Rape Cultures and Loud Pubs

I've been thinking for a while about the relationship between structural oppression, individual actions, and individual responsibility. Today I was having lunch in a loud pub, and it occurred to me that there might be an instructive analogy between a loud pub and a rape culture (or a racist country, or an ableist society, or a patriarchy, etc. etc. etc.).

A rape culture is a society that is conducive to sexual assault. Some of the elements of our society that make it one include: slut-shaming, normalization and valourization of seduction tropes, excessive empathy towards privileged individuals accused of sexual misconduct, 'stranger rape' myths, toleration of abuse against complainants, etc.

Societies don't have features like this ex nihilo; they emerge from individuals' behaviour. But individual behaviour is very much conditioned by the societies in which they exist. When someone focuses on what a rape victim was wearing, or says that if someone was attracted to someone they couldn't have been raped by them, they are both reflecting and contributing to rape culture. Insofar as rape culture is something everyone has to figure out how to live with, it will impact individuals' behaviour — even if they resist it, that will be an action, perhaps a costly one, requiring effort. This complicates the relationship between structural oppression and an individual's responsibility for an action that contributes to it. It also makes actions that further rape culture the default, so that people will often perform them unwittingly. This doesn't always or usually get people off the hook entirely, but it is very relevant contextual background.

Loud pubs are a little bit like rape cultures. The pub's being loud might not be attributable to any one individual's decisions. There are many people in there, and they each feel the need to speak loudly to be heard, because it is a loud bar. But their speaking loudly is also what makes it a loud pub. Each person's raised voice both reflects and contributes to the loudness of the pub.

One can, with some deliberate countercultural decision-making, refuse to contribute to making the pub a loud one, but this has costs. For example, one might not be heard. This might well frustrate one's broader social interests, like having a conversation with one's friends. This complicates the relationship between the loudness of a pub and an individual's responsibility for an action that contributes to it. It also makes actions that further the loudness of the pub the default, so that people will often perform them unwittingly.

My example has been rape culture but I think these issues play out in exactly the same way if you swap out other forms of structural oppression. Racist societies have the same relationship to individual behaviour as rape cultures and loud pubs do too.

When to engage

Elizabeth Barnes has a nice piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education on an important topic: when is it a good idea to engage in a serious way with harmful and offensive ideas? Barnes draws a distinction between, on the one hand, Peter Singer’s discussions of the value of disabled people, and on the other, a hypothetical philosophical argument in favour of rape. She finds both stances morally problematic, offensive, and pretty clearly false, but sees value in engaging with the former, but not with the latter. The difference lies the opinions of people at large. As Barnes puts it: “A pro-rape argument isn’t an important ‘option on the table’ in debates about sexual ethics unless (by repeatedly discussing and citing it) we make it one”; by contrast, Singer’s view about disabled people reflect widespread assumptions.

I like Barnes’s piece, and I think her strategy of looking beyond views’ intrinsic features to social facts about how views are distributed, is a sensible and correct one. (I wrote something making a similar point a little while back.) That said, I think I have a couple of points of disagreement about how this kind of framework plays when we look to specifics.

Kipnis on believing rape survivors

There have been several recent feminist reactions to Laura Kipnis's book that I've found pretty insightful. Here's a Jezebel piece focusing on the lawsuit; here's a very solid review by Jeremy C. Young, focusing on the harm the book does to university culture. I started blogging at length about this book a couple months back because I felt like no one was publicly articulating some of the obvious feminist perspective; I'm glad to see that others have started to write about it too. I had thought that my previous post would be my last on the topic, but I did have a new thought today in response to something I read in this series of "Short Takes" by Signs. Unlike the other critiques I've read, this one included a response by Kipnis herself.

The exchange I want to discuss is about rape and rape culture and involves some specifics. So consider yourself content advised.