Marcus crafts a very neoliberalistic argument in her article, implying that the work of rape prevention needs to be done on an individual level, and even more importantly, inside of the victim herself. She seems to be trapped in the idea that rape will come to an end if women stop being polite. While I do agree that the problem of rape needs to be examined in the context of feminist standpoint theory, Marcus seems to deny that the law has to have anything to do with rape, largely because the law and its punishments can only come into play after the fact and that we shouldn’t have to “prove our innocence at some later judicial date,” rather we should attempt to prevent rape because it is in our “interests” to do so (392).
Understatement of the century.
I want to take this back to something that the woman from Kindred House said to us last week, that “safety is power.” What I’m wondering is how safety is constructed and how that works in a neoliberalistic and therefore individualistic society where your safety is something you have to make for yourself. Safety seems impossible when you have to do it on your own – it seems to me safety is something that comes from a collective, something that depends on others being willing to prioritize the safety of others as much as they prioritize it for themselves. Of course it is “in our interests” to keep ourselves safe, but when does the safety of others become central to our interests as well?
I think we like to be able to use the excuse that someone leads a “risky” lifestyle to reinforce that our own safety is our number one priority, but it seems to me that safety is something that cannot be achieved without the help of others in our communities. We just don’t seem to see it as our responsibility. What we don’t seem to realize is that safety of oppressed and marginalized groups, safety of those who do lead “risky lifestyles” has to be prioritized in the interests of groups that are less or not oppressed. As long as there are still power imbalances, safety of the marginalized is not individualistically possible. Those who do have the privilege of safety through structuralist, patriarchal systems don’t seem to understand that their safety is guaranteed, and that makes them powerful.
The other day in Cape Town, white students at the University of Cape Town stood in lines around black students protesting fees. I don’t know much about this story, but the white students lined up in layers around the black students because police were firing rubber bullets at the protesters. The white students knew their safety was guaranteed and came together to protect the safety of those who were unable to protect themselves. As long as structural inequality exists, I think we all need to take a page out of these students' books.
This post made me think about two precautionary narratives women are offered to combat the threat of sexual assault: surround yourself with other people for protection (there is safety in numbers, and safety in men), is one option. The other is to take individual responsibility for your own safety and learn to protect yourself (through things like self-defense). While the latter has a clearer connection to personal safety, both still enforce the idea that individual bodies are responsible and liable for violence. Forms of self-defense, then, become a resource we can “invest” in for self-development. Bodies are further separated into “responsible” and “risky” depending on if they choose to access this tool and utilize it during an “attack”. It is a very neoliberalist, militarized concept and shows how we commonly think about sexual assault: an enemy invader that we can build up weapons against and learn to fight. While this is obviously extremely problematic, because it really only focuses on one type of experience (such as the stranger danger narrative), I wonder if there are benefits of thinking about the “fight” of sexual assault in more collective ways. I wonder if this would allow us to think about others’ safety in addition to our own. I’m reflecting on marches and protests like “Take Back the Night” and “Slut Walk”…could these maybe be seen as more collective responses to safety? Interestingly, we’ve talked about how these movements are at risk of dismissing certain bodies, experiences, and voices (which is often true), but I’m thinking they might also be powerful sources of challenging how individual “choices” define individual bodies. How can I be both an autonomous body and an ally to other bodies? How does considering others’ safety have the potential to strengthen my own safety? Is this what maybe “feminist” self-defense is getting at?
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