Pamela Cooper-White, "Rape," The Cry of Tamar: Violence Against Women and the Church's Response, Ch. 4 (Fortress 1995): 79-99.

 

Rape

But he would not listen to her, and being stronger than she, he forced her and lay with her.

--Tamar's story, 2 Samuel 13:14

Recently, while on jury duty, I sat through the questioning of over twenty-five potential jurors for a case involving three counts of rape. The judge would always ask. "Have you, or any member of your family or a close friend, ever been the victim of a crime, including sexual assault?"

"Yes, my sister was raped when she was thirteen. . . ."

"I have a close friend who right now is dealing with the emotional problems she has because she was raped as a child. . . ."

"Yes, my mother was raped when she was in her twenties, but she doesn't ever talk about it, really. . . ."

"I was raped when I was eighteen. . . ."

"I have a cousin who was raped just last month. . . ."

"I was raped a few years ago. . . ."

"Yes, I was raped. . . ."

The judge: "Did you report this to the police?"

"Yes." . . .

To another juror "Was anyone arrested?"

"No." . . .

And another: "Did they ever find the alleged perpetrator?"

"No." . . .

Again: "Did the police arrest anyone?"

"Yes. There were three of them."

"Were these men ever prosecuted?"

"No. The district attorney said there wasn't enough evidence. . . ."

And again: "Was anyone arrested?"

"Yes. A man who lived down the street from me."

"Was he prosecuted?"

"Yes."

"What happened?"

"He was acquitted. The D.A. said that the jury couldn't find him guilty ‘beyond a reasonable doubt..’"

We rarely talk about rape, certainly not in social settings, and rarely in public—yet here were twenty-five strangers, revealing under oath how rape had touched their lives. The impact was staggering. Here was the living truth of statistics we usually read and wince about and set aside, a social truth that is usually covered over by silence, reticence, and denial.

The statistics on rape are astounding: one out of three women will be raped in her lifetime in this country. Boys and men are also raped by other boys and men. About one out of five or six boys is sexually assaulted before the age of eighteen, and one out of fifteen to twenty men are raped within their lifetimes. There is also evidence that rape is increasing (beyond what might be accounted for by increased reporting).1 Rapes continue to go unreported in as many as 50 to 90 percent of cases, making rape the most underreported crime in America.2 Reasons for not reporting include lack of counseling and advocacy services, lack of public education about acquaintance rape, absence of laws protecting confidentiality and disclosure of the rape victims' names to the press. But even more compelling, the reality that relatively few rapes are successfully prosecuted and even fewer cases end in a prison sentence inhibits women from reporting. This is perhaps the major reason women do not report: They fear that they will be put through a terrible ordeal where they themselves feel they are on trial, only to end up fearing the violent retaliation of an enraged perpetrator who continues to roam free. In fact, no suspect is even apprehended in a majority of cases, and of those, only one-fifth to one-half go to trial, and only approximately 10 percent of those are convicted. Nor do all convictions, particularly on a "first offense," result in incarceration. Studies only confirm what women have suspected for decades: that justice will not serve them or protect them from their rapists.'

Even these horrifying statistics are a pale shadow of the reality of rape in the lives of women. As juror after juror told stories of rape, of rapists getting away without being arrested, of rapists not being prosecuted or found guilty, it became horrifyingly clear that fear of rape is simply a part of the fabric of everyday life for women.4 Almost every woman knows someone to whom it has happened. Every woman thinks about it. It is like background noise in every woman's life—static that interferes with her movements, her choices, her freedom.

We think about rape daily. We think about it when we park our cars, when we get into an elevator with a strange man, when we walk from our driveways to our front doors. We think about it when we buy extra locks for our apartment doors, install alarms on our windows, choose apartments and houses nearer to street lights. My daughter's two babysitters, sisters aged seventeen and eleven, carry self-defense keychains in the shape of cat's ears that can be aimed at the eyes of an attacker. Other women carry mace, whistles, hairspray.

But precautions about walking at night and weapons for self-defense cover only about half the situations in which rapes occur. Many rapes occur during the daytime. Rapes are more likely to occur in a woman's home than on the street. And rapes are three to four times more likely to be carried out by acquaintances than by strangers. Rapes are committed by friends. Rapes are committed by husbands.5

And rape changes lives forever. Rape survivor Ruth Schmidt writes:

Although all these [social, political and theological] issues are important, personal experience is the only adequate window through which to view the reality of rape. It is difficult for many to imagine how one's life changes after living through an experience of terror. I cannot imagine how my life might have been had I not been raped. I have little connection to my life prior to the rape. Rape forced me to start over. In a very disturbing way I experienced the trauma of being torn from the womb and immediately recognizing that even while clothed I am naked, even in a family I am alone, even speaking I am silenced and even living I am dying.6

Rape has severe aftereffects: Rape victims are three times more likely than nonvictims of crime to suffer major depression, four times more likely to have contemplated suicide, and thirteen times more likely to have made a suicide attempt, and also significantly more likely to have more drug and alcohol problems than the general population.7

What Is Rape?

The traditional legal definition of rape hinges on the issue of consent. Rape is "unlawful sexual intercourse with a female without her consent."8 This definition is quite narrow. Rape by physical force is in reality a subset of rape, in which physical force or threat of force is used. Date or acquaintance rape may involve other, less overtly violent forms of coercion. The issue of vaginal penetration, traditionally assumed in "carnal knowledge," does not encompass other forms of sexual battery that do not involve penetration: flashing, voyeurism, and other acts with varying degrees of physical invasion. Michigan state law, which has become a model for reform in a number of states, identifies four degrees of sexual assault, which broadens the definition of sexual assault to include penetration of any bodily orifice with any part of a person's body or any object, and intentional touching of the victim's genital area, groin, inner thigh, buttocks, or breasts (either with skin contact or through clothing). Further, the presence of a weapon, two or more assailants, or incapacitation of the victim (whether unconscious, mentally disabled, drugged, etc.) constitute an "aggravated" sexual assault. This type of law does not require penetration of a vagina by a penis, a definition that is more dependent on a male/assailant perspective than women's experience.9 Nicholas Groth, an expert in the psychology of male rapists, writes, "All nonconsenting sexual acts are assaults."10

