What We've Learned From the Elliot Rodgers Murders

There is no one reason for the recent killing spree in Isla Vista.

There are a myriad of reasons. Although I'm sure mental health played a part, plenty of mentally ill people don't kill other people. But what strikes me as unique to this particular crime, is the way in which his rampage was fueled by misogyny, as many feminists have pointed out.

I won't rehash their arguments, but I will reflect on discussion of his mental health as a way to minimize his ideology.

Looking at these videos and the very common theme, which is that Rogers feels sex is owed to him, and that women are unfairly denying that to him, one can't say that misogyny didn't play a role.

The question is "How much of a role did misogyny play?"

In my opinion, it played a pretty strong one. It would be easier to simply leave it at "mental illness" even though we don't have the facts on what his illness was, because somehow that makes us feel comfortable. He was an outlier. Despite the fact that there are many mentally ill people in the world, we have been taught that "crazy" people are rare. If Elliot Rodger is simply one deranged killer, we don't have to look inside ourselves and examine our own misogyny. It is scary to think that this is lurking inside so many of us, and so many people we know. I have spoken to numerous people, whether acquaintances, co-workers, college classmates, high school classmates, etc., who have expressed themselves in a very similar way to Roger.

That is why the first video terrified me. I certainly did not watch it to the end.

What's worse are the YouTube comments on his channel, many of which pondered whether or not this all could have been avoided given those "blond sluts" Rodger referred to had just offered the sex he obviously deserved. Then all of this mayhem could have been avoided, they argued. That sort of commentary should serve as proof of how widespread this attitude really is.

Although (for all we know at this point) his mental illness could have driven him to punish women with such severity, it certainly isn't the main reason he decided to exact violent revenge on women. If he didn't kill all of these people, it is quite possible he would have committed another violent act, assuming he were perfectly well. To not examine the ideology behind it is to dismiss other ways men exact revenge on women for the lack of interest every day. Less severe, but impactful acts of violence occur every day. Mental illness does not create the drive to kill women for very specific reasons - reasons that you can find on many, many websites.

They're too specific, too familiar, to be discounted and pushed aside as the ramblings of an unwell man.

For better insight and commentary than I can provide, please read here and here and here.

Let's play the game: Is that really sexist?

Hillary Clinton's age:

I would be the first person to say that age should be an issue when considering a president. It should be a part of the conversation. In that way, I don't think that bringing up age, in itself, for Clinton, is sexist.

It is the way her age is brought up that is sexist.

In 2008, when her age was far more typical for a presidential candidate than it may be now, Bill O'Reilly wondered if we really wanted to see Clinton age in office. If you wonder which angle, Bill O'Reilly is aiming for when he takes down Clinton, it's usually her gender he aims at. Do you think his insistence there "must" be a downside to a woman president is simply O'Reilly sexism, or is it aimed at Clinton? I would say both:


Rush Limbaugh brought it up, making the issue of her aging very gendered. Do you really want to see a woman grow old? Because men grow old so well, and my male presidential candidates should exist to please my eye. Lookin' at you, sweater vest, or as I mom called you, the "handsome one." *shudders*

As Ana Marie Cox noted on Up With Steve Kornacki, women are told they have an expiration date. We are constantly reminded of it. So what would an appropriate question on Hillary's age look like? See John McCain and Bob Dole.

Jill Abramson's firing:

As every writer and reporter covering this issue has said before, we don't know everything that happened.

I can't say with any certainty that it is sexist. As Jessica Valenti rightly noted on her blog, sexism does not announce it is there. It is slick, not oafish, most of the time, and that is why it's still around after all these years.

What sticks out to me about this is the way in which she received the boot. First we have a Politico piece that uses every gendered word in the book to describe Abramson's behavior. Then we have many of those same words brought out for a second rodeo when time came to justify her firing. That is fairly suspect. The only legitimate reason I am aware of for at least criticizing Abramson is making a decision without consulting the right people, i.e. Dean Baquet.

Even so, it doesn't appear to justify her firing. And then we have Abramson bringing in a lawyer to discuss pay equity.

