U.S. Investigates GI Accused of Rape

by Shaker Pizza Diavola

A few nights ago, I was reading the SF Chronicle and tucked away on page 14 of section A in the WORLD DIGEST column, which is full of blurbs about things going on in the world, I found this article by Mari Yamaguchi at the AP:

U.S. investigates GI accused of rape

TOKYO - The U.S. military is investigating an American soldier who had been accused of raping a woman on Japan's southern island of Okinawa, after Japanese authorities dropped the case, an army official said Wednesday.

An army-appointed investigator began the military equivalent of a pretrial probe on Monday into the allegations against a 25-year-old specialist assigned to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, Army spokeswoman Amanda Kraus said.

The soldier, who is accused of assaulting the woman in February in a hotel room, has been restricted to base but is not facing formal charges on any of the allegations, she said. [emphasis mine]

That was the full text of the print version of the blurb. The online version is different, and although it still says

The U.S. military is investigating an American soldier who had been accused of raping a woman on Japan's southern island of Okinawa before Japanese authorities dropped the case, an army official said Wednesday.

...

The soldier, who is accused of assaulting the woman in February in a hotel room, has been restricted to base but is not facing formal charges on any of the allegations, she said. [emphasis mine]

—the title is softened and shortened to "US investigating soldier in Japan." The online version also reveals some problematic attitudes toward rape (i.e. "real" rape is physically violent and therefore the absence of physical violence means it wasn't rape) on the part of the Japanese authorities investigating the case.

Anyway, the reason that the article caught my eye was the title.

Liss has extensively documented the euphemisms that writers, journalists, and editors in the mainstream media use to describe rape, such as being "forced ... to engage in sex acts" and being "hid in a cellar" or "abused by father, falling pregnant", etc. And there's the judge who banned the use of 'rape' in a rape trial.

It is common for people to rhetorically deny rape. It is so common for people to call it 'sex or 'sex without consent' or 'gray rape' or 'forced to have sex' or any number of misleading terms that hide that what happened was in fact rape.

Perhaps they do so to soothe their own discomfort at hearing a word signifying an ugly, vicious act; to deny that such a nice person as so-and-so could possibly be a rapist; or to deny that an ugly, vicious act was perpetrated against the victim.

Perhaps they do so because they've been taught to assume that women are in a default state of consent to sex; that calling a rape a rape diminishes the impact of "real" (i.e. any hypothetical rape but never the real rape you're currently talking about) rape; or that women and girls are responsible for being raped.

Pick any of those reasons; I bet we can come up with many more. Whatever the reason, the effect is the same: every time someone comes up with euphemisms to avoid calling a rape a rape or even use the word correctly in casual conversation, that blurs peoples' understanding of what rape actually is. It takes away the word that describes the experience and tries to turn the act into something it is not (consensual sex). It hides the reality that rape is common and prevents people from realizing how widespread rape and sexual assault are. If you can't even talk about a problem then it's difficult to realize that it exists, which makes it even more difficult to realize that it urgently needs solving, to say nothing of actually solving the problem.

In light of all that, it is a sliver of hope to see a rape case described as an accusation of rape, even if it's in a short blurb tucked away in the middle of section A in the world briefing column. It is especially heartening given that it appears in an article about a rape investigation. The reason for that is that within the context of trials, rape apologists frequently argue that using the word rape is somehow prejudicial. It makes the defendant appear guilty before the trial is completed and so instead of calling it rape we ought to call it "sexual intercourse" or "sex" or similar or anything other than rape, god forbid. That's such a nasty, prejudicial word, donchaknow. It has power. It's such a powerful word that it should never be used, apparently. The simple response to that, of course, is:

1. Rape IS nasty, traumatic, violating, evil, and awful. Trying to diminish the real impact of violation of one's self by describing it as "sex," with the consent that implies, is not comforting or helpful to anyone except the rapist, who then receives carte blanche to rape again, knowing that not only will there be no consequence to raping someone, people will come up with justifications to dismiss the rape.

2. "Sexual intercourse" and "sex" carry their own connotations--of consent. If alleging rape somehow mysteriously, definitively declares the rapist guilty (low conviction rates for rapists be damned!), then calling rape "sexual intercourse" or "sex" makes it seem that the rape was a consensual act and not, in fact, rape at all.

3. If, within the context of a trial, you are worried about implicit allegations of guilt somehow influencing the jury, use the standard legal talk employed in writing about or discussing trials: So-and-so is accused of raping the victim. So-and-so allegedly raped the victim. See? Presumption of innocence satisfied. Rape called rape. As Yamaguchi and the SF Chron show, it is this easy:

U.S. investigates GI accused of rape

TOKYO - The U.S. military is investigating an American soldier who had been accused of raping a woman on Japan's southern island of Okinawa, after Japanese authorities dropped the case, an army official said Wednesday.

I believe that the mainstream silence around sexual violence is part of what allows it to flourish, because most people are good, and I think that if they had any idea of how rampant sexual violence is, they would be up in arms. Not only feminists, not only victims, not only allies, but everyone. Breaking down the wall of silence is a vital task and seemingly endless, but at the same time, it is so heartbreakingly easy, when you get down the bare bones of it. And this is a starting point: call a rape rape.