In her speech to the Australian Press Gallery this week, Grace Tame explained the power of language in shaping community perceptions of sexual assault and rape. The acts of her perpetrator, she explained, were framed as, ‘maintaining a sexual relationship with a person under the age of 17’ as opposed to being, ‘ child sexual abuse’. The power of language in framing public understanding of rape and sexual assault continues to be wildly misunderstood. Institutions of power position women as instigators of, contributors to, and agents in their experiences of sexual assault and rape, while the language around perpetrators commonly minimises their agency, the criminal nature of their actions, and their choices. Many feminists will be familiar with the work of Jane Gimore (Fixed It), who re-shapes newspaper headlines to appropriately describe crimes against women; we are desperate for public language to reflect the accuracy of our experiences.
As long as women as victim/survivors are vested with descriptions that imply our actions can ‘stop’ or ‘encourage’ criminal acts towards us, we will never achieve equality and safety. In this regard, we still have so far to go. Note advice from the ADF chief who counselled that especially ‘attractive’ first year cadets should not go out alone, after midnight, or drink heavily. Explained as well intentioned, these comments elide the fact that only perpetrators are responsible for their criminal behaviour in assaulting or raping women. Some private schools too have offered advice in the wake of prevalent reporting on sexual assault. Headlines over the past month have included, ‘Parents allowing drunken teen parties enable sexual assaults’ (Sydney Morning Herald) and ‘Sydney School Principal calls on parents to instil ‘self respect’ in their daughters (news.com.au). These types of advice are as sexist and insulting, as they are uneducated and dangerous. Parties and alcohol do not cause sexual assault. The only thing that enables sexual assault is perpetrators who cannot or do not want to understand consent. More troubling is the implication that the advice to avoid parties is motivated by a desire to help young men’s reputations (rather than women’s bodies) - as though a drunken party might ‘lure’ young men into criminal behaviour. Stopping a party does not stop the attitude or the behaviour; it merely stops one of many opportunities for perpetrators. If this is a proposed solution for change in the minds of private schools, it is no wonder that many young men in their care aren’t getting the right message.
The kinds of comments reported above show that what we say, and how we say it, is critical in the fight to change attitudes. Some time ago Germaine Greer, who has fallen out of favour in some feminist camps, penned an article that grappled with the question of rape’s seriousness as a crime. From women’s perspectives, the seriousness of rape is self-evident. Our concern is the degree to which our experiences are minimised; how frequently we are disbelieved, how few cases are prosecuted or successful before the courts. This might lead us to believe that rape is considered socially unimportant. However Greer hypothesises the opposite. Accusations of rape strike fear amongst men in a patriarchal culture, which might be central to the reason that women’s accusations and experiences are marginalised. Note the arguments about how allegations of sexual assault and rape alone can ruin a young man’s (or male politician’s) future. Like the other ‘r’ word in Australia (racist) the mere allegation of rape is considered outrageous, highly insulting, and permanently damaging (or unlikely).
Greer received much criticism for her article because it was interpreted as diminishing the experience of rape; but this wasn’t her purpose. She was interrogating the elevation of rape as a crime of the highest order (despite the fact that other forms of assault can be damaging too) as a consequence of historical male privilege and property rights. That is, the reason rape retains a special status as heinous is not because society cares about women’s experiences, but because it cares about men’s. Across time and many cultures, women and children have occupied the status of men’s legal property, and woman’s marriageability has been tethered to our sexual status or perceived virginity. Any watcher of period drama knows the story; cue Daphne Bridgerton’s potential loss of suitors because she is discovered alone in the garden with the Duke of Hastings. A woman who is not a virgin, whether through her own agency or through the impact of a criminal act, cannot be given away by her father to another man.
Greer reminds us that indignation at rape is still deeply connected with the ruin of women as men’s property. It is the impact of interfering with men’s property, rather than women’s lived experience, that underpins much of rape’s continuing social stigma. When cast in this light, the implications for women of the treatment of our rape experiences is even more outrageous. If a woman is raped, we are bombarded with messaging that encourages us to minimise the experience; she must have asked for it, she was dressed inappropriately, she was out late at night. In other words, it’s not that bad and if it is, we helped cause it. And yet, women should be careful about making the accusation for fear of how seriously it will impact a man.
Perhaps this is part of the reason many women felt so uncomfortable with Morrison’s comments about Ms Higgins’ experience last week. Taking advice from his wife that he should consider the impact of Ms Higgins’ experiences should they have occurred to his daughters, Morrison could not muster empathy or a sense of justice outside his patrilineal role as the guardian of girls who belong to him. This might seem quaint or loving; however it should not require thinking as a father to conceive of Ms Higgins’ lived experience as having legitimacy in its own right. The seriousness of Ms Higgins’ experience could not be conceived until it might impact the Prime Minister’s daughters. There remains a strong social aversion to use of language such as rape and sexual assault in describing women’s experiences, much like the use of climate change instead of global warning. But as one caller to talk back radio pleaded this week, we need to stop tempering our language. Rape should be called rape. Sexual assault should be called sexual assault. Shying away from the language simply serves to hide or diminish the experience. As the #metoo movement has shown, and Grace Tame has ably demonstrated, there is power in publicly naming and sharing our experiences.