You put all of those issues together, and then add to it the way that Abramson was "dumped":

The New Republic's Rebecca Traister explains in her piece, "Abramson's Firing Was Singularly Humiliating:

Abramson’s firing was among the most harsh and humiliating I’ve ever seen play out in the media's recent history. Within minutes of the editorial meeting at which the turnover was announced, Abramson’s name had been scrubbed from the masthead of the paper she’s run for the past two and a half years. A Times spokeswoman told Buzzfeed that Abramson would not be remaining with the paper in any professional capacity and would have no involvement in the transition of power. Sulzberger made no pretense that this was anything other than an unceremonious dump. When staffers reportedly expressed concern that Abramson’s firing would be a blow to women, he helpfully explained that that women in top management positions are just as likely to be fired as men in top management positions.

When you contrast that with the warm and fuzzy departure that Howell Raines received post-Jayson Blair, it is pretty hard not to come to the conclusion that sexism played a large role in this, even if sexism wasn't the only reason Abramson lost her job.

Most Women Can’t Afford to ‘Recline’

Rosa Brooks wrote an engaging and refreshing take on the Sheryl Sandberg revolution for Foreign Policy, telling women to sit back in their LazyBoys and recline. Brooks says that our work culture is toxic, promoting the idea that more work hours are better, and that being burnt out is somehow better for us than having the breathing room to innovate. In many ways, I couldn’t agree more.

I know how it feels to be tired, because I worked a 5a.m. to 2p.m. day and went to sleep while I could still see daylight peeking out from the curtains. In my spare time I would interview sources for freelance pieces, so that I could cover all of the topics I found interesting and make extra money. And I went on dates that I almost fell asleep during because I had forced myself to be awake for 20 plus hours.

That said, my life may have been less overwhelmed with work than someone who worked two jobs, or a job combined with an entire course-load, or someone married with kids who runs the section of national news organization. But I know how it feels to long for that day when I can take a deep breath and cut myself some slack.

However.

I think we need to consider how unrealistic it is to ask some women to stop going and going like Energizer bunnies. The truth is that only a few, select women have the privilege to zonk out at the end of the work day, and it doesn’t simply depend on whether or not they have children or a spouse.

It reminds me of the way in which a certain segment of the population insists we stop voting or vote for a third party candidate to send a message to the two respective parties. It’s all well and good to say that. I’d love to send a message to Democrats and Republicans that their blithe acceptance of to full exuberance for money in politics is despicable. But I know it’s not realistic until we become more organized in our response to money in politics.

Young white men usually push for this simple response, but I rarely see it from women of color, LGBTQ people, or anyone else who really has something to lose if the candidate supporting their interests cedes ground to another because the third party candidate won, or no one turned up at the polls.

Brooks can talk about doing this, but I think she and others need to present it in a way that tells us (besides asking our significant others to help out more) how women and men alike can demand flexibility from the workplace, whether it’s white collar or blue collar. It has to be part of a greater labor movement if it were to work for most people. If you are upper middle class, you can decide to spend less time at work, and you may not get the corner office Sandberg speaks of, but you may have a comfortable life anyway. You may still have free time to read books, try out new recipes and enjoy a spa day now and then and maintain a decent salary at the same time.

That’s not an option for someone who isn’t young, poor or faces discrimination or all three. Then it isn’t optional to lean back. If you’ve already made it, and earned a reputation, a title, and gone through most of the milestones we expect of women (however unfair those expectations are) , you’re in a much better position to lean back.

I know Sandberg’s book has always been seen as a book for the elite, and I understand why. It speaks to a white-collar office culture that not everyone works inside. In fact, most of the media representation of office culture is centered on the hierarchies of cubicles vs. corner offices, and leaves out restaurant work, construction and maintenance and housekeeping work.

But there are some ways in which Sandberg’s hyper-energetic, use-every-moment-of-the-day-to-your-advantage-lifestyle speaks to more women’s realities than Brooks does. If you’re young and just starting to pay off loans, or if you came from an impoverished to lower middle class background, and no one could help you afford that internship, you need to always be on. There isn’t a choice.

You must pay your bills on time. You must make the rent. If that means taking on a night job to pay for the necessities while you take on that unpaid internship, so be it. If that means writing for $12, because it’s better than having zero visibility and writing nothing, as you wait tables and go to school, so be it. And if that means taking on two jobs just to feed your kids and keep the lights on, then, “Oh well.” You just don’t have time to think about taking any time off. Leaning back would actually hurt you. And it’s hard to tell women to recline when they’re the majority of minimum-wage workers.

