I’m fond of saying I learn something new from my students each quarter. It’s happened again, though I half wish I were still ignorant.
For the second day of class, I asked my intro to WGS students to check out Jeff Fecke’s post on that appalling “political cartoon” depicting Obama as having raped Lady Liberty. (Go check out Jeff’s post and then come back; I will not have that “cartoon” befouling this blog.) I’ve taken to starting the term with a blog post or two along with a few canonical articles on gender and oppression. My hope is always that a few very current examples will upend the assumption that we’re all post-feminist and colorblind now. I was afraid this post could upset students badly because it was so vile. It did rile them up – but for all the wrong reasons.
For one thing, several students thought that calling the cartoon racist was “pulling the race card.” Lady Liberty was green, after all, not a white woman. And we do have a Black president, after all, so what color should they cartoonist paint him? One bright young woman brought up the myth of the black rapist. Yep, I said; what do you know about its history? After a few minutes of circling around Jim Crow laws and the Civil Rights movements, my students gave up. Lynchings, I said. Lynchings! They had no bloody idea that the history of lynching is largely history of black men being murdered on the pretext of allegedly raping white women. I guess this hasn’t trickled into the high-school curriculum. Maybe it’s not taught in Texas and thus not in the books? Or maybe teachers just don’t go there because sex and race are taboo enough on their own, god forbid they’d have to mix them? Or am I just encountering the same unflappable colorblindness that I saw last fall, too?
But while I was prepared for some resistance on the cartoon’s racism, I was sure someone would take umbrage at the rape metaphor. I asked if it didn’t trivialize actual victims of sexual assault. Forty faces looked at me blankly. Then one of the talkative men, who’s struck me as no dummy, said: “Well, it’s kinda like ‘fag.’ People use it all the time and don’t mean anything by it. It’s just slang.”
One of the women said, “Yeah. Like: ‘Wow, their soccer team totally raped us.’”
I picked my jaw up from the floor just long enough to ask if this was common. Forty heads nodded.
I wondered if this inflationary use of “rape” stems from the right wing’s frequent use of rape metaphors to protest Democratic policies and ideas. I tend to think not; Rushbo and his colleagues want their audience to be deeply outraged, which presumes that “rape” still holds some power to shock.
But my students are only rarely ideologues. Few of them listen to Rush or Glenn Beck; those guys are just too old. The young folks aren’t using rape as the ultimate metaphor for violation. They’re using it like my mom might say, “Oh, heck!”
So have any of you heard “rape” used as casual slang? “Fag” is problematic enough; as C.J. Pascoe shows in Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School
But “rape”? As slang? I mean, I remember it from The Who’s Tommy (We’re not gonna take it!) but that’s about it.
An hour after class, one of the young women showed up at my office hours. “I just heard someone say ‘That test raped me.’ I wouldn’t have even noticed it before.”
What have you noticed? Is this a generational thing? Do I just live in a bubble? I’d be grateful for any clarifications and insights.
Update 4/13/10: Yesterday I spoke about all this with my neighbor, who’s a historian of 19th-century America. He said that he actually works with high-school teachers regularly and when he discusses lynching with them, they are very nervous about creating a local scandal if they were to include it in their curriculum. The intersection of racism, sex, and violence is just too explosive for many parents and school boards. I thought this helps clarify my students’ experiences (and confirms that they are not clued out – in fact, they’re a pretty sharp lot. And as Shinobi notes in comments, hearing about how rape allegations were employed in lynching later in life can lead to an potent “aha” moment.
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
Wow, I don’t know. I’m only a little past college age (graduated 3 years ago), and I’ve heard “rape” used in that way, but only infrequently. I couldn’t imagine a whole classroom full of people just agreeing that it’s common slang. Yikes.
I’m in my early 30s, and I certainly hear it often enough that it wouldn’t shock me – more often from people a little younger than myself. One interesting/encouraging thing is that I’ve also heard guys, even ones younger than me, who do not remotely identify as feminist call this out or say it makes THEM really uncomfortable. But if that’s the attitude in your class, that transitional moment may be passing.
