Damned Whores and God's Police

by Anne Summers

  As we have already seen, adherence to the God’s Police role affords women status and some degree of protection from poverty and from illegal rape. It also gives them the psychological security that comes with conforming to majority values. Certainly the majority of men continue to affirm these dual categories of women because they are of considerable advantage to them, and it is difficult for women to mount the kind of resistance that would be necessary to transcend them. With women divided as they are, men can have it both ways. They are able to have both a wife and a mistress. Even if the mistress subsequently becomes his wife, the man is still able to acquire yet another mistress, and there is always a clear distinction in his mind about the different functions of each woman. Even if a man does not have a mistress or visit prostitutes, he is still aware of and able to utilise the social distinction made between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women. What most Australian men seek from their wives, after the first couple of years of marriage, is the provision of domestic comforts. The Australian wife is expected to be primarily a good mother, to both her children and her husband. Australian men acknowledge this in the way they so often refer to their wives as ‘Mum’. It is very common for them to address their wives in this fashion – they are so identified with their role that their names and their identities are totally hidden behind it – and even more frequently men refer to their wives in this way when discussing them with their friends or workmates. Most men maintain a firm distinction between their wives/sisters/daughters/mothers and other women who are all seen as potential if not actual sex objects.

  Men have different standards for and expectations of wives and of women they consider to be whores, and they treat the two very differently. This is most apparent in their sexual behaviour. They will often accord their wives a ‘respect’ which amounts to gross neglect of the women’s sexual desires, while visiting a prostitute to satisfy the yearnings they have for what they regard as perversions. The same men who are protective and respectful towards their wives often see all other women as fair game for their predatory behaviour, be it an attempted seduction, an aggressive cat-call or merely a heavily insinuating leer. Yet should any man, even his friends, attempt such behaviour towards the women the man regards as his, he will quickly leap to defend them or their reputations, often demonstrating his proprietorship with his fists.

  The effect of this division on women themselves is to create anxiety and uncertainty about how to behave – just as the code of femininity does – and to engender a competitive and unfriendly rivalry towards other women. Since the benefits and protection afforded by the God’s Police designation are so essential to women’s security, they strive to earn it and are careful that their transgressions are discreet. They also learn as a self-protective measure to subtly denigrate other women in the company of men they want to impress. In this way they hope to enhance their own impeccability and hence their suitability to be a wife/mother. Women engage in bitchiness towards each other in an effort to unsettle the other’s assurance, hoping she will thereby discredit herself in front of the men by losing her composure or by engaging in unfeminine retaliation. This kind of behaviour is most pronounced in single women who are still husband-hunting, but even married women cannot afford to let down their guard and they are prone to making sure that any woman in whom their husbands show an interest has her virtue undermined so that their matrimonial security is not threatened.

  Women who act in this way totally accept the validity and justice of the way in which their sex is divided and set against itself and they are thus collaborators with the colonisers. They not only agree with the two stereotypes but they are quick to condemn one of their sex to the ignominy of the Damned Whore category, knowing only too well what the consequences of this are likely to be. Their actions are prompted by a raw survival instinct, and for this reason are understandable, but they do not realise that they help perpetuate the stereotypes by making use of them and that they are both continuing their own oppression and undermining any attempts by rebels to end the colonisation of women.

  How the stereotypes subvert feminism

  The success or failure of feminist movements has always rested to a very large degree on whether or not they were able to make significant inroads into these divisions between women. Chapter Eleven discusses the turn-of-the-century Australian feminist movement and its response to the sexist stereotypes. Like all feminist movements to date, the Australian women were unable to transcend these divisions: they accepted that there were ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women and tried to rehabilitate the latter, thereby reinforcing the patriarchal condemnation of them and their behaviour. It is impossible for unity among women to be forged while credence is still given to these two opposing categories. To have any chance of success, a feminist movement – which is, by definition, a movement for the liberation of women from their colonised state – must reject the stranglehold of these spurious stereotypes and affirm the common bond of the oppression that all women experience.

  Such a task is supremely difficult, however, because the colonisation of women is so complete that few women themselves recognise it; they accept the colonisers’ ideology that women’s separate and unequal position is ‘natural’ and that feminists are trying to tamper with something that has divine sanction. Feminism itself is dismissed by men as a trite and unnecessary ideology and feminists are disposed of by the very labels they are trying to subvert. They are accused of being lesbians, or man-haters, or bearing resentment against men because they have been unable to find one for themselves. The ideology itself is not considered seriously – for to do so would be an admission that it contains some validity – and the often successful tactic of personal persecution of its adherents is pursued. To identify with feminism thus takes considerable courage, for in doing so women almost inevitably incur the displeasure of the men they live and work with and risk being relegated to the Damned Whore stereotype themselves. While feminism remains a minority idea, few women are willing to take such a risk and indeed will join in, or even lead, its denunciation. In doing so, these women help perpetuate the patriarchal fallacy that women are not oppressed. Men can then say to the desisting women: your complaints are not valid, otherwise all women would agree with you; the fact that other women denounce you undermines your arguments.

