Before I begin on the entrée, the meat of today's blog, I wish to recount a small tale from today; an amuse-bouche to whet the appetite. A couple of hours ago, I was making my way down a familiar street, a street I had walked down every day for a number of years; a street which leads to the tube station from where I used to live back in the late seventies/early eighties, a street which leads down in to Brixton. At that time it was the run-down, somewhat dilapidated, home to large numbers of first generation Caribbean immigrants and their second generation Caribbean-British progeny.
An area of London which only sold ska, blue-beat and reggae, where Jimmy Cliff, Prince Buster and the Upsetters held sway; an area which possessed a 'front-line'; an area where the market stalls were filled to the brim with yams, green bananas, sweet potatoes, tilapia and red snapper; take-aways where you could buy roti-roti, Jamaican jerk (chicken) and curried goat; a tiny piece of the Caribbean in a grey-sky, inner-city metropolis. And along the street which I ambled down today were to be found the shebeens; unlicensed, and therefore illegal, drinking and gambling dens and home to that staple of the Rastafarian 'culture', ganga. Weed, dope, Mary-Jane, grass, resin, joints, spliffs or just simply Cannabis sativa, call it what you will, it is what being 'high' is all about.
If you walked up the road late then, before the riots,, say after midnight following a gig or a late night session behind a pub's closed doors, you would be besieged by people seeking to sell you some ganga, often 'home grown'. Well today, things took a decided turn for the better; someone ran after me in the street and offered me a plastic carrier bag of 'weed' free, gratis and for nothing! Needless to say I declined his generous offer. It is at least twenty years since I last smoked grass and I have no intention of starting that 'habit' again, free or otherwise; besides it was no doubt a loss-leader! I am still not sure, a few hours later, whether I want to appear, at my age, as if I might still smoke dope!
From one crime, albeit a petty one, selling class 'C' drugs on the street, to the unspeakable crime, the unspoken crime, a crime so heinous that is neither boasted about by the perpetrator or admitted to by the victim, even amongst friends; rape.
(I should point out that I am male; a member of the gender that Dworkin, among others, perpetually labels 'misogynist'. As a result, my perspective is no doubt influenced by both my upbringing, the sexual stereotype with which I am labelled and to which I am bound by social conventions and by my hormones.)
The word 'rape' was originally derived from the Latin verb 'rapere', by way of the old French 'raper', meaning 'to carry off', 'abduct', sometimes 'elope', as in the 'The Rape of the Sabine Women'; the term in Latin for rape as we understand it was 'stuprum' (violent outrage). Rape. however, concerned ownership, property, the perception of women as chattels, mere goods, slaves to be bought and sold in a market place dominated by males. Quite where, or how, it acquired the more common contemporary meaning, 'to violate (sexually, by force)' is unclear but it had certainly done so by the beginning of the seventeenth century and Shakespeare's 'Rape of Lucrece'. In fact, it is probably the tale of Lucretia which most cements the current definition of the word, and its possible repercussions, into the 'modern' mind.
(Lucretia was an aristocratic noblewomen, living at the end of the reign of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the last King of Rome, who was raped, sexually violated against her will, by Superbus' son, Sextus Tarquinius and who subsequently took her own life as a result; the subject of many a Renaissance painting and, in various forms, post-eighteenth century novels. It was this affront which caused the ending of the monarchy that was Rome and led to the founding of the Republic, or so the story goes.)*
While the ancients, Romans and Greeks, condemned rape (in its current meaning) and punished the crime most severely,usually with death, it was still a crime bound up with, and heavily influenced by, concepts of 'ownership' (of women) and the dishonour to the 'husband' or 'father' and not to the 'wife' or 'daughter'; the low-born seldom had recourse to the law, although the victim was held to be (legally but not necessarily socially) blameless. ** However, by the time of the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, around the early fourth century, and later through the writings of St Augustine, the victim was somehow deemed to be implicitly complicit in her own violation; a view which the writings of scores of 'feminist' writers have so far failed to eradicate completely from the minds of certain sections of Western society.
