Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Christians for Biblical Equality presents: Rape Culture in the Church

The following post is what I talked about during my presentation on rape culture for Christians for Biblical Equality. Delivered the entire message without tearing up, throwing up, or tripping in my heels. AND I got to sign some books. Success!





You may be wondering what is meant by the title “Rape culture in the church.” To start, let me just explain what “rape culture” is, for those who have never heard that term before. Rape culture is living in a society that excuses rape by placing the blame on the victim. Rape culture is perpetuating a cycle of irresponsibility for rapists who are in relationships with their victims, which is more common than you think. We often tell women that because they consented to sex before, they can’t say no, now. We teach men that sex is a right, and one that is theirs for the taking, especially in a marriage where a man is considered the head of the household, according to Christian tradition.
Rape culture is also making jokes about rape. When I was a freshman in college, it was an inside joke in my sorority to say “It’s not rape if you call pin rank” (“Pin rank” referring to the order in which the pledges were initiated). This wasn’t referring to actual rape, but was used as an extreme expression to show the amount of power and authority the older pledges had on the newer ones. To my knowledge, no one thought anything of it, and I laughed along as much as everyone else did.
This topic is very personal to me, because I myself am a statistic of rape. Rather than beat myself up, I channeled my anger and grief into my self-published book, Someone You Already Know, which tells the story of two teenage victims and their efforts to understand each other. One character was raped by her boyfriend; the other by a stranger. It wasn’t written as a Christian book, but I intended for it to be a teaching tool for classrooms and churches.
Now you’re probably wondering, what does this have to do with the church? If you’re active on Facebook and other forms of social media like I am, you may be familiar with a certain blog post regarding female modesty that went viral this summer. It was written by a woman named Kim Hall, and in her post she talks about looking through her sons’ Facebook friends’ lists. She is writing to their female friends asking them to “cover up” so her sons don’t stumble. She writes, “Once my boys see a suggestive photo of you, they can’t un-see it.” To be fair, this woman’s intentions were good: modesty is a forgotten virtue in our culture that must be brought back. But Kim Hall is not the only Christian going about this important subject in a way that shames women. We Christians care a great deal about modesty, but we teach it in a way that is completely backwards.
I want to tell you that it is not a woman’s responsibility to prevent men from lusting. Not to mention, telling women to “cover up” for the sake of helping out their brothers in Christ is demeaning to both sexes.
First, it implies that women’s bodies are shameful and something to be hidden, which they’re not! Remember that Adam and Eve were originally naked in Eden. It was after the Fall that the body was viewed through corrupt lenses; but there is nothing inherently shameful about our bodies to begin with. Secondly, this mindset implies that men are barbaric beasts who are slaves to their hormones. It implies they have no self-control, and need to rely on women to take responsibility for them.
Men, I don’t know about you, but I’m highly offended by the implication that your brain is next to your balls. If men become animals and lose all self-control at the sight of a suggestively-dressed woman, and seemingly have no ‘choice’ but to either lust after her, or assault her, then what we’re saying is that the default status of all men is "rapist."
Think about it this way: we all know better than to take things that don’t belong to us. We know better than to trespass onto someone else’s property. Such actions have serious consequences, and rarely do we tell the person whose car was broken into that it’s their fault for not hiding the GPS under the seat, or in the dash. But when it comes to rape, there is something unique about this crime where it’s easier to excuse the perpetrator. We blame the woman’s skirt. We blame the fact that she was drinking. We insist she should have known better. Why her, and not the rapist?
So now, you may be thinking: okay, rape culture is a problem, but what does this have to do with the church? The answer is simple: the line between “She caused him to stumble” is not a far cry from “She was asking for it.” The reality is, women are just as likely to be raped in burquas as they are in string bikinis. This happens every day in the Middle East, especially right now in Syria.
I’ve had well-intentioned Christian friends preach modesty during Bible study, in a way that suggests “Only you can keep your boyfriends’ minds in check.” Well, my ex-boyfriend raped me when I was wearing sweatpants: not my first choice of ‘asking for it’ clothes. So clearly, sinful behavior is a deliberate choice. It’s not something one ‘stumbles’ into by accident. The relationship began when I was 17, an age where I thought I knew everything, and it ended when I was 22. He was a leader in the young adult group at his church; if you knew him, you probably looked up to him, as I did. He told me he was “making me into a woman,” and because he was a leader in his church, this raised an important question for me: what kind of womanhood is expected of me as a Christian?
It’s time the church starts taking responsibility for one another by changing the way we see each other. We are created in God’s image, meaning we are creatures with inborn dignity. Men AND women should care about modesty out of respect for their own bodies, a vessel that should not be revealed to just anyone. What would it look like if we taught our sons and daughters to view each other as dignified human beings, instead of ‘stumbling blocks’?
When we teach our daughters to cover up to prevent men from lusting, we are telling them that their bodies are shameful. And when we tell men that the control of their hormones are a woman’s responsibility from the way we dress, we are teaching them to view women as temptresses, not human beings. Attitudes like these are further traumatizing for rape victims in particular, who may already blame themselves for what they endured. That’s what society does, but the church is called to be different. The church is called to set an example.
According to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, approximately 28% of victims already know the person who raped them. These victims are often sitting next to you in church, and are further shamed into silence by their pastors and fellow congregants, who ignorantly promote a view that modesty is about preventing men from lusting; and should they fail, then rape is not only excusable, but asked for.
How can we better address this issue in the church?

