Playlist for Show: Long Waves

 

Show script notes

Emma Sulkowicz
Colmbia University student. “Carry that Weight” campaign
Now has new a new project to trigger thought about rape and assault, Ceci n’est pas un viol.
Turns the discussion away from the victim and back to society.
This is where it should be. Stats are grim:
Prevalence of Rape
Missoula last year, football time 88 rapes per 3 years, about average, for reporting, but actual incidence is much higher:

 

Citation and discussion of David Lisak’s studies on prevalence of assault.

Extrapolating data not based on reporting of victims, a 2002 study reported:
• 14.8% of women were victims of rape at some point during their lifetime
• 2.8% of women were victims of attempted rape at some point during their lifetime
• 0.3% of women were victims of rape during the previous 12 months, yielding an
8.7 per 1000 “incidence rate”
Extrapolating this incidence rate to the population of Metro Boston reveals the stark
disparity between “official” rape statistics and the reality of sexual violence. In 1998,
there were 1,687 rapes reported in all of Massachusetts, and 526 arrests were made17.
That same year, among the approximately 1.75 million women in the Boston Metro
area, there were actually 15,225 rapes.

Not citing numbers on men sexually assaulted or on children
The big focus has been Campus Rape. New category that fits with Date Rape or Relationship Rape as something not so important, both parties are somewhat to blame, etc.
Society doesn’t have a clear way to speak of these assaults in law, in custom, in social power dynamics.
But Colleges are target rich environments for rapists.
Young people away from home for the first time, living like adults without much training or experience at it, drugs and alcohol common, Peer pressures and other social pressures.
But all this misses the point of why all this rape?
Much concerns men’s inabilities to understand and to work through their own emotions and their own damage.
Men are damaged, but being macho guys we don’t like to talk about it much.
Many men are fascinated with and threatened by women. But men are also threatened by other men in some ways, especially in status and in the ever present threat of violence.
Because the emotions and impulses and pains are unexamined, they remain unconscious.
They take form in attractions, in thoughts, in vague moods: all expressions of the unconscious, that is of the things men don’t want to be aware of.
As such they are repressed but alien and emerge in fantasies or in various forms of acting out.
It is best that men might learn something of themselves
Alas, too many men leaned and continue to learn not to become self-aware; they are like Achilles who feels in this Thumus but does not reflect.
And we learned this in childhood. There are a lot of damaged people out there. We are not doing well.
Childhood sexualization Bratz and Barbie, Guns God and Gays
The construction of men to be unconscious, unaware, and often violent.

Evidence is in the fantasies of men, especially porn. But rather than use their own feelings and desires as a starting point for self-awareness, many if not most men use it to fuel and reinforce their ideas and feelings, as well as the scenarios in which these might play out.

← All Playlists for Show: Long Waves