Only two weeks in, and already June has been an eventful month. The first weekend was the national commune elections, and I was happy to see the political hubbub finally die down. But the very next weekend (after a week of my being sick) was the event which has been months in planning.
Click the link below to open up the full post and see photos of the event! ^_^
la la la
You will probably be disturbed and irritated at me for writing this… “Lee, why you always gotta be such a downer?” Well, don’t blame me for being down, blame the Patriarchal world we live in for getting me down. It is not possible to cover our ears, shut our eyes, and run our mouths about human rights all at the same time, monkeys.
This week in news (Cambodian Daily-style)…:
Tuesday: Training Aims to Protect Children From Predators: British experts in Phnom Penh are training about 160 teachers, police, government workers and childcare professionals on how to better protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation as part of a three-day workshop that began only yesterday. …British Ambassador Mark Gooding said the training was necessary because of “the growth of Internet use in Cambodia, especially among young people.” According to… the country director for anti-pedophile NGO Action Pour les Enfants, there are clear signs that online sexual predators are beginning to have a presence in Cambodia. “We have observed a few cases where children were groomed online by traveling sex offenders, and that means it will be a great concern in the future.” (by Lauren Crothers)
The growth of the internet has produced many learning opportunities for kids in Cambodia, but the downside is that it also increases their risk of encountering predators who use this anonymous technology to seek out victims. Kids, especially boys, can use the internet in towns and cities (and, increasingly, larger villages) completely unmonitored. These days this is how young boys are more often exposed to porn; they can pay less than 50 cents for 30 minutes to an hour of unrestricted access to any site on the web, and many of them go with friends to watch pornography at public internet cafes. Even when shop owners and others know this is going on, there is little or no stigma attached to boys (even very young boys) viewing porn. For all children, though, “playing chat” on the web is the new “big thing”; my impression from my students is that there is a certain prestige to having foreign friends on Facebook and Skype– I can imagine how easy it would be for a foreign pedophile to arrange a meeting with a child in Cambodia via the internet. Cambodian nationals will probably catch on to the internet as a way of hunting victims, too, as their access to the web increases; probably they have already, but there are very few statistics on crimes organized using the internet here.
Court Charges Man with Raping 8-Year-Old Girl: The Kandal Provincial Court yesterday charged a 31-year-old man with raping an 8-year-old girl in her home…on Sunday. The suspect was drunk at the time of the attack and had gone looking for the victim’s 16 year-old sister…”But he did not find her and met with the victim,” said police chief Mean Samnang. (by Khy Sovuthy)
Um… I don’t really have anything to say about this. I think it speaks for itself. But if your first thought was, “It would have been better if he’d found the 16-year-old instead,” I hope you ask yourself why.
Wednesday: Girl Detained, Drugged and Raped Over Two-Week Span: Girl was allegedly given sleeping pills by suspect, fed little in order to keep her in a weakened state.
The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court on Monday charged a teenager with rape, after he allegedly detained a 17-year-old girl at his home, drugged her and raped her over a two-week period, court officials and police said yesterday. The suspect, 17, was arrested on Friday after his uncle discovered the girl locked in his wooden house in Banlung City… After being questioned by police, the suspect confessed to raping the girl– who was his neighbor and knew him well– giving her sleeping pills and barely feeding her so that she would be sleepy, weakened, and unable to cry for help, [police chief] Vun said. “The girl was detained and locked in the room. The suspect had given her medicine that we assume must have been sleeping tablets,” Mr. Vun said. “He confessed that he raped her seven or eight times, but says it was because he loves her.” ..”After seven days, we were hopeless. We thought she had died, and we lit incense and put out offerings for her,” the victim’s mother said. (by Chhorn Chansy)
It is unlikely they will do a follow-up story here, but it is quite possible that the survivor will be mistreated (or disowned) by her family for “allowing” the rape to occur, or even worse she might be forced to marry her rapist. Well, he does love her after all.
Horrific? Toahmadah in the Kingdom of Wonder– normal, that is. If you talk to young adults, especially pre-teen and teenaged boys, in Cambodia, you will find that they have very unhealthy conceptions about “love”, “relationships”, “boyfriends/girlfriends”, and what constitutes “romantic”. A friend of mine had it from her teacher that the first time he had sex with his girlfriend, he had to hold her down and force his penis inside of her as she said “no no no” while physically resisting him. This girl later became his wife. Most people can look at this scenario and say, “This is rape.” But many people see this is “what must be done”, since it is culturally unacceptable for a girl to say “yes” to sex; if a girl says “no”, the default assumption can be that she wants to have sex, but cannot consent to it without looking like a whore. So the young man in the article above may have thought he was doing his “love” a favor by drugging her and locking her in a shed– maybe he really believed she wanted to have sex with him, but “could not consent”.
