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Saying this in a calmer voice: I am well and fully aware of the myth of Medusa, and I goddamn hate that this is being installed outside a courthouse.
I am a rape survivor. I do not want a sword. I do not want more violence. I am not an aggressor. I want *help*. https://twitter.com/rachelholliday/status/1314580135350337536
I am a rape survivor. I do not want a sword. I do not want more violence. I am not an aggressor. I want *help*. https://twitter.com/rachelholliday/status/1314580135350337536
The most popular and comfortable way our society engages with the reality of rape is with "revenge" narratives. KILL BILL and similar. Folks want to hand a weapon to a victim and see rapists carved up into bloody pieces.
What isn't popular and comfortable is our pain, our messiness. The fact that we need healthcare and universal basic income and childcare and therapy and SAFETY NETS that have nothing to do with cool swords and shiny guns.
Too many of you want to "solve" rape culture by having a shitty man be carved up into shreds because that's EASY. What skin off your back is that? But it's not a solution.
Real solutions mean really listening to us, helping us, paying us, letting us be messy, not talking over.
Real solutions mean really listening to us, helping us, paying us, letting us be messy, not talking over.
How are we going to talk about problems in the justice system, about how rape victims are treated, about prison abolition, and at the same time put up this statue that swaps a victim into an aggressive role where she's got a sword and killing?
I want to work towards prison abolition, towards rehabilitation, towards community solutions. I don't want "justice" to look like a woman with a sword beheading men. (Beheading a man who wasn't even her rapist, because that's not Poseidon, but that's another rabbit hole.)
Revenge narratives are popular because they're the only way we can get justice when the system fails us. Rapist can't be brought to court? Cue the KILL BILL sirens and go nuts.
But a courthouse IS "the system". It doesn't need more swords and violence. It needs to work.
But a courthouse IS "the system". It doesn't need more swords and violence. It needs to work.
I needed to be able to safely report my rape. I needed to be able to be listened to, and believed. I needed resources to process my rape and to safely take time to do so. I needed my rapist to be taken in and rehabilitated so he wouldn't do it again.
A sword does NONE of that.
A sword does NONE of that.
I'm not empowered by the image of a woman with a sword, killing a man who didn't rape her. I'm not empowered by associating "telling the truth about what happened to me" with beheading and violence and blood and swords.
If you are, that's great and I'm happy for you that this statue speaks to you.
I still do not think a *courthouse* is a neutral, appropriate place to install this violent imagery.
I still do not think a *courthouse* is a neutral, appropriate place to install this violent imagery.
And the fact that more people are going to "protect" fictional role-swapped Medusa than the rape survivors who are speaking out about this as harming them is kind of my point: we "messy" survivors are embarrassing, unwanted, too noisy, too inconvenient.
And I do want clarification on how we can juxtapose this imagery near a courthouse with being anti- death penalty, pro- prison abolition, pro- rehabilitation. How are we dismantling a violent system with a sword?
Anyway, @courtneymilan has a good thread up about this and I'm tired. https://twitter.com/courtneymilan/status/1314605061931237378
TL;DR: It's fine to like the statue. I've seen it before and thought it was a cool artistic concept as a narrative role reversal.
But that doesn't mean I want this symbol of violence tied further into our already too-violent justice system.
But that doesn't mean I want this symbol of violence tied further into our already too-violent justice system.
Just because I like revenge fantasies doesn't mean I want a statue of John Wick or The Bride (KILL BILL) outside the courthouse downtown. Our justice system shouldn't be about bloody violent revenge.
Addendum: Reading other survivors' objections to this statue has reminded me of how long I grappled with the fact that maybe I wasn't "really" a victim because I didn't fight back or want to kill my rapist.
I was one of those victims who was raped by someone I loved and cared about. I didn't want to hurt him; I wanted him to *stop* hurting me.
But because my rape didn't look like Angry Woman With Sword, I thought it *wasn't* rape.
But because my rape didn't look like Angry Woman With Sword, I thought it *wasn't* rape.
I went to a school counselor, described exactly what happened to me, but called it "sex". He broke confidentiality and tried to get me expelled from college for immoral behavior. It was YEARS before I realized I'd been raped.
Because I wasn't an Angry Woman With Sword.
Because I wasn't an Angry Woman With Sword.
If Angry Woman With Sword speaks to you then that's great and I hope you can get a really cool version for your mantle or coffee table, but when we elevate that in Public and Legal Spaces as THE rape victim narrative, it makes it harder for those of us who don't look like her.
