This article was sent to Fightback by Bevan Morgan.

This week has not been a particularly pleasant time to live in Aotearoa.  The revelation by TV3 that there has been a youth gang working at intoxicating and raping young girls and then bragging about it on the internet obviously sent some major shock waves through the country.  Understandably many queries have been raised about the nature of the way the report was dealt with, and of course with the reaction, or rather lack thereof, within the New Zealand Police.  Inevitably though, one of the major questions that have arisen has been regarding the idea of a rape culture in this country, and whether or not we have one in New Zealand.

The responses from both the public and the media have been illuminating to say the least, and if there was any doubt that we had a problem with both the level of sexual assault in this country, and how it is perceived within the community, there certainly is absolutely zero doubt now.  There have been some heated discussions, plenty of victim blaming, and the rise of more amateur Batman wannabes than in Kick-Ass 2.   But one of the most contentious points has been on whether or not in New Zealand we have a ‘rape culture’,  to which multiple people have screamed that this is not the case, and that these young guys are an anomaly to how we as a society view the larger question of rape and sexual assault.  Most of this defence stems from misunderstanding s of what a culture of rape and sexual assault might look like (outside of the Catholic Church or within Gang Culture for example), and is unhelpfully argued down with the simple and obvious assertion that most men aren’t rapists.

This is not an okay place to be having such an important discussion stem from.  Too often people get distracted by discussions of rape culture to understand the nuances and the human picture of the suffering.  There have been an astonishing number of men getting on the defensive and the offensive this week, as if a group of sex crazed date rapists sexually assaulting girls as young as 13 is a personal slight on them individually.  It is not.  However, we still need to look deep inside ourselves as a society, and have a serious examination of how economic factors, cultural factors, social factors, and religious factors (amongst others) taint our perceptions of sexual assault in this country.  Here are just four questions that might help people reconsider their perception of sexual abuse in New Zealand, and are important to keep in mind as we move forward to a future where instead of burying our heads in the sand, we tackle these problems head on.

Why is it normal that when girls go to bars that they can’t leave their drink unattended?

If we didn’t have a culture of rape, this wouldn’t be the case.  If the statistics were right on this matter then we would have just a few instances of girls having their drinks spiked and it wouldn’t be like the current status quo where drink spiking is a problem in nearly every bar or nightclub, every single weekend.

Men, please just picture that for a second. Imagine if every time you went out, and you took your eyes off your drink, you had to worry about whether or not somebody had drugged it with something to make you pass out so you can be sexually violated.   If this was the case, you can guarantee that men would be armed, and police presence would be heavy handed.  But with our females we just accept this and warn our girls as if this is okay – as if the rapist should be just simply something to avoid in the evening like the rain, or overpriced drinks.

And here is the kicker on that point anyway – as much as drink spiking is a serious problem, we have an even bigger elephant standing in the room.   The fact of the matter is that in 2008, alcohol was the date rape drug of choice in 80% of sexual assaults in New Zealand anyway.  This is in a country where alcohol is so ingrained into our psyche that we actually let alcohol companies sponsor children’s sports clubs amongst other things.  So girls in many ways are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.  They can go out with the peers in what is the generally accepted ‘normal’ social setting in New Zealand, and risk either having someone slip something in their drink, or have someone take advantage of them if they get too drunk.  And for those who like to take the holier than thou road and say ‘don’t get that drunk’, let us remind you that getting drunk is NOT an offence that deserves a punishment of sexual assault.  This is not how a society treats its women in 2013.

Why is rape so underreported in this country?

On the surface there is false authority in the idea that rape and sexual assault isn’t that bad in New Zealand, because the figures show that it’s not an epidemic yet.  This is one of the most sinister and depressing aspects of a culture of rape.  It implies that because we don’t know for a fact the full figures that we can take a blissfully ignorant approach, and in the interests of ‘objectivity’ and ‘rationality’ we can’t do anything else, because the data isn’t there.  And this, again just patently is not true.

The Invercargill Rape and Abuse Support Centre claimed this year that while there were only 98 reported rapes in the region between January 2011 and April 2013, their centre took on about fifteen new clients a month during this time.  In 2007 it was found by Rape Prevention Education that sexual assault was being reported about 13% of the time, and that of these reports, roughly 9% resulted in convictions.

