July 10, 2005
Unclean and Unforgiven
by Lorraine Berry
Salman Rushdie has an op-ed today on the "shame" that is assigned to women who are raped. He's talking specifically about cases in Pakistan and India, but here in the States, we all know the statistics about the number of rapes that go unreported, and the shame that gets attached to rape here.
I want to try to tease out the source of this shame, and I think the first thing to sort out is the difference between "guilt," and "shame." Guilt is the internal barometer that tells us that our individual moral codes have been violated by something we have done. Shame is an external thing--it is given to us by our culture that tells us we should feel badly about something. Often, that manifests itself as guilt, even if we have done nothing wrong, and there, in that intersection, it gets confused. But shame begins is an imposition upon us.
There's a temptation to go off on a riff about Marx, Levi-Strauss, and Irigaray and the "fetish," but I want to leave that alone. Going there will take me into my head and away from my heart, and I'm trying to understand, on a visceral level, why men, apparently, feel such deep shame (or is it guilt?) when the women in their community are raped. And how, rather than taking on those feelings themselves, they project them on to the victim.
I'm about to engage in an essentialist argument, I think. I'm not an essentialist, but sometimes, going back to these archetypes helps me to try to understand seemingly unexplainable things. If you're up for a thought experiment, continue reading.
I have tried to write about this before, but I come back repeatedly to trying to understand what happens when a man has sex with a woman. I know what it feels like as a heterosexual woman to be penetrated, but I'm trying to understand what I would feel if the roles were reversed. If I were the one inserting part of my body into another's. And not just any part. Not a finger, but a penis.
If a man rapes a woman, he is using his penis as a weapon. But what if he is making love to a woman? Is there surrender there?
What is it for a man to surrender to a woman? Is it to imagine what it is to be the glove, rather than the hand. To be the sheath. That is what vagina means, you know. Sheath. From the Latin. I find it fascinating that a part of the female body, the canal through which women bring forth new life, the first journey we experience as human beings—sliding through a fleshy tunnel into the light and cold—that the name for that conduit is not related to its function in birth, but rather, bears the name of a holder of a weapon. A scabbard—the covering in which you insert your sword.
Is this what men think of their penises as? Weapons? Swords? But a sheath is where you keep your knife to keep it safe, to keep it when you’re not using it for violence. It’s a place for it to rest until the next time it’s needed. When you place your sword inside its sheath, you’ve put down your weapon, you’ve disarmed yourself, you’ve made yourself vulnerable. You’ve surrendered.
Julia Kristeva has written that the "abject," literally, the things we "throw away" from ourselves, the things we attach the most disgust to, are the things that show to us that our bodies are not self-contained units. Piss. Shit. Vomit. Tears. The fluid that leaks from our bodies, that reminds us that we are not immortal, solid, that we will eventually dissolve, rot, become one with the earth again.
For women, we are reminded every month that we are fluid. We bleed. When we give birth, we open up, send new life out into the world. We feed children with the fluid from our breasts. When we have sex, we are penetrated. And, we are fluid. When we are fully aroused, we leak copious amounts of fluid; it is the condition that makes a pleasurable penetration possible. When we have sex, we smear our lovers with that fluid; when he is at his most vulnerable, when he climaxes, he leaks fluid, too. Men leave their fluid inside women. What happens if another man has contact with some other man's fluid?
Fluidity is openness. Fluidity is vulnerability. Fluidity is the abject. Fluidity brings shame.
Here, I'm speaking of heterosexual sex. But I think at the heart of this shame is wrapped up in penetrability and fluid. Thus, male homosexuality is implicated here, too.
The notion that a rape victim is "unclean," then, is about the possibility that any man who has sex with her afterwards will be exposed to another man's fluids. It's a crude argument, and yet, I think there's some truth to it. What do you think?
Posted by in Bio-Power, Body, Critical Theory, Culture, Feminism, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Gender, Homosexuality, Julia Kristeva, Metaphor, Mythologies, Psychology, Rape, Religion, Rights, Semiotics, Sex, Sexual Politics
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Found inJuly 11, 2005 07:33 PM
Say it loud, say it proud!
