In this article on rape in the holocaust, what I found most profoundly disturbing, or most immediately so, as it has to do, not with the past, but with the present, with us, we who participate in the cleansing and altering of cultural memory, was the reaction of the male historians-- in diminishing the significance--under the guise of scholarly duty ("where is the evidence?")--so shockingly, transparently defensive--like a child discovered in a 'naughty' act.
Related to this, the reactive need to "protect' the victims from shame...that is, ATTIBUTING shame to them (it's a shonda)--this is what reveals the truth they don't want to face... What is the REAL shame? NOT to the victims! Not of the women! But of a complicated set of assumptions and dispositions rooted deep in our cultural unconscious--about sexuality, particularly, male sexuality... that sets rape--and violence against anything that is taken as deviant from the mythical 'norm' ... when it is this very disposition... which those historians so desperately want to deny, that is the REAL sexual perversion, the real violence-begetting sickness... that they want to PROTECT and COVER up and HIDE!
A cultural disposition to shame victims of sexual violence--to ATTRIBUTE shame to them, is in actuality, a defense of the RIGHT to rape, the right to commit such acts. A simple equation that needs to be writ out in BIG LETTERS.
No comments:
Post a Comment