Laaltain

Rape, Football Matches and Us

11 جولائی، 2014

As Brazil suf­fered an igno­min­ious defeat at the hands of Ger­many a lit­tle under two days ago, and some irate Brazil fans took to the streets, riot­ing, Face­book found itself as being a site for hor­ren­dous vio­lence as well – but the sort of vio­lence that was being per­pe­trat­ed on Face­book was a dif­fer­ent kind of vio­lence: it was vio­lence of the mind and against the mind, and against good sense and one’s intel­lect.

I found in my news­feed a steady stream of rape analo­gies describ­ing the 7–1 loss – “Brazil got raped by Ger­many”, read one com­ment, “Ger­mans rape Brazil­ians” read anoth­er, and so it went, this flip­pant mis­use of the word “rape”.

We see that the mis­use of the word “gay” is, in fact, an expres­sion of a het­ero­nor­ma­tive world­view, on the one hand, and of entrenched misog­y­ny, sex­ism, inflat­ed male ego­ism and social­ly ill-con­struct­ed and ill-con­strued ideas of mas­culin­i­ty.

The word “rape” has become “a catch-all for any­thing neg­a­tive”, accord­ing to one com­men­ta­tor. Any man­ner of neg­a­tiv­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly such man­ner of neg­a­tiv­i­ty as emanates out of or is asso­ci­at­ed with a sense of loss, real or imag­ined, is quick­ly sub­sumed into the word – nay, I say, the idea of ¬– “rape”: if I am to lose an arm-wrestling con­test to anoth­er per­son, I would nec­es­sar­i­ly have been “raped” by the vic­tor; if the Sun sears the skin in this infa­mous July sub­con­ti­nen­tal heat, then the lat­ter is sup­posed to have been “raped” by the for­mer; or, as in our case, if a sports team (Brazil) is to lose to anoth­er, it is said to have been “raped” (or “gang-raped”, depend­ing on the imag­i­na­tion of the per­son mak­ing the sug­ges­tion).

Thus, the word “rape” has become so nor­mal­ized, deeply incor­po­rat­ed into, and entrenched in, our com­mon vocab­u­lary that it has become easy, usu­al, aver­age, and “shrug­gable” to use it, and more wor­ry­ing­ly, with­out our feel­ing – well, any­thing at all about it. The case of the word “rape” is quite sim­i­lar to the equal­ly flip­pant mis­use of the word “gay” to describe any­thing deemed “uncool”, not the “in-thing”, dis­agree­able and, extend­ed­ly, (how­ev­er mar­gin­al­ly) “fem­i­nine”. We see that the mis­use of the word “gay” is, in fact, an expres­sion of a het­ero­nor­ma­tive world­view, on the one hand, and of entrenched misog­y­ny, sex­ism, inflat­ed male ego­ism and social­ly ill-con­struct­ed and ill-con­strued ideas of mas­culin­i­ty.

Very sim­i­lar­ly, it fol­lows very nat­u­ral­ly that the mis­use of the word “rape” too is, in fact, a more extend­ed expres­sion of some­thing else – of deeply held val­ues and beliefs: val­ues and beliefs which are informed by misog­y­ny, sex­ism and male ego­ism, which are in turn root­ed in a social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, deeply and intrin­si­cal­ly patri­ar­chal, trib­al ethos. Rape is an expres­sion of male pow­er and need for dom­i­nance, which trans­mutes into role-cast­ing of the vic­tor as the rapist, and the defeat­ed as the rape vic­tim.

I shall come to illus­trat­ing such more clear­ly as we go along. I am wont to state that the anal­o­gy is flawed in its very con­struct. In a foot­ball match, two teams con­sent to the act of play­ing against each oth­er. Con­verse­ly, rape is rape because it is com­mit­ted in the absence of com­plete, con­scious, law­ful and “pres­sure-less” (if I may) con­sent. How then is the los­ing side in a match “being raped”? Or are the word’s (mis)users sug­gest­ing that the vic­tims of rape con­sent to the act?

