"Full-On Violence". Paula Bennett and a culture of victim blaming

I don't want to have to read Paula Bennett's thoughts on domestic violence again. I don't want to have her words in my head as she denies the existence of rape culture, lays the issues of child poverty back on the parents and backs up the men in her Government who so badly let down Tania Billingsley over her sexual assualt (let's stop calling it the "diplomatic case" or somesuch nonsense, can we? It's not about diplomacy, it's about attempted rape). But I'm reading the transcript of her interview with The Nation where she says all these things and trying hard to understand how a woman with so much power to change things for the better can, in one short interview, sweep so many of our social ills off the table as casually as a toddler overturns their plate.

A real woman of the people.

Her comments on poverty in this country are outrageous, her refusal to discuss Billingsley's complaints against her government revealing if not surprising, and I could write volumes on both, but it is necessary to focus.

Yeah but we can only report if it’s happening.
Yeah but some of them are not actually full on violence that I think it makes it sound like. At the moment we can see incidences where there is some.

Full on violence. Full. On. Violence.

I am reminded, horribly, of the traditional damaging adage that sticks and stones (and fists and belts and feet) can break your bones (and blacken your eyes and throttle you and bruise your organs) but names can never hurt you (in the ways that look shocking on poster campaigns). A view espoused by a representative of the legal system, no less. (see my previous article about NetHui)

This is the culture that we live in.

NZ stats: source

It ties in with rape culture, with misogyny, with our inability to address the need for our mental health to be as protected as our physical health.

The discussion of rape culture has opened a rich vein of horror and denial from a lot of men who argue that they, nor their friends, ever raped anyone. They'd never make a rape joke. That to point out rape culture is a hysterical overreaction by "Feminazis" who hate men. We're making it up.

This is the argument that creates "full-on violence". If it's not within a narrow definition written by those unaffected then it isn't legitimate. It's not a real problem.

These men who ask me why I hate 50% of New Zealand's population miss the point. It's not about suggesting that all men are rapists. That all domestic violence is the beatings, the rapes, the thrown punches. That the only violence is physical violation.

It negates the violation of our minds, of our selves.

Rape culture is not that all men are rapists. It's the culture that makes the act of rape the fault of the victim. Nobody ever, ever, asks to be raped. No woman ever looked at her wardrobe on a Saturday night and wondered which skirt would create the greatest invitation to strangers to violate her. No man ever went on a date and had a few drinks in the hope his potential partner would sexually assault him without his consent. Ever.

Every time you add a caveat of "What did the victim do..." you are promoting a culture that condones rape as an understandable response to the victim. Every time you critique a victim's dress, actions, self, you are taking the responsibility for a violent action away from the perpetrator.

You are, consciously or not, saying that the rape was understandable. By blaming the victim you are excusing the perpetrator.

So it is with "Full-on violence". We create a culture where the realities of those assaulted, living in fear, looking for a way out, are negated.

But those statistics that have been talked about this week, 1 in 3 women suffering from intimate partner violence and between 2000 and 2010 the highest levels of intimate partner violence in the OECD in New Zealand. Doesn’t that suggest that there is a degree of apathy towards the problem?
No I don’t think so. I think what we do in New Zealand is we report more than any other country. So actually some of those that are being reported are incidences that haven’t even led to violence.

Partner violence is only legitimate if it is physical violence. The emotional control some partners exert over their spouses isn't "real". The threats of violence, the curled fingers, the barked orders, they're not "full-on" enough for those who've never experienced them to really appreciate. And they don't want to, for the most part. Because, like rape culture, it's too omnipresent, too close. To speak out against it is to make us shuffle in our seats, fumble at our phones, look anywhere except at the people we respect and love in our lives to the aspects we might not like. To look at ourselves.

No wonder it's the victim's fault. They're easier to blame. Easier to silence.

Which leads to my final point. About the value of our mental and emotional health. That a beating is more legitimate, more full-on, than a lifetime of death by a thousand paper-cut words. Our emotional and mental wellbeing is not important because it can't be seen, and we are nothing if not what we are to look at. Live in fear of assault? Toughen up. Spend sleepless nights staring at dark ceilings next to someone who told you to eat outside because the sight of you nourishing yourself disgusts him? Come back to us when he hits you.

Until we peel back the veneer to see what violence in our culture actually is, that sticks and stones will break our bones, but the names and blame will suffocate us if we don't do it to ourselves first, then we will continue to live in a society of rape culture, where the only indefensible violence is "full-on" and where we will continue to be threatened and belittled when we overcome our fears to say otherwise.

