Rape Culture: It's time to start calling cnts, cnts

TW: Rape, sexual assault, sexual coercion, graphic language. 

Editor's note: The writer of this piece (me) is British and uses the C word here in the context of categorising an awful person being awful. It is not to be conflated with the American version, where it's used to demean women, nor this writer's (still me) habit of using it when creating smut, where it refers to a specific and wonderful part of human anatomy.

Basically, we're talking cunts, not cunts.

I was a little late to the Cornell story but after I read the Girl on the Net piece, I went and looked it up, and was utterly horrified by what I saw.

Horrified. But I wasn't surprised.

I wasn't surprised because these stories aren't rare. It's like when you hear about a school shooting across the Atlantic - it sends a shiver down your spine and your heart aches, but of all the emotions you might experience, shock and surprise are not among them.

You see, I live in a world with Gisele Pelicot and without Sarah Everard. I live in a country where 1 in 4 women have been raped or sexually assaulted since the age of 16, Where nearly 75000 rapes were recorded here in the same year that this crime at Cornell occurred. I live in a media landscape where the degradation and depiction of violence against women is ubiquitous to the point of cliché. I have lots of women in my life and I hear their stories. I hear of their survival and I hear of their near-misses and I hear of their precautions and their tiredness and their worries and the sheer exhaustion of navigating through a world in which ominous danger, hogging a whole spectrum, follows them every day of their lives.

We even have a term for it: rape culture.

I am am going to take a brief moment here and address the bad actors who might be reading this and be tempted to pipe up that men can be victims too or this is just more Feminazi propaganda, designed to accelerate the male loneliness epidemic, demonise hashtag good men, and that women are capable of evil acts too. To those people I say this: I am a survivor of sexual manipulation and coercion, perpetrated by a woman, and if I can see that the existence of crimes against men by women in no way negates the overwhelming statistics and testimony that show the reality of rape culture, so can you.

And if you can't you have two choices: pull up a chair and listen to the kind of man for whom you claim to speak, or absolutely, permanently, and endlessly, get fucked.

Okay.

In the GOTN piece, she talks about how men will react to stories like these and reassure that they would never and they could never, but laments how we don't talk about what we WOULD do (NB, as I edit this, she has posted a follow up, with some advice on how to challenge and disrupt behaviour when we see it. I agree with all of it, except for the part where she says it isn't easy to be difficult. I think maybe it is for US, but more on that later).

Since then I have seen lots of posts on social media urging men to stop sitting on the bench, or bemoaning "not all men" and actually confront and drive the conversation, rather than leave it to women to do all the work. Speaking for myself, it's hard to know how to do that without virtue signalling, but fuck all that. 

When I read the GOTN piece, my first reaction was to try and remember when I last challenged someone on the way they talked about women, and nothing sprang to mind. I initially felt a bit sheepish, until realised that I also can't remember the last time I actually heard men talk this way in front of me. This is less evidence of an improving culture, and more the result of a 45 year old man choosing better friends and social circles. And it wasn't actually that hard to do. It isn't actually that hard to do, though I appreciate that waves of experience have carried me onto the shores of 45 and that for much of my life, when I cared more about what people thought, and saw my position in the social hierarchy as fragile, it really felt rather hard.

When I was youngster in short trousers, I went to an all boys boarding school abroad which dripped with every stereotype you could name in a lightning round. It was boisterous and violent and bullying and intimidating and bullying and oppressive and bullying. There were prefects who seemed to roam in packs and would conduct late night "erection inspections" to make sure no one was having a wank in the night. There were constant fights, physical invasion of personal space, malicious rumours and hate campaigns, theft and vandalism of personal property, and a list of other darker things that I only omit here because I think it might be too specific to the school.

And within all of that was the commodification of women. The Lacrosse team would boast about how they had slept with the girlfriends of opposing teams, ruining them for their boyfriends, their value measured only by their looks, bodies, and how "up for it" they were. From the ages of 11-18, I lived with these people, slept a room with these people, went to lessons with these people and ate with these people. I wasn't ever prepared to behave as they had behaved, but I was too cowardly to call them out and stop them. Others were brave. I watched as others tried to take a stand, others tried to challenge the culture, and when they did I watched as vicious retribution was visited upon them. I didn't want that so I stayed the fuck back and shut the fuck up.

I chose what I perceived to be survival. I made a calculation that if I avoided the spotlight, I could get out and be free of all of that shit. I'm ashamed I never stood with those other kids. Maybe nothing would have changed, but the only thing I know for sure is that nothing did.

Things are different now. When I was at school, I didn't think I could choose my social circle but now I can. Now I am uninterested in having lots of friends, I just want really good ones. I'm more comfortable with myself, and I'm sure it doesn't hurt that I am much bigger too. With a better social circle, I am not in those whatsapp groups or those pub crawls.

But there have still been opportunities. I wish I could tell you I remember all of them, and I wish I could tell you that I definitely met the moment every time, but I don't think I did. I think sometimes I did and sometimes I rolled my eyes and let the witless fool drift out of my life as anonymously as they arrived.

But when I have done it, it was surprisingly easy.

When a client of mine on a night out commented on the attractiveness and legal availability of a new team member - who was 18 years old - I felt a moment of hesitation to call him out, knowing that him liking me was a huge part of how I would keep my job. But I told him that I was going to write the comment down on my phone, and write any other subsequent comments down that he made throughout the night, and in the morning, I would read them back to him on our team briefing. He laughed. Brushed it away. And gave me nothing else to write.

It was easy.

Just like it was easy to tell another colleague that no, I didn't want to see the sexual picture a woman he was seeing had just sent him. And that without her consent, he shouldn't be fucking asking.

It was easy to tell a teenage nephew of an ex that no, Andrew Tate didn't have anything good to say about masculinity at all and his attitude towards women was fucking disgusting, and if you followed that clown, you were just another lemming, soon to be easily parted from your tuck money, you dippy cunt.

These are aged examples, mercifully, because my path is rarely crossed by this stuff now. But men call each other out all the time. Men argue, challenge, and hold grudges. It's easy to add this to the list. You'll call your mate a cunt if he won't pay you back the twenty pound he owes you, so call him a cunt when he makes a joke about fucking the new girl in the office.

Let's start by admitting that the damage is done upstream. That rape culture isn't just what happened in the room. It was the safety and encouragement that men give each other, inch by inch, word by word: this is okay. I'll say it too. I'll do it too. If you go down, I'll go down, so let's have each other's backs.

Let's change it.

Let's say that this isn't what men do.

That the virtue of strength is only found when combined with gentility. That we are impeccable with our word. That we expect a standard from our friends and that when they say sickening things we will wait for them in the tall grass.

This isn't how we behave. This isn't how men behave. Let's call them cunts because they are cunts. Let's shame them, let's exclude them, let's reduce their orbit. Lets make it so that having friends means you can't be a cunt, mustn't be a cunt, and would dread being called a cunt.

And when they hurt someone, when they rape and assault and try and cover it up, let's ruin their lives. Not ask them to write a fucking essay, not apologise, let's ruin their lives. Let other people see that their lives were ruined so that they won't want to risk it themselves. This isn't hard to do for almost all other crimes, why are we baulking at these, some of the worst crimes we have.

And upstream, let's call them cunts.

It's easy.