Marital rape has only recently been recognized in some states as a crime comparable to other rapes. In twenty-nine states it is a lesser offense, and in two states it is still not a crime at all.11

What the law cannot, by its nature, describe is that rape is the forcible entry into the most private, most vulnerable, and, arguably most sacred parts of the human body, and, as such, it is a spiritual crime as well as a physical one. In one of the first, groundbreaking descriptions of women's reality of rape, early in the formation of the antirape movement in the early 1970s, Susan Griffin wrote:

Rape is an act of aggression in which the victim is denied her self-determination. It is an act of violence, which, if not actually followed by beatings or murder, nevertheless always carries with it the threat of death. And finally, rape is a form of mass terrorism, for the victims of rape are chosen indiscriminately, but the propagandists for male supremacy broadcast that it is women who cause rape by being unchaste or in the wrong place at the wrong time—in essence, by behaving as though they were free.12

Perhaps the most succinct definition was given by Andrew Medea and Kathleen Thompson, in another book early in the rape crisis movement: "Rape is all the hatred, contempt and oppression of women in this society concentrated into one act."13

Rape comes from the Latin word rapere, "to steal." This etymological root reveals the prevailing view of rape from earliest centuries—as a crime against property. Sexual assault, as in the story of Tamar, becomes a theft of another man's possession, rather than a violation of a woman's sovereign jurisdiction over her own body. Whether as a callous and utilitarian means to claiming a woman as a wife, retaliation or theft committed against a neighbor, or one of the spoils of war, rape has been practiced worldwide as men's prerogative—with the claims of another man upon a particular woman's body as the only possible deterrent.

In a number of ancient civilizations, rape was punishable by death (for example, see Deut. 22:23-29).14 If the woman "did not cry out," she was also stoned (Deut. 22:23-24). The exception was in the case of the rape of a virgin. Then the rapist was required to marry the victim and pay her father three times her original marriage price (in Deut. 22:29, fifty shekels of silver). In addition, the girl's father was in some civilizations allowed a "rape of retribution," which legally permitted him to rape the ravisher's wife or sister. Many centuries later, while rape was viewed as illegal among upper classes, it was still considered the prerogative of a landed aristocrat to have sex with his servant girls and women—and especially to enjoy the privilege of deflowering them on the eve of their wedding. This droit du seigneur (master's right) became the subject of an entire opera by Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro, based on a play by the eighteenth-century playwright Beaumarchais. The dread of rape and the angry protest of the serving class against tyranny of the aristocracy lie at the heart of this seemingly lighthearted comedy of manners, which is now often seen—erroneously—as more charming than political.

The intertwining of class privilege with the privilege to rape is clearly demonstrated in early English law, which set different standards for punishment and compensation for rape depending on the relative social positions of perpetrator and victim. For example, a man "who lay with a maiden belonging (not married) to the King" had to pay fifty shillings for the rape, but if she was a "grinding slave" the amount was cut in half. On the other side of the equation, if a slave dared to rape a commoner's serving maid, he was castrated, and if he dared to rape anyone above that rank he was killed. It was legally impossible for a king or bishop to rape anyone. One word said in their own behalf would automatically clear them of all charges. If a priest was accused of rape or any other misdeed, he could take an oath while wearing his vestments and swear before an altar that the charges were untrue. He would then be cleared of all wrongdoing."

Neither can rape be separated from racism.16 Black slave women were routinely raped by white slave owners and by their black overseers as well. The narratives of slave women are filled with stories of rape and sexual violence.17 Angela Davis wrote:

As females, slave women were inherently vulnerable to all forms of sexual coercion. If the most violent punishments of men consisted in floggings and mutilations, most women were flogged and mutilated, as well as raped. Rape, in fact, was an uncamouflaged expression of the slaveholder's economic mastery and the over-seer's control over Black women as workers.18

Long after the Emancipation Proclamation, the rape of a white woman by a black man was a capital offense, when the maximum sentence for a white man who committed the same crime was only twenty years. African American researcher Darlene Clark Hine asks: What are the psychological consequences for entire generations of women living under the constant threat of rape?19

Racism also distorted justice for the accused. Rape charges against black men served a dual purpose of enforcing white men's ownership of women, both white and black, and of a "systematic weapon of terror" against black men.20 To this day, the vast proportion of men arrested and convicted for rape are black, with no social evidence to support a disproportionate conviction rate.

Rape is also intertwined with other human rights violations, directly linking political repression, machismo, and torture of prisoners.21 Rape is listed by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations as a common form of torture throughout the world. The recent rape of women in Bosnia is a clear example of rape as an act of political violence, domination, conquest, and hatred. This is but one moment in a history of rape that is centuries old. Rape of indigenous women was a routine part of the colonization of the Americas by the Spaniards and other Europeans, long before the wave of political violence in Latin America, which began in the middle of this century and which made use of rape to intimidate and silence the population. Wherever in the world the most repressive dictatorships exist, racial oppression, genocide, and rape go hand in hand. South Africa has the highest incidence of rape in the world, with a much higher percentage in the black community than in the white, and possibly the highest level of silence: only one in thirty women reports rape to the authorities, and there is very little social support. "People never really talk about rape. Many of them don't report the incident to the police because they are ridiculed. Not only that, but they fear the police."23

Myths Surrounding Rape

Myth #1: Rape is an impulsive act, beyond the rapist's control.

