Rape Culture is Way Bigger than Rape
Something I just need to get off my chest…
There are pictures of me topless as a child that should not have been taken.
I wasn’t four or five. I was probably nine or ten with clearly budding breasts. Who does that? Well, my photographer father. And the ogling didn’t stop when the shutter did.
I remember him saying to me when I was 13 and my sister was 11 that he wanted to take pictures of us on a bear skin rug. (He read Playboy Magazine. Can you tell?) He would pose her on her tummy and me on my back.
After that I learned to cover up. Way up.
That didn’t stop him from noticing. He was the one who told my mom it was time for me to get a bra.
I remember her saying clearly when we went to the store, “Your father says it’s time for you to wear a bra.” But she could have owned the idea.
My first bra was a Peter Pan training bra. Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Why name a bra after a boy who refuses to grow up? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?
That’s like that line in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. “Call an animal “Little Sheba” and you can’t expect it to stick around.”
Anyway, my breasts trained well and soon boys on the street were saying things like “Boy, you’re pretty stacked for your age.” I didn’t even know what that meant, though I figured it out fast.
I learned to cross my arms over my chest when out walking. I still do that. It’s a long time holdover for self-protection. My hunched posture began long before home computers came along to hunch us.
In spite of my hunching, men kept looking and many tried to touch or did.
A whole slew of men. Ranging from total strangers to my dad to co-workers and even bosses. Some made it look accidental. Some just reached and grabbed. And one even came in through the window while I slept.
Encouragement in high places
It sickened and enraged me to see then candidate Trump bragging about this and worse. In one short video clip he “undid” years of hard work people of conscience have done educating, asserting, and standing proud yet safe with our bodies and our sense of ourselves intact.
It feels like we finally got to the top of the mountain after a long, arduous climb and there’s a giant ogre up there gawking and drooling and with one seemingly careless but no doubt intentional back handed slap, knocks us all the way back to base camp.
We live in a society where a man can violate a woman with a look, a word, or a seemingly casual or accidental touch.
None of this is considered rape per se. But as far as I am concerned, it’s on the spectrum. Even if it’s at the shallow end of that pool, to mix metaphors.
This is what we mean when we talk about rape culture.
The whole spectrum or the whole pool should be off limits. Period.
Until that happens, we’re sending mixed messages at best. Some version of — do what you can get away with. Get good at it and we’ll appoint you to the Supreme Court.
That’s what the boys are picking up on. What about the girls?
Some version of — you can have a Ph.D. and still be an object for our pleasure. Know your place. It’s on the bottom. Your bottom.
Until we attack this head on, we’re in trouble as a society.
A world that is dangerous for women is a dangerous world. Period.
How did I get here?
The intention was to muse on having breasts and their arc across the course of a lifetime from pimple to precocious to perky to pendulous to plunging.
Instead, we’re here.
Maybe because of my new grand-niece.
The Global Climate Strike has me thinking about the kind of world we’re creating for our children and their children.
If we manage to leave them a world — and that’s a pretty big if — I want to leave them a world where they are 100% free to be all of who they are and treasure and delight in their bodies. While being absolutely safe.
We’re not there yet. In fact, it feels like we’re racing backwards right now.
So what’s a great aunt to do? Or anyone who cares? Including men?
Pray and pray hard. Talk and teach. Show up in the bigger conversations, including ones we have here. Vote. Register voters. Speak out and up. Make some noise. A lot of noise. With words, songs, paint, sculptures. Take self-defense. Support the work of Eve Ensler and like-minded others.
And when the time comes, put on your pink pussy hats — men, too — and take to the streets. Take back the night. Take back the day. Take the House and the Senate.
And next year, the White House.
Marilyn Flower writes fast fun reads with a touch of magical realism to strength the imagination of socially conscious folks. Clowning and improvisation strengthen her during these crazy times. She’s a regular columnist for the prison newsletter, Freedom Anywhere, and five of her short plays have been produced in San Francisco.
