Trigger Warning
I just came across this post at Abyss2Hope about a woman who died because a man drugged her with “date rape drug” GHB and raped her — about a man who killed a woman with his decision to rape her, and another man who helped him cover up his crime.
And I sat here, and I asked myself: when are we going to take “date” rape seriously? When? What does it take? And why on fucking earth does it take a woman dying, a woman being murdered, for it to happen?
But then I read the article and realized that still, the media is not taking it seriously (emphasis mine):
After Clayborn left work that night, she went to a party at the Pine Road house the men shared. There Farrar slipped Clayborn GHB (gamma hydroxy butyrate), a colorless, odorless depressant, better known as the date rape drug, and Klonopin, an anxiety control medicine.
Farrar had sex with Clayborn and when she subsequently died of an overdose, he and Houghtalling put her in her car and left her body on Whorton Bend Road.
Because of course a woman can consent to “sex” after being given an incapacitating drug without her knowledge, which eventually kills her. Why on earth would we call that rape?
I read that, and I was angry. Furious. And then I read this:
Farrar is charged with murder and abuse of a corpse. Houghtalling is charged with abuse of a corpse and hindering prosecution.
I saw the charges and said: good, they’re charging him with murder rather than just manslaughter. Finally.
Then I did a double-take and realized that rape (or whatever it is legally called in the jurisdiction) is not among the charges. I realized that a woman was essentially murdered with rape as the fucking weapon, and still that rape is not seen as a crime itself worth prosecution.
But the abuse of the woman’s corpse is. What this man did to her body while she was alive does not count, and what he did after is apparently a crime. I realized that someone, likely a group of someones, decided that a woman’s right for her body to not be abused and violated matters more when she’s dead than it does when she’s alive.
And then I was beyond angry; I was speechless.
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What this man did to her body while she was alive does not count, and what he did after is apparently a crime.
UGH.
i was doing some research about the legal status of nigerian women for a case at work, and found things like a federal statute authorizing marital abuse as long as it didn’t kill the woman or disfigure her case, and the inheritance laws that considered a widow part of the man’s estate. and i thought about how much more freedom and rights i have as a white straight cis woman in the united states – i’m basically as free and liberated as a woman can get.
and to realize that the most free women who have ever existed in the history of the world have still had decided for them that “a woman’s right for her body to not be abused and violated matters more when she’s dead than it does when she’s alive” – that is awful. awful and vile.
The sad part is, nobody takes this seriously. The infuriating part is, nobody even wants to take this seriously.
I’ve never been raped (thank God). Just last week, I was talking to a friend on IM, discussing another friend of ours with whom I only sometimes get along, and then he goes and says “You’re lucky he’s forgiving, he should have raped and killed you long ago.” My initial reaction was a shocked blink and staring at those words, utter disbelief. A supposed friend of mine, even in jest, basically just wished that another friend of mine had violated me sexually and murdered me. WTF?! Needless to say, he “mysteriously” hasn’t heard anything from me since then.
Seriously, though, I felt horrible being told that even considering I’ve never been a victim. Couldn’t imagine how much worse that’d be if I had been!
But of course, because of my silence, this guy correctly picked up on that he’d said something offensive, only to end up teasing me endlessly for having been offended. To him and sadly so many other people, rape, while wrong, isn’t a serious thing; it’s just “another irrational thing bitches complain about”. A prevailing viewpoint and Clayborn is just another victim we have to show for it. :(
Cara, good catch on Farrar not being charged with rape. Since the woman was killed because of his actions, the claim that it was sex not rape had to come from him.
He succeeded at killing her so she cannot testify that she did not consent. As I wrote in my post once you drug someone then any sexual contact or activity which follows is a sex crime. If the criminal statutes in Alabama don’t reflect this reality then those statutes must be changed.
I started to write a comment and it turned into a rant, so I posted it here.
Katrina, the good news is there are people taking this seriously. I attended an all-day training session last week sponsored by Minnesota Men’s Action Network called Stop it Before it Starts. I’ve been blogging about this training most of this week. The Minnesota Dept. of Health has a strong focus on prevention.
What we don’t have enough of is funding and buy in from people who feel terrible about crimes like this but who do nothing because they assume there is nothing we can do.
Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.
Not very coherent, but I’m speechless too.
Comment on the site:
“Mothers, go home to your children at night.”
In this one short sentence response we have victim-blaming, the prioritising of the child’s welfare over his/her mother’s, and some good old fashioned ‘this wouldn’t have happened if she’d stayed in the kitchen’ chauvinism.
If it’s not the articles softening their reports on rape that hurt the most, it’s the casual comments in response that take it upon themselves to lecture women for being in possession of a vagina and a normal social life.
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