by Laurie Penny
What was astonishing was not the courage it doubtless took for Stoya to type those fifty-five words and hit send, knowing that she would be accused of lying and attention-seeking, knowing the number of people who would claim that as a sex worker, she cannot expect to claim rape and be believed. What was astonishing, though, what had my heart between my teeth, was the number of people who did the opposite. Even before more former partners and colleagues of Deen came forward with more accusations of rape and violence, major porn studios dropped him as a performer, and many outlets publishing his work and writing cut ties. The hashtag #solidaritywithstoya trended around the world.
Watching the story unfold, I found these lines from Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Small Backs of Children echoing in my mind: ‘Nations will shift like stones in the hands of a girl making a city in the dirt, and men and women . . . either they will finally see each other and do what must be done to evolve, or they will not.’
Something is changing. The response to Stoya and the other accusers is the crest on a tidal wave of women’s truth washing away the detritus of lies about sex and violence, about which lives matter and who is to be believed. In Hollywood, in the music industry, in politics, in every corridor, women and girls are coming forward and coming together to stand against a culture of abuse that has valued the reputation of powerful men above the dignity and voice of women. It’s Bill Cosby. It’s Jimmy Savile. It’s Terry Richardson. It’s the Steubenville High School football team. It’s all of their accusers, whose names we have been told do not matter. Until now.
That’s what solidarity is.
The default response to accusations of rape, especially against powerful men, has long been to assume that the accusers are lying. That’s what women do, of course – that’s the nature of the sex. They are malicious and vengeful and they refuse to accept that men simply have more sexual power than they do, because nature made them that way, or because God wants it that way, depending on your point of view.
The thing about rape is that it is extremely hard to prove. By its very nature, there are usually no outside witnesses. Even when victims steel themselves, overcome their fears and go directly to the police without taking a shower, they can count on not being believed.
Part of the reason that rape is hard to prove is that sexist fairy tales about what constitutes consent infect judges and juries just as much as the general public. Of the many myths about sexual violence, the most pernicious is that women routinely lie about it. That’s not true: the rates of false reporting for rape and sexual assault are estimated to be around the same as rates of false reporting for any other crime – the current figure is anywhere between 0.2 per cent and 8 per cent. Men are actually more likely to be victims of rape themselves than they are to be falsely accused of it.
Rapists rely on these myths, often targeting women and girls who they know will be too scared to come forward, or who will not be believed. That means women of colour, young girls and sex workers. Former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw was found guilty of stalking and raping thirteen black women and girls, some of whom had previous arrest records for sex work. Serial rapists target the young, the vulnerable and sex workers, knowing how hard it is even for women deemed ‘respectable’ to be taken seriously.
For legal reasons, I must state that James Deen has not been convicted of rape – no charges have been brought, and he has denied the allegations.
But for moral reasons, I must emphasise that none of this means that rape did not happen.
Yes, Stoya could be lying. So could Tori Lux. So could Joanna Angel, Ashley Fires, Amber Rayne, Kora Peters, Nicki Blue, Lily LaBeau and all the other women who have accused James Deen of rape, assault and mental abuse. As a journalist, I have to consider that possibility, and so do you. He has denied the allegations. But the fact is that rape is common. Far too common. False allegations of rape are not common. Perhaps James Deen didn’t do it.*
‘Innocent until proven guilty’ is the cry that goes up every time a woman, then two, then five or ten or twenty women come forward to accuse a powerful man of abuse. What this means, in practice, is that we should always assume that women are lying until a judge says otherwise. In other words: shut the hell up. In other words: don’t rock the boat.
The reputation of men has historically been valued higher than the safety of women. If it’s a case of he said/she said, and nobody can ever know the truth, it’s tacitly understood that it’s better for fifty women to suffer in silence than for one man to lose his career. This continues to be the case despite the number of men who continue to enjoy success even after being convicted of rape or sexual assault.
Something huge is shifting in our culture. The way we think about sexuality as a whole, and the way we think about sexual violence in particular, is evolving as women and girls begin to speak collectively and with courage about their experiences. Rape is a crime; rape culture is what allows that crime to go unpunished and unreported. Rape is the injury; rape culture is the insult, shouted at you from comedy stages, whispered in the corners of parties, around dining-room tables.
Well, what was she thinking, going back to his apartment in the first place?
She was so drunk. Boys will be boys.
For a long time, women’s only real power in society was the power of sexual refusal. This was a contingent power – not based on pleasure but on the power to say yes or no to this man or that – and it was always dependent on whether the man in question would respect your decision, which depended largely on your race, class and social position. But the power to say ‘no’ to sex has always been women’s last bargaining chip in a misogynist society, and for as long as that has been true, men have resented them for it. It is about power. It is about the insistence that women’s bodies are public property, and women’s words, women’s autonomy, women’s agency do not matter, at least not compared to a man’s good name.
