Last year I wrote about "grey" rape, and took a slightly different angle with it from a more personal perspective. This year...I don't quite know what I'm going to write about, but expect plenty of posting on this subject during the next few weeks.
What I will do, however, is remind you to buy your copy of Nothing But Red. The proceeds go to Equality Now, and it has work by some amazing people I admire, such as Joss Whedon, Lilith Saintcrow, Ann Aguirre, Elaine Corvidae, Hanne Blank, Ellen Sheeley, and so many other people--just go check out the contributors to see it all. It's an arts anthology--there's fiction, non-fiction, poetry, photography, art...it's really a fantastic collection. Read Joss's essay that started it all here, check out the foreword, some beautiful and heartbreaking art, and as I find other pieces shared online, I'll link to them in other posts.
(And if you're okay with a bit of a downer, here are my thoughts on the two year anniversary of Du'a Khalil's death.)
And here are a couple of reviews:
Nothing But Red, while sometimes dark and horrifying, is an extremely powerful and exceptional piece of work. Please do not think, though, that every story in this book is violent or that it contains nothing positive or hopeful. There are many contributions that tell of strong women who are determined to get out of their situation, to be free and live. There is hope contained within the pages of this very eloquent book just as I believe that there is hope for women of the world. The fact that this book even exists is, to me, is definite proof of that.
Beautifully crafted, NOTHING BUT RED brings home, with stunning clarity, the fact that anybody who believes that violence against women is something that only happens in certain countries, amongst people of certain religions, or is a thing of the past, is sadly mistaken. This could be YOUR mother, YOUR sister, YOUR daughter, friend or niece. This could be YOU. The words and images captured in these pages will not fail to stir you to your very soul. The writing is raw, poignant and heartfelt. The images are haunting. Reading this book left me feeling frightened, horrified, saddened, disgusted, bewildered and enraged. It also left me with a burning desire to be a part of the solution, to help assure that "honor killings" and other atrocities become a thing of the past. Most importantly, it left me with a feeling of hope. Hope that because of the passion and conviction of the talented women and men who contributed to NOTHING BUT RED, things can change.
A few things have coincided lately that got me thinking about some things, which I felt compelled to talk about. One is personal “old life” stuff popping up again with certain people, another is an episode MadMen I saw last night (that probably should have come with a trigger warning), and the other is my charity anthology Nothing But Red finaling for an EPPIE Award.
I want to talk about a little thing called “grey rape”.
There’s a good chance you haven’t heard about the whole myth of grey rape, but it’s the idea (perpetuated in a major womens’ magazine by the batshit crazy Laura Sessions Stepp) that there is a grey area regarding rape. That if it’s not violent, or it’s committed by a date/intimate partner with perhaps coercion but not violence, it’s not “real rape.”
This doesn’t hold up to logic, in a lot of ways, but the myth continues. I think in part, the problem is the emphasis on “no means no” and NOT “yes means yes.” Women are treated—in both real life and the fiction we encounter every day—that their default setting is “yes.” “If she doesn’t say no, then she must mean yes.” Um...no, actually. And if we—men and women—could shift our perspective of consent, I think the myth of grey rape would disappear. If you’re in bed with a woman, unless she says, “Yes, I want to have sex,” and starts tearing her clothes off (while sober, I might add), don’t sleep with her. Don’t just start stripping her clothes off and listen for “no.” Don’t touch her unless she says YES.
However...
There is a lot of talk in modern feminists circles about how we should have no tolerance for the term “grey rape” and how we should call it what it is: rape. And logically, I agree with that. But I think a lot more care has to be taken when speaking to survivors if that’s how they identify their experience. YOU may call it rape and say it’s wrong and illegal, and that she did nothing wrong, and her rapist is a bastard that should rot in hell. But that invalidates the feelings of the rape survivor. When it comes to rape by an intimate partner, you risk silencing a survivor by defining for her what her experience was like before she’s able to process it. Given the choice between defining her experience as rape (a very loaded term) or not at all, many would chose to say they were never raped.
Who wants to accuse their intimate partner of that kind of thing? Maybe you were drunk or high. Maybe you said yes, but don’t remember. Maybe he was pressuring you a lot and you felt like you didn’t have a choice. Maybe he didn’t notice you were crying. Maybe it was just your wifely duty to “put out” regardless of how you were feeling. “But it wasn’t rape.”
As soon as you define what happened to a survivor before she does, it’s another violation. It’s taking the power away from her. AGAIN.
So that’s why, when we’re talking about gender violence, rape, and domestic abuse, it’s important to keep dialogue going and not re-silence survivors.
Please take time—not just during these sixteen days, but all year around—to do something to SAY NO to gender violence. Check out some of the links on this page for more information, and be sure to buy your copy of Nothing But Red. http://www.lulu.com/nothingbutred
November 25th kicked off the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence.
