Valenti & Graff Ending Rape Culture

1. Valenti & GraffEnding Rape Culture “Rape is rape”

2. “To too many people, ‘rape’ and ‘rape victim’ are not accurate descriptors but political shorthand—the product of an overblown, politically correct interpretation of sex”. • Tennessee Senator Douglas Henry, 2008, “Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse.” (Valenti, Ending Rape Illiteracy) • Is rape a political act? Is rape victim a political category?

3. Todd Akin • “Well you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.” • How can the rapist be punished? What is rape? • “Legitimate rape” = violent, stranger rape • A woman pregnant from rape by definition not raped • She wanted it, culpable in her own rape

4. WI state representative Roger Rivard • “Some girls rape easy.” • Clarifying: “What the whole genesis of it was, it was advice to me [from my father], telling me, “If you’re going to go down that road, you may have consensual sex that night and then the next morning it may be rape.” So the way he said it was, “Just remember, Roger, some girls, they rape so easy. It may be rape the next morning.” • Reflexive distrust of rape victims • The shadow of the slut enables rape: • Stigma of the slut attached to women who have sex • This stigma causes a belief that a women will allege rape so as not to be labeled a slut • Rape victims thus not credible

5. “Recently the Connecticut State Supreme Court overturned a sexual assault conviction for a man who attacked a woman with severe cerebral palsy. The woman cannot communicate verbally, and according to the court’s documents, has the “intellectual functional equivalent of a 3-year-old.” • Still, because of how the state defines rape in cases of physical incapacitation, the court decided that the victim was capable of “biting, kicking, scratching, screeching, groaning or gesturing,” and therefore could have communicated a lack of consent and didn’t. Basically, she didn’t fight back hard enough in order for what happened to her to be considered rape.” (Valenti, “Ending Rape Illiteracy”)

6. After the Department of Justice reported that there were 182,000 sexual assaults committed against women in 2008, a study by the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center showed that their numbers were wrong—thanks largely to the way they talked to women. Instead of asking questions like “Has anyone ever forced you to have sex?”, they asked women if they had been subject to “rape, attempted or other type of sexual attack.” • Thanks to the confusion around the definition of rape, and the hesitance of many women to label themselves victims, the actual number of women raped was much higher—the center put it around 1 million.

7. Gray Rape • Laura Sessions Stepp in Cosmo • “A generation ago, it was easier for men and women to understand what constituted rape because the social rules were clearer. Men were supposed to be the ones coming on to women, and women were said to be looking for relationships, not casual sex. • But these boundaries and rules have been loosening up for decades, and now lots of women feel it’s perfectly okay to go out looking for a hookup or to be the aggressor, which may turn out fine for them—unless the signals get mixed or misread.” • A few months after this article ran, a student at Lewis & Clark College in Portland was assaulted... The young woman called what happened to her “gray rape,” a term she learned from an article in Cosmopolitan. • “It started happening, and then he, like, twisted his fingers around my hair and started pulling it and being just kind of violent. I started choking because he was just, like, pushing my head. I started gagging and choking and I couldn’t really breathe.” She says she started pushing on [her attacker’s] abdomen to tell him to stop. ‘And he was like, “yeah, that’s right, choke on it.” (Valenti, Ending Rape Illiteracy)

8. Consequences • Maryland law until 2008: • Consent not able to be withdrawn • “The damage is done” • “A woman could never be ‘re-flowered’” • “If a woman consents prior to penetration and withdraws consent following penetration, there is no rape” • California hung jury • Video of unconscious victim raped by multiple men, penetrated vaginally and anally w/pool sticks, bottle, lit cigarette • Victim’s sexual history, desire to make porn video, used as evidence she could not have been raped (Valenti, 299-301) • Steubenville rape case • Rape, Suicide, Bullying • Elizabeth Seeberg • AudriePott • Rehtaeh Parsons

9. Julian Assange sexual assault accusations • Allegedly forcibly held a woman down, forced sex on her • Allegedly penetrated second woman while she was sleeping • Assange describes Sweden as “Saudi Arabia of feminism”, seeks refuge in Ecuadorian embassy • Keith Olbermann: “the term 'rape' in Sweden includes consensual sex without a condom” • False • Claims of women dismissed • Alleged as dupes of imperial power, fame-seekers, ‘buyer’s remorse’ • Michael Moore: • Donates $20,000 to defense of Assange, says “We’ve lived long enough, through enough of this kind of deception, these kinds of dirty tricks that governments and corporations play. • “And the issue here is that if he were any other just normal Brit, with this so-called ‘crime’that he’s been accused of — which I understand isn’t, wouldn’t actually be a crime if it was committed in Britain, a condom broke I believe is the ‘evidence.’ He hasn’t even been charged with a crime. He hasn’t been charged with anything” • Would be a crime anywhere, Swedish formal charge comes at end of investigation, rather than beginning (as in US & UK)

10. Cui bono? • In what ways do the vast majority of men, who are not rapists, benefit from rape culture? • Sexual freedom, agency • A legacy of power & ownership • Prestige and status • Epiphenomenal • Culture that takes men’s word more seriously than women’s continues to do so in cases of rape • Male dominance extends into sexual sphere • Privilege & invisibility