Yes, Women Are for Raping, for "Law & Order" Tells Us So

I am a long-term fan of the "Law & Order" franchise.  I have been watching its shows faithfully since the mid-1990s when a lull between my failed university career and a job in a bookstore left me with some time on my hands.  I would hear that famous BUM-BUM that happens before the opening scene in each episode of the original show, and I would race from whatever part of the apartment I was in, even if it meant tripping across the floor in a towel while yanking on jeans over wet legs, so that I could catch the usual gruesome opening scene in which death or an already dead body came as a surprise to some unlucky soul or another.

Over the last few years, though, I have become less and less comfortable with my attachment to one particular arm of the franchise, "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit", because it marries itself so strongly to the sexiness of raped, battered, and/or murdered women and children. Is this what we are as women in this society? Is this the definition of our class status that we want to see delivered and expounded upon so often as a part of our cultural lexicon?

By "sexiness", I of course mean the glamor extended by sheer dint of the extreme drama around and attention paid to the sexually and otherwise violently degraded lives of women.  I am not comfortable with how drawn I am to these depictions of my own sex as being so vulnerable.  We are vulnerable, because as women, we are second-class citizens, and, as such, are less humanized than our male counterparts.  It is easier to brutalize a person when you have been trained to fold them into the faceless mass of a sub-class.  What I hate is the extent to which women are made to be seen as vulnerable in "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit".

"Law & Order: SVU"'s purpose is to "...[chronicle] the life and crimes of the Special Victims Unit of the New York Police Department, the elite squad of detectives who investigate sexually based crimes", so do not mistake my upset for surprise at its sexual content.  If the intent is to dramatize the investigation of sexually based crimes, rape, assault, murder, and child abuses are par for the course.  What I question is whether this show, which depicts one hour of graphic hate crimes against women and children every week, is healthy for a society with a long history of conditionally accepted violent crime against women and children.

The argument could be made that a show like "Law & Order: SVU" actually speaks out against the heinousness of these crimes and lifts the veil on what happens to us every day.  I do agree with that argument to a certain extent, but I also believe that the argument that "Law & Order: SVU" actually creates and deepens our predisposition to expect and fear these types of crimes against ourselves and our children outweighs its public service message.

As a female, I have been raised to look over my shoulder, to listen for footsteps, to never be alone, to fear spaces within even my own home, and to assume that one-third of my female friends have been sexually victimized.  I have been trained to live as a victim, as a prisoner, if you will, by and within the culture that perpetrates this victimization, and watching more than twenty variations on the themes of rape, assault, murder, and child abuse investigated in part by Detective Benson (Mariska Hargitay), a character born of rape who is also a sexual assault victim, does nothing to disabuse more than half our population of a lifetime of training.

When I watched this season's premiere episode of "Law & Order:SVU" on Wednesday, I had these thoughts in mind, and as much as I have loved this show in previous seasons, I found the opening of the ninth season a difficult one to sit through.  In the episode, there is a child witness to rape, several unsolved rape cases, a rape victim who unwittingly marries her rapist, a rape victim who gives up her child after a rape, and Detective Benson suffers from flashbacks of her own prison sexual assault.  I felt like I was sitting through some sort of emotional rape victim porn, porn bent on being so shocking that it enlisted almost every variation of rape in its arsenal, and I wanted the show to stop, just stop, oh my gawd, please.

I, for one, no longer want to ride the huge rape rollercoaster that is "Law & Order: SVU".  This is not what we, women and children, are.  I know that the show does not set out to define women and children as a whole, but in the face of a culture that has already trained us in this belief since birth, it acts to cement our preconceived notions of ourselves not only as victims but as victims in waiting.  We are not strong and safe even when we feel strong and safe.

This is not who I am, and this is not who you are, especially since this definition is based on nothing more than one part of our anatomies.  I, for one, and I am sure I am not alone in this, am tired of being defined by and made to feel as a victim because of my vagina.  I love this part of my anatomy, and when a culture uses it to lessen me and profit from it by making it the center of emotional porn, I am, shall we say, less than pleased.  Having the apparently insurmountable handicap of our vaginas underlined and bolded for us week after week makes the project of personal reinvention from victim to commander of our own fates even more difficult than it already is.

Women are not for raping.