Transcriber: Vivian Mills Reviewer: Chiara Coletta
What is rape culture?
If you haven't heard the term before,
rape culture is basically acknowledging that we live in a society
that normalizes or diminishes rape through the bombardment of images,
language, laws and social attitudes.
It's a culture in which victim blaming is just not present but common -
and caveats like: What did she expect going home with him?
And: "She was drunk, wasn't she?"
And: "She slept with him before, look at that skirt she was wearing",
are routinely invoked to excuse perpetrators
as having just done what everyone would've expected them to do.
Done what a red-blooded Aussie man would do.
I can't say it clearer than that, she did go home with him
It's that kind of language.
it's the language of lawmakers who use words like:
honest rape and forcible rape and legitimate rape.
To portray the fact
that they believe there are actually two kinds of rape:
there is the very small incidence of real rape
and there are all the overwhelming incidents of rape -
where women are actually just lying about it -
because they are so embarrassed
by the fact they've allowed something to enter their shame cave –
other than the Holy Spirit.
So that's rape culture.
I am just going to talk you through a series of examples now
of what I think rape culture looks like.
Some of them are local and some of them are international –
because rape culture exists everywhere.
We can all share it.
So rape culture is Peter "Spida" Everitt
after the 2010 AFL Grand Final responding to allegations.
It is very important this word "allegedly".
you'll speak to people who don't believe that rape culture exists.
You'll speak to people who don't believe that men can ever be charged with rape
because, of course, women are always lying.
Very intend on protecting the due process of the legal system -
only in case of sexual assault
when they remind you consitently that "this just happened allegedly".
So, Peter "Spida" Everitt -
responding to the allegations after the 2010 AFL Grand Final -
that, sexual assault had occurred in the home of one of Collingwood players.
Now, that has since been resolved -
and if you do have a chance do read Anna Krien's "Night games",
because it's a brilliant exploration of sex, power, and culture.
But him responding to that with the following tweet:
"GIRLS!!
When will you learn
that at 3:00 am when you go home drunk with a guy
that is not for a cup of Milo?"
"Allegedly".
It's Kerrie-Anne Kennerley responding to that tweet -
by inviting Peter "Spida" Everitt onto her show
and sympathizing with him over the poor fate of footballers
who have "strays" throw themselves at them all the time
and get them in trouble.
It's Channel 9 responding to the dismay and outrage
- and I'm grateful that it was given -
because not everyone wants to talk out about rape culture -
But Channel 9 responding to that outrage
by issuing a statement that said:
"In regards to the segment on Kerrie-Anne's show this morning,
what she was talking about
when she talked about "strays" was alcohol-fueled situations
in which both, girls and guys, must take the blame."
Rape culture is reducing rape to an "alcohol fueled situation."
Rape Culture is Channel 9,
responding to these things with such a dismissive tone -
that it reinforces to people that it's an alcohol-fueled situation -
and not an actual assault on their bodies.
Looking further abroad, rape culture is Daniel Tosh.
He is a comedian, standing in front of a live audience
and responding to a woman
who had taken umbrage at one of his jokes about rape,
by saying:
"Wouldn't it be funny if five guys just came down and raped this woman right now?
Wouldn't that be hilarious?"
Rape culture is also his comedy mates then defending him.
Because comedy is sacred, and women's bodies aren't.
Rape culture is raising boys in an environment and a society
that teaches them they have an entitlement to women's bodies.
And that is how things like Steubenville, Ohio happens.
That is how things like the Roast Busters in Auckland happens.
Boys think that it's so much their right to treat a woman's body as they please -
that not only would they do it in front of all of their friends,
rape an unconscious woman repeatedly but they'll film it.
They'll actually document the evidence
and put it on the Internet for everyone to see what a big man they are.
In Auckland,
it's the police not doing anything about it for years,
even though they knew about it because they said:
"We couldn't do anything about it".
Rape culture is reinforcing to young girls
that they don't have the right to feel safe.
Rape culture is people telling women
that protecting themselves from rape is like property theft.
That, well, you know
It's not that I believe that rape is ok,
but if you're going to leave your car parked on the street
with the keys in the ignition and walk away,
can you really expect that someone is not going to come along and steal it?
And I say to that, the two things that I think when I think, you know -
people calling "property theft" into account for this, is that:
One, my vagina isn't a car.
And if it was, I would have saved a lot more money in taxis over the years,
and then I'd be able to fix its break pads.
But secondly, we are not disembodied from our bodies.
Our vaginas aren't cars that we can walk away from and leave.
The only way that analogy works
is if I am sitting in the car and you come and you open the car
you drag me out of it and you steal my fucking car!
Your vagina is not a vehicle.
But this is what rape culture looks like.
Rape culture is pretending rape culture doesn't exists.
It's people preferring to believe
that the women in their lives are potential victims
rather than accepting that the men in their lives are potential predators.
Because people like to talk about rapists as these evil monsters
who lurk in the streets and shadows.
We, the women, have to protect ourselves against them.
"I am not saying that rape is good, girls
I'm just saying, can't you just learn to take care of yourselves?
Girls, when will you learn that the world is full of evil monsters
and you have to protect yourselves?"
Rape culture is assuming
that we haven't been raised protecting ourselves,
believing in the state of our own vulnerability since the very days
that we were first walking out away from our parents.
And on that note, actually - and the evil monsters -
rape culture denies the reality of rape
that most of it doesn't happen on streets, most of it happens in the home.
It's done to us by men we know, men we love,
men we may even be related to.
