The most horrible name you can think of

Warning: In the part of this post that discusses sexual assault, which may be triggering for some readers, I use gendered language. In referring to rapists as "he" etc., I do not mean to convey that I think all rapes ever committed were committed by men. I do mean to comport with the statistically accurate assumption that a given rapist will be male.

Whom do you think of when you think of a racist? A Klansman? Someone who lynches people of color or keeps them from voting? It seems that many people I'm talking to lately have a very hard-line definition of a racist, a definition which describes a despicable person, someone to be reviled.

Whom do you think of when you think of a rapist? Are you the priveleged person who thinks of a rapist in the abstract, or are you one of millions of people who can picture a face when you read the word "rapist"? Do you think rapists are evil, sociopathic men who prey upon women or children, people so depraved that you have nothing in common with them?

Absolute definitions for people who commit terrible acts or hold harmful views can be comforting, but they are ultimately harmful. In the case of racism, for instance, if you think a racist kills people of color here are some things that might not seem racist to you:

1. Sending an email of the White House lawn filled with watermelons.
2. Saying some members of a certain racial group are "just better/worse at cleaning or watching kids or certain sports or gardening" than members of other racial groups.
3. Including Asian-American actors in movies, but only if there's a "reason" for them to be Asian. You know, like they're computer scientists or ninjas! This works for other races, too. This also works for movies in which people of color only appear as facilitators for the white characters, suggesting that their lives and life stories are less important than those of the white main characters.
4. Taking for granted that mass media, in advertising, television, and movies, reflects your *white* race almost universally, and not thinking of that as different than the world you live in.
5. Making evolution-based arguments for a thin, white, fair-haired beauty ideal in Western culture, as if all men who desire any woman who does not measure up to that ideal has been obliged to ignore his biologically determined (can't control or change it!) desire for white blondeness.
6. Not noticing that throughout the world fairer, paler, whiter people of all races are overwhelmingly members of the upper classes, while darker complected people are members of the lower classes. Or, if you notice, not even considering that to be the product of systemic racism.

There are others. All of these things reflect a preference in the world for whiteness over black- or brown-ness. Contributing to this structure without questioning it is racist, because the structure is racist. It's called living with "unexamined white privilege", and you can do something about it if you want to. You can have racist views without wanting to kill people who are a different color than you. But, the definition of a racist as a cartoonishly villanous Klansman-type character lets many people off the hook in their own minds for their racism and unexamined privilege. This works in rape, too. Check it out.

In the wake of the Roman Polanski arrest and subsequent flood of apologists, Chris Rock went on the Jay Leno show and reminded us: "Rape is #2! Behind murder! It's the second-worst!" While it is true that rape is horrible, public perception of rapists is similarly horrible. This doesn't really work how you'd expect it to, unfortunately. You'd think that when any heretofore good guy that you know who commits rape, he is no longer considered a good guy. Instead, people rush to defend him: he's a good person, he respects [x] and [x] is a woman, he helped an old lady across the street one time etc. etc. This is particularly insidious when you consider the ways the justice system makes it hard for women to report rape, and for laywers to prosecute rape. There's pressure on a woman alleging rape to drop the charges, lest the investigation into a crime committed against her ruin her rapist's reputation.

I submit the much more nuanced, ugly, and uncomfortable truth: if it were easy to recognize a rapist, fewer rapes would occur. We know that most rapes are committed by non-strangers, a.k.a. acquaintances, partners, co-workers, boyfriends, husbands, fellow soldiers. The idea that a woman can avoid every potential rapist in her sphere is, unfortunately, impossible. It is quite likely you have met a man who has raped someone, and you'd never know it unless you knew it! Think about that. There are people you have met who have sexually assaulted people. People who you and/or the greater society consider "good people" rape other people. Stop apologizing for them just because you like their movies or you had fun drinking with them that one time!

Update: great post on this issue on The Sexist: