This was an interesting program. Last broadcast yesterday, 11:30 on BBC Radio 4:
'Madwomen in the Attic' will consider bedside analysis from afar for the mad, bad and sad heroines of classic fiction through the eyes of modern medicine and psychiatry. '... including the first Mrs Rochester in 'Jane Eyre', Lady Glyde in Wilkie Collins' 'A Woman in White' and the (undoubtedly maddening) Emma Bovary in 'Madame Bovary'"
Also includes the case of Rosina Bulwer Lytton, novelist, essayist and satirist, daughter of the early feminist Anna Wheeler, ?...for a modern audience, it seems barely credible that a fortune-seeking husband could get away with having his sane wife certified and locked up in an asylum...? but Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton had his wife carted off to Brentford asylum in 1858 because she was an embarrassment to his political career.
To quote the presenter, Vivienne Parry "...women that refused to conform were the ones that got locked up, by men, in attics or whatever other spaces were available..."
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s0cn3
While this isn't about rape per se, it is about control of women, by men.
The deeper societal psyche of rape is all about control, by men, of women. When a woman is raped outside her own home, it?s a punishment; she, and all other women, is being told, in no uncertain terms, she has no right to be out, in the public men's sphere - her proper place is at home, shut away, ?contained?. Preferably under the ownership of a man. It's a warning. This is our domain, if you enter it, this is what you'll get. If you're raped you've ?asked for it'. Our own society, and even posts here, tells us this - we must watch where we go, who we're with, what we wear, how we behave and even what time of day we are permitted to be abroad in safety. No such ?advice? is given to men. Nobody says to men, ?because of your sex, you must curtail your freedom if you don?t want something nasty to happen to you?.
While anyone may be mugged in a dark alley, only women face the threat of attack simply for being women. And not often is it for fear of a woman that we avoid that dark alley. While we can leave our mobiles and laptops at home, we can hardly leave our vagina's.
The attitude, to rape, rapists and the raped, of our patriarchal society is clearly telling us something.
The 'advice' we get as women, to 'avoid rape', as has been discussed, (don't walk alone at night etc), is myth, but that's not its point, the point is to generate fear of the outside world so that we stay home, where we can be ?contained?. (Where we?re likely to get raped, statistically, more often ? so it?s not to avoid rape, then). The moment it?s uttered and the very fact that this ?advice? exists, and is widely promulgated, is a gift and an immediate ?get out clause? for men who rape, or who pressurise women for sex, and for society to take rape seriously. It?s an ?I told you so?. Which shifts blame onto the raped ? if only they?d heeded the warning, it wouldn?t have ?happened? to them. ?You know what men are like?; ?boys will be boys?.
I would hope that any modern, thinking man would be as incensed by the implications of this for him as I am incensed by the implications for women. Unfortunately, sadly and horrifyingly, given the statistics, I cannot afford to give him the benefit of the doubt.
However, when you consider that had our forebears, women and some men, not fought for the rights we have today, such as they are, we would still be owned by our husbands as chattel wives, as we were; we would still be required to ?submit? to our husbands sexual needs and there would still be no such thing as rape within marriage. We would still be having fourteen children if we hadn?t fought for contraception within marriage, we would still have no property rights and any property we may have owned would automatically have passed to our husband on marriage for him to dispose of as he may, as they did; our husbands would still automatically have the right to take our children away from us in event of divorce or separation, as they did; we would still be deprived of an education and we would still not have the vote. This is a very short list but the patriarchy fought tooth and nail against all this which surely gives some idea of what men think of women.
This is what our society, deep down and from deep historical roots, thinks should be the lot of women, and, as said in the program ?'Madwomen in the Attic?, I linked to earlier, "...women that refused to ?conform? were the ones that got locked up, by men, in attics.? Or raped.
We would still be under a Talibanesque regime, as many women still are, ruled by men, with our freedom of movement, freedom of speech and freedom of any choice over our own lives virtually non-existent. You don?t have to look too far back in history and not too far afield today to see how men, the Patriarchy, did, will and do treat us if they can. And as I said, still would in our society but that the freedoms we women enjoy today were clawed, scratched, and died for against people, men, the Patriarchy, who fought just as bitterly to deny us. What was wrong with them? To quote the anti-slavery slogan (?Am I not a Man and a Brother??) - ?Am I not a Woman and a Sister??
Look at it. The origins of this are rooted way back and a subject for a whole Mumsnet thread of its own.
Rape has been used by men against women throughout the ages, either as personal control in the domestic sphere as a ?right? (and it was argued, regarding rape within marriage, that when a woman said ?I do? at the altar, that was thereafter consent) or systematically as a weapon of war, as in the Congo, right now. I found so many links to rape in Haiti - even after a national disaster, the first thing some men think of is raping the women.
www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/moving_america_news/17150
When Dittany says ?...that women are in a constant state of consent?, she is right; men consider women in a constant state of consent, as a default condition, but in the domestic sphere, ?by right?, this means the husband, though we are silent, as posts on this thread testify, about the father, the brother, the uncle, the cousin, the ?friend of the family?, the Priest.
If she dare venture to the outside world, to work, to play, to dare to be independent, she opens herself up to all, she is sexual ?fair game?.
It would be interesting to see what the premium would be to insure against rape. Or would this be classed as ?Natural Disaster? - ?Act of God??