That means that we can probably extrapolate and estimate that in the fiscal year of 2012-2013 when there were approximately 8.2 reported sexual assaults per 10,000 people in New Zealand, there was probably more like 56 per 10,000 at least.  Doesn’t sound like much?  Well we’ll keep extrapolating.   If our population is four million, that equates to well over 20,000 sexual assaults in the space of a fiscal year that we can guess at.  8.2 instances of sexual assault per 10,000 is a problem, however if this does only represent 13% of actual cases then we have a full blown catastrophe on our hands.

Why is our history of sexual oppression and rape forgotten?

The whole concept of sexual assault being seen as hideous is relatively new in the history of patriarchal class societies.  The Ten Commandments are orders from God on how to act on this planet and many people still believe in these.  Jealousy of your neighbour warrants a mention, but there is nothing to do with sexual assault whatsoever – in other words according to God it is worse to be annoyed that your neighbour drives a BMW than it is to sexual assault one of their children.

Or how about the countless, countless stories of war atrocities where rape was served up as the first thing on the agenda for maniacal soldiers?  We need to understand that by and large in the history of patriarchal class societies, this whole conception of ‘consent’ is actually pretty new and we still haven’t cracked it yet completely.  It was only in 1985 – not even thirty years ago – that it was made illegal to rape someone within a marriage.  That means we have for less than thirty years had mainstream acceptance that within marriage, the parties involved still need to consent.  What was once considered a good night of sex and fighting might be now considered a night of rape and assault, because our values and perceptions change as we become more enlightened, and we evolve socially.  While we have made ground in combatting these things it cannot be forgotten that by and large, throughout class societies, rape and sexual assault have not been seen as particularly bad under the law.

Why the hell are we pretending that this is only a wild youth problem?  

The talkback stations have been waiting for a story like this in New Zealand, and with typical vigour and aggressiveness, they have jumped on this story, and there have been calls from both listeners and DJs that this is an on-going issue and that teenagers are out of control.  But this just isn’t true.  Teenagers today smoke less, drink less, and drive safer than the generations that preceded them.  But because the concept of sexual assault is relatively new, and because we have hid the problem out of sight and out of mind for so long, we just assume that because we hear more about it now, then it must be simply that the youth are wild.

We also know definitively that poverty, abuse, and trauma lead to drug use and alcohol dependence hugely and we know that presently in New Zealand we have abhorrent child poverty statistics whereby over 200,000 young New Zealanders live below the poverty line.  So if our economic system is increasing inequality in New Zealand (which it is), and thus some children out of desperation are acting ‘bad’ as the statistics have predicted time and time again they will, how can we possibly even begin to frame this discussion as a problem with delinquent youths only?  Why are the people who make these living situations possible (i.e. the financial thieves, the politicians, the police, the ruling oligarchy) not receiving the same visceral anger and disrespect that our youth are facing?  We are on track to have the smartest, most orderly generation yet, however they are still targeted because their voices don’t count.

Additionally, sexual violence is a problem throughout all age groups, throughout all classes. The Roastbusters were sons of a police officer and a Hollywood actor. To blame youth, or working class hedonism, rather than considering the inherent problems with how we structure our very society is pig ignorant, and downright cruel.   The ideas of rape culture are handed down from above, and they don’t just apparate out of nowhere – they are crafted unintentionally a lot of the time and then passed down implicitly through social cues and interactions.  Our youth aren’t the problem.  Our adults are.

***

There are multiple factions of the left each with their own philosophies and explanations for why things have gotten to this stage.  Radical feminists may disagree with Socialists, who may in turn disagree with Anarchists and so on and so forth.  But this is window dressing.  The idea of looking at rape culture does not have to be an accusation that all men are rapists, and that all men are designed to rape.  It is bigger than a philosophy, or who is right and who is wrong on this issue.  We live in a society where there is a massive inequity between men and women (this isn’t even touching on assault for our non gender-binary comrades) in which we can make serious long term transitions to combat this problem.  There is no Band-Aid, so the National party will be shit out of luck in trying to wait for this problem to blow over.

This is a delicate issue that we must treat with the utmost care and respect.  But something must be done.  Rape and sexual assault cannot be a secret in Aotearoa anymore and we must question the very foundations of how we perceive sexual assault in order to move forward to a future where reporting isn’t a case of being brave and admirable as much as it is just what you do.

By Anne Russell. Reprinted from Scoop.co.nz.

Trigger warning: rape, discussion of victim-blaming.

