The Voices We Don’t Hear: Confronting the Dismissal of Sexual Assault Victims
Written by Aashna P.
For the feminist movement in the United States, 2018 was a year of extremes. While #MeToo was trending, serving as a long overdue platform for victims of sexual assault, allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh were brushed aside by the men in power. In her essay “Men Are More Afraid Than Ever,” writer Lili Loofbourow contends with the effects of normalizing sexual misconduct: rather than simply denying the facts of the case, certain men have resorted to defending the actions of the accused. Loofbourow generates outrage in an audience already roused by the #MeToo movement, bolstering her argument with examples of male politicians’ misogynistic comments. Ultimately, she argues that the root of defensiveness around sexual assault originates from the fear that men, unlike the past, will be punished — thrown in jail with a tarnished reputation — leading to a culture that diverts attention from the trauma of women to the ‘undue’ suffering of men.
Loofbourow first characterizes a shift in male attitudes, from the denial of sexual misconduct to the defense of it, asserting that society normalizing harmful behavior inclines certain men to believe it doesn’t warrant punishment. She supports this argument with specific and shocking examples, an appeal to both logic and emotion. Exhibit A is a White House lawyer’s take on Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh: “If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man certainly should be worried” (145). His statement captures an unsettling reality — some will sooner embrace male malfeasance as simply a characteristic of ‘how things are’ than acknowledge the symptoms of deep-rooted misogyny. While the woman’s experience with sexual assault is trivialized, the ‘worrying’ consequences for the man take center stage. Offering another example of men perpetuating narratives that dismiss victims, Loofbourow discusses the case of convicted rapist Brock Turner, whose father defended him by asserting that jail time would be “a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life” (149). In a household where one’s own father trivializes sexual assault, the omittance of the victim’s suffering may dishearten but cannot surprise. Indeed, Turner’s actions are a casualty of both his upbringing and own wrongdoing, but responsibility must ultimately rest with him, the perpetrator.
Loofbourow goes further to put individual sentiments in the context of societal narratives that perpetuate the dismissal of victims, expressing that a man “not getting exactly what he wants, precisely when he wants it, will truly believe he’s suffering more than a woman in pain who has never been told that what she wants might matter” (148). Illustrating this irony, Loofbourow ends her essay by calling out a tension in certain (often Republican) politicians’ beliefs: while “men should get to escape consequences for youthful ‘indiscretions’ like assault, … women should not—especially if the consequence is a pregnancy” (149). Today, female autonomy is threatened not only by public sentiment but legal obligation. In light of the overturning of Roe v. Wade five years after Loofbourow’s essay was published, the double standard is more evident than ever: though jail time is “a steep price to pay” for a male rapist, carrying a potential pregnancy to term isn’t for a female victim. For her, “20 minutes of action” could mean a lifetime of trauma. From the dismissal of victims during the #MeToo movement to the assault on bodily autonomy in the present day, male inconvenience has been pitied and female suffering shunned.
This double standard became visible to me during summer. I had a conversation with a pre-med student in the United States — let’s call her Jen. While I expected to hear stories about the rigors of Jen’s course load, the biggest challenge she admitted to was gendered: her university interviewer had received sexual assault allegations; her only female professor had experienced instance after instance of dismissal, disrespect, and violation; and she was sexually harassed during her lab research internship — an opportunity she had worked for and depended on for her future aspirations. Both Jen’s story and Loofbourow’s article invoked in me a visceral reaction to modern society’s deep-rooted culture of dismissal — a reality that I, as a woman, am forced to confront. Will I, too, recount stories like Jen’s?
Ultimately, I admit that Loofbourow’s argument is over-generalized: her use of umbrella terms like ‘men’ make the ‘not all men’ response too easy — especially for those who are dismissive in the first place. But, rather than discussing the obvious, the more relevant concern is tragic: almost all women have been victims of sexual misconduct at some point in their lives. Hence, in refusing to keep victims’ needs front and center, individuals like the White House lawyer, Turner’s father, and Kavanaugh communicate that they are in fact “more afraid than ever” — afraid of a world in which justice is served. For this reason, I gather a fundamental imperative from Loofbourow’s essay: women’s voices must resonate louder than ever, above all those calling for the pity of male perpetrators, in order for change to actually occur.
If you’d like to read the original essay that Aashna responds to here, please click here.