That's what rape culture looks like.
So, that's a very sort of somber view of the world that we live in.
But the world that people don't want to talk about because rape is not nice.
We don't really talk about it, it's not nice.
It's a hemorrhoid removal operation on the television.
(Sigh)
I was pretty scared coming here to do this talk today
because it's quite daunting standing in a room full of people
and sharing your ideas on things.
Had a couple of nervous poos.
(Laughter)
Sorry, I forgot that women aren't supposed to shit!
(Laughter)
See, I'm shaking!
We all get nervous.
(Applause)
But this is the thing.
It's that standing here in front of people,
in front of an audience,
anyone doing that, it's scary and it's a good kind of fear.
And I want to be liberated by my fear.
I don't want to be imprisoned by it and this is what I think.
You know, Paul mentioned a comment before talking about terrorism,
I do think it's an act of terrorism
to raise girls to believe that the world is not safe for them.
Because what it does, is that it forces us to diminish ourselves.
It means that we take up less space than we're entitled to.
We live in a world where women are taught
they do not have the right to walk down the street at night
because they don't have the access to the same space as men.
And I think that's an act of terrorism
and I will not negotiate with terrorists on those terms.
So, I do not engage people in conversations about
why women need to protect themselves or why our vaginas are like cars.
I just don't tolerate it and this is what we all have to start doing.
I have a boyfriend, which I know is kind of crazy,
because as an obviously radical, separatist, lesbian feminist -
(Laughter)
as a lot of my fans in daily life call me,
I am not supposed to have a boyfriend.
But I did fashioned him out of gingerbread and bring him to life
with a black voodoo magic swirling around in my devil's datsun.
But he exists, now,
and it still counts.
And he often says to me:
"Can we just make it through one dinner
where you don't talk about rape?"
To which I reply:
"Can we just make it through
one of Earth's rotations around the Sun
where I can walk on the street with as much right to safety as you
just because you have a penis?"
And actually, statistically speaking,
based on what we know on male on male violence,
he is less likely to be safe on the streets than me.
But that is not the way that we talk about violence and safety.
It is convenient for people to make women afraid,
because it keeps us controlled.
I understand that rape makes people uncomfortable.
A lot of things make me uncomfortable,
For example,
I am uncomfortable with the fact
that millions of girls and women are raped around the world each year.
And only a handful of them will ever see justice prevail.
I am uncomfortable with the fact that because of the work that I do,
I stand in front of an audience like this and I automatically think:
"Which third of this audience
has experienced sexual assault or violence or rape?"
And I'm uncomfortable with the fact
that of that proportion of the audience
all of them will have been socialized at some point
that you don't talk about these things in polite society.
And I'm uncomfortable with the fact
that as a white, middle-class woman is hard for me to talk about rape,
but it's even more difficult for a woman of color,
a disabled woman,
a woman who is a sex worker,
a woman who is living in poverty,
a woman who doesn't live here.
It's harder for those women to talk about something
which is already hard for me to discuss.
I'm uncomfortable with those facts.
I get it.
Rape is uncomfortable.
But this is why
we need to keep talking about it
and we need to keep disrupting
people's comfortable lives with it.
Because the result of that is that they actually do start to change.
In all of the time that I've been writing and writing about rape,
in all the emails that I've gotten from,
you know, peeling through the ones that say to me
that I am just jealous because no one wants to rape me
because I'm too ugly.
Because, of course, the only thing worse than being raped,
is being considered not pretty enough to be raped.
Right, Tracy?
In all of that, I also get emails from young girls that inspire me,
who tell me
that the things that I've written,
and things that other women like me have written about rape
bringing this conversation into the national dialog -
have let them realize
that they're not responsible for what happened to them.
It's made them realize, it's not their fault.
But even better than that,
it's the emails that I get from men,
who tell me that something about this conversation we're having now,
has changed they way they view the world.
It's made them realize how privileged they are.
It's made them realize how much entitlement
men generally have to space and safety
and it's made them want to change things for the better.
I received an email from a friend of mine the other day,
or I say friend, but we went to school together,
so, you know, we haven't talked really in 20 years
but we're Facebook friends, that's how people catch up these days.
And he sent me an email out of nowhere
with a link to a meme,
and it was just a venn diagram of "this is what causes rape"
and it's things like: alcohol, clothing, attitudes, rapists.
And the rapists was in red and the whole venn diagram was in red,
because the only thing common to all experiences of rape, is a rapist.
That's the only thing we can say causes rape.
It's the rapist.
And the way we talk about rape,
as if it's some kind of arbitrary thing that just happens to women.
That we just walk out of the door one day
and just accidentally step in a puddle of it,
because we weren't paying attention.
that's how we remove responsibility from the problem.
And I believe that to fix the problem, you have to name the problem.
And I was really inspired by that email that he sent me.
Because it showed me that this guy,
who, I would say, is kind of
pretty much your average Australian bloke,
you know, he likes sports,
and he is a pretty good guy,
he is kind of on the middle of the fence politically.
He doesn't have to be engaged in these topics
because society enables him to not be engaged in them.
But he has chosen to become engaged
because of the things that he's been reading
and because of the things that he's been hearing.
And it means that he wants to change the world around him for the better.
And I'm really inspired by that.
And I think that's why we need to keep talking about these things.
Even though it makes people uncomfortable,
Even though people don't like to think about it.
Even though they like to pretend that it doesn't exists.
Because I'd rather people be uncomfortable about rape,
than be complacent about it.
Thank you.
(Applause)