Friday: Violence Continues to Go Unpunished, Adhoc Says: Domestic violence continues to go virtually unpunished, authorities appear unable or unwilling to arrest sex traffickers, and rape of minors is “exceedingly numerous,” according to Adhoc’s annual report on the state of women and children in Cambodia… Deep-seated cultural obstacles are part of the problem of combating the violence, noted [Adhoc's] report. “Domestic violence is seen as the norm and women themselves do not think it is criminal but a regular part of married life,” the report states. …Impunity also plays a role in the punishment of rapists. Courts handle only 2.52 percent of rape cases, and 11.34 percent are mediated by local authorities. …Last year was the first year in which rapes did not increase, but 72 percent of rape victims were children under 18, “which is extremely concerning” [the report says]. …Khieu Sopheak, spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, said the fact that figures remained “stable” was a positive sign. “It’s better than increasing,” he said. Asked about Adhoc’s focus on impunity, Mr. Sopheak said: “Oh, we don’t have an impunity culture. That is what people say, but the government does not have an impunity culture.”
Of course the Ministry of Interior is not going to just come out and say, “Hellz yeah we’re corrupt! LOLZ”. But Sopheak’s delusional observation of Cambodian rape statistics as positive because they are “stable” is insufferable. “It’s better than increasing”…? If you say dumb shit like that in the U.S., you lose your job (or you should, at least). Again, toahmadah. Whatever. Highly-ranked public “servants” can openly deny corruption and dismiss horrific rape stats in the same breath here with absolutely no consequences. If you live here, you’re thinking, “Well, duh. It’s not like this is a democracy.” And I agree. It still completely blows all my circuits though– I simply cannot comprehend it. I want to reinforce this point so that you understand how completely normative, pervasive, and acceptable rape culture is in this country. It is my personal belief that all of human society operates inside of rape culture, but it is more powerful and functions in greater degrees in some countries than in others. It is not just the lack of punishment and accountability of rapists that perpetuates rape culture in the Kingdom of Wonder, but the deeply-ingrained effects of enculturating people of all genders here with profoundly violent and misogynist behaviors and attitudes and acceptance of those behaviors and attitudes. Like the teacher I mentioned above: this is a teacher, a respected member of his community who wants to educate poor villagers for free and start a non-profit jobs training program and all kinds of stuff– Nice Guy™. He’s still a rapist, people. If a “nice guy” like him believes that you have to force sex on a woman the first two or three times you want to have sex with her, we can’t be surprised to see articles like the one about the 17-year-old who kidnapped and raped the love of his life, or the 31-year-old who raped his 8-year-old neighbor ’cause her older sister wasn’t “available”.
About the article… “But Lee, isn’t it positive that the statistics aren’t increasing?” The statistics, unfortunately, only take into account those rapes that Adhoc heard about in some way, shape or form. Most rapes are never reported to any official entity, let alone dealt with by the police. It is extremely common for rapists to simply pay off families of victims to maintain silence, and in some cases to marry the victim to the rapist in order to save face (especially if the victim becomes pregnant). If only around 13% of reported rapes were dealt with by some kind of official entity (courts, commune and village chiefs, etc.), then that means almost 87% of cases (again, of reported rapes) are being handled privately. Which means virtually no repercussions for the rapist. Who will then be free to rape again. And again. Well, you get the idea.
p.s. That 2.52% are case that are “handled” by the courts NOT cases in which the perpetrator is sentenced, let alone serves that sentence. The 31-year-old who raped his 8-year-old neighbor was charged, but that does not equate to being sentenced or going to jail, or even paying a fine (though he can, and probably will, pay a bribe to be cleared of charges). Are we getting the picture here? Really? (For a laugh, you could compare these stats with those from American courts and you’ll see that they are more similar that you might think. Ha. Ha.)
