Rape and Black Mirror

I’m just going to go straight in for the kill with this one: why is no one talking about the rape of the Prime Minister in Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror?

For those not in the know, Charlie Brooker has written a series of 3 hour-long TV features under the title of ‘Black Mirror’. Each explores the implications and effects of a society that is increasingly reliant upon and obsessed with technology and online social media.

Given Charlie Brooker’s involvement the series is of course going to be dark, and we all knew that he was going to make some pretty sharp observations. But the big question to emerge from the first episode for me doesn’t seem to be the same one that has struck everyone else.

The first episode, The National Anthem, sees the fictional Princess Susannah kidnapped and held for ransom. The ransom demand is made via Youtube, spread via Twitter and viewed by thousands before coming to the attention of government officials and the police, and it continues to be reposted by members of the public faster than it can be taken down. This means that within hours of Princess Susannah’s video being posted the whole country knows that the Prime Minister must have full penetrative sex with a pig on live TV in order to guarantee her release.

Watching the programme you are torn between the drama of a kidnap plot and the dark, dark do-I-look/don’t-I/do-I-laugh/don’t-I act of bestiality. Everyone else I know was laughing their heads of at this, imaging how hilarious and how just it would be if our Mr. Cameron or Mr. Clegg found themselves being blackmailed into shagging a farmyard animal.

But what if it were his wife? If the ransom video had been released: “Prime Minister, your wife must shag this pig on live television or I’m gonna have my head chopped off” the story would have been much different. Blackmailing or coercing a person into having sex is rape. If you have no free will to make the decision to have sex, or at least a situation is created by the rapist to make you believe that you has no choice but to have sex then it is rape. The Prime Minister in Black Mirror, as far as I’m concerned, was raped.

He was walked into the TV studio, handed viagra and then, forced by the belief that an innocent person would die if he refused, cried as he had sex with a pig.

Spot the difference between that and any of the following scenarios:
“If you don’t have sex with me then I’m going to kill your mum/friend/partner/child/work colleague/neighbour…”
“If you don’t suck me off then I’m going to blow up that bus full of people.”
“If you don’t agree to have sex with me then I am going to fail all of your coursework.”

So do we agree now that he was raped?

But why has no one been talking about this? The only criticism of the programme that I have come across in the last few weeks is from people complaining about the rape of the pig. That is, of course, a valid complaint to have, and it is not something that should be made light of. However, I am deeply concerned that no-one acknowledges the rape of the PM. Is it because there was no gun held to his head, or is it because he is a man?

The idea of men being raped, but not anally, is not often discussed – ‘After all, if they really don’t want to do it then they wouldn’t have a hard on, surely?‘ – but sex by force isn’t always that clear, as the above scenarios I have suggested illustrate. Men can be raped too and, while I usually really like your stuff Charlie Brooker, it’s just not funny.

When sex is not okay.

An art-project-in-progress and upcoming exhibition is calling out for contributions. The organisers have released the following:

“In the last few weeks, we’ve been participating in a discussion group in
London called The Flip Side: When Sex is Not Okay*. *For us, not okay
experiences mean times when someone has felt unsafe, unable to say no,
threatened, misled, or pressured into something, as well as experiences of
sexual abuse or assault. It also includes times when people have had
distressing emotions or states of mind during sex – which might mean feeling
dirty, guilty or ashamed; having flashbacks; or disassociating.*

*We are perpetually encouraged to stay silent about our experiences, even
though we have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. We need and deserve
spaces where we can break this taboo and be honored for our creativity,
strength, and courage.
* *
That’s why we’re really excited about an idea we came up with last
week: *putting together a night for people to display artwork that relates to these
experiences*. One of the ideas we had was to create pieces of artwork based
around objects we associate with moments in our pasts when things weren’t
okay – for example, clothes we were wearing at the time, CDs, photographs or
gifts from perpetrators, basically any object that triggers these memories.
For many of us, throwing out these objects can really difficult, since they
evoke so much meaning, but so is having them in our homes. We were thinking
people could submit pieces of artwork, and write short blurbs/stories to
accompany the art if they felt comfortable doing so. At the end of the
night, we’ll have a massive smash-up party, so that anyone who wants to can
smash their piece!

Of course, any other creative means of expressing these experiences is
equally welcome — poetry, narratives, zines, performances, letters written
to perpetrators or abusers — anything/everything! We want to emphasize
that you don’t have to identify as a survivor to contribute to the night,
and we are happy to display anonymous contributions. We encourage
contributions from people of all genders, ages, and experiences.

The gallery night will be sometime in late July, so our tentative deadline
for submissions is *10 July 2011*. Please let us know if you have any
suggestions for potential spaces to use for the show, since we’re still on
the look-out.

Submissions can be mailed in, brought in on the night, or picked up by
someone if necessary. If you want to sell/display zines, do a performance
piece, or anything else, please let us know! Drop us a line at *
whensexisnotokay@gmail.com* to talk about your piece, let us know you’re
contributing something, if you have any feedback on the event, or just want
to say hi! Also e-mail us if you want the address to send your piece to or
more info about how to get invovled.