You could lose your job if you don’t follow the unwritten rules of your work culture. You could lose extra income if you decide to stop and smell the roses.

You could be the first to go if jobs are on the chopping block and you’re the one young person who decides to leave on the dot, even though you don’t have kids.

You need to pay off your loans, so you take on extra work, even at the expense of your relationship.

The problem isn’t with the core of what Brooks is saying: That our workplace culture needs to change and respect its workers. We have to stand up for ourselves. But we need to look at the debate from more than one perspective, and typically the perspective we see is from middle to upper middle class married (mostly white) women with children who have much less to lose. It leaves out a large swath of people - Millennial women, single women, childless (or childfree) women, women of color and LGBTQ women, all of whom face greater hurdles to finding a “room of her own.”

If Feminists Failed Monica in 1998, Did New York Feminists Fail Lis in 2014?

In the past week, feminist writers have looked back on Monica’s treatment by many feminists and liberal intellectuals at the time and declared that everyone could have done better. But are we doing better now? The feminism we see now has grown more diverse and more inclusive, with Twitter campaigns challenging white feminists and the ability of a single video bashing Robin Thicke to go viral and create notoriety that will help build a feminist activist’s channel. A blog hits the right nerve at the right time and is reposted on the right website and suddenly we’re talking about transgender women and feminism. But more often than not, feminists with real clout are part of a mostly white, straight, Ivy League-educated group from middle class backgrounds, and that can affect what feminists focus on. Oddly enough, in feminism, you still have to be the right kind of woman to merit said support. We’ve seen this recently, in the case of Lis Smith.

In her interview with Vanity Fair last week, Monica Lewinsky said that feminists had failed her. I agree, to the extent that many mainstream feminists did not acknowledge Bill Clinton’s part in the affair, placing blame and ridicule squarely on Monica’s shoulders. She was either a dimwitted bimbo looking for cheap thrills or a calculating asexual young woman, looking to influence one of the most powerful men in the world. Now, she has been portrayed (at the time) of being a naïve young girl who was taken advantage of – by Congressman Rand Paul.

It is unlikely that any of these caricatures capture the truth of what actually happened, and who Lewinsky was at the time. She was 23, and old enough to know better, but the president was the president, married and in his 50s. The reduction of this young woman to a handful of gendered stereotypes was reason enough to defend her. Feminists need not have called her a helpless victim in order to defend her. A one-sided attack, in which a woman is depicted as someone who failed in her role as a sexual gatekeeper, and a man is depicted as a helpless oaf, should always be countered by feminists – not supported by them. But not all feminists railed against Lewinsky. Many simply stayed mum.

After all, one of the first things that Clinton did in his presidency was sign a series of executive orders that undid the Reagan-Bush era policies that restricted family planning and abortion and he vetoed a partial birth abortion ban – not an easy stance to take at the time. Betty Friedan called Lewinsky a “little twerp” and Katie Roiphe admitted that she hadn’t seen mainstream feminists support Lewinsky in the New York Observer article “New York Supergals Love That Naughty Prez.” Although Roiphe is not by any means a model feminist or necessarily a feminist at all (she has been largely criticized by feminists) she was aware of the dialogue on Lewinsky the time. Maureen Dowd, author of the book “Are Men Necessary?” which examined the benefits and drawbacks of being in a relationship with a man as well as balancing career and domestic duties, is the same woman who won a Pulitzer Prize for portraying her as a crazy, promiscuous and vapid.

Most recently, we have a case that is very different from Monica’s – in which the woman in question – Lis Smith – did not actually do anything wrong. Lis Smith, who ran Bill de Blasio’s communications efforts, committed the crime of dating Elliot Spitzer. Spitzer and his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, filed divorce papers in mid-January, which does not come as any surprise to watchers of New York politics. Andrea Peyser tore apart Smith’s character as if it were 1998, or earlier, using odd old-timey language to decimate her character, such as “youngish cookie,” “hot and fit political insider,” and predictably, “bimbo,” adding that she does “presumably not charge Eliot for service rendered.”