15 comments:

  1. I hope it will change as more women of your generation have learned to stand up for themselves and not listen in silence to what they're being taught. I hope ti changes as more women of my generation empower you to do so and refuse to back down from the fight we will get from men and women alike who prefer to hear and believe that controlling girls is the easy answer to a difficult problem. I have three daughters, and I, like you, will not let them be shamed anymore because they are lovely young women. Yes, to pretty much everything you said.

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  2. Excellent article... thank you for your courage in sharing.

    For rape culture to be better addressed in the church, I believe, we need to acknowledge the many ways it enters -- from the pulpit, Sunday school, programming, youth group, mindsets surrounding men's/women's roles, supporting Grade 12 students as they transition towards post-secondary, nursery school children as they transition to kindergarten...

    - how are we presenting Jesus to one another (either from the pulpit or in everyday relationships)? Our perception of God will affect how/if we see hierarchy in relationships.

    - how are we being open about sexuality? If we aren't, we need to loosen our neckties and have frank discussions around gender, orientation, lifestyle, choices, roles, and even the porn v. art debate. We also need to allow room/space for girls to admit that we are visual creatures just like men, and experience sexual stimulation as such. We have been told that we're more emotional, so we suppress these physical aspects of ourselves which then emerge in other unhealthy ways. It's never been appropriate for women to be sexual except in strict categorical boxes, but men are expected to be hormonal and uncontrollable.

    - how are victims being treated in the church? Are they hushed away and told to forgive? Are they given full support and backing?

    - how are perpetrators being treated in the church? While I fully agree that victims and perpetrators shouldn't be forced to "kiss and make up" (I shudder to write that) especially where sexual assault is involved, I do believe there are gifted believers able to enter prisons and walk alongside convicted sex offenders... or listen to young men who are struggling with thoughts of forced sex. That's a hard thing to say when so much hurt, anger and devastation is caused by sexual assault, yet if only anger and retaliation is repeatedly returned to perps, perps will always be perps.

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  3. You are so correct in what you are saying, Sarahbeth! I know of a situation in which a woman was raped at one of the Christian colleges, and then was penalized for being raped by getting kicked out of the school for a year. When she came back to finish up her degree, she was not allowed in the women's dorm because she was considered to be "promiscuous" (because of the rape). ABSOLUTELY SICKENING! To add insult to injury, she received a letter from one of her professors at her previous institution (a sister school to the one she was raped at), in which he told her that he was "disappointed in her behavior!" The guy who raped her...nothing was done to him...of course! She was at fault!

