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Hex The System, Bind The Perpetrator

Hex The System, Bind The Perpetrator

Last updated on: June 10, 2016 at 9:50 am by Yvonne Aburrow

Hex The System, Bind The Perpetrator 2016-06-10T09:50:52-04:00 Yvonne Aburrow

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Regarding the hexing of the perpetrator of the Stanford rape case. I am not sure why the Steubenville rape case didn’t provoke a similar response, but maybe it did and we just didn’t hear about it. I am saddened that many articles failed to report that the people doing the hexing also sent healing to the victim.

My preferred method in such cases is to bind the person not to cause harm again, by placing a mirror around a poppet of them. If they cause harm it will rebound on them; if they do good, it will bless them. So the binding acts as a way of reinforcing good behaviour. I guess it is still a hex in some ways, but it is about limiting the harm that the person can cause.

The rapist is a complete arsehole and so is his father, and they both need to realise the consequences of their behaviour and attitudes, but they are the end result of a system of white privilege and male privilege and rape culture and failing to teach kids what consent culture looks like. We need to start work on tearing down that system. Fine, so you have hexed a rapist. Are you working to help transform the culture that created his apparent lack of awareness that what he was doing was wrong?

Others have pointed out that claiming that the Goddess, or the gods, endorse your actions is somewhat hubristic, and arrogates the vision and judgement of the gods to your own finite perspective. Your actions, the consequences of your actions, and your views, are your responsibility.

Erin Lund Johnson’s comment on Erick Dupree’s article is an excellent suggestion:

I read the letter written by the rape victim. She was appalled at the light sentence, but even more so by her attacker’s continued defiance, even in the face of his guilty verdict. She mostly wished for him to “get it.” I would hex him with that–the burden of fully understanding what he’d done, and the impact he’d had, of experiencing her inner experience. That would enlighten him more than anything, and change his attitude and behavior. For those who haven’t read this letter yet, please do. Her voice, above all else in this, needs to be heard and honored.

http://www.independent.co.uk/n…

In this particular case, the moving testimony of the victim has shocked many people into thinking about what it is like to be raped, perhaps for the first time. Many of my male friends have said that they cried while reading her testimony. Thank you for your compassion, my friends. Personally, I have read too many such accounts to shed tears any more. I feel a huge and sickened void inside me, numb and paralysed. I suspect that my female friends have also read, or heard, too many such accounts already.

The one bright spot in all of this is the two Swedish guys who stopped to help the victim and bring the perpetrator to justice. Their names are Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson. It is very good to know that they were paying attention and that they intervened. It’s possible that they actually saved her life.

If you don’t think that white privilege is involved in this case, read what happened to Brian Banks, who also had a promising sporting career, but is Black, so was sentenced to six years in prison – despite being innocent.

If you think that “nice” people don’t commit rape and sexual assault, think again.

The shadow. [photo by Sundaram Ramaswamy, CC-BY-SA]

A system that still tries to blame a woman for being sexually assaulted is deeply flawed. That is rape culture, right there. The fact that a judge who went to the same university as the perpetrator can judge the case without it occurring to anyone that there is a conflict of interest there, and then give the rapist only six months in jail – words fail me. The fact that his “promising sporting career” was taken into account: ugh. He ruined his prospects: no-one else did that. A system that sends a Black guy to prison for six years, but sends a white guy to prison for six months: deeply flawed. A system that encourages young men to think they are entitled to sex, that’s it’s OK, or that it’s not rape, to put your penis or your fingers into an unconscious woman: deeply flawed. As Emlyn Pearce has pointed out, there is a culture of toxic masculinity that needs to be challenged:

You can’t fix this situation, but you are young, and you can fix yourself. You NEED to fix yourself, Brock: those around you still seem to claim that your conviction has damaged you, but you were already damaged when you took a valuable, much-loved human being behind a trash can and raped her in the dirt. What you are seeing now is the consequences of your damage, not its cause.

That is why we need to hex rape culture, and white privilege, and male entitlement. We need to bring about the realisation, once and for all, that rape and sexual assault are the end result of a failure to teach people about consent, a failure to create a culture of consent, and respect, and sovereignty. Sure, we need to make this rapist feel and understand the consequences of his actions – but we need to get all men to understand that women are not property.

It’s not enough to hex a rapist. There are conversations to be had about how women are blamed for being raped while drunk, and men are excused for perpetrating rape while drunk. There are many difficult conversations to be had where we explore together what a consent culture looks like – because we are currently living in a rape culture, and we have to work out how to create a consent culture.

The other day, I fended a man off who wanted to kiss me on the cheek and got snitty when I said no. Another man asked me for a hug (good that he asked). Then he asked my husband if that was OK. GRRR!!! A hug is not sexual, and it is up to me who I hug, not my husband. I am not his property. This kind of incident happens too frequently for me to dismiss it as merely one person being an idiot. I see examples of male assumptions of entitlement being discussed very frequently on social media. That’s why I think rape culture is deeply ingrained, and we need to do some serious work to uproot it. And the same applies to deeply ingrained racism. It’s not enough to be not openly sexist and not openly racist: you actually have to actively work to uproot internalised misogyny, internalised homophobia, and internalised racism, as well as working to uproot systemic racism, systemic misogyny, and systemic homophobia and transphobia. Yes, it is hard work. Anything worthwhile is hard work.

If a man assumes he is entitled to physical contact (sexual or otherwise) with a woman, do you challenge this assumption? If another man treats your partner as your property, do you challenge that behaviour? If you saw a woman (unconscious or otherwise) being raped, would you intervene? If you saw a woman in a hijab being vilified and attacked, would you intervene?

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