Not special rights, equal rights.

     The readings this week were all so thought provoking I honestly had trouble deciding what to write about. In today's class we watched a short segment of an interview with Cece McDonald and Laverne Cox and I found the emotion in that interview overwhelming. The part that struck me the most was when Cece was talking about how you never hear of a trans* woman just being happy, living her life, and dying of old age. Our society is not creating a space for trans* individuals to be happy. The structure of our society is fashioned in such a way that the comfort of one group is placed higher than the other, so much so the "lower" group does not have a place to grow old and die of old age. I could not find a consistent number but on average articles said that the life span of a trans* person is 30-32 years while the life span of the average male is 76.4 years. To me, those numbers alone prove serious structural inequality.
     In the interview segment we saw interviews from trans* individuals at a rally for a trans* individual that had been brutally attacked and murdered. One individual being interviewed reiterated something that every minority group is striving for, "we don't want special rights, we just want equal rights, human rights." This is something seemingly so simple but apparently impossible to achieve.
     Why is this such a hard concept for our society to grasp? When I was reading the Dear BB article the writer says something that I think relates to this inability to understand: "until dudes have the opportunity and reason to think through how their socialization has groomed them to be rapists, we'll always believe rape is inconceivable - too big, too irreproachably evil to even consider, let alone deconstruct or eradicate." 'Dudes,' unfortunately and annoyingly, need to be given the opportunity AND reason to give other groups equal rights and the onus on teaching people not to rape (or teaching people about the lack of equal rights), as Dear BB says, "is work that is disproportionately performed by the people who are raped most often."
     The readings this week brought up a lot of frustration and anger but it is anger I know I will be able to use in productive ways, ways to hopefully promote change.

Gendering Power

This week’s readings made me question how rape and other sexual assaults should be defined. I used to think that rape was just about power, but then up until this point in our class we have talked about the dangers of eliminating gender and sex from the definition of rape. However, this week’s reading contents did make me think about the importance of power when defining these terms.

While reading Michael Munson’s blog post on sexual violence towards the Trans community, I was struck by how our construction of rape as a gendered crime “re-victimizes the millions of survivors who are not women, and those who have not been assaulted by men.” In Jos Truitt’s article she takes this notion a step further by claiming that rape is gendered but that “both the act and idea of rape are used to perpetuate a patriarchal gender hierarchy.” This plays into the idea of rape as a power dynamic, while still acknowledging the fact that it is often still entrenched in the gender. Furthermore, this definition does encapsulate a wider variety of experiences, since it allows the perpetrators and survivors of assault to be genderless. It implies instead that rape is a tool used to enforce patriarchal power, but this structure of patriarchy can take many forms. It does also still acknowledge that most perpetrators are cis-gendered men, which I think is important. I just think that we cannot separate the notions of power and control that are involved with sexual violence.

Jos Truitt also argues that “we don’t actually know how strong the gender disparity is largely because of how gendered our concept of rape is.” While I don’t think that we can separate gender completely from rape I do agree that our focus on gendering rape marginalizes a lot of survivors, and that that is dangerous. I don’t think that we can separate rape from gender when addressing violence against trans-people either, but I suppose this brings be back to how power is a gendered thing. That’s why I like the sentence in Truitt’s post about the enforcement of patriarchal hierarchy, because I think that power is inherently gendered, and that rape is inherently a sexual crime. I think that acknowledging that all power gendered may be a better way (for me at least) to try to understand how to define rape.

The Patriarchy Controls ALL THE THINGS

This week we talked a lot about groups of people who are impacted by gender-based violence other than cis-gendered women. In exploring these experiences, we challenged the deeply held belief within our patriarchal society that sexual assault happens in a certain way, to certain people; we attempted to work through the insidious barriers that exist between hegemonic patriarchy and reality. To what extent is patriarchal hegemony responsible for the lack of recognition of various ‘types’ of victims? What is it about society’s values that determine who is allowed to identify as a victim or survivor of sexual assault?