This is a variation on the myth that men's sexual drives are uncontrollable once aroused, and that men are victims of their own biology. Statistics have shown that rape is more often than not premeditated: 90 percent in the case of group rape; 83 percent involving two perpetrators; and 58 percent involving a single perpetrator."24 Thirty-five percent of male students in one study reported hypothetically that they would be likely to rape if guaranteed that they would not be caught or punished.25

Alcohol also does not cause rape, although it may be a disinhibitor. In one study, men who believed that they had drunk alcohol were equally aroused by violent rape pornography as men who had drunk. (A control group who did not drink were less aroused.) This implies a social placebo effect for alcohol as a disinhibitor as much as any physiological factor.26

Myth #2 Sex appeal is of primary importance in selecting targets. Beautiful young women are more likely to be raped,

In reality, women of all ages from infants to the elderly are raped. Stereotypical beauty or attractiveness is not relevant. Women in their nineties and infants as young as six months have been victims of rape.27 A man assaults someone who is accessible and vulnerable.

Myth #3: Rape is an act of sexual passion.

Studies of rapists have shown sexual gratification as secondary or absent. Nicholas Groth writes, "Rape is never the result simply of sexual arousal that has no other opportunity for gratification."28 Primary motives include power, domination, revenge, hatred of women, and desire for humiliation. Rape is an act of aggression and intimidation accomplished by sexual means. Groth, in describing his clinical work with sex offenders, told Newsweek magazine, "We look at rape as the sexual expression of aggression, rather than as the aggressive expression of sexuality."29 Groth has developed a threefold typology of rapists: those who use sexual aggression to discharge anger by degrading and humiliating their victims; those who rape in order to compensate for feelings of powerlessness by overpowering a victim in the area of her greatest vulnerability, and those whom he labels as sadistic, deriving erotic gratification from sexual domination and torture. Even in this third category, the anger and power motives are primary, but in this case they become eroticized.30 In his landmark book Men Who Rape: The Psychology of the Offender, Groth writes:

Rape is a pseudosexual act, a pattern of sexual behavior that is concerned much more with status, hostility, control, and dominance than with sensual pleasure or sexual satisfaction It is sexual behavior in the primary service of non-sexual needs.31

Gang rape adds the dimensions of peer pressure, baiting, and group psychology to create a pack mentality in which individuals' inhibitions against committing crimes are loosened. Sixty-two percent of multiple-offender rapes are committed by young men under twenty-one, compared to 20 percent of single-offender rapes.32

Myth #4: No woman can be raped against her will.

This is expressed by the crude joke, "You can't thread a moving needle," and is used especially against women who do not fight back and in cases of date or acquaintance rapes. In many cases, fear is so immobilizing that a perpetrator does not need to use extreme force to accomplish the rape. This does not constitute an invitation on the victim's part. This myth gained official sanction as early as 500 B.C.E. in the writings of Herodotus, the so-called Father of History: "Abducting young women is not, indeed, a lawful act, but it is stupid after the event to make a fuss about it. The only sensible thing is to take no notice; for it is obvious that no young woman allows herself to be abducted if she does not wish to be." This is perhaps the purest statement of blaming the victim on record."33

One survivor bravely confronted this myth during her questioning by a police officer after she was raped. The officer gave her his billy club and asked her to insert it in the styrofoam cup he was holding. While holding the cup, he moved it back and forth quickly, trying to make the point that if she had struggled she could not have been penetrated. The woman responded by hitting the officer on the arm with the club, causing him to drop the cup. She then inserted the club into the cup.34

Myth #5: Women secretly want to be raped.

"She asked for it." Women do not want to be raped. While some women as well as men do fantasize about rape, and may even enjoy a mock sexual struggle, this does not equate with the terrifying reality of actual rape. In fantasy, the person fantasizing is still in complete control of what happens. In actual rape, she is completely out of control—dominated, humiliated, and often caused excruciating physical pain.

The moment of a woman's "no" is the turning point between seduction and sexual play on the one hand, and violation, fear, and pain on the other. There is no better illustration of this than the character Sarah Tobias, portrayed by Jodie Foster in the movie The Accused. Based on an actual incident of gang rape on a pool table in "Big Dan's" Bar in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in March 1983,35 Sarah at first dances and flirts with one of the men. The viewer is set up to believe that here is an obvious case of a young woman who dressed and behaved in a way that was intended to invite sex. However, a dramatic change occurs. When she says she's had enough and wants to go home, he begins to force her. Egged on by their buddies at the bar, several of the men eventually take turns holding her down and forcibly raping her. There is no mistaking this for romance, seduction, or mixed communication. Again and again, she cries "no" and struggles. In a matter of seconds, what had seemed like flirtatious play is transformed into a prolonged episode of terror and violence. Jodie Foster's genius is to show how a woman's exercise of freedom—including sexual freedom—is turned against her will into a brutal violation. Later it is Sarah Tobias's struggle to prove that the exercise of sexual freedom did not warrant such a violation, and in the movie we are allowed to see how this becomes heroic.

Myth #6: If you're going to be raped, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

Of course, the double bind created by this saying is: If a woman appears or pretends to cooperate with the rape, it is used as evidence that she was consenting and no rape occurred. Susan Brownmiller identifies this pseudo-consent as part of the rapist's own fantasy: "to make a woman a willing participant in her own defeat is half the battle. . . . It is a belief in the supreme rightness of male power."36

The cultural bias against women's using physical force, even in self-defense, ends up contributing to the further oppression of women. A corollary myth to "lie back and enjoy it" is the myth that attempts at self-defense will result in being killed. This belief deters many women from successfully defending themselves. However, studies have shown that self-defense often helps women in a number of ways. In a study of ninety-four women survivors of sexual assault (forty-three of whom were raped, and fifty-one of whom avoided rape although they were attacked), Pauline Bart and Patricia O'Brien at the University of Chicago concluded that the immediate use of physical force, especially when combined with other defensive strategies (yelling, screaming, fleeing, using deceptive maneuvers) was the best deterrent, although they emphasized that no strategy guaranteed that rape would be avoided. Fleeing was the best single deterrent when only one strategy was used.37 They contend that women's socialization not to fight physically and not to play contact sports renders them much more vulnerable to rape. While no defensive strategy succeeded in avoiding rape 100 percent of the time, the use of no strategies resulted in no avoidance of rape in five out of five cases. The use of force, contrary to the prevailing myth, does not lead to greater injury once a woman is attacked. On the contrary, victims who did not fight back often sustained greater injuries.38 Bart and O'Brien declare that women being advised to try to avoid rape through passive resistance or talking and thus "humanizing" the relationship are being misled in what amounts to yet another form of social control.

