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Why We Shouldn’t Throw Around The Word Rape To Describe Anything
More from Lipi Mehta
By Lipi Mehta:
“Saw a car on the side of the road today. You should have seen it; it was raped”, a friend remarked.
No it wasn’t; there had been an accident.
However, even if we assume for a second that it had indeed been ‘raped’, let us investigate further by asking (as our society often does): What was it doing outside on the road at 7 in the evening? Was it indulging in late night frivolity or was it parked provocatively?
What are we doing here? We are undermining the seriousness of both – the incidents of rape and those of road accidents.
When it comes to rape, why is it that we are unable to use our language wisely? I asked a few people about this and one of the answers that jumped up at me was, “Because I don’t know anyone who has faced sexual violence”. The truth is, sexual violence is no longer a problem that is yours or mine alone. Millions have faced it through no fault of theirs. It is not specific to any parameters of age, gender, region, or time. Most importantly, it is not a term that is to be thrown around carelessly when discussing a difficult exam paper (“the Math paper raped me”), the weather (“the sun is going to rape us all today.”) or a bad remix of an old tune (“the dubstep has totally raped the chorus”).
In a disturbing revelation, the word ‘rape’ has also been adapted to specific situations, such as when your Facebook account gets hacked by a friend (“I got fraped at work again, man”). Having a silly status update on Facebook does not mean that you have been ‘fraped’. Simply put, a violation of your social media account with statuses like, ‘I am King Kong’ and ‘I am the real Slim Shady and I will stand up’ does not give you a license to misuse the term. Surely, this experience of yours is not tantamount to that of someone who has undergone sexual assault.
When we use the term ‘rape’ so callously, we are undermining the seriousness of the issue. In India, a woman gets raped every 20 minutes. Yet, convictions don’t take place in the same time frame. We cannot afford to become a society that is ‘used to’ knowing or hearing about incidents of rape. When we institutionalize rape, we treat it as a common phenomenon. We skim over it in the newspaper, and use it flippantly in our language.
Recently, I read a New York Times article that describes the police response to an incident of rape as ‘broad and high-level’, ‘as if an act of terrorism had taken place’. First of all, comparing terrorism with sexual assault is not justified. Why is it surprising if the police reacts swiftly and effectively to deliver justice? Why can we not look at the bigger picture and work towards a system where a similar response is attributed to every act of violence? Moreover, even by stating that a car was ‘raped’ in an accident, we are not merely drawing a comparison; rather, we are undermining the seriousness of sexual assault and misrepresenting the road accident.
Recognizing ‘rape’ as a socially-acceptable cultural expression is not the solution to distancing ourselves from the magnitude of the violence dispensed through the act. The truth is, incidents of rape occur in Bharat and in India and in Hindustan and in the rest of the world. They occur because someone chooses to assault another person — more as an act of power, than of lust. Even then, the ‘blame’ is often tipped the other way. For instance, when the BBC journalist Radha Bedi visited India to study the nature and aspects of sexual assault in the country, she was told by the lawyer Manohar Lal Sharma that he had “never heard of a respectable girl getting raped”. (Watch – India: A Dangerous Place to be a Woman)
You see, even when the verb ‘rape’ is used in the right context, it is often done so with a cold, stinging callousness that comes only with a mindset that desperately requires change, a set of rigid, delusional notions (“it will never happen to me or someone I know and love”) or the purposeful dismissal of reality. Only when we acknowledge that it is our problem to tackle as much as anyone else’s, can we stop normalizing it and avoiding it.
We could perhaps begin by using language wisely.
Note: This article was originally published here.
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Akanksha
Equating rape to “winning” is another extremely problematic issue that has now become naturalised in daily language. India “raped” Pakistan in last night’s match.
Normalising abusive language DOES matter.
TempleTwins
Lots of people. Lots of groups in this country want to tell you how to talk. Tell you what you can’t talk about. Well, sometimes they’ll say, well you can talk about something but you can’t joke about it. Say you can’t joke about something because it’s not funny. Comedians run into that shit all the time. Like rape. They’ll say, “you can’t joke about rape. Rape’s not funny.” I say, “fuck you, I think it’s hilarious. How do you like that?”
Now I’ve probably got the feminists all pissed off at me because I’m joking about rape. Feminists want to control your language. Feminists want to tell you how to talk. And they’re not alone. They’re not alone. I’m not picking on the feminists. They got a lot of company in this country. There’s a lot of groups, a lot of institutions in this country want to control your language. Tell you what you can say and what you can’t say. Government wants to tell you some things you can’t say because it’s against the law. Well you can’t say this because it’s against the regulation. Well here’s something you can’t say because it’s a secret. “You can’t tell him that, because he’s not clear to know that.” Government wants to control information and control language, because that’s the way you control thought…and basically that’s the game they’re in. Same with religion. Religion is nothing but mind control. Religion is just trying to control your mind, control your thought, so they’re going to tell you some things you shouldn’t say because they’re sins. And besides telling you some things you shouldn’t say, religion’s going to suggest to you some things you ought to be saying. Here’s something you ought to say first thing when you wake up in the morning. Here’s something you ought to say just before you go to sleep at night. Here’s something we always say on the third Wednesday in April after the first full moon in spring at four o’clock when the bells ring. Religion is always suggesting things you ought to be saying. Same with political groups of all kinds, political activists, anti- bias groups, special interest groups, are going to suggest the correct political vocabulary. The way you ought to be saying things, and that’s where the feminists come in. – George Carlin
Rape also means pillage , plunder, ransack, despoil , sack , loot. For example ‘There is no guarantee that companies will not
rape the environment’. One could also say ” I murdered you in that game”. Isn’t murder worse than rape? Wouldn’t you be more offended by that? Does the usage of the said term trivializes the crime of murder? Do you have any empirical data proving that joking about or using the word to describe anything else would cause more rape or murder for that matter? or less conviction?
Believe it or not,while your point may be emotionally valid, you seem to have skipped the fact that rape always did, and continues to have meanings apart from sexually forced acts.
EggsBenedictCumberbatch
If you think rape is hilarious, you need serious psychiatric help. Probably a straightjacket.
TempleTwins
That part was from this segment of George Carlin. Yes! Rape is hilarious in this context, when it is told as a joke in a stand up comedy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwMukKqx-Os
TheSeeker
Thanks for saying that.