While the ancients, Romans and Greeks, condemned rape (in its current meaning) and punished the crime most severely,usually with death, it was still a crime bound up with, and heavily influenced by, concepts of 'ownership' (of women) and the dishonour to the 'husband' or 'father' and not to the 'wife' or 'daughter'; the low-born seldom had recourse to the law, although the victim was held to be (legally but not necessarily socially) blameless. ** However, by the time of the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, around the early fourth century, and later through the writings of St Augustine, the victim was somehow deemed to be implicitly complicit in her own violation; a view which the writings of scores of 'feminist' writers have so far failed to eradicate completely from the minds of certain sections of Western society.
Rape has increasingly been seen as a crime not of sexual gratification but, under the influence of 'feminist' writers such as Dworkin, of power and control, domination and coercion. This is certainly true where males are raped by males in 'abnormal' circumstances such as in the confines of prison; the perpetrators are not necessarily 'gay' but will still bugger those lower down on the hierarchy merely to assert their dominance. And it it is almost certainly true where it used as an instrument of oppression. The NKVD did not merely 'allow' the rape of at least 25-50% of the female populations in Berlin, East Prussia and Silesia in 1945 but, due to their inactivity in opposing it, actively encouraged it, despite the protestations to the contrary of later Russian historians. (The Allies at least made the attempt; rape charges numbered at least one thousand during the months following the invasion of Germany, although, perhaps, too large a number of these were of African-Americans to make one feel entirely comfortable with the justice of the eventual outcomes; too many cases of the 'Nelson eye'*** in the case of white, Caucasian males, perhaps.)
It may almost be a truism that rape is a natural concomitant to invasion; after all, the bulk of the invading army is likely to be made up of males aged between 18 and 25. often deprived of normal sexual relations in the period prior to invasion, and on a high from testosterone and adrenalin; an age at which hormones rage the loudest. Despite the veneer which our civilisation and the need for social cohesion gives to us, adrenalin promotes the so-called 'flight or fight' response and high levels of testosterone make 'fight' more likely than self preservation in the case of many mammalian species. including us. Ally that to the almost overwhelming desire for sex**** among young males, eager to prove themselves in the eyes of pack, asserting social dominance and the siring of offspring and it seems to me to be clear that the misogyny. so beloved of feminist writers. is not confined to simply one gender against another, although females may numerically predominate in any battle between the weak and the strong. It should come as no surprise to learn that violence against the person is most common amongst the under 25s.
Moreover, rape in 'peacetime' is not, on the whole, engaged in by strangers'; in the UK 90% of rapists are known to their victims. I, personally, have known only three women who had been raped and, in all three cases, it was their partner or ex-partner who committed the crime.
Moreover, rape in 'peacetime' is not, on the whole, engaged in by strangers'; in the UK 90% of rapists are known to their victims. I, personally, have known only three women who had been raped and, in all three cases, it was their partner or ex-partner who committed the crime.
While it may still be that the over-riding urge is to 'power' and 'domination' over the victim, of whatever sex, I am more inclined to see rape in many cases, but certainly not all, as partly a miscomprehension on the part of the rapist; the mis-reading of signs which every human being makes whether they will or no. Most rapes, if not 99.9% of rapes, are perpetrated by males. This is not to excuse the behaviour of the rapist or to justify it but merely to explain it in ways that do not rely on the ultra-misogynist view of the ultra-feminists, which see, as they must, given the history of the between-the-sexes rivalry as a contest between the oppressed and the oppressor; seldom are things so clear-cut and defined. Modern society has not lost all vestiges of the stigmata of the oppressed and the oppressor and rape is merely one manifestation, albeit a hugely skewed one, of that will to assert 'power' and dominance which lies at the heart of much human behaviour.