I don't want to live in that culture. And neither should you.

Tantric Misogyny: or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the yoni

You know you’ve done some damage when you’re the person in the room who all eyes turn to when the speaker says “I’m probably going to get a lot of anger on Facebook for this”. Nah bro, facebook’s far too restrictive a medium for that.

The redoubtable @rabblearouser of Crevice Canyon, Filthy Queer and Filthy Gorgeousness fame alerted me to a seminar called “Expanding Women’s Sexuality”, hosted by the Australian “Tantric sex, relationship and orgasm coach” Andrew Barnes. The four hour (!) class promised such wonders as “Identifying blocks to orgasm”, “Understanding full body orgasm” and “Learning about the suppression of female sexuality”. She was going, and was looking for a wingman. Four hours of being told about my body by some straight cis dude? Challenge accepted.

Now, despite appearances I have on occasion had a high tolerance for esoteric thinking. I’ve been on yogic retreats, meditation courses and even went vegan for a month (well, two weeks). However, I’ve found that I can put up a certain amount of discussion about expanded thinking and higher consciousness only so far, before my “Show me the science!” klaxon starts going and I become That audience member. Yeah, THAT one. And so it proved.

Actual t-shirt that I own.

The seminar was held in a place that had more incense than chairs (for $40 they could have at least given us some seats, but then that’s just me), and had an audience that was exactly who you’d expect at something like this. The first 45 minutes or so were, I grant you, quite interesting. Anatomy’s an interesting subject and learning about the history of the G-Spot, the true size and location of the clitoris and the role of the female prostate was definitely note-worthy (though I found myself sneakily fact-checking a few times)

G spot: doing it wrong

The first signs that the cosmic wavelengths weren’t fully aligned came right before the intermission, when Barnes ascertained that women can’t/won’t have orgasms unless they’re willing to do so. This struck me as problematic in the way that all statements about what women’s bodies can and can’t do that are made by men tend to be. One hesitates to chuck around phrases like “rape apology” in such instances but it’s certainly on the spectrum that includes “legitimate rape” and women being magically able to prevent pregnancy. Possibly through prayer.

After a frankly depressing half-time spread of a couple of squares of chocolate and some pineapple (guys, for $40 a ticket and FOUR HOURS I would like a chair, decent snacks and a hot drink minimum), we got stuck into emotional and energetic stuff. Clearly I am not this type of thing’s target audience as I was frequently lost amongst mentions of higher vibrational frequencies (nothing to do with Hitachi Magic Wands oddly enough) and my cervix harbouring not only my past painful memories but those of my parents and grandparents as well (the actual fuck, people). My SCIENCE, BITCHES radar was getting ever more urgent (“cancer is caused by emotional blockage! I can make women orgasm with my brain!”) when finally the alarms got tripped and it all went to hell.

You ready for this?

“WOMEN NEED TO LOSE THEIR THOUSAND YEAR OLD RESENTMENT OF MEN TO BE HAPPY SEXUALLY”

What the fuck.

Like, what just happened.

I’d already got the hard looks when I asked for a citation on the idea that living in an adopted family that has a history of a genetic condition will cause that to manifest in the adopted child, but this was The Moment. It not so much ripped through my (not-quite) willing suspension of disbelief as shredded it, set it on fire and flung it over a fucking rainbow.

I was polite. I pointed out that yes, things were better for women now (I appreciate the generalisation here but this was not the audience) but, as a cisgendered male, he was talking from a position of male privilege and was in no way qualified to tell women about their experiences of sexism or describe it to us. I was respectful. I didn’t call him names. His response?

“What’s a cis…….”

Oh my. A sex expert who had to have the term cisgendered explained to him. Who had clearly never butted up against the term “privilege” in his career. However, it was the audience comments that really made me despair for humanity. One woman said that she didn’t know what I was talking about, that she’d never experienced any sexism in her everyday and didn’t see any examples of sexism or misogyny (not that she used that word) in the media. The old man (also a tantric massage dudebro) who suggested some esoteric rubbish that seemed to boil down to sexism being a construct of people too shallow to rise above it and not let it affect them.

Victim blaming just got taken to a whole new plane (literally). I’ve got into some vicious bunfights with misogynists before but this was breathtaking. Then came the suggestion that women in violent relationships, sufferers of rape, domestic violence and the other evils that stalk our world are the result of women not being allowed to wank more as kids and that if we were all vibrating at a higher frequency then these things could be avoided. Quite a few people in the audience seemed uncomfortable with this (no, really?), prompting his little Facebook nod to the women with the enthusiastic hair. That it was all done with that mansplaining, there-thereness of someone who truly seemed to believe that the heavy-lifting towards a more equal society just needed us all to be a little more masturbatory made me want to throw a brick through the window of every bro who asked me to suck his dick in public, at every shop selling me my own body packaged up and distorted to the point of unrecognisability, at the face of every man who said “who me” when a young girl’s trembling finger pointed them out of a line up. I was shaking.
                              
