The Creation and Perpetuation of Rape Cultures: Brock Turner’s Rape of Chanel Miller
The Creation and Perpetuation of Rape Cultures: Brock Turner’s Rape of Chanel Miller
A book review by Jocelyn Crawley
The expression “Ideas do not fall out of the air” has existed long enough to produce a clear sense of its meaning. This phrase means that ideas exist (and, by implication, proliferate) through engagement, effort, and an environment that is conducive to their presence. There are multiple ways that any given idea can acquire presence and power within an environment, but written and spoken language are the two that allow the clearest limits or definitions. With this reality in mind, it is important for radical feminists to consider the applicability and relevance of discursive formations as mediums through which sexist ideas become present and pervasive within our communities. In his work, Foucault defines discursive formations as the system of beliefs, practices, and rules which determine how a particular concept or subject is discussed and understood within a unique social milieu. In considering this concept, one can conclude that the development of discursive formations (which are essentially the systems of thought and language that individuals develop to understand various ideas) plays an integral role in the development and content of specific cultures. This includes rape cultures, and writer Linda Alcoff has something specific to say about the interconnected nature of discursive formations and rape cultures. In her book Rape and Resistance, Alcoff argues that
Rape cultures produce a discursive formation in which the intelligibility of claims is organized not by logical argument or evidence, but by frames that set out who can be victimized, who can be accused, which are plausible narratives, and in what contexts rape may be spoken about, even in private spaces…They don’t tell us what is true; they tell us what can be true, as opposed to nonsensical (3).
In this article, I argue that the discursive formations which exist in rape cultures have (at least) three distinct features which need to be understood in order to understand how individuals within these communities think and communicate about sexual assault. These three distinct elements are:
They contextualize human character in ways that obscure logical analysis and/or work to delegitimize the notion that rape warrants legal punishment.
They redirect attention away from the reality of rape and into other, less problematic and disturbing ways to think about what can and does transpire between men and women.
They produce environments in which, even when the reality of rape is acknowledged, it is minimized or subjected to ambiguation.
Sometimes one of these three elements of discursive formations exists independently; in other cases, they are all equally present in the expression of ideas which sustain and support the reality of sexual assault. To discuss these three patterns as they exist within the discursive formations that oftentimes transpire in rape cultures, I will consider several discourses which transpired in multiple formats–texts, conversations, letters, and verbal speech–as the case of Brock Turner sexually assaulting Chanel Miller gained presence in the public eye. Although the rape of Chanel Miller contains a plethora of elements which are eerily similar to the patterns seen in many cases of sexual assault, the reality of the narrative is still deeply disorienting. Additionally, the discursive formation produced within communities that (whether intentionally or inadvertently) promote rape culture are disturbing and disquieting.
As the events pertaining to Chanel Miller came to public light, multiple divergent discourses regarding the sexual assault surfaced. Each of these discourses–whether they incorporated skepticism, empathy, apoplectic incredulity, or some other cognitive and/or emotive configuration–constitutes a type of discursive formation which reflects the attitudes and ideological slant that the individuals operating within their specific field of discourse maintain toward sexual assault. For example, individuals who spoke and wrote within communities which viewed sexual assault as either very common and/or at least real often engaged in forms of discourse reflecting knowledge of how rape typically involves the principle of blaming the victim, detachment from assent to the notion that the feelings of the rapist should be considered, and reflections on how the sexual assault being discussed is indicative of the broader issue of rape being an epidemic that problematizes the lives of millions and millions of people. On the other hand, the individuals who exist within communities and groups which intentionally or inadvertently promote rape cultures typically evince some or all of the three aforementioned forms of discourse. In the case of Brock Turner, element one of the triadic discursive formation is glaringly present as made evident by the presence and proliferation of discourse which analyzes a human’s ostensibly exemplary or qualitatively good character. This process of creating discourse regarding the good character or nature of the rapist works to obscure conversations regarding whether, and to what extent, legal and/or social punishments should be exacted against the violator. As several rape experts know, many Brock Turner sympathizers engaged in various forms of discourse designed to attest to the fact that he was either an exemplary individual or at least a pretty good person. For example, in contextualizing discourse regarding whether and to what extent Brock Turner should be punished under the law, Judge Aaron Persky asserted “Obviously, the prison sentence would have a severe impact on him,” Persky said in court. “The defendant is youthful and has no significant record of prior criminal offenses.” Here, the principle of mitigating and minimizing discourse regarding the need to punish rapists for raping women is elucidated as Persky alludes to the sufficient character of the violater by asserting that he “has no significant record of prior criminal offenses.” It is important to note that this assertion is used to promote the idea that Turner does not have significant behavioral issues which impede his ability to operate successfully within society, conforming to that aspect of discursive formations which promote rape culture by contextualizing human character in ways that delegitimize the notion that rape warrants legal punishment. In this case, legal punishment for rape is delegitimized through Persky asserting that, because Turner is young and has not been hardened by engagement in a plethora of crimes, placing him in prison would adversely impact him. Although not directly stated, readers (and the individuals who listened to Persky make his assertions aloud) can infer that the Judge believed Turner would be hardened by exposure to the conditions of prison as well as other imprisoned individuals who might lack character and youthful hopefulness regarding the reality of building a meaningful future for themselves.