One more thing. I would say the people I’ve heard use it have tended to use it for an exploitative situation that left them feeling violated. It was still, to me, grossly inappropriate in the contexts in which they employed it, but it at least had a fairly strong connotation. Using it for something like a test or a sports game would seem to be yet another step down. I mean, do you really feel violated by a difficult test?
I graduated college in ’07. I heard “rape” used as slang a lot. Particularly like, “Man, I just got totally raped by that bio exam.”
I’m 22, and I’ve been hearing it since high school, including from self-professed feminists (…granted, not the only questionable thing this particular self-professed feminist did), mostly, yeah, in the context of “that test totally raped me.” I’ve heard it so much it surprises me that you’re surprised, which makes me suspect it is in fact a generational thing.
I’ve recently heard “fraped”, which apparently is when your mate gets into your Facebook account and posts stuff on it without permission. Yeah, totally like sexual assault \end{sarcasm}
That usage does suggest the violation meaning, but it’s really casual, and worse — it’s a *playful* coinage.
–IP
I’m 23, and an English radical feminist – none of my friends have ever used the word this way, but my 20 year old brother does, usually in the context of having lost a video game. I’ve talked to him about why it’s problematic, but that hasn’t affected his usage at all, it’s ‘something all his friends say.’
If it *is* that common, that’s just depressing.
[...] or – especially vilely, given its triggering nature to many survivors – use rape as casual slang for ‘failing at’. (As in: “Your team got raped! HAHAHA!”) It’s [...]
I am in university, but I am a decade older than most of my peers. I have never heard that phrase used in the context of a test, only once or twice as a sports reference, but I have heard it dozens of times from environmentalist friends… the “rape” of mother nature. I generally call it out when I hear it, but I am known for being quite “radical” so people have learned to watch what they say around me sometimes.
Yes, I’ve heard it – not from my friends (all in our 30s anyway) but overheard it in conversation, or seen it on forums or Facebook comments. Hopefully your students will take something away from the discussion in class – they might not pledge to change their language use on the spot but over time, being more aware may have an impact.
I’m 23, and while I rarely heard “rape” used like this in high school, it’s fairly common where I’m going to college. In my old apartment, we had a cat who would rub all over anyone who walked through the door, and I had to ask my roommates to please stop calling her “rape kitty” because it made me uncomfortable. She was promptly renamed to “slut kitty”, which has all sorts of other implications, but was better than hearing the word rape constantly.
On the other hand, my boyfriend’s about 12 years older than I am, so we have the opportunity to compare our generational differences a lot. He’s said that people, and particularly men, are a lot more willing to talk about rape, both with each other and with women, than he remembers from when he was younger. He says that just the word used to make people much more uncomfortable. I don’t particularly like hearing that a test raped someone, but maybe this is just indicative of a more general comfort with the word and idea (not acceptance, just that it’s not as taboo to mention). Not sure that’s a good thing either, though….
online video gaming…the word is used to describe almost every possible scenario where one team or player is defeated by another
“oh, man…we fucking raped that guild”
I hate to say I not only heard it but used it in high school. It was common slang in debate. Not only would we say that we raped another team, or the raped us, but a truly spectacular win would commonly be referred to as a “skull fucking”. And I went to high school in the late 80′s.
It was not particularly feminist culture, and it involved a lot of bravado. It definitely seemed to me to be used for shock value.
23, just graduated from college, ardent foot-stompin’ feminst, hear it all the time, don’t find it that problematic and haven’t yet heard a compelling reason why it is. Maybe it’s just me, but I truly don’t think this sort of colloquial usage dilutes or minimizes rape anymore than saying “I just murdered that test” or “we totally killed it” minimizes murder.