One of the most pervasive ideas that controls which victims or survivors of sexual assault are recognised is the idea of masculinity. Under the umbrella of patriarchy, masculinity is valued above everything else. As a result, anything that de-masculinizes someone who is ‘supposed’ to be masculine is unacceptable and virtually ignored. As seen in Weiss’ piece about male sexual victimization, “men who are sexually victimized may not recognize what happened to them as crimes or may be reluctant to admit to being victimized by incidents that are not supposed to happen to ‘real’ men” (pg. 289). Even men who have experienced sexual assault are unlikely to recognize or admit it on account of their desired masculinity; how less likely, then, is it that someone on the outside would recognize it? Weiss goes on to demonstrate that even men who do recognize their sexual assault “may attempt to frame their situations in ways that allow them to repair, reclaim, or reassert masculinity” (pg. 289). That male victims of sexual assault are so concerned with upholding this idealized masculinity (which is valid and understandable) demonstrates how deeply embedded it is in our society.

Along the same lines, victims of sexual assault who identify as trans*/non-binary or genderqueer are faced with an abundance of challenges. The idealized masculinity that is so deeply connected with an inescapable hegemonic patriarchy has created a binary which narrowly defines categories for people to fit into. As said by Truit in her column regarding the problems with essentializing sexual assault, society has “a very hard time recognizing and understanding sexual violence that doesn’t fit the standard narrative”. In this way, many experiences and people are ignored.

In both of the cases above, the underlying issue is that patriarchy has decided what is ‘truly important’, and anything that doesn’t go along exactly with its standards is swept under the rug; forgotten and ignored. As more experiences are shared, the threads which hold patriarchy together will begin to unravel and fall away to reveal the truth: anyone at any time can be affected by sexual assault.  

Issues With the Weiss Article

Karen Weiss’s piece on “Male Sexual Victimization” is by far the most positivistic piece we have analyzed so far in this course. I question the cause and causation that has led the piece to acknowledge men’s victimization in sexual assault to rely so heavily on a positivistic model. Is there a demand that men’s plight in this system have statistical backing to be held relevant? Or is the article parsed this way so it can be made more relevant to a hegemonic patriarchal society?

I also question if these American statistics hold true across the borders. Too often is American society conflated with Canadian. In Canada we have a different form of masculinity which is far more influenced by our frontier environment than the heavily militarized masculinity that is dispensed in America.

Furthermore, the article fails to address the long lasting psychological effects that these events have on male victims. Where Campbell’s “Thinking To Feeling” creates a strong visceral reaction in the readers to the victims tragedies Weiss’s piece glosses these trauma’s in its positivistic reporting to mere sentences. I appreciate the nuances Weiss offers us in understanding barriers created by constructs of masculinity identifying and reporting sexual assault, such as pride and shame, but the article fails to identify the importance of her study.

The study fails to acknowledge the lasting traumatic effects of male victimization and how they differ from a woman’s experience. In doing so it also fails to acknowledge if current post trauma support systems are able to provide support to these victims.

Weiss’s article also has some serious racial suggestions which are glossed over. The article suggests that roughly 82% of rape victims are white, regardless of gender. Is the research and reporting only interested in this race? Or is there under-reporting in different socio-racial-economic brackets? Or is this simply a problem of access for study? In the Canadian context, explicitly because of the legacy of residential schools and colonialism, sexual assault against first nation’s people alone would clearly problematize these American statistics.

There is a certain irony that the highly factual account of male victimization is itself alienating to the experience and lasting effects of these victims. 

Why Does the System Keep Failing?

If we consider them vulnerable populations, then why does our legal system fail them when it comes to sexual assault? Obviously this was what Benedet was trying to argue in her article, that no matter who you are, the legal system fails when it comes to instances of sexual violence. Yet I do not understand how a population who has continually had their sexaulity policed or has had it denied, can still receive the same injustice when it comes to sexual assault. Alberta had one of the largest eugenics movement in Canadian history, aimed at the sterilization of individuals with disabilities. Even with this, and the institutional policing of sexuality, the hypersexualization of ‘deviant’ bodies is continually the source of violence.

What I find even more heartbreaking is that while sexual assault happens because of a power imbalance the patriarch has created, but in the instance of those with disabilities, it comes from an ableist society as well. The cases we read were from individuals who had been abused by their caregivers, people who are suppose to help them manage day-to-day life, and instead abused this power dynamic in the worst way possible. Even in cases where the law is suppose to prevent this, somehow these offenders manage to still slip by.

