Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (90 page)

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   having women give testimony about their own rapes and what happened to them af terwards, the police, the hospitals, the courts? Far out!" And then the nervous giggles that betray confusion, fear and shame disappeared and in their place was the dim recognition that in daring to speak the unspoken, women had uncovered yet another part of our oppression, perhaps the central key: historic physical repression, a conscious process of intimidation, guilt and fear.
   

   Within two years the world out there had stopped laughing, and the movement had progressed beyond the organizational forms of speak-outs and conferences, our internal consciousness-raising, to community outreach programs that were imaginative, original and unprecedented: rape crisis centers with a telephone hot line staffed twenty-four hours a day to provide counseling, procedural informa tion and sisterly solidarity to recent rape victims and even to those whose assault had taken place years ago but who never had the chance to talk it out with other women and release their sup pressed rage; rape legislation study groups to work up model codes based on a fresh approach to the law and to work with legislators to get new laws adopted; anti-rape projects in conjunction with the emergency ward of a city hospital, in close association with police women staffing newly formed sex crime analysis squads and investi gative units. With pamphlets, newsletters, bumper stickers, "Wanted" posters, combative slogans-"STOP RAPE"; "WAR WOMEN AGAINST RAPE"; "SMASH SEXISM, DISARM
   

   RAPISTS!"- and with classes in self-defense, women turned around and seized the offensive.
   

   The wonder of all this female activity, decentralized grass roots organizations and programs that sprung up independently in places like Seattle, Indianapolis, Ann Arbor, Toronto, and Boulder, Colorado, is that none of it had been predicted, encouraged, or faintly suggested by men anywhere in their stern rules of caution, their friendly advice, their fatherly solicitude in more than five thousand years of written history. That women should organize to combat rape was a women's movement invention.
   

   Men are not unmindful of the rape problem. To the contrary, their paternalistic codes reserved the harshest penalties for a viola tion of their property. But given an approach to rape that saw the crime as an illegal encroachment by an unlicensed intruder, a stranger come into their midst, the advice they gave ( and still try
   

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   to give) was all of one piece: a set of rules and regulations designed to keep their property penned in, much as a sheepherder might try to keep his flock protected from an outlaw rustler by taking pre cautions against their straying too far from the fold. By seeing the rapist always as a stranger, never as one of their own, and by viewing the female as a careless, dumb creature with an unfortu nate tendency to stray, they exhorted, admonished and warned the female to hide herself from male eyes as much as possible. In short, they told her not to claim the privileges they reserved for them selves. Such advice-well intentioned, solicitous and genuinely concerned-succeeded only in further aggravating the problem, for the message they gave was to live a life of fear, and to it they appended the dire warning that the woman who did not follow the rules must be held responsible for her own violation.
   

   Clinton Duff y, the famous warden of San Quentin, couldn't understand why women didn't imprison themselves under maxi mum security conditions for their own protection. He wrote, "Many break the most elementary rules of caution every day. The particularly flagrant violators, those who go to barrooms alone, or accept pickups from strangers, or wear unusually tight sweaters and skirts, or make a habit of teasing, become rape bait by their actions alone. When it happens they have nobody to blame but them selves."
   

   Duffy heaped scorn on women who "regularly break common sense rules of caution" by neglecting to draw the shades or put out the light while undressing, by forgetting to lock all doors and windows, by failing "to report telephone callers who hang up when they answer, or suspicious-looking loiterers," by letting a lone male stranger into the house, by walking home alone late at night.
   "If
   it's impossible for a woman to keep off lonely streets at night," he instructed, "she should walk near the curb with her head up and her eyes straight forward, move rapidly and keep going. . . . Women in these situations should carry a police whistle in the palm of their hand until they are out of the danger area. Ridiculous as it may sound," he concluded, "women should be careful to hang underwear out to dry in the least conspicuous places on the line.
   If
   a woman lives alone she shouldn't hang it outside at all."
   

   A fairly decent article on rape in the March, 2974, issue of
   The
   Reader's Digest was written by two men who felt obliged to warn,
   

   

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   Don't broadcast the fact that you live alone or with another woman. List only your last name and initial on the mailbox and in the phone book. Before entering your car, check to see if anyone is hiding on the rear seat or on the rear floor.
   If
   you're alone in a car, keep the doors locked and the windows rolled up.
   If
   you think someone is following you . . . do not go directly home if there is no adult male there. Possible weapons are a hatpin, corkscrew, pen, keys, umbrelJa.
   If
   no weapons are available, fight back physically
   only
   if you
   feel
   you can do so with telling effect.
   

   What immediately pops into mind af ter reading the advice of Warden Duffy and
   The
   Reader's Digest is the old-time stand-up comedian's favorite figure of ridicule, the hysterical old maid armed with hatpin and umbrella who looks under the bed each night before retiring. Long a laughable stereotype of sexual repression, it now appears that the crazy old lady was a pioneer of sound mind after all.
   