Stop Rape Now Day of Action details here: http://tinyurl.com/md4cn7j

It is, unfortunately, a truism that the older you get, the more of your friends have been raped. Although popular narratives suggest that rape victims are easy to identify, many of these friends will never be known to you. It takes time for the victim to process what has happened, get past the frequent self-blaming and start their healing process. If they then tell someone, by this time the bruise marks have often faded, if there were any to begin with, and admissible legal evidence is sketchy. Even when rape victims actually want their rapists to go to jail, many are put off going to the police by the victim-blaming and retraumatisation that frequently happens during questioning, with only a slim chance of a conviction.

This is not to say that the police are incapable of being good allies to rape survivors, or that victims should never go to the police for help. But anti-rape advocates have known for a long time that the police aren’t often the first port of call for rape survivors. In many cases, the function of the police is to deal with problems that we’re unable or unwilling to fix ourselves. As such, it’s telling that most of the public debate around the Roastbusters group has focused on how the police should deal with the problem.

I say ‘won’t’ rather than ‘can’t’, because these people are middle class adults with state-granted powers of surveillance power at their hands. It wasn’t impossible for the police to dig up internet and telecommunications evidence to use against the Urewera 17, and yet the Roastbusters’ open admissions of rape were not enough for them to even report the page to Facebook. While some suspect that the inaction on Roastbusters is related to the fact that one of them is the son of a cop, this sort of inertia is all too common in police conduct around rape cases. It’s not a coincidence that an institution that frequently upholds misogynist power and violence—as in the rape of Louise Nicholas by police in 1984, not to mention ongoing prison rape statistics—is ill-equipped to understand or dismantle the misogynist power and violence that shapes rape culture.

When asked about the case, John Key expressed disgust and said that the Roastbusters crew needed to “grow up” (as though adults don’t rape). He indicated that the government would be advancing the Harmful Digital Communications Bill in response, wherein posting rape videos online could be interpreted as a crime. This creates a worrying discourse whereby the further extension of surveillance powers is framed as necessary for the safety of young girls—if we oppose the bill we’re supporting rapists and rape culture. Despite such abuses of state power, even committed leftists who otherwise chant “fuck the police” often pressure rape victims to make formal complaints, whether the survivors feel it would aid their recovery or not.

The cultural focus on whether or not the Roastbusters’ acts legally count as rape is part of an attempt to treat them as an anomaly, neatly dividing the world into Evil Rapists and Good Non-Rapists. If the accused rapist is found guilty in a court of law they can be sent to jail, wherein many people view prison rape as a fitting retribution, and we can forget about them—the problem is sitting in a remote cell. If they are not, their friends can keep inviting them to parties without discussing the violence they’ve committed because it’s too awkward.

Unfortunately, the legal system of “innocent until proven guilty” is not particularly helpful when it comes to the problem of rape. Outing a rapist in a public forum almost invariably risks accusations of slander or libel, because there is rarely concrete proof of rape that can be used in a court of law. Yet anti-rape organisations estimate that only around 3% of rape accusations are false—these forming only a small fraction of rapes that are reported at all.

Statistics from the US, similar to those in New Zealand. Source: http://theenlivenproject.com/the-truth-about-false-accusation/

These statistics demonstrate a second truism: that the older you get, the more rapists inhabit your social circles. It would be comforting to think that rapists were only violent psychopaths who we could easily identify and isolate, but there are too many for this to be universally true. Although sometimes spottable by their sleazy remarks, groping, or open rape apologia, many of them blend into social scenes more subtly. Rapists are our workmates, our drinking buddies, our favourite musicians, people at the front of socialist rallies, queer rights advocates, and men who talk about feminism at length. Some of these people are rape victims themselves—how then to dispense justice? Such people cannot be categorised as both waif-like victimsand inhumane monsters.

The narrative of rapist as unrepentant psychopath is undermined when the rapist expresses guilt, or when they genuinely didn’t realise their sexual partner hadn’t consented, or really did desire their partner—since sexual desire and abuse of power are not mutually exclusive. The apology from one of the Roastbusters read: “I just want people to know I am a good person at heart and I have matured and have taken this as a massive learning experience.” While these admissions are often made much of by reporters, as in the similar Steubenville rape case last year, the experiences of survivors are virtually ignored. The apology of the rapist is understood as the endpoint of making amends, rather than the beginning, and survivors who continue to experience trauma or demand further action are dismissed. When they are noticed in the media, survivors are often shamed for not responding or behaving in ways deemed acceptable, as Willie and JT did to a Roastbusters victim on RadioLive. (Trigger warning: victim-blaming, slut-shaming, rape apologia.)