I'm not sure LB. I mean, this would apply to any woman who is not a virgin; she has been penetrated and inseminated by another, yet I'm not sure she would be viewed as unclean. In years past, under more repressive times perhaps, not being a virgin was a stigma, but not so much anymore. Perhaps this idea may apply in cultures where women are killed for pre-marital or extra-marital sex. And it may still apply to the Christianist crowd here. I'm not sure it explains the whole complicated view of rape, victimization, blame and shame to which you are referring.
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Comment by: lorraine at July 10, 2005 10:51 AM
Well, this is the problem with essentialist arguments, I think. They break down, but I think there's a nugget in here somewhere. The emphasis on virginity, for example, where does that come from?
And I can think of many historical instances where women of one race had sex with men of another, and were from then on considered "taboo" by the men of their race, as if they had been infected by sexual contact.
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Comment by: Morgaine Swann at July 11, 2005 01:06 AM
The fluid imagery explains sexuality, but not the shame. The shame part is all about ownership.
In order to establish a patrilineal system of inheritance, men had to establish exclusive ownership of women's bodies and make sure that female sexuality was severely restricted.
In that context, if the woman you own is violated by another man, the shame is not hers, it's yours. Her feelings don't matter - it's your position as a man that has been compromised. You resent her for being a symbol of your disgrace. He has marked your territory with his fluids.
This symbology runs all through our culture. Look at the imagery of football. The other team penetrates your territory. When you win, you tear down your own goal to show that you can no longer be violated. In ancient times, when a tribe or kingdom was overthrown, the victor would sodomize the king of the other people.
None of the shame works without a concept of ownership. To be "unclean" one must be a thing. A person is not unclean because all they have to do is wash. To be soiled, to be ruined, you have to unalterably changed. What is actually ruined is the hymen. The irony is that not all women have them and women have been murdered for being born without one.
Without the ownership, rape becomes irrelevant. If the man who raped were shamed, rape would not exist. They do it to prove their power over women, to harm, to cause the shame, to take away her freedom. Our entire culture is complicit in the crime, because if we embraced the woman and punished the man, there would be no point in raping. The culture still views her as "damaged goods".
Women will not be free as long as we are valued primarily for our hymens. When we are no longer a thing to be used, soiled and discarded, we will begin to be people. This is why I have no patience with any form of misogyny. As long as we are dismissed as 'less than' in any way, we are still being treated as things and not people.
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Comment by: lorraine at July 11, 2005 07:50 AM
Morgaine,
I agree with a lot of your analysis. In many ways, we are operating in this archetypal world in which the hymen is symbolic of a fetish that is exchanged--from father to husband--that symbolizes the passing on of prestige and property, etc., etc. A ruptured hymen negates that deal.
But what of a married woman, as in the case in India, who is raped and then declared unclean for her husband? Is the shame that he was unable to protect his piece of property and thus it was stolen from him?
None of these things make sense to me. The layers of shame and guilt that we attach to sex of any kind is mysterious to me. This fundamental distrust of the body, that I can only explain by the obvious. Bodies are the source of our mortality. They die. We die. Therefore, our bodies are the enemy.
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Comment by: Arun at July 11, 2005 10:41 AM
I think the blog entry is off-base. Let us review some Islamic law. Firstly, divorce and remarriage are perfectly allowed in Islamic law, though the prerogative of divorce is essentially reserved to the male. That is, it is very difficult for a woman to get a divorce, while for a man, he simply has to pronounce the divorce formula three times.
Secondly, should a Muslim man divorce his wife and then decide that it was a mistake, he wants to remarry her, he cannot! unless she is first married to someone else and divorced.
So, the shame does not come from one man's exposure to another man's fluids.
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Comment by: Arun at July 11, 2005 11:28 AM
Secondly, the issue in the Imrana case in India, unlike the Muktaran Mai case, is not centered on shame.
The following links may help you dig down to the root of the controversy:
Finally, using Salman Rushdie as a useful source of information about the subcontinent is misinformed, and actually, IMO, downright stupid.
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Comment by: Arun at July 11, 2005 11:29 AM
There is a bug in this blog.
URLs:
http://www.milligazette.com/dailyupdate/2005/20050706b.htm
http://www.milligazette.com/dailyupdate/2005/20050706a.htm
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Comment by: Arun at July 11, 2005 11:59 AM
Sorry, the previous post did not take the URLs, here they are:
URLs:
http://www.milligazette.com/dailyupdate/2005/20050706b.htm
http://www.milligazette.com/dailyupdate/2005/20050706a.htm
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Comment by: Morgaine Swann at July 11, 2005 07:20 PM
OK, here's where you're making your mistake - you think it's going to make sense. It doesn't and it won't. The whole reason faith is hammered into people is so that they will accept illogical restrictions.
It reflects on the husband because his property has been ruined. Think of it as someone shitting in his car - like that. Even if you clean it up, you'll never forget it happened. And believe me, that analogy disgusts me as much as anyone else who reads it.
There's nothing logical about the monotheist fear of sexuality. It is expedient, that's all. If you are happy sexually, you are not easily controlled. You can't work yourself into a hateful religious frenzy if you've just had an orgasm.
Repression and fascism/autocracy go hand in hand. Fear of the body, fear of nature, assuring the line of patrilineal succession, hatred of women, control of women's sexuality - none of it is logical or healthy, but it is very, very profitable if you're male.
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Comment by: Arun at July 12, 2005 08:38 AM
"If you are happy sexually, you are not easily controlled. You can't work yourself into a hateful religious frenzy if you've just had an orgasm."
- This is not borne out by the evidence. Firstly, Islam gives full reign to male sexuality. A man is permitted his up-to-four wives. He can divorce anytime by simply thrice-pronouncing the divorce formula; and he does not owe his divorced wife alimony. A man is also permitted "all those possessed by the right hand" which is a Quranic euphemism for slaves and prisoners of war. The paradise described in the Quran is a male sexual fantasy land.
It is under such a dispensation that Muslim warriors conquered a huge swath of the ancient world, from Spain to the Indus in about a century after the Prophet's death.
"There's nothing logical about the monotheist fear of sexuality." - nothing logical today. In the days when monotheism grew up, I think there was no effective contraception or safe abortion, the infant mortality rate may have been as high as 30% and a similar high death rate met birthing women. There were deeper consequences to sex then than now, perhaps. I think the net result is that not just monotheism but all traditional societies regulate sexuality.
Anyway, I'm sure indignation goes well with morning latte'.
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Comment by: lorraine at July 12, 2005 12:56 PM
In your comments, you say that men are given free rein sexually by Islam. Where is the space for female desire? It doesn't seem to be in there anywhere. Are women not supposed to enjoy sex?
As to birth control, abortion, and maternal mortality. Yes. Those rates were traditionally very high, which is why restrictions on birth control and abortion make no sense--abortion lowers maternal mortality rates. And, the "knowledge" about how to prevent pregnancy has been around for thousands of years. It's the dissemination of the knowledge that has always been at issue. If simply protecting women from dying in childbirth was the issue, it would be a religious sacrament to provide women with that knowledge. Instead, the restrictions seem to be on sexuality itself. Why?
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Comment by: Amanda Marcotte at July 12, 2005 04:24 PM
I think men feel shame when other men rape because of the guilt of reaping the benefits of male dominance.
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Comment by: lorraine at July 13, 2005 07:54 AM
Amanda,
It's a provocative point. How does it benefit all men if women are afraid of some men?
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Comment by: Morgaine Swann at July 14, 2005 04:44 AM
Arun - most suicide bombers are single men. It is a statistical reality that the more repressed a culture is, the more violent it is. Sexual freedom is the surest way to reduce violence.
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Comment by: aqualung at July 10, 2005 10:32 AM