Right now, the balance of power is shifting. Why? Why now, after lifetimes of silence and suspicion, are women and girls coming forward to name their abusers and demand change?
Technology has a great deal to do with it. Social media allows all people to talk to one another frankly and in elective anonymity about their experiences. Women tell their truths on the Internet, from powerful personal essays to private groups and listservs. One such group I was recently privy to allows women and queer people in a particular location to warn each other about how men in their social circles behave – not just about whether they are rapists, but whether they are violent, whether they are respectful, whether they treat their partners like human beings.
The group is private, and it is not about shame, but about protecting one another without censure. If a friend warns me not to date a certain man because he has a tendency to get drunk, ignore boundaries and become aggressive, I won’t wait for a court conviction before making other plans. In almost every community I’ve been part of in the last few years, this story has played out. Serial abusers are finally confronted, no matter how powerful and popular. Women speak up together, and they are believed. The community struggles to readjust.
Divisions occur, arguments erupt and friendships change. Change this profound is always painful. But so is silence.
If patriarchy dreams, then its nightmares must involve women talking, loudly, bravely, about men. In fact, much of our culture is set up to avoid just this. Women are pitted against each other, taught to compete for male attention, socialised against solidarity. Our truths are dismissed as gossip and chatter, our writing as empty confession. The prospect of women truly talking to each other, trusting one another and standing together against male violence and sexism in their communities is legitimately terrifying to those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
The uncomfortable truth is not that women are lying en masse about rape – they’re not – but that women and girls and their allies are finally speaking about their experiences in numbers too big to ignore. The even less comfortable tr
uth is that many of these experiences involve behaviour that men and boys grow up believing is not criminal. The same rape culture that raises women to believe that it is their fault if they were assaulted raises men to believe the same thing. Men learn, because culture tells them, that women’s sexual autonomy is a barrier to be conquered – that sex is something they are supposed to get from women. Boys will be boys. The little boys who grow up hearing that mantra repeated learn that they need not take responsibility for their actions.
There is solidarity in adversity. Perhaps the reason that the adult industry is the only community currently actually behaving in an adult manner is that sex workers are under no illusion that the law is designed to protect them. The assumption of the general public has long tallied with the strategy for former MMA fighter War Machine, whose defence team claims that he could not have raped his ex-girlfriend, twenty-four-year-old Christy Mack, because her ‘work in pornography pointed to consent’. She was asking for it. She was also asking for the broken ribs, the fractured eye socket, the missing teeth and the lacerated liver that she sustained. War Machine has pleaded not guilty to the thirty-four felonies he’s been charged with, including sexual assault and attempted murder. Sex workers have had enough of being told that they have even less right to consent than the average woman – and it is no surprise that a broad movement against rape culture is now being led by sex workers themselves.
No means no, no matter who you are, no matter what job you do. No matter if he’s your partner. No matter how many times you’ve said yes. Women have always known this, but knowing is not enough when your friends, your family, society and the legal system tell you that you’re lying, you’re crazy, nobody will believe you, that you should think of the man’s reputation, that you should worry about being ostracised, that it wasn’t really so bad, was it, that you’re making a fuss about nothing, and really what were you doing drinking in the first place? Why were you wearing that dress? Why didn’t you fight harder? What made you think your dignity and safety was important? What made you think your body was your own? Shut up, stop whining and think about the man.
It is never easy to confront the prejudices we have grown up breathing in like air. But around the world, women are coming together and doing what needs to be done for society to evolve. Those clinging to old myths about rape and virtue, about good women and bad ones, will find themselves on the wrong side of history.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IS ‘MANNERS’ BY ANOTHER NAME
The year is 1994 and the place is a small suburban kitchen in Sussex. I’m eight years old and I’m sitting at the table, slopping Frosties into my mouth and reading Politically Correct Bedtime Stories. Some friends of my parents bought it for me as a joke. The joke is that I’m an angry, sensitive child whose favourite phrase is ‘That’s not fair!’ and I should lighten up and play with Barbies like a normal kid. I fail to get the joke. Politically Correct Bedtime Stories is my favourite book. You can tell from the milk stains.
In these stories, no princess has to wait to be saved. Cinderella organises against low-paid labour. Snow White is an activist for the rights of people of restricted growth. And the wolves are gentle, misunderstood carnivores who sometimes get to win. As I’m eight, I’ve never heard of political correctness before but it sounds good to me.
Fast-forward twenty years. In a freezing cold flat in Berlin, I’m standing under the shower with the water turned up as high and hot as it will go. I’m trying to boil away the shame of having said something stupid on the Internet. The shower is the one place it’s still impossible to check Twitter. This is a mercy. For as long as the hot water lasts I won’t be able to read the new accusations of bigotry, racism and unchecked privilege. I didn’t mean it. I don’t understand what I did wrong but I’m trying to understand. I want to be a good person. It turns out that however hard you try to be politically correct, you can still mess up. I am so, so sorry.