I’ve mentioned this in other posts, but the reason why I am so sickened by these statistics is because they don’t account for all rapes, but only a portion– how large of a portion? We can’t know, but remember that rape victims are extremely stigmatized here. If you knew you were going to be blamed, badgered, laughed at, possibly married to your rapist, and ultimately told to shut up, and your rapist would almost certainly walk free, would you tell anyone that you were raped, or would you keep it to yourself? I look around at my neighbors, students, friends, even my Khmer family and wonder how many of them have experienced violence, including sexual violence, and are stoically keeping their mouths closed about it. Actually, many of them would probably never label rape if it did happen to them, which is no surprise consider that Cambodian law excludes many forms of rape in its legal definition. I also look around at the same people and wonder how many of them have raped or are raping someone and they will never even call it that. It saddens me very, very deeply.
When I talk about things like this with my (most often American) family, friends, acquaintances, whoever… They express a good deal of discomfort, try to change the subject, attempt to “lighten the mood” by making jokes, and so on.
Am I getting you down?
I don’t care.
Perhaps this is the 2012 “new me”, but I intend to unapologetically disperse information to as many people as I can about the Situation we find ourselves is as often as I possible can. I will ignore your discomfort, I will refocus the subject, and I will carefully dismantle your jokes with psychosocial and cultural analysis so you see how joking about This perpetuates rape, the function of Patriarchy, and so on.
I am going to be SO POPULAR. :D
In the back of Thursday’s issue of the Cambodia Daily was an article headlining “Girl, 7, Raped, Murdered in Kompong Speu”. Kampong Speu is a province not far from Phnom Penh. Perhaps the age of the victim and the extremity of the violence used against her seem ghastly and unbelievable, but rapes and rape-murders of young children are frighteningly commonplace here. Many people blame a culture of impunity which overlooks and trivializes violent crimes in Cambodia. This culture of impunity would not be thriving as it is today were it not for an underlying and more prevalent culture of silence. Rape is possibly the most under-reported crime here– which, considering that in January alone there were 24 rapes, 11 of which were child rapes, shapes up to a very poor situation.
The article ends with a statement from a bureau director at the Ministry of Interior: “We found out that victims and perpetrators always tend to know each other.”
Statistics in the States say that between 75-90% of rapes are acquaintances rapes. According to available data, that also holds true in Cambodia. Oftentimes, victims are raped near their homes, often within shouting distance of neighbors. So how is it that so many perpetrators can rape and go unnoticed?
This is a multifaceted problem, but a major contributing factor is a culture of silence surrounding anything which relates to sex. Rape survivors have reported to police, village chiefs, and other authorities that they did not cry out for help or waited hours or days to report the crime because they were afraid of the consequences. That is, the survivors face consequences– whereas the perpetrators often walk away with reputation and civil liberties intact.
Another darker, more ominous reason is that people also look the other way. Even when they are aware of someone raping a child, especially if it is occurring within the family, to speak of it would be to bring shame upon the family. Moreover, to report it to the police would be to betray the family, and if Khmer culture promotes any kind of loyalty it is familial loyalty.
by MSLucy
This culture of silence also functions (though perhaps to a lesser degree) in the U.S.
Why do people remain silent after something horrible has happened to them? Self-blame. Denial. Fear that others won’t believe them, or will mock them or discourage them from speaking out. Fear of retaliation by the perpetrator. Fear of other consequences (related to work, family, school, etc.) Debilitating depression. There is rarely a single reason that inhibits a survivor from telling others what has happened to them, but all of these reasons are fueled by rape culture: if you are a woman, why didn’t you think twice before letting that guy come home with you? If you are a strong, independent woman, guess those self-defense classes didn’t pay off, huh? If you are a man– well, men just don’t get raped. If you are gay, rape is simply a pathology of the condition of gayness. If you are Black, rape is an integral part of Black culture– don’t you ever watch BET?! The “reasons” are numerous; the fact that they lack reason has no bearing on their prevalence. This is what rape culture looks like, and it functions to shut you up.
Lately I’ve been pondering the ineffectiveness of “sexual assault prevention education” back home. During college I attending a session or two of these, myself, often promoted by the university with all good intentions. Likewise, after college I attended a session which was conducted by a sorority and hosted by the university. These sessions provided very little statistical information on rape, and very little information about what to do after you or someone you know has been raped. The main focus was on advice-giving for how to not get raped, which tended to be “monitor your drinks,” “don’t go out alone, go with friends,” “never walk home alone; make sure your friends get home safely, too,” and “avoid going home with people you have just met.”
