RAPE As A Metaphor Of Southern Gender & Racial Relations
By Kalamu ya Salaam
Rape is not a metaphor. Rape is a reality. For the most part rape is a domination of women by men. Although it is true that a man can be raped, and occasionally, mostly within the prison system, men do get raped. Nevertheless, the dominant reality of rape is a woman overpowered by a man.
In the early eighties I wrote an analysis of rape from an African American perspective. I defined four types of rape. 1. Brutal rape. The stranger with a knife, gun, or brutal fists. 2. Bogart rape. This is commonly referred to today as “date rape.” The perpetrator of this form of rape is usually an acquaintance, kin, or friend of the family. 3. Business rape. The use of economic coercion or other implied threats against the economic or social well-being of a woman. Cops raping prostitutes. Professors raping students. Ministers raping parishioners. In this case, often the threat is psychological and not physical, but it is coercion none the less, rape none the less. 4. Bed rape. Specifically spousal rape.
But a socio-political analysis of rape is not the rape I want to talk about now. I want to talk about rape in both a more personal way and also in a more symbolic way. I want to talk about rape as an untalked about way of life that influences and even shapes our personalities. I want to address rape as a universal characteristic of social activity and mores in the south. I want to begin a discussion of rape as an unavoidable shaper of our consciousness, and as an explanation of many attitudes and behaviors that at first glance, and second and third glance for that matter, may not seem to have anything at all to do with rape.
In short I propose to see rape as a metaphor for social exchanges between genders and between races in the south. So, while I am perfectly aware of the reality of rape, and understand the seriousness of that reality, what I would like to focus on is rape as a symbol of how we treat each other in the south. Further, I will ask the question what is the role of the writer in illuminating the meaning of this and other symbols. Perhaps, or more accurately I should say “hopefully,” at the end of this brief presentation you will at least share with me an appreciation of the realities I refer to with the concept of “rape as a metaphor” even if you may disagree with much of the meaning I deduce from the various social realities I will discuss.
I do not have a straight way to tell this story, so please indulge me as I reveal the various layers.
My first memory of a discussion of rape in literature is the Greek mythology “the rape of Europa” where Zeus turns into a bull and abducts the fair maiden. This always struck me as a rather ridiculous story as a means of detailing how a continent, a land, a country or nation came into existence. But, now as I reflect on the metaphor, that is the symbol, I understand that essentially from a euro-centric perspective the founding of civilization is based on male domination of women. Despite all its celebrated philosophical ideals, Greek society was highly misogynist, in fact, both the word and the concept for the hatred of women comes from the ancient Greek.
I do not argue that all Greeks were misogynist, nor that there are no examples of women playing significant roles in that society. My view is simply that Greek mythology is the mythology of male domination of women.
Some feminist argue that this juncture in history represents not simply male domination of women, but indeed patriarchal overthrow of the matriarchy. While I appreciate this point of view, advocacy of this view is not essential to the issues I am raising at this moment, so I note this point in passing mainly to acknowledge its relevance. I should point out that in this context I can appreciate why some so-called “militant feminists” have described men as biologically the enemy. I think such gender critics are identifying men as the “outside other” who exists apart from women.
While many of these critics advocate “amazonism,” i.e. societies devoid of men, I would raise the question of what is the nature of manhood within the context of a matriarchal society. My answer is that, rather than man becoming a dominator as is the nature of manhood under patriarchy, under matriarchy manhood becomes simply another expression of nurturer.
In fact, in our language husband has two very different meanings. The most generally accepted meaning is master of the house, but husband can also mean to judiciously maintain and use resources. I think those two definitions reflect both the current domination of the patriarchy and the prior existence of matriarchy.
But let’s get back to Zeus so that we can move on to the south. What does the bull represent? Again, I asked myself if Zeus was indeed a god why did he have to turn himself into an animal in order to “take and deflower” the maiden. As the supreme god, it seems that it would have been a simple matter for Zeus to turn himself into a tall, dark and handsome stranger whom Europa would have found irresistible. Or for that matter he could have just hypnotized Europa and “made” her fall in love with him. My contention is that this rape, like all rapes, has nothing to do with love. It was about power and domination.
At this point I am assuming that most of you have seen Titian’s famous painting of this mythological rape. When I first saw a reproduction of “Europa”, it did not look like rape to me. It looked like an idealization and romanticizing of what is actually a very brutal and unsentimental act. If one does not know the myth of the painting, one is able to look at it and think that it is about a woman riding a bull’s back, going somewhere. So then this is my first clue to the nature of rape — the brutality is always concealed. The overpowering is presented as though it were a natural activity, taking someone out for a Sunday ride, or something else equally as innocuous.