Let me modify that. I think it can become problematic but it’s very difficult for me to quantify the crossover. Suffice to say I don’t find “I raped that exam” terribly problematic, but I find gamers (who I am a fan of, usually!) telling each other “I’ll rape you” EXTREMELY problematic. And I can’t really quantify it.
The evolution of language is an odd thing. People who say fuck don’t necessarily mean the act of coitus, people who say damnit don’t necessarily mean hell, and people who say Jesus Christ might well be atheists. This isn’t to trivialize rape, it’s to point out the difference between a word and a concept. I doubt most people would MEAN “that test forced sexual intercourse on me.” What they mean is that they were caught unprepared or felt a little shocked. Exaggeration is part of speech, and as much as rape is a horrible thing, why do you hold that word above so many others that might have even more personal connotations?
I’ve been quietly appreciating this comments, even as my life has kept me mostly off of blogs for a few days. I was quite convinced that this usage was generational – but then MomTFH came along and torpedoed the idea.
So there may be a mix of regional and generational and local factors at work. Jack, I am inclined to think that gaming might have a lot to do with this, if only because both gaming and the casual use of “rape” are quite foreign to me.
What’s changed since the late ’80s – the “shock value” that MomTFH mentions – is that in some circles, apparently, the shock value is gone.
And that’s why I think this does matter, not because I’m on some PC quest. Goodness knows I don’t like to play PCer than thou games.
Morgan, I fully appreciate that there’s a difference between denotative, literal meaning and a metaphor, as well as between a word and a concept. There’s also a key difference, though, between dead metaphors and living ones. We cease to perceive dead ones, for good or for ill, as being a metaphor. In the case of “I just killed that test,” we’re pretty close to a dead metaphor. But rape metaphors are much more alive, in my estimation. Otherwise Rushbo et al. wouldn’t bother with them. They’re still kicking around, still able to shock. We may be on the way to using rape as a dying metaphor, though, in which case I imagine it as a kind of zombie trope, which can do a fair amount of damage before it truly enters the kingdom of the dead.
And politically speaking, I’m not ready for rape to become a dead metaphor just yet. I don’t want it to lose its ability to shock. I don’t want it to become meaningless to the majority while it still may evoke trauma in survivors.
That’s why I think this matters. It’s not that I see “rape” as a sacred cow, which should be set apart from an otherwise living language. Rather, I think it’s not politically wise to conflate it with losing a video game. Perhaps our ancestors should’ve put the lid on “murder” and “killing” as tropes, because when you think about it, they too should still shock us. Woe that we’ve become so hard to shock!
I know! I felt guilty for betraying your theory. Remember, though, I lived in Miami, and we started a lot of trends;)
I remember thinking it was so horrid and daring to talk like that at the time. It was in common usage like it is now. At least in medical school, the students about 10 years younger than me often discuss being raped by exams.
It was more of an issue of being heard by a disapproving adult than hurting anyone’s feelings. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I was incredibly selfish about those kinds of things at the time. I also hadn’t heard anyone talk about those kinds of social justice issues – I was just figuring out my thoughts on abortion, and came from a very conservative family.
It makes me think of telling dead baby and child molestation jokes around the fire in college, which I am guilty of 500 times over. It was that fauxgressive nonirony hipster obnoxiousness. It never even crossed my mind that someone listening could be personally very, very, very hurt, or that just, in general, it is a wrong, hurtful thing to make jokes about, considering the intense pain they cause.
Sorry, that should say *it WASN’T in common usage*
I’ve seen a photograph of a sign saying “raped by the police” in front of Columbia University following the student strike and ensuing police riot 1968.
I’ve also heard the term used in a slang fashion.
I find it extremely problematic. Extremely. We live in a culture that is apathetic towards violence against women, especially sexualized violence. The dismissive comments here– on a *feminist* blog!!– are evidence of how desensitized we’ve become to this REALITY.
Ask yourself this: would you say RAPE in a casual, joking fashion in front of someone you KNEW had been sexually violated? I sincerely hope not. In which case, it’s NOT OK. Ever. There is NO justification or excuse for thinking otherwise.
