“I tell my stories louder all the time,” Dorothy Allison, sexual assault survivor, feminist author, and storyteller writes, “Mean and ugly stories; funny, almost bitter stories; passionate, desperate stories—all of them have to be told in order not to tell the one the world wants” (Allison 451).
Anjeli Doty
WRIT 376-001
Kirk Branch
18 February 2016
On Being Heard: The Movement of Sexual Assault Survivors
Introduction
In the United States, one in five women will be raped in her lifetime. Half of those assaults are perpetrated by a close friend or family member, and 80% know their perpetrators. Less than one-third of survivors report their assault, making rape the highest underreported crime. According to research, that equals over 200,000 incidents of sexual assault yearly that never see justice (National Sexual Violence Research Center, n.p.). Although the 1970s brought a surge of crime victim movements garnering national attention and legislative change, from the founding of RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) to the 1984 Victims of Crime Act, arguably, the stronger movement combating rape culture and the effects of sexual assault is the growing group of individual survivors joining together and publicly speaking out.
The topic of sexual assault and recovery presents an enormous field of study. For the purposes of this project I intend to discuss how survivors of sexual assault are emerging as a counterpublic, and empowering their mobility and identity by speaking against traditional beliefs and preconceptions of dominant discourse. As a historically silenced group, I will consider what social and discursive elements act to support and constrain their emergence, and question how building a survivor public enables abilities, support, and rights that individual survivors may not access as readily. Finally, I will conclude by analyzing how public discourse which counters negative representations and understandings of sexual assault is crucial for enabling survivors to form affirmative identities.
Defining Terms
To begin, a few definitions. In Rhetoric in Civic Life, Palczewski et. al write, “...a public is formed by people coming together to discuss common concerns, including concerns about who they are and what they should do, and as a result constructing social reality together” (236). They put forth a relatively unproblematic definition, but we cannot assume the phrase “common concerns” goes uncontended. How society determines what concerns are common public interest decides which topics merit national attention, and which are reserved for support groups and gossip circles. When the “common concerns” are debated, society experiences the emergence of counterpublics. Nancy Fraser defines, in Rethinking the Public Sphere, counterpublics as “parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs” (67). Counterdiscourse not only re-presents and re-prioritizes specific issues, but in doing so, enables different forms of action and identity for individuals affected by those issues. Finally, Palczewski et. al define “The Public Screen” as “the constant circulation of symbolic action enabled by the relatively new media technologies of television, computers, photography, film, Internet, and smartphones that is ‘characteristic of contemporary communication’” (261). The public screen emphasizes and deemphasizes, creates public conceptions and representations, and operates in a variety of ways to constrain and empower different modes of communication and behavior. Here we will begin our discussion of the survivor public, by considering in what arenas are survivors circulating discourse, and how their modes of communication work to challenge preconceptions and enable changing public representations.
