Rape Myths, the Bible, and #MeToo

Johanna Stiebert

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781032087146
• eBook ISBN: 9781000752083
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Biblical studies is increasingly interdisciplinary and frequently focuses on how the Bible is read, received, and represented in the contemporary world, including in politics, news media, and popular culture. Rape Myths, the Bible and #MeToo illustrates this with particular and critical assessment of #MeToo and its rapid and global impact. Rape myths – in particular the myth that rape victims are complicit in the violence they encounter, which consequently renders sexual violence 'not so bad' – are examined both with regard to current backlash to #MeToo and to biblical texts that undermine the violence perpetrated by rape. This includes aggressive media attacks on the accusers of powerful men, as well as depictions of biblical rape victims such as Dinah (Genesis 34), Bathsheba, and Tamar (2 Samuel 11–13). Biblical studies channels and expresses wider cultural and political manifestations. This exemplifies that the influence of ancient texts is abiding and the study of the past cutting edge.

1 The Bible and #MeToo

#MeToo (or the Me Too movement)¹

#MeToo is associated first and foremost with a social media driven digital feminist activist movement² that spread suddenly and remarkably quickly starting in late 2017. This movement sought, first, to expose the extent of sexual harassment, assault, and discrimination and, second, to rally solidarity and support for resisting these scourges. Its primary and distinctive tactic has been to trigger a deluge of revelations about sexual abuse, ranging from microaggressions to rape,³ so that victims and survivors could find strength in numbers and collectively challenge perpetrators and rape-supportive social mechanisms.⁴

Both feminist activists and victims of sexual harassment and assault have been speaking loudly and publicly about the magnitude of the problem for years, even decades.⁵ But none the less it remained ‘obscured by both social stigma and the inadequacy of the criminal justice system’ with only the occasional high-profile case (such as that of Roman Polanski or Dominique Strauss-Kahn) hitting the headlines (Popova 2019: 5). The movement’s primary catalysts were the publication in the New York Times (Kantor and Twohey 2017) and The New Yorker (Farrow 2017) in October 2017 of articles reporting dozens of accusations by women of sexual misconduct, including rape, perpetrated by US mogul film producer Harvey Weinstein. The movement rapidly went viral, particularly when US actor Alyssa Milano used Twitter to rally victims of sexual harassment to add their voice declaring ‘me too’. This grew rapidly into a swelling tide of resistance that demonstrated and testified to the magnitude of the problem. The problem itself – namely, widespread, even endemic and systemic, sexual harassment, abuse, and violence – was far from new. Accusations against Weinstein alone reached back three decades. Also, by 2017 a considerable number of other scandals had already hinted ominously at the range and depth and spread of sexual abuse. Be it in Catholic congregations across the globe, in Protestant churches, in Mormon and Mennonite and Hasidic communities,⁶ in sports clubs, children’s homes, exclusive boarding schools, in the military, on campuses and in hospitals, in institutions of government and in the commercial sector, sexual exploitation was in evidence and sometimes rife. Very many revelations disclosed abuses of power and exploitation of the vulnerable, who were, disproportionately, women and girls.⁷

The Me Too movement may have risen to wide public consciousness in 2017, but it had already been founded back in 2006 by African-American civil rights activist Tarana Burke.⁸ Struck by her own inability to help a teenage girl who confided in her about sexual abuse, Burke initiated ‘Me Too’, the campaign motto of which is ‘empowerment through empathy’, with the purpose that the most vulnerable in her own community, namely, young girls of colour, would not be isolated or alone but could find support, community, and a means to empowerment and healing.