Then it was over, bar a few more plugs for his book about genitals (that compares them to flowers. Unless you are Georgia O’Keefe you’re not allowed to do that. Ever.), a massively off-putting discussion about his tantric sex workshop this weekend (which reminds me, I never did ask if performing “yoni massage” for money made him a sex worker and if so, how did that square with Australian law?) and an attempt to garner email addresses for future seminar alerts.

I listened to Black Sabbath all the way home and narrowly avoided rage-buying cigarettes.

You can dress up your misogyny in as many colourful pashminas and yonis and reverberations as you like. It’s still misogyny, and it’s rotten.

Defining Violence

Meet James Robertson Parker.

James was a deputy principal at Pamapuria School near the Northland town of Kaitaia. He ran the kapa haka group.  He'd have been a role model, a hard-working member of the education machine.

He's also a convicted paedophile, pleading guilty on 74 charges of indecent assault, 25 of which he pled guilty to today. The charges included indecent assault, performing indecent acts and sexual violation on young boys (source).

During the trial details about how he had got away with it for so long seeped out, including his close relationship with the principal, how sharing a bed with the boys in his care was passed off as "sleeping marae style", and his having an adult girlfriend which was seen as putting him above suspicion. In his fifteen year tenure at the school concerns were raised several times, but allegations were retracted or never taken further than a "strongly-worded letter" sent by Kaiaia police to Parker telling him to stop the sleepovers (source)

If you're a sane, decent human being you'll be reading the details of this case with the bile rising at the back of the throat and a feeling of horrified familiarity. The position of trust. The close links with the families of the abused. The casual attitude of the police. One would assume that, now his brutality and deception had been uncovered, a long jail term would be a certainty, where he could sit and consider all the lives he had destroyed at his leisure. Surely no-one, not even a defence lawyer, could argue otherwise?

I was sitting getting some work done and watching the news when I heard one of the most despicable utterances ever said on TV (and the bar is pretty damn high, let's face it). Parker's counsel, Alex Witten-Hannah, stood on the court steps after the verdict today and made this pronouncement:

"It has to be borne in mind that the charges James Parker has pleaded guilty to are not charges that involve violence or brutality. He is not a Beast of Blenheim. He breached the trust of the boys, but it didn't involve intimidation or violence," (source)

Uh, what? Sexual violation is not brutal or violent? The legal definition of sexual violation in New Zealand is:

“Person A has unlawful sexual connection with person B if person A has sexual connection with person B –(a) without person B’s consent to the connection ;and(b) without believing on reasonable grounds that person B consents to the connection.”This means that unlawful sexual connection covers any sexual contact that happens without consent: ie. Male to female, female to male, male to male, and female to female.  Sexual connection includes anal and genital penetration of one person by any part of another or by an object held or manipulated.  It also includes oral sex, which is the touching of the lips to the genitals (either giving or receiving). (source)

I'm not reading anything in that definition that is neither brutal nor violent. Penetration without consent is never, will never, be anything other than a brutal, violent act. Breaching the trust between an adult and a child in there care is an act of deep emotional brutality, let alone the violence of the act itself. 

One expects very little in terms of empathy from defence lawyers, but this deeply disturbed me. Could he truly, really believe this? And if he does, do others? Just how widespread is this notion that sexual violence is somehow "less bad" than causing non-sexual physical harm? 

Judge Greg Davis obviously doesn't agree, having passed sentencing from the District to the High Court as they have the ability to pass a sentence of preventative detention, which could keep him locked up indefinitely. Whilst I am not of the Sensible Sentencing Trust in their "Jail for everyone!" campaign, but for someone who had orchestrated a horrendous, prolonged campaign of violence and brutality against vulnerable young people whose stories were unheard because he was seen as beyond reproach, it seems only right that he spends a long time away from society. It won't make everything better, but some closure if better than no closure at all. 

I'm optimistic that the High Court will do the right thing on May 2nd and locks him up, with one would hope the chance at counselling and the opportunity to understand just how deeply his crimes will have affected his victims and their families. However, that a member of the bar is willing to espouse this view of sexual assault leaves me with less to feel optimistic about. I just hope he's the only one.