I have heard the term countless times from all walks of life…Undercover Punk has the right idea about the whole thing, too. I am wondering how those who have been sexually violated react, respond or just feel when they hear the term thrown around in that way. But clearly its overuse has desensitized even me, because I hear it often and never give it a second thought.
I’d be willing to wager that the militarization of video games, the militarization of the American culture, the ten years of murder and mayhem and unpunished rape in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the militarization of the prison system, the encouragement and acceptance of prison rape, the continuing hyper-masculinization of pop music and entertainment…
…all these contribute to tolerance of one more addition to rape culture.
It’s not a casual evolution of term usage, or language.
It’s the millennial social project of all patriarchy.
We’ve had a brief (if very profitable for “tolerant” corporations) respite from it, as prosperity allowed for some superficial social relaxation – and now we’re heading back down the slope, towards another trough.
Rape is fucking wrong. It’s always fucking wrong. Please, please don’t excuse it, or de-fang of the term, on account of some disjointed, context-free theory of language drift.
I’m not very sure how prolific the word is but on my campus (21 year old from Toronto) it’s very widespread when used in conjunction with testing – aforementioned “I raped that test” or “That test raped me”. Thankfully students still physically recoil while learning of or discussing actual rape and related activities.
We have many other words that suggest dominating or being dominated in. Worst though is the use of “bomb” as in “I bombed that test” as that word isn’t taken as seriously.
BUT words like “fag” or the n word or any of those that discriminate and demean an individual aren’t tolerated at all – users get very dirty looks from passer-bys thank goodness.
A few weeks ago my eighteen-year old niece left a message on someone’s Facebook page that said:”Sorry, I just totally raped the comments on your photos.”
When I was in college (5 years ago or so) rape was a fairly common analogy for our continual failure at tests. (Typically scatalogical and “without lube” descriptions of anal rape were used.) Now as a gamer I hear it about… uh… lets go with… all the freaking time. I’d have to say that its common use in slang pre dated its use by the conservative movement as a metaphorical way to talk about something totally unlike actual rape.
Additionally, I did not learn about lynching until I took a history class in college. It wasn’t even the main history class, it was actually a history elective given by an amazing proff who also taught a class on the history of rock and roll. He showed us photos played the song Strange Fruit for us. It was extremely memorable for me, partially because, uhm WHY THE HELL HAS NO ONE TOLD ME ABOUT THIS BEFORE.
“Rape” and every variation you can imagine has been ridiculously common in all video-gamer (and other hobby game) circles for the better part of a decade. It was fairly common to use “rape” to describe an athletic competition loss on my college campus as far back as the late 90′s.
Take any word you can think of from the offensive to the seemingly mundane, then attach it to “rape” and rest assured that someone is saying that right now about losing a Modern Warfare 2 match.
Thanks to all of you who keep chiming in. I’ve been listening in quietly while suffering through a nasty viral infection (much better now).
MomTFH, I can see where the transgressive thrill comes in, and I know I had moments like the ones you describe. I played in the Stanford Band in college, and when we ran out of ideas for formations, we’d just form a penis – um, Hoover Tower, that is – on the field. Back then, it was considered offensive, but I suspect times have changed.
Heather, the kind of usage you mention does have a longer past, I think. Certainly “rape of the environment” goes back decades. Those usages are still intended to shock, however, and that’s the key difference to what my students and many of the commenters here are describing. (Also: I would love to travel back in a time machine and spend a day or two at Cornell during that period!)
I agree that language drift doesn’t excuse the casual use of “rape,” it only helps explain it. Seems like gaming is one of the prime forces behind that drift. In other words, perhaps it’s not so much drifting as being collectively steered.
I would hope “rape” doesn’t lose its power to shock. Possibly that’s why we’re hearing and seeing more references to anal rape in the past few years, as “regular” rape has become common usage. I agree that “bomb” should never have lost its power.
Hysperia, I’m curious what you said to your niece!