Private Practice: an example of how sexual assault is depicted on television

Last night on Private Practice, one of the main characters, a doctor named Charlotte, was sexually assaulted at work. People making the show were in close contact with rape victims and an anti-sexual assault organization. Still, I had a few problems with this episode. I am not going to embed a video of sexual assault on my blog (for reasons that will be discussed further in this post), but if you feel the need to see what I am referring to, there is a video here.

The biggest problem is the "type" of rape that was shown. The perpetrator was a patient at the hospital who appeared to have a mental illness of some sort (people with mental health problems are more likely to be the victim than the rapist). It was an extremely violent case of stranger rape. The woman involved had no prior relationship with her rapist, she was not drinking, not walking alone outside at night, nor was she dressed provocatively or doing anything else that a "good" rape victim doesn't do. So, this episode really didn't push any boundaries to help people conceive of rape differently. I thought it could have been much more useful to depict a type of rape that isn't often seen as such, rather than playing into stereotypes of what constitutes "real" rape.

So many shows on primetime tv (think CSI and Law & Order), can show various forms of sexual assault in ways that can help people become more aware of sexual assault, but they generally depict scenes in a way that make rape look a lot like sex. The act of rape is typically more about power than sex, but that can be difficult to depict on television. Private Practice did show parts of the rape, which sexualizes it to a degree. I prefer when the scenes show enough to imply what is happening, without graphic images when "No matter how well-motivated, a rape scene is a sex scene, and TV shows are fantasies."

The part that bothered me most was her hiding the rape. At every commercial break, I expressed my frustration with her silence to the person I was watching the show with. She told people she was mugged, only told one person what actually happened, and refused a rape kit. I understand how horrible the criminal justice system can be, but it is not a he-said-she-said trial, so I personally cannot understand why she wouldn't report it other than a fear that other people will look at her differently. And this is an area that I hope they focus on differently in upcoming episodes.

Charlotte said "he took my wallet. He didn't take anything else" to the one person she told about the rape. I personally tend to agree with this statement... but not in the way that she meant it. He didn't take anything, he raped her. I don't like thinking about rape as taking something from someone. My opinion is that conceiving of it as something being taken from you is linked to patriarchal notions of purity and innocence and considers rape victims damaged in some way, which I completely do not agree with. I don't mean to erase some people's experiences with this last paragraph, as some people do experience it as something having been taken from them... this just doesn't make sense to me, personally.

One thing I did like is probably best articulated by entertainment journalist Emily Nussbaum

In what was clearly Rhimes’s mission statement, Charlotte contrasted her rape with rapes in "made-for-TV movies." In these gauzy victim narratives, she says mockingly, the woman rocks in the shower crying, and when the rape happens, her eyes go blank so she can go somewhere else. “It’s nothing like that,” she says bitterly. “It's dirty and sweaty and he licks your face and he wipes himself off in your hair and when you try to scream he punches you so hard you see God.”

I'm not sure that narrative is any more true for all victims than the made-for-TV movie shower crying scene, but it is good to see this depicted in a different way.

Stripper Pinatas

This video is a news story for adult pinata's that are shaped like strippers, pole and all.



This is a very odd news story to me, because the adults keep talking about how the display is horrible because it can be viewed by children in passing cars.

Does anybody realize that, more problematic than the fact that children can see cartoonish breasts might be that grown men (and women) are beating 4 foot tall replicas of naked women with bats for fun? But then, on the Madonna/whore dichotomy, strippers definitely fall in the "whore" category, and are therefore not "deserving" of being treated with any degree of respect.

I won't embed this next video, because I find it quite disturbing, but if you want to watch people beating at one of these pinatas with a stick and laughing, it is also on youtube.

Maybe the news, and society more generally, needs to reframe their views on such issues when violence against women is so normalized that it isn't even considered in a news story about people beating images of women.

Sex Education in Ontario: Beyond abstinence only curriculums

There is a new sex education curriculum in Ontario that is being strongly opposed by "family values" groups.

Some of the highlights are
Grade 1- taught to identify body parts by their proper names, including male and female genitalia
Grade 3- curriculum includes gender identity, sexual orientation, and same-sex marriage
Grade 5- identify reproductive organs and describe puberty changes
Grade 6- taught about masturbation, as well as definitions for terms like "vaginal lubrication"
Grade 7- STIs, AIDS, and unwanted pregnancy prevention, including information about oral and anal sex.
Grade 8- Taught about the importance of abstinence as a positive choice, but not as the only choice. They are also taught about pregnancy prevention and how to find support for issues relating to a healthy sexuality.

Dr. Charles McVety, president of Canada Christian College, claimed that

"Little eight-year-olds, they're going to be taught they look one way on the outside but they may be the opposite on the inside... This is so confusing to an eight-year-old ... these are children in the strongest sense of the word -- they're innocent, they're clean, they're beautiful -- and to corrupt them by imparting a question of gender identity is beyond the pale."

Would talk of gender identity confuse an 8 year-old? Probably not, I think most third graders are more open to these ideas than many adults... and it might help a lot of children accept how they feel about their own bodies.

I am troubled by the perception that children are pure and innocent. Children are in need of protection and nurture from adults in order to survive. Adults are supposed to provide them with the necessities, like food and shelter. In western society, adults must also protect children from "secret" adult knowledge, such as sexual relations, money, violence, illness, death, as well as specific social relations and language. This is not always the case historically or in many other cultures, where children sleep in the same room as parents and it is not uncommon for them to see their parents having sex.

Children are constructed as pure, innocent and in need of protection from adult knowledge, when I believe that they are merely ignorant because of this so-called protection. I have heard it argued that this ignorance can make them more at risk because the concept of innocence can be arousing to abusers, it can stigmatize children who have figured out these secrets, and it makes them more vulnerable to abuse when they don’t have the words to describe what is happening or the knowledge to understand what is acceptable and what is not.

The importance of teaching youth about the dangers of sex is widely debated, but it is much less controversial than the concept of teaching them about the pleasures of sex- which is something that this curriculum does not quite get into, but is bordering on. In order to be successful in most aspects of life, children are taught to practice. They spend countless hours doing homework to practice for a test, training for a sport, or learning a musical instrument. What they are not taught is that sexual pleasure also takes practice; in fact, they are shamed into not practicing. The safest way to practice would be to masturbate, but instead of being encouraged to do so, they are made to feel guilt over autoeroticism and sexuality itself. The importance of having a healthy sex life in adulthood is rarely discussed in school curriculums.

Children, and especially teenagers, know that sex exists and trying to end premarital sex is an effort in futility. Rather than continuing to fight this losing battle, children should be 'protected' by being given complete and accurate information about sex. I hope that teachers get the training necessary to deliver this information to students in a way that does not shame them into avoiding questions and not getting the information that they need.

In a lecture on the problems with abstinence only education, a women's studies professor argued that everyone (even children) deserve to practice with as much information at their disposal as possible.


edited to add: Upon re-reading this, I thought I might end up with comments telling me that it is wrong to push sexuality onto children... Just to make it clear, I am not suggesting that we actively encourage young children to masturbate, or give them step by step instructions on how to do so... I am merely saying that we need to make sure they have all the information they need available to them so that when they do decide to experiment with their body in various ways, they are able to do so without being embarrassed or ashamed of themselves.