But even more profound than the concealing of the brutality inherent in rape is the presentation of the rapist as a beast. In the context of human sexuality, bestiality is not unknown, but I was always mystified as to why bestiality would be celebrated. Thinking about the meaning of bestiality within the context of this myth led me to the second major aspect of rape as a metaphor: the rapist must dominate his victim, clearly and utterly. So first the brutality is concealed and second the dominance is celebrated.
Concealment is a major aspect of the myth in that the concealment of the brutality helps to make the rape seem natural and thus inevitable or unavoidable. Moreover, the concealment also implies that there is nothing that women can do to stop rape and that there is no reason for men not to rape women. Such concealment requires the complicity of the raped in the form at least of silence and the complicity of the larger society in the form of denial. I think you can see how this has traditionally played itself out in southern gender and racial relations. But there is more.
I am starting this discussion of rape as a metaphor by examining these paintings and the myths associated with these paintings because this society actually teaches and maintains these myths. Everyone who goes to college, for example, must take art appreciation and these are some of the paintings that are presented for appreciation.
Why? Why are false images of rape worthy of appreciation? I suggest that these images actually are encoded with the basic philosophy of social behavior because myths are essentially the standards for the “social concepts of morality and behavior”.
I believe that literature is the visual art of the industrial era. By “visual art of the industral era” I mean that originally the myths of the society were encoded in the paintings but that task has shifted to literature, primarily fiction. Indeed, one might argue that once the general populace became literate, the visual arts were freed from the task of mythological representation and thus non-representational and non-figurative visual forms became the norm.
Thus, the novel specifically and literature in general, replaces the painting in the myth making and myth maintenance of our time. My spin on the role of the visual arts and on literature also explains why poetry and drama were the two forms of literature that first gained currency. Because neither drama nor poetry required a literate audience in order to exist, both forms were able to widely “broadcast” (to use a modern word in an ancient context) the myths of their era.
Every modern writer, either consciously or unconsciously, must decide whether to perpetuate or debunk the prevailing myths of this era, namely whether to uphold or oppose patriarchy and colonialism. Because of the dominance of these myths in the psychological life of our era, there is no avoiding this choice.
Here are the major divisions between people within a society and between peoples of different societies. First there was the mythology of the patriarchy and then there was the mythology of race. Actually, the mythology of race is really the mythology of colonialism. So at this point we see two lines of demarcation, one is gender and the other is race, and thus within this mythology the White male is king. Third is modern class struggle but the dividing line of class in this case, as is the case with most aspects of the modern era, is not fix nor based on the biological differences of race or gender. Moreover, although class differences may seem to us to be the major division, it is not the primal division and that is why even when we attack class distinctions we have not spoken to gender nor racial issues.
This calls to mind another aside. The myths of a society always rationalize the history of the society and in that regard mythological images must be contextualized to be fully understood. For example the patriarchal bull of Greek and European society is transformed in the mythic history of Spain into the racial bull of the moors. Thus bull fighting, which is unique in its passion to Spain and areas where Spanish colonialism has dominated, actually represents the expelling of the moors, of African dominance, from Spain.
While any one of these points could be explored in greater depth, I want to move on to briefly address the third characteristic of rape, which is the concept of “the other”.
Another famous rape painting is Giovanni da Bologna’s “The Rape Of The Sabine Women.” Notice again the portrait lacks realistic horror, lacks actual brutality, lacks the intense pain a rape victim feels. What are these male painters saying? I think they are trying to condition all of us to accept that rape is not as bad as it is.
Bologna’s painting clarifies the third encoded aspect of rape. Rape is committed by an outsider. Rape is an act not just of domination but also of conquest, of foreign invasion, of alien occupation, in short of colonialism. If you choose, you may see the woman in all of these instances as a metaphor for the indigenous society and the man as a metaphor for the conqueror from abroad.
What does this have to do with literature and the south? Precisely this, myth determines attitude. The prevalence of these myths. The constant purveying of them in college courses under the rubric of great literature and art appreciation, is substantially not only an ideological justification of rape but, more importantly, this teaching of mythology is a psychological brainwashing designed to insure that those who are the victims of brutal male domination are never able to completely describe the full horror of their victimization and hence are never able to organize opposition to their domination.
Since two thoughts can not occupy one mind at the same time, these sentimental images of rape make it impossible for us to think of rape as rape really is. I am saying that if we teach romance and the student accepts romance then not even the individual reality of the student will be able to overcome the romantic images in the student’s head. Why? Well, essentially because we are social creatures and we use language to communicate with each other.
