Matthew G. P. Coe looks critically at a culture that allows people to make jokes about raping the President of the Student Union of the University of Ottawa.
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Last Friday, Anne Thériault released photographs she received of a Facebook conversation between five members of the board of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa. She wasn’t a party to this discussion, thank God, because if you weren’t already aware, this conversation was a product of their frustration over the victory of the new leader of the Federation, Anne Marie Roy.
The photographs that were released, which are part of an ongoing issue within the SFUO, capture a conversation that describes the assorted sex acts one of the participants seemed to intend to engage in with Ms Roy. The conversation included the exchange, “someone punish her with their shaft,” and the reply, “if you fuck [her] I will definitely buy you a beer.”
Anne’s article has been linked to from a variety of areas (including the SFUO’s own publication, The Fulcrum), and almost invariably, when (presumably) university-age men get involved in the discussion, they defend the participants in the discussion, claiming that this isn’t rape culture; they were just talking about much they wanted to have sex with her.
No.
This conversation isn’t a bunch of fourth-years fantasising about a particular woman. This conversation is people who are angry that this particular woman won an election, who rumourmonger about her sex life, and who describe in graphic detail how they would like to revenge their electoral loss upon the victor.
If that isn’t rape culture, I’m not sure what a better example could be.
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But their apologists insist that we don’t live in a rape culture. Because, despite myriad examples in the media, they can’t (or won’t) interpolate a common thread of all the incidents to discover a working definition. So, how about this, which I’ve derived from all the examples I’ve discovered and read of since I started paying attention:
Rape culture is the gradual normalisation, through, for example, jokes, commentary, and apologia, of the exertion of one person’s will over another, through the use of coerced or forced sex acts, such that such exertions become acceptable or justifiable as either hypothetical or practical actions.
Does that about cover it? I think it does. The way we suggest that victims of prison rape somehow had it coming, simply by virtue of being convicted criminals, is there. The way we suggest that, when a woman gets drunk at a party and coerced into sex she wouldn’t normally have, that she’s somehow invited it, is there. We’ve got all the tasteless rape jokes covered, including those made by these five individuals… and as a bonus, the included definition of rape, I think, avoids the obnoxious fallacy of “all intoxicated sex is rape”.
So, given this as a working definition of rape culture.. how exactly is the conversation between these five not a glaring example? How exactly is the fact that at least three of them are, apparently, considering legal action against Ms Roy, not rape culture? And for.. what? Receiving photographs of a Facebook conversation, and bringing the conversation to the attention of the SFUO? Even this threat of a lawsuit is an aspect of rape culture–they’re using threats (and legally dubious ones, at that) to try to silence her and keep their appalling conversation in the shadows. They are attempting to normalise their “jokes” about raping Ms Roy.
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That all but one of them are so aggressively refusing to admit that their conversation was so horrifying is a further attempt to normalise it. They’re acting as though Ms Roy exposing them was a greater wrong than what could, in a certain light, be seen as a conspiracy to rape her. And why? Because she won the Student Federation’s election.
These aren’t even reasonably responsible adults. They’re undergraduate students, and they seem to think that all of how they’ve been behaving is acceptable. This speaks volumes of the society in which they grew up, that at (roughly) twenty-two years of age, they can so thoroughly disrespect and disregard women.
The worst part of it is that, for women who put themselves on the front lines, who speak and act as though they deserve to be regarded equally with men… this kind of reception isn’t remotely uncommon.
So try to tell me that rape culture isn’t real. Because every time something like this happens… I know that it is.
Rape culture means pretending male victims of rape do not exist.
Generally this Facebook conversation sounds like some underdeveloped egos lashing out because they lost. However, if conversations like this aren’t quashed, there’s always a very small minority that takes the bad jokes and insults as fantasy, and then action. So what to do?
In another time, Ms. Roy’s brother(s), father, boy(girl)friend might have had a much more intense conversation with these turds…..but that’s not allowed these days.
The only legal way to fight back is with articles like this. Great work!
On face value this looks like a good definition, but a deeper analysis reveals several problems. (1) Does talking and joking about rape actually lead to the event happening. I don’t know the answer definitively but if we extrapolate from research there is a weak correlation between talking about/fantasising violence and actually committing it. Those who commit violence usually don’t talk about it first. for such a definition to be valid, causality would have to be established and all other factors accounted for, which it hasn’t been. The fact that these students did not rape the victim of their smear… Read more »
Well said! I agree 100%
The use of the term ‘culture’ in this context seems to be causing some confusion. It does for me, as when I think of “culture” I think of a large group of people. This incident, as rotten as it is, is about a handful of people and I’d like to view it that way. Having said that, on today’s national news, the entire U of Ottawa has been suspended for the year while an investigation is being conducted concerned sexual assault involving the team’s recent road trip to Thunder Bay early in February of this year.