This advice, however, still functions on the principles that rapes are largely perpetrated by people we have never met before, often in unfamiliar places, and that ultimately the responsibility for not getting raped falls on the potential victim. All of these ideas are ultimately unhelpful and ignore significant facts: the majority of rapes (possibly a greater majority than we know, since acquaintance rape is even less likely to be reported than stranger rape, for a variety of reasons) are perpetrated by people familiar to the victim, they are often perpetrated in places we have been before (and perhaps even consider places of safety, including our homes), and finally and most importantly, the perpetrator is responsible for rape, not the victim. As in, 100% responsible. No, that dress you wore does not make you 5% accountable, or the fact that you invited the perpetrator into your home before he raped you doesn’t make you a little a fault. No. The rapist is responsible for the rape.
I’ve often wondered, how can one make rape prevention education more effective without denying reality, which is that even if you take every “precaution” you may still experience rape?
The first mistake may be giving people a false sense of security by suggesting that taking precaution will reduce their chances of being raped. Sure, we can suggest safety tips like “safety in numbers”, “monitor your alcohol consumption since it is the number one date rape drug”, etc. But they should not be administered as a solution. In that sense, it is better to promote the truth that rape is not the fault of the survivor, that fault lies completely with the perpetrator. Knowing this fact will empower many more people to come forward after they have experienced rape, as they will be less likely to place all blame on themselves and less fearful (if only marginally) of other people placing blame on them.
Does that mean that rape prevention should focus on the perpetrators, and not survivors? Of course not, they are equally important.
The major taboo of talking about rape is still well and alive in our “outspoken” American culture. In spite of slow progress being made by the anti-rape community to reduce the stigma and ill treatment which survivors endure, there is still a great deal of shame and self-blame that survivors must face. Any rape prevention education program should make a focal point of its curriculum the elimination of stigma. I think there are many ways to go about this, but one very powerful way to reduce stigma is to encourage people to speak out about their own rape, in a safe and supportive environment. I have experienced group dialogues wherein a safe space was provided; once one survivor had the courage to speak about their own rape, others poured out their stories in what often seemed to be a flood of relief: “Finally, someone is listening, and they care.”
In the same vein, people who trivialize or ignore rape are just as responsible for rape prevention. To say, “I don’t want to see it, hear about it, or talk about it,” while at the same time participating in a larger rape culture that promotes sexual violence in everything from magazine articles to music videos to pornographic movies, is to condone rape. No, rape is not a comfortable subject; if it was, maybe it wouldn’t be so prevalent. But breaking down the barriers of silence (while simultaneously halting our voyeuristic indulgence of rape culture) will be crucial to ending survivor stigma and achieving real justice, which is holding rapists accountable.
These are just the first steps. Achieving them will help us move into a culture wherein all sexual violence is identified as unacceptable, and that any form of education, commerce, entertainment, etc. which trivializes, ignores, exploits, or profits from is also unacceptable. There are many steps ahead of us, though, and many questions which first need to be openly discussed: What is sexual violence? How does it function in the context of relationships? In the context of society? What is love? What does it mean that love and sexual violence often occur in overlapping functional spheres? Until these questions become acceptable questions to ask, we will continue to live in a rape culture. To encourage discussion of these questions and related subjects should be a fundamental goal of rape prevention education.
[Potentially triggering material.]
People are capable of committing crimes even when they’re not aware that what they’re doing is criminal. I think this is often the case with rape. Because our baseline for understanding rape as a crime starts with extremes (e.g. blood, violence, force, use of a weapon, threats of harm or even death), there is so much that falls into a so-called grey area of what Latoya Peterson calls “not-rape”.
“Not-rape was being pressured into losing your virginity in a swimming pool pump room to keep your older boyfriend happy.
Not rape was waking up in the middle of the night to find a trusted family friend in bed with you– and having nightmares about something that you can’t remember during daylight hours.
Not-rape was having your mother’s boyfriends ask you for sexual favors.” (from “The Not -Rape Epidemic”, as included in Yes Means Yes {2008}).
Which is probably why Brad Perry, whose essay in Yes Means Yes appears directly before Peterson’s, wasn’t able to label his own behavior as rape. I suspect that perhaps, in the course of studying feminism or rape theory or, at the very least, laws concerning sexual assault, he at some point came across some definition which revealed the illegal nature of his past behavior. Maybe that’s partially why he became an anti-rape activist, in the first place. Yet in spite of the fact that he educates young people on “healthy sexuality”, he trivializes the seriousness of his own behavior.
