Larissa Nolan
WHEN I was raped, my first instinct was to try to jump off a balcony. Not to kill myself, but to save myself.
I was in such fear of the man who had entered my room while I slept that I was willing to risk leaping from a building to escape.
That’s how horrifying and dehumanising rape can be.
Since then, I’ve felt the only thing equal to such a terrible crime is being convicted of it in the wrong.
So when the #MeToo campaign started almost a year ago, I saw it as a vigilante movement, championed by righteous crusaders unconcerned about evidence and willing to discard the presumption of innocence for “a greater truth”.
It would lead to false allegations, torment and ruined lives. A generation of frightened young women and wrongly accused young men.
Worst of all, it would cause great damage to the gravity of rape as a crime, and to the societal perception of the rape victim.
When you welcome all accusations without need for proof, you also open the door to the mad, the bad, and the vengeful.
You allow the system to be exploited by abusers, hiding in plain sight, and deflecting attention away from themselves by pointing the finger at others.
The revelation that a #MeToo figurehead, actress Asia Argento, paid off a child star she had sex with has imploded the movement. She is a real life Abigail Williams from ‘The Crucible’.
Resultingly, victims may now be believed less than they ever were before.
Mass hysteria – without any true redress – was never going to help women.
Undoubtedly, everyone’s experience is different; however, the vast majority of victims I know were against #MeToo from the start, fearing what I feared.
They didn’t support a movement that lumped sexual harassment in with sex assault and ruled they should all be treated the same.
They were troubled by the free-for-all that meant innocent men would be found guilty by the lynch mob of the most egregious and stigmatised crime there is, bar murder.
They resented being told how to think and feel about rape.
The #MeToo orthodoxy dictates that personal responsibility is a dirty word, the language of rape apologists. This ideology doesn’t take into account the valid feeling of some in the aftermath, who are empowered by reflecting on cause and effect.
Owning a situation doesn’t mean blaming yourself for it. Rape is never the victim’s fault.
I’ve always been aware that I was in no way responsible for what happened to me, but realising I was engaging in self-destructive behaviours that may have inadvertently led to the event was emboldening.
It meant I no longer saw every day as a jack-in-the-box. It provided a certain sense of control. It did not curtail my freedom – it was liberating.
Encouraging all women to look back on all sexual experiences through the prism of #MeToo, and redefine unpleasant or regretted hook-ups into a vastly broadened definition of rape is also troubling to many victims. You don’t have to mine for violation.
This has been so problematised, some women genuinely don’t know if they have been raped or not.
THE ‘I Believe You’ stance is viewed by many of us as a grossly offensive and damaging diktat. Automatic belief is infantilising and dismissive – as bad as automatic disbelief, in that it renders truth as meaningless. We need to be heard, supported, and have the facts established.
Perpetrating myths about the criminal justice system is another unhelpful aspect. UK studies show most women would be put off reporting rape as they believe the conviction rate there is 6pc, when it is closer to 60pc, once the case goes to trial.
Yes, it is traumatic, and that’s why women need to be assisted to go through it.
The answer is not to turn vigilante, but to improve supports for women in court, to bolster legal representation and to look at areas of reform.
Preventing it happening where possible is far better than highlighting it after the fact. The ‘No means no’ model draws a clear line between rape and sex.
Affirmative policies where consent must be ongoing and sought anew every step of the way set an unattainably high standard and
The ‘I Believe You’ stance is viewed by many of us as a grossly offensive and damaging diktat. Automatic belief is infantilising and dismissive – as bad as automatic disbelief, in that it renders truth as meaningless
deem passion and spontaneity dangerous. If women are finding they are unable to say no, this cannot be accepted – we have a responsibility to teach them how to.
The Asia Argento development has taken us as a society to ground zero in the campaign to tackle rape and sexual assault.
The pendulum swung too far in one direction with the #MeToo movement, and may swing too far in the other due to Argento.
Perhaps it will land somewhere in the middle – unless irreparable damage has already been done.