   But the negative value of this sort of advice, I'm afraid, far outweighs the positive. What it tells us, implicitly and explicitly, is:
   

   1.
   A woman alone probably won't be able to defend herself. Another woman who might possibly come to her aid will be of no use whatsoever.
   

   2.
   Despite the fact that it is men who are the rapists, a woman's ultimate security lies in being accompanied by men at all times.
   

   1. A woman who claims to value her sexual integrity cannot expect the same amount of freedom and independence that men routinely enjoy. Even a small pleasure like taking a spin in an automobile with the windows open is dangerous, reckless behavior.
      

   2. In
      the exercise of rational caution, a woman should engage in an amazing amount of pretense. She should pretend she has a male protector even if she hasn't. She should deny or obscure her personal identity, life-style and independence, and function on a sustained level of suspicion that approaches a clinical definition of paranoia.
      

Of course I think all people, female and male, child and adult, must be alert and on guard against the warning signs of criminal violence and should take care in potentially hazardous situations, such as a dark, unfamiliar street at night, or an unexpected knock on the door, but to impose a special burden of caution on women

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is no solution at all. There can be no private solutions to the problem of rape. A woman who follows this sort of special cau tionary advice to the letter and thinks she is acting in society's interest-or even in her own personal interestis deluding herself rather sadly. While the risk
to
one ·potential. victim might be

·slightly diminished ( and I even doubt this, since
l
have known of ' nuns who were raped within walled convents ), not only does the , number of potential rapists on the loose.remain constant, but the ultimate effect of rape upon the woman's mental and emotional' health has been accomplished even without the act. For to accept a , special burden of self-protection is to reinforce the concept that, women must live and move about in fear and can never expect to · achiev the personal freedom, independence and self-assurance of men.

That's what rape is all about, isn't it? 'And a possibl deep- , down reason why even the best of . our concerned, well-meaning ,

• men, run to stereotypic warnings when they seek to grapple with· 'the poblem qf rape deterrence is that they prefer to see rape as a . woman's problem, rather than as a societal prblem resulting from
  

a distorted masculine philosophy of aggression. For when men raise the spectre of the unknown rapist, they refuse to take psychologic responsibility for the nature of his act.

We know, or at least the statistics tell us, that no more than half of all reported rapes are the work of strangers, and in the hidden statistics, those four out of five rapes that go unreported, the percent committed by total strangers is probably lower. The man who jumps out of the alley or crawls through the window is the man who, if caught, will be called "the rapist" by his fellow men. But the known man who presses his advantage, who uses his position of authority, who forces his attentions ( fine Victorian phrase), who will not take "No" for an answer, who assumes that sexual access is his right-of-way and physical aggression his right-on expression of masculinity, conquest and power is no less of a rapist-yet the chance that this man will be brought to justice, even under the best of circumstances, is comparatively small.

I am of the opinion that the most perfect rape laws in the land, strictly enforced by the best concerned citizens, will not be enough to stop rape. Obvious offenders will be punished, and that in itself will be a significant change, but the huge gray area of sexual exploitation, of women who are psychologically coerced into

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acts of intercourse they do not desire because they do not have the wherewithal to physically, or even psychologically, resist, will re main a problem beyond any possible solution of criminal justice.
It
would be deceitful to claim that the murky gray area of male sexual aggression and female passivity and submission can ever be made amenable to legal divination-nor should it be, in the final analy sis. Nor should a feminist advocate to her sisters that the best option in a threatening, unpleasant situation is to endure the insult and later take her case to the courts.

Unfortunately for strict constructionists and those with neat, orderly minds, the male-female sexual dynamic at this stage in our human development lends itself poorly to objective arbitration. A case of rape and a case of unpleasant but not quite criminal sexual extortion in which a passive, egoless woman succumbs because it never occurred to her that she might, with effort, repel the advance (and afterward quite justifiably feels "had") flow from the same oppressive male ideology, and the demarcation line between the two is far from clear. But these latter cases, of which there are many, reflect not only the male ideology of rape but a female paralysis of will, the result of a deliberate, powerful and destructive "feminine" conditioning.

The psychologic edge men hold in a situation characterized by sexual aggression is far more critical to the final outcome than their larger size and heavier weight. They
know
they know how to fight, for they have been trained and encouraged to use their bodies aggressively and competitively since early childhood. Young girls, on the other hand, are taught to disdain physical combat, healthy sports competition, and winning, because such activities danger ously threaten the conventional societal view of what is appropri ate, ladylike, feminine behavior. The case for a strong mind in a strong body as a necessary step in the battle for equality (which Susan
B.
Anthony argued for vehemently in the earliest issues of her feminist newspaper,
The Revolution )
is being dramatically and effectively argued each day by our professional female athletes who at long last are becoming female stars-and by recent strug gles to integrate the Little League and to equalize expenditures for female sports programs in grade schools, high schools and colleges.