Burke has since expressed the view that #MeToo has become ‘unrecognisable’ to her (Wakefield 2018). Others, too, have made the case that Burke’s movement was co-opted, often with little or no mention of its roots in Black activism. Zahara Hill, to give one example of many, was quick to point out, already on 18 October 2017, that ‘Black women were left out of the dialogue that spurred the movement [and] … quickly isolated’ (Hill 2017).⁹ And yet, Hill continues, Black women ‘weren’t excluded for lack of relation to conversation around sexual assault and misogyny’s impact’, given that ‘Black women regularly experience sexual assault as well and are often coerced into silence’ (Hill 2017). Moreover, she points out, ‘the outrage simply wasn’t there for the Black women [such as Jemele Hill and Leslie Jones] who were put in vulnerable positions by rich white men’ (Hill 2017) – whereas it was for the predominantly white Hollywood female actors prominent in the early stages of #MeToo.¹⁰ Others have seen the response to the TV documentary series Surviving R. Kelly, wherein young Black women detail the abuse, paedophilia, and predatory behaviour of R&B singer Robert ‘R’ Kelly (which he denies) as the moment when the movement finally returned to Black girls – albeit rather late: the series, based on allegations dating back decades, only aired in January 2019 (Tillet and Tillet 2019).

Another notable precursor to #MeToo is #YesAllWomen. This campaign responded directly to the Isla Vista massacre on 23 May 2014. Elliott Rodger killed six people and injured 14 more before shooting himself. Prior to his murder spree, Rodger disseminated his ‘manifesto’ and disclosed via a video on YouTube that he was motivated by hatred both for the men whose sexual prowess he envied and for the women who had rejected him sexually.¹¹ The hashtag was partly created in response to #NotAllMen, which aimed to demonstrate that not all men are like Rodger, or even sexist. The response hashtag retaliates with the counter that while not all men may be sexist, all women are confronted with sexism, and it encouraged women to share examples or stories of misogyny and violence. Within four days #YesAllWomen had been tweeted 1.2 million times.

A second hashtag phenomenon of 2014 was #BeenRapedNeverReported. This hashtag began to trend shortly after the emergence of allegations of sexual violence by Canadian radio host Jian Ghomeshi. The hashtag was created by two journalists in response to suggestions that Ghomeshi’s accusers were lying, because, if they were telling the truth, they would have reported his acts of violence more promptly. Countering the myths around how victims of sexual violence ‘should’ respond, the hashtag documents why victims often do not report sexual violence at all (or why, if they do, reports are frequently delayed). Over several weeks, the hashtag became an archive of in the range of eight million tweets.

In 2016¹² there followed #NotOK, initiated by author and social media personality Kelly Oxford in response to a recording in 2005 in which Donald Trump boasted of kissing, groping, and aggressively pursuing sex with women. The recording was leaked during Trump’s presidential campaign¹³ and the then nominee brushed it aside as ‘locker room banter’. Oxford led the social media revolt to resist the notion that any such conduct is acceptable or excusable. Sharing her own story of first assault, being grabbed by the crotch as a 12-year-old while travelling on a city bus, Oxford asked others to join her. In the first 24 hours, 9.7 million women shared their stories.¹⁴

But 2017 marked a turning point. This was the year not only of feminist digital activism but of women’s protests on the streets. The Women’s March on 21 January 2017, the day following the inauguration of President Donald Trump, constituted the largest single-day protest in modern US history, with estimates ranging from 3.3 to 5.6 million marchers. Many more marched in solidarity in countries beyond the USA. And then, later that year, overtaking #YesAllWomen, 4.7 million people in 12 million posts on Facebook alone responded within 24 hours to Alyssa Milano’s #MeToo rallying cry of 15 October. The movement gathered momentum extraordinarily quickly and led to the deposition of a number of public figures. Weinstein was promptly, roundly, and publicly condemned and has mostly withdrawn from the public domain, although he has mounted a legal challenge and is denying all allegations of non-consensual sexual contact. Others followed: among them, in the USA, the actor Kevin Spacey, television journalist Charlie Rose and news anchor Matt Lauer; and, in the UK, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, to cite a few very prominent examples.¹⁵

