Monday 12 August 2013

Rape Culture - Part 1

I realise that outside of feminist circles, the idea of 'rape culture' is quite controversial. It's the idea that there are parts of our culture that can be seen to promote or accept rape. Some people say anything that 'objectifies' women can be seen as rape culture, but I'm not so sure on that one. What I'm going to talk about mainly is culture that dismisses or trivialises rape.

Some people deny rape culture exists. To me, this seems like a part of rape culture itself. We acknowledge that some places have a higher incidence of rape than others. South Africa has darkly been called 'the rape capital of the world'. Assuming more rape actually does happen there than other places, there must be cultural reasons for that. If part of their culture is responsible for rape, can we not say the same of ours?

I feel my life has always contained rape culture. It was in films I watched as a child. Grease was voted the number 1 greatest musical on some rubbish programme I watched recently. You all know Grease: that musical we all watched when we were too young to understand that it's all about sex. Where the girls are all chatting about love and the guys are chatting about sex, singing:
"Tell me more, tell me more! Did she put up a fight?"

When I got older, I watched a lot of other musicals, including Cabaret. On the whole I liked it, but there's a scene where Natalia tells Sally how Fritz 'pounced' on her. How at first she is shouting harsh words at him, but then she gives in and likes it. Sally then responds with 'He made love to you.' I couldn't believe I was watching something which suddenly seemed to imply that someone who is raped will eventually enjoy it. I know someone who watched Cabaret on a date. The guy then asked if this is when he should 'pounce'.

I realise Grease and Cabaret are pretty old, and Cabaret isn't even that popular. A little while back, I decided to read 50 Shades of Grey. That's pretty damn popular. It's the fastest selling paperback of all time. I stopped at the point where the main character wakes up in just her underwear in Mr Grey's home after a night of heavy drinking. She asks if they had sex, and he tells her no. She then thinks to herself

Does he want me? He wouldn’t kiss me last week. ... You’ve slept in his bed all night, and he’s not touched you Ana.'

There we go. If a man doesn't touch you when you're unconscious, he clearly doesn't fancy you. It's totally okay though for him to take your clothes off when you're passed out though. Even if you barely know each other. That's an implicit message in a supposedly erotic novel that has been said to empower women with their sexuality.

Part of what disturbs me so much with all of these examples is that no one says the word 'rape'. The same with the 'Don't pick up the soap' jokes about prison rape, that aren't even considered the realm of 'dark' or 'edgy' humour. No one even points out that it's disturbing. It just masquerades as normal.

And I believe this doesn't end with fiction and distasteful jokes. Rape is common, and only a small minority of these rapes are reported*. A common thing in people who have been raped is that they believe it's their own fault. Those who are raped after they have been drinking are often blamed for what happened to them. I don't belive that messages in popular fiction that imply it's sometimes okay to rape people helps that any of that.

'The Steubenville case' has been frequently called an example of rape culture in reality. It's truly chilling. A group of teenage boys undressed and repeatedly sexually assaulted a girl of the same age, while she was too drunk to do anything. They then happily shared photos and videos of the incident online, joking about the rape. They believed their behaviour was not only acceptable, but hilarious. More disturbingly still, in both this and the Ched Evans case, many people's responses were in favour of the rapists. People seemed to believe it's acceptable to have sex with someone who's so drunk they're hardly conscious. I can only hope the sentencing in these proved otherwise.

The only thing I feel I can do about rape culture is to speak up like this. To not let it just pass by unnoticed or blending into the normal.  I wrote this blog post to say, and to encourage others to say, "I've noticed this, and it's not alright."

*I'm finding the exact statistics a little tricky here. The UK Home Office says that 15% of rape is reported to the police. When I'm less tired I will probably post some varying statistics in this footnote.

Friday 10 May 2013

Unwanted 10kg buoyancy aid



So, I’m fat now. Before we start the post on this, I’d like to say that none of this gives you the right to boost your ego by telling me off for not looking like the perfect woman and not being in the ‘virtuous’ 50% of the UK population who are of a healthy weight. Shit happens, okay. Particularly when you’re stressed and the structure of modern life and the massive food industry are completely against us on this one. And most importantly, it’s totally unhelpful to tell me I shouldn’t be fat. Here’s a rant about why I don’t want to be fat, and why I aim to not be fat in the future:

There are a lot of unexpected discoveries when you gain 10kg over a few months, when that 10kg firmly pushes you into ‘overweight’ territory. Or as I prefer to say, ‘fat’. Because, much as we obsess over it, it’s not weight that’s the issue. Body builders have ‘obese’ BMIs. The issue is that there’s no muscle and a lot of adipose tissue (or to non-biologists, flab).

So, how did I get fat? I've never had a healthy diet. And this year has involved a lot of ice and snow and pain that has prevented me from exercising. In addition, I've been taking Paroxetine, which seems to co-incide with the weight gain. It's a medicine for turning panic attacks into flab.

This doesn’t feel like it happened to me over the last few months. That only occurs to me when I think about it. I feel like I woke up fat one day. I just got up and suddenly that zip didn’t close and I wondered when my belly started to stick out so much. Oddly, the only thing others seem to have noticed is the belly. I worry they’ll think I’m pregnant, particularly as I like to go into toy shops. I know my legs and arse are fatter, though, because I’ve tried to squeeze them into my old jeans in order to put some clothing on to exercise. Being fat makes it harder to exercise, partly because I can’t fit in those jeans any more. Oh, the irony.

I never thought about the cost of buying new, larger clothes as a problem with getting fat.  I mean, I’ve already spent too much money on too much food that made me fat, and then when you reach a notable stage of fatness it costs you even more.  No one warned me about this! They just blabbed on about heart disease.

I’m joking. I do worry about my health. Actually, I’ve got Generalised Anxiety Disorder so I worry about pretty much everything. The fat has, however, prevented some worry. While holding a bread knife this morning, I realized that if I were to collapse and fall on it, the blade now would have to go in further before reaching any internal organs. Hooray!

That is actually one of the reasons we have fat; to protect our insides. Other reasons include warmth, protection from starvation (not that useful living 10 mins from a Nisa), and buoyancy (although I don’t know how well I can swim in this state of unfitness).
 
I’m not sure these benefits really add up when the fat's in excess. I greatly dislike the stretch marks and the way my thighs now squish together and chafe against each other. Other disadvantages are finding I can’t squeeze through tight spaces or past occupied seats in theatres. On the whole, I’d give being fat a 1/10: to be avoided where possible.