Unwatchable? Or Voyeurism Run Amok?

I heard about the storm the film 'Unwatchable' has caused when my therapist mentioned it to me. Suffice it to say I have no wish to watch the re-enactment of a woman being gang raped and hideous violence meted out to her family to put across a point about abuses which occur through the mobile 'phones industry in the Congo.

This is in no way because I think this stuff shouldn't be given publicity, and be denounced and taken action against. I believe passionately that wherever there is violence and injustice that the truth must be told and brought to people's attention, no matter how unpalatable. Here in the West we too often sit all too comfortably on our complacent arses and think that as long as life is good for me, then I'm not too bothered about anyone else. We live in a 'me' culture. Even when things that bring us pleasure cause other people pain (pornography being the main example I have drawn upon here in my blogs) we prefer a good old ostrich approach. We need to be made uncomfortable! Only if I am uncomfortable will I move from my armchair and take action.

But to draw attention to rape and torture doesn't necessitate a re-enactment. It just seems to me to be part of the same old same old pattern: people get desensitised to pain and violence, so rather than finding more creative means of expressing the destructivity of rape and violence we simply show it in ever more graphic ways. And so the shock factor barrier gets pushed further and further and the images on our screens become more and more sordid.

The truth is that rape is sordid. It is damaging, it is scarring, it is the fundamental loss of something irretrievable: yourself. As a survivor of rape, and of gang rape, I felt lost even to myself, disconnected, other than my body, betrayed by it. Unable to stop what was happening to it, I removed myself mentally, I split off. My body remained but I didn't: I was there but not there, present but not present. The rapes and the violence remain a part of me, even now: they were my reality, that was my life as a pimped woman, addicted to drink and drugs. And there's no moving on fast from that. Everybody likes a happy ending, boy how we love them! She got away from him, got clean and sober and now lives a happy life. The end! We can move onto something else conscience clear.

Not likely. Not in my experience, anyway. Healing from trauma takes time and help, and healing from severe trauma takes a lot of time and help.

What has been produced is a quick, sensationalist video of graphic sexual violence (likely to trigger survivors of rape), another piece in the ever growing pile of more sexually graphic material that's already coming out of our ears. This has triggered off a flash shock-horror-this-is-what-gang-rape-looks-like kind of response which seems likely to fizzle out soon (we'll see if the hype it's created moves beyond talking about the actual video into actual longterm action and pressure groups). Isn't that the pattern with shocking images? Shocked, then less shocked, then just forgotten as something more shocking comes along. I've watched a video and been outraged and talked about it, maybe even signed a petition so now I can wash my hands and forget... Wouldn't it have been more effective perhaps to draw attention to the psychological damage of rape? Wouldn't a broader conversation rather than a visual shock tactic have had more of a lasting impact, getting people thinking, triggering whole areas of helpful frank discussion and action rather than a routine response?

Why are we still obsessed with watching a woman being raped rather than talking to a rape victim and hearing her voice? Why is the emphasis still on a naked helpless woman's body rather than the whole woman?

Wouldn't it be a refreshing change for us not to be the voyeur?

In a society saturated with hardcore pornography in which women are routinely subject to violence, where lapdancing clubs where women are objectified and bought every day are thought of as harmless fun, where stripping and pornography are seen as empowering for women, in truth nothing is unwatchable. A more helpful and unusual approach given our society's obsession with objectifying women's bodies would have been to actually hear the woman's voice, not linger on her with the camera, frozen in time, as she is raped. If people are uneasy about this film (and they should be: I'm arguing here that there was a better way of raising awareness of this issue, not that this issue shouldn't be raised), maybe we need to ask them not so much why they are distressed by the realities of what's happening in the Congo as why they aren't distressed by the realities of what's happening here and now in our own country.

1 on 4 women will experience domestic violence.

Every week, 2 women in the UK are killed by their partner or former partner.

The incidence of rape still makes it a threat for every woman.

The conviction rate for rape remains at 13%.

Polls continue to show that most people, male and female, believe that the rape victim has some degree of responsibility for being raped.

Our culture is a rape culture, that is, one in which women remain unequal, where pornographic material of an ever more hardcore nature is becoming more and more mainstream, and where this is deemed as a good thing, not at odds with promoting sexual equality. The makers of 'unwatchable' aren't the only ones who realise that more shocking tactics than ever are required to pull in an audience. Pornographers are entering more and more extreme territory to pull in johns to buy it. We are desensitised. The price pornographers are willing to pay is the damage done to a woman's body as she undergoes more and more brutal acts for the punter's kicks. Strikes me, if the people who made the video were really bothered about women, they shouldn't be taking a leaf from the pornographer's books and focussing on more extreme graphically depicted sexual violence. Being a voyeur is not enough. Instead, it would be more helpful if people stood alongside survivors of rape and heard our voices.