In “Hooking Up with Healthy Sexuality: The Lessons Boys Learn (and Don’t Learn) About Sexuality, and Why a Sex-Positive Rape Prevention Paradigm Can Benefit Everyone Involved”, he recounts an experience from when he was thirteen. A brief summary is as follows: he and a few other 13-year-old male friends wanted to “get some” (his ironical phrasing) from their female peers, and so invited three girls out to an empty construction site to drink beer. (“All rape is premeditated”…?) After “his girl”, Janice, had had three beers, Brad (on the advice of a friend’s older brother) decided this was the time to “make his move”, beginning by putting an arm around her. When she didn’t seem averse, he then touched her breast. Janice “sat up straight as soon as I did it, but kept talking with me as if everything was okay,” which he “interpreted…to mean, Go for it!” And he put his hand under the waste band of her pants and underwear.
Janice, evidently, was very averse and immediately took his hand out of her pants. When he tried to do it again, she removed his hand again. Finally Brad got the hint and stopped.
Now, 13-year-old Brad could have had no idea that (in my state and many others) you can go to jail for said behavior. Obviously for minors the sentencing is less severe, but the act is no less criminal. But the 30-something Brad who wrote this piece calls what he did “uninvited touching” and believes that “Janice didn’t seem to hold [it] against [him]”.
There are a couple of points that really stand out to me: the first and most obvious is that he minimizes his own actions as merely “uninvited touching” (recall my definition of rape, “Any unwanted sexual touch”, and you can start to see why I find this problematic). I can hear him, upon confrontation, defending himself, “Hey man, I was thirteen, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.” That’s true, but your 30-year-old self has every clue as to what your past self did.
The next stand-out point is actually what’s missing: Janice’s interpretation of the experience. Of course, most girls (and not just boys like Brad) are socialized to believe that this kind of “uninvited touching” is normal and expected and you just have to giggle and take someone’s hand out of your pants (even if you are REALLY uncomfortable or even shocked and humiliated), but it’s in no way, shape, or form equated with rape. So perhaps Janice took this as a mundane part of the world she grew up in and put it out of her mind.
On the other hand, maybe this early sexual experience changed the way she was to look at boys and sex and touching and consent forever. Or maybe it warped her image of her own body or damaged her self-esteem. Maybe she would no longer be as trusting of all male friends in the future, even though all of them were/are not abusers. We really can’t know, because her tale is not told. Brad’s is.
And according to Brad, we can call him “badly-behaved”, “misguided”, “self-centered”, and even “a dick”, but we shouldn’t call him an abuser. Or a rapist, for that matter.
Can I blame him? Of course not. Who the hell wants to self-identify as a rapist? Or an abuser? Or even call something that they did, say, sexual harrassment? Even though most people have at some point done some behavior that was sexually abusive, harrassing, demeaning, coercive, or manipulative.
I can understand that. It is difficult. It has taken me a long time to acknowledge that I have used coercion and manipulation to “get” or try to “get some”. This has included pressuring (asking again and again), testing established boundaries (“I know you said no, but are you sure?”) and pouting (reacting coldly and distancing myself after being told no)… THAT SHIT IS FUCKED UP!
There’s another side to that coin, too, which is also wrong: when you are not the one trying to “get some”, but the one from whom another person is trying to “get some”. This could look like teasing– for instance, knowing when another person desires your sexual touch, and “leading them on” while having no intention of giving that touch. It might also look like laughing at– humiliating– another person’s sexual desire. “Hah, you want me and I don’t want you, haha!” Also really really messed up.
So, I get it… Owning up to our own revolting, messed-up, sickening sexual behavior and past acts of violation is not easy. It’s hard, really really hard. But necessary. If we’re not honest with ourselves, we certainly can’t expect those people who view this behavior as normative and culturally-acceptable to change. Anti-rape activism and transforming the rape culture begins with activists and supporters, themselves.
It’s hard to blame a 13-year-old kid for the manifestations of culturally-engrained behaviors and attitudes. But it is a very different story when his 30-year-old self refuses to take on the full weight of those prior actions once it has become understood. In order for him to be the most effective anti-rape activist that he can be will require a change of mindset within himself before he tries to instill that change in others. Especially children.
