Years ago, her hero–and he is her hero–date-raped the heroine. Riggs writes:
The hero I love is imperfect in some terrible way. He’s an all too-human soul who’s driven by inner demons far more deadly and cruel than any serial killer or evil empire or double-agent. A man, who, because of a mistake in judgment or action, had done a terrible wrong to an innocent victim, and if that victim is our heroine, so much the better.
She knows her choice is controversial. To her critics, she replies:
Why was it written? Why choose to frame a love story in such a way? What kind of message does a rapist hero and an irresponsible heroine send to the reader? In my opinion and intention, one of hope. If the people in my fictional world can face their own mistakes, learn to forgive themselves, and rise above the harm they’ve caused themselves and others, so can each and every one of us. Our mistakes are most likely far more benign, and yet, perhaps, just as painful to admit. Most of us have a strong sense of personal integrity, no matter what our religious preference. To violate our rules of decent behavior shames us. It’s often easier to accept our failings when we compare them to the far more serious failings of fictional folks. Living through their pain, seeing them make restitution, and thus find redemption and happiness is often enough to encourage us to do the same.
What do you think? I wonder if we are less tolerant of heroes and heroines who, in the past, have done reprehensible acts than we used to be? And, is that a good or bad thing?
Let us know your thoughts.
I hope this isn’t too off-topic, but getting back to the original question of “Could you forgive this hero?,” are we as romance readers becoming more intolerant of non-verbal forms of consent in romance? I ask because lately, my romance reading has been filled with enthusiastic consent- which is fantastic!- but its manner of presentation is often overkill in its execution.
For example, it is becoming almost standard to read seemingly endless repetitions of “Can I touch you here?” Sure, for a first time sex scene with a nervous virgin or a character who has suffered trauma, that can make a lot of sense. But when it keeps happening in every single scene with the same two characters, it feels like the author is trying to cover her butt to avoid accusations of having a rapist hero.
Has anyone else noticed this? Do you think it’s killing subtler, sexier forms of seduction and nuance? Is there any room for misunderstandings or sexual mishaps? What about instances where a character performs a non-favorite sexual act in order to please a partner? I certainly don’t mean rape or any kind of force, but compromise. What about adult conversations during pillow talk about how things went “wrong” and how to fix them in the future? What about regret and hurt feelings?
I’d love to hear some thoughts on these messy questions if you don’t consider them too off-topic. I realize that romance is often idealized (some of that is inherent in the genre), but it seems like heroes are never allowed to “mess up” in the bedroom anymore at all- just like a heroine can’t seem to be touched with one finger without having an explosive orgasm. After all, there are more ways to demonstrate healthy sexual interaction than a constant call and response of “Can I touch you here?” “Yes.”
As ever, Nan, you have asked some interesting questions that deserve an answer so here goes with my responses to your can of worms!!
“are we as romance readers becoming more intolerant of non-verbal forms of consent in romance?” I think this may be the case, sadly, which I interpret as a deficit in emotional maturity and intuitiveness. I believe that non-verbal communication is supremely important in relationships of all kinds and I also think that most adults are pretty proficient in using and interpreting it.
“it is becoming almost standard to read seemingly endless repetitions of “Can I touch you here?” Yes, and for me, it’s a bore. A huge bore. A sexual groundhog day..
“it feels like the author is trying to cover her butt to avoid accusations of having a rapist hero” I agree, Nan. It’s probably as a result of our litigious society combined with the Harvey Weinsteins of the world and social media egging everyone on. Everyone is running scared, most of the time it seems probably without cause or need. Sad.
“Do you think it’s killing subtler, sexier forms of seduction and nuance? Is there any room for misunderstandings or sexual mishaps?” In a good relationship, surely misunderstandings or sexual mishaps are part and parcel of its growth and development. None of us are born with all of the answers about everything; nuance is a tool for use in learning and understanding.
“What about instances where a character performs a non-favorite sexual act in order to please a partner?” Amongst my cohort of girlfriends I don’t know anyone who hasn’t, as an act of love at least once or twice, agreed to something they weren’t that fond of. And in a loving relationship, I am sure we all got something in return. (And I don’t mean submitting to rape or something that causes harm though some will feel that emotional harm is equal to or trumps physical harm.)
