Opponents of Deja Vu ads in
the Western Herald repeatedly claim they act in the best interest of “our
community.” But instead, they attempt to transform Western Michigan
University into a place hostile to those who disagree with their agenda.
Like all patriarchal movements,
the Bertha Capen Reynolds Society seeks to institutionalize limits on
women’s activities and speech, and then ostracize those who refuse to
conform to its image of “womanly” behavior.
Although the BCRS is allegedly
a “progressive” group, its agenda is every bit as paternalistic
and smothering as anything proposed by the Christian Coalition of the
American Family Association.
Despite the BCRS’ assertions
to the contrary, there is a paucity of credible evidence connecting sexually
explicit materials to violence against women. Not only are there few or
no demonstrated links between pornography and sexual violence against
women, as stated in a 1993 report by The National Research Council’s Panel
on Understanding and Preventing Violence, but researchers Larry Baron
and Murray Straus have found a negative correlation between pornography
and rape in some areas. Countries that have banned pornography, such as
Iran and Saudi Arabia, often have some of the highest rates of violence
against women. Countries where pornography is easily acquired, such as
Denmark and Germany, have extremely low rates of violence against women.
The BCRS seeks to solve the
social problem of sexual violence by controlling female sexuality. Like
the Victorians before them, the BCRS claims depictions and expressions
of female sexuality are responsible for rape, violence and a while host
of other social ills. It asserts that if all sexually suggestive images
of women can be expunged from the media, all will be well.
This ideological position
is extremely discomforting.
First, this makes me uncomfortable
as a woman because the BCRS furthers the “objectification” of
women’s bodies with its claim that sexually suggestive pictures of women
by definition objectify women. This is nothing more than a new way to
say men are incapable of seeing women as anything but sexual objects.
Rather than try to change the way men think, the BCRS wishes to change
the way women look, shifting the blame for rape and violence to women.
Just as men centuries ago
dismissed the woman who celebrated her sexually as a whore, negating any
other aspect of her personality, so does the BCRS deny the notion that
someone can view a sexually attractive woman and see her as a whole person.
This amounts to little more than a contemporary, politically correct version
of misogyny.
Second, this makes me uncomfortable
as a rape survivor because the BCRS perpetuates the myth that women want
to be raped by placing the blame for rape on the sexually explicit material
men read instead of on the men themselves. If this is true, however, why
would women consent to pose for these sexually explicit images? Why would
women allow this material to exist? The implied answer is that women who
pose for or defend these images must secretly want to be raped.
If it is these sexually explicit
images of women that are responsible for the sexual violence against women,
it must be women’s sexuality that is causing these helpless men to scour
the countryside raping indiscriminately. Need women be protected from
their own sexuality? Need men be protected from women’s sexuality?
The continuing problem of
rape is one of the biggest reasons to oppose the BCRS’ agenda. If the
BCRS convinces people that it is pornography, not men, that causes rape,
the issue of how responsible men are for rape becomes a real issue.
If viewing pornography causes
men to view women as mere objects to rape, it becomes difficult to hold
individual men responsible for their actions. Already, feminist scholars
such as Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon have moved to theories
of crime that deny that men are responsible for such acts.
I am outraged by this attempt
to shift the responsibility from the perpetrator of the crime to a non-proven
causal agent. It is not the women in magazines or on stages that raped
me. It is not a newspaper that ran a Deja Vu ad or a videotape that raped
me.
It is those individual men
who are responsible for their actions, it is those men who raped me.
Punish crime, not speech.
Punish rapists, not women.