The Public Screen: Legal vs. Survivor-Driven Forums
Traditionally, sexual assault survivors are represented by criminal justice attorneys. The process of public communication for survivors includes answering questions in front of juries, often with their perpetrator present, and attempting to convince the audience of their attacker’s guilt. Therefore, the Criminal Justice System with its “innocent before proven guilty” protocol puts survivors in an incredibly difficult situation where, in an intense post-traumatic time, their validity is inherently questioned, and survivors are responsible for giving convincing enough testimonies to convict their offender. Today, scientific advances such as DNA evidence alleviate the burden of proof from resting solely on the survivor, but traditional courtrooms as public discursive spheres still disadvantage sexual assault survivors. A major way this constraint occurs is through the dominant discourse definition of evidence. Jurgen Habermaus wrote, “public opinion can by definition only come into existence when a reasoning public is presupposed” (50). The reasoning public, by nature, assumes “rational” discourse as the most valid. That is, discourse that follows logical progressions, avoids overt displays of emotion, and maintains a sense of distance from the topic in order to enable an “objective” perspective. Last year in commemoration of sexual awareness month The Huffington Post published a video interviewing sexual assault survivors. Speaking on their experiences, numerous interviewees admitted that their memory was fragmented and spotty, some explained their minds blocked out much of the incident in order to keep functioning (The Huffington Post, n.p.). Post-trauma, survivors of sexual assault experience a variety of emotions, from fear to anger to memory loss, all which contribute to a decreased presentation of ethos and credibility. Further, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice estimate that from all reported sexual assaults (which again, equals less than one-third) only six percent lead to felony convictions or incarceration (“Reporting Rates” n.p). An article on sexual assault conviction in The Guardian writes, “...rape is unique because in no other crimes were victims subject to such scrutiny in court or was the defendant so likely to claim the victim had consented to the attack. Between half and two-thirds of all cases are dropped before they come to court” (Travis n.p.). Another article in BBC News wrote, “Public perception is affected by the way rape is treated by the justice system. You see it in the press, you hear it from other people. One third of people think that [a woman is partly to blame for rape if she is flirtatious, and a quarter if she is drunk or wears revealing clothing] and that includes the judges…” (“Police Disbelieve Women” n.p.) Palczewski et. al note that a characteristic feature of counterpublics is to “...expand discursive space…[to] develop alternative norms for public argument and what counts as evidence” (243). In order to be heard, the survivor public needed to expand their sphere of discourse beyond the court of law, which indirectly excluded them, and also change what counted as credible evidence. And they did so, by creating non-state organizations and public screens which made space for personal narratives to emerge as alternative forms of evidence.
Alternative Discursive Arenas
Project Unbreakable is one such public sphere. This Tumblr site sources user submissions for its content; the “text” is pictures of survivors holding pieces of paper that tell everything from the story of their assault, to quotes their attacker, friends, or the police said, to how they treated themselves post-assault. Because of the repost-ability of Tumblr, Project Unbreakable constantly circulates counterdiscourse as more submissions come in, and more viewers share the stories. The site does not question credibility or validity; rather, it provides a forum for survivors to communicate in a variety of discursive forms. Some of the submitters include their faces in the photos, but many hide behind the paper or off-screen, reflecting the continuing sense of shame and fear which surrounds sexual assault. Although Project Unbreakable does not work legislatively to change law, it creates a counterpublic where survivors support and believe each other, and encourages the two-thirds who never reported to speak out, even if anonymously. This type of organization, although it could be termed an enclave public, generates larger public notice and attention, which can function to support oscillating public support and initiative to change policy to better protect survivors and serve justice. A similar movement was the widely-publicized Twitter #whyistayed campaign. After the Ray Rice incident where security footage recorded the 200+ pound football player punching his then-fiancee in an elevator who proceeded to marry him, a landslide of victim blaming around abuse survivors began, where the public criticized and questioned her choice to stay. The #whyistayed movement was started by writer Beverly Gooden, to encourage survivors to share their reasons for staying with abusers. The tweets included everything from, “He told me ‘no one will ever love you like I do’” to “Everything was in his name. I had no credit rating. Nobody’d rent to me” to “Because I thought if I loved him enough he would stop being abusive” (“14 Tweets” n.p.) Although the campaign focused more on domestic violence than sexual assault, the movement showed how a changing public sphere of communication enabled a changed public conception. Strangers gathered together to create counterdiscourse which united them through a common cause while also highlighted the plethora of complicated and heartbreaking reasons for staying with abusers.