With the exception of Jen Chung at The Gothamist, Ginia Bellafante at The New York Times and Lindy West at Jezebel, not many feminist writers or reporters jumped on the story, or rushed to defend Smith in the midst of Peyser’s attacks. There were a few tweets calling Peyser sexually repressed from male journalists, but not many insights from the feminist peanut gallery. It’s not hard to see why from a purely superficial reading of the situation and the people involved.

In the eyes of many feminists or liberal opinion writers in general, you have an unsympathetic man (Eliot Spitzer), a woman who isn’t famous and largely keeps to herself and a sympathetic man (Bill de Blasio). Is it worth challenging de Blasio, the newest liberal darling for hopeful progressives, a man whose life story couldn’t be more picturesque and supportive of liberal ideals, and who may run for president someday? No. Not when it’s your man. And in this respect, it isn’t very different from Clinton, despite Smith’s personal life being completely immaterial to the workings of de Blasio’s administration.

If anything, this case is much more deserving of outrage. You have a evidence of the new, progressive America in de Blasio, rejecting the commercial interests of Michael Bloomberg, who is supportive of the middle class, people of color, LGBTQ rights and women’s rights. Or at least that is the narrative. If the mayor had consensual sex with an intern it would be more moral and feminist than tossing out an employee because of whom she sees outside of work. Instead of standing up to and questioning the outrage over Smith’s dating life, and using it as a teachable moment to discuss gender and politics, de Blasio simply gave up. If prolific and well-respected feminists – a group mostly based in New York – have any credibility, they will raise the issue if he ever becomes a contender for president or vice president. If they don’t, Republicans surely will, the way Rand Paul did by raising the ghost of the blue dress. Only this time, it may be effective, because Democrats won’t be able to defend it. 

The Term "Social Issues" Should Be Retired

Often, we become so detached from the original meaning of political catch phrases that we forget  to evaluate whether or not they still have value. The past informs the present, and the term “social issues” is one of those terms, repeated ad nauseum to the point that we forget its origins. The term describes an array of controversial topics from crime to illegal immigration to gay marriage and abortion. No matter how varied the topics were, they were all rounded up into “social issues,” because conservatives found a way to make them revolve around one thing: social order.

Being “hard on crime” has always translated to comforting those suburban white voters who find poor inner city blacks threatening. Immigration makes our nation increasingly more diverse, whittling away at the political power that has long been concentrated in our majority white population. Positions opposing gay marriage and abortion are, supposedly, designed to keep the nuclear heterosexual family intact.

            There is a reason why one of the men who coined the term in 1970, Richard Scammon, said social issues were issues that appeal to the average voter, who was decidedly “unyoung, unpoor and unblack.” In Scammon and Wattenburg’s book, “The Real Majority: An Extraordinary Examination of the American Electorate,” they argued that conservatives owned social issues, and if the Democratic Party intended to survive it needed to focus on issues that concerned voters in middle America.

Economic issues ruled American politics for the first half of the century, the two argued, but priorities were changing. Concern about increasing drug abuse, violence, racial tension and sexual promiscuity helped Nixon win the 1972 election by a landslide. He stood in opposition to abortion and became “hard on crime,” which appealed to blue collar voters George McGovern needed to win the election.

Fifty-seven percent of people polled by Gallup in November 1972 supported the death penalty, increasing from only 50 percent in March of 1972, suggesting that fear of crime and social disorder grew in those years, fueling a need for law and order.

The Nixon campaign’s strategy of focusing on social issues was a recipe for success that Republicans continued to use to their advantage in 1980, 1984 and 1988.  In regards to abortion, Reagan helped popularize many of the talking points conservatives continue to use today. In his 1984 Louisville, Kentucky debate with Walter Mondale, Reagan established which party was on the right side, the moral side, of the issue:

            “I believe that until someone can establish that the unborn child is not a living human being, then that child is already protected by the Constitution, which guarantees us life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to all of us.”

            Both parties took ownership of the phrase and brought it into the popular political lexicon. But, in the near-term, that was a mistake on Democrats’ part. Because Republicans brought the term into existence, it was defined by their agenda. A debate couldn’t be had, because foundation of the conversation on social issues was founded upon what were thought to be distinctly Republican principles – The protection of the white middle class nuclear family from disorder, crime and loss of moral character.

            If social issues were defined by the opposition to abortion and punishing criminals with no hope of serious rehabilitation, Democrats would continue to be on the defensive as long as the term was used, and largely, they have.

