Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics Read online

  (16 percent pair rapes, 27 percent group rapes). 33 I want to

  tell you about two multiple rapes in some detail. The first is

  reported by Medea and Thompson in Against Rape. A twenty-

  five-year-old woman, mentally retarded, with a mental age of

  eleven years, lived alone in an apartment in a university town.

  She was befriended by some men from a campus fraternity.

  These men took her to the fraternity house, whereupon she

  was raped by approximately forty men. These men also tried

  to force intercourse between her and a dog. These men also

  put bottles and other objects up her vagina. Then, they took

  her to a police station and charged her with prostitution.

  Then, they offered to drop the charges against her if she was

  institutionalized. She was institutionalized; she discovered that

  she was pregnant; then, she had a complete emotional breakdown.

  One man who had been a participant in the rape bragged

  about it to another man. That man, who was horrified, told a

  professor. A campus group confronted the fraternity. At first,

  the accused men admitted that they had committed all the acts

  charged, but they denied that it was rape since, they claimed,

  the woman had consented to all of the sexual acts committed.

  Subsequently, when the story was made public, these same

  men denied the story completely.

  A women’s group on campus demanded that the fraternity

  be thrown off campus to demonstrate that the university did

  not condone gang rape. No action was taken against the fraternity by university officials or by the police. 34

  The second story that I want to tell was reported by Robert

  Sam Anson in an article called “That Championship Season”

  in New Times magazine. 35 According to Anson, on July 25,

  1974, Notre Dame University suspended for at least one year

  six black football players for what the university called “a

  serious violation of university regulations. ” An eighteen-year-

  old white high school student, it turned out, had charged the

  football players with gang rape.

  The victim’s attorney, the county prosecutor, the local reporter assigned to cover the story, a trustee of the local newspaper—all were Notre Dame alumni, and all helped to cover up the rape charge.

  Notre Dame University, according to Anson, has insisted

  that no crime was committed. It was the consensus of university officials that the football players were just sowing their wild oats in an old-fashioned gang bang, and that the victim

  was a willing participant. The football players were suspended

  for having sex in their dormitory. The President of Notre

  Dame, Theodore Hesburgh, a noted liberal and scholar, a

  Catholic priest, insisted that no rape took place and said that

  the university would produce, if necessary, “dozens of eyewitnesses. ” I quote Anson:

  Hesburgh’s conclusions are based on an hour-long personal

  interview with the six football players, along with an investigation conducted by his Dean of Students, John Macheca, a. . .

  former university public relations man. . . Macheca himself will

  say nothing about his investigation. . . Various campus sources

  close to the case say that, throughout his investigation, no university official spoke either to the girl [j/c] or her parents. Hesburgh himself professes neither to know or to care. He says testily, “It’s irrelevant.. . . I didn’t need to talk to the girl. I talked to the boys. ”36

  According to Anson, had Dr. Hesburgh talked to “the girl” he

  would have heard this story: after work late on July 3, she

  went to Notre Dame to see the football player she had been

  dating; they made love twice on his dormitory bunk; he left

  the room; she was alone and undressed, wrapped in a sheet;

  another football player entered the room; she had a history of

  hostility and confrontation with this second football player

  (he had made a friend of hers pregnant, he had refused to pay

  for an abortion, she had confronted him on this, finally he did

  pay part of the money); this second football player and the

  woman began to quarrel and he threatened that, unless she

  submit to him sexually, he would throw her out the third-story

  window; then he raped her; four other football players also

  raped her; during the gang rape, several other football players

  were in and out of the room; when the woman finally was able

  to leave the dormitory she drove immediately to a hospital.

  Both the police investigator on the case and a source in the

  prosecutor’s office believe the victim’s story— that there was a

  gang rape perpetrated on her by the six Notre Dame football

  players.

  All of the male university authorities who investigated the

  alleged gang rape determined that the victim was a slut. This

  they did, all of them, by interviewing the accused rapists. In

  fact, the prosecutor’s character investigation indicated that the

  woman was a fine person. The coach of the Notre Dame football team placed responsibility for the alleged gang rape on the worsening morals of women who watch soap operas.

  Hesburgh, moral exemplar that he is, concluded: “I didn’t

  need to talk to the girl. I talked to the boys. ” The Dean of

  Students, John Macheca, expelled the students as a result of

  his secret investigation. Hesburgh overruled the expulsion out

  of what he called “compassion”— he reduced the expulsion to

  one year’s suspension. The rape victim now attends a university in the Midwest. Her life, according to Anson, has been threatened.

