The Normalization of Sexual Violence

by Andrea Scrima

1. Bloodthirsty

Swedish journalist Kim Wall in a 2015 portrait taken in Trelleborg. Wall died aboard Danish inventor Peter Madsen’s submarine.

I have a morbid personality; sometimes I stay up late at night, googling serial killers and rapists. In the light of the computer screen, scrolling through articles on websites published by amateur sleuths, I feel the dark pull of the unspeakable deed. But my fascination isn’t for the blood and gore; there is no thrill bubbling up inside, no voyeuristic kick. Nor am I moved by an urge to understand the killers’ psychological predicament or the geometry of their desire. The pull I feel is not toward their person or otherwise banal lives, but that point of no return when the not-yet-killer gives in to the irresistible urge, forfeits his allegiance to society, and defects to the other side. How strong does that urge have to be?

I worry. The brain is an organ, it’s unreliable, prone to illness; a sick brain thinks sick thoughts. There was a point in the killer’s life, I think, when he or she hadn’t yet committed the crime, a point when it would have been possible to stop and reflect on the inevitable consequences—not a life of adventure and freedom, but the monotony of prison, of incarceration and boredom, isolation, enforced celibacy. Could this happen to me—could something push me over that tipping point, and I’d find myself a moment later in a foreign land? I am horrified by physical violence; a bloody scene in a movie makes me turn my head away. The mirror neurons in my body tingle in response when I see someone else’s wound. What happens to people who lose this visceral reaction, who grow numb and enter a realm in which the divide between the self and the other is so absolute that they live as though in a vacuum, sealed off, in communion with their darkest compulsions, indifferent to the living reality of another human being’s existence?

I scroll through reports of repulsive deeds: the Danish inventor who murdered the young journalist who came to interview him because he was convinced that the rush he would experience at the very moment he was annihilating her would be superior to all the orgasms he’d had previously; the Coloradan who strangled his wife and smothered his two children in the expectation that the life he would then be free to live with his girlfriend could be happy and carefree, unencumbered by child support payments and filled with the real-life equivalents of the emojis and exclamation marks that decorated his love letters to her. Unremarkable, contemptible people on nearly every level. In the first case: megalomania and a history of power issues and abusive relationships; in the second, murderous intent hidden behind a mild-mannered demeanor and a stupidity so dumbfoundingly obvious that the footage of his interrogation at the hands of a brilliant woman detective deftly guiding him toward claims that proved effortlessly refutable is almost a pleasure to watch. And yet: there’s something I’m not getting. What is it that draws me in? Read more »

Monday, August 26, 2019

The fallibility of feelings

by Emrys Westacott

A recent article by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, “The Case of Al Franken,”[1]should disturb anyone who places a high value on fairness and rationality. Franken, who first became famous as a comedian, was elected to the US senate from Minnesota in 2008 and soon became a leading and effective advocate of liberal causes. But he resigned from the senate in January, 2018 after being accused of sexual misconduct during his time as a comic actor and writer.

Franken was effectively forced to resign by his fellow Democrats in the senate. At the time, the Me Too movement had recently surged, and feminists everywhere had vociferously criticized Donald Trump’s blatant sexism as well as the revealed sexual misconduct of well-known men like Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, and Louis C.K.. Franken’s colleagues, several of whom expressed profound regret over his resignation afterwards, appear to have believed that if they even acceded to his immediate request for a hearing before a Senate Ethics Committee, they would be open to charges of inconsistency and hypocrisy.

As Mayer’s article makes clear, Franken was largely stitched up by some of his enemies in the right-wing media. A proper hearing would have revealed, for instance, that:

  • His main accuser, Leeann Tweeden, was a close friend of the extreme right-wing talk show host Sean Hannity.
  • Many of her claims were demonstrably false (e.g. that he wrote a kissing scene especially so that he could kiss her; and that after he had kissed her once in that skit, she never let him near her again)
  • The release of Tweeden’s accusation was carefully plotted, with no attempt to fact check any of her claims or discuss them with Franken.
  • Alleged accusations by other women were either not corroborated or were extraordinarily thin (e.g. one woman said she once thought that Franken was planning to kiss her, and that made her feel “uneasy.”

The rush to judgement, the denial of any sort of due process, and the willingness to place perceived short-term political concerns ahead of principles of justice are all deeply disappointing in this case. But to my mind, the most disturbing item in Mayer’s article is a statement made by New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a friend of Franken who, nevertheless, called for his resignation. Referring to Franken’s accusers, Gillibrand said, “the women who came forward felt it was sexual harassment. So it was.” Read more »