Once the economy took center stage again in 1992, Democrats’ used their command of economic issues too woo voters. Clinton tried to walk the line on abortion by stating that he was not “pro-abortion,” because he sought to make abortions rare, a tactic Obama repeated in 2008, but one that, again, cedes the conversation to Republicans and assumes Democrats must operate on their turf.

Nevertheless, social issues became a topic of conversation again when George W. Bush won reelection in 2004 and the media perpetuated the idea that “family values voters” decided the election based on one exit poll question. You know the Republicans have won the perception game when national news reporters interpret “pro-moral values” as opposing abortion and gay marriage.

It became a catch-all for any issue adversely affecting people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ people, poor people and women. After the Reagan era and the emergence of the religious right, these groups carried other connotations as well: Lazy, entitled, criminal and promiscuous. Social issues also became code for tangential issues, or issues that don’t affect white middle class America. The demographics of the U.S. hadn’t changed wildly enough to convince the press that these were anything but “niche” issues. Social issues remained second-tier for this reason, with presidential debate questions on national security and the economy taking center stage.

Journalists hadn’t considered the economic ramifications of women not having safe, affordable, or legal (in case Roe vs. Wade were overturned) access to abortion. Only four short years ago, I recall being the only person in a room full of reporters to ask a newly announced candidate for U.S. Senate where he stood on abortion or gay marriage. The pattern continued for the remainder of my reporting on U.S. Congress and Senate races that spring.

The conversation has come a long way since then. Although both Democrats and Republicans kept a safe distance from the topic of abortion and gay marriage in 2008, and continued to remain cautious in the 2010 elections, the truce didn’t last for long.

Now Democrats have reclaimed the content of the debate on these separate issues, and presented their point of the view as the moral and humane one.  As a Republican-led House and many statehouses across the country continue to cater to what they believe are the fears of middle America, middle America itself is changing. Reproductive health care in its entirety is mainstream now. Having premarital sex is mainstream. Being gay is becoming more and more mainstream.

 According to Gallup polls, 89 percent of Americans believe contraception is morally acceptable and 50 percent of Americans support same sex marriage in comparison to 27 percent in 1996. More than 7 million unmarried couples are living together in contrast to 450,000 in 1960. Now that the concept of morality has shifted for a large number of the population, conservatives find themselves on the wrong side of it.

The Democratic Party’s choice to invite Sandra Fluke to speak at the convention shows the degree to which Democrats have embraced social issues, especially women’s reproductive care. The White House’s slideshow, “Life of Julia,” shows Julia standing in a pharmacy, ready to buy birth control covered under the president’s health care plan. I can’t imagine either of these events happening in 2008.

As the country’s social mores continue to change, Republicans strive to maintain their last frontier, “decency,” only to find that Democrats have redefined it. Democrats have steered the discussion on these issues, separately, however, not as a pack. What were once considered background issues are now at the very forefront of the president’s, and the Democratic Party’s, agenda.

That is why I believe the term “social issues” has become useless and should be retired. We don’t rope all of these terms together now because they’re important enough to stand on their own. Democrats aren’t siphoning off these issues, trying to hide them as if they are the collective red-headed stepchildren of the party platform. For politicians of all stripes, it is finally sinking in that women are 50 percent of the population, not a niche group, Latinos are a huge voting bloc, that most Americans know at least one LGBTQ individual and the legalization of marijuana is becoming less and less controversial.

            It doesn’t mean that Democrats have won ground for decades to come, or that the Republican Party’s epitaph should be written. It means that Democrats have become successful by gradually bringing these issues to the table one by one, taking control of each argument piecemeal and flipping the narrative accordingly.

Republicans have helped enormously in this regard, by raising these issues in the national news media all on their lonesome, as Democrats waited the right moment to swoop in and take advantage. The discussions began with Congress incumbents or challengers, or state legislative bodies, moving to pass laws limiting abortion and birth control at a rapid pace. Backwards comments on immigration from Mitt Romney, some during the onslaught of way too many primary debates, and others made behind closed doors, served Democrats yet again.