  The fact is, as these two stories demonstrate conclusively,

  that any woman can be raped by any group of men. Her word

  will not be credible against their collective testimony. A

  proper investigation will not be done. Remember the good

  Father Hesburgh’s words as long as you live: “I didn’t need to

  talk to the girl. I talked to the boys. ” Even when a prosecutor is convinced that rape as defined by male law did take place, the rapists will not be prosecuted. Male university officials will protect those sacrosanct male institutions—the football team and the fraternity— no matter what the cost to women.

  The reasons for this are terrible and cruel, but you must

  know them. Men are a privileged gender class over and

  against women. One of their privileges is the right of rape—

  that is, the right of carnal access to any woman. Men agree, by

  law, custom, and habit, that women are sluts and liars. Men

  will form alliances, or bonds, to protect their gender class

  interests. Even in a racist society, male bonding takes precedence over racial bonding.

  It is very difficult whenever racist and sexist pathologies

  coincide to delineate in a political way what has actually happened. In 1838, Angelina Grimke, abolitionist and feminist, described Amerikan institutions as “a system of complicated

  crimes, built up upon the broken hearts and prostrate bodies

  of my countrymen in chains, and cemented by the blood,

  sweat, and tears of my sisters in bonds. ”37 Racism and sexism

  are the warp and woof of this Amerikan society, the very

  fabric of our institutions, laws, customs, and habits— and we

  are the inheritors of that complicated system of crimes. In the

  Notre Da
me case, for instance, we can postulate that the

  prosecutor took the woman’s charges of rape seriously at all

  because her accused rapists were black. That is racism and

  that is sexism. There is no doubt at all that white male law is

  more amenable to the prosecution of blacks for the raping of

  white women than the other way around. We can also postulate that, had the Notre Dame case been taken to court, the rape victim’s character would have been impugned irrevocably because her lover was a black. That is racism and that is sexism. We also know that had a black woman been raped,

  either by blacks or whites, her rape would go unprosecuted,

  unremarked. That is racism and that is sexism.

  In general, we can observe that the lives of rapists are worth

  more than the lives of women who are raped. Rapists are

  protected by male law and rape victims are punished by male

  law. An intricate system of male bonding supports the right of

  the rapist to rape, while diminishing the worth of the victim’s

  life to absolute zero. In the Notre Dame case, the woman’s

  lover allowed his fellows to rape her. This was a male bond. In

  the course of the rape, at one point when the woman was left

  alone— there is no indication that she was even conscious at

  this point— a white football player entered the room and

  asked her if she wanted to leave. When she did not answer, he

  left her there without reporting the incident. This was a male

  bond. The cover-up and lack of substantive investigation by

  white authorities was male bonding. All women of all races

  should recognize that male bonding takes precedence over

  racial bonding except in one particular kind of rape: that is,

  where the woman is viewed as the property of one race, class,

  or nationality, and her rape is viewed as an act of aggression

  against the males of that race, class, or nationality. Eldridge

  Cleaver in Soul on Ice has described this sort of rape:

  I became a rapist. To refine my technique and modus operandi I

  started out by practicing on black girls in the ghetto. . . and

  when I considered myself smooth enough, I crossed the tracks

  and sought out white prey. I did this consciously, deliberately,

  willfully, methodically. >.

  Rape was an insurrectionary act. It delighted me that I was

  defying and trampling upon the white man’s law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women—and this point, I believe, was the most satisfying to me because I was very resentful over the historical fact of how the white man has used the black woman. I felt I was getting revenge. 38

  In this sort of rape, women are viewed as the property of men

  who are, by virtue of race or class or nationality, enemies.

  Women are viewed as the chattel of enemy men. In this situa­

  tion, and in this situation only, bonds of race or class or nationality will take priority over male bonding. As Cleaver’s testimony makes clear, the women of one’s own group are also viewed as chattel, property, to be used at will for one’s own

  purposes. When a black man rapes a black woman, no act of

  aggression against a white male has been committed, and so

  the man’s right to rape will be defended. It is very important

  to remember that most rape is intraracial—that is, black men

  rape black women and white men rape white women—because

  rape is a sexist crime. Men rape the women they have access

  to as a function of their masculinity and as a signet of their

  ownership. Cleaver’s outrage “at the historical fact of how the

  white man has used the black woman” is wrath over the theft

  of property which is rightly his. Similarly, classic Southern

  rage at blacks who sleep with white women is wrath over the

  theft of property which rightly belongs to the white male. In

  the Notre Dame case, we can say that the gender class interests of men were served by determining that the value of the black football players to masculine pride— that is, to the

  championship Notre Dame football team—took priority over

  the white father’s very compromised claim to ownership of his

  daughter. The issue was never whether a crime had been

  committed against a particular woman.