We’re also planning to have a working day sometime in mid-June, where we’ll
bring some supplies and food, and sit around and work on our pieces
together. E-mail us if you’d like to be invovled in that.

Thanks so much for your time,
The lovely, beautiful members of the discussion group

Ps. The discussion group is also in the process of putting together a zine
on strategies for negotiating and navigating not-okay experiences with sex.
We would love love love contributions from other people on this! And we’ll
have the zine ready for the art show. If you’d like to get involved, please
email us at *whensexisnotokay@gmail.com!*”

The exhibition will be held on 22 July, 7pm – 11pm at the Lambeth Women’s Project, 166A Stockwell Road, London SW9 9QT. Spread the word.

So, I went on Slutwalk.

Despite my reservations, my political panic and my determination to not be confused with any wannabe sluts, the London Slutwalk was nothing short of fantastic. The real message of the campaign shone through the torn fishnets as marchers waved banners that read ‘slut is a social construct’, ‘I am not a slut’ and ‘I was wearing jeans and a jumper’.

The event had 1500 ‘likes’ on Facebook, and so the organisers had sensibly assumed that only a portion would actually attend. If you have ever tried to organise an event on Facebook you will know that as a rule of thumb you should never expect more than half of your confirmed attendees to actually bother showing up, and so it is rumoured that the organisers expected only 500 on the day. The old adage there’s no such thing as bad publicity has now been proved true though, as over 3,000 people congregated near Hyde Park Corner ready to march.

The march itself was fun and shouty, and it was heartwarming to see youngsters chanting for the first time (I assume it was their first time because ‘stop slut shaming, start rapist blaming’ somehow morphed into ‘stop slut shaming, start racist haming (sic)’, which made me giggle, made the woman next to me guffaw and left her pal looking very confused…). It was also really awesome to see that at least 80% of the crowd were just wearing regular civvies, rather than ‘slut’ constumes, and that feminist groups were all taking the opportunity to circulate flyers and pamphlets, letting the younger protesters know that feminism didn’t start at Slutwalk and certainly won’t end there either.

There were news reporters and cameras moving through the crowd, which could well have glorified the ‘slut’ and ‘angry feminist’ element of the march – indeed, at one point a photographer complained that my friend and I had stopped chanting and so no longer looked angry – but if they didn’t realise the real motive from the march, the placards and the chanting, they sure must have realised it when they got to the rally.

With speakers from organisations such as Women Against Rape, Black Women’s Rape Action Project, and the English Collective of Prostitutes, WinVisible, Gender Action for Peace and Security, and an individual that spoke as a representative of the trans community, the rally covered a range of experiences and opinions that left many in the crowd comforted to know that they weren’t alone. It opened people’s eyes to the ways in which sexual violence has been masquerading in our societes for millenia as an uncontrollable male urge, and how the shame we are taught at a young age only acts to protect perpertraors of violence. We heard about female immigrants being offered papers in exchange for sex, and we heard of the frequent attacks upon sex workers, who are often too fearful of arrest themselves to report these crimes.

The Slutwalk organisers, both currently completing their A level exams, are now continuing their campaign under the name ‘Slut Means Speak Up’. Keep an eye on their blog for news on upcoming protests. It’s exciting to know that they didn’t want the march to be a one-off event and it will be interesting to see what they do with the publicity and support they achieved.

Conclusion: I had fun and will be following the campaign.

Slutwalk

The London Feminist Network forum is filling my inbox with angry emails again. I subscribe to their mailing list in a bid to keep up to date with feminist happenings (causes, petitions, protests, events, lectures…etc) and every now and again an interesting discussion arises that brings into question the future of feminism.

A few weeks ago I stumbled across Slutwalk, a worldwide campaign that encourages women to march and protest against rape. The walks were started in Toronto after a group of women were told by a police officer that they should stop dressing like sluts if they want to avoid getting raped. Obviously this advice didn’t go down too well with the women in town and so they set up the first Slutwalk protest, more of which are set to begin in the UK this month and over 5,200 noted on Facebook to attend the Hyde Park walk. They encourage women and girls to demand the right to not get raped, whatever they are wearing, and to put an end to ‘slut-shaming’ and victim-blaming in rape cases. The name is an attempt to reclaim the word ‘slut’, as is the encouragement of ‘slutty’ outfits on the march.

A valient cause, right? And in essense it is the same cause that the Reclaim The Night marches have been fighting since the 1970s. But for some reason the London Feminist Network is very angry about the Slutwalks…

They are objecting to the name ‘Slutwalk’ and claim that there is no power to be gained from reclaiming mysoginist words.

Fair enough.

The march’s organisers hope that by reclaiming the word ‘slut’ women are also able to reclaim the power held over their bodies and female sexuality. It’s a very riot grrrl philosophy, and it’s one that is direct and effective if you want to cause a stir. But I’m afraid that I have to side with the angry feminists agree with them about this – I don’t think that there is anything posisitive to come of keeping such words alive in our language. Attempting to reclaim ‘slut’ only asserts women’s right to initiate sex and have it on their own terms. But the inequality of sexual politics runs much deeper than this, and only getting rid of the word completely will allow women to fully reclaim their sexuality.