If we have no words, no images, no language in common then we can not communicate the full reality of our individual experiences. Essentially, until the romance of rape is deconstructed, every time a rape victim talks about rape, unavoidably the person or people to whom the victim is talking will envision that experience according to socially determined conceptions and images of rape. Indeed, even if one of the listeners is herself a victim, she often will have a difficulty in bonding with the victim who is speaking out because she has no common language and in the absence of language we cease to be social because all social activity requires language of one sort or another. This is also why many victims of rape turn silent or resort to quote “ranting.”
I suggest that part of the horror of rape is the concealment of the horror, the lack of “words” to reveal the truth. When truth goes untold, lies prevail. The average victim of rape literally lacks the vocabulary to communicate what has happened. This vocabulary lack is not a result of ignorance on the part of the victim but rather a tacit structural absence in the language. Moreover, if you think about it, not only are the words not there, but worse, dominating behavior is celebrated thus even as the victim attempts to describe what happened, she ends up “glorifying” the rapist by describing him as a powerful man, i.e. someone who overpowered her.
The absence of language to tell the truth about rape is so pervasive that the average rape victim remains silent because she often is literally unable to speak about the experience. All of the feelings of shame and guilt, and other negative self concepts common to victims of rape are nothing but the social language of patriarchal and colonial rape internalized. What Franz Fanon, Paulo Friere and other anti-colonial theorists have described as the “psychology of the oppressed” is a cogent description of the rape victim. I am saying that the colonized individual is a victim of White male domination, a victim of rape.
Let me fast forward a bit — and please bear with my jumping around, but this is a very difficult subject to tackle in a short span of time.
Have you noticed how the most brutal forms of rape have been normalized in our minds as interracial? In this sense, the rapist becomes not just someone from a different place but becomes a complete outsider. We all know that in southern culture the stigmatizing of Black males as rapists is a myth of major proportions. The Black male is the quintessential outsider. But the same is equally true of the White male. In African American society, the White male, historically is the quintessential image of the rapist. So then the image of the rapist becomes a foreigner of a different race.
While there is certainly a basis for the White fear of Black rape, which is really a White fear of Black domination not just in the sense of Black rebellion but also Black retribution, and while there is certainly a historical basis for the characterization of White males as the raper of Black women — indeed, had Titian’ painted the bull white and portrayed the woman as Afrika rather than as Europa, he would have been very precise in his depiction not only of patriarchy but also of colonialism — all of that notwithstanding, in modern society, the majority of rapes are not interracial and the majority of rapists are not outsiders.
The mythology of rape with its emphasis on the outsider actually “protects” the insider, the non-other who is the real rapist. What happens is that the very people who were lynching Blacks were actually the major rapists. The mythology of rape is what allows males to sleep soundly next to women they rape everyday. The Bobbett castration paints the female as extreme for responding as she did to her perception of male domination. Ms. Bobbett simply reached the point where she recognized that her enemy, the person who was dominating her life, was not Willie Horton or some other fictitious outsider. She broke through the myth and acted on her beliefs. If tomorrow we woke up to find that five thousand women had cut of the penises of the men who raped them, that would be a real tomorrow in the sense of a new day rather than a repeated tomorrow in the sense of another day just like the last day. This is a destruction of myth.
Rape reinforces colonialism but also supersedes it. The issue of how Black men benefit from and participate in patriarchal behavior has been addressed before, but simply let me point out that it is in the interest of patriarchal men of whatever race to perpetuate rape thus there is a convergence of behavior and attitude in this regard even as there is a divergence of social reality along racial lines. When we look at the patriarchal mythology of rape and combine that with the colonial manifestation of rape, we can easily understand how the Black woman is doubly dominated: White men dominate her in the classic patriarchal and colonial sense, and Black men dominate, or attempt to dominate, her in the patriarchal sense.
Much of the post-sixties fiction by African American women speaks to this issue of dominance even when it does not speak directly about the issue of intra-racial rape. The worldwide anti-colonial, national liberation struggles of the fifties and sixties which were characteristic of the so-called Third World along with the anti-colonial struggles in America which were known as first the Civil Rights Movement and second the Black Liberation or Black Power Movement gave voice to the anti-colonial aspect of rape. The feminist movement gave voice to the anti-patriarchal aspect of rape. We still await a movement which reveals the combined reality of rape.
This brings us to southern literature. Where in southern literature are we presented with the reality of rape rather than the mythology of rape? The literary landscape is littered with all kinds of references to the mythology but who has tackled the task of giving voice to the victim of rape, of revealing their realities, of providing vocabulary to communicate the reality and meaning of rape?