Just as discourse surrounding the case of the sexual assault of Chanel Miller contains discourse which conforms to element one of the triadic discursive formation that is prevalent amongst individuals who promote rape culture with their use of language, it also reflects the second principle of directing energy away from conceptualizing rape as a reality and towards less egregious modes of contemplating how and why problematic sexual interactions between men and women unfold. This aspect of the discursive formation which transpires in communities that are intentionally or unconsciously hostile towards the reality of men raping women being 1. a social norm and 2. a social norm that needs to be addressed while directing sympathy and allegiance towards the victim becomes evident when one considers a letter that Leslie Rasmussen wrote. Judge Persky viewed this letter as a strong character reference for Turner. Although the letter contains elements of the first aspect of the discursive formation, I will provide an excerpt from the section of her verbiage which either directly asserts or alludes to the following three ideas: 1. Brock Turner did not rape Chanel Miller 2. That the nature of the problematic sexual activity transpiring on college campuses does not necessarily result from the monstrous tendential inclinations of men but rather university entities which market their premises as a realm where partying and drinking are viable modalities to pursue and 3. (with # 3 being implied by the concepts elucidated in #2), what is really going on between men and women on many college campuses is not the horror of rape but things “getting out of hand.” To understand how these three assertions are made evident in Rasmussen’s letter, consider the following excerpt:
“I don’t think it’s fair to base the fate of the next ten + years of his life on the decision of a girl who doesn’t remember anything but the amount she drank to press charges against him. I am not blaming her directly for this, because that isn’t right. But where do we draw the line and stop worrying about being politically correct every second of the day and see that rape on campuses isn’t always because people are rapists. It is because these universities market themselves as the biggest party schools in the country. They encourage drinking. I think it is disgusting and I am so sick of hearing that these young men are monsters when really, you are throwing barely 20-somethings into these camp-like university environments, supporting partying, and then your mind is blown when things get out of hand. This is completely different from a woman getting kidnapped and raped as she is walking to her car in a parking lot. That is a rapist. These are not rapists. These are idiot boys and girls having too much to drink and not being aware of their surroundings and having clouded judgement.”
This excerpt from Rasmussen’s letter alludes to the idea that 1. Brock Turner did not rape Chanel Miller by identifying sexual assault as fundamentally antithetical, or “completely different” from the conditions that transpire when a real rape is operative. According to Rasmussen, what constitutes sexual assault is “a woman getting kidnapped and raped as she is walking to her car in a parking lot.” This, she writes, is distinct from the behavior which she will not identify as identical with, or at least confluent to, rape. Thus boys and girls who drink and develop substandard consciousness of their environment have clouded judgment with their interactions with one another, and these encounters can be deemed as problematic and disgusting yet somehow not become worthy of the appellation “rape.” That rape is what transpired remains questionable or nonexistent. (Also, another myth that is prevalent in rape cultures–the “stranger danger” myth–is purported through Rasmussen’s assertions. You can learn more about several other rape myths that are enumerated in the letter here.)
In addition to subtly (or saliently, depending on your perspective) asserting that Brock Turner did not rape Chanel Miller, Rasmussen’s asseverations promote the idea that the blame for sexual assault can and should be placed anywhere but with the rapist. Rasmussen blames the victim in her letter, but she also blames the universities through her assertion that they market their educational facilities in ways that are confluent with the development, proliferation, and sustaining of environments that catalyze, or are at least conducive to, sexual assault. In asserting that “rape on campuses isn’t always because people are rapists” but rather because “these universities market themselves as the biggest party schools in the country” and “encourage drinking,” Rasmussen asserts that what is transpiring isn’t rape by rapists, but rather college campuses encouraging depraved behavior which culminates in practices which, rather than being identified as sexual assault, constitute things getting “out of hand,” as she says.