Or there can be a third sug­ges­tion implic­it in this anal­o­gy: that the los­ing side was “raped” because it lost. That one side will lose and the oth­er will win in any giv­en match (except in cas­es of a draw; but then such instance does not invite the use of “rape” analo­gies) is inher­ent in the idea of a “match”, is obvi­ous­ly lost on the “rape” anal­o­gy ped­dlers. Any­way, stat­ing that the win­ning side has “raped” the los­ing side glam­or­izes rape by cast­ing the act – nay, the crime – of rape in bina­ries of vic­to­ry and loss. Since, the case here is of sports where supe­ri­or ath­let­ic abil­i­ty is para­mount, and indeed, pre­req­ui­site to vic­to­ry on the field, the idea of vic­to­ry in the “rape” anal­o­gy nec­es­sar­i­ly comes to encap­su­late the nat­ur­al asso­ci­a­tion of adren­a­line and testos­terone with sports. Thus, the anal­o­gy por­trays the rapists (the vic­tors) as supreme­ly com­plete in their mas­culin­i­ty, and the act of rape as a demon­stra­tion of envi­able pow­er. At the same time, the anal­o­gy serves to belit­tle the rape-vic­tims (the losers).

Rape is so par­tic­u­lar­ly trau­mat­ic and so mean­ing­ful in so many ways, that there’s some­thing about using the word in oth­er con­texts that dimin­ish­es the real­i­ty of it, and the impact it has on wom­en’s lives.

I am wont to raise such ques­tions as: do the “rape” anal­o­gy ped­dlers real­ize that they are implic­it­ly sug­gest­ing that rape equals vic­to­ry, or, alter­nate­ly, that rapists are in some way “vic­to­ri­ous”? To say that the los­ing side must essen­tial­ly have been “raped”, do they mean all rape vic­tims are the “los­ing side” in an odd­ball, even bat­tle between the attack­er and the attacked? And fur­ther, since the los­ing side lost because it was the poor­er – and the say it was “raped” – what does this mean for their view of rape vic­tims? Does being raped demon­strate some form of weak­ness – a weak­ness that should and can be made fun of? Are the vic­tims, then, pathet­ic, “los­ing” the “rape bat­tle” because they could­n’t “win” over the attack­er? Are rapists supe­ri­or and pow­er­ful? If the answer to either of these is “no,” then how can they employ the use of the word “rape” with such appalling face­tious­ness?

Such (mis)use of the word “rape” belit­tles the crime itself – par­tic­u­lar­ly when “rape” anal­o­gy ped­dlers incor­po­rate it in such slap­dash com­ments as: “That wait­er total­ly raped my sand­wich when he brought it to me!” or “the wind has raped my hair!” (there used to be a Face­book page titled “Thanks wind, you have total­ly raped my hair” with well over a mil­lion likes!). The appli­ca­tion of the incred­i­bly triv­ial to some­thing so seri­ous is belit­tling it: rape itself is very seri­ous. As Sandy Brind­ley, nation­al co-ordi­na­tor of Rape Cri­sis Scot­land, says: “Rape is so par­tic­u­lar­ly trau­mat­ic and so mean­ing­ful in so many ways, that there’s some­thing about using the word in oth­er con­texts that dimin­ish­es the real­i­ty of it, and the impact it has on wom­en’s lives. Rape is a pow­er­ful word, and it’s pow­er­ful for a rea­son, because of that dev­as­tat­ing impact.” I ask my con­sci­en­tious read­ers: is the sand­wich-ruin­ing or hair-ruin­ing, or, as in our case, then real­ly the same as actu­al­ly get­ting raped?
Also, we must not for­get that in the ped­dlers’ draw­ing of “rape” analo­gies, there is the assump­tion that the per­son who is being spo­ken to or might be read­ing rel­e­vant com­ments or posts or any oth­er man­ner of com­pre­hendible sug­ges­tion to the effect, would not have expe­ri­enced rape – or, at least, that even if they have, either they them­selves might have com­plete­ly dis­as­so­ci­at­ed with the mem­o­ries of it, or, even more omi­nous­ly, that the ped­dlers sim­ply do not care about the mem­o­ries or anx­i­ety they may trig­ger.