What has come to be called ‘political correctness’ used to be known as ‘good manners’ and was considered part of being a decent human being. The term is now employed to write off any speech that is uncomfortably socially conscious, culturally sensitive or just plain left-wing. The term is employed, too often, to shut down free speech in the name of protecting speech.
Recently, prominent writers from Jon Ronson to Jonathan Chait and Dan Hodges have been doubling down on the supposed culture of ‘political correctness’ and ‘public shaming’. It is no coincidence that most of the loudest voices condemning the ‘Twitter mafia’ are white, male, cisgender, privileged and unused to having to share any sort of public forum with large numbers of people who rarely have to worry about which pair of dad jeans will best conceal a pudding-coloured paunch. I’m really sorry if that image offended anyone, because some of my best friends truly are straight white men. Sometimes we do straight white men things together, like eating undercooked barbecue meat and scratching ourselves in front of Top Gear.
On one level, the pushback against ‘public shaming’ can be read as a reaction from the old guard against the empowerment of previously unheard voices. There is nothing particularly novel about well-paid posh chaps writing off feminists, black activists and trans organisers as ‘toxic’ and demanding that they behave with more decorum if they want to be taken seriously. I think, however, that it’s about more than that. I think it’s about shame and about fear.
On a very profound level, people who occupy positions of social power – and I include myself in that demographic – are worried not just that the unheard masses are coming for them but that they might be right to do so.
Most of us like to think we are good people. I do, although once, in a moment of extreme stress, I did tell a Telegraph journalist to go and die in a fire. When you are faced with a barrage of strangers whose opinions you actually care about yelling at you that you’re hateful and hurtful, that you’re an idiot and a bigot, when all you’ve done is make a mistake – well, the easy option, the option that feels safest and most comfortable, is to wall yourself off, decry your critics as prigs and bullies and make a great many ominous references to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Which is silly, because Internet feminists are really not a lot like totalitarian dictators; but if we are, I want to know when I’m getting the drone army and the snazzy Hugo Boss outfit.
It’s easy to criticise call-out culture, especially if the people calling you out are mean and less than merciful. It’s far harder to look into your own heart and ask if you can and should do better. Like almost every other human being, I don’t like it when people shout at me, unless I’m at a punk show and have paid good money to have people shout at me. I’m quite a sensitive bunny. I am mortified by the thought of hurting other people, even by accident. I’ve spent very dark days, following social media pile-ons, convinced that I was a horrible person who didn’t deserve to draw breath. I am not afraid of the sexist trolls who send me boring porn gifs on Twitter. I am afraid – frequently legitimately afraid – of letting people down. Of letting my community down. Of making a mistake I can’t move on from. I think everyone with a social conscience and a Facebook profile worries about this.
There is an enormous difference between being brought to task in public for making mistakes and the ritualised shaming of women, queer people and ethnic minorities online. There is a difference, a difference that critics such as Ronson and Chait are keen to smudge over, between marginalised people clamouring against instances of oppression, and everyday cyberbullying and harassment – what Monica Lewinsky, in her phenomenal TED talk, calls ‘public shaming as a blood sport’. The difference is all about power: who has it and who doesn’t.
I know this because I’ve experienced both. I’ve been called out for saying thoughtless things online, and I have also been the target of vicious hate campaigns from people who wanted me dead just for who and what I am. Much of the pushback I experience comes from sexists and bigots who simply hate the idea that any young woman, anywhere, has a writing career.
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Their violence can be very frightening, especially when they send bomb threats to my house. It does not, however, throw me into existential panic. The last time I got a graphic rape threat, I felt awful but the last time I got a furious tweet from a trans woman telling me off for accidentally using appropriative language, I felt worse. I felt shame. Especially because she had a point.
It is terribly difficult to stay in the room – physically, emotionally, politically – with the untempered anger of other people whose opinions you care about. It is harder still to cope with the possibility that the world is changing and you may need to change, too. That good intentions are not enough to stop you hurting others through ignorance or obliviousness. In that poky, unventilated bathroom in Berlin, I laid my head against the tiles and breathed in lungfuls of steam and decided to try to move beyond my own panic and understand that although this wasn’t, ultimately, about me, it was still my responsibility to try not to be a prat if I could help it. This is as good a baseline for human decency as any, even when the public parameters of what does and does not constitute tosspottery are shifting faster than a potter can toss.
Moving through guilt to catharsis is a tall order for a Tuesday night. It’s uncomfortable to realise that you’ve messed up in a way that requires apology. But I think moving through that discomfort, in this weird and unsettled age, is part of being an adult. Whoever we are, we have to learn to deal with the discomfort that comes with making mistakes, if we don’t want this moment of social change to produce more fragmentation, more misunderstanding, more dismissal of the concerns of the most marginalised and vulnerable people in society – people for whom discomfort is way down the list of daily concerns, somewhere behind homelessness and being shot in the back by police for a parking offence.