Some of their detailed conclusions, many of which have been replicated by Sarah E. Ullman at Brandeis University, included:

  • Acting "like a lady" is more likely to result in rape than in avoiding its occurrence;
  • the women whose primary concern lay in avoiding death or mutilation have been less likely to avoid rape than those who had a gut reaction of rage and were primarily determined not to be raped
  • . . . raped women who used physical strategies were less likely to be depressed than raped women who did not. . . . They are less likely to blame themselves. . . , more likely to gain strength from the belief that they did everything they could in that situation.
  • We are told that if we fight back, if we physically resist, we will pay the price through severe injury or death. This admonition is not supported by our findings.
  • Women who fought back sustained the following kinds of injuries: bruises and bite marks on the neck, soreness for a few days, strained muscles bruises and minor cuts, more serious cuts, back injury and aching the next morning.
  • Women who stopped their rapes did not respond differently to their assailant whether or not they knew him—except that they were more likely to yell or scream when the assailant was a stranger.
  • Even when there was some indication of a weapon, 44% of the women avoided being raped39

Py Bateman, one of the founders of the women's self-defense movement, wrote of her own experience of defending herself in a prolonged rape attack:

We have always stressed determination as important, and it was determination that kept me fighting—and thinking—when he didn't give up, when he escalated the violence. Another factor, one that we didn't know so much about, was biology. I never felt any pain while I was fighting. Not even when I cut my hand grabbing the knife by the blade. My consciousness was dominated by the determination to come out alive and my plans for how to do that'

None of this discussion should be interpreted as blaming women for being raped if they did not fight back. Encouragement to use physical resistance is an important self-defense message for women prior to being raped. It is not useful after the fact, when it may carry the implication, "If you had fought back you wouldn't have been raped." There are many factors to be considered in the decision whether to resist physically. In some cases, although not probably in the majority, the rapist may be further stimulated by a victim's resistance. Women must use their judgment.41 In many rapes in which the woman's life is threatened, staying alive is the best resistance, regardless of the strategy used to do so. The final answer to the myth of "lie back and enjoy it" is that, while it may be debated whether rape is sex or not for the assailant, it is never sex for the victim. It is violence, and violence is not enjoyable.

Myth #7: Women cry "rape" to get revenge.

This myth has biblical sanction in the story of Potiphar's wife (Gen. 39). Seventeenth-century jurist Matthew Hale wrote: "Rape is an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, though never so innocent."43 Statistically, however, this myth is hard to defend. As with battering, as few as one in ten rapes is reported to the police.44 False accusations of rape do not statistically exceed any other crime (approximately 2 percent).+45

Myth #8: The myth of the black rapist.

The stereotype of the black man raping the white woman was seared into the popular imagination in 1915 in D. W. Griffith's monumentally racist propaganda film The Birth of a Nation. In this movie—the first feature-length film telling a cohesive story and thus intended as a heroic milestone for the director—the fragile, doll-like Lillian Gish is saved from a black man's rape by the Ku Klux Klan.

Facts tell a different story. The vast majority of rapes are same-race crimes.46 The one exception to this is that Asian women are slightly more likely to be raped by white men.47 This reality is distorted by media attention to black-on-white crimes and relative ignoring of white or black-on-black crimes. It is also distorted by the fact that men of color arc disproportionately convicted and jailed for assault—although only a small percentage of male assailants are men of color, they are 48 percent of those convicted and 80 percent of those jailed for assault.48

While black men are not more likely to be rapists, black women are significantly more likely than white women to be victims,49 and they are subjected to more violent attacks.50 Black women and other women of color are sometimes more vulnerable for reasons of lack of community awareness of the problem, the necessity of working undesirable hours, high utilization of public transportation, and residences located in high-crime neighborhoods with inadequate police protection. Several of these reasons are because of the economic inequalities in the lives of women of color and pertain to all poor and working-class women to some degree. Women of color also face a dilemma in reporting, because of justifiable mistrust of racist law enforcement and public agencies, unwillingness to subject themselves to racist disbelief and blame, and reluctance combined with social pressure against exposing a brother to arrest or incarceration.

Myth #9: Most women are raped at night by a stranger in a desolate place.

In reality, statistics show that sexual assaults occur over one-third of the time at home, and one-third occur during the day.51 And contrary to the myth of the stranger, 50 to 78 percent of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim. As many as 46 percent of rapes are committed by family members (husbands, ex-husbands, fathers, stepfathers, and other relatives).52

Myth #10: Only women are raped

For its crime reporting program, the FBI conforms to the traditional definition of forcible rape as "carnal knowledge of a female forcibly or against her will,"53 so certain national crime statistics cannot indicate the prevalence of sexual assaults against men and boys. Sociological studies generally show that one out of four girls is raped, and one out of five or six boys, before the age of eighteen. Over age eighteen, one of every three women is raped, and one out of fifteen to twenty men is raped (by other men).54 Twelve to 14 percent of the sexual assaults treated at the San Francisco Rape Treatment Center in 1992 were suffered by men, both straight and gay.55 While the focus of this book is on violence against women, it is important not to ignore the fact of male victims' pain and terror. Men, too, become victims of male violence.'

Rape in the Language of the Mystics

Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee, 'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is ca'tiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely'I love you, 'and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie;
Divorce me,'untie, or breake that knot againe,
Take me to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast escept you ravish me.57

A rape fantasy takes on a profound and transcendent glow in the words of John Donne, seventeenth-century poet-mystic. The imagery of sexual assault is used as a powerful metaphor for being overshadowed and transformed by the presence of the divine. But this raises a number of questions. First, could such imagery ever be used quite so rapturously by a woman? Or is the relative absence of fear of literal rape necessary for such romanticization of it?

The imagery of sexual surrender as a spiritual metaphor is not unique to John Donne. Compare his seemingly fearless desire for being ravished by God to the words of St. Teresa of Avila:

The Lord wanted me while in this state to see sometimes the following vision: I saw close to me toward my left side an angel in bodily form. . . . I saw in his hands a large golden dart and at the end of the iron tip there appeared to be a little fire. It seemed to me this angel plunged the dart several times into my heart and that it reached deep within me. When he drew it out, I thought he was carrying off with him the deepest part of me and he left me all on fire with great love of God.

Here we have similar sexual imagery, of being overwhelmed, even impaled by divine shafts of love. Teresa does not use language of violence: "batter" and "ravish." Her imagery is ambiguous between enjoyment and suffering, but perhaps seems more relational and voluntary: "the pain was so great that I screamed aloud, but simultaneously felt such infinite sweetness that I wished the pain to last eternally. It was the sweetest caressing of the soul by God."58

We may also ask, has Teresa's experience itself been transmitted well, or has it been used at the service of the patriarchal myth of women's enjoyment of rape? Perhaps the most famous image of Teresa is the statue by the Renaissance sculptor Bernini. In it, God is concretized in the form of a youthful angel—presumably male, but having androgynous characteristics—whose expression is both smiling and vacant, plunging a spear into the heart of a swooning figure of Teresa. Art historian Kenneth Clark has written, "The Ecstasy of St. Teresa is one of the most deeply moving works in European art. Bernini's gift of sympathetic imagination . . . no doubt enhanced by his practice of St. Ignatius's spiritual exercises—is used to convey the rarest and most precious of all emotional states, that of religious ecstasy."59 Is Bernini faithfully depicting Teresa's own authentic experience of inner rapture, or is there an element of pornography that is perhaps inevitable in the translation of one woman's interior, mystical experience into the concrete medium of marble sculpted by a male master? Would it even be possible for Bernini, embedded as he was in the assumptions of his time and culture, to separate out an image of female ecstatic surrender from supposed ecstatic enjoyment of rape.

The use of rape is not exclusive to the religious imagery of Christianity. Rape stories abound in Greek and Roman mythology, and have been retained in the artistic imagination of our own Western culture. Gustav Klimt's painting of the rape of Danae seems on the surface to be a sensitive and loving portrayal of female sexual ecstasy. Danae reclines on her back, nude, with a look of sleepy fulfillment on her face, as a shower of golden light pours down between her legs.60 Yet once again, the question must be raised, why this image of ecstasy? And where are the myths and images of male surrender and male ecstasy in being overpowered and sexually overtaken?

John Donne is unusual in this regard—it is himself of whom he says, "Batter my heart, 0 God," and "ravish me." And yet this poem is dearly not a desire for literally being raped. It is the overpowering of the soul, which itself carries socialized connotations of the feminine (the anima). Here again, a masculine voice presumes to speak universally of the human quality of spiritual surrender. And while such surrender may in fact be at the heart of all human experience, male and female, such a romanticization of rape belies the pain and horror of the actual experience—an experience in which any redemptive quality is questionable.

Even contemporary psychologists utilizing mythology to illuminate the deeper aspects of the human psyche may differ according to gender in their retelling of stories of rape. Jungian writer and therapist Naomi Ruth Lowinsky, drawing on quotations from the Greek poet Homer,61 retells the myth of the rape of Kore/Persephone, which was the heart of the Eleusinian mystery cult:

In the myth, Kore, the adolescent daughter of Demeter, goddess of the grain, is picking flowers in a meadow with her friends. She is drawn to a particularly beautiful flower, a narcissus. As she picks it up, the earth opens up and Hades, Lord of the Underworld, seizes her and carries her, crying and protesting into the realm of the shades. When her mother, the "awesome goddess with her beautiful hair," realizes that her daughter has disappeared:

a sharp pain seized her heart
With her lovely hands
she tore the headdress
on her immortal hair
she threw off
the dark covering
on her shoulders
and she shot out,
like a bird,
over dry land
and sea
searching.

The goddess goes into so deep a state of mourning that her beauty fades and she looks like "an old woman ... beyond childbearing, beyond the gifts of Aphrodite." In her rage and grief she causes the earth not to take seed, the "white barley" to fall "uselessly upon the earth." So angry and full of grief was she that "she would have wiped out the whole race of talking men" if Zeus had not interceded, ordering Hades to return his bride so that her mother could see her "with her own eyes."62

This is a full rendering of the pain and anguish of both mother and daughter, without minimization or qualification. Lowinsky goes on to use this myth as an argument for reclaiming and restoring honor to the depth and mystery of the mother-daughter connection: "Imagine, if you can, a society of men and women so permeated with the inner meaning of the female mysteries that they would hold in silence the secrets of life that were revealed to them. Imagine women and men sharing the rage and grief of the mother whose daughter has been seized by the lord of the underworld."

Jungian analyst Jean Shinoda Bolen similarly emphasizes the pain and grief of mother and daughter. She adds that in one version of the myth Demeter herself is raped by Poseidon while searching for Persephone. Bolen highlights Demeter's outrage at Zeus's betrayal:

Helios, God of the Sun . . . told them that Hades had kidnapped Persephone and taken her to the underworld to be his unwilling bride. Furthermore, he said that the abduction and rape of Persephone had been sanctioned by Zeus. He told Demeter to stop weeping and accept what had happened; Hades was after all "not an unworthy son-in-law." Demeter refused his advice. She now felt outrage and betrayal by Zeus as well as grief She withdrew from Mt. Olympus. . . . "64

Bolen compares Demeter's maternal persistence even in the face of danger to the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, the mothers who confronted the authorities in Argentina to demand the return of their sons and daughters who had been "disappeared" by the state police.

In contrast, another Jungian writer, Thomas Moore, makes use of the same story, not focusing on the anguish of the victim and her mother, but finding a psychological argument supporting Zeus's complicity:

From the Demeter point of view, the abduction into depth is an outrageous violation. But we know, from the complicity of Zeus, that it is also a necessity. If Zeus approves, then whatever is happening is truly the will of God. It is in the nature of things to be drawn to the very experience that will spoil our innocence, transform our lives, and give us necessary complexity and depth.65 (emphasis mine)

He further goes on to characterize Demeter's actions as "neurotic activities."66

It can be argued, of course, that this is taking these mythological stories of rape too literally, and that the use of rape as metaphor and deep truth cannot be confused with women's actual experience. Moore, for example, is making the valid point that we must all descend into depth, which involves a loss of innocence and an initiation through danger, in order to move toward fuller life. But again, to focus on the validity of the male gods' larger purposes sacrifices the female victim's experience, erasing her voice just as Tamar's was silenced, and draws us once again to read these stories and myths of rape through the universalism of a patriarchal lens. Are we to read myths of rape as metaphors and abstractions because that is how masculinist history has read them? Or, as women, are we called to challenge these myths as inappropriate expressions of spiritual development, because we know too well that rape is not a matter of glorious surrender, and that only one who does not fear rape could ever really glorify it? Are these metaphors and abstractions not, in. fact, more subtle propaganda for the myth of women's enjoyment of rape? Isn't the spiritualization of rape through myth and male mystical imagery one of the deepest forms of denial of women's actual experience of rape and horror and violation?

There is one central truth revealed by the prevalence of rape in mythology and even in the language of the mystics: Rape is not just a matter of the body, but of the soul. The feminist saying, "Rape is power and not sex," is true in the sense that the goal of the rapist is not primarily sexual pleasure but domination. And, paradoxically, it is the sexual nature of the act that renders it most powerful and most violating—at the level of soul itself.

Rape is a violation of the most private territories of the body and, as such, is a violation of soul. Nor is it enough to call these territories simply "private"—our "private parts" are connected with procreation and birth as well as sexual ecstasy, and because of this they are not only private but sacred. The mind-body split of our culture, reinforced vehemently by Christian theology and tradition, denies the sacredness of the body. And yet, a very young child who has not yet been immersed in this confusing separation of body and mind, body and spirit, knows that her bodily integrity represents the boundaries of her Self And there is a part of each of us into adulthood who knows that truth as well. The violation, then, of the most private parts of the body—the parts connected with procreation, birth, and sexual pleasure—constitutes a violation of nothing less than one's spiritual core of being. It is the sexual nature of the violation that makes it so profoundly a crime against the spirit. There is one way in which rape as a metaphor does, admittedly, speak to a deep aspect of the human condition and the human spiritual journey. I say this cautiously, because to claim that rape has an allegorical message transcending gender experience can all too easily reinforce patriarchal universalizing of male reality and male rape fantasy as normative for behavior. It is instructive, however, to make the distinction between mystical-mythological rape imagery as surrender as opposed to submission.

John Donne and Teresa of Avila, however patriarchally conditioned their use of rape as metaphor, are pointing to an act of voluntary and chosen giving up of the confines of one's own limited ego consciousness and surrendering to the larger life of God which is loving and good. The result is ecstasy, not trauma. Here in the mystical imagination, the fantasized loss of control is encapsulated safely within the voluntary choice the mystic has made to enter into this state of being taken over.

Psychologist Mary Tennes distinguishes between submission and surrender, and points to the implications of this distinction for feminist psychology:

Submission, on the one hand entails a relinquishment of our authentic and necessary self-expression. The giving over in submission is to the powerful and willful other for whom we become an object rather than a subject. Submission is motivated by the fear that unless we sacrifice our own subjectivity and abide by the other's will, we will be abandoned, hurt, or violated, the fear of losing or being harmed by the other takes precedence over the fear of losing ourselves. . . .

Surrender, on the other hand, involves relinquishing control in a way that propels development forward. The "giving over" in surrender is not to the terms or perspectives of another, but rather to the possibility that our developmental requirements are outside of our control. Contrary to submission, which requires a forfeiture of our most essential selfhood, surrender involves a yielding to what we are "meant to be," an alignment with ourselves and with the direction of our self-realization. Implicit in the concept of surrender is the experience of a force beyond our conscious intent which motivates and guides our growth and healing. Jungians call this the Self (with a capital S) as distinct from the ego, and note that the ego must eventually realize its subordinate position to the Self in order for the individuation process to evolve. . . . This process can, like submission, be experienced as a loss of self. But the loss is one that expands and enlivens us, rather than one that causes our sense of self to be diminished. . . .

I would argue that because the consolidation of the female self has been so influenced by the demand to submit and the refusal to do so, many women resist the process of surrender, thereby curtailing essential developmental possibilities.67

Seen in this light, surrender is the relinquishing of conscious control by the ego, to let in the fullness of the soul's wisdom. It is "not my will but Thine," opening the confines of consciousness to an ecstatic flooding of divinity. In reading Teresa or John Donne, we cannot confuse inner experience with outer, or concretize what is being expressed in allegorical language. We cannot eliminate images of surrender from the mystic-mythological realm, because they represent a deeper truth about where the soul must go to stay alive and move on its journey.

Christ's own surrender on the cross may be seen as paradigmatic for this part of the soul's joumey. Feminist theologians Joanne Carlson Brown, Rebecca Parker, and Rita Nakashima Brock, among others, have argued that the cross represents "an abusive theology that glorifies suffering."68 They rightly identify that Christ's suffering as it is understood in St. Anselm's classic theory of the atonement (in which Christ is believed to have died for all of humanity's sins in order to satisfy God's requirement for justice while preserving God's desire to be loving and merciful) sets forth a paradigm of a divine child abuse.69 This view casts Jesus' death as submission rather than surrender.

It is possible, however, to understand Jesus' sacrifice as one of surrender, a voluntary action taken in the face of political and religious injustice, in fidelity to his own faith and principles—rather than as an act of submission, which would have been to the secular forces of oppression that sought to silence his message of justice, his proclaiming of the immanence of God's Realm. Even in their critique, Brown and Parker approach this interpretation: "Jesus chose to live a life in opposition to unjust, oppressive cultures. Jesus did not choose the cross but chose integrity and faithfulness, refusing to change course because of threat."70 Some victims of rape and abuse have found hope in the crucifixion in the sense that, through his experience of suffering, Jesus stands in solidarity with their suffering and there is no suffering that is unknown to God.