The “rape” anal­o­gy ped­dling is not restrict­ed to Pak­istan or to Pak­ista­nis – it has some­what glob­al stand­ing. I should men­tion at the out­set, that the inten­tion behind men­tion­ing this is that there is a rather euphemistic term “Face­book Rape” meant to describe a third par­ty gain­ing access to someone’s Face­book account and alter­ing its set­tings, dis­play pic­ture, cov­ers, et al. Renowned Amer­i­can come­di­an, once infa­mous­ly remarked, much to the cha­grin of the con­sci­en­tious: “I’ve done it once and I’m real­ly ashamed of it. It was Christ­mas – I’d had a cou­ple of drinks and I took the car out. But I learned my les­son. I near­ly killed an old lady. In the end I did­n’t kill her. In the end, I just raped her.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­can radio talk show host, Rush Lim­baugh told his lis­ten­ers “get ready to get gang-raped again” in 2009 in one of his many cri­tiques of Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s health­care reforms. Sim­i­lar­ly, a year lat­er, British heavy­weight box­er David Haye caused out­rage by boast­ing that his upcom­ing match would be as “one-sided as a gang rape”. Indi­an law­mak­ers’ – a whole host of them, not just a cou­ple! – bum­bling goofs on the sub­ject of rape are all too well known (and too many) to neces­si­tate repro­duc­tion here. On anoth­er lev­el, con­vict­ed rapists like for­mer Mike Tyson con­tin­ue to be cast in pop­u­lar Hol­ly­wood cin­e­ma. Speak­ing of Hol­ly­wood cin­e­ma, the Dus­tim Hoff­man and Susan George star­ring 1971, “Straw Dogs” has an infa­mous scene in which George’s char­ac­ter is pur­port­ed­ly raped, and she is shown to be, first, acqui­esc­ing and then even enjoy­ing the rape! The (mis)use of “rape” has even found expres­sion in his­to­ry: the swift Nazi march into Czecho­slo­va­kia dur­ing the Sec­ond World War has been termed “the rape of Prague” and the Japan­ese cap­ture of Nan­jing in Chi­na has been called “the rape of Nan­jing”, at var­i­ous points in time.

Triv­i­al­ized ref­er­ences to rape are ubiq­ui­tous and per­va­sive, on the one hand, and nor­mal­ized and deeply root­ed, on the oth­er, in not only Pak­istani soci­ety, but also around the world. Events such as the FIFA World Cup sim­ply make these instances more vis­i­ble.

Triv­i­al­ized ref­er­ences to rape are ubiq­ui­tous and per­va­sive, on the one hand, and nor­mal­ized and deeply root­ed, on the oth­er, in not only Pak­istani soci­ety, but also around the world. Events such as the FIFA World Cup sim­ply make these instances more vis­i­ble. The pur­pose of delin­eat­ing sim­i­lar instances from around the globe was not to con­found the debate, but to extend it and to offer per­spec­tive. The West and many oth­er regions in the world have active fem­i­nist move­ments which are strug­gling to put such (mis)uses in check, and to put their employ­ment in reces­sion. They have made con­sid­er­able head­way on sev­er­al issues of sim­i­lar import. It is, thus, nec­es­sary that we visu­al­ize this issue as an issue not of Pak­ista­nis doing some­thing oth­er-world­ly, but as insen­si­tive (per­haps desen­si­tized?), unfeel­ing and under-edu­cat­ed (per­haps pur­pose­ly obliv­i­ous?) humans express­ing deeply held patri­ar­chal, misog­y­nis­tic and sex­ist val­ues and beliefs. Such visu­al­iza­tion would allow us room to learn from the dis­course on the sub­ject in oth­er regions in the world, per­haps even twin our own dis­course with theirs, and see how peo­ple in oth­er parts of the globe are bring­ing such flip­pant use of lan­guage into check.

At the end, as one com­men­ta­tor writes “women con­tin­ue to be men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly bru­tal­ized around the world. When that bru­tal­i­ty isn’t tak­en seri­ous­ly – and what’s more, when it is talked about flip­pant­ly and with­out regard – it speaks of a deep inhu­man­i­ty. Lan­guage is a pow­er­ful weapon. Defuse the pow­er of the word “rape”, take away its val­ue to shock and ter­ri­fy, and, for women at least, all is lost.”

NOTE: This arti­cle is ded­i­cat­ed to Ahmed Anwaar-ul-Haq and Michelle Young.

2 Responses

  1. Real­ly, a very very good article.….…Totally agreeable.Well writ­ten and point of view, very well expressed.

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2 Responses

  1. Real­ly, a very very good article.….…Totally agreeable.Well writ­ten and point of view, very well expressed.

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Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *