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TW: Rape, sexual assault
One of my good friends frequently uses the word “rape” in a casual manner; he would throw around sentences like “I got raped today in badminton bro” or “he got raped in that game of chess”. You know, the usual utterances of any casual “rape”-user. It made me deeply uncomfortable every time I heard it and I wanted to ask him to stop using it. I was considering confronting him about it but before that, played out the confrontation in my head. The simulation ended at an impasse: if the usage of “murder” or “kill” is not a problem, what is wrong with the usage of “rape”? Both are egregious violent crimes. To that, I did not have a defense ready. Furthermore, I myself was not convinced why one was acceptable while the other wasn’t. I had to solve this double-standard conundrum for myself before I picked up an argument with my good friend.
Let us first talk about the casual use of “murder”. It is not just the utterance of the word “murder” or “kill” as in “I would kill for a cup of chai”, it is much more ubiquitous than that. We show people getting killed in movies, we score points for killing people in games and we use those words to rhetorically show our frustration when we say "I will kill you" to that friend who argues that Karnataka sambar is better than Tamil Nadu sambar; we use it when we get competitive - "Watch me murder you this round"; we even make the act of killing look cool and graphic almost as if we forgot that taking someone's life is not a plaything. The gore genre is becoming increasingly popular.
One solution to this conundrum is to socially (as opposed to legally) ban the use of “murder” or “kill” along with “rape". What next? Rally for the abolition of gore? Protest that there should be no killing in any of the games or movies? Where does it stop? If we lobby for a social ban on “murder” then another group would lobby for the ban on the word “x” and then on “y” and then…. Are you just going to go around banning all the words that describe violent acts because they can be triggering or offensive to some group or the other? Who is to say that we will stop with that? Before you know it, the fundamental right to free speech will be stripped away from us. You see how dangerously regressive and slippery-slope-ey this proposition is.
The only way out is to build a solid enough argument that can stand against “okay, but why can’t that argument be applied to the usage of “murder” as well?” (hereafter referred to as ‘what-about-murder defense’). This is where most arguments of today fail.
Weak Arguments
“Casual use normalizes rape”/“Casual use desensitizes people to rape”
Casual use of “rape” normalizes/desensitizes us to rape no more than casual use of “murder” normalizes/desensitizes us to murder. Also, really? Do you think excessive use of “murder” or “kill” is going to make people pick up a machete and go on a killing spree? Or do you think that it cultivates this ability to witness a murder in plain sight without flinching or getting traumatized? Where exactly is the normalization/desensitization? I have seen the word “rape” thrown around numerous times. I am not desensitized in the slightest.
The desensitization argument does not give enough credit to our ability to take into account the context. “I would kill for a cup of chai” and actually murdering someone are entirely different things in our brains. So is the case with rape. Anyone who says “I am gonna rape you this game” can still have zero tolerance towards rape and fight for its elimination.
“Casual use trivializes rape”
Casual use as in “He raped me in that game” does not trivialize rape. To trivialize something, you need to make a reference to the actual thing you are trivializing like these pathological examples:
The phrase “legitimate rape”
“Men will be men” (when specifically referring to sexual assault and rape)
That one time when a Judge who was adjudicating a rape case remarked “Is this ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ or 50 shades of illegal?” A movie reference? Really?
That time when “the chief of India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Ranjit Sinha used rape as a misguided analogy in a statement about gambling. "If you cannot enforce the ban on betting, it is like saying: 'If you can't prevent rape, you enjoy it'“
All of them have a direct reference to the act of violating a woman’s body. But “I am going to rape you this game”? The context is different. The context in which you are using “rape” should be about the actual act of rape for it to trivialize the act of rape.
Also, by this argument, one should not use “murder“ casually either because it trivializes murder.
“Casual use can be triggering to people”
Murder is vastly distant to us than rape is. How many people do we know that have come close to getting killed or have close ones that were killed? None for me. But some of my close friends have been raped; which isn’t surprising given that 1 out of every 6 women1 has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. That is a staggering number. Unless you’ve been living alone under a rock, you too most certainly know someone who has been raped. You just wouldn’t know because 5 out of 6 women2 do not report it3. Even if you do not know any victims of rape, you would be better off making the statistically-informed assumption that someone in your circle has been raped or sexually assaulted and thus, refrain from using “rape”.
What if you are hanging out with a bunch of your friends and you are certain that no one was sexually assaulted or raped? Given how prevalent it is, your friends would surely know someone in their circle who was sexually assaulted/raped. Using “rape” casually would make them uncomfortable. Once again, you would be better off making the assumption that someone in your friend’s circle has been raped or sexually assaulted. In such a scenario, it would be insensitive of you to use “rape” for trivial things.
This is the only argument that comes close to being a strong argument. But this too has its flaws. For it suggests that not using “rape” is simply a matter of good manners and polite behavior.
Consider a hypothetical scenario: you are hanging out with a bunch of your friends and say, somehow, you know for a fact that none of them have undergone sexual assault/rape and neither have the people in their social circle. No one would be triggered by “rape” in this group. Would it be acceptable to use it then? Surely, such a scenario is not realistic but if it was, the “it will trigger people” argument suggests that it would be acceptable to use “rape". This is where the argument breaks down.