Worryingly, these discourses can prevent rapists from thinking of themselves as rapists, since they have not held their victim at weapon point. Moreover, it implies that any act short of rape is socially and politically irrelevant to the crime. But rape doesn’t come from nowhere, and not all aspects of rape culture are serious enough to merit a jail term. Should the man who I tried to kiss without asking have taken me down to the station for non-consensual conduct? Should I have been charged with aiding and abetting criminals when I made rape jokes at age nineteen, letting rapists in my circle know that what they’d done was not a big deal to me? The problem of rape culture doesn’t only emerge when rapehappens, but in micro-aggressions, poor personal boundaries, and the dreadful anticipation of the act. I didn’t call the police when a man almost succeeded in attacking me on Cuba St at 2am—he was Not A Rapist, though probably only by dint of a few seconds. Nor do I call them every time an acquaintance gropes me or says that my low-cut top means I don’t respect myself. Police do not and cannot always press charges for routine events that form the backdrop of women’s lives.

In this context, the question of whether or not the Roastbusters crew can be legally charged as rapists is irrelevant. Even if the evidence of videos and public bragging didn’t exist, it would still remain clear that these men, and countless of others in this country alone, are misogynists with lax boundaries who are willing to abuse their power. The problem of rape culture is not rooted entirely in misogyny; rape also exists within the queer community, and men can be raped by women. But the cultural centring of cisgendermale perspectives at the expense of women and trans* people forms a lot of ground for rape culture to flourish, whereby cis men are told they are entitled to our bodies. Of course, many men are outraged at the Roastbusters events, but many are also responding in patriarchal ways that exacerbate the problem. The masculine vigilante violence that has been proposed against Roastbusters’ masculine violence won’t stop rape from happening, or indeed help many survivors to heal.

How then to take a stand against sexual violence? Leaving aside the police, one might wonder why the friends of the Roastbusters crew didn’t raise objections while their friends were drugging, raping and then publicly humiliating underage women. People are more likely to listen to their friends than to strangers, and cis men generally listen to cis men more than any other gender. Groups like White Ribbon have recognised this, calling on men to take a stand against the misogyny and violence that manifests in cases like Roastbusters. Ironically, it is likely that they will receive more praise than the feminist and other rights groups who have opposed sexism and rape culture for decades.

The supposed helplessness claimed by the police and others in the face of rape culture is particularly frustrating, because certain techniques, education programmes and structural reforms have been tested and proven to work in reducing rape rates. Anti-rapist advertisements in Vancouver, for example, resulted in the number of sexual assault reports in the area dropping by 10% for the first time in several years. And as Greta Christina said, this was a one-off ad campaign; imagine what effect a sustained anti-rape movement at all levels of society could produce. On the New Zealand front, below is a fantastic anti-rape PSA, which takes the viewer up to the point of sexual assault and then rewinds to show how bystanders can make a difference. It shows the rape of a drunk woman, so commonly framed as “grey rape” rather than real rape, and avoids both victim-blaming and the Evil Rapist narrative. (Trigger warning, so only watch if you’re feeling strong.)

Much of the public debate has been triggering and upsetting for rape survivors and their allies, with its framing of rape as an abstract problem rarely seen outside a law lecture. The conceptual and sometimes judicial dehumanisation of rapists disguises the levels at which the routine violence of rape seeps into all areas of our culture. What minimalist sex education is offered at schools, usually amounting to ways to avoid pregnancy and STDs, does not equip people to understand what enthusiastic consent means, or how to deconstruct models of masculinity that encourage sexual violence and coercion. Too often rape prevention is understood as catching criminals after the act, rather than preventing trauma from being set in motion.

It’s possible that the Roastbusters affair could be a watershed moment in New Zealand’s rape culture politics. The anger around the country is widespread and palpable; protest actions against rape culture have been organised in Wellington,Auckland, and Christchurch. Many are refusing to treat rape as a nasty but inevitable part of living in human society. The dismantling of rape culture will take time, since rape is enabled by all sorts of different institutions and social practices. But at the most basic level, the questions are: what will you do when someone you know is raped? Almost as importantly, what will you do when someone you know turns out to be a rapist, or when they display predatory characteristics? As the Who Are You ad above says, you can be the difference in how the story ends.

Anne Russell is a journalist with a long-standing interest in feminist politics, queer rights and the cultural formations of intimate relationships.