“What about regret and hurt feelings?” I can hear Frank warbling away. It’s called LIFE.
“but it seems like heroes are never allowed to “mess up” in the bedroom anymore at all- just like a heroine can’t seem to be touched with one finger without having an explosive orgasm” Precisely. It’s so irritating. I like character-driven romance and without someone(s) messing up at least a bit, no one matures or deepens a relationship to a satisfactory level. One finger, eh, Nan? Hmmmm!!!!
“After all, there are more ways to demonstrate healthy sexual interaction than a constant call and response of “Can I touch you here? Yes.” Absolutely. After 40 years of a very happy marriage, I would die of shock if asked that question. So would the DH. We finish each other’s sentences, know each other’s thoughts, tastes, preferences, dislikes, joys, sorrows, regrets and expectations. Of course, like any other couple, we have a few deep secrets but not many after all this time!
Aw, thanks Elaine, for answering my questions so thoroughly. It’s good to know I’m not the only romance reader who has noticed a definite shift in how sex scenes are portrayed- and I haven’t been a reader of the genre that long. While I don’t want to tell authors how to write their sex scenes, I would recommend a little more “showing” and less “telling.” I think a good writer can just as easily describe a series of come hither looks and suggestive banter as having a character constantly say “Can I touch you here?” outright.
As for non-verbal consent, I was pleasantly surprised the other day when I watched the 1970 B-film The Losers for the first time. Granted, it is a war picture about a bunch of ragtag bikers dropped in to Vietnam to rescue a CIA operative via guerilla warfare tactics (stick with me here), but there’s a rather touching subplot between one of the gentler bikers and a local woman. Okay, okay, I can hear the cries of “OMG! A foreigner and a possible prostitute? Sexist, racist, blah blah blah!” But hear me out.
Basically, Limpy (such a politically incorrect nickname for a biker with a limp, but this is 1970) goes to this club where he sees a young woman, Kim Su, (yeah, yeah, bear with me) sitting on the sidelines like a wallflower. They exchange glances, quick “hello’s,” and then Limpy offers her his hand. She takes it. They end up on the dance floor doing this sort of disco thing where they never touch each other but flirt entirely with small talk and come hither looks. As things get more heated- again without any touching or direct sexual offers- Kim offers Limpy her hand. No words, but the next thing you know, she’s leading him up the stairs. As the viewer, you feel their connection as strongly as they do, no unnecessary chitchat or contract signing required. Cut to the next frame and we get a nice, natural pillow talk scene. Actually quite sweetly funny too when Limpy gives her a kiss and says, “Well, now that we’ve got that out of the way, what’s your name?” And the whole thing really is all sweetness and smiles in sharp contrast to the war raging outside. Problematic by today’s standards? Maybe, but I thought it was one of the better examples of enthusiastic consent sans practically needing a written contract prior to a sexual encounter. Despite not showing actual sex- unless you consider exposed female breasts an automatic depiction of sex- I thought it was quite steamy.
As an unrelated fun fact, The Losers is the movie that is playing in the background in Pulp Fiction. Apparently, it is a favorite of Tarantino’s and he auditioned Paul Koslo (the guy who played Limpy) to be in Pulp Fiction. That didn’t work out, but he put one of the scenes from The Losers in his film to give him a cameo appearance and pay him residuals.
An even steamier movie that I think shows the rougher aspects of consensual sex is the erotic thriller Sea of Love with Al Pacino and Ellen Barken. Pacino plays a detective on the case of a possibly female serial killer targeting her ex-lovers, and ends up falling for the prime suspect. Given the setup, this is borderline dubious consent at times, but its portrayal of sex feels very adult in comparison to the scaredy-cat type sex scenes in books and movies nowadays that do everything but shout to the audience, “Look at us, we’re consenting- with a capital C.”
After reading comments from the people who have read the book and Marian Perera’s comment where they point out how the author described the events of the book in her article, I find that I’m a bit confused / don’t have a clear enough understanding of this particular case to have a proper opinion of it. How things went down all in all matter to me when I’m trying to understand the hero and figure out whether I could forgive him. Which doesn’t mean that the heroine’s experience wasn’t horrible from the moment on she didn’t want to go further no matter which way it went down. Or that I’d expect her to be able to forgive the hero.
