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Feb. 2nd, 2009 07:29 amMaia has a really, really good post about perceptions of rape and rapists at THM.
To expand on this a little in the slightly wider context of our attitudes to criminals: we like to believe that criminals, especially violent criminals, and especially sex offenders are just random violent anomalies - monsters that come out of nowhere that society then has to deal with and "get off the streets" and "punish". This is a seductive myth for two reasons: firstly, as Maia describes, no-one wants to think that our friends and family have the potential to hurt people. Maia also points out why that's dangerous; also, of course, believing that people who commit crimes are random monsters is also going to make you sceptical of things like rehabilitation & human rights in prisons (although there are some fallacies there, but never mind.)
But there's a second reason: we like this idea because it disclaims responsibility. Because if we don't think that criminals are just innately monstrous, we maybe have to think about the fact that there's something at work in our society that is producing crime. We don't want to accept that continuing objectification of women in the media, and the power that men retain over women, means that rape within the confines of marriage is a reality for a lot of women - not one or two. We don't want to accept that our unwillingness to criticise guys who make jokes about drunk girls contributes to those same guys, or their friends, feeling comfortable about going out and date-raping someone because lack of capacity to say "no" is reinterpreted as consent. We don't want to accept that frustration with the poverty trap might lead someone to rob a bank.
And this is dangerous because it really stops us fixing the problem, and let me be clear here: the problem is not criminals, the problem is society. This is why I find tough on crime initiatives to be poorly named: "tough on crime" policies aren't, really, tough on crime, because being tough on crime means reducing poverty, and being tough on crime means changing our attitudes towards the way men drink and behave, and being tough on crime means speaking out about domestic violence in a way that accepts that people who commit domestic violence aren't random monsters - and by the way, this is a reason that I think the White Ribbon campaign is really valuable (and it apparently quadrupled the number of calls to the domestic violence self-help phone line.) This is a campaign "by men for men" about domestic violence: it doesn't call on women to stop being beaten, it addresses men and tells them to stop beating their wives and families. Just by starting to have that conversation, the White Ribbon campaign is demonstrating that there is a conversation to have - that people who commit domestic violence can have a conversation about that, because they're not monsters.
OK, I gotta go, so this isn't quite finished, but my last paragraph was only going to be "and this is why National and their tough on crime initiatives suck", so you can fill in the blank yourself.
This idea is dangerous because when people hear that one of their male friends has been accused of raping one of their female friends, then in order to believe their female friend something has to give. Either people abandon their idea that rapists are all 'bad people' or they abandon the idea that their friend is a good person. But often neither of these things happen, and instead this person (who had been rigorously berating the evils of rape) doesn't believe the woman who was raped.
- Here, really recommended.
To expand on this a little in the slightly wider context of our attitudes to criminals: we like to believe that criminals, especially violent criminals, and especially sex offenders are just random violent anomalies - monsters that come out of nowhere that society then has to deal with and "get off the streets" and "punish". This is a seductive myth for two reasons: firstly, as Maia describes, no-one wants to think that our friends and family have the potential to hurt people. Maia also points out why that's dangerous; also, of course, believing that people who commit crimes are random monsters is also going to make you sceptical of things like rehabilitation & human rights in prisons (although there are some fallacies there, but never mind.)
But there's a second reason: we like this idea because it disclaims responsibility. Because if we don't think that criminals are just innately monstrous, we maybe have to think about the fact that there's something at work in our society that is producing crime. We don't want to accept that continuing objectification of women in the media, and the power that men retain over women, means that rape within the confines of marriage is a reality for a lot of women - not one or two. We don't want to accept that our unwillingness to criticise guys who make jokes about drunk girls contributes to those same guys, or their friends, feeling comfortable about going out and date-raping someone because lack of capacity to say "no" is reinterpreted as consent. We don't want to accept that frustration with the poverty trap might lead someone to rob a bank.
And this is dangerous because it really stops us fixing the problem, and let me be clear here: the problem is not criminals, the problem is society. This is why I find tough on crime initiatives to be poorly named: "tough on crime" policies aren't, really, tough on crime, because being tough on crime means reducing poverty, and being tough on crime means changing our attitudes towards the way men drink and behave, and being tough on crime means speaking out about domestic violence in a way that accepts that people who commit domestic violence aren't random monsters - and by the way, this is a reason that I think the White Ribbon campaign is really valuable (and it apparently quadrupled the number of calls to the domestic violence self-help phone line.) This is a campaign "by men for men" about domestic violence: it doesn't call on women to stop being beaten, it addresses men and tells them to stop beating their wives and families. Just by starting to have that conversation, the White Ribbon campaign is demonstrating that there is a conversation to have - that people who commit domestic violence can have a conversation about that, because they're not monsters.
OK, I gotta go, so this isn't quite finished, but my last paragraph was only going to be "and this is why National and their tough on crime initiatives suck", so you can fill in the blank yourself.
