{"id":18033,"date":"2013-03-21T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2013-03-21T17:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=18033"},"modified":"2013-03-21T02:02:53","modified_gmt":"2013-03-21T07:02:53","slug":"politics-and-the-rape-metaphor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/03\/21\/politics-and-the-rape-metaphor\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics and the Rape Metaphor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Re-posted to add to the discussion about sexual assault in the aftermath of the\u00a0Steubenville rape trial<\/a>, the\u00a0Senate hearing on rape and harassment in the military<\/a>, and the\u00a0controversy at Occidental College<\/a>.<\/em>
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nNizam A. sent in a rather stunning two-minute, 15-second clip put together by Media Matters<\/a>.\u00a0 It is a montage of the use of rape as a metaphor by right wing pundits (trigger warning).\u00a0 To be fair, I don’t know if a similar video could be made using left wing pundits, so it may be best in comments to stick to a conversation about the metaphor itself.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Why it this such a popular way of talking about the world?<\/p>\n

How does it work?\u00a0 Does the metaphor, given that we think of rape as a crime that men do to women, feminize and masculinize?\u00a0\u00a0 Or is it about a gendering of the very notion of violation and vulnerability?\u00a0 So are these pundits trying to transfer listener’s beliefs about protecting women and girls to other categories (e.g., the rich and the people of New York)?<\/p>\n

Does using it as a metaphor give more power to, or trivialize and make invisible, actual rape?<\/p>\n

Is there not some irony in how frequently we use it to describe something horribly violating, given the high rates of rape in the U.S., the frequency of non-reporting, our dismal treatment of victims, and the wildly low incidence of trials and convictions?<\/p>\n

See also our post on violent metaphors<\/a>, including rape.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Re-posted to add to the discussion about sexual assault in the aftermath of the\u00a0Steubenville rape trial, the\u00a0Senate hearing on rape and harassment in the military, and the\u00a0controversy at Occidental College. Nizam A. sent in a rather stunning two-minute, 15-second clip put together by Media Matters.\u00a0 It is a montage of the use of rape as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23384,55,2090,85,133],"class_list":["post-18033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-gender","tag-gender-violence","tag-politics","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18033"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54514,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18033\/revisions\/54514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}