Recasting: Language Shifts
Aside from creating counterdiscourse arenas, the language around sexual assault needed to change for survivors to emerge as a counterpublic. One of the largest discursive shifts was the change from victim to survivor. This labeling shift redistributed power. When someone is a victim, the perpetrator retains their dominance and power. Victims are weak, helpless, unable to save themselves or protect themselves in the future. Survivors are strong; they are resilient and larger than what attacked them. Survivors have agency and power to fight back. Fraser discusses the importance of recasting terms, writing “...feminist women have invented new terms for describing social reality, including "sexism," "the double shift," sexual harassment," and "marital, date, and acquaintance rape." Armed with such language, we have recast our needs and identities…” (67) Changing from victim to survivor reframes situations to advantage the survivor and not the perpetrator, and was a crucial rhetorical shift both for discourse and identity. Further, contemporary literature and research focus on sexual assault as an issue of power and control, rather than sexual drive. This reframing further enables survivors to gather together and speak out because it invalidates victim blaming patterns which accuse survivors of dressing sexually, acting promiscuously or flirtatiously, etc. When an issue is recast as revolving around power and control, how an individual dressed becomes less consequential. That said, victim blaming is still a detrimental and widespread response. However, changing the issue from sexual to power/control related makes the survivor counterpublic more inclusive to male survivors, who are often laughed at or not believed. One Project Unbreakable photo reads, “Real men can’t be raped by women” as quoted from the Spokane, WA Police Department.
Many individuals cannot imagine a woman’s sex drive would be strong enough to rape a man, but when the act is recast as operating from power and control dynamics, females are less easily excluded as perpetrators.
Legal definitions also directly exclude certain individuals. In 2012, the DOJ changed their definition of rape from “The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will” to “Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim” (FBI, n.p.). The new definition discursively included men as potential rape survivors, as well as included sexual assaults with objects, and assault towards incapacitated individuals. As the language changed, the FBI changed their manner of crime reporting, and survivors who were previously excluded on legal terms could now speak out, given their legal backing. Further, The Washington Post writes, “College sexual assault, a long-hidden problem, emerged as an issue in the 1980s along with the term “date rape,” describing a certain kind of sexual crime involving friends or acquaintances. The date rapist — someone who ignored a “no” or never sought a “yes” — contrasted with the stereotype of the rapist as a predator lurking in the dark” (Anderson & Clement n.p.) As terms are recast, the public imagination changes to include previously marginalized individuals, and change the perception of sexual assault.
The Private to Public Switch
Nancy Fraser writes, “...counterpublics stand in a contestatory relationship to dominant publics. One important object of such interpublic contestation is the appropriate boundaries of the public sphere. Here the central questions are, what counts as a public matter and what, in contrast, is private?” (70). The National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) writes on sexual assault, in a history of crime victim movements, “...[the] issue was one that society didn’t want to think about, didn’t want to hear about. The individual survivors felt incredible isolation” (“History of the Crime Victims’ Movement” n.p.). When people are kept in isolation, there is no possibility of forming a public or counterpublic. Thus, a crucial component to enabling the survivor counterpublic and bringing survivor stories to public attention was changing sexual assault from a private concern to a public one. Research advances partly enabled this; one in five women is hardly a “private” matter anymore. The progression of the feminist movement also helped to reframe sexual assault as a public issue, as similar previously privatized issues such as motherhood expectations and the glass ceiling were made public. In this way, the emerging counterpublic of sexual assault survivors was able to ride the wave of a larger counterpublic of feminism. Counterpublics can thus "nest" within each other, cooperate and be in agreement, although working towards different agendas and issues. The circulation of personal narratives also played an active role in publicizing sexual assault. As survivors shared their stories in safe discursive spaces (like Project Unbreakable or a number of other web-based forums), they changed public conceptions of who can perpetrate, and who can be assaulted. Asen writes, “...collective imagination constitutes a constellation of shared assumptions, values, perceptions, and beliefs for matters identified explicitly as topics of discussion” (351); he further concludes that counterpublics cannot ignore negative representations if they want to advance positive ones (361). The Washington Post published a piece on sexual assault survivor stories, which advanced numerous stories, many of which are “non-typical” to the public imagination of rape. These included stories of women forcibly coming on to men, situations that started out consensual but ended non-consensual, complicated situations where both individuals were both intoxicated (one wrote, “it’s like we’re both raping each other”), one woman said “I’m a good muslim girl...never took a sip of alcohol and certainly didn’t know about men,” another woman reported she was sexually active with her boyfriend then decided she wanted to stop and wait for marriage but he pushed sex even after she said “no,” and many other narratives which reframe sexual assault from an act of lust, intoxication, or recklessness into one that any individual, regardless of dress or gender or religion, can experience (Anderson et. al n.p.). Further, dominant political public discourse around sexual assault is often sterile or unemotional, striving again for that highly-valued objectivity. Circulating personal narratives invalidates these sterile renditions of sexual assault, and reminds the public that this issue is both highly personal and relevant publically. Fraser writes, “ the terms "private" and "public"...are not simply straightforward designations of societal spheres; they are cultural classifications and rhetorical labels. In political discourse, they are powerful terms that are frequently deployed to delegitimate some interests, views, and topics, and to valorize others” (73). Making sexual assault a public issue both increased its importance and created spaces for survivors to be heard outside enclave support groups.