Mind you, I am not talking about a literature focusing on the injustice of lynching. I am not talking about a literature that talks about either the joys or horrors of taboo sex. I am not even talking about the literature that deals with the alleged angst of miscegenation. I am talking specifically about a literature that gives language to the reality of rape.
The metaphor of rape for me is a metaphor of concealed domination and hidden horror, a metaphor of silence and misunderstanding, a metaphor of the celebration of dominance and colonialism. Where is the literature that deals with this. What does Faulkner, or Ernest Gaines for that matter, have to say about this? To find this literature we must turn to the writings of African American women precisely because they are the most victimized by these various forms of domination, and certainly they are the main victims of rape.
Male domination is what a great deal of the work of Alice Walker and Gayl Jones and hundreds of other African American female writers concentrate on. When you read these books you will notice that the language is not “normal” precisely because they are trying to deconstruct the normal, deflate the myths and reveal the truth. In order to achieve their ends they must tangle with the question of language.
While I celebrate and am happy to read the works of African American women, I think this job of deconstructing rape and creating new language is a task for all writers. In many ways, as James Baldwin pointed out, although certainly less socially exploited, so-called Whites are more psychologically trapped than African Americans are by the results of rape.
Allow me this brief digression to illustrate what I see as the persuasiveness of rape in this society and the psychological entrapment the persuasiveness of rape inevitably produces. There is another famous painting. Georges Seurat’s “Sunday Outing.” It is a French painting in the style of pointillism. In the foreground of the painting one of the dominant images is a White woman in the fashion of the day which includes a bustle. What is a bustle and what does it mean? Why should White women of that era adopt a fashion style which is an exaggeration of the classic physique of the Black woman?
I know what it means when Black women rub bleaching creams into their skins, when they wear blue contact lens, when they put weaves and extensions into chemically straightened hair. What does it mean for a White woman to wear an artificial butt and why should that become a fashion rage? This fashion happened at a time when Black women were often paraded and displayed in circuses, the Venus Hententott being the most famous of them.
Obviously the bustle reveals a deep seated anxiety or feeling of inadequacy, but where would that feeling come from? This brings me to the fourth aspect of rape as metaphor in southern life. Rape is a psychologically loaded metaphor for the contradictory love/hate, envy/disgust that Whites feel for Blacks and that Blacks feel for Whites. In order for big butts to become the fashion among White women there had to be not only a social acceptance of this trend but indeed their had to be a social desire. The fact is the other, the male, be he Black or White, acting out his role as a dominator unconsciously not only seeks to rape the other woman, but also eroticizes and invests in the other woman a tabooed pleasure.
One does not rape a woman that one considers the paragon of beauty. But if beauty and eroticism are split, if love and desire are divorced that we get the kind of fascination with the O. J. Simpson case that is completely out of keeping with it’s horror as a murder case. We watch O. J. precisely because the myth of rape and all of the attendant spin-offs, particularly the eroticization of the other, is the silent subtext. This is particularly the case in a society which is sexually repressed as has been the sexual history of America specifically and Christianity in general. Hawthorn’s The Scarlet Letter (or the “fucking A” as it is vulgarly known) is a quintessential example.
I wonder specifically what do White women think of White men in the south given this eroticization of the Black woman. The movie “Wide Sargasso Sea” began to touch on some of these questions but did not really foreground the realities. Where is the literature that specifically locates the feelings of White women as they look around and see so many Black children who have the characteristics, sometimes even including the color, of their White male partners? Where is the literature that unlocks the feelings, the experiences and the realities of the Black mothers of these mulatto children? I think there is a considerable void in our southern literature?
I am not asking for a literature simply of rage, or a literature of maudlin confession, nor a literature of political and/or moral condemnation. I am calling for a literature of revelation that simply tells the truth. I realize that telling the truth is far from simple, but I think that is the literature we need, particularly in the south.
Northern literature has another major theme and that is the transformation of European immigrants into so-called White Americans and this transformation often took place without any major interaction with African Americans on a day to day physical basis. Of course I realize that it was impossible to live in America and not be affected by the dominant racist racial attitudes, nonetheless, there is a distance in the northern experience that does not exist in the southern experience.
Toni Morrison has commented on the lack of racial truth telling, the absence of Black images in the literature even though “Black otherness” dominated the cultural life of America for most of its existence. This domination manifested itself first in terms of the slavery/abolition question, second in terms of the civil war/reconstruction question, third in terms of the segregation/immigration question, and finally in terms of the civil rights/integration question. The absence of truthful renderings of these themes and eras in much of American literature is precisely what dooms most of that literature to the dust bin of colonialist and patriarchal propaganda and myth making.