And most recently, a wave of politicians came out in support of gay marriage, as if they all received the same memo, shortly after the 2012 election made more cautious Democrats (and a few Republicans) see the writing on the wall.  Now, as the challenges of the 2016 presidential election for both parties become clearer, Democrats have to decide if they want to erase all of the progress made in 2008 and start playing by Republican rules again, or retire the term, and idea, of social issues, and finally write their own agenda.

Stop Trying to Follow Rape With a False ‘Happy Ending’

           

           In some ways, we should be thankful that rape, outside of a stranger jumping out from the bushes, is depicted at all. Depictions of rapists as acquaintances, friends or former significant others help people understand that rapists aren’t boogeymen, but men considered “good” in many other respects – a person who is considered family-oriented, kind and involved in their community.

            But it isn’t good enough to simply depict rape – We have to consider how the way we depict rape reflects the reality of many victims, and that we consider our own prejudices in the process. A person can be an outspoken advocate for rape survivors and still struggle to understand how their views are shaped by rape culture and in some cases, certain American values.

            Three fairly recent depictions of rape or its aftermath (outside of courtroom dramas) stand out to me – Mellie’s rape by her father-in-law on Scandal and Anna’s rape by a visiting servant on Downton Abbey. Both women follow similar paths following their sexual assaults: They stay mum. And to be clear, that choice is the choice of the majority of rape survivors, with 60 percent never reporting their rapes to police, according to the Department of Justice’s Crime Victimization Survey from 2008 to 2012.

            But my concern is whether or not television writers are pushing what they believe is the acceptable kind of victimhood, based on what we’ve been taught about how women (although men are rape survivors as well, women are the most common victims) should respond to what is considered an assault on her dignity, whether it be rape or something far less threatening but still misogynist and hurtful - such as calling a woman a whore or a bitch. Let me separate the fact that rape is absolutely an assault on someone’s dignity and discuss the difference between the damage done to the victim and what society perceives to be the victim’s damage.

            One of the reasons that rape is used as a weapon of war is that the rapist knows the survivor will be perceived differently by society – as tainted by their own sexual assault. Being seen as a victim first and as a full person, of which their rape is one of many experiences that have shaped them, second, is one of the many consequences of telling the wider public that you have been raped. In our culture, one of the worst things that an a person can suffer is the indignity of being pitied, and these shows have found a work around: Instead of putting the show through a trial, during which a painful he said/she said will continue for several episodes until creators can craft an unlikely outcome where the rapist is sent to prison, or show the rapist walking out scot-free, they choose two special routes. 

          One possibility is that the (usually) female protagonist refuses to call herself a victim or give the man who wronged her any more power over her than he already has. It feels like a faux-empowerment message though, and one that undercuts the reaction of many survivors, who could never sit across the table and smile lovingly at the man who raped them, as Mellie does, or withhold the fact of their assault from their husbands, as Anna withholds from Bates.  It is a sort of martyrdom that is expected of female rape victims on television, especially married ones. The other possibility is that the male significant other, friend or family member exacts vigilante justice on the rapist, as happened with Bates, removing any agency from the rape victim, and making it all about the person exacting revenge on their behalf.

            Sons of Anarchy’s matriarch, Gemma, is gang-raped and similarly withholds information for a long time before telling her son, Jax, and her husband, Clay, what happened. Like Anna fears they’ll attempt to exact revenge on her rapists and endanger themselves. Her son Jax eventually ends up killing one of the rapists, AJ Weston. As with Mellie, the rape seems to function as a device to make the character softer and more sympathetic.

            Their decision not to tell the police, or even others close to them, at least at first, is portrayed as self-control, a great quality that is to be admired. But what does that make the rape survivors who don’t fit this mold? Are they less dignified, less in control of their emotions? In a culture where we consider it manly to experience pain, both emotional and physical, and let that pain wash over you, only to become stronger from enduring it without complaint, it’s easy for some to paint such a reaction to rape as empowering to women.

            By refusing to exact vengeance, it appeared that Mellie in particular, and also Anna to some degree, was refusing to "let" the rapist take her mental stability from her, but that assumes other survivors are letting rapists rule their lives, simply because they are acknowledging their truth to the public or pursuing justice in the courts. And that seems unfair, to say the least. Whether or not the rape survivor decides to tell the police, the rape still happened, and it can’t be erased as an experience, just like any other experience.