Perhaps the most problematic nature of Rasmussen’s letter is her ambiguation of rape. This transpires not only when she identifies real rapes as those which occur when strangers accost women in parking lots, but also when she claims that what transpires on college campuses is oftentimes things “getting out of hand.” In organizing language this way, the plethora of rapes which actually transpire on college campuses are no longer a part of material reality but are rather erased with amorphous language that alludes to something significant, and significantly bad, happening.
(In considering the arguments that I have been enumerating regarding the import of Rasmussen’s letter thus far, you may have picked up on the reality of the letter containing all three, not just the second, aspect of the discursive formation. This is correct. Rasmussen’s letter conforms to element one of the discursive formation by contextualizing Brock Turner in a way that delegitimizes the idea that sexual assault (or anything akin to it such as things “getting out of hand”) warrants legal punishment. She accomplishes this upon asserting that “I don’t think it’s fair to base the fate of the next ten + years of his life on the decision of a girl who doesn’t remember anything but the amount she drank to press charges against him.” Here, and perhaps interestingly, the writer characterizes Brock Turner through her mischaracterization of Chanel Miller as an individual who lacks awareness and responsibility. This mischaracterization of Miller as a person who does not possess character subtly emphasizes that Turner should not be mischaracterized as an individual who would rape a woman. Rather, we should see him as an individual who is being accused of sexual assault by a person whose character is questionable. Since this, according to Rasmussen, is reality, it is untenable for Turner to face a prison sentence.)
As already articulated earlier, Rasmussen’s letter conforms to element two of the discursive formation with its assent to the form of false consciousness which involves deflecting attention from sexual assault and towards psychosomatic configurations of how men and women relate sexually. (Rasmussen reconfigures these relations by colluding in the aspect of rape culture which promotes the “stranger danger” myth and thereby delegitimizes the idea that women and girls can and are raped by men that they know and have meaningful, seemingly harmless and oftentimes amicable relationships with. She also reconfigures these relations by asserting that what transpires between men and women in sexual interactions is not rape but rather a less desirable form of sex which transpires in context of drinking and partying that leads to a form of only ambiguously, amorphously understood sex she refers to as things “getting out of hand.”)
In addition to containing elements one and two of the discursive formation outlined above, Rasmussen’s discourse conforms to the third component. This component involves acknowledging rape in a way that results in minimization and/or ambiguation. In my opinion, the minimization transpires here as a result of Rasmussen’s willingness to purport the logic of the “stranger danger” myth such that sexual assault is not a common reality that men who know women for years or operate as their seemingly gregarious co-workers and husbands and fathers and fellow college students; rather, it is a reality that transpires when strangers attack women in parking lots or, as is implied, usually takes place in a context entirely divorced from men who know women and live in close proximity to them deciding that sexually assaulting them is acceptable and appropriate. Rasmussen’s assertion elides the abundance of evidence which indicates that sexual assaults transpire in these types of contexts consistently. In some cases, women respond in creatively illuminating ways such as listing the names of rapists on the walls of the university bathrooms. And, as mentioned earlier, Rasmussen’s letter conforms to the cognitive process of ambiguation through the use of the amorphous phrase “getting out of hand” when referencing how what transpires between men and women on college campuses is oftentimes not rape but rather some other form of physical relations which is ambiguously problematic.
Rasmussen is not the only individual who perpetuates rape culture through the minimization of rape or ambiguation of events which individuals are attempting to clearly define as rape. In a letter that he wrote to judge Persky regarding his son, Dan A. Turner asserts “These verdicts have broken and shattered him and our family in so many ways. His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life.” In referring to Chanel Miller’s rape as “20 minutes of action,” Turner minimizes the dehumanization that transpires when an individual is raped as well as the ongoing dissociation and dissonance that sexual assault engenders. Turner’s misapprehension of temporality is unveiled when he thinks of sexual “action” as lasting just twenty minutes; in reality, individuals who endure unwanted sexual interactions frequently report that the trauma results in long-standing pain. This pain can be intermittent, coming and going in seemingly aleatory ways; it can also be perpetual and systematic, reflecting a seemingly inexplicable rhythm whose consistent constancy results in psychosomatic unravelling.
