Quick disclaimer: Scientific words are used for body parts here.
If you're not grown-up enough to have this conversation, then go somewhere else.
Part of what I love about my life is the large number of strong feminists in it, including many male feminists. (I know there's a discussion as to whether men can be feminists. I'm just asserting here without analysis that they can be. Deal with it.) And I love men. Not just the men I've never hooked up with. Men in general. But particularly feminist men.
If you are a man (or a woman), you should join my amazing brother by doing your local Walk A Mile in Her Shoes, which raises money to combat rape, sexual violence, and the gender-based violence. My brother and my 13 month old nephew are walking - shoes, I've been told, will be decided later but I'm hoping my nephew busts something like these out (dear bro, you can buy them here). I appreciate that my brother and sister-in-law - one of the coolest sets of feminist parents I could imagine - are starting early in raising my nephew as a feminist. I love that he will grow up doing this walk with his father, whose previous career life involved prosecuting domestic violence and rape cases. I love that his mother and aunts all have jobs that keep them active in the community and ensure that my nephew will never grow up thinking a woman's job can only be a small subset of the world. I won't have to worry that my nephew will think having a female professor or boss is President is "insanity" or unbiblical. I won't have to worry that he'll think it's acceptable to hit a woman because she pissed him off, she broke a golf club, she got into a car accident, or she cheated on him.
And I don't have to worry that my nephew will think "some girls rape easy."
He will be raised to understand that unless a girl says yes, she hasn't consented. He'll know that a girl being drunk isn't an excuse, and neither is the fact that her shoulder, or stomach, or even her breasts and vagina are showing. He'll know that the fact she walks outside in public alone doesn't mean she wants his hand, his eyes or his penis on her. I expect my nephew will know to stand up to other men who say and do these things, even if it means losing friends and even it means that sometimes the conversations get awkward or uncomfortable.
Because that's what it means to be an upstanding man.
I know he will know this because I know his father and mother, his aunts, his uncle, and his grandparents all know this and will reinforce it for him. Again and again and again. The thing about young boys is they grow up to be young men, so if you let them know early and often the expectations of them as men, they will generally embrace those expectations and live up to them.
The other thing I know my nephew will know that is too often our general society gets wrong:
Simply because there is no external eye-witness to a rape, it doesn't mean rape comes down to "he-said, she-said."
A facebook conversation prompted this post, so a little background. There's a brilliant commentary by Owen Jones at the Independent reminding Europeans that while their outrage over the Delhi rape case is justified, the problem isn't Indian, or even developing state / patriarchal society specific. The problem of how women are treated in India is replicated in Europe and the US:
Take a look at France, that prosperous bastion of European civilisation. In 1999, two then-teenagers – named only as Nina and Stephanie – were raped almost every day for six months. Young men would queue up to rape them, patiently waiting for their friends to finish in secluded basements. After a three-week trial this year, 10 of the 14 accused left the courtroom as free men; the other four were granted lenient sentences of one year at most.
...
All rape is violence by definition, but particularly horrifying incidents take place here, too. Exactly a year ago, one woman was raped by 21-year-old Mustafa Yussuf in central Manchester; shortly afterwards a passer-by – who the rape survivor thought was coming to help – raped her again as she lay on the floor. Or take 63-year-old Marie Reid, raped and savagely murdered earlier this year by an 18-year-old boy she had treated like a “grandson”.
It’s important to clarify that most rapes – in India or elsewhere – are not carried out by strangers waiting in alleys to pounce on women. It is mostly by people known to the rape survivor or victim; often someone they trust. It is a concept that the law itself took a long time to recognise, which is why – until 1991 – it was legal to rape your wife.It was the first story - of France - that prompted a quick discourse on the constraints of justice in prosecuting rape. A male friend noted that (in French) that in that case the rape wasn't sufficiently proven and that the interests of justice require the burden be placed on the prosecution and witness to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the rape occurred.
This is the common explanation trotted out whenever a particularly horrific rape case catches the media's attention and the judge or jury subsequently acquits the accused. There just "wasn't enough evidence." They "couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt." It's just "sometime's a matter of he-said / she-said and a jury can't go on that alone."
My first reaction to this line is "bullshit." But I've promised my mother to swear less in public - and on facebook - and I don't think "bullshit" is a sufficiently established argument to justify my position. So let me clarify a little further.
First, we allow eye-witness testimony in cases involving murder and robbery as well as rape. Sometimes, this witness identification is the only testimony available and it results in a conviction. When this happens no one dismisses the testimony as a matter of "he said / (s)he said." We accept it and filter it and the issue of the credibility of the witnesses is assessed by both how they tell the story and their own general credibility. (But no one attempts to argue a shop keeper is not a credible eyewitness because the shop keeper was once robbed before, or once sold beer to someone who looked like the guy who later robbed him.)
Yet, eye-witness accounts in situations of armed robbery or murder are probably less likely to be accurate than those involving sexual assault. Since rape predominantly involves cases where the victim and perpetrator know each other, the impact of trauma on the ability of a witness to identify the perpetrators is reduced. The same is true for other social biases that can affect eyewitness testimony.
We don't dismiss eye-witness accounts all together because we recognize that it can have validity and we simply need to use it better. We continue to develop and advocate for rules that allow us to balance the interests of justice so that judges and juries understand the factors that can affect eye-witness accounts. But again, though, these issues of the doubtfulness of eye-witness accounts aren't major considerations in most rape cases. If a friend I know rapes me, the distance, lighting, and his race are unlikely to impact the accuracy of my identification.
This doesn't mean that even in rape cases, eye-witness testimony becomes fool-proof. We do need to be careful about its use. I recognize that. In my home state of Ohio, Clarence Elkins was once convicted for rape and murder based principally on the eyewitness testimony of his six year old niece. Now, that eye-witness testimony ended up being wrong (a fact the amazing faculty and students associated with the Ohio Innocence Project - including several of my friends - helped bring to light), but a lot of that relates to how the eye-witness testimony was collected and the age of the witness.
So, yes, eye-witness testimony has its limits. Yes, that includes in cases of rape. Yes, there needs to be reform to the use of eye-witness testimony. BUT, we would never argue that when the guy who runs the local 7-11 says he was robbed by that guy and indicates to the defendant, and the defendant says "it wasn't me"* that it's just a matter of "he said / he said." We evaluate the testimony. We hear experts who explain how testimony can be effected by trauma. And finally, we assess the credibility of the witnesses.
The difference between eye-witness testimony in rape and armed robberies is, actually, a matter of social bias against the victims. We are taught - through movies, TV shows, and yes, sometimes real cases - that women "make up" rape to "punish" men who have spurned them or hurt them or whatever. We are taught that women sometimes change their minds afterwards and claim rape, or do it when they end up pregnant at an inconvenient time.
We are taught women are emotional and therefore unreliable when it comes to issues of their sexuality and sexual health. And finally, we're that that if they aren't virgins, they must be whores. If they've had sex once, they probably wanted it.
If they don't want it, women shouldn't dress provocatively, walk alone, go to clubs, or do any number of other things that some guy once decided meant a woman "wants it" and actually wants it from anybody any time. That apparently includes getting married. If a woman fails to take these steps, they're probably at fault. They should've known better.
This is what our society tells us. Regularly.
On the other hand, our boys will be boys attitude suggests men should and do consistently pursue sex and that shouldn't cost them their lives or freedom. We are taught to sympathize with the rapist because they look like sweet young boys we probably knew back home. Do we really want to ruin their lives because of a little confusion as to whether her "no" was "no" or "oh, baby, no, no, no, yes, yes, yes!"
This brings me back to Roger Rivard's assertion that "some girls rape easy." This is reflective of the idea that men should be pursuing sex but sometimes it just get a little confusing for them as to what a woman wants. It is, once again, the assumption that the woman is at fault. It's not just that she's promiscuous but that she's emotional and unclear about what she wants from her partner. She wants to be a good girl, but she also doesn't want to be. She therefore must've gotten herself into a situation where she is unclear for the guy and he just accidentally ends up raping her. And isn't it just terrible that his life would be ruined like that?
Most of consciously reject some or all of these proposition to an extent, but their social prominence unconsciously gnaws at us when we consider how to prove rape. It's why we don't give sufficient credence to eye-witness testimony in rape cases. It's why psychological testimony regarding the way trauma affects the giving of evidence is rarely fully introduced at trial.
And it's why we distinguish between the viability of sole eye-witness testimony in the armed robbery of a grocery store versus the continuous rape of 2 girls by 14 boys.
Because when it's rape, someone pointing the finger isn't sufficient. Particularly when it's just some emotional girl who didn't do enough to protect herself or fight back.
In that case, it's just "he said / she said" and how in the world could we ever have justice if we convicted on that basis alone?
No comments:
Post a Comment