While I am always skeptical of exceptionalistic arguments, it seems clear to me that southern literature is in a unique position to explore the themes which have dominated the social life of America throughout its history but it can not do so if it simply perpetuates the myths of rape rather than reveals the reality of rape. I believe that rape mythology is the bottom line for most gender and racial interchange in this society in general, and in the south in particular.
Part of our tasks as writers is to explore our realities, but I think another part of our task is also to give voice to the silent, to reveal what has been hidden, to communicate that which has been conveniently ignored. In this way just as rape is a metaphor for the terrible state of social relations in the south today, a literature which accurately deals with rape will produce liberating metaphors, liberating language. Such a literature will enable us to confront our realities and move on rather than to simply be caught in a vicious cycle of domination and repression of reality. Of course, such a literature will be dangerous precisely because it will necessarily call for a complete overturning of the current social order.
From my perspective rape is the most concentrated expression of patriarchy and colonialism, and as such is the chief metaphor which must be examined if one is to deal with the psychological underpinnings of what we are told is a scientific and democratic culture. No other single act, no other single metaphor, is as cogent in its embodiment of four essential aspects of our contemporary reality. Those four aspects are the concealment of brutality, the celebration of male dominance, the acceptance of dominance by the other, and the convolutions of interracial relationships.
The power of art is precisely its passion rather than its logic. This is why we look to the arts, to the literature of today and the paintings of yesterday. The arts reveal the myths, the passionate beliefs of a society as well as the rationales for those beliefs.
The question is to what end will the passion of art be employed. Any art that does not reveal, implicitly conceals, and vice versa. What I am suggesting is that the prevalence of myths around rape are necessary in order for this society to remain structured as it is, in order for White males to remain in charge.
If we successfully challenge rape, unavoidably we will challenge male domination. While I am not unmindful of class distinctions and the importance of class struggle, I think that class is always an internal matter. Additionally, class struggle does not get to the foundation of male domination in the forms of patriarchy and colonialism. At the same time, I think we all understand that the rich benefit from colonialism and from patriarchy. For example, a rich woman may act like a man, i.e. dominant others. Nevertheless, the question of male dominance and the metaphor of rape seem to me to be the richest area of investigation for our southern literature, and is certainly the area least investigated to date, which is not surprising given that the majority of published southern authors are White males.
I shall conclude my remarks with the reading of a poem which I wrote back in the early eighties, unfortunately this poem is every bit as relevant today as it was then, if not more so. Thank you for your attention and your consideration of my loose assemblage of ideas and observations. If I have said anything of value please feel free to use it and pass it on. Here is my poem.
RAPE POEMS (for C.C. & C.E.)
#1
“the thing
about it
was, i knew
the nigger”
a “good” rape happens
all the time
you know him
it has been a good
date or a bad one,
you’re sober or slightly
glowing or tipsy, rarely
high or drunk, mostly
straight awake
at first he’s
insistent,
you say no,
he hesitates
but then the time comes,
the bogart begins, the
hands ruff on your
body, the methodical
pressure to make you
give it up
in the movies there is
always this mean magical minute
when each woman’s resistance
melts, her semi-serious
pleas of “no” and “don’t”
turn to methodical breathing
and clothes peeling off
in soft piles of nylons & synthetics
with a searing hot
french kiss
but this is not the movies
all you feel is pain
as this man violates
you, again and
again
it is not passion nor pleasure
but pure physical pressure
that forces your
submission
suddenly you are not even
there, he is over your body
in your body
but you
you are not even there,
only, for truth
you are there
right there getting raped
afterwards you wash yourself
and douche but do not cry
and seldom call the police,
after all it happens
to lots of women
all the time, why
feel sorry for yourself,
you’ve been raped
before
and the thing about
it is, you thought
you knew the nigger
#2
your husband, your
lover, your duty
it is
no less a crime
when he makes you
do it, invoking
the finalness of his fists
the holiness of his husbandness
the whoreness of your wifeness
sailing smugly
and nonchalantly
through your body
like as if his penis
and a piece of paper
(with some judge’s signature
endorsed by the state)
gives him omnipotent license
and unlimited rights
of passage through
the waters of your vagina
but then this rape
(like most rapes
in this society)
this rape
in the final
analysis
is legal.
#3
few men know
how it feels to get fucked
to lay there and take
it in and out
when you don’t want to
maybe in the prisons
and behind bars
when dudes turn out
young males
but on the streets
and in the bedrooms, in
back seats of cars
and office suites
around the world
few men realize
what rape
really is