Two years after its inception, the movement still continues to demonstrate efficacy, direct impact, and consequences – including well beyond the USA from which it first emanated. This is demonstrated, for example, by Minister M. J. Akbar’s resignation from the Indian parliament (Suri 2018) and by Pakistani celebrity actor and musician Ali Zafar’s emotional denial of harassment allegations (Hemery and Singh 2019) that followed a deluge of declarations of sexual impropriety in the wake of South Asia’s #MeToo gaining momentum.¹⁶ Other responses include the Japanese government’s requirement for senior civil servants to undertake anti-sexual harassment training prior to being considered for promotion, Jamaica’s new sexual harassment bill, a New Zealand doctors’ union’s launch of an investigation into sexual harassment in the medical profession, India’s Telugu film industry’s announcement of a sexual harassment redressal forum, and Australia’s national inquiry on sexual harassment (see Sen 2018).

Milena Popova has called #MeToo ‘the most visible expression … to date’ of the endeavour to peel back the layers of rape culture and to dismantle the power structures in which it is enmeshed (Popova 2019: xii). Its resonance and success is perhaps indicated most memorably by the featuring of The Silence Breakers as Time magazine ‘Person of the Year 2017’. The Silence Breakers is a diverse group of predominantly women which has spoken out against sexual exploitation; the group comprises not only celebrities (such as Ashley Judd and Taylor Swift), but also lobbyist Adama Iwu, software engineer Susan Fowler, activist Tarana Burke, and an anonymous hospital worker, among others. Another indication is the presence of #MeToo in advertising, notably in the Gillette campaign entitled ‘We Believe: The Best Men Can Be’, featuring news clips reporting on #MeToo alongside images showing sexism in films and elsewhere. The ad immediately went viral, with more than four million views on YouTube in 48 hours. Advertising is an industry that depends on instant recognition (in this case, recognition of #MeToo) and from an advertiser’s perspective the campaign was stunningly successful.¹⁷

#MeToo has also spawned another movement called ‘Time’s Up’, which acknowledges that class and colour in particular have considerable impact on vulnerability to sexual harassment and abuse. Founded by Hollywood celebrities on 1 January 2018, Time’s Up raises money for its legal defence fund in order to provide for victims of sexual violence, particularly those who encounter it in the workplace. The fund is aimed at and being accessed by those most vulnerable to sexual assault who are least likely to be able to afford adequate legal representation, notably women on low incomes.

#MeToo has been criticised (like #YesAllWomen before it) for a number of reasons and from different angles. As well as Hill’s (2017) critique, mentioned above, others have noted the movement’s lack of inclusiveness and its propensity to give a greater platform to those who are more privileged than to those most vulnerable to sexual violence. Other criticisms focus on the conflation of microaggressions with violent physical assault, of succumbing to political correctness,¹⁸ ‘witchhunting’ of persons who have not committed any sexual offence¹⁹ or ‘only’ an offence that is arguably insufficiently serious to merit public criticism, and on not doing enough to tackle sexual violence.

But by any measure, the scale and impact of the viral and global #MeToo campaign has been immense. While it is sometimes referred to as the ‘MeToo moment’, the movement’s influence has been and continues to be sustained. Alongside its persistent presence in popular media, evidence for this also comes in the form of multiple book-length publications.²⁰ Again, like the movement itself, these publications, first, are often centred on feminism and, second, incorporate self-disclosure. They are not, however, of one voice. Two examples illustrating this are Roxane Gay’s Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018) and Germaine Greer’s On Rape (2018).

Gay opens her book with an account of her rape and its grave consequences:

When I was twelve years old, I was gang-raped in the woods behind my neighborhood by a group of boys with the dangerous intentions of bad men. It was a terrible, life-changing experience. Before that, I had been naive, sheltered. I believed people were inherently good and that the meek should inherit. I was faithful and believed in God. And then I didn’t. I was broken. I was changed. I will never know who I would have been had I not become the girl in the woods.

(Gay 2018: ix)

What follows is an anthology of accounts testifying over and over again to the long-ter...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: at the outset
• 1 The Bible and #MeToo
• 2 Rape culture, rape myths, and the Bible
• In conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index of authors and subjects
• Index of biblical passages