I can't speak for every rape victim, but for me? I'm tired of people standing by watching, be it shocked or unshocked, as women are raped and beaten. We need access to help, and beyond that, we need a voice, we need understanding, we need to live in a society where we are not blamed for being raped because of what we wore / said / how we acted, where people stop simply seeing us frozen in time as the woman being raped and see the whole us: our history, how we came to be here, our hopes and dreams. In short, we need change, which can only mean one thing. Action!

Desensitised and Anaesthetised

A group of us were round at a friend's house the other day, chilling out together, and we began to watch a film which someone had heard was good... 10 minutes later we were stopping it again, overwhelmed by the violence. Don't get me wrong, my friends and I aren't fragile or exceptionally sensitive. But when a man was depicted being graphically tortured, we were in agreement: it wasn't 'entertainment', it was sick.

I got to thinking afterwards how desensitised our culture has become. That this sells as entertainment is a little disturbing. But how much more disturbing that pornography is so widely accepted as 'harmless' and 'fun' and 'entertainment'! The blood in this film, the violence in this film, the cuts and bruises in this film were special effects: they weren't real. The actor would most likely object were it otherwise!

Yet in pornography, real women are penetrated and used and fucked and cum on or in, for real. No faking: the vaginas and anuses and mouths in the close ups are all part of the 'models', the women being sold. When that woman looks like she's in pain, that's because it hurts, it hurts her, for real, no acting required. That she is given lines sometimes in films to repeat, that it feels good, doesn't diminish that fact, though it increases her pain.

When I was raped and being hurt and it was being filmed or photographed for the entertainment of others, to make money for others, it was the final insult, to be made to 'smile' or say I enjoyed it. I didn't want to say those things, didn't want to be there, didn't want to smile, or at least, try to smile, not knowing whether I was or if I was grimacing. I remember thinking, I can't remember how to smile.

Sitting here at my computer, knowing that those images are still out there, I see that the best I can hope for is for that pain, that real pain and suffering, to be acknowledged. But I also sit here in the knowledge that pornography is becoming ever more accepted, ever more available, and ever more extreme, because as people become accustomed to it, it no longer seems shocking, and something new, something more 'hardcore', more 'shocking' is needed to gain the same 'effect'. All this combined with the fact that pornography is bizarrely seen as fantasy, inspite of the fact that the women it uses are real, and shrouded in a language of 'rights' and feminist terms, is deeply disturbing.

It hurts.

The women directly involved are damaged. But women who are not so involved are damaged by it too. What we view has a direct effect on how we act in our lives. So if in pornographic magazines and films women are treated as sex objects, and treated violently, and shown to enjoy it, and pornography is now viewed widely as acceptable, something men need to be men, something harmless, we are normalising treatment of women that should not be normalised. We are making the unacceptable acceptable. If we allow some women to be treated as fuck dolls, nothing more than a bunch of orifices to be used and abused for men's pleasure, we allow every woman to be treated as such.

Women need to know this. Women need to see that while they may not be in those pictures or those films, this touches their lives too. No one is immune. The prevalence of violence against women makes that clear. If I allow other women to be sold as sex objects, penetrated, wanked over and cast aside, that leads me to 2 possible conclusions, logically. Either I say that there is a sub-class of women who are in some way different than me, and therefore it's ok for them to be treated that way, but not ok for me to be. In this way I can remove myself from the picture, and say: not my problem. Or I have to say that the woman in the pictures is just like me, and that if it's ok that that can be done to her, it's ok for it to be done to me. I stand alongside of her and say: no, I wouldn't want this for myself, so it shouldn't be happening to her.

I am one of those women in those pictures, one of those women in those films. I am no different than you, reader. I laugh and cry, have hopes and dreams, have family and friends. I'm a middle class young woman who found that domestic violence, that addiction, that rapes and pimping can happen to anyone. That being used in pornography can happen to anyone. I'm not special or different, or unusual in any way other than to have come through it, to have survived it, and to be in recovery and finding a voice to speak about that now. I'm speaking for all those women who aren't able to, for all those women without a voice, for those women who won't make it out.

We don't have to let future generations of women suffer this way.