Madhuri reviews one of Jon Krakauer’s books.
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
by Jon Krakauer
Anchor Books, New York, 2016,
398 pages
www.barnesandnoble.com
I started reading this at night before sleep, and after a couple of hours I felt so disturbed that I decided to put the book back on the shelf for a while and read something else.
Next day the disturbance continued – a sort of ragged churning in my stomach – so on my walk I dialogued with the sensation. There had been so many times, when I was a teenager, that sex was forced on me, or coerced or manipulated – and of course I have done much inner work on this; but here it was, all churned up again. I’m a little hesitant to share what happened next, but… here goes: as I stood on a rustic path, the cold wet fallen leaves of autumn flattened beneath my boots, a huge angel-presence appeared in the air above me – made out of air, and yet outlined there with huge wings half-open. Over minutes, I felt things inside my body align, and then all was uplifted too. I felt love all around and through me. And there was nothing for me to Do about all this – just be, and continue my days.
That night I felt ready to continue reading, and I was no longer off-centered, and could be with my indignation at what I was reading without feeling more traumatised.
Jon Krakauer is the journalist who wrote Into Thin Air, about the debacle on Mt Everest in the 90s’ when so many climbers died in a storm. Since then he’s written about murder among fanatic Mormons (Under the Banner of Heaven) and a young man who exiled himself to the Alaskan woods (Into the Wild), and more. This new book was inspired by the ordeal of a family friend who’d been raped and had suffered much afterwards.
On the cover it says: Missoula, Montana is a typical college town, home to a highly regarded state university whose beloved football team inspires a passionately loyal fan base. Between January 2008 and May 2012, hundreds of students reported sexual assaults to the local police. Few of the cases were properly handled by either the university or local authorities. In this, Missoula is also typical.
One thing we learn in this book is that 80% of rapes go unreported. So if hundreds were reported, how many were not? And, 90% of rapists get away with it completely.
We also learn that with an adversarial justice system, a victim of such an intimate assault can expect to be harassed and grilled and accused herself – in fact, rape is the only crime where the victim tends to be regarded with enormous suspicion. This puts off many who might otherwise report the crime.
It was scary to read that the football players – who were actively protected by coaches, police, and townspeople – tended to be about 6’4″ and weigh 300 pounds! A much-smaller female had no chance with a drunken hulk like that (and while they were being beastly, they were pretty much always off-their-faces drunk).
What I found shocking and frightening too was that the young males had been immersing themselves in porn, and had extremely unrealistic ideas about what females are like and what a sexual encounter should be like. In fact, I had to conclude that both males and females don’t know what a woman is – there is no respect in most societies for the abyssal, for the vulnerable, for the internal – only for yang, and show, and force, and muscle, and winning. The excellent book Vagina by Naomi Wolf needs to be required reading in schools – age 12 or 13 would probably be about right. And since men also have woman in them – in their emotional world, in their hearts – they are also missing out terribly when that half of the universe is denied.
On the title page for Part One there is this quote:
“Now, should we treat women as independent agents, responsible for themselves? Of course. But being responsible has nothing to do with being raped. Women don’t get raped because they were drinking or took drugs. Women do not get raped because they weren’t careful enough. Women get raped because someone raped them.” (Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth)
Juries often acquit rapists because they don’t think the victim acted enough like what they think a victim should act like: she didn’t fight, she didn’t scream, maybe she had a snack afterwards or even gave the rapist a ride home, if she knew him (most rapes are done by acquaintances of some sort). She might have made coffee or gone to a party. So it couldn’t have been rape, right? Why didn’t she fight to the death, if rape is such an awful thing?
In this book we meet a wonderful researcher named David Lisak who specialises in date rape. I really perked up my ears at his testimony, because this was my situation too. Science shows that rape is such an intimate assault, so intrinsically shocking and brutal, that the subconscious of the victim will try to do anything to undo it. If she acts as normal maybe it didn’t really happen? And she doesn’t fight because she is afraid of being killed. And because she is in shock. This was true for me, all of it. And also for me, a disconnect would happen when I would say to a new acquaintance, “I enjoy being friends but I don’t want to have sex,” and they would say, “Okay,” and then, a couple of days later, they would simply push me down on a bed (or onto a sleeping bag in a tie-dyed teepee – it was the 60’s) and do their thing, and somewhere inside me would be the notion, “This is not really happening, because I said no and they agreed.” And I would try to go on as normal afterwards, and accept the new order of things. But I had not really accepted it, deep down; because it was not my choice. The timing had not been right. I had not been ready. (As Vagina shows, women biologically need courting, and gifts, and assurances of love; and much else too – the man must be seen as in some way worthy.)
Most women don’t fight, most women don’t report, most women try to act normal afterwards.
But damage is done. In the book we see young women drop out of college, have nervous breakdowns, become drunken and promiscuous, take drugs, suffer depression.
Another quote from the book:
“There is no way to tell who is a rapist.
There’s also no normal way to respond to rape.
Victims often deny or minimise what they’ve been through.
Victims try to make things appear normal after a rape.
Self-blame is common.
While the event is occurring, in the presence of the perceived threat, victims often freeze.”
– Dr David Lisak, Professor of Psychology, University of Massachusetts
I was left with a feeling of what a shame it all is – all that vital energy, misused, gross, bludgeoning – when that same energy could be explored with subtlety and delight, educated into its most refined and yet elastic and vividly essential possibilities. Such a waste! So much possible joy, even transcendent joy, lost. And in its place darkness, confusion.
I had recently been reading about steroid use among football players. In a quest for ever-more pumped-up demigods of brute force, no cunning or expense is being spared. As a very non-sporty person I find all this difficult to understand, but there it is. I know that some people are designed to compete – and that’s fine, evolution apparently likes it. And in my explorations of my Inner Man I have found brutal warriors, bent on owning whatever they can seize, and loving the conquest. But right now the idea makes me tired.
Somebody once asked Osho, “If you could give us one rule for life, what would it be?” And he replied, “Do whatever you like. But don’t interfere in anybody else’s life.”
If only the whole world could contemplate this, for a few minutes every day, for, let’s say, three generations. It might sink in.
Related
Dissociation is when… – Quick notes by Punya about Svagito’s online workshop, Dealing with Dissociation and Denial
Osho on Rape – “Rape is one of the problems which is not so easy to decide and judge; there are so many complexities,” says Osho
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