  Women who have become famous or successful within the patriarchal system are sometimes quick to heap scorn on feminism. Such women are called Aunty Toms by feminists and fulfil exactly the same function for sexism as black Uncle Toms fulfil for racism: they deny the existence of the oppression that makes their success so very conspicuous. If our society were not sexist then there would be nothing remarkable about their achievement. To be successful in a system that denies women virtually any opportunities outside the domestic sphere, a woman must have remarkable talent, persistent determination and/or be prepared continually to seek male approval for what she is doing and to alter her course of action if she incurs insurmountable disapproval. Such women must ensure that they are also successful in the domestic sphere. They are the women who, when they give newspaper interviews about their achievements, always stress their wifely devotion and their maternal achievements and imply that their success is secondary and perhaps not even terribly important. They will often deny that any obstacles exist to prevent other women from following in their footsteps yet they usually pose beside the kitchen sink and demur that feminism is unnecessary since they succeeded without it. What they do not acknowledge is that feminism exists because so few women are able to achieve fulfilment outside the God’s Police role. The anxiety these women show lest they be thought bad wives and mothers is a testament to the enveloping hold this stereotype has on women. And, as I have already attempted to show, its demands prevent most women from participating in the world as freely as men do.

  Until very recently, most women were prevented from doing anything else at all by the demands of motherhood and domesticity. This has changed in the postwar years as women have smaller fam
ilies, but even though this gives many of them the time to take a job or further their education or engage in some other activity outside the home, they are still required to discharge their domestic duties first and anything they do must be compatible with this primary responsibility. As I have attempted to show elsewhere, this in itself creates a schizoid-like anxiety as women try and juggle their ambitions or desires with the imperatives of the God’s Police role. They cannot risk failing at the latter because of the known consequences of being relegated to the Damned Whore category. It is this constant anxiety that contributes to women’s confinement, inhibits their ambitions, deters them from aiming too high or reaching too far – in case they overstep the boundaries of the God’s Police role. Because if they do, or even if it appears that they might have, the condemnation is quick and cruel and the woman has literally to fight to have herself reinstated in the favoured category.

  A variety of things can provoke such condemnation. If a child has an accident, the mother can be blamed for not watching its movements more closely. If an adolescent ‘gets into trouble’ with the police, the mother’s devotion and home attendance are scrutinised by critics to see if some action or omission on her part can be held responsible. If a husband drinks a lot or is seen in the company of other women, it is assumed that his domestic situation must be unbearable and his wife’s behaviour somehow responsible for his failing to be a devoted husband and father. If a woman bears a child outside marriage, she is almost automatically assumed to be a slut. And if a woman is raped, she is invariably considered to have done something to invite the attack and to be, therefore, besmirched by it.

  How rape divides women

  The treatment of rape victims is a very striking example of how women’s reputations can be sullied and their status altered by an action for which they were not responsible. Women who have been raped are set apart from other women: they are condemned and ostracised by both sexes.

  It is a situation in which only women find themselves since men are seldom raped, and when this does on rare occasions happen, their attackers are always other men – not women. So rape itself is a microcosmic instance of the unequal power relations between the sexes but, as was pointed out earlier, it is the expression of a very particular aspect of men’s superior power. Women are powerless both to prevent the phenomenon of rape – and thus ensure that it can never happen to them – and to stop the physical and psychological aftermath that the victims suffer.

  Rape is the only crime in which the victim has to prove her innocence. Earlier in this chapter I described the various ploys that patriarchal society has for absolving the rapist and implicating the victim. In practice the woman is assumed to have ‘asked for it’ which, in patriarchal parlance, means deserved it. She is assumed to have acted in such a way as to have made the attack possible and, as the feminine code proscribes any behaviour that could be construed as being provocative, it is concluded that the woman must have been acting in an unfeminine manner. In other words, that she has abrogated her God’s Police status (if she possessed it before the attack) and can now be considered to be a Damned Whore. And as such she is no longer entitled to the respect and cordiality that a God’s Police woman can demand. She is therefore subjected to a brutal and humiliating cross-examination by both the police and the courts in which she is required to retell every detail of her ordeal.48 In court she must relive the experience in front of her attacker(s) whose sober and spruced-up appearance will give no indication of how he (or they) appeared and acted during the actual rape. And she is subject to cross-examination on her testimony by the defence lawyer(s) who will overlook no opportunity to try and force her to contradict details of what she has testified, or to discredit her personally.

