So I’m finally blogging about something that has been bugging me for months, and that has been discussed constantly all over the web- the casual use of the word rape, as in “I totally raped that test” or “I got raped on that speeding ticket”. In both cases, no, no you didn’t. I will almost guarantee you that anyone saying these words has never experienced the horror of being raped or sexually assaulted or does not know someone who has been. (And if they have? …That’s… insensitive at best.)
I’ve seen two arguments that I’d like to explain in greater detail when I was reading the comments section over at Feministe:
1. That when you make these comments, your privilege is showing. You are walking around making these horrible comments completely unaware of how terrifying such an experience really is and you have no concept of what it’s like to walk around all day every day being aware that this can, in fact, happen to you.
2. That many of the men (and I have heard a few women use this language, but very, very few so I will say men) are the same men that have a problem with girls and women using the word correctly to describe what happened to them.
As to the first point. There is no way to explain to a man the fear and scrutiny that is built into being a woman day in and day out, to the point that when someone commits a crime against us, the first reaction is not How awful, let me call the police, but rather What did you do. We teach our girls to Prevent Rape, and we do not teach our boys to Not Rape. And to me- this is where the problem comes in using language this way. To women it has been presented as an ingrained facet of our lives, and in fact it is! Everyone’s familiar with the 1 in 4 statistic by now, so I say that with some evidence to back me up. Men are in fact raped and assaulted every day, but there is still not the intense, building-one’s-life-around-that-fear that there is for women. Women choose where to live, where to work, what parties to go to, what friends to make, what clothes to wear and when they can and cannot leave their homes based on this fear. And to hear some jackass say “I raped that test” completely invalidates the experience of both the millions of women who have experienced rape and the rest of the female population that is forced to live in fear of it, and this all happens because we still label it as a woman’s problem, and therefore completely OK to joke about.
My second point is a tad more nuanced. While reading this post I noticed that I’ve been observing a particular phenomenon: when a rape case hits the papers, it’s continuously called “Sex with a child” or “Unwanted sex with a Co-Ed”. IT IS NOT SEX. SEX IMPLIES CONSENT. IT WAS RAPE. Call the defendant the “alleged rapist” but do not use the phrase “alleged rape”. The crime happened. The mystery is not the crime, it is who committed it. But what is perhaps most disturbing is the trend that judges are not allowing the use of the word rape in criminal trials because it is unfairly prejudicial to the defendant. (See here, here, and here.) ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! This speaks VOLUMES about how far we have yet to come in terms of believing women’s claims about rape. It is unfairly prejudicial because no one thinks of teh menz! and what happens when there’s a false accusation?! And yet, it’s still totally cool to say your team “got raped” at last night’s game.
I’m going to have high blood pressure if this continues.
-BFF
