Soaking In It

[Trigger warning for sexual assault.]

I used to run a series called "Rape Culture: We're Soaking in It" (explanation here) which hasn't had an entry in a year or so, and which has essentially been usurped by the Today in Rape Culture tag—but today I was reminded of the "we're soaking in it" moniker by a truly shocking example of how reflections of the rape culture permeate even the most unexpected spaces.

Shaker Muz sent me the link to a massive story in The New Yorker (the abstract for which is here, although you've got to be a subscriber to access the whole thing). The piece is broadly about the trial of Mazoltuv (Marina) Borukhova and Mikhail Mallayev for the murder of Borukhova's estranged husband, Daniel Malakov, but is more specifically about the idiosyncrasies and prejudices of the people involved, and what role those may have played in the trial, which ended in Borukhova's and Mallayev's convictions.

The author, Janet Malcolm, paints an interesting picture in particular of how those idiosyncrasies and prejudices may have damned Borukhova, irrespective of her actual innocence of guilt—the habit of the prosecutor and the judge of demeaning her by calling her "Miss" instead of "Doctor"; the various forms of Othering that went on by virtue of her being a woman, an immigrant, a Bukharan Jew; the conclusions that were drawn because she is well-educated and not demonstrably emotive; the judgments made about her on the basis of her mothering; how she was seen as "unsympathetic" because of all these things. It is, in many ways, a compelling story of the many manifestations of misogyny.

But then, toward the end of this titanic article, comes this stunning passage (emphasis mine), which refers to Borukhova's allegation that she had walked in on her husband kissing their young daughter's vulva—her explanation for why their daughter (Michelle) screamed when forced into visitations with her father, in contradiction to the advocate who asserted in language suspiciously reminiscent of Father's Rights rhetoric, that Borukhova had turned the little girl against her father:

Here we come to another of the questions about Borukhova that blur her portrait and give it its strange tinge. Why did she keep harping on the sexual abuse? If Daniel's "grave misconduct directed at the vagina of his young daughter" (or what [Borukhova's attorney] called "inappropriate touching") actually occurred, it surely wasn't the cause of the child's fear of him - it was merely kinky. It would have served Borukhova better - it would have been rational and logical - to connect Michelle's fearful, clinging behavior during the visits to scary scenes of domestic violence.

I am left breathless with astonishment that anyone, anywhere, with any sense of decency, could categorize a father kissing his own baby daughter's genitals as "merely kinky," and in no conceivable way capable of generating the abject fear that would cause a child to cling fearfully to her mother at the prospect of being left in her father's care.

And not only did Janet Malcolm make this stunning claim, but the proof-readers and editors and everyone who saw this piece before it went into print in the pages of The New Yorker all apparently felt it was totally appropriate for publication.

Yikes.