Here we are, yet again. Someone else in the public eye has been accused of rape. People are widely condemning or supporting him on the internet, and it's led to a frenzy of conversation about rape and how it's handled in society. If you don't know what recent even I'm talking about, I'll give you some context. Recently several women have come forward accusing comedian Aaron Glaser of rape and/or sexual assault. This has led to his being banned from a handful famous comedy clubs. One issue people have with these accusations is that the women have come forward anonymously. Comedian Kurt Metzger is one supporter of Glaser who is particularly perturbed by the anonymity issue, and he has been less than shy about this. Metzger has made some horrendous comments on Facebook and Twitter, which sparked some intense conversation from everyday citizens and celebrities alike. Metzger is more widely known as a writer for Amy Schumer's show "Inside Amy Schumer," and she's recently been under fire in the aftermath of Metzger's comments. It's snowballed into the conversations we often see after events like this: is the situation being correctly handled by authorities? Are people victim-blaming? What is rape culture, and is it even a real thing?
Metzger appears to be partial to the belief that rape culture is a myth. Rape culture is the term used to describe society's general attitude towards incidences of sexual assault. It references the way society often normalizes sexual violence, blames the victims, and treats rape as a sort of "inevitable fact of life." I'll let some of Metzger's Facebook posts be a better explanation of it. For someone who doesn't think rape culture is a thing, he sure is a marvelous example of it.
This post is remarkably tame in comparison to the others he posted. WARNING: The rest of his posts are even more offensive, and he's a huge fan of profanity. I'm not comfortable including them all in my own article, but I'll give some highlights for those who don't want to actually read them. Metzger tells "'internet feminists'" to "pull your heads out of your [insert horrible word for female genitalia]" and actually help victims instead of going on with this "nonsense about 'culture'" and teaching women to be weak. He also says he is so passionate about this belief and pleased with all the criticism for his comments, it's sexually exciting to him. He, not shockingly, says this in a much more foul way.
Metzger's main issue appears to be with how rarely victims report rape to police. What he's referring to is true. According to statistics from RAINN, only 344 out of every 1,000 rapes get reported to authorities. Like many other members of society, Metzger immediately jumps to anger and calling people weak instead of asking why these incidences often go unreported. If he considered that question, he'd find there are a multitude of reasons.
Generally speaking, the authorities don't do sh*t. Get ready for a statistic that will make a piece of your soul die: "Out of every 1000 rapes, 994 perpetrators will walk free." Yes, rape is incredibly hard to prove. Yes, victims often either don't report it or wait too long to report it. But realistically, how can you expect someone struggling with a trauma like that to jump at the chance to go to police when they see rapists walk free time and time again? I don't have to reference incidents in the US where perpetrators were given little to no punishment for sexual assault, because I guarantee you can think of one.
The emotional trauma isn't something you can just magically deal with. After being the victim of sexual violence, a person is considerably more likely to have depressive or suicidal thoughts and/or fall victim to drug or alcohol addiction. "94% of women who are raped experience Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms in the two weeks following the rape." A person struggling with PTSD is most likely not going to be emotionally able to report a rape to police. Spoken word poet and best selling New York Times author Rupi Kaur presents these feelings of emotional trauma beautifully in her poetry. She recently gave a TED talk this week where she discusses her own experiences with sexual assault and how it affected her life and poetry. Her portion of the talk begins at 1:08:30, and I would recommend watching it. For those who don't have the time to, I'll include an excerpt from it:
"'When you broke into my home, it never felt like mine again. I can't even let a lover in without being sick. I lose sleep after the first date, lose my appetite, become more bone and less skin, forget to breathe. Every night my bedroom becomes a psych ward where panic attacks wake men playing doctors to keep me calm. Every lover who touches me ends up feeling like you. Your fingers--you--mouths--you--until they're not even the ones on top of me anymore, it's you."
In this excerpt, Kaur refers to her body as her home. In this comparison, her rapist broke into her home and robbed her. She later says this led to a feeling of "homelessness within the body." You are stuck inside a body that you feel belongs to someone else, and can't escape the feeling. These struggles are far too common, and the trauma is often too overwhelming and painful to know how to deal with it.
Worldwide, there is obvious evidence of men feeling superior to women and feeling able to freely use women as sexual objects at their leisure. In March of this year, three teenage boys in Washington tied up a 15 year old girl, sexually assaulted her, and sent out videos of it to friends on Snapchat. In June of this year, seven men in Brazil similarly raped a 16 year old girl and posted pictures and videos of their assault on the internet. In July of this year, a 21 year old woman in India was gang raped by the five men who had gang raped her three years prior. This month, BBC News reported on a woman in Columbia who was raped by five men over a period of five days as punishment for speaking out about sexual assault in her community. They also reported on a study done in a mining area in South Africa where approximately half of the women had been assaulted in their lifetime. Only 5% of the 11,000 women and girls raped in that area each year report it.
Those are the examples I could remember reading about off of the top of my head.
This is so much bigger than an ignorant, insensitive comedian on Facebook who wants to label women as weak or as liars. He is just a part of the feelings fostered worldwide that allow men to feel entitled to abuse, use, rape women and put their violence on display. This isn't an issue limited to college campuses. It isn't limited to America. It isn't just the "rape problem," it's a worldwide epidemic, and it's an epidemic opinions like those from Kurt Metzger only contribute to.