It is becoming more apparent to me that there needs to be a desperate re-working of society. It’s easy to blame the justice system for failing, or the actions of individuals, but honestly, our society is setting everyone up to fail. As Benedet states “rape, as a relatively common practice, is rooted in, and reinforces, sex inequality” (Benedet, 136), showing that our society is built for rape to occur. Our society is built on inequalities and injustices. I am not saying that people aren’t to blame for their actions, and that they shouldn’t be held accountable, but we do need to fix the way our society is structured. I know that there is not a simple solution, as nothing about this is simple, but it does need to change.

Sexual Assault: Gender and Race

Jos Truitt’s “The Dangers of a Gender Essentialist Approach to Sexual Violence” in combination with Randi Nixon’s comment during class regarding a “trickle up effect” created the space for me to think about how feminism can better support all survivors of sexual assault. After all, we know sexual assault is not limited to the narrow confinement of white gender binaries. Second wave feminists approached sexual assault from a “women as victims and men as perpetrators” point of view, and I am afraid this approach has not evolved since. This perspective of sexual assault does a sort of violence not only to cis-men and cis-women, but to non-binary non-gender conforming people through the erasure of their identity in sexual assault discourse.

In the article Truitt claims that “we need to be able to hold an understanding of rape as a genderless act at the same time that we recognize it as embedded in a gendered culture of violence.” This speaks to the, what I believe we can call, an outdated approach to sexual assault. There is a fine line between recognizing sexual assault as a battle between the sexes and recognizing sexual assault as a type of violence intended to secure gender roles and binaries, and I believe this distinction is difficult to make without understanding the realities of sexual assault among all genders. 

Recognizing sexual assault as the formerly mentioned leads me to Nixon’s mention of a “trickle up effect” when working with sexual assault survivors. If the experiences of non-conforming gender identities are taken seriously and sexual assault survivorship is written in the narrative of non-conforming gender identity, everyone else who is a survivor of sexual assault would be welcome in that narrative. So far, all these thoughts are only applicable to white people. I think it is a safe assumption that the narratives of coloured cis-women sexual assault survivors are very different from the narratives of their white counter parts. This difference in survivorship narrative needs to be taken up as well, although I am not sure this “trickle up effect” would prove effective when dealing with this intersection. Since coloured cis-folks are deemed rapable and white folks are not, I wonder if these narratives of sexual assault need to be reinvented in order for a a “trickle up effect” to be effective.

Consequences of the Narrative in "Male Sexual Victimization"

This week we kicked off classes by engaging with a rather taboo or controversial, to say the least, topic: male sexual victimization. It was mentioned in class that many of us had to work through our initial eye rolls (myself included) because how many of us have been “felt up” or have had unwanted sexual advances made towards us on a Saturday night? However, as we examined Karen Weiss’ article, we were able to push past these initial reactions and extract many of the important issues raised by her study. 

One thing that I found particularly interesting was the structure of the article, mainly the way that the information gathered from the interviews was presented to the audience. As I mentioned in class, in comparison to Campbell’s “From Thinking to Feeling”, the accounts felt distant and encouraged the reader to analyze them “objectively”. What I mean by this, is that there is no apparent/obvious effort on Weiss’ part to elicit a strong emotional response from the reader. By recounting the incidents through third person narrative, referring to the survivors as “respondents” and employing simple language that hinders imagery, the reader does not feel naturally compelled to sympathize as a knee jerk-reaction. Further, the content included in these accounts do not present the “feelings” of the survivors towards their experiences as a central focus. 

So after reading Weiss’ article, I wondered why she would choose to frame the narrative of male victimization void of emotion? If the author wanted us to sympathize with survivors who lack visibility as victims, then why wouldn’t the accounts try to pull at the readers’ heartstrings? 

It made me think that perhaps the men who had participated in Weiss’ interviews did not want their accounts to be seen as "overly emotional" or that when they were being interviewed, they emphasized mostly the events that had happened and not how it made them feel. I believe that there is a a strong resistance to exposing vulnerability for male victims because vulnerability is always at odds with expectations of masculinity. This is strongly supported by Weiss’ findings that male survivors consistently emphasized intoxication/not remembering and physical aggression/“taking care of it” on their own. 

On a tangent, it actually made me think of a stand-up comedy clip about “Man Rape” by Dave Chapelle. I think there’s a sort of funny narrative within a narrative happening in this video. While Chapelle explains how men do not want to talk about the male victimization of rape, he drinks and uses humour as a vessel to communicate this message. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLWlBgj0uOc