In this type of situation I feel like whether or not I could forgive the hero and whether I could buy into a romance between two people with this kind of past are two different things. I have read several romance novels with characters who have done reprehensible acts of different degrees in the past, but I can’t remember reading a book where a victim was paired with their offender. I’m failing to see how that could work for me especially in case of violent crimes.
In a more general sense, how everything happened matters and intentions matter when I consider if I’m able to forgive someone’s actions. In my understanding, learning about the variety of intentions won’t change the victim’s experience. It might, but I would imagine most often might not, change how the victim ends up feeling about it all in the long run.
Like, you can drive over a person accidentally or on purpose. The victim will be just as dead or paralyzed or perhaps just badly bruised (if they are really lucky) regardless of the intent, but it would certainly be harder for me to forgive an act like this if it was intentional instead of accidental. I think that if the victim lives it might end up meaning something to them as well to know that the collision was accidental. Or, as I said, it might not.
Or perhaps a group of people are waiting in a line at a grill kiosk after a night out in a bar. They are drunk, a few of them quarrel and someone shoves another person. Instead of taking a few steps back like they would if they were sober, they stumble, fall, and crack their skull on the edge of the road. Here the shove, the intention to do harm was there, and I don’t think it’s something anyone should do in such situations, but in my understanding people don’t generally shove other people like that and expect them to die. I find that it would affect the way I feel that the intention was not to do serious harm even though it changes absolutely nothing for the victim and the consequences of the act were horrendous.
I’ve read the story of a heroine who had killed her abusive husband. I didn’t feel like I even had to forgive this heroine. She did the only thing she could – she saved herself in a situation where, while he had not attacked her (yet) heaven knows what would have happened if she had not acted. She had no choice.
I do believe that people can change, learn from mistakes, do better in the future. I don’t think that every person who behaves in a certain way will automatically keep repeating the behavior until the day they die. I also know that change won’t happen by itself. A person has to genuinely want to change and be ready to work hard and then work even harder.
Annik, lovely post!
a few excellent points to think about,
I particularly think about the point of “can the victim forgive / have a HEA with her offender” – a lot of romances, especially older ones, say yes. Especially for sexual abuses. And this is really such an essential point: what does it mean for a woman who felt raped, no matter all our long debates about whether it was rape, she felt that. So how can she be happy and feel fully safe with him? Are women so used to not being safe from men, even in our closest intimate relationships, that we mix up objective forgiveability with subjective love story with the offender? I did, until you pointed it out, which means I have to look carefully at my thoughts on all this.
thank you, I like thinking new paths!
Thank you for your kind words and an altogether insightful comment, Lieselotte!
You ask good questions – I’m going to have to give them some serious thought.
Having read articles and discussions of the romance genre, I’ve been aware that abuse between love interests is not such a rare thing especially in older books, as you say. I can obviously only speculate why I have not read such stories yet, but I would imagine that the fact that I’m still quite new to this genre and the books I’ve read so far have mostly been on the newer side of the spectrum does figure into it. Also, since I have to buy almost all the romance novels I read I do try to research them to the best of my ability beforehand, because I know that there are certain subjects that I don’t deal very well will because of things in my past. Perhaps avoiding certain subgenres and/or tropes might have contributed a little too, I don’t know.
“Perhaps avoiding certain subgenres and/or tropes might have contributed a little too, I don’t know.”
That’s certainly possible, annik. These days, rapist heroes in romance novels generally don’t fly outside of really niche markets that are difficult to bump into by accident. I would say that’s a good thing. Although, unfortunately, there is a growing extreme on the other end of the spectrum where characters can hardly make one move without constant verbal checking-in with the partner- as I discussed with Elaine S. below.
If you avoid things labeled “dark romance” or “mafia romance,” you generally won’t find the extremely forceful heroes that used to be commonplace. I’ve never run into that sort of unpleasantness in a Harlequin Historical, Harlequin Intrigue, or Carina Press title, for example. I’m not a paranormal reader, so I can’t really speak to that. Although I have heard that there’s a lot more leeway for brutish behavior in heroes in more fanciful genres than historical or contemporary romance right now.
