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... at Harriet's Fugitivus blog. I love her posts, but sometimes she mooshes together several different, large, related concepts and I want to send people to a particular part and that's not possible because of the way the writing is formatted. I'm putting the part that I share around the most often below. The rest of the post is here.
Let’s make this simple.
Rape and abuse exist. They’re horrible and they’re wrong.
The only way rape and abuse can be less horrible is if we don’t value the person who is being raped or abused.
Let’s Godwin’s Law this: Hitler is being raped and abused. How much do you care?
Okay, let’s back this up realistically. Your sister is being raped and abused. How much do you care?
A woman who sleeps with a lot of people and callously disregards their feelings is being raped and abused. How much do you care?
A woman who was drinking heavily at the club and hanging off every single guy is being raped and abused. How much do you care?
The only way rape and abuse can be cheapened is if we cheapen the victims. They aren’t cheapened by expanding the definition of victim. If rape and abuse are horrible and wrong, then more victims just equals more horrible and more wrong. But we can cheapen rape and abuse by limiting the definition of victims we give a shit about.
There does not exist the possibility of cheapening rape and abuse if rape and abuse are considered to be inherently horrible and wrong. No matter how few or how many victims, it is inherently horrible and wrong for each of them. There exists the possibility of becoming desensitized to the horribleness and wrongness when the number of victims reaches critical mass (thought experiment: try to imagine the experience of all the women and men being raped in the Congo and see if your brain doesn’t just burn out before you reach the point of major and crippling depression), but there does not exist the possibility of rape and abuse no longer being horrible and wrong based on who is victimized (and/or who is perpetrating).
But if rape and abuse are horrible and wrong only when committed upon certain people,
Then there exists the possibility of cheapening rape and abuse by trying to include people for whom rape and abuse are deserved and right.
That logic train can only exist if we live in a society that believes in some cases, for some people, abuse and rape are deserved and right. Only if some people deserve to be treated horribly and wrongly can we have a situation where something that is horrible and wrong can be cheapened by the amount and type of victims experiencing it.
A person can flounder about whether or not they want to call themselves a rape or abuse victim for a lot of personal reasons. Nobody really wants to identify themselves as a victim; it’s humiliating. And if the potential for being victimized again exists, then what’s the point? Why admit that something wrong happened to you, and deal with the emotional fallout of that, when that something is just going to happen again tomorrow? And admitting to having been victimized doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You may have to change your life to exclude the perpetrator, and allies of the perpetrator, which sometimes can add up to all your friends and family. You may have to admit that if this thing the perpetrator did was abuse, then this thing your family does is also abuse, as well, and you can’t make a moral stand that the one thing is wrong without confronting the other. All that shit takes time to work through.
But most people won’t say all that, because that stuff gets into some other sticky territory, like: Is there something inherently wrong with me if I’m a victim? or Why does my abuser have so many allies? And the answers to those questions can sound a lot like feminism. So a convenient and acceptable cultural shorthand to express misgivings about whether or not you personally want to be identified with that crap is to say, “I don’t want to say that what happened to me was rape because that cheapens it for other women who were raped worse.”
On the flip side, you’ll have people (mostly women, I’ve found) that express an extreme amount of hostility toward women who are not likable and worthwhile victims claiming to have been raped. They express the same amount of hostility towards women who have not claimed they have been raped, but are behaving in ways that would make them unlikable and non-worthwhile victims if they were to be raped.
“Look at that fucking girl. She’s hardly wearing anything. She’s so drunk, and she’s just rubbing her ass all over everybody in the club. If she gets raped, it’s going to be her fault.”
If we live in a culture in which certain abuses are always, inherently, unforgivably horrible and wrong, then the responsibility for those abuses always rests upon the perpetrator, who has done something horrible and wrong.
If we live in a culture in which some people are unvalued enough that we are allowed to commit certain abuses upon their bodies without those abuses being considered horrible and wrong,
Then the responsibility lies with those unvalued people for acting/living/being in unvalued ways, and “choosing” to be unvalued becomes the thing that is horrible and wrong, because it was the existence of an unvalued person that created the abuse and the rape (instead of the existence of a perpetrator).
And if those unvalued people are not born with a birthmark that says “unvalued”, if they are not an inherent biological class, then that un-value must be acquired through behavior and appearance and activity.
And if that un-value can be acquired, then anybody may acquire it, accidentally or purposefully.
And if anybody may acquire that un-value, then anybody may be abused with abandon, provided they bear a passing resemblance to the unvalued class (note: this applies to raped and abused men, too, who will have their masculinity mocked as a way to identify them with the rapeable unvalued class).
And then you end up with “women who are ruining it for the rest of us.”
What that really means is, there are women who deserve to be raped and abused, and by their very existence, they put me in danger of being raped and abused, because somebody might mistake me for them.
These ideas — the cheapening of abuse and women who make it worse for other women — can only exist in a culture that already believes that abuse can be cheapened, and that some people deserve to be abused. If we believed that abuse was always wrong, no matter who the victim (or who the perpetrator), abuse could not possibly be cheapened, and no woman could ruin it for another.
If these ideas exist in your brain, if you have said these words, it’s because you swallowed this line completely. It’s because you believe some people deserve to be abused. That’s a dangerous and frightening belief to have. If you believe that some people deserve to be abused, if you open that door, you might find that you or somebody you love is behind it. And they totally deserved it, too.
