And still she cried, and still the world pursues

October 22, 2018 4:56 PM

A Woman Becomes a Nightingale: Carolita Johnson reviews the ugly history of rape being weaponized — and politicized — as a means of silencing women. (SL Long Reads)

(Carolita Johnson earlier on Metafilter.)

posted by frumiousb (3 comments total)

Thanks for posting this. Please don't take lack of discussion as a slight on the post, so much as the last month has been exhausting. So many mefites have shared their stories as we watched the government bring its force to silence women.

And we refused to be silent, and they still ignored us, and now, I think there is a quiet time, as we regroup and regird for the constant war. But, it's not the silence of submission. It's the silence of chaos before the bang.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 9:02 PM on October 22, 2018 [22 favorites]

Thanks for posting, that was a really well written and thought-provoking piece.

Victimhood is absolutely central to politics and I find it often helpful to look at political rhetoric as a competition for victim status. The recent episode of The Dig podcast about John McCain (and how a torture victim's support served to justify foreign aggression) talks about a similar dynamic to the posted article.

We end up supporting violence in the name of victims, instead of fighting the systems that allowed injustice to flourish in the first place. (Oftentimes the former is far more convenient, especially if we are benefiting from those systems ourselves.)
posted by ropeladder at 4:23 AM on October 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

Ugh. I always hated these tales of virtuous Roman women who conveniently killed themselves rather than make everyone uncomfortable with their demands for justice. And in these stories, the women still don't get to be fucking people! They have to be stand-ins for nation-states, structures of property inheritance, justifications for wars that perpetuate the same violence upon other women. Fuck that. I think the far superior option is growing some snakes out of your head and turning every man in your vicinity to stone.
Great article, though.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 10:01 AM on October 23, 2018 [8 favorites]