Brown and Parker assert that suffering is never redemptive and can never be redeemed. "The cross is a sign of tragedy. God's grief is revealed there and everywhere and every time life is thwarted by violence. God's grief is as ultimate as God's love. Every tragedy eternally remains and is eternally mourned. Eternally the murdered scream, Betrayal. Eternally God sings kaddish for the world."71 Christ's surrender to the cross, however, is not redemptive because of his suffering, but because of his choice to remain faithful even in the face of death. And it was that choice, and not the suffering, that was vindicated by the resurrection. God does not cause suffering, but stands in solidarity with those who suffer. This has been a central understanding of Latin American Liberation theology.72 Survivors of violence can find strength in both sides of the crucifixion/resurrection mystery—the knowledge that God stands with them and sings kaddish for their agony, and at the same time vindicates them with the resurrection gifts of healing, transformation, and new life.73

The feminist critique of atonement theory and the glorification of suffering may be applied to the mystical-mythological images of rape in the writings of Christian contemplatives. Is Brown's, Parker's, and Brock's assertion that suffering is never redemptive and can never be redeemed a confusion of inner and outer realities, a splitting off and rejection of necessary imagery that represents a deeper picture of the ego's surrender to God—or is it a necessary warning that torture can never be a useful symbol?

There are no easy answers to this question. Rape must not be glorified, and there is no doubt that rape imagery is drawn from a patriarchally contaminated history of domination and torture of women. What can be said is that both real and imagined rape participate in the realm of soul, and it is precisely this conjunction of sexual violence with the sacredness of the body that makes the allegory of rape so powerful in the mystic imagination and the reality of rape so heinous.

Pastoral Response

Over the next few weeks after the rape when I spoke of anything at all, it was about this attack, but more usually I kept it to myself. Within a week I gradually received the nonverbal cues that it was time to stop mentioning it. . . . There seemed to be no further need for your attention or solicitude. True to form, I had continued my usual stance of maturity and calm. Now you should know, because next time it might be more serious: though my routines and words signaled, "I’m all right," I was lying through my teeth.74

A pastor may be confronted with the news that a parishioner has very recently been raped. At this time, crisis skills are needed. However, there are often others, particularly trained rape crisis specialists, who are available to assist in the immediate aftermath of the assault. A pastor's sensitivity and knowledgeability are perhaps even more essential as time passes and family and community crisis resources begin to diminish.

Rape crisis workers commonly refer to a "rape trauma syndrome,"" in which there are several stages of recovery that can last as long as several years even with support and intervention. In one version, the first is the acute or "impact stage,"76 which lasts from several weeks to several months. This stage includes disorganization and disruption of normal coping mechanisms, shock, fear (including fear of retaliation), anxiety, withdrawal, crying, unexpected outbursts, self-blame, intrusive reliving of the events of the rape, and other classic post-traumatic symptoms such as nightmares, sleep problems, startle responses and hypervigilance, and physical symptoms such as nausea and headaches. Anyone in recovery from alcohol or drugs may experience setbacks in the recovery process. What the survivor "knows" intellectually may be far beyond what she can allow herself to feel emotionally. She needs permission and validation for all her feelings, without hint of blame or shame. She is likely to be certain that the pastor either won't believe her or will blame her. The pastor must let her know that he or she is proud of her for coming in and knows how hard it must be. In this stage, a victim needs calm, matter-of-fact, reliable pastoral presence, and reassurance that all of her reactions, both emotional and physical, are normal.

In the second "recoil" or "pseudo-adjustment stage,"77 lasting from several months to several years, the victim appears outwardly to be coping well and to have adjusted. Her life is pulled together again and normal activities are resumed. Symptoms may diminish, although many may remain, often more hidden to observers. Fear may be managed but not yet worked through. It is in this period that it becomes important to check in with the victims, remind them that it's OK not to feel completely pulled together, and to invite them to continue to talk. The victim may be trying very hard to appear "just fine," and may need the pastor to take the initiative. She may need reassurances that the pastor is not bored, annoyed, frightened, or put off by the victim's continued preoccupation with the rape or any of her feelings, ranging from anger to confusion to sadness.

The final "integration"78 or "reorganization"79 stage is the stage at which the assault is put into some personal sense of perspective, however the individual woman defines it, and most symptoms are gone. Still, the victim may experience brief periods of depression and may have occasional setbacks. This phase may even initially resemble the first phase, as emotions are now being fully felt. The assault of a friend, a big rape story in the media, a graphic scene in a movie, or seeing the assailant can all re-evoke the terror and anger of her own rape. Another attack, or related incidents including sexual harassment and seemingly milder forms of personal or sexual violation, can trigger post-traumatic symptoms at any time. Normal developmental changes and major stresses throughout her life can trigger assault-related emotions. These after-effects are permanent in most women. It is important in this stage for the pastor to recognize and celebrate that the woman has passed over from "victim" to "survivor" and has regained a sense of her own power. Much of the work of this stage has been compared to the process patients go through in coming to terms with death and dying.80 It is also, important to validate the lasting effects of the assault, and once again to provide reassurance that some residual effects will be lifelong and are a normal part of the healing process itself.

The most important response to a variety of victims' reactions is acknowledgment.81 In the immediate aftermath of a rape, a victim may respond with feelings of extreme powerless and helplessness—particularly in connection with feeling she was almost killed. She may present a composed, silent reaction, or respond by screaming, crying, giggling, or shaking. She may respond toward helping professionals and significant others with hostility, denial, shock, self-blame, or embarrassment. It is important for a pastor or counselor to allow the victim to be as she is and not urge her somehow to respond differently—for example, to think she should be "talking it out" if she needs to be quiet, or to be angry when she is mainly feeling fear and grief. A pastor may find it frustrating if she is in denial, and may be too frightened or angry or embarrassed to ask important questions. If the pastor is also a survivor of rape or another form of violence, the victim's own emotions may trigger the pastor's own helplessness, fear, or rage. If this is not recognized and processed apart from the victim, it is likely to be projected onto her situation. This actually distances the pastor from the victim, because the pastor is seeing him or herself rather than being fully present to the victim.

