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Lesson in sexual violence given
SCSU students were recently given a lesson on the philosophy of rape.
As part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, philosophy professor Lisa Bergin gave a talk Thursday about sexual violence in intersexual relationships. The main point of her discussion was that the form of rape that most people are familiar with is different from the sexual violence that occurs against transgender and intersexual people.
"You have to understand the sexuality of the victim and the assailant to understand the rape," Bergin said.
The majority of rapes that the public hears about involve women. This is because 94.5 percent of sexual assault victims are women and 99.6 percent of rape perpetrators in prison are men.
She explained that women are most often the victims because society has been taught that women are rape-able. In the same way, transgendered people are victimized because their attackers see them as something less than human.
"But the rape will be experienced differently by transgendered people because they are often viewed as freaks," Bergin said. "They don't fit into the categories of male or female."
Bergin explained that the philosophy behind her theories about sexual violence is based on a book by Ann Cahill, titled Rethinking Rape.
Cahill's theories deal only with heterosexual rape, but Bergin believes that they can be applied to the rape of transgendered people as well. She said that no matter what the sexual preference of the victim, everyone will be affected differently.
In heterosexual rape, the victim will deal with the experience differently depending on whether the attacker is a stranger or someone familiar.
In the rape of transgendered people, the effects depend on a number of factors, including whether the victim is a male living as a female (M to F) or a female living as a male (F to M).
"In M to F rapes the attacker might justify the act by saying something like 'so you want to be a woman? Here's what we do to women, we rape them,'" Bergin said. "In F to M rapes they might say, 'you're not a real man. Men don't get raped. You're a woman.'"
Another of her theories has to do with the rape of intersexed people. Intersexed people are those who are born with ambiguous genitalia.
Since this is seen as abnormal, doctors will many times perform certain procedures that will transform the newborn into a definite sex, most often female.
"The reason behind that is because doctors think that it is nicer to the baby to turn them into a woman than for them to go through life with a small penis," Bergin said. "I think that is a form of sexual violence."
She feels that these medical procedures are a form of rape because the baby doesn't get to choose what it wants to be. She proposed the question, "What if they decide that their gender expression is male but they have been forced to live their life as a female?"
Another problem is that the operations are done without fully consulting with the parents.
Bergin said that they are not told about the effects of scarred genitalia, nor do they get to talk with other intersexed people who may be able to give them more insight on the effects of the procedure.
Bergin's theories on how to deal with transgender and intersexual rape are just two philosophies that need to be further explored in order to understand the effects of these types of sexual violence. In her presentation, Bergin even said that, "I'm going to raise a lot of questions that I can't even answer."
Through further exploration, she hopes that those answers can be found.
Kelli Sandhurst can be reached at: [email protected]
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