Though I am sympathetic to all of the above arguments, I am shooting them down because these arguments make it look as if we have solid grounds for socially banning the casual use of “rape”. However, anyone who gives it enough thought will come up with similar objections and will conclude that there is no strong reason for not using “rape” casually. They won’t admit it to anyone because they fear getting canceled but inside their minds, conclude they will; this will then manifest in their utterances in so-called “safe spaces” where it is socially acceptable to use “rape” casually.
Strong(er) Arguments
Here are some arguments that stand the test of the what-about-murder defense.
Rape ≠ Murder
The best move against the what-about-murder defense is to attack its shaky premise. Yes, rape and murder are violent acts. But that is a parochial view. They both differ in numerous ways. For starters, the physical act itself is different. But the differences run deeper than that:
Rape is gendered violence, murder is not. 91% of rape victims are female, while almost 99% of perpetrators are male4. Rape is targeted violence. If you compare everyday murder cases to the mass genocide of Jews by the Nazis, the latter is several magnitudes more barbaric and tragic simply because one group was circled out and hunted. Rape is similar except that the orchestrator is not Hitler, it is patriarchy. Unlike the Holocaust, patriarchy is not centralized and there is no chain of command; instead, it is decentralized5.
The consequences and suffering are entirely different. Murder leads to death. Rape leads to a life of torture and trauma. The survivors have to bear enormous mental burden and to deal with it, have to bear enormous financial burden (for therapy and medications). The trauma that comes with it affects them in every sphere of life - it makes their relationships complicated, it is harder for them to perform at work, it affects the way they interact socially and they tend to become either sexually repressed or hypersexual. These are just the first order effects. I'll leave it to you to think about the second order effects. This is perhaps best captured by a quote from the Tamil show Suzhal (The Vortex) - “Rape casts a shadow the length of a lifetime”.6
Murder is black and white. Someone was killed and it is about finding out the killer(s). It is, unequivocally, a crime. But rape is an alleged crime. The survivor has a hard time to even make the claim that she was raped. This is on top of preposterous comments like “Did you see the way she dresses? She was asking for it."
People who were murdered are not around to watch you toss the word around casually. Survivors of rape and sexual assault are around to see the usage of the word “rape" flippantly.
Rape is much more common than murder.
Normalizes & Perpetuates Patriarchy
The casual use of “rape” does not normalize rape itself (as argued before). Its effect is subtler than that and thus more pernicious.
Rape is driven by patriarchy. So by using it casually, you are normalizing and perpetuating patriarchy. That is a terrible thing to do given how women are battling it out every day against gender discrimination. It is abhorring, deeply insensitive and dick-ish to diminish the seriousness of it by using it casually.7
This is also why you should not use “rape” in the hypothetical scenario we saw before (where no one would be triggered by its use). Refraining from such use is not merely a matter of good manners, it is a matter of principle and a show of solidarity.
Next time someone (including my own brain) puts forth the what-about-murder argument, I now have an impregnable counter-argument.
Note: I am a guy so I have no idea what it is like to be a woman. Let alone a woman who has been sexually assaulted or raped. But I spoke to several female friends of mine (some of whom are survivors) about this in my effort to do justice to this topic. I am open to hearing opposing views and feedback. So if you disagree with anything, reach out.
Thanks to intellectual sparring partners Kritee, Smriti, Shanize, and Ananya.
Thanks to Kritee and Kavitha for reading drafts of this.
All views expressed by the author are personal.
Any feedback and criticism are more than welcome. Find me on Twitter or LinkedIn or Instagram.
Source: Rapecrisis.org
Both 1 and 2 are statistics from US and UK respectively. The numbers could be higher in other countries but I doubt it would be lower given that UK and US are, on average, more egalitarian than many countries. See the Gender Inequality Index for more.
I am not saying one is worse than the other vis-a-vis rape and the Holocaust. There is no point in comparing the two. But there is utility in drawing similarities.
Once again, I am not positing that rape is worse than murder. I have no way of conceiving that. I am simply pointing out the differences in the experiences of the victim.
You might say “well, it is dickish to diminish the seriousness of rape itself, not just of patriarchy”. I concur. But remember, we are finding arguments that can stand against the what-about-murder argument. So making it about patriarchy instead of rape breaks the premise of the what-about-murder argument which is that “both rape and murder are violent acts”.
If "murder" can be used casually, why can't we use "rape" casually?
I got curious and decided to come back and read this one.
…I’m glad you dug deeper.
I’d argue that murder/kill are gendered words though, considering the massive dis balance in who suffered random violence, who winds up self deleting, winds up “nobly sacrificing” for women/children in wars/emergency, or even being victimized in non mutual domestic violence. The issue is that they are gendered against men as much as rape is.
Domestic violence is especially egregious in that the definition game with DV isn’t just as bad as it was with rape, but much worse and more insideous, getting stronger and less understanding.
For instance, if a man stands over a seated women and yells loudly at her inches from her face and someone sees it, he’s going to jail to atleast cool down.
If a woman does it; people video record and joke about it, see Bryan Laundrie pushed his abuser back so her has space to stand, calls the police on HIM for making space. The woman is then placed in the back of the cop car before being released for Brian to deal with more.
You know those stories of abused women finally taking revenge against their husband that get a year and a movie deal… do you honestly think Brian would have been given so light a sentence or a pre-execution movie? Think about the way society views rape.
Hell, think about the way society views most dangerous things. Men have to register for the draft to get financial aid of any kind (student loans, disability, social security). Draft registration is needed for federal jobs. In a lot of states draft registration is required for voting.
Draft Required unless you are from one group of people that have a rather matriarchal look to them.