Those are all good points and I agree about intent. If a person intends harm or is just the victim of very bad luck – those are two different very things.
Here in the U.S. there are various degrees of crime for many offenses with intent being a key differentiator. There are even differences made between crimes of passion and crimes of intent even if the end result is the same thing. If someone just lashes out in response in the heat of the moment it’s still wrong, but so very different than someone who meditated and then plotted to do harm.
I had wanted to read this book now just to see the language used and be able to relay what specifically happens but haven’t decided if I want to invest in owning it.
Thank you for your kind words and sharing your thoughts, Chrisreader! I’m happy to have learned something new again. :)
I must confess that my knowledge and understanding of even my own country’s criminal laws is embarrassingly limited, and having spent the last hour reading about the classification of crimes here in Finland so that I wouldn’t end up talking nonsense about such a serious matter, I was once again reminded about how damn hard legal text is for me to read.
There are so many kinds of crimes of course, so this couldn’t be further from comprehensive, but what I do know is that we don’t have the kind of degrees of crime here as you do. We classify crimes according to their severity such as petty assault, assault and aggravated assault, rape and aggravated rape etc. (It depends on the type of crime if there are petty and/or aggravated cases of it.) and between these the seriousness of criminal conduct and the harm done or danger caused seem to be more often the key differentiators than intent. However, one of the differentiating elements between murder and manslaughter is premeditation. There are three other elements that define murder, and to be considered a murder a homicide has to have at least one of the four elements and be considered aggravated overall. The second most severe homicide charge after murder is manslaugther (which requires that the act of violence that caused the death was deliberate) then surma (there’s no English equivalent for this law term as far as I know, it’s basically petty manslaughter) and then negligent homicide. Also, for an act to be considered a crime to begin with, there has to be something objectionable about it – at least some degree of intent or neglect. If something is purely accidental, it is not a crime. But that’s just my uneducated interpretation, and honestly, the more I read the more complicated it all became especially in terms of intent and neglegt.
It did certainly start to seem that to ascertain what precisely happens, what are the actual words used in Her Secret, His Child, one would have to read the book oneself. It kind of bugs me, not knowing, but at least for now I’m just going to have to live with it.
I had to rest yesterday and only now noticed that there is a small but rather important part missing from the paragraph of my original comment where I talk about the heroine who had killed her husband. The second sentence was supposed to go like this:
She did the only thing she could – she saved herself in a situation where, while he had not attacked her (yet) that time around, heaven knows what would have happened if she had not acted.
Her husband had been abusing her for years before she killed him.
I don’t know how I managed to bungle it up like that. I’m sorry it took me such a long time to make the correction.
Excellent post, Annik. Thank you for this post. It reminded me of Alexander Pope’s words: “To err is human, to forgive divine.”
Thank you for your kind words and for sharing the Alexander Pope quote, Elaine S! I’d only heard the quote in Finnish before now: ”Erehtyminen on inhimillistä, anteeksiantaminen jumalallista.” It was lovely to see it in its original language. :)
Interesting question. I have purposely refrained from answering it until I have had adequate time to process my thoughts on the subject. First, how much I am willing to tolerate/forgive in a protagonist (“hero” or “heroine”) depends a lot on the genre. As some here have said, if you read something marketed as a “dark” story, there’s a totally different expectation than in other forms of romance. But a character who committed any form of abuse against an animal or child, for example, would definitely be off the table as a protagonist for me, regardless of genre. I’m definitely okay with morally ambiguous protagonists (i.e. antiheroes) in darker stories such as professional criminals (gentlemen thieves, jewelry robbers, crime families, etc.), but you are beyond redemption if you torture animals or people of any age. Period. And the same goes for unambiguous rapists. By “unambiguous rapist,” I mean a character who, beyond a shadow of a doubt, knew exactly what he was doing to the victim- not iffy cases that may have been the result of legitimate misunderstandings. Just as an example of a fictional legitimate misunderstanding for narrative purposes, I remember reading about a controversial science fiction story where an alien unknowingly commits rape because he totally misunderstood every signal his victim gave him as enthusiastic consent according to his cultural norms and had no frame of reference otherwise. It might have happened on his planet too, if I’m not mistaken. With a setup like that, I could possibly keep reading to see how the story turned out. That doesn’t mean I’m going to excuse