What It Is

Trigger Warning: Rape and Assault

In rape culture, misogynistic men and their defenders will commonly debate what rape and sexual assault "are."  We see this appear in the public sphere through the idiotic ramblings of mostly Republican politicians, such as their make believe debates about "legitimate rape."  Of course, all of this is more about protecting men and restricting a woman's right to an abortion than it really is about assault or about women.  That much is clear.

We have to call the media and other similar institutions to account for their role in this too though.  We have to recognize that the way in which sexual assaults are portrayed in fictionalized narratives on television and in movies, and as such as they are often also imagined by too many people, is only one variant on assault.  The media would have us believe that assault always looks like either a drug being slipped into a drink and then a woman being shuffled to a car or a man lurking in the shadows pouncing on an unsuspecting woman.  While such incidents do happen, and far too often, this is not the only way in which assault might take place.

Firstly, a majority of assaults are committed  by someone who the victim/survivor knows.  In these cases, the image of the lurking stranger is largely eliminated as a possibility.  However, there is more.  While our imaginations may have us believe that rape involves a woman fighting, screaming "no!", and so on, this will not always be the case.  Sexual assault takes place in any instance during which someone's ability to consent to the activity is compromised.  While the typical portrayal may be the most ostentatious variant on this, it is far from the only.  For example, an assaulter may engage in the practice of  what I'll call creeping advancement in which, from an initial activity that is consented to, the abuser slowly and methodically pushes the boundaries of what the other has agreed or consented to, gradually escalating the sexual encounter to a level that was not agreed to.  In such a situation, the victim/survivor may find that they never felt that they had the choice to consent or dissent and will often feel violated afterward.  And yet it likely did not "look like" an assault to the casual observer; it was though, without a doubt.  As another example, we can imagine someone in an abusive relationship in which one fears that dissent may result in other forms of violence.  This person may appear to consent, but that appearance is irrelevant because her ability to consent is compromised by the abuser's threats and violence.  The person being abused cannot really dissent, and thus cannot legitimately offer consent either.

There are certainly countless other examples too, but I don't want to get caught up in these descriptions, both because I don't want to fetishize rape by recounting it in too much detail and because the appearance isn't the point.  In fact, focusing on what we think assaults look like is the problem because, while focusing on appearances we fail to focus on what really matters, which is consent.  The only question that really matters is something to the effect of, "Does the survivor feel that she or he had the ability to deny or withdraw consent without retribution or retaliation?"  If the survivor tells us that she or he was not able to do so, then consent was not really or entirely viable.

Furthermore, while we debate what it "looked like," we are further objectifying the body of the survivor.  The survivor is telling you what happened, but by debating the appearance one is saying, "I don't really believe you.  I must observe your body, your trauma, casually and with disinterest because you cannot be trusted.  You are a thing, an object, to which something was done: the question is, what was done?  You, as the thing, cannot be trusted to answer that question for yourself because the important part is what it looked like, 'objectively,' not what you say happened."  This is deeply objectifying and forces the survivor to relive their trauma in detail.  Furthermore, it has the side effect of making survivors less likely to come forward.  If they are not believed, if they will be further objectified, and forced to relive their trauma then the survivor is less likely to feel safe to come forward.  How fucking convenient for rapists, misogynists, and those who would defend them...


All of this is especially important because our imaginings of assault are a part what allow us to question claims of assault in the first place.  Once we recognize that rape and assault can have a lot of different looks to it, it becomes far  harder to deny that a rape or assault took place or to question the "legitimacy" of a claim of assault.

And if y'all would just fucking believe survivors, then I wouldn't even have to write a post like this...