Conclusion: Biblical and Theological Resources

I am an uncomfortable person. To know me is to know that we live in a society where rape is permitted, where women live as second-class citizens denied rights that so many men take for granted, to know an uncomfortable feeling of "all is not right" in this life- To know me is to know an anger which is ice blue, to know that women are vulnerable as a sex, to know that hatred is not simply a concept of philosophy but a painful reality. Women are raped out of hatred. Women hate out of the reality of rape. To know me certainly is not to love me. And to love me is to risk incredible frustration and painful rejection. For I live first and foremost as a survivor of rape, as a spokesperson of inequality, as an angry, angry woman.

Listen to my anger. I have been taken in darkness.

"All that came to be had life in Him and that life was the light of men, a light that shines in the darkness, a light that darkness could not overpower." I do not know that light. "Sin began with a woman and thanks to her we all must die." I do not know that sin.

Listen to my anger, for it cries out from everywhere and nowhere. It lives in the headlines, in the news broadcasts, on the movie screens, in magazines, in the hollow eyes of our daughters, sisters and mothers, and in the lost lives of those of us who don't survive.

See my anger, it is abundant It is glaring, it is blinding, it is plastered on billboards, it hangs in store windows, it is drawn on the covers of books.

Touch my anger. It is damp from tears. It is hot from smoldering. It is heavy and difficult to carry. Taste my anger, it is bitter. Smell my anger, it is rancid, it is filled with sweat from a heaving man forcing himself upon me and into me.

Understand my anger, for you have brought it upon me. "Happy are those who are persecuted in the cause of right; theirs is the kingdom of heaven." I do not know this heaven.82

A rape survivor in the immediate aftermath of the crisis needs support, belief, and nonintrusive caring. But as time goes on, and she reaches out to the church specifically for what it—and no social worker, therapist, or crisis advocate—can give her, she needs spiritual sustenance, a fortified sense of justice, and hope. The last thing she needs is platitudes, even in biblical form. Rape victims do not need to hear how their suffering is blessed, how they share in Christ's suffering, or how the rapist is troubled and needs forgiveness. They do not need premature cheerfulness or encouragement. Rape survivors do need hope, a hope that is grounded in righteous anger and a zeal for truth. They need to hear that God affirms them in all their wholeness, anger, shame, bitterness, and all.

Some women are helped by scriptural assurances. There are two cautions with this. First, that Scripture should not be imposed on a survivor, but offered at the woman's request. Second, it is not helpful to be literal and concrete. Assurances such as "God keeps you safe" are not necessarily true at a literal, physical level. A survivor will hear this as false and revictimizing. However, at a deeper and less concrete level, many biblical passages are particularly appropriate to share with rape victims.83

For Fortitude and Hope

2 Cor. 4:6-18 "In our affliction, we are not crushed; we are persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed."

James 1:2-6 Faith faces trials and endures.

Many psalms, including Psalm 143 "Answer me now, Lord. Rescue me, Lord, as you have promised; in your goodness save me from my troubles."

Remind her of the strength and courage that brought her this far and helped her to survive. Celebrate each decision she makes, and remind her that God stands with her through it all.

Naming Evil

Luke 18:1-8 The parable of the unjust judge. One woman insists upon justice and the need to name evil.

To Address Fear

Isaiah 44:1-2 and 51:12-13; Psalms 31, 44, 91, 94. Even the writers of Scripture knew fear. Validate her experience that God did not protect her literally, physically from the rape. God cannot interfere with humanity in that way, but God does grant a peace that no human being can take away, the "peace that passes all understanding." God is not an external avenger, but brings continual healing and courage from within.

Her own power can be validated also: Acts 1:8 "When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be filled with power."

Abandonment

Matt. 27:45-46 Even Jesus cried out on the cross: "My God, my God, why did you abandon me?"

Rom. 8:35-39 There is nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God.

Psalm 27:9-14 "My father and mother may abandon me, but the Lord will take care of me."

Guilt

Rom. 8:1-2; John 3:17-18; Ps. 103:11-13; Luke 5:20; 1 John 1:9 are all passages about God's forgiveness. It is important to stress that the survivor's assault is not her fault or her sin. Some survivors, however, will ask for forgiveness, and after counseling them that the rape was not their fault, it may be healing to pronounce absolution for whatever is still troubling their own conscience about it.

Shame

I John 3:1-3 Everyone who has this hope in Christ is pure; Rom. 12:2 We are transformed by God inwardly; 2. Cor. 5:17 If anyone is in Christ, she is a new creation; and Rom. 8:16-17 Because we are God's children, we possess the blessings God keeps for us. For the Christian survivor, messages about who she is in Christ may be helpful to counteract her fears that she is "damaged goods," or that what happened to her is too horrifying for anyone ever to love her or come close to her again. Again, messages about her basic goodness in creation are also important.

Depression and Suffering

Here the message of Scripture is that healing takes time, and that neither God nor the church expects her to be cheerful or to get on with her life as if nothing happened. Scriptures about the cyclical nature of life are helpful: Eccles. 3:1-8 There is a time to break down, to weep, and to mourn as well as to build up, to laugh, and to dance. Rom. 5:3-5 Trouble produces endurance and ultimately hope—but these things take time.

Anger

There are many expressions of righteous anger in the Bible. Job (7:11), Jeremiah (chap. 15), and even Jesus (Matt. 21:12-13) were angry. It is not necessary for the survivor to swallow or hide her anger in order to be a good Christian. She may even feel angry with God, and this must be understood and validated. Passages like Eph. 4:26-27 "Do not stay angry all day"—need to be understood in terms of the long-term, cyclical nature of the healing process. Eventually, perhaps, some of her anger may be released. But this is not ever a requirement that the church lays on her.

To Affirm Her Goodness

Gen. 1:1-2:2 Remind the survivor that God created the world and declared it good, and that she is a part of this goodness.