A New Old Problem with No Name

I read Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia when it was published 15 years ago, in 1994.  I reread some of it on Saturday night.  It was part of my futile never-ending quest to understand why and how some men exploit women and children and generally get to go on with their lives without consequences, as though it never happened.  The book includes the case of a teenage girl whom 4 boys  pulled into a car  while she was walking home alone.  3 of the 4 took turns raping her while laughing and joking, as well as declaring that she had “asked for it” by walking alone.

As it turns out, exactly as I was reading this, a 15-year-old girl in Richmond was being raped and beaten by as many as 10 of her her high school acquaintances, while 20 or more watched and laughed and even recorded the torture.  None were brave enough to intervene or even to sneak off and call police, though some grew bold enough to join in the raping.

From the comments on many of the articles on this particular attack, I find that many are blaming race and class, when they are not blaming the victim herself.  Yet the victim described in Reviving Ophelia was white and middle-class, and presumably her attackers were also.  And the attackers in the Polanski and Phillips cases were most solidly privileged, white entertainers.  (Both Roman Polanski and John Phillips are accused of drugging and raping their teenage victims, in Phillips’ case his own daughter.)  Polanski acted alone, but the media and his Hollywood supporters have generally filled in for the role of leering mob.

Many also blame porn, but I think it is at worst a symptom, not a disease.  Reviving Ophelia was published well before the internet was streaming pornography into everyone’s bedrooms.   Polanski’s case, as his defenders never tire of pointing out, is decades old.

The only truly common denominators are these:  that these children were raped by boys and men, and that someone has found a way to blame each of these women for being attacked.  Nothing can immunize these women from blame:  youth is not enough, being the attacker’s own daughter isn’t enough.  Even children, who can’t consent, are “asking for it,” in some cases presumably from their own fathers and friends.

I feel uneasy even pointing out that these were men who raped children.  I expect to be understood as a male-basher just for identifying the sex of those involved.  Yet many don’t hesitate to blame the victim, and implicitly all of womankind for their vulnerability.  Yes, I know, “victim” is not the politically correct word.  But nobody talks of “robbery survivors,” and I don’t want to imply that rape is some sort of routine trial for the strong to live through.

So, what to do?

The libertarians offer a very partial solution, which I do wholeheartedly support–the arming of women–but this is effective only against the small fraction of rapes which are committed by strangers.  Unfortunately it seems to be the only category of rape that libertarians and conservatives are routinely willing to acknowledge.  When they do acknowledge statistics showing that rape is widespread and perhaps worsening, they either:  deny them as paranoid concoctions of those harebrained feminists; or they blame the Sexual Revolution and the weakening of gender roles, which is, again, the fault of the feminists.

However, after reading Alternet’s “Why Do Men Catcall?” I suspect I’ve hit on some sort of solution of my own.  Feminists, always a problem, will probably object that it sounds too much like the stereotypical “woman’s intuition.”  But this is a step beyond, and far more impressive:  women merely have to attain psychic abilities.  This way, they will be able to detect whether or not a acquaintance, friend, date, relative, officer of the peace, or “liberating” soldier means them harm.  They will also be able to discern whether or not street harassment–itself often accompanied with joking and laughter–is merely harmless flattery, or will escalate into a brutal attack.  Since they are almost always blamed for their rapes, it is crucial that they develop these abilities.  (Abeer Qassim Hamza was harassed by soldiers for months before several finally decided to kill her and her family; her parents assumed they would “never attack a child.”)

I am not entirely being flip.  I’ve spent years trying to process the contradictory commands to women to “be careful,”  and nothing coherent has emerged, so I say:  attain supernatural mind-reading abilities!  Just be psychic, eliminate feminists, and girls can stop intruding upon others’ peace of mind with lurid stories of victimization.  The media’s got its hands full right now, what with the Richmond case and those of Polanski and Phillips.

Oh, but there’s this:  Reported Rapes hit 20-year low I further amend my conclusion:  become psychic, eliminate feminists, liberate technology.