Conduplicatio And The Rhetorical Conditional In The Rape-Related Suicide of Audrie Pott

By Jocelyn Crawley

Male domination is the foundational ideology and praxis upon which the modern world operates. And although male domination is a multifarious practice which incorporates the use of many resources and products, its primary tool is the sexual assault of women. This tool operates in a multi-faceted manner which involves (1) making sexual assault of women by men a normative and acceptable practice through the patriarchal propaganda of prostitution and pornography (2) stifling victims who attempt to come forward regarding the fact that they have been raped (through practices such as arresting them for filing “false” reports of rape) and (3) minimizing rape by asserting that it is not that bad. The multi-faceted nature of the tool of sexual assault means that sexual assault functions not only as a practice which adversely impacts the somatic and psychological well-being of victims as individuals, but also that the system of male domination ensures that society’s institutions and ideologies will make the upholding of patriarchal values more important than experiencing and expressing empathy towards individuals who have endured its deleterious harms. To clarify further, rape is a patriarchal value. Upholding patriarchal values means holding rape up rather than putting it down. The upholding of axiological frameworks that support rape is accomplished in innumerable ways, one of which is by associating sexual assault with love and sexiness. Another is by conflating love and male dominance and asserting that they coexist peacefully. In discussing this reality in Right-Wing Women, Dworkin notes that, according to the androcentric axiological framework, “Rape is just another kind of love; and nothing— no law, no political movement, no higher consciousness—has yet made rape less sexy for those who see love in male dominance” (211). Additionally, the multi-faceted nature of the tool of sexual assault means that even as rape adversely impacts victim-survivors in life-altering ways which have a permanent impact, the system of male domination uses the mantra “Rape is not that bad” to minimize the magnitude of what the victim does and continues to experience as a result of being assaulted. Andrea Dworkin agrees with me about this and articulates patriarchy’s preoccupation with downplaying its harms in her important text Right-Wing Women. There, she states that “Antifeminism can accommodate reform: a recognition that some forms of discrimination against women are unfair to women or that some kinds of injustice to women are not warranted (or entirely warranted) by the nature of women. But underneath the apparent civility, there are facile, arrogant assumptions: that the remedies are easy, the problems frivolous; that the harm done to women is not substantial nor is it significant in any real way; and that the subordination of women to men is not in and of itself an egregious wrong. This assessment is maintained in the face of proved atrocities and the obvious intractability of the oppression” (196). (In order to not contribute to this aspect of male domination, I want to reemphasize, as many radical feminists have, that rape is bad. It is really, really bad for the victim who has been egregiously harmed through no fault of her own. I discuss the androcentric myth that rape is not that bad in my book review entitled “Dual Consciousness: A Return to Not That Bad by Roxane Gay.” It can be found on page 48 of this issue of The Radical Notion.) In many cases, rape survivors are so psychologically, emotionally, and socially debilitated due to how patriarchy has organized the way people are supposed to respond to the rape (ostracizing or ridiculing the victim, saying it didn’t actually happen, calling the survivor a liar or “slut,” etc.) that they opt to commit suicide. The reality of suicide being considered a viable response to rape, and the subsequent suicides that result, are important realities for radical feminists to create discourse about because doing so effectively contends with patriarchy’s insistence that sexual assault is “not that bad.” Therefore, this article will place primacy upon suicide as Audrie Pott’s response to being sexually assaulted by multiple males.

Audrie Pott was sexually assaulted on September 3, 2012. The sexual assaults transpired when she attended a party with several other teenagers. After Audrie became intoxicated, she was dragged to a bedroom. The significance of Pott being assaulted in private is that it demonstrates that men control this sector in addition to dominating the public domain. It also demonstrates that the oppression of women in personal spaces is a political issue. In discussing male dominance as it manifests in private realms in Right-Wing Women, Dworkin notes that “Male dominance in society always means that out of public sight, in the private, ahistorical world of men with women, men are sexually dominating women…The antifeminism in the all-male rulership of society always means that in the intimate world of men with women, men are politically suppressing women.” (215). In describing Pott’s assault, reports indicate that the male attackers “pulled off her shorts and partially removed her bra, exposing her breasts.” Additionally, the three male teenagers sexually assaulted Pott. I want to assert here that the sexual assault should not be, as it is within mainstream discursive formations, reduced to linguistic utterances such as “a mistake” or “an accident,” with these phrases working to diminish the magnitude and political implications of what transpired. The sexual assault is an act of male dominance completed by an all-male power clique. In this case, the power clique is informal in the sense that it does not operate on the institutional level but is rather comprised of male people who, through association at a social gathering, utilize their power to subvert a woman. In discussing how all-male power groups operate within Right-Wing Women, Dworkin notes that “Every all-male or nearly all-male group—profession, institution, business, club, or power clique—is a concrete embodiment of antifeminism. By its existence it upholds and proclaims the dominance of men over women. By its existence it reinforces the social inferiority of women to men, perpetuates the political subordination of women to men, mandates the economic dependence of women on men, and endlessly revitalizes the sexual submission of women to men. The all-male clique of power communicates the antifeminism of male dominance everywhere it operates, all the time, without exception” (213-214). In addition to being subjected to sexual assault, Pott’s abuse also included attackers utilizing markers to draw and write on her body. At least one of the drawings was lude, including the word “anal” being written above her bottom. Beneath the word “anal” was an arrow pointing towards her behind. Nude photos of her body were also taken and posted online following the attack. In the days following the assault, Pott was subjected to bullying. 