But underneath the naivity of its exterior the Slutwalk is both a valient and popular show of cross-gender solidarity against sexism. Yes, they only scratch the surface of the problem, and no, the word ‘slut’ (reclaimed or otherwise) will not and should not have any longevity within progressive feminist activity, but that doesn’t mean that these marches aren’t positive. The participants are being proactive and should be praised for this. They should be encouraged to explore the feminist arguments that support their plight and engage with feminist discourse. But instead the feminist groups are moaning about Slutwalk, without offering an appealing alternative.

Well done LFN, you’ve just gone and isolated people EVEN FURTHER from feminism.

Being a feminist isn’t something many people admit to in public anymore. But Slutwalk contains thousands of women offering their support to one of the most fundamental demands of the feminist movement and a very basic demand of our human rights – to not be raped. Perhaps they just don’t see this as a feminist fight because, you know, feminism isn’t cool. Or perhaps they don’t see it as a feminist demand because it so bloody obvious that no-one ever deserves to get raped.

But whilst Slutwalk may not be a name that this campaign can run with in the long term, and even though we must place a (hopeful) expiry date on words like ‘slut’, Slutwalk has created a stir in the media about sexual consent and perceptions of sexual intention. The readers’ comments that follow articles about the campaign show just how big a problem we still face:

“Rape is an utterly dreadful crime, and perpertrators should get the death penalty. But women must take some responsibility for their own actions, and I’m sorry, but going out in your underwear with parts of your body that should remain covered up on show is only asking for trouble….FACT, like it or not!” (Daily Mail reader comment, funnily enough)

The Reclaim The Night marches, whilst popular, are very much feminist marches, and so the many young people who do not associate themselves with feminism are reluctant to get involved. Like many feminist events, some people find them intimidating, inaccessable and separatist. I have to say, I kind of agree. Because of its reputation it took a long time before I really identified with feminism, declared my political leanings or started to be activley involved.

But Slutwalk is a cause that people are getting behind regardless of their political affiliation. I think that that is AWESOME, and so while I will not be dressing as a slut, and I most certainly won’t be calling myself or anyone else a slut either, I will be in attendance at Slutwalk.

Don’t Be That Guy – targetting the perpetrators of sexual violence

Check out this amazing new campaign in Vancouver. The ‘Don’t Be That Guy’ campaign is targetting the perpetrators of sexual violence, rather than asking potential victims to change their behaviour in order to avoid being attacked. Brilliant.

Reclaim the Night

I remember moving to Southampton back in 2004 when I was 18. I was about to start university, studying a fashion oriented degree and my coursemates were all female. Most of us had moved into halls of residence the weekend before Freshers Week and so we had already done a little exploring (hunting for pubs, off-licenses, hotties etc.), discovering our halls to be separated from the city centre by only a few parks that took no more than 15 minutes to walk through. On our first day in class our course leader sat us down to tell us very sternly that we were not to walk through these parks after dark, even in a group. A fresher had been raped in one of the parks on that first weekend.

She was not the first and will certainly not be the last, but from our first week in Southampton we all knew that sexual assault was a very real possibility for any of us. All we could do was plan our walks home at night with military precision and ensure that we never left the house alone after dusk… I have been living in this town for 6 years now and photofits pasted on lampposts in the park are a regular occurance.

Of course I’d be lying if I said that I have never walked home alone from the pub, but I do so carefully, keeping to well-lit areas and threatening to hit any man that dares to try and talk to me en route. But why is it right that I should walk home fearing an assault, and why is it right that every person and dark shadow is a potential attacker?

The Reclaim The Night marches were started in the 1970s, not just in the UK, but across the world. Women were angry that the advice from police following sexual assaults (most prominently those of the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe) was for women to stay indoors after dark and not to travel alone. It seemed unfair to the women that the onus was with them to stay out of public at night, out of the territory of the attackers, rather than on the legal system to catch the predators, prosecute and incarcerate them.

Unfortunately the situation has not changed a great deal since then. Women are still advised not to walk alone at night, and the conviction rate of sexual attackers is actually now lower than in the 70s, now only 5.3%, and the lowest in Europe. The reality of sexual assault is present in every sphere of life, and as long as women are expected to accept a portion of responsibility for our attacks – ‘I shouldn’t have walked home alone’, ‘I shouldn’t have worn such a short skirt’ or ‘I shouldn’t have taken that shortcut through the park…’ – we are being denied true equality.

The Reclaim The Night marches take place each year around autumn to draw attention to our right to walk the streets at night in safety. They take place around the country on different nights and are open to all women. Some of the marches are also open to men. They will be followed by speeches and probably some kind of dancing.

This year’s UK marches are as follows:

BIRMINGHAM
16th October 2010
bhamfems.wordpress.com

OXFORD
22nd October 2010
oxfordfeminist.ox4.org

PORTSMOUTH
25th November 2010
Email: tonia.earey@portsmouthcc.gov.uk

LONDON
27th November 2010
www.reclaimthenight.org