Wow, it has been a rough couple of days. I’ve felt like the whole entire internet and every single piece of news media should have come with a trigger warning. (As should this piece – it could be upsetting.)
Wherever I’ve looked, people are talking about Roast Busters, a group of Auckland teenaged men who have allegedly raped underage girls and posted details online. Megan and Elle have answered some of the questions about the group, and touched on why media coverage of the group have been using terms like ‘group sex’ and ‘sex scandal’, terms that dilute the traumatising nature of the crimes the men have allegedly committed.
Feminist circles often discuss rape culture, a term discussed and defined by Melissa McEwan, on her blog Shakesville.
“Rape culture is tasking victims with the burden of rape prevention. Rape culture is encouraging women to take self-defence as though that is the only solution required to preventing rape. Rape culture is admonishing women to "learn common sense" or "be more responsible" or "be aware of bar-room risks" or "avoid these places" or "don't dress this way," and failing to admonish men to not rape. Rape culture is "nothing" being the most frequent answer to a question about what people have been formally taught about rape.”
Roast Busters, and the subsequent media coverage, is a glaring example of the rape culture we’re all stewing in. A police officer, Detective Inspector Bruce Scott has said “none of the girls have been brave enough to make formal statements”, which to my mind could be seen as blaming the victims for the lack of prosecution and failing to address how traumatic it can be to talk to the police about sexual violence. Rape culture makes excuses for rapists, saying they are nice young men who’ve made mistakes, and rape culture blames victims for what happened to them, saying they shouldn’t have been drinking.
Over at The Hand Mirror, feminist blogger Scuba Nurse has written an amazing piece with ways that we can address this culture of rape apology and victim blaming, without resorting to violence or vigilante justice. If we’re going to be addressing the whole of rape culture we can’t joke that Roast Busters members will get an "eye for an eye" when they go to jail, because we all know what happens to men in prison. This doesn’t solve anything, and jokes like these only normalise rape in a culture where rapists are rarely held accountable, the very culture that produced the Roast Busters in the first place.
Discussion of rape and rape culture has been everywhere this week, and I know that a lot of people are hurting. Sometimes, when the world feels toxic and distressing and overwhelming the best thing we can do is look after ourselves and the members of our community. And I know, it sucks that this onus of care falls back on us as individuals.
I wish we had a bigger safety net and that we didn’t have to patch ourselves back together after trauma. I like to think though, that self care can be a radical act. Taking time to nurture yourself is powerful. It’s about giving yourself a moment to breathe and acknowledging your needs, and accepting that those needs are valid and important, because you are valid and important.
I’ve made this list of self care activities for anyone that needs it. For some people, a lot of this list might feel unmanageable, and that’s totally okay. Sometimes, it takes all the energy you have just to survive. This list isn’t going change the way the New Zealand criminal justice system prosecutes sexual offenders. It isn’t going to ease the hurt that many survivors feel. It isn’t going to magically guarantee funding for our Rape Crisis services, many of which are at breaking point. Maybe though, something on this list might just be what you need to keep going. And we’ve got to keep going, if we can. We need to stick around so we can address rape culture together.
Self Care Suggestions - Take What You Like:
- Find an album on Spotify that you used to listen to all the time, and listen to it the whole way through. It’ll be like catching up with an old friend, whether you end up reliving school camp talent shows or your angsty goth phase.
- Set aside a whole day to cook or bake something really complicated and time-consuming, like French onion soup or baked cheesecake. Marvel at your efforts. Go and get takeaways if it all goes wrong.
- Google image search ‘coughing’ because it’s hilarious.
- Make an ice-cream sundae.
- Print out some photos of people and things you love for your desk or your work space.
- Go to the library and tuck yourself away in a corner to read a massive pile of magazines.
- Change your sheets as soon as you wake up, so you can look forward to climbing into them all day.
- Eat a plate of your very favourite vegetable covered in garlic butter or olive oil or lemon juice, however you like it.
- Move your body in a way you like to move - walking, jogging, swimming or joining a Lacrosse team.
- Read an intellectual type book and every time you look up every word you you don’t recognise in the dictionary, add it to a list. The Luminaries is pretty good for this. Upon completion, you can review the list and feel smug about your expanding vocabulary.
- Submerge your body in some water - a bath, a pool, the ocean - and enjoy the feeling of weightlessness and quiet.
- Make plans to dye your hair a different colour. Only follow through if you want to.
- Go to Etsy and enter in random words like "pig" and "sunflower" and "cake" and see all of the weird art that people have made.
- Attempt some complicated nail art.
- Go to the RSPCA and walk the dogs there.
- Make a three-course meal for someone you love. Alternatively, buy and arrange a three course meal for someone you love.
- Go to a quiet bar and order a glass of your favourite wine or beer or mocktail.
- Donate money to someone or something that is making the world look the way you want it to look, maybe a blogger or an artist or a charity.
- Throw a potluck based on one type of food like a dip potluck or a salad potluck or a pie potluck.
- Climb up somewhere really high and look around you.
- Cover your whole body in a really lush, rich moisturiser so that you can’t really move for ages. I use coconut oil and then watch lots of reality television.
- Write an email to your favourite high school teacher or an important mentor and let them know that you still think about them all the time.
- Download a cheesy workout video and do it in the privacy of your bedroom.
- Swap back massages with a friend.
- Do a really weird and satisfying cleaning task like soaking your makeup brushes or washing your bike or disinfecting your Xbox controller.
- Brush your cat(s) until they can’t take it anymore.
- Pick or buy a little posy of flowers, for yourself or for someone you really like.
- Set aside a couple of hours to really clean up your inbox or iTunes account. Marvel at the fact that once upon a time you felt the need to download the Plastic Bag Theme from American Beauty.
- Email back that friend in Europe.
- Go to an op shop and buy a Goosebumps/Sweet Valley High/Babysitters Club/Animorphs book - whatever you were obsessed with as a kid. Buy a $2 mixture and hide under your duvet to read.
- Turn the best compliment you’ve ever received into an art project. Use glitter.
- Adopt a cat or a dog, if you have the financial means and you can commit to looking after that animal for its lifetime.
- Offer to clean a stressed out friend’s bathroom.
- Attend to your mending pile. Either throw your clothes out, take them to a tailor or pay a friend with mad sewing skills.
- Find a patch of dry, grassy ground and lie on it. Feel soothed by feeling the big, heavy earth under your back.
- Sign up for a class to learn a new skill like speaking Icelandic or playing the ukulele. If you can’t afford a class, watch some YouTube videos.
- Pick an issue that you know you should know more about like intersectionality or Parihaka or stem cell research and read up on it. Contribute actively at the next dinner party you go to.
- Meditate. Download an guided meditation or just sit quietly and concentrate on your breathing. My favourite meditation is to close my eyes and imagine sitting on a bench with another version of myself, watching and observing and accepting.
- Attempt to watch an entire television series in a day.
If you, or someone you know, needs help, please contact Victim Support.
(Image from Flickr user Rico San)
