I didn't understand how widespread rape was. Then the penny dropped

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: November 7, 2017 at 10:30:43 AM EST
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] I didn't understand how widespread rape was. Then the penny dropped
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> I didn't understand how widespread rape was. Then the penny dropped
> I’m a lefty academic versed in feminist theory. Still, I rebelled against the idea that rich and powerful men 
> regularly rape or attempt to rape women
> By David Graeber
> Nov 5 2017
> <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/05/dsk-sexual-assault-feminism-weinstein-casting-couch>
>
> This is a very difficult column for me to write because it’s about my mother.
>
> A week or two after the then IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested for sexually assaulting a chambermaid 
> in a posh New York hotel in 2011, there was another case when an Egyptian businessman was briefly arrested for a 
> similar assault at another such New York hotel. 
>
> This first struck me as puzzling. It could hardly be a copycat crime; considering the drama surrounding the arrest 
> and travails of DSK, it was inconceivable that anyone would see this and say: “Oh good idea, I’ll attack a 
> chambermaid as well.” 
>
> Then it dawned on me. 
>
> The only logical explanation was that businessmen, politicians, officials and financiers rape, or attempt to rape, 
> hotel workers all the time. It’s just that normally, those assaulted know there’s nothing they can do about it. 
>
> In DSK’s case, someone – for whatever complex political reasons – must have refused to make the usual phone call. 
> There was a scandal. As a result, when the next assault took place, the survivor must have said to herself, “Oh, so 
> does this mean we actually are allowed to call the cops now if a customer tries to rape us?” and acted accordingly. 
> And sure enough this is precisely what turned out to have happened. (In the end, both women were silenced, and 
> neither man convicted of any crime.)
>
> What I really want to draw attention to here is my initial reaction of disbelief: “Sure things are bad; but it can’t 
> be that bad.” Even a lefty academic versed in feminist theory instinctively rebelled against the idea that rich and 
> powerful men regularly rape or attempt to rape the women cleaning their rooms, that this happens all the time, that 
> everyone in the hotel industry knows it happens (since they must know), and that those rich and powerful men in turn 
> know they could get away with it because if any woman they attacked did protest too strenuously, everyone would move 
> in lockstep to do whatever was required to make the problem go away. 
>
> It’s of course this very disbelief that allows such things to happen. We are loth to accept people we might know 
> might practice pure, naked aggression. This is how bullies get away with what they do. I’ve written about this. 
>
> Bullying is not just a relation between bully and victim. It’s really a three-way relation, between bully, victim and 
> everyone who refuses to do anything about the aggression; all those people who say “boys will be boys” or pretend 
> there’s some equivalence between aggressor and aggressed. Who see a conflict and say “it doesn’t matter who started 
> it” even in cases where, in reality, nothing could possibly matter more. 
>
> It makes no difference if there’s a real physical audience or if the audience just exists inside the victim’s head. 
> You know what will happen if you fight back. You know what people will say about you. You internalize it. Before 
> long, even if nothing is said, you can’t help wonder if these things they would say are actually true.
>
> Sexual predation is a particular variety of bullying but like all forms of bullying it operates above all in 
> precisely this way by destroying the victim’s sense of self.
>
> I had another, similar, horrified moment of realization in reading Dame Emma Thompson’s remarks about Harvey 
> Weinstein. Not because of her observation that his predations were, as she said, “the tip of the iceberg” – this is 
> surely true, but not entirely unknown; what startled me was one word. She described Weinstein’s behavior as typical 
> of “a system of harassment and belittling and bullying and interference” that women had faced from time immemorial.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp



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