            There are mountains of reasons not to step forward - the exhausting process of a trial, during which you'll see your rapist, have people question you on your sexual past, be judged for not wearing the proper facial expressions after your rape or not remembering the story as clearly as you should have remembered it and so many more. Even if you tell only family members and friends, there is a chance some of them won’t believe you either, putting an incredible strain on your relationship. In the case of Mellie, her husband already felt unadulterated rage towards his father, a former president. Mellie was protecting him from the damage her rape would do to her husband’s political aspirations. Anna protected her husband from possible imprisonment.

            Their decisions are never presented as decisions made for themselves – that they actively decided this was the best decision for them and their own mental stability. Those decisions were made on behalf of others, and although their husbands are part of their emotional stability in many ways, I wonder if this is at all a symptom of how we see women, as an extension of the men around them. It is almost a vision of a saintly rape survivor, a suffering wife, who values her husband’s well being above her own. How would viewers react if the survivor actively sought out vengeance or justice, no matter how her actions affected others? It is stepping outside of the feminine role, in many ways.

            Viewers may eventually turn on the rape survivor if she continues to pursue some form of justice on her own (in Mellie’s case a political one, and in Anna’s case likely a social and economic one). It is far more traditional to watch a rape survivor on television (outside a courtroom drama) simply tell her husband to calm down, until the husband takes actions into his own hands on her behalf, usually outside the law.

            I thought House of Cards’ Lady Macbeth, Claire Underwood, would go this route as well, until she decided to transform a political nightmare into an opportunity to punish her rapist. In an interview with a reporter, she was badgered into admitting she had an abortion, and decided to the use the rape, and outing of the rapist, a general, as a distraction from the abortion. The lie, while damaging because it discredits rape victims further, was perfectly in keeping with the character. Her husband did not defend her “honor” as Bates did, although she could have requested some action from him.

            The manipulation and lack of concern she showed towards the young private, another woman raped by the general, as she worked with her on a campaign to change the military’s handling of sexual assault, was well thought-out. It reinforced Claire’s character: a ruthless pragmatist blind to the emotional wreckage and compromising of ideals that pragmatism costs, and serves to remind people of the way in which rape survivors may be treated by political figures in real life – as political props whose emotional well-being is secondary to the abstract cause. Her story was left unsettled, despite the prosecution of her rapist, showing that the classic TV model of punishing the rapist and proceeding as if everything is fine – is false.

Looking further back at The Sopranos, Jennifer Melfi, Tony Soprano’s psychiatrist, is raped by a man she later discovers works at a fast food restaurant, and has been named “Employee of the Month.” Although he is arrested (and his arrest may have been aided by the rape being a stranger rape), he is released on a technicality. She has a chance to tell Tony to take the man out, but decides not to. This is a great example of a more nuanced rape survivor story. The man isn’t considered a monster in his regular habitat. He’s a hard worker, and respected. There isn’t any happy ending; no closure on a legal or vigilante level. It sends a message to viewers that even though Jennifer went through a horrible life event, she isn’t defined by that event, as much as she may continue to struggle with it.

            What I am suggesting is not that there should be one correct model of how rape victims on television should be depicted reacting to their rapes - that would be ludicrous. But I think it would validate more rape victims' experiences if we portrayed a wider range of experiences on television that don’t simply exist to create a beleaguered spouse’s revenge plot or show a character as strong or noble because she was raped. The scenario that is depicted today feeds into ideas about how women should react to violence and abuse - that there is always more dignity in "not giving power" to that person, but that is the same line of reasoning that people use to dismiss sexism and racism. The idea is that by acknowledging injustice, we are somehow allowing it to continue. It's completely illogical, but remains very popular argument, nonetheless.

            Even though the majority of rape survivors don’t report crimes to police, 40 percent of rape survivors come forward, and to leave them out of the equation is to deny telling valuable stories. These stories usually aren’t uplifting in reality, with only 10 percent of reports leading to an arrest and 97 percent of rapists never spending a day in jail according to the 2006 to 2010 FBI Uniform Crime report. But if you watch today’s most lauded shows, many of them aren’t tied up with a neat little bow. Orange is The New Black, The Big C, Nurse Jackie, Mad Men and the recently ended Breaking Bad, are all quite dark in nature. Why can’t we represent rape as the reality it often is, when we portray so many other parts of life in a raw and honest format?