Note To Self: Exploiting Rape Victims Is Wrong

Published February 25, 2009 @ 06:35PM PT

Wronging Rights, one of my favorite blogs, had a great piece yesterday, oh-so-gently expressing reservations about the forthcoming book Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape.

According to Wronging Rights:

"And probably, if I specialized in children affected by armed conflict, or was Amnesty bloody International, I would understand why it was a good idea to single women out as rape victims, without presenting anything more about their lives or identities. (Sad that you still live in poverty? Depressed because your whole family was murdered? Sorry, this exhibition is vaginas-only!)

Those five years of experience with UNICEF would probably have given me the information I need to differentiate between the lurid details described so carefully in each video, and the lurid details described in, say, rape-fantasy porn. Because right now, I see basically the same thing: women whose presentation to me starts and ends with the sexual trauma inflicted on them."

Which struck a nerve, seeing as how many of my posts about rape in Congo fall into exactly this trap, or at least follow a similar pattern - brutal story, horrible statistics, general feeling that evil runs riot in the world.

Haven't done such a good job of presenting rape victims as actual people.

Certainly something to keep in mind.

And, curious to hear if anyone has thoughts or suggestions on how best to cover rape in Congo and other unpleasant places.

(That said, my guest bloggers have done a much better job providing context - including Lizzie Goodfriend writing about women survivors of rape in Liberia, and Brooks Keene, Harper McConnell, Jocelyn Kelly and Kerry Gough writing about Congo.)

Finally, on a related note - using images of starving children to raise funds is also exploitative. And yes, I'm talking about you, Concern.

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Comments (8)

Your and Concern's favicons are somewhat similar..

Posted by vytautas rudzianskas on 02/26/2009 @ 04:12AM PT
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Vytautas - potentially constructive criticism, if only I knew what a "favicon" was. Any clarification?

Michael

Posted by Michael Bear on 02/26/2009 @ 07:42AM PT
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No, no don't pay attention, just a nerdy joke... You can see it here: http://img147.imageshack.us/my.php?image=86069817.jpg

Posted by vytautas rudzianskas on 02/26/2009 @ 12:29PM PT
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Thanks for the clarification -- and, if it's any help, I'm writing on this on an Apple IIe.

MBK

Posted by Michael Bear on 02/26/2009 @ 12:33PM PT
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All good points, and honestly I haven't a clue how to begin doing a better job of that and not sure I deserved a shout-out there. Maybe going MORE in-depth into a given person's life? If you're trying to mobilize action, I definitely think hashing out statistics isn't really going to cut it, so you have to find a way to humanize the whole thing. The only way I can see to do that is (1) make sure people know what they're giving their story to and why, and (2) tell the story on a deeper and more complete level.

Posted by Brooks Keene on 02/26/2009 @ 08:28PM PT
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Brooks - couldn't agree more,

MBK

Posted by Michael Bear on 02/28/2009 @ 06:17PM PT
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As a friend wrote:

I liked the writing about rape. And agree that too often we focus on the rape and not the person - just as doctors speak about an interesting case....

As a friend of mine often says, the tales of grief and woe, the horror and the sadness leave people with a strange fascination (which I found very unsettling during my time in Rwanda) and also a sense of hopelessness. In many cases, the focus on the human turns this around - it is no longer fascinating it is abhorrent (because if you a know a crime victim, the detective story that goes with it becomes less interesting doesn't it? Except perhaps from the perspective of how much closer the detective is to finding out who did it?) but humanity does give a sense of hope...with the human side, comes the point that people in so many of these extremes are incredible... they are whole - people with lives... just like you and me, and just like you and me - things do more forward...

Posted by Michael Bear on 03/02/2009 @ 01:55AM PT
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This comment was sent in by Jocelyn Kelly, of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative:

As a researcher in the field of sexual violence, I struggle with how to represent survivors of violence with dignity and honesty everyday. So much of advocacy seems to pillory women for the world - her face, her most personal and horrific moments. The purpose is to say "look, look what happened to her. This woman had her life destroyed and in your bearing witness, your guilt must drive you to action."

The word pillory refers to the stocks set up in medieval times to display criminals to the communal eye. Now it seems that since we can't find the criminals, we display the victims. The purpose is different. The mob, instead of punishing the perpetrator is supposed to be driven to redress injustice in the world.

But perhaps the result for the person on display is the same - shame and dehumanization.

It is hard to know. I will say often women I work with are eager, insistent on telling their stories. At the end of many focus groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo with survivors of rape, the women urge us to take their plight and their proposed solutions to the international community. There is a sense of urgency and a crying out for change.

One key difference I can identify between this and something like the "Intended Consequences" exhibit is that women in the focus groups are treated as experts in the problems they face. They are given an open forum to express their experiences, but also their needs for change and their ideas for ways to address problems. They choose their agenda.

In the end, advocacy and research can have similar aims. Researchers studying current issues, like advocates, would like to see their work inform policy. I think much of it comes down to how women are asked to come forward and the freedom they are given to talk about what is important to them.

I have never met a woman who thinks of herself only as a victim of violence. That is perhaps why an exhibit depicting them that way feels so wrong.

Narratives that dehumanize women by making them only a vessel for violence - a one-dimensional testament to evil in the world - are irresponsible and medieval.
Stories that are designed to evoke the most horror possible may shame viewers. But stories that emphasize the complex humanness and many facets of a problem connect us through our humanity.

We should urge change not through evoking feelings of guilt, but by challenging people's consciousness and igniting their sense of justice.

Posted by Michael Bear on 03/16/2009 @ 02:20PM PT
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Michael has worked for NGOs in Afghanistan, across east and central Africa, and Iraq. Prior to going overseas, he worked on a project providing assistance to the United Nations on the application of International Humanitarian Law to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.