the rapist, but I’m not going to put that in the same category as a character who willfully committed an act of rape. Second, moving over to real life rather than literature, I am sympathetic to the painful stories many have shared here. I totally get the frustrations about victim blaming and shaming. However, I am also a staunch defender of equality before the law. So, I do have a problem with blanketed social movements to automatically “believe her” when doing so flies in the face of everyone’s right to a fair trial and the principle of “innocent until proven guilty.” Rape is a heinous crime, no question. Unfortunately, it is difficult to prove in a court of law, especially if a) much time has passed and/or b) there is little concrete evidence to suggest physical injury. I’m not saying any of this to cause hurt or to discredit victims, but there is an important legal side to this. You cannot rightfully convict someone of a crime without solid evidence. So, what can realistically be done to ensure a) justice is served while b) making sure innocent, falsely accused parties are not punished for crimes they didn’t commit? As for the argument that false rape reports are rare, I don’t think there’s any way to gather accurate, concrete figures on this. People make false accusations about various things all the time. People commit murders and cover them up with piles of lies. People lie, lie, lie before cops and judges to avoid being punished. People tell dastardly falsehoods to ruin people’s careers (I know a patently false accusation of plagiarism nearly ruined me, so don’t try to tell me it doesn’t happen). In short, people can and do lie about anything and everything for their own personal gain. So why are we supposed to believe that people never or hardly ever lie about rape? I’ve definitely heard horror stories about divorce lawyers encouraging their clients to accuse their ex-spouses of rape, child molestation, and other forms of violence in order to get the ex to lose all custody to the kids. Believe me, there are some really ugly reasons why a person would accuse someone of committing heinous crimes. That’s why we have to uphold the principle of “innocent until proven guilty.” Also, I don’t see taking common sense precautions as automatically falling into the category of victim blaming. I see it kind of like this: In a perfect world, I should be able to walk around with several hundred dollar bills hanging out of my pockets without ever having to worry about getting mugged. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world, so it’s better to exercise caution. True, if I walked around with my money hanging out and got mugged, that wouldn’t make me any less of a victim. But at the same time, it wasn’t the wisest decision I could have made. I… Read more »
You are entitled to your opinion of course. However, it is interesting that you have presented no actual data or statistics to support your argument beyond a few anecdotal examples. No one here is saying that someone accused of rape is not entitled to a fair trial. I am a law lecturer and my husband is a criminal defence/family barrister, you don’t have to convince me of that. When people say ‘believe the woman’, what they mean is that we should listen to her the way we listen to other people who report crimes. Data shows that false reporting for rape is no higher than for other crimes (Gilbert and Pittman, 1993). Yet we rarely approach an alleged victim of theft or robbery with the same suspicion and vitriol as we do an alleged rape victim. Your argument that ‘everyone lies’ is the reason why it is so hard to uphold an allegation of rape in court; it frequently comes down to a he-said, she-said situation. This is why any ‘good’ lawyer, would NEVER advise their client to make up allegations of rape etc in court. Not only is it a breach of a lawyer’s duty to the court, it is also quite frankly a piss-poor legal strategy. You are right to argue that a person is ‘innocent until proven guilty’, but does it not apply the other way too? Shouldn’t a person be innocent of the crime of falsely reporting rape, until they are proven guilty? Let’s not forget that there is very little to gain from making a false accusation of rape. A woman or man coming forward with an allegation of rape, will have to withstand a barrage of victim-blaming, invasive questions of their personal life, and (quite often) death and rape threats. That’s why a number of women in this thread have decided not to report their own experiences with sexual assault.
“But at the same time, our society is failing women by teaching and socializing them to be too nice to their attackers. Girls need to learn early and often how to make a big, loud possibly violent scene if touched against their will. Frankly, I think a lot of the “freeze” reaction, while definitely legitimate, is often conditioned throughout a lifetime of teaching girls to always be nice and quiet”: The ‘freeze reaction’ is complex, it is often a psychological reaction to the trauma of rape. When someone I know was gang-raped by 5 robbers, their mind automatically went blank, their body froze and till today, they cannot remember anything of their rape. Their freeze reaction cannot be easily explained as they were being nice to the poor robbers. You are right to point out the toxicity in teaching girls to be nice and quiet. Yet, when these girls decide to speak out, you quickly change tune and question their motives. A little bit of mixed messaging here.