While the sexual assault and suicide of Audrie Pott possess an elegiac tone which conveys the definitively negative aura that surrounds her existence as a result of rape, the language that she uses to describe the depth and scope of thoughts and feelings regarding the violent violation that she experienced carry an even more haunting aura of negativity which radical feminists need to be attentive to for the purpose of garnering more awareness regarding the somatic and psychic devolution that male domination engenders. As is the case with other rape victim-survivors such as Chanel Miller, Pott’s linguistic structures contain various rhetorical devices which, although not necessarily intentionally chosen by the speaker-writer, exist in a manner which gives the utterances a hauntingly indelible weight. One such rhetorical device which surfaces in the text messages Pott sent to an acquaintance following her sexual assault is conduplicatio. Although broadly defined, conduplicatio is a rhetorical term used to describe the repetition of one or several words in successive clauses or sentences. An example of conduplicatio surfaces in Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “The Last Quatrain of Emmett Till,” the text through which the poet explores the emotional and cognitive experiences that Mamie Till may have experienced upon learning that her African-American son had been brutally murdered in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman named Carolyn Bryant during the Jim Crow era. The poem reads: 

(After the murder, After the burial)

Emmett's mother is a pretty-faced thing;
the tint of pulled taffy.
She sits in a red room,
drinking black coffee.
She kisses her killed boy.
And she is sorry.
Chaos in windy grays
through a red prairie.

At the onset of the poem, the word “after” is repeated twice. Here, conduplicatio works to emphasize the morosity of Emmett Till’s death given that the words “after” are used as temporal reference points for 1. murder and 2. burial. Readers who are familiar with the Emmett Till case may find conduplicatio uniquely effective in conveying the significance of the young boy’s death given that the murder involved him being tortured and beaten. Following the murder, Till’s murderers tied a 75-pound cotton gin fan to his neck with barbed wire before disposing of his corpse in a river. The gruesome murder was followed by a burial whose gruesomeness came to life when Emmett’s mother insisted that his coffin be kept open so that the world would be able to see the brutality that her son had been subjected to. Till’s mutilated body was not “touched up,” and photos of his mutilated remains helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement.  

Just as conduplicatio surfaces in poetry meant to convey the portentous presence and power of white male supremacy—with its expression involving white men utilizing violence as an expression of dominance over blacks which ends in death—this rhetorical strategy also manifests in texts which engage the role that men dominating women plays in galvanizing the cessation of life. Following Audrie Pott’s sexual assault, she left several messages on her Facebook page. Lisa Pott quoted the page as including the following message: “I have a reputation I can never get rid of.” Here, conduplicatio surfaces with the repetition of the word “I” twice. Ironically, the use of the self-referential term “I” underscores the lack of subjectivity that Pott experiences as a result of being sexually assaulted. Specifically, Pott acquires a reputation for being promiscuous and “horny” as opposed to a victim of rape, thereby losing the sense of personhood that individuals often acquire through the introspective development of self-concepts. The use of the term “horny” in reference to Pott’s somatic and psychic state with respect to the sexual assault is illogical given that, to experience and express a substantive amount of arousal, one must be conscious. Pott was not conscious during the assault, which makes the appropriation of the term “horny” in reference to her nonsensical. But, as Andrea Dworkin points out in analyzing how patriarchal ideologies which work against women work, “logic and consistency are not prerequisites for keeping women down” (215). In addition to emphasizing her loss of personhood, the repetition of the word “I” functions as an ominous premonition of Pott’s suicide given that the phrase “I have a reputation I can never get rid of” suggests that something, if not the fictitious reputation she acquires through no fault of her own, has to be gotten rid of. What must be gotten rid of, the sentence seem to suggest, is the real Audrie Pott. After all, the fictional Audrie Pott created by a community of individuals whose language regarding her bolsters rape culture cannot be gotten rid of. Ultimately then, the conduplicatio that transpires in the sentence featuring the replication of the self-referential term “I” references the erasure of her literal personhood while also signifying on how this negation transpired in light of the fictional characterization that surfaced regarding her identity.  