I Don’t Want To Say I Was Abused Or Raped Because That Cheapens Abuse and Rape/Some Girls Ruin It For The Rest Of Us
Let’s make this simple.
Rape and abuse exist. They’re horrible and they’re wrong.
The only way rape and abuse can be less horrible is if we don’t value the person who is being raped or abused.
Let’s Godwin’s Law this: Hitler is being raped and abused. How much do you care?
Okay, let’s back this up realistically. Your sister is being raped and abused. How much do you care?
A woman who sleeps with a lot of people and callously disregards their feelings is being raped and abused. How much do you care?
A woman who was drinking heavily at the club and hanging off every single guy is being raped and abused. How much do you care?
The only way rape and abuse can be cheapened is if we cheapen the victims. They aren’t cheapened by expanding the definition of victim. If rape and abuse are horrible and wrong, then more victims just equals more horrible and more wrong. But we can cheapen rape and abuse by limiting the definition of victims we give a shit about.
There does not exist the possibility of cheapening rape and abuse if rape and abuse are considered to be inherently horrible and wrong. No matter how few or how many victims, it is inherently horrible and wrong for each of them. There exists the possibility of becoming desensitized to the horribleness and wrongness when the number of victims reaches critical mass (thought experiment: try to imagine the experience of all the women and men being raped in the Congo and see if your brain doesn’t just burn out before you reach the point of major and crippling depression), but there does not exist the possibility of rape and abuse no longer being horrible and wrong based on who is victimized (and/or who is perpetrating).
But if rape and abuse are horrible and wrong only when committed upon certain people,
Then there exists the possibility of cheapening rape and abuse by trying to include people for whom rape and abuse are deserved and right.
That logic train can only exist if we live in a society that believes in some cases, for some people, abuse and rape are deserved and right. Only if some people deserve to be treated horribly and wrongly can we have a situation where something that is horrible and wrong can be cheapened by the amount and type of victims experiencing it.
A person can flounder about whether or not they want to call themselves a rape or abuse victim for a lot of personal reasons. Nobody really wants to identify themselves as a victim; it’s humiliating. And if the potential for being victimized again exists, then what’s the point? Why admit that something wrong happened to you, and deal with the emotional fallout of that, when that something is just going to happen again tomorrow? And admitting to having been victimized doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You may have to change your life to exclude the perpetrator, and allies of the perpetrator, which sometimes can add up to all your friends and family. You may have to admit that if this thing the perpetrator did was abuse, then this thing your family does is also abuse, as well, and you can’t make a moral stand that the one thing is wrong without confronting the other. All that shit takes time to work through.
But most people won’t say all that, because that stuff gets into some other sticky territory, like: Is there something inherently wrong with me if I’m a victim? or Why does my abuser have so many allies? And the answers to those questions can sound a lot like feminism. So a convenient and acceptable cultural shorthand to express misgivings about whether or not you personally want to be identified with that crap is to say, “I don’t want to say that what happened to me was rape because that cheapens it for other women who were raped worse.”
On the flip side, you’ll have people (mostly women, I’ve found) that express an extreme amount of hostility toward women who are not likable and worthwhile victims claiming to have been raped. They express the same amount of hostility towards women who have not claimed they have been raped, but are behaving in ways that would make them unlikable and non-worthwhile victims if they were to be raped.
“Look at that fucking girl. She’s hardly wearing anything. She’s so drunk, and she’s just rubbing her ass all over everybody in the club. If she gets raped, it’s going to be her fault.”
If we live in a culture in which certain abuses are always, inherently, unforgivably horrible and wrong, then the responsibility for those abuses always rests upon the perpetrator, who has done something horrible and wrong.
If we live in a culture in which some people are unvalued enough that we are allowed to commit certain abuses upon their bodies without those abuses being considered horrible and wrong,
Then the responsibility lies with those unvalued people for acting/living/being in unvalued ways, and “choosing” to be unvalued becomes the thing that is horrible and wrong, because it was the existence of an unvalued person that created the abuse and the rape (instead of the existence of a perpetrator).
And if those unvalued people are not born with a birthmark that says “unvalued”, if they are not an inherent biological class, then that un-value must be acquired through behavior and appearance and activity.
And if that un-value can be acquired, then anybody may acquire it, accidentally or purposefully.
And if anybody may acquire that un-value, then anybody may be abused with abandon, provided they bear a passing resemblance to the unvalued class (note: this applies to raped and abused men, too, who will have their masculinity mocked as a way to identify them with the rapeable unvalued class).
And then you end up with “women who are ruining it for the rest of us.”
What that really means is, there are women who deserve to be raped and abused, and by their very existence, they put me in danger of being raped and abused, because somebody might mistake me for them.
These ideas — the cheapening of abuse and women who make it worse for other women — can only exist in a culture that already believes that abuse can be cheapened, and that some people deserve to be abused. If we believed that abuse was always wrong, no matter who the victim (or who the perpetrator), abuse could not possibly be cheapened, and no woman could ruin it for another.
If these ideas exist in your brain, if you have said these words, it’s because you swallowed this line completely. It’s because you believe some people deserve to be abused. That’s a dangerous and frightening belief to have. If you believe that some people deserve to be abused, if you open that door, you might find that you or somebody you love is behind it. And they totally deserved it, too.
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