  Now, I have laid out the dimensions of the rape atrocity. As

  women, we live in the midst of a society that regards us as

  contemptible. We are despised, as a gender class, as sluts and

  liars. We are the victims of continuous, malevolent, and sanctioned violence against us— against our bodies and our whole lives. Our characters are defamed, as a gender class, so that no

  individual woman has any credibility before the law or in society at large. Our enemies—rapists and their defenders—not only go unpunished; they remain influential arbiters of morality; they have high and esteemed places in the society; they are priests, lawyers, judges, lawmakers, politicians, doctors, artists, corporation executives, psychiatrists, and teachers.

  What can we, who are powerless by definition and in fact,

  do about it?

  First, we must effectively organize to treat the symptoms of

  this dread and epidemic disease. Rape crisis centers are crucial. Training in self-defense is crucial. Squads of women police formed to handle all rape cases are crucial. Women prosecutors on rape cases are crucial.

  New rape laws are needed. These new laws must: (1) eliminate corroboration as a requirement for conviction; (2) eliminate the need for a rape victim to be physically injured to prove rape; (3) eliminate the need to prove lack of consent;

  (4) redefine consent to denote “meaningful and knowledgeable assent, not mere acquiescence”; (5) lower the unrealistic age of consent; (6) eliminate as admissible evidence the victim’s prior sexual activity or previous consensual sex with the defendant; (7) assure that marital relationship between parties is no defense or bar to prosecution; (8) define rape in terms of degrees of serious injury. 39 These changes in the

  rape law were proposed by the New York University Law

  Clinical Program in Women’s Legal Rights, and you can find

  their whole proposed model rape law in a book called Rape:

  The First Sourcebook for Women, by the New York Radical

  Feminists. I recommend to you that you investigate this proposal and then work for its implementation.

  Also, we must, in order to protect ourselves, refuse to participate in the dating system which sets up every woman as a potential rape victim. In the dating system, women are defined

  as the passive pleasers of any and every man. The worth of

  any woman is measured by her ability to attract and please

  men. The object of the dating game for the man is “to score. ”

  In playing this game, as women we put ourselves and our wellbeing in the hands of virtual or actual strangers. As women, we must analyze this dating system to determine its explicit

  and implicit definitions and values. In analyzing it, we will see

  how we are coerced into becoming sex-commodities.

  Also, we must actively seek to publicize unprosecuted cases

  of rape, and we must make the identities of rapists known to

  other women.

  There is also work here for men who do not endorse the

  right of men to rape. In Philadelphia, men have formed a

  group called Men Organized Against Rape. They deal with

  male relatives and friends of rape victims in order to dispel

  belief in the myth of female culpability. Sometimes rapists who

  are troubled by their
continued aggression against women will

  call and ask for help. There are vast educative and counseling

  possibilities here. Also, in Lorton, Virginia, convicted sex

  offenders have organized a group called Prisoners Against

  Rape. They work with feminist task forces and individuals to

  delineate rape as a political crime against women and to find

  strategies for combating it. It is very important that men who

  want to work against rape do not, through ignorance, carelessness, or malice, reinforce sexist attitudes. Statements such as “Rape is a crime against men too” or “Men are also victims

  of rape” do more harm than good. It is a bitter truth that rape

  becomes a visible crime only when a man is forcibly sodomized. It is a bitter truth that men’s sympathy can be roused when rape is viewed as “a crime against men too. ” These

  truths are too bitter for us to bear. Men who want to work

  against rape will have to cultivate a rigorous antisexist consciousness and discipline so that they will not, in fact, make us invisible victims once again.

  It is the belief of many men that their sexism is manifested

  only in relation to women—that is, that if they refrain from

  blatantly chauvinistic behavior in the presence of women, then

  they are not implicated in crimes against women. That is not

  so. It is in male bonding that men most often jeopardize the

  lives of women. It is among men that men do the most to

  contribute to crimes against women. For instance, it is the

  habit and custom of men to discuss with each other their sexual intimacies with particular women in vivid and graphic terms. This kind of bonding sets up a particular woman as the

  rightful and inevitable sexual conquest of a man’s male friends

  and leads to innumerable cases of rape. Women are raped

  often by the male friends of their male friends. Men should

  understand that they jeopardize women’s lives by participating

  in the rituals of privileged boyhood. Rape is also effectively

  sanctioned by men who harass women on the streets and in

  other public places; who describe or refer to women in objectifying, demeaning ways; who act aggressively or contemptuously toward women; who tell or laugh at misogynistic jokes; who write stories or make movies where women are raped and