Finally, in relation to your point of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and not automatically believing the accuser, perhaps it is worth employing the same tactics that it is used against women reporting rape, to accused rapists. Why were you placed in a situation, that led to another person to accuse you of rape? Why did you drink so much? Why didn’t you just walk away if you were both inebriated? Why is it the case that we know so many decent, upstanding men who have never been subject to the false accusation of rape?
“You are right to argue that a person is ‘innocent until proven guilty’, but does it not apply the other way too?”
From what I understand, the burden of proof falls on the accuser regardless of the type of crime. Am I right?
“You are right to point out the toxicity in teaching girls to be nice and quiet. Yet, when these girls decide to speak out, you quickly change tune and question their motives. A little bit of mixed messaging here.”
I don’t think it’s mixed messaging to be skeptical when rape accusations come to light years after the fact as opposed to a victim fighting back and/or reporting the incident immediately. Especially when there was a lot of that he said, she said ambiguity as opposed to your example of that savage gang rape by robbers. Yes, I understand the cultural and social reasons why it is often difficult to come forward. I don’t blame anybody for that. But at the same time, I recognize there are definitely widely different scenarios that constitute rape. To me, mutual drunken stupidity followed by regret and then accusing someone ten years later when he runs for office is not the same thing as being traumatized by robbers. Yes, I absolutely think people should be sober when having sex, but I think treating every case of moronic college behavior from both parties as automatic rape- as some people want to do- is taking things too far. Drugging someone or having sex with an unconscious person is absolutely 100% rape and the full measure of the law should be thrown at the rapist. But a bunch of bad judgments from both people that led to a disappointing and ambiguous sexual encounter? I’m going to be giving that the side-eye if I were on a jury. That doesn’t mean I automatically wouldn’t find the accused guilty, but I would have to listen to and view all the facts of the case.
Having said that, like you and Marian, I am absolutely disgusted by the Brock Turner case, especially that f-ing judge. I don’t give a rat’s tail about an obvious rapist’s future and frankly think he should have been put into a maximum security prison, general population to learn the real meaning of rape. You’ll find that I can be quite draconian toward irredeemable criminals…
I think the situation in the U.S. was turned on it’s ear with the proceedings that took place against now Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh.
The accusations against him were so unspecific the original letter accusing him didn’t even include a year, just “early 80’s”. Dr. Ford not only could not provide a date, time, or address for the incident-every single “witness” she said was there had no knowledge or recollection of the party let alone something happening as she described.
Even her best friend (also a life long democrat) who she claimed was there said she had no recollection of the party, let alone an incident. At first she said she believed Dr. Ford was telling the truth even though she had no first hand knowledge or memories of the party, but then later recanted saying she was put under huge pressure to support her. (The friend was undergoing cancer treatment at the time as well and was harassed by the media amongst others).
From what I understand there is not a single person who can corroborate that Kavanaugh and Ford ever even met or were in the same place at the same time.
Dr. Ford could not say where the party was, how she got there or how she got home. She didn’t mention Kavanaugh (or the incident I believe) until 2012 or later when he was a very high level judge. Every person she listed as there said they had no knowledge of any such gathering let alone the incident.
Dr. Ford was allowed to present as “evidence” a polygraph test that was not overseen by any official agency with no review of questions or presentation. A polygraph is considered so unreliable it is not considered admissible in court. (Even if we assume that the polygraph was correct and accurate- and that’s a huge if, all it would conclude is that Dr. Ford BELIEVES it to be true).
Because there were no witnesses to examine, no place or time to prove or disprove anyone was there or that the event (party) ever took place (even a question of the year) it was a situation where there was absolutely no way for the accused to prove it didn’t happen despite the “defendant” producing detailed calendars and evidence saved since the early 80’s.
The whole incident, driven entirely by politics became a primary example of the “Me Too” movement where a number of prominent people and countless women demanded that the standard should be “believe all women” despite the evidence or lack of evidence.