Creating Affirmative Identities
Identity is the final topic I will discuss. Warner writes, “...the discourse of a public is a linguistic form from which the social conditions of its own possibility are in large part derived” (75). That is, how one speaks enables what they can do. Participation in publics makes one feel decisive about their personality (Warner 62), and the inclusive discourse enables one to form an affirmative identity that reinforces their experiences as valid and deserving attention (Asen 346). As opposed to shame culture, the survivor counterpublic enables survivors to create self-representations that change from a victim status to a powerful individual status, with the ability to create social change. Further, Asen writes how traditionally marginalized people do not want access to the public conversation only within their “disabled” identity (260). In the Huffington Post video, the interviewer queried survivors about their reasons for speaking out. Sue Tilghman, who was assaulted as a child, said sharing her story gave her younger self a voice; “I felt whole,” she said (The Huffington Post n.p.). In saying that, she claimed her entire self-- both the raped child and her adult woman-self into one holistic being. She refused to let herself be entirely defined by the act, but also refused to let it be washed over or forgotten. Further, the Huffington Post video showed survivors dressed formally, articulating their experiences, both which counter dominant discourse of survivors as forever tainted or incapacitated. Many of The Washington Post narratives include similar stories; individuals who recognize their assault as worthy of public attention and communication but not composing the entirety of their identity. Some individuals also discussed how their survivor-status enabled them to create meaningful social change; that is, the identity which the public imagination often slates as disabled or broken was reframed as powerful and capable. In sharing stories, survivors have the opportunity to create cohesive identities that allow cathartic release, correct the public perception of sexual assault, and create an opportunity for affirmative identity construction where others believe and support them.
In Conclusion
Although much remains to be done around changing the discourse of rape culture, public perceptions, and legal policy, the counterpublic of survivors is steadily growing and creating change. Future work includes addressing the public communication practice of treating all men as potential perpetrators (with a high focus of masculine sex drive, competition over women, etc.) and all women as potential victims (warning women to dress modestly, marketing a variety of “must-have” products such as rape whistles, and creating fear culture), which sends the message “women should avoid getting raped” rather than “men should not rape women.” The prior message is reactive communication where the latter is proactive communication. To appreciate this issue, watch the humorous and dryly cynical "How to Not Get Raped." Greater change also needs to occur on the state-level. NCJRS wrote, “...the largest cause of prosecution failure was the loss of once-cooperative witnesses who simply stopped helping a justice system that was indifferent to their most basic needs” (“History of the Crime Victims’ Movement” n.p.). The legal response to sexual assault needs to change to better reflect how survivors experience post-trauma, to recognize that assault is not always violent or man-to-woman, and to believe survivors’ stories on default. The emerging counterpublic of sexual assault survivors, enabled through feminist discourse, changing definitions, and courageous personal narrative has the strength to create meaningful change for personal identities and self-conceptions, as well as for the public imagination and legal system at large.
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