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  5. Here's the first problem I have with this post: twice during the course of the article, the author poses the question "So what does this have to do with the church?"

    Yet she never really answers her own question.

    The first time she rhetorically asks this, she gives the example of Kim Hall's Facebook posts. How does this have to do with the church? The actions of a well-intentioned yet misguided woman don't represent the universal body of believers, do they?

    The second time she poses this question, she replies that "The answer is simple: the line between 'She caused him to stumble' is not a far cry from 'She was asking for it.'" Maybe in her particular case she experienced this type of response, but she has given no evidence to support her assertion that this is a widespread attitude that is present in Christian churches all over the country.

    The second problem I have is her attitude(s) regarding modesty. She says, "We Christians care a great deal about modesty, but we teach it in a way that is completely backwards." Ok, so should "we Christians" be concerned about modesty? If so, what is the correct way to instruct young men & women in this regard?

    Rather than providing some insightful instruction, she (like virtually every other Christian female writer I've read on this topic) takes the tack that it's not the woman's responsibility, but the man's. In fact, she directly says that "it is not a woman’s responsibility to prevent men from lusting. Not to mention, telling women to 'cover up' for the sake of helping out their brothers in Christ is demeaning to both sexes." It always seems to be an "us vs. them" mentality, with the additional claim that women's bodies are healthy and beautiful, and shouldn't have to be covered up.

    In my mind, this kind of response is as unhelpful and arrogant as the male-dominated claim she makes that blames the victim for the attack based on what they were wearing. Both attitudes are essentially selfish, in that they claim that the responsibility lies solely with the other, and not at all with themselves. So, if we can, let's dispense with the "he said/she said" attacks and focus on some truth.

    - First, it would be helpful to distinguish between lust & rape. Lust is best described as an impulse toward a particular object or activity. It may be sexual in nature, or not. It is something that we *all* struggle with, in some form or another. It may be sex, or alcohol, or anything towards which we have a strong proclivity - whether learned, taught or innate.

    Do women in this country have the "right" to dress as they choose? Of course. Yet Paul (in Romans 14:13) says to "make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister." If we are acting out of love and genuine concern for our Christian brothers & sisters, will we not give up some of our "rights" if in doing so we may prevent others from stumbling? He gives the example of meat sacrificed to idols, but what - in our day in age - would be some equivalent examples of actions that may cause others to stumble?

    - Second, I want to make it clear that there is no excuse for rape. None. Ever. That is a whole separate issue than the subject of modesty, and the two should not be tied together. Men who rape may have lust issues, but it is their lust for power or control, not necessarily sex. But blaming the "church" for having this attitude or promoting a "rape culture" while providing only anecdotal evidence for your case does not make for a very strong or compelling argument.

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    1. Dave,
      This presentation was meant to bring awareness to a problem that has long been ignored in Christian circles. I don't have the answers, and I certainly didn't expect to fix the problem in one hour-long speech. I was mostly interested in hearing other people's opinions/personal stories about this topic.

      Of course the opinion of one Christian blogger doesn't represent the opinion of the masses; but Kim Hall did receive a flood of supporters in addition to haters, so she's not alone in her thinking. If you were present during my speech, and even if you read the above comments, you will see the evidence that this is a problem within the church. I don't have statistics for you, I only have my testimony. If we open the door for this subject to be addressed, there will be an out-pour of similar stories, I promise you.

      I'm sorry you got the impression that I'm promoting an "us vs. them" mentality. That was not my intention. I am an advocate for PERSONAL responsibility of every Christian. Ultimately, only God can judge someone's intentions. This issue is not about having the "right" to wear what we want, but about using clothing as a scapegoat.

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    2. "That is a whole separate issue than the subject of modesty, and the two should not be tied together."

