Rapists and the Apocalypse

Trigger warning for rape.

So it all started with this conversation:

me: ...so why is there sexualized abuse every time I turn on the walking dead

crysiana: Because media sucks.
 
me: like this guy is interrogating a woman and he makes her take off her shirt, then takes off his belt and stands next to her/over her while she starts to cry
 and I'm like JESUS CHRIST

crysiana: ...well, fuck. I'm glad I don't watch that. >.>
 
me: also it made me think of io9's post "why we secretly wish for the apocalypse" and I'm like, hell naw, because it's a fuckin' rapefest.
dudes have fantasies about survivin' and shit and I make plans for killing all men who cross me just in case.
because eventually they're gonna try to stick their dick in me
 
crysiana: Now I'm thinking of your thing with the harpies
Or furies
 
me: haha, thanks XD
I love that story so much. It just... it makes me so happy
especially when I see some post-apocalyptic bullshit about men and where they wanna put their penises
I'm like christ don't you have better things to do
sorry I just. Had to be mad. It's like de facto "in case of apocalypse all men will become raping machines"
why do we bother with zombies. It's just the men, yo
shambling around, unzipping their pants

crysiana: No, it is totally understandable to react like that.
Because, you know, clearly he couldn't have just threatened her with non-sexualized violence either.
 
me: of course not! No woman fears getting punched in the face. Just the pussy.
We are otherwise invincible

So, yeah. Rape in apocalyptic settings. What gives? The rape statistics in the real world are pretty alarming, but in case of apocalypse the odds become "if you haven't been eaten by zombies, you will be raped or threatened with it." Like the people making these stories can't figure out any other way to threaten women-- I've been in threatening situations before, and I was way more afraid of getting beaten up than I was of being raped.

And yet bring this up and people cry "realism!" and I want to say: fuck no, not realistic. Y'all don't know shit about rape and rapists.

Will there be rapists? Will they take advantage of the loss of social order? Yes.

But lemme lay some truth on you: if you ask college-aged men if they're rapists, between 7% and 13% will say yes. They will tell you they're rapists, so who knows how many of them actually are. This means that in a group with ten men, one of them is a rapist.

"Whoa, I don't know any--"

You don't know you know any. Know why? Because rapists are cowards. Most rape is date rape, and most rapists know how to play a social situation in their favor, grooming their victim and their victim's friends so that no one realizes it was rape, and a lot of them employ drugs and intoxication to get their way. Now think about it. Can you remember any shady situations? Let that sink in and percolate a bit. "But he doesn't seem like a rapist...." That's exactly how a rapist works.

Put a gun in most of these men's hands, put them in a scary situation with zombies beating down the door, and you think they're going to rape?

Maybe. Maybe not. I'd say a lot of them wouldn't, because rapists notoriously do not use force to get their way. Most of them don't jump out of bushes with knives. Because most rapists-- the ones who commit the most rapes-- are serial rapists, which means they know how to rape and get away with it.

Which means putting victims into situations where their friends won't believe them, where they'll be discredited, where it's "gray." And, sure, I could see a survivor situation where this comes up, and the rest of the survivors are like "well I guess you led him on," which, frankly, I find an even scarier prospect than the rapists-- your entire survival network turns against you rather than do something about the monster in their midst, because they don't want to believe he's a monster. But that's never how these narratives go. It's always the scary man jumping out of the bushes, the man everyone knows is evil (see: the pilot episode of Revolution). Then the other survivors and the audience can cheer when the protagonists kill him.

Sure, there's bad men out there who will do what the bandits in Revolution did. But that's not where most rapists come from. And bandits? Want your stuff. Taking the time to rape you is more time for them to get caught, so they're not always (or even most times) going to take a detour to do anything but maybe kill you to take your stuff.

But no. Because a woman is involved, and she's invincible except in the genitals like some kind of XX chromosome-derived Achilles heel, you can't have just bad things happen to her. Those won't affect her like they would a man.

So according to Hollywood, I have more to fear from other survivors than I do from the zombies, because the end times are full of rapists. And following logically, you have no recourse despite Hollywood's cheering when the protagonists dispatch them. 'Cause zombies? Shoot them in the head when they attack and everyone cheers. Shoot a rapist in the head when they attack and your team will go "gosh couldn't you just lie back and think of England?" or "well you know he's liked you for months now" or "you kissed him that one time, how was he supposed to know?" or some other bullshit excuse.

Because while rape is scary, there are stories everywhere you look where survivors say "not being believed hurt worse than the rape." Hell, it showed up in (TW) postsecret last Sunday. People close ranks around their rapist buddies-- people who don't even know the rapist will leap to said rapist's defense, sight unseen. But you never see that in the post-apocalypse. Anyone who does this is coded bad/evil.

But really, your band of plucky survivors is even more likely to do it than the dog-eat-dog band of mercenaries.

And since rape is an inevitable part of ladyhood in the post-apocalyptic world according to nearly everyone who writes about the genre, you may as well spare yourself the pain and create a band of amazons who kill men on sight. Because according to Hollywood, he's gonna rape you sometime. 'Cause you're a woman and someone has to do it.

Yet this is "unrealistic" and "misandry." But turning men into rape-machines via plot-related penis rays is not.