The problem is that isn’t remotely just a few isolated incidents here and there. Comments like these are *endemic* in Western culture. Every student who suggests they were raped by a difficult exam (or, conversely, raped an easy exam) participates in it. Several Canadian schools, in this academic year alone, have had frightening demonstrations of rape culture, sponsored by various levels of student government, that have made coast-to-coast news. It’s not just a few bad eggs. You probably wouldn’t have to go digging very far to find it in your own day-to-day life.
Although it predates the popular use of the phrase ‘rape culture’ and isn’t exactly on topic, Gavin de Becker’s outstanding book ‘The Gift of Fear’ is something I would recommend to everyone. It’s about the idea of threat awareness and some of the things that you can do about those threats. The book really opened my eyes to what women experience in everyday life. It pointed out and made me really understand how many things that I as a man find trivial that are legitimate threats to women. That, more than anything else, gave me a greater understanding of rape… Read more »
I know rape culture exists, I have heard it in my uni days and I never liked it. I grew up being bullied and rape culture sounds exactly like the dehumanization tactics used by bullies on me, just with different words, and the end result is rape instead of assault. The people on the receiving end aren’t treated as people, they are considered objects and eventually someone acts out those words exactly because the person on the end of it isn’t considered a person anymore. So I am going somewhere different because too little is heard from the side of… Read more »
Great piece Matt and nice to know you and Anne are out there sticking up for one another. That’s the most romantic thing ever.
Call me confused….but are they dating or something? The romance comment seems odd? I say good humans stick up for each other but if they’re dating then sure that’s romantic.
Married, in fact.
Oh, congrats :). Which Anne just out of curiosity? I am guessing Anne Marie Roy?
Sorry Archy,
I know them from beyond the interwebs. 🙂
Ah ok, I guess it’s quite romantic then 😀
“If that isn’t rape culture, I’m not sure what a better example could be.” What about the FBI definition of rape that ignores the vast majority of female perpetrated rapes? “Rape culture is the gradual normalisation, through, for example, jokes, commentary, and apologia, of the exertion of one person’s will over another, through the use of coerced or forced sex acts, such that such exertions become acceptable or justifiable as either hypothetical or practical actions.” Although a good working definition, I can see a glaring omission, the erasure of victims. Whenever someone makes a statement such as only 1% of… Read more »
I don’t think anybody is disagreeing about that at all. Nor is anybody denying ANY male survivors, we never would here at GMP.
That is not what this article is about.
He is pointing that the people that are in charge of the rape narrative and data collection have gone to lengths to actually keep women forcing men, women and children to penetrate them off the radar.
This would be an example of the culture promoting actual rape and making sure actual rape victims are kept in the closet.
So what this article is about, and showing as an example of rape culture, is relatively trivial.
He asked for a “better example” and provided one.
But uh-oh, someone in student politics is making inappropriate remarks about a female participant. Clearly the epitome of “rape culture” is when one gender’s commission of rape is acknowledged to happen, never mind all those rapes that are socially erased.
@ OirishM
Unless I missed something a rape hadn’t actually occurred in this instance. So the threat of rape to a woman is more indicative of rape culture than the actual rape of men by a woman. Am I missing something here?
I’m sorry if I made it seem like the normalisation of rape is more indicative of a rape culture than rape itself. Of course it isn’t. The fact that, what are the most recent numbers, one in FOUR women will be sexually assaulted in her life, is indicative that rape is a *huge* problem. I was attempting to address all the conversation that tries to suggest the conversation I referred to is *not* rape culture. That it’s just “how guys talk”, or that because Ms Roy wasn’t *actually* raped, it’s okay to talk like that. That it’s harmless fantasy. It’s… Read more »
@ Mathew Men and women both get raped. I understand that it’s difficult to see things differently from what we’ve been socialized to believe. I suspect that you’ve been socialized to only or mainly look at rape from the standpoint of women as victim and men as perpetrator. This is why we have discussions. It expands our understanding and possibly fine tunes our positions. You talk about language as a tool of rape culture. I just wanted to point out how language can be used to erase the experience of rape victims. How in certain circumstances rape isn’t rape it’s… Read more »
John, you’re quite right that I left that aspect of it out, and I’m quite embarrassed that I did. While I was trying to come up with something that encompassed the events I was referring to, it certainly wouldn’t have been a great extension of thought to remember what I *know* about the low conviction rate and low reporting rate of sexual assault, and to integrate that more fully into the definition. I did specifically use the expression “sex acts” to try to be more encompassing of the wider range of sexual assaults, but I could have been more explicit… Read more »
No one said this incident at the U of O is the only example of rape culture that exists. The article is simply not about women raping men. Those articles exist, this just is not one of them. Are you also going to be mad that it also doesn’t mention Russia invading the Ukraine?
@ Danielle Paradis
I thought the article was on rape culture. Let’s just call it what it is rape culture is the normalization of the rape of women at least then we have an honest definition of what the author and some of the commentators believe.
John, you did notice Matt’s statement about prison rape, correct?
At this point, the conversation has become derailing. The author has clarified what he’s saying, including men, and further commentary accusing the author of an agenda that doesn’t exist will be deleted and commenters banned.