If you read the letter that Dan A. Turner wrote in entirety, you may note that, like Rasmussen’s letter, it contains all three elements of the discursive formation. Element three is outlined in the previous paragraph, and element one–which involves asserting that an individual’s character should make him immune to legal remonstrance resulting from rape–is articulated when Turner enumerates a plethora of desirable attributes and attitudes that Brock ostensibly has. In addition to asserting that his son “has no prior criminal history and has never been violent to anyone including his actions on the night of Jan 17th 2015,” Dan Turner maintains that Brock “has an easygoing personality that endears him to almost everyone he meets” and “has always been a person that people like to be around whether they are male or female.” After enumerating these and several other desirable attributes that Brock holds, Turner goes on to assert that, in light of his good character and the fact that he has no prior criminal history, incarceration “is not the appropriate punishment for Brock.” Here, we see a form of illogic come into being. This form of illogic concerns asserting, or at least insinuating, that because a person has good character they either 1. Are not capable of rape or 2. Do not deserve significant punishment for rape. (These cognitive configurations entail a plethora of troubling questions, including why individuals consistently believe that “good” people cannot do bad (or, in this case, monstrously egregious) things. Additionally, Turner’s cognitive configuration leads to the question of whether an individual who has what society collectively agrees upon as “poor character” should receive a more substantive “punishment” for raping a woman than an individual who has always received societal accolades and maintained glowing records.) Ultimately, Dan Turner’s attestations regarding Brock’s character reflect the aspect of discourse which transpires in rape communities that maximizes, or makes the most of, the rapist’s character for the result of minimizing the idea that the individual’s act of raping another human being should entail legal penalties.
Just as Dan A. Turner’s assertions regarding Brock conform to element one of the discursive formation, it also conforms to element two. To redirect attention from the reality of rape and into less disorienting, disturbing ways to think about the way men and women interact, Turner notes that “He has always ben a person that people like to be around whether they are male or female.” Rather than engaging in the awkward and potentially problematic practice of enumerating the ongoing challenges that result from male and female interactions–such as men overpowering, dehumanizing, and/or silencing women–Turner emphasizes the reality of male/female relationships being amicable and cooperative by asserting that both men and women liked to be around Brock. In so doing, Turner fails to cultivate deep engagement around the idea that male and female interactions are perpetually problematic due to men and their proclivity to adopt hostile, violent modalities when relating to women. As many radical feminists have noted throughout their years of paying deep attention to the reality of male violence, part of the reason that patriarchy works is that individuals committed to mainstream/malestream values obscure, or entirely ignore, how dangerous and problematic male interactions with female people can be. Rather, they tend to characterize these dangerous interactions (which include but are not limited to rape) as mishaps in which things “get out of hand” or, to use a phrase that Detective Merifield adopted in reviewing the sexual assault case of Kerry Barrett, amounted to “a big misunderstanding.” Additionally, Turner asserts that his son’s rape of Chanel Miller constitutes “20 minutes of action,” with this verbal configuration deflecting attention from the reality that the events constituted a sexual assault and redirecting energy towards the notion that the interaction was some amorphous, ambiguous form of “action.” (This reconfiguration seems attuned to the patriarchal practice of turning rape into sex which C.K. Egbert elucidates in her own discursive formation regarding sexual assault.) Ultimately, Turner’s discourse elides the depth of depravity made evident by his son’s rape of Chanel Miller while also refusing to subject how this individual case reflects the broader reality of young men being unwilling to relate to women in humane ways. It also elides the discourse which seeks to examine the understanding that it is not that men don’t know how to relate to women as humans, it is that they refuse to do so due to their arrogance and male privilege.
When considered in terms of its constituent elements and how those individual components operate to create one cohesive entity, the role that discursive formation outlined above can play in impacting responses and receptivity to the reality of rape is plain. Rather than facilitating awareness and understanding regarding what sexual assault is and how it impacts individuals, the discursive formations which surface within rape cultures support and sustain immersion in a world of illogic regarding the existence, nature, scope, and impact of sexual assault. These discourses perpetuate a key aspect of patriarchy, false consciousness, through a plethora of language processes which invert reality or subject it to the confusion which results from attaining an only ambiguous understanding of what actually happens. This fragmented and false understanding of reality precludes individuals from thinking accurately and responding appropriately to sexual assaults as they transpire, and one could argue that the breathtakingly lenient sentence of Brock Turner attests to the way that these discursive formations–which one might construe as just or only the words that people use to think about rape–negatively alter material reality. Because entire communities are exposed to and even inundated in the illogic of discursive formations which rape cultures sustain, it is important for radical feminists to engage in the ongoing process of disambiguation. By regularly outlining and unpacking the fictive, fragmented, and/or fallacious reasoning that individuals and communities oftentimes utilize to create worlds in which rapists receive little to no punishment for dramatically and negatively impacting the lives of victims, their readers have the opportunity to reconfigure rapes such that there is assent to both the fact that they are actually transpiring and that something significant should be done about them.
Work Cited: Alcoff, Linda Martin. Rape and Resistance. Polity Press. 2018
Jocelyn Crawley is a radical feminist who places primacy on analyzing and exploring rape and sexual assault as key aspects of male supremacy.