      Dave, I agree with some of your statements that rape is about power and control, not necessarily modesty. You're right that in an ideal world, the two subjects shouldn't be tied together. But that is actually Sarahbeth's whole point; people often point to "modesty" as the root of these problems when in fact they shouldn't. The cause of rape isn't actually modesty or lack thereof, but it's a handy excuse that bystanders (and perpetrators) latch onto to explain what happened or avoid confronting the attackers.

      If you don't believe that this sort of blame-shifting to modesty is a common occurrence in North American churches, I'm not sure what I can tell you. I've heard story after story after story that is similar to Sarahbeth's and those in this comment section. I've never been a victim myself, but after hearing about it so much, from many different sources, it's difficult for me to dismiss all that anecdotal evidence. I know anecdotal evidence isn't the be-all and end-all of proof, but it's not nothing, either.

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    3. @Rach-
      Thanks for your reply. Dialogue is important on this subject, esp. between men and women.

      From what I can tell, Sarahbeth is condensing the whole church involvement in rape culture down to one sentence: "the line between 'She caused him to stumble' is not a far cry from 'She was asking for it.'" I take this to mean that she believes that some Christians (hopefully, not the whole Church) conflate modesty & rape.

      Personally, I have not heard or seen this in any of the churches I've ever been involved with. To be sure, there's a wide variety of attitudes regarding modesty; what is or is not appropriate, tasteful, tacky, etc. Good, well-meaning Christians will naturally disagree on what it means and how it should be applied. But I've never heard of anyone in leadership at a church or school link modesty to rape in the way that she (and you) are describing. I'm not saying it doesn't happen - just that that is something that I've never personally witnessed.

      @Sarahbeth:
      First, let me just thank you for taking the time to put your thoughts in writing and address such a sensitive subject. I'm sure that can't be easy for you.

      Here's the thing: when issues such as this are couched in such broad-brush terms as "a problem with the church," no one takes responsibility. It's some nebulous term - the Church - that applies simultaneously to everyone and no one. In my opinion, it would be much better if people addressed issues they see at their OWN church. I would challenge people with the following:

      - Have you witnessed this attitude being presented by the leadership of your church? Do you know of situations where an issue was "swept under the rug" or the victim blamed? Have you heard gossip from any corner where the prevailing attitude was "She was asking for it?" Then stand up and say something!! Address the lies and the misinformation WHERE YOU ARE!

      For attitudes and actions to change, there must first be grassroots effort to address these issues where they have taken root. Repeated stories and anecdotal evidence don't change things - one must be themselves willing to BE that agent of change.

      And it starts in your own church.

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    4. After I was raped in 2002 by a fellow church member, the church senior pastor encourage the report to police. Other church officials didn't want to be involved because the rapist was the adult son of one of the secretaries. The men of my Sunday Class got proactive and developed dialogue with the officials which lead to the church banning the rapist from the church...so that I would feel safe to return again. What I'm sharing is that people in the church do not know how to manage a rape situation. The senior pastor at the time was right on target with my needing to go to the police which I did. But the other officials wanted the whole scenario to disappear like it never happened. But it did. Education within the clergy regarding rape is necessary because it happens a lot. The body of Christ cannot turn a blind eye to it. Because the rapist was a family member of clergy staff, I was turned away from receiving much need counseling. I ended up having to go to non-Christian support organizations for therapy...and ended up on temporary medication/hospitalization. The officials of the church only banned the rapist after I was hospitalized for a week for suicidal idealations and over medication of welbutrin after Paxil. I don't entirely agree with the author but I don't disagree either. I hear a lot of lashing out in her words due to the raw pain she is still experiencing because she's still healing. However, modesty is not a church mandate...it's a Biblical one. If you do want to help change the 'church' culture, you will have to get you points drafted and have concrete subjects/proposed solutions for each point...to be taken seriously for real solutions to the cultural misperceptions within the church. Further you will need to look at the demographics of the various churches. One cannot blanket assumption that every person within every church sees things from only one perspective. However, when an assault victim is still reeling from the pain of the assault, we are hypersensitive to the insensitive approaches of certain people within the church or representing the church. My best advice would be to collect your arguments in a more orderly presentable fashion to gain traction if you want a cultural change. Further, you will bode well to reach out to women like Kim Hall instead of bashing her thru a blog. You may be surprised how much you and people like her could work together to change a church culture...collaboration with key public figures within the church will broaden your ability to educate the masses while also teaching folk a like Ms. Hall what you have gone through personally. God bless you for making a stand, but remember that we in the body of Christ are NOT the enemy...so may your words and actions reflect this knowledge. From a fellow survivor...