Conduplicatio is not the only rhetorical device that surfaces in context of Audrie Pott’s sexual assault and suicide. Additionally, the rhetorical conditional exists as a linguistic structure which enables the reader to begin to grasp the depth and scope of dehumanization and degradation that Pott experienced. Although defined diversely, the rhetorical conditional is basically a statement which follows the structure of an “if/then” assertion (although it does not have to include the “then” to constitute a rhetorical conditional). Rhetorical conditional statements are typically used for emphasis as opposed to stating what is logically possible. As a literary device, the rhetorical conditional typically engages the absurd or operates hyperbolically to express skepticism, induce shame, or generate inspiration. An example of a rhetorical conditional would be “If he raped me, then he probably raped her, too.” In this case, the rhetorical conditional does not express the absurd given the reality of rape as well as the evidence which exists regarding the activity of serial rapists. Additionally, this rhetorical conditional is not hyperbolic given that no exaggeration exists. Rather, the musing regarding rape expresses emphasis, drawing awareness to the idea that rape is not an occurrence that happens in context of a singular temporality; instead of existing as one moment in time, sexual assault is a situation that people have to consider in context of recurrence. 

Part of the power of rhetorical conditionals is that their ambiguous amorphousness can make them unverifiable while simultaneously affording them the epistemological weight which results from causing people to consider their preexisting frameworks of knowledge in order to determine whether what has been suggested is actually plausible or possible. For example, when the rhetorical conditional “If he raped me, he has probably raped other women as well” is asserted, the listener cannot demonstrably prove that the rapist has raped other women. Nevertheless, she or he might start to think about whether an individual who has raped one woman has likely raped others. 

Another element of the rhetorical conditional that makes it a powerful strategy of articulation is the issue of unassertability. As Eliza Kitis states in her paper “Conditional Constructions As Rhetorical Structures,” “conditionality is almost tantamount to unassertability.” This means that conditional statements are assertions which function as suggestive statements, not facts. Because rhetorical conditionals function as assertions or statements without operating as truth statements, they signal speculation, uncertainty, and the hypothetical situation. Therefore, the utterance of a rhetorical conditional raises the question of whether the articulation should have been made at all given its unverifiability. To paraphrase, one might suggest that a rhetorical conditional is unassertable in the sense that it should not be asserted out loud at all given that it cannot be proven. Herein lies another dimension of the rhetorical conditional’s weight. In considering it, the reader may be led to reconsider the utterance in context of its truth value. In this infinitely important case, the reader might consider whether the reality of boys raping a woman and exacerbating the egregious harm by distributing pictures regarding the deleterious event entails assent to the notion that these pernicious activities could impact anyone. Whether the rhetorical conditional “If this can happen to my daughter, it can happen to anyone” is logically sound or fallacious is not the issue; rather, what is primary is the cognitive process that the reader may go through in connecting the rape of one individual to the reality of sexual assault as an issue that can potentially impact anyone.   

Once the multifarity of the rhetorical conditional becomes evident to the feminist reader, it is time to recognize its relevance to the sexual assault and suicide of Audrie Pott. In examining Sheila Pott’s discussion regarding her stepdaughter’s suicide, the presence of a rhetorical conditional becomes evident. Specifically, Pott states that “These boys distributed pictures to humiliate and further bully my daughter. If this can happen to my daughter, it can happen to anyone.” In making this statement, Pott’s rhetorical conditional points towards an understanding of rape as having a multifariously deleterious impact rather than existing in the potentially less problematic sphere of singularity. Thus rather than constituting one act which adversely impacts the individual subjected to the somatic and cerebral devolution it engenders, rape becomes, through Pott’s rhetorical conditional, a perniciously pervasive patriarchal process which, in happening to one individual, carries with it the potential to recur in the life of another person. The lugubrious weight of Pott’s words thus becomes plain: they work to convey the potential rape has to spread itself through societies like the pernicious disease that it is and, because many of us who have studied sexual assault already recognize it as a ubiquitous perniciousness, her rhetorical conditional functions as a reminder of what we already know rape is and can become: repetition. 

 As anti-assimilationist anarchists continue to move beyond superficial and distracting practices of pseudo-feminism and/or ideological alignment with the oppressor (and, in many cases, the former is the latter), it is important to recognize whether one agrees with the radical feminist tenet that sexual abuse is the core practice of male domination. I do, and I was recently cognitively altered through exposure to the ostensibly radical feminist mantra that “The vote is a con, male power goes on.” Although much meaning can be extracted from this assessment, I interpreted the axiom to mean that organizing around and against the oppression that results from voter suppression is futile because acquiring the vote does not prevent the perpetuation of male domination. I agree with this assertion and it is important to understand that, irrespective of which patriarchal king is dominating us with repressive, regressive, and/or reactionary U.S. ideologies that are germane or peripheral to our Radical Movement, the androcentric system of reducing women to objects-not-subjects through rape remains a repetitive act that we should be attentive to. By taking the time to stop (and by stop I mean a full stop) and assess the rhetoric of rape victims and the individuals who support them through non-conformance to the discursive formations which legitimize sexual assault, we can ensure that radical feminism keeps on moving. 

Jocelyn Crawley is a radical feminist who places primacy on analyzing and exploring rape and sexual assault as key aspects of male supremacy.