Exposing the victim

The following is regularly happening: some online publication publishes in the “Kurisi” section the news of the rape of a man with a woman, and my acquaintances of men publish this on their social networks, accompanying malicious comments. “Here the man was lucky”, “What kind of babies are there?”, “How is it technically possible, guys?”

Well, everything is like that. And I am no longer even surprised at the women who accuse other women who survived rape of “easy” behavior and what is “to blame”. Or the cross-gender victimization of the victims, when adults, for example, reproach the raped girl for “bringing the guy to the pen, you need to behave more modestly”. I can only be surprised that adults, educated, often even advanced and free will, people can live in such a magical, as if an invented world in which violence is absolutely impossible.

However, for some reason, almost none of them will ever react to the news of the killings. Although, it would seem, someone also brought every household killer to the pen; Each sacrifice of the maniac was probably not careful enough, too responsive or provoked him with something.

No, they can, of course, but somehow transfer the guilt of the killer to the murdered about this is usually not accepted. Probably because every person from news about someone else's death has his own fear of death rises lumpy in his throat. But there is practically no fear of violence at anyone - except those who managed to survive violence. This is unusually strange, given how fragile a person has a body, how easy it is for a person to hurt a person.

If someone in the subway, on the street, in any public place to suddenly grab the hand suddenly, I’m sure that almost everyone will react as a person should react to violent actions. So why is it so easy to give a complete, unconditional denial that in sexual contact, violence can also be? And moreover: it happens, all the time.

I already wrote about how the inability of a person to put himself in a strange place and take into account all the nuances of someone else's existence prevents the emergence of independent empathy. Here is the same situation, but more complicated. Violence for us is so absolutely and ordinary - in domestic manifestations, in raising children, in the assertion of an authoritarian position and, of course, in bed - that we cannot look at it from the side and realize it. And it is also impossible to foresee the consequences of this violence on others.

Let me explain the examples of the most general ones, in appearance nothing in common with sexual violence. Say, bodily punishments as part of the educational process - existing, but ideally criminally punishable in Western countries - in Russia remain absolutely alive and often receiving an institution from above. The logical chain “my father beat me, but I grew up with a normal kid” creates a vicious circle of violence in family generations. Together with fists from father to son, deep psychological trauma is also transmitted. But no one sees her, since the son does not look back, but simply repeats the developed templates. The same with the penitentiary system: the process of initiation in the prison certainly includes physical violence. And the victims, without hesitation, become executioners when their turn comes. The correctional institution has the same goal as the family: to educate a person, only in this case is a new one. A circle of punishment is closed, the result of which are recidivists, and not corrected people. Because from violence, souls break as simply as fate.

But the cycle is a cycle, and the army in Russia in this aspect is almost no different from the prison. No one is surprised, the meat grinder works. Thus, when violence becomes a routine, what is called “alienation” in philosophy: a person and the process and the result of its activity are divided, and exist absolutely parallel, alien to each other. The alienation, for example, explains such phenomena as the massive participation of ordinary citizens in the Holocaust and the relationship of the worker and the employer under capitalism.

An ordinary employee of the concentration camp - for example, a cook in the kitchen - did not see the relationship between his work and the death of hundreds of people in the gas chamber in the same camp before his eyes. The conveyor worker in China, collecting iPhones at 16 hours a day, is engaged in physically heavy and spiritually exhausting work and does not belong to itself, and its meager salary is unlikely to be enough for a couple of sixes in the collected smartphone. But the owner of the iPhone does not see in his brand new gadget of the labor of a conveyor worker. However, this does not mean that the cooks in the concentration camp can be fully justified. And this does not mean that iPhones arise from clean air.

The same thing with violence: if a person who caused violence does not see how it crippled physically, morally or somehow his victim, if he simply does not see that his actions were unpleasant-this does not mean that there was no violence. In Russia, sex speaks either bashfully covered with a pen, or transferring the topic into a rude joke. And how to discern violence in what seems to be frivolous? How to realize that rape can occur not only in a terrible situation that is loved in the cinema - where an innocent, beautiful girl is abducted by a whole criminal group in a huge black jeep, they are taken to an empty apartment and raped in turn, clinging to the battery? Of course, this happens in life, but when we consider rape only where special effects, it becomes too easy not to see it in the most frequent, simple, everyday manifestation.

Few people have huge black jeeps, empty apartments and criminal groups. But everyone has the genitals and cruel will, which is so easy to break through. And when she breaks through, not only beautiful, slender beauties with an impeccable reputation become victims, but the first (or first) who falls by the arm. Therefore, rape happens everywhere: on the street, in locker rooms, at parties, in shops, at the workplace, visiting and even in a married bed. Light women and fat women, pretty students and pensioners for 80, become victims, men are becoming victims and, of course, teenagers, children, even babies.

The victims of rape sometimes come to where they will be raped, sometimes they are well acquainted with those who rape them, even consist with them in a family relationship or marriage. And they are also drunk in the insole, immaturely dressed and unconscious. This is all not important at all. Why will no one justify the person who approached the sleeping man and killed him?

The only thing is important - any sexual action that has not been received and clearly not voiced by a person’s consent in a sober mind and memory is violence. Cross out the phrase “sexual nature” - and is unlikely to want to argue. Sex is absolutely the same set of physical actions between people as, for example, a fight. But there is a huge difference between situations when two sober people are jokingly boxing, and when one drunk the other, even more drunk, kicks his feet for the fact that he "impolitely called him impolite." The first is stupidity, of course, but by good will. The second is waiting for criminal liability, because this is causing harm to health. And yes, it may end in murder.

So it is with sexual. It is only normal what happens between adults by mutual agreement. If there is no consent, then this is violence. Even if the rapist is a legal spouse. Even if the rape is sleeping. Yes, maybe he will wake up and will not mind. But then this is already mutual sympathy, and it will not go anywhere if you wait a little, wake up and treat her partner with respect.

Recently, I heard in the poem an amazingly accurate metaphor about the raped girl: “A cemetery grew inside her.” I don’t know how to describe what happens after violence as possible. And after all, its consequences are not only scars, abrasions, internal bleeding and all that can be issued in the protocol of the medical examination. But even if you limit yourself to physical: violence is always half a step before death. Incorrect, imperfect, suspended murder. And I think, maybe, if we say so, it will become clearer and worse? Maybe then there will be no more attacks on the victim?

Katya Kazbek-feminist, LGBT research, publicist, citizen of the world

The author of the text did not receive a reward for him. The author’s opinion may not correspond to the point of view of the editorial office