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  6. How about we teach our girls to dress modestly out of respect for themselves, rather than out of "keeping men from stumbling." And how about we teach our boys to respect others no matter how they are dressed? If a girl is immodestly dressed - you look away. You don't assume the goods are there for the taking or for your mental lusting (or taking it further to physical violation). The problem with the church is that more often than not the burden is always put on the females. It's also ok for boys to go around half naked (no shirts, with shorts) but if a girl shows a little bit of cleavage or a little too much leg, she's a tramp. Those are the kinds of things wrong.

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  7. Here is another problem I see with this article (and with the comments that follow it). Here is what has been written just in response to this article:

    "...this is a problem within the church."

    "If you don't believe that this sort of blame-shifting to modesty is a common occurrence in North American churches, I'm not sure what I can tell you."

    "The problem with the church is..."

    It seems as though a common thread whenever someone has an issue that they want to focus on is to blame the "church" for ignoring it, not doing more about it, or not giving it more attention. While this is a convenient way to stir up awareness (and criticism), it's woefully inaccurate. Consider for a moment the vast number of churches in North America alone. Hundreds of different denominations, hundreds of thousands of individual buildings and communities.

    What gives you the right (or the ability) to speak about ALL of these churches and condemn them for whatever issue you're hot about? You may have personal experience with one or more churches in your area, but that does not make you an expert on what goes on in the Church writ large. That would be like me saying "The problem with women is..." based on a few personal experiences I've had with women over the years. Would you object to my lumping you all into the same category? Would that be fair and/or accurate?

    I get that this is a deeply personal issue for you, and one that you want to shed more light on and make people more aware of. Kudos to you for that. However, titling your article "Rape Culture in the Church" is - in my opinion - a misnomer. You cite examples from your college sorority, an online blogger, Muslim culture, etc. but the only thing church-related (that I can tell) is that your rapist was "a leader in the young adult group at his church." Were his actions based on something he was taught, or was it something else?

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    1. Here's the point I am trying to make: if rape culture happens in more than one church, then it's necessary to educate ALL churches, even if yours isn't guilty of promoting it. It's for the same reason we talk to kids about peer pressure *before* they find themselves with peers trying to get them to smoke. It's for the same reason we have anti-bullying programs and seminars on gun violence for schools, because not taking preventative steps can result in another incident like Columbine. I called this speech "Rape Culture in the Church" because 1) this is a problem that exists in many churches, even if not ALL churches, and 2) everyone needs to educated so we can make sure it won't happen in their church. Hope that clarifies.

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  8. Excellent, brave post.
    Thank you.

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  9. Sarahbeth, I agree with what you're saying. The point is that both genders need to take responsibility for themselves and for the enculturation they are part of and in many ways, propagate. As has been previously said, modesty for its own sake and for the sake of the person's self respect, regardless of their gender, is really important.

    However, modest people get raped just as often and just as easily as immodest people. Which means that there is more to the question than just that women need to do all the things required to make sure they don't get raped. Old ladies in their homes get raped... little children get raped... As has been said, rape isn't about sex, it's about power and control and as such, needs to be addressed from that perspective.

    Thanks for a brave and strong post which speaks deeply into the issues we are all struggling to make sense of.

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