I posted a question on Facebook which was "how do you define rape without the phrase forced sex?" We need to give journalists a language to explain what rape is. I started to comment on the ensuing discussion but it got a bit long so I put it here instead...(and edited it slightly!)
I don't know much about journalism or about whether the flurry of outrage about the reporting/ sentencing of rape on Twitter recently is unusual (I suspect not) but being new to Twitter I am feeling a bit overwhelmed and needing to pull together all my thoughts and reflections. (I process things externally and am rubbish at thinking in the quiet of my head!)
We've had articles stating that 13 and 14 year olds were forced to have sex and some were raped, as though these were two different things. We've had a 40 month sentence for the rape of a child because she was a "willing" victim (which is, as far as I'm concerned, an oxymoron)... oh and she looked 14 (um...that's still illegal. In fact, given the context it would have been rape had she been 30... oh, and they filmed it so that's also making extreme pornography even if she had been 30). We've had the councillor who felt like an embarrassment and left the conservative party, while other Peterborough councillors where baffled at why she felt like that.
But all this reminded me again how powerful words are and therefore how careful we must be with the words we use. Sometimes when I think about it I want to say nothing at all. Words can be clumsy, full of unspoken meaning and betray ugly values and prejudices we don't even know we have. But silence is no answer. So we tread cautiously forward with ears wide open till our speaking comes closer and closer to the truth.
What I think those articles were attempting to say was that forced sex is rape. They were just a bit clumsy about it. But often people use the verb "to have'"in connection with rape and maybe that's what needs to go? Initially I was thinking it was the term "sex" that needed to be dissociated from the term "rape" but that could get very tricky and how would you describe sexual assault? So now I'm thinking its the term "to have" that's problematic. Rather than "they forced them to have sex", should we be saying "they forcibly took sex from them"? I don't know but if we say "they had sex" where it's consensual and then in another context say "they forced them to have sex", the only difference is the force, which is not the only difference.
Also, how do we define "having sex"? I would want a definition incompatible with being raped because people who have been raped won't feel like they've had sex. To say "they were forced to have sex" also possibly narrates what happened from the perpetrators point of view. Perhaps we should be saying "they did not give consent to the enforced sex the perpetrator took from them", or "they could not consent as they had had their freedom and capacity removed by the perpetrator who took sex from them". I also liked the suggestion of the word "using" rather than "having". "Using a person for sex without them giving consent" or "they were used for sex without being given the right to consent".
Anyway, however we describe this, we must be clear that all of it, not some of is rape. If the victim, looked 14, wore a short skirt or was an embarrassment, then those are the things they are "guilty" of and last time I checked none of those things where illegal. As was tweeted recently "blaming the victim" is another way of saying "protecting the perpetrator".
Comments very, very welcome.
I don't know much about journalism or about whether the flurry of outrage about the reporting/ sentencing of rape on Twitter recently is unusual (I suspect not) but being new to Twitter I am feeling a bit overwhelmed and needing to pull together all my thoughts and reflections. (I process things externally and am rubbish at thinking in the quiet of my head!)
We've had articles stating that 13 and 14 year olds were forced to have sex and some were raped, as though these were two different things. We've had a 40 month sentence for the rape of a child because she was a "willing" victim (which is, as far as I'm concerned, an oxymoron)... oh and she looked 14 (um...that's still illegal. In fact, given the context it would have been rape had she been 30... oh, and they filmed it so that's also making extreme pornography even if she had been 30). We've had the councillor who felt like an embarrassment and left the conservative party, while other Peterborough councillors where baffled at why she felt like that.
But all this reminded me again how powerful words are and therefore how careful we must be with the words we use. Sometimes when I think about it I want to say nothing at all. Words can be clumsy, full of unspoken meaning and betray ugly values and prejudices we don't even know we have. But silence is no answer. So we tread cautiously forward with ears wide open till our speaking comes closer and closer to the truth.
What I think those articles were attempting to say was that forced sex is rape. They were just a bit clumsy about it. But often people use the verb "to have'"in connection with rape and maybe that's what needs to go? Initially I was thinking it was the term "sex" that needed to be dissociated from the term "rape" but that could get very tricky and how would you describe sexual assault? So now I'm thinking its the term "to have" that's problematic. Rather than "they forced them to have sex", should we be saying "they forcibly took sex from them"? I don't know but if we say "they had sex" where it's consensual and then in another context say "they forced them to have sex", the only difference is the force, which is not the only difference.
Also, how do we define "having sex"? I would want a definition incompatible with being raped because people who have been raped won't feel like they've had sex. To say "they were forced to have sex" also possibly narrates what happened from the perpetrators point of view. Perhaps we should be saying "they did not give consent to the enforced sex the perpetrator took from them", or "they could not consent as they had had their freedom and capacity removed by the perpetrator who took sex from them". I also liked the suggestion of the word "using" rather than "having". "Using a person for sex without them giving consent" or "they were used for sex without being given the right to consent".
Anyway, however we describe this, we must be clear that all of it, not some of is rape. If the victim, looked 14, wore a short skirt or was an embarrassment, then those are the things they are "guilty" of and last time I checked none of those things where illegal. As was tweeted recently "blaming the victim" is another way of saying "protecting the perpetrator".
Comments very, very welcome.
Just to add, a friend of mine was one of the editors when the OED defined rape for the 2008 version. He reports it being very challenging and they were 'trying to capture the fact that the most fundamental part of sense is that of lack of consent, rather than force, especially in modern usage'
ReplyDeleteThe definition they came up with was:
'Originally and chiefly: the act or crime, committed by a man, of forcing a woman to have sexual intercourse with him against her will, esp. by means of threats or violence. In later use more generally: the act of forced, non-consenting, or illegal sexual intercourse with another person; sexual violation or assault.'
What are people's thoughts?