Hillary Clinton – An unreliable victim of rape culture

A few weeks ago, I re-posted an article about how this year’s American Presidential election was a referendum on male entitlement. Well we now have our answer. While Clinton ‘won’ the popular vote, the low turnout of democratic voters, the overall vote in the mid-west and industrial swing states, and the willingness of a substantial number of women (42% of women voters according to the Pew Research Center Facttank) who voted for Trump indicates a significant plurality of American voters are comfortable enough with male entitlement to support a man who has historically and consistently imposed himself on women’s bodies without their consent. This raises the question of why a substantial portion of a society is willing to accept a rapist and serial sexual abuser in the highest office over a woman career politician.

Part of the explanation certainly is the prevalence of a rape culture in the United States. Wikipedia is quite clear in its definition of rape culture; “a setting in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes about gender and sexuality. …Behaviours commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, sexual objectification, trivializing rape, denial of widespread rape, refusing to acknowledge the harm caused by some forms of sexual violence, or some combination of these” (Wikipedia citing, Offman 2009, Flintoft, Nicoletti, Spencer-Thomas & Bollinger 2001, and Attenborough 2014). While the site does qualify the entry saying there is disagreement as to whether any society currently meets the criteria for a rape culture, it does appear that events in the U.S. do tick many of the behaviours listed.

For example, the pornographization of much of our mainstream popular media, including the celebration of the perfect female form in programs like America’s top model, speaks to the continued sexual objectification of women as a matter of course in and for our entertainment. Recently, in my household, we have taken to watching HBO’s WestWorld. Its narrative regarding sexual objectification is particularly interesting because two of the main characters are defined by their being AI/robot/android “hosts” whose explicit function is to provide sexual gratification to guests. For one, her function is to be the target of violent sexual predation by male guests. It is interesting because the major narrative (possible spoilers here) is one where the two female AI are developing “memories” and consciousness that allows them to understand their designed functions as being fundamentally abusive and the show’s plot line shows them attempting to respond to this realization.  It is intended as a storyline of empowerment, but it rests on a profound understanding that central to the culture of “entertainment” is the desire of men to rape and sexually use women’s bodies. There is explicit recognition of the prevalence of “rape culture’ in both the design of the WestWorld Park and the narrative the writers are exploring in the series.

To bring this back to the Presidential campaign, such objectification can clearly be seen in the President Elect’s comments ranking women out of 10. His defence against the accusations of sexual assault against him was to say, “look at her!? There is no way I would touch that!”

Further to this, is the victim blaming that emerged from the Trump campaign to counter the testimony of women who came forward with their narratives of abuse by Trump, characterizing them as delusional liars or a put-up job orchestrated by another desperate woman, Hillary Clinton. To top it off was the double-down where the juxtaposed hypocrisy of presenting the victims of Bill Clinton (not their actual narratives) ended up trivializing the testimony of these women as simple campaign spectacle. 

Which brings us back to Clinton as unreliable because she is a woman. As Rebecca Solnit writes, “not uncommonly, when a woman says something that impugns a man, particularly one at the heart of the status quo, especially if it has to do with sex, the response will question not just the facts of her assertion but her capacity to speak and her right to do so. Generations of women have been told they are delusional, confused, manipulative, malicious, conspiratorial, congenitally dishonest, often all at once.” Part of the difficulty of sexual assaults and violence, as we saw here in Canada with the Jian Ghomeshi case is often accusations come down to he said-she said. Part of the process of victim blaming in rape culture is that it places the burden of responsibility on the victim to not only protect themselves from the unwanted attention but also to present “objective” and unhysterical evidence of the depth of the violation. Such evidence is only acceptable if the women can show herself to be of obvious chaste and pure character. Outside of the Virgin Mary, all other women are “mendacious and murky-minded” (Solnit, 2014).

This is another way rape and sexual assault end up trivialized in a culture, because the expectation that the victim will not be believed results in few women willing to come forward with their narratives. While it is extremely hard to measure unreported incidents the US National Research Council found sexual assaults to be “grossly underreported.”

So we have Hillary Clinton, a career politician and woman. It is a double whammy. In a world where politicians are considered somewhat less truthful than used-car salespersons, lawyers and weather persons (meterologists?), her reliability and honesty takes a hit. Then you add in women as unreliable witnesses regarding their sexual relationships with men, it’s not surprising that slogans of “lying Hillary,” “crooked Hillary,” and “jail her” catch on with a large segment. Which is rather astounding when you check out Politifact’s score card for Clinton and Trump. 26% of Clinton’s statements ranged between mostly false 14%, false 10%, and pants on fire 2%. However, a whopping 70% of Trump’s statements ranged from mostly false 19%, through false 34% to pants on fire 17%. As a woman politician, there is no way her presentation and narrative would be taken and given value. Her very gender discredited anything she would and could say; she was by her very gender unreliable.

On the other side, Trump behaved within the confines of a culture that accepts the idea of women’s bodies as being readily available for men’s entertainment particularly when they can pay for the service, either at the time or later in Court when it’s combined with a strict nondisclosure agreement. This is rape culture writ large. As large as the outcome of the Brock Turner case. A case of rape (looking at the FBI definition of rape it did constitute this) that was trivialized and marginalized as a “campus date rape,” where a felony sexual assault verdict was given a six-month sentence, three months off for good behaviour, even though the prosecution asked for a sentence of 6 years, less than half the maximum. Like many American voters have now said about Trump, the judge was saying, “boys will be boys, girls should take better care of themselves behave appropriately, not get into trouble, and be silent.” If we need any illustration of a society defined by a pervasive and endemic rape culture, we need only look to the U.S. and its 45^th President.

BTW: RAINN: Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network has an online petition for the next President and Congress to make sexual violence a top priority. Rainn.org

References:

Frederick Attenborough. “Rape is rape/except when it’s not: The media recontextualization and violence against women,” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. 2(2), pp. 183-203, 2004.

Rebecca Flintoft, John Nicoletti, Sally Spencer-Thomas, Christopher M. Bollinger. Violence Goes to College: The Authoritative Guide to Prevention and Intervention, 2001.

National Research Council. Estimating the Incidence of Rape and Sexual Assault. 2013.

Sharna Offman. ‘The Sexualization of Childhood, 2009/

Pew Research Center. Behind Trump’s Victory: divisions by race, gender, education. November 9, 2016. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/#more-284858

Politifact. Hillary Clinton. http://www.politifact.com/personalities/hillary-clinton/

Politifact. Donald Trump. http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/

Rebecca Solnit. ‘Cassandra Among the Creeps.’ Men Explain Things to Me. 2014.