Reevaluating Rape

Last Monday, the women of “The View” gathered at their round table of rambling incoherence to discuss one Roman Polanski. (I use the term “discuss” loosely.) Whoopi Goldberg emerged from behind her rose-tinted sunglasses to make what she seemed to think was an important distinction: “I don’t believe it was rape-rape, and when we get all the information, someone will tell me in my ear.” No word yet on what’s been whispered to the star of “Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit” since, but perhaps I can offer something in the way of elucidating details. Roman Polanski lured a 13-year-old girl to a friend’s home under the guise of taking her picture, gave her champagne and part of a Quaalude pill, and proceeded to have oral, vaginal, and anal intercourse with her in spite of almost constant protest. Polanski lacked consent in a wide array of ways: The victim was underage, the victim was intoxicated, and the victim didn’t provide any.

But Whoopi Goldberg isn’t the only celebrity who has rushed to Polanski’s defense. Throngs of Hollywood types have expressed their support of the Oscar winner in the form of an online petition demanding that the director be released. (Polanski pled guilty to sex with a minor over three decades ago, then fled to France before receiving his sentence. He was recently arrested after traveling to Zurich, where a film festival was being held in his honor.) The absurdly long list of his supporters includes former crush of mine Gael García Bernal, former artist worthy of my respect Pedro Almodóvar, and former and current creepster Woody Allen. The petition dismissively referred to his crime as “une affaire de moeurs”: a matter of customs.

Before we get to the moral aspect of this affaire de moeurs, perhaps it’s worth it taking a little detour into legal history. As recently as 1982, in acquitting a 35-year-old Cambridge resident, Judge David Wild ruled, “If she [the victim] does not want it she only has to keep her legs shut and she would not get it without force and there would be marks of force being used...Women who say no, do not always mean no. It is not just a question of saying it, it is a question of how she says it, how she shows and makes it clear.” When Polanski’s sister-in-law Debra Tate appeared on the “Today” show last week, the crux of her argument echoed Wild’s. “There’s rape and then there’s rape,” she claimed. “It was determined that Roman did not forcibly have sex with this young woman.” While the legal definition of rape might today accommodate victims who verbally reject sexual acts, Wild’s words seem to ring true with a significant portion of the population. The rest of us find ourselves asking just how bruised and bloodied a woman has to be for society at large to perceive a crime as rape.

The traditionally feminist position refuses to make such differentiations on principle alone. When we discern among the various forms of sexual assault, the argument goes, we are making some kinds of rape more acceptable than others. But for victims of rape, such questions are all too familiar. Did I have too much to drink that night? Did I resist too little? In moments of tortured reflection, victims readily distinguish between actively forceful rape that occurs at gunpoint in dark alleyways and the dorm-room confusion of acquaintance rape. The answers to such questions are further obfuscated by a society in which “Cosmopolitan” recommends sex positions promising “a sense of vulnerability and confinement” (apparently “a huge turn-on”). Or in which professional douchebag Tucker Max can, with a straight face, claim that he “got like 20 e-mails from women who were rape victims saying that, like, they supported me and loved my stuff, and they all had these stories, that were, like, heartbreaking, dude, because fucking rape sucks, dude, it’s not a joke.” (Touching, Tucker.)

The legal system alone cannot prevent rape. We must root out fundamental problems with a culture that explicitly and implicitly condones sexual assault. Obviously, the first step is to stop explicitly condoning sexual assault. (Here’s looking at you, Woody.) But a second, and equally important, step is to engage in categorizations that seem to be intuitive to so many. Rape is a complex crime riddled with subtleties, and while any sexual assault is despicable, immoral, and illegal, these experiences still lie on a spectrum. If we insist on lumping them together, our go-to picture of rape naturally becomes one of extremes. When we imagine rape, it’s “rape-rape,” not drunken refusal or subdued resistance. Embracing, rather than instinctively condemning, these distinctions can go a long way toward preventing rape and supporting those for whom such preventative efforts come too late.

Silpa Kovvali ’10 is a computer science concentrator in Eliot House. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.