It is my opinion that this whole proceeding did IRREPARABLE harm to women and to anyone trying to accuse/prosecute someone of sexual assault.
It allowed an official proceeding that in no way resembled anything that occurs in a courtroom or real life to be blasted all over the world and put in the minds of millions of people that this could happen to anyone, particularly any man.
It falsely made people think our justice system allows people to drag someone and their name and life publicly through the mud with an accusation that has not one shred of evidence or proof behind it apart from one person’s word and unrecorded recollections from decades previously. That is so unspecific that it does not name a date, let alone a week month or even originally, a year when it occurred.
That unfortunately is what many, many people think of now when they hear “me too”. Not that women (or any victim) of a sexual offense should be treated as we treat victims of other crimes- fairly and examining all evidence after due investigation- but that there is a separate standard apart from what we use in other investigations and cases just for women where a woman just saying something happened is enough and more important than any other evidence or testimony.
I was wondering if someone was going to bring up the Kavanaugh case, but I didn’t want to be the one to do it. Thanks for describing some of my thoughts so articulately. Like you, I believe kangaroo court cases like this one- especially this one- really damage the credibility of actual victims.
I think a lot of the problem with rape cases in general is finding/supplying proof. A lot of people blame this on patriarchy- which isn’t entirely unfounded- but a lot of it has to do with the nature of the crime itself. People consent to sex all the time, whereas they don’t consent to robbery (short of an inside job), theft, murder, etc. So, it’s very difficult to tell without concrete evidence if a sexual encounter occurred voluntarily or by force as the outcome can “look” exactly the same. Cases like this Kavanaugh business certainly don’t help any. I do remember with a tinge of bitterness hearing a cop get asked what rape victims should do to help their cases. His advice was something like, “At the moment of the infraction, make sure the room looks like a crime scene- smashed vases, overturned furniture, etc. In other words, make sure the crime scene- and maybe you too- looks so bad that there’s no question of a lack of consent.” To this day, I’m not quite sure what to make of that…
The biggest problem with the Kavanaugh case, in my opinion, is that it was perceived by the world as if it were a court case when it operated as no court in the U.S. ever would.
I think it was incredibly damaging and put out a false idea of what an actual trial for such an offense would be like.
“I think it was incredibly damaging and put out a false idea of what an actual trial for such an offense would be like.”
And too often today, people are tried by the media itself- certainly in the Kavanaugh case but in many others as well. Honestly, I’ve had it with so-called “reporting.” It’s been ages since news outlets have even pretended to be impartial. But I digress.
I don’t know if I agree with this. Speaking as a non-American, my friends and I were more troubled with the political spectacle and partisanship that attaches to the election of a US Supreme Court justice. I think most right-minded people were aware that it was not an ordinary trial process.
You’ve very fairly highlighted the problematic aspects of the case against Kavanaugh, but I fear that you may have over-emphasised the supposed weakness of Ford’s testimony. Firstly, she is a well-regarded professor, who came across as a very credible witness. She has no previous history of lying. Experts in sexual trauma have stated that her inability to remember certain details is consistent with the experience typically faced by sexual assault survivors.
A college classmate of Kavanaugh, Deborah Ramirez, also came forward and alleged that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her in college. Another woman, Julie Swetnick, alleged that Kavanaugh was involved in enabling a pattern of sexual assault in high school. Ford offered some corroborating evidence in the form of therapist notes, and the other women were able to show that there were friends and classmates who had heard of the allegations at the time.
Whether or not such claims would be upheld in court is unclear, particularly given the passage of time. However, it is worth bearing in mind that it was necessary to listen to Ford’s claims, in order to determine whether or not Kavanaugh was fit for a lifetime appointment, particularly one where he would be called upon to decide upon the rights of women. Kavanaugh’s conduct during these hearings casts doubt as to whether he has the necessary temperament to serve as a judge.
I don’t see any long-lasting harm to Kavanaugh – he has been elected to one of the highest office of the land, for a lifetime position no less. Meanwhile, Ford has been the subject of horrendous death threats and doxxing.
Thank you for saying this. I’m an American and I’d characterize the events similarly.
Thanks a lot Cece:)