Trigger warning: this blog post contains triggering and/or sensitive information about sexual assault.
Since the breakout of the Harvey Weinstein scandal in October 2017, the ever-expanding list of sexual assault allegations against well-known male figures across various industries has received many responses from fellow male celebrities (including Ben Affleck and Matt Damon), condemning the abhorrent actions. Most of these responses, however, follow the same pattern:
“As a father… as a brother… as a husband…”
“Let’s imagine if this happened to our sisters, our mothers, our wives.”
This line of rhetoric is not something new – almost every time a female is a victim of any sort of violent crime, we can observe a flood of empathetic reactions (primarily addressed to and from males) with underlying messages that have long-lasting and daunting consequences. My blog post is based upon the themes of this issue as presented in The Belle Jar’s post: “I am Not Your Wife, Sister or Daughter”, in which Anne Theriault investigates the adverse effects of those kinds of messages on all parties (i.e. the perpetrator, the victim, and the whole population in general). I will be analyzing the problematic nature of those responses/statements as well as the implications they have on females, in particular.
Theriault explores the dangers behind the responses that empathize with the female victim(s), for they automatically limit and place her in relation to the men in her life. These messages, according to Theriault, ultimately feed into rape culture (a society that normalizes sexual abuse), for they imply that it was wrong to rape a female merely because she was somebody’s daughter/sister/wife, not because she was a person. Many male celebrities have denounced sexual abusers in the similar fashion that was explicated by Theriault:
Ben Affleck’s tweet regarding the Harvey Weinstein scandal. Source: Twitter
“As the father of four daughters, this kind of sexual predation keeps me up at night. This is the great fear for all of us… We have to be vigilant and we have to help protect and call this stuff out, because we have our sisters and our daughters and our mothers.”
Matt Damon’s Interview with Deadline Hollywood.
I noted that men bring themselves into the picture by placing a possessive pronoun before mother/daughter/wife (e.g., our/your/my daughter). This possessive pronoun serves a completely contradictory and disturbing purpose – instead of separating females from the sexualisation and objectification they experience, the possessive pronoun actually objectifies them even more in that they are now perceived as fragile entities that must be protected by the heroic men in their lives. The sympathy and sadness would therefore arise not primarily from the awful nature of the sexual assault of the female, but more so from the failure of men to fulfill their roles/responsibilities of defending them.
But, what about the women who are not anyone’s wife, mother, or daughter? Theriault also proposes other questions: “Did they deserved to be raped? Not worthy of protection?” In Jiwani and Young’s “Missing and Murdered Women,” they analyze the ways in which the media presents missing sex workers by drawing on Lisa McLaughlin’s work, where she notes that society has labelled only “mothers, wives, and daughters” as good, “virtuous” women worthy of saving (900). Although Jiwani and Young’s work mainly revolves around the media portrayal of sex workers, their analysis is a fitting response to Theriault’s questions: the value of a female is solely measured by or limited to her relationships and in the case of sexual violence, her relationships with men. In this context, one’s status as a daughter/mother/wife increases her value and ensures protection.
The truth and reality that these responses fail to highlight is that women are people first, before they are anyone else’s daughter, mother, or wife. That fact alone should be enough to elicit sympathy from others and, more importantly, ensure females of respect and agency.
Works Cited
Anne Theriault. “I Am Not Your Wife, Sister, or Daughter.” The Belle Jar, 18 Mar. 2013, https://bellejar.ca/2013/03/18/i-am-not-your-wife-sister-or-daughter/. Accessed 1 Mar. 2018.
Fleming, Mike. Interview with Matt Damon. Deadline Hollywood, 10 Oct. 2017, http://deadline.com/2017/10/matt-damon-harvey-weinstein-russell-crowe-sexual-abuse-scandal-interview-1202185574/. Accessed 1 Mar. 2018.
Jiwani, Yasmin & Young, Mary Lynn. “Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse.” Canadian Journal of Communication, vol. 31, no. 2, 2006, 900. ProQuest, https://search.proquest.com/docview/219564084?pq-origsite=summon&accountid=14656. Accessed 1 Mar. 2018.
Kantor, Jodi & Twohey, Megan. “Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades.” The New York Times, 5 Oct. 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/harvey-weinstein-harassment-allegations.html. Accessed 1 Mar. 2018.
Peck, Emily. “Why the ‘I’m A Father of Daughters’ Line Is Irrelevant In The Discussion Of Sexual Assault.” The Huffington Post, 10 Dec. 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/10/11/why-the-im-a-father-of-daughters-line-is-irrelevant-in-the-discussion-of-sexual-assault_a_23240458/. Accessed 1 Mar. 2018.