However it is no more 'right' to sexually violate a woman, or a man. because you mis-interpret the signs of sexual availability than it was in Berlin or in any other war or oppression you care to mention but to concentrate on the merely feminist perspective is to lose sight of all other perspectives which might pertain to the rapist and their motivation.
The situation has been made more inimical to the perpetrators of rape and more sympathetic to the victims of the crime over the past 50 years or so, in part at least due to not only the increased independence, both financial and social, of women in Western democracies but also the vehement and often strident posturing of the early 'politicised' feminists such as Friedan, Dworkin, Greer, Millet, although there is still a way to go; one should not expect to unravel the customs, traditions and practices of 5,000 years in a matter of a few decades, however 'enlightened' we have become. Surely the answer to rape and a host of other oppressive practices is to continue to educate. Not that it is wrong to rape per se but simply that to do violence to, or exploit, another human being for personal 'power' or gratification, wherever it may occur, is in itself, intrinsically immoral and wrong; whether it be by rape or bodily assault, murder, or by oppression or by exploitation, these things should not be tolerated in a just and humane society.
* It seems likely that the tale has some relation to an historical event. When one considers the fanciful tale of the founding of the city of Rome - Romulus and Remus and the She-Wolf - the founding of the Republic takes on a much more realistic cloak, although for the Romans, and the Greeks before them, it was less of an insult or violation of the woman and more of an affront to the honour of her patrician spouse and, by extension, to the state, SPQR, Senatus Populusque Romanus..
** The story of Laius, King of Thebes, who raped Chrysippus, son of King Pelops, does illustrate how forced violation might be seen in the Ancient Greek era; one interpretation of Laius' 'crime' has it that it is not only punished by Laius' death, at the unknowing hands of his own son Oedipus, but is carried on down the line to Oedipus and his wife and mother, Jocasta, and on to the next generation in the shape of Antigone, Oedipus' daughter, who commits suicide, and his two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, who kill each other on the battlefield. A tragedy of epic proportions, spanning generations.
*** Turning a 'blind-eye' to crime or misdemeanours from the possibly apocryphal story of Captain, later Admiral, Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen when he raised his telescope to his blinded eye and said, after Admiral of the fleet, Sir Hyde Parker had raised the flags for disengagement and retreat: 'Signal, I see no signal.'
**** Lenny Bruce once based an entire skit on the male propensity for sex; from manual stimulation to holes in tree trunks to chickens (the object of Bruce's exaggerated derision: "Get your chicken to make you dinner.' yells the 'wife' after finding her husband in bed with said chicken)
* It seems likely that the tale has some relation to an historical event. When one considers the fanciful tale of the founding of the city of Rome - Romulus and Remus and the She-Wolf - the founding of the Republic takes on a much more realistic cloak, although for the Romans, and the Greeks before them, it was less of an insult or violation of the woman and more of an affront to the honour of her patrician spouse and, by extension, to the state, SPQR, Senatus Populusque Romanus..
** The story of Laius, King of Thebes, who raped Chrysippus, son of King Pelops, does illustrate how forced violation might be seen in the Ancient Greek era; one interpretation of Laius' 'crime' has it that it is not only punished by Laius' death, at the unknowing hands of his own son Oedipus, but is carried on down the line to Oedipus and his wife and mother, Jocasta, and on to the next generation in the shape of Antigone, Oedipus' daughter, who commits suicide, and his two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, who kill each other on the battlefield. A tragedy of epic proportions, spanning generations.
*** Turning a 'blind-eye' to crime or misdemeanours from the possibly apocryphal story of Captain, later Admiral, Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen when he raised his telescope to his blinded eye and said, after Admiral of the fleet, Sir Hyde Parker had raised the flags for disengagement and retreat: 'Signal, I see no signal.'
**** Lenny Bruce once based an entire skit on the male propensity for sex; from manual stimulation to holes in tree trunks to chickens (the object of Bruce's exaggerated derision: "Get your chicken to make you dinner.' yells the 'wife' after finding her husband in bed with said chicken)
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