  According to law, rape is a very serious charge. It carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment although in practice sentences of over ten years are very rare and most convicted rapists at present seldom get more than five or six. Yet although the practice is nowhere near as severe as the letter of the law, an alleged rapist is afforded every opportunity to acquit himself of the charge. These opportunities extend far beyond those that are the civil rights of persons charged with any other kind of crime.

  The rape victim’s story is not automatically believed: the fact that she has complained is not deemed sufficient proof that the attack occurred and first the police and then the courts will subject her to extensive questioning about what happened. If the police are satisfied that the woman’s complaint is justified and that there is sufficient evidence to convict the rapist – providing he can be identified and arrested – then the police will prosecute him. Since rape is a criminal offence it is heard in a criminal court before a judge and jury, but first the evidence must be presented before a magistrate who decides if there is a case against the alleged rapist. The rape victim appears as a police witness and must appear at both hearings. In order for her assailant to be punished, therefore, the victim must endure two court cases each of which will necessarily involve a brutal and insulting inquisition into her personal life.

  There are only two possible defences against rape: (1) that penetration did not occur or (2) that it was not in fact rape, that the woman consented. Since the court is required to pass judgement on the word of one woman – for there are seldom witnesses to rape – against one or more men, the defence will usually try to argue or to imply that it was not rape. And it is in this process that the unique position of the rape victim is highlighted. Unlike the victim of any other crime, the woman is cross-examined not merely about the actual rape but about her entire lifestyle. The defence lawyers will cleverly play on what they can safely enough rely upon to be the sexist prejudices of the jury to try and suggest that the woman is promiscuous or has at least engaged in extra-marital sexual relations previously. He will then insinuate that since she has consented in the past to men to whom she was not married that there is no reason to believe that she did not consent this time. Victims of assault are not cross-examined about whether or not they have been in fights before, nor is it implied that they invited robbery by walking the streets with wallets in their possession. Yet a rape victim is often practically accused of having incited the attack, and the cross-examination can be so gruelling, and irrelevant to the charge, that it often seems that it is the victim who is on trial. Even if the rapist is convicted, the victim is left with the experience of the rape and the court cases engraved indelibly in her mind.

  Some reformers who recognise and abhor the humiliating and tortuous experience a rape victim must endure if she wants to press charges have argued that it would be preferable for the woman to merely charge the rapist with assault and thus save herself from cross-examination about the details of the rape and her previous sexual experience. While the sincerity of such reformers is usually beyond question, the effect of such a practice would be to increase the ways in which patriarchal society can deny the extent of, or excuse, rape. I have already described the three forms of rape that the law does not recognise; this measure would pave the way for denying the existence of the one form that the law does take into account. Such a move would not stop rape. If anything, the incidence of illegal rape would increase as men, who already can rape with virtual impunity since so few rapists are caught and even fewer convicted, would have only the lesser charge of assault with its lighter penalty as a deterrent. Moreover, this ‘reform’ would in no way lessen the shame and humiliation and degradation and stigma, which all rape victims feel, because although these are heightened and made unforgettable by a court experience, they occur with all rape victims whether they press charges or not.

  One woman who went through this process described in the following poem just how she was left feeling after a court case:

  stinking sperm

  ran down my legs

  mingling with gutter sewage

  and pavement spittle

  as the animalman

  limped off into his inflamed infested world

  i picked />
  my torn and battered

  vagina

  up from the red earth

  and took it to the local gestapo

  who tortured it

  and threw it into the courts

  where

  it lay on display

  for animalmen to starejeer

  and spit venomous taunts at

  – Shouldn’t have taken your vagina

  into the streets that night –

  – Leave your vagina behind next time –

  my vagina

  was discharged from

  the animalmen’s bench

  charged first

  with inciting penises

  and causing erection

  – sentenced to lifetime

  servitude to seedysperm

  and penispersecution.49

  The court experience merely highlights and crystallises the prevailing social attitude to rape and its victims, and a woman does not have to go to the police or endure a court hearing to be marked by these attitudes. All women have been taught to fear rape and to curb their activities and behaviour because of it. If a woman is raped, therefore, one of her first reactions will be guilt. She has internalised the myths of rape described earlier and it is impossible for her not to apply their import to herself. Even if her rational mind can reassure her that she did absolutely nothing to provoke the attack, her subconscious is likely to quibble and question, to turn over every word or action that could perhaps have sparked off the rape.