Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (70 page)

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AGAINST OUR WILL

Yes, it is all relative, and whether life imitates art or art imitates life is immaterial when we consider the heroic rapist. We can move from fact to fiction and back again to fact with alarming ease, for men have created the mythology and men continue to act it out.

A skyjacker is analyzed from a distance by a psychiatrist who concludes that the wish to kidnap an airplane is symbolic of an impotent's wish to rape a woman, and this is put forward as some kind of deep truth, a "logical" explanation for an irrational act. The police records of two other skyjackers are released to the press and, lo, we discover that both men were wanted on rape charges in Detroit and had jumped bail some months before their grandiose escapade in the air.

Four armed men with nylon stockings over their faces rob a fancy mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, while the master of the house is away on business. They take the color TV and a sewing machine. They look for cash and silver. While they are searching, one of them forces the governess into a downstairs bedroom and rapes her, tying her with ripped-out telephone wire. An updated version of Dick Turpin?

Two Bronx teen-agers follow a 49-year-old woman to her apart ment door and force their way inside. The woman's husband is in the house, convalescing after a brain operation. The youths proceed to rape their victim while her disabled husband watches in tears, unable to move. Did the youths see a movie called
A
Clockwork Orange?

Three convicts escape from Colorado State Penitentiary and go on a rampage across New Mexico and Texas. There is talk of a "death list" and settling old grudges. For four days the nation follows their trail of killings while hundreds of police close in. What begins as revenge turns into a random binge and a shootout in a mesquite forest. What do you do, you desperate, self-styled "soldiers of fortune," when you realize you will not be able to make it to the Mexican border? You kidnap female hostages at gunpoint and you rape them repeatedly. You let the world know that you are men.

10

Victims:

The Setting

Women are trained to be rape victims. To simply learn the word "rape" is to take instruction in the power relationship between males and females. To talk about rape, even with nervous laughter, is to acknowledge a woman's special victim status. We hear the whispers when we are children: girls get raped. Not boys. The message becomes clear. Rape has something to do with our sex. Rape is something awful that happens to females: it is the dark at the top of the stairs, the undefinable abyss that is just around the corner, and unless we watch our step it might become our destiny. Rape seeps into our childhood consciousness by imperceptible degrees. Even before we learn to read we have become indoctri nated into a victim mentality. Fairy tales are full of a vague dread, a catastrophe that seems to befall only little girls. Sweet, feminine Little Red Riding Hood is off to visit her dear old grandmother in the woods. The wolf lurks in the shadows, contemplating a tender morsel. Red Riding Hood and her grandmother, we learn, are equally defenseless before the male wolf's strength and cunning. His big eyes, his big hands, his big teeth-"The better to see you, to catch you, to eat you, my dear." The wolf swallows both females with no sign of a struggle. But enter the huntsman-he will right this egregious wrong. The kindly huntsman's strength and cunning are superior to the wolf's. With the twist of a knife Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are rescued from inside the wolf's stomach. "Oh, it was so dark in there," Red Riding Hood whim-

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pers. "I will never again wander off into the forest as long as I live . . ."

R,.ed, Riding
Hood is a. parable,
9f
rpe:,,There are frightening male figures abroad in the woods-we call them wolves, among other names-and females are helpless before them. Better stick close to the path, better not be adventurous.
If
you are lucky, a good,
friendly
male may be able to save you from certain disaster.

("Funny, every man I meet wants to protect me," says Mae West. "I can't figure out what from.")
In
the fairy-tale code book, Jack may kill giants but Little Red Riding Hood must look to a kindly huntsman for protection. Those who doubt that the tale of Red Riding Hood contains this subliminal message should consider how well Peter fared when he met his wolf, or even better, the survival tactics of the Three Little ( male) Pigs. Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Not they.

The utter passivity of Red Riding Hood in the teeth of the wolf is outdone by Sleeping Beauty, who lay immobile for one hundred years before she was awakened by the kiss of the prince. As a lesson in female sexuality, Sleeping Beauty's message is clear. The beauteous princess remains unresponsive until Mr. Right comes along. The prince is the only one who can awaken the princess. She cannot manage this feat by herself. Her role is to be beautiful and passive. Snow White in her glass coffin also remains immobile until her prince appears. Cinderella, too, needs a prince

to extricate her from her miserable environment. Thus
is
female

sexuality defined .. Beautiful passivity.i: Wait, just wait, Prince Charming will soon be by; and if it is not Prince Charming but the Big Bad Wolf who stands at the door, then proper feminine behav ior still commands you to stay immobile. The wolf is bigger and stronger than you are. Why try to fight back? But don't you worry, little girl. We have strong and kindly huntsmen patrolling these woods.

I was nursed and nurtured on fairy tales, but as a child of World War II, there were other, stronger rape images that came into the home. My parents had a favorite art book that held a place of honor on the coffee table, and on one of its pages there appeared a popular example of a propaganda poster from World War
I.
This was the Rape of Belgium, also known as the Rape of the Hun. There are several variations of this poster, but in all of them Belgium is pictured as a beautiful young maiden with long, flowing

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hair lying prostrate at the feet of the towering Hun, complete with pointed helmet. The purpose of the poster in terms of World War I propaganda is simple: Defenseless Belgium is the tragic victim of the German war machine. But the propaganda message I received at age eight in 1943 was slightly different. Belgium was
beautiful,
even if she was lying on the ground.

I was drawn again and again to the Rape of Belgium because she was so pretty-unlike the overblown, embarrassingly naked Venuses and the stiff Madonnas that filled the rest of the book but it puzzled me that she was lying down. "Why doesn't she hit him and run away?" I once asked my parents. "It's just a picture, dear" was their response. But was it just a picture? For into the house there soon came Belgium's sister from World War II.
In
the new drawing, a political cartoon, a porcine Nazi was hauling off two gunnysacks of plunder from a tiny cottage. And cowering prostrate near the doorstep, clutching a baby this time, was a beautiful young girl with long, flowing hair.

What jumps does a child's mind make when confronted with such compelling proof that to be beautiful is to lie crumpled on the ground? This was the middle of World War II, the German Army had marched through Belgium a second time, and I was a Jewish girl growing up in Brooklyn. I could not help but conclude that the Hun and the Nazi were one in the same and, therefore, I had to be Belgium.
In
the next year I fantasized myself to sleep at night with a strange tableau. A tall and handsome Nazi concentration-camp guard stood near a barbed-wire fence. He did not menace me directly-after all, I had no idea what the actual menace involved. For my part, I lay there motionless, at a safe distance. I was terribly beautiful.

My concentration-camp daydream struck me as peculiar and dangerous even as I conjured it up, and I soon rooted it out of my fantasy life. No doubt the end of World War II helped to speed its annihilation: Jews were no longer international victims. I use this painful remembrance to set the stage for an examination of female victim mentality, and how it is conditioned.

"ALL WOMEN WANT TO BE RAPED"

"NO WOMAN CAN BE RAPED AGAINST HER WILL" "SHE WAS ASKING FOR IT"

"IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE RAPED, YOU MIGHT AS WELL RELAX AND ENJOY IT"