WATER Teleconference with Gina
Messina-Dysert
“In Search of Healing: Confronting Rape
Culture and Spiritual Violence”
April 24, 2013
WATER
is deeply grateful to Gina Messina-Dysert for her gracious sharing of remarks
on confronting a rape culture. We consider this a central issue for feminist
work in religion, and we hope that her contribution here will spark others to
join in this important work.
Summary of Gina’s Opening Remarks
1. Introduction
Gina Messina-Dysert sends
her thanks to Mary, Diann, Wendy, and WATER for these teleconferences.
In preparation for this
teleconference, Gina thought that rape culture and spiritual violence would be
a timely and important topic. Not only has violence against women been
prevalent in the news recently, but it seems to be a subject that is constantly
in the media. This demonstrates that rape culture continues to have an impact
our society.
2. Rape Culture in the News
a. Steubenville: The reporting on Steubenville in the news has lead
many to ask what would lead to these boys to think it was appropriate to
photograph images of sexual assault and then post them to the internet? The
answer is rape culture. The treatment of the victim in Steubenville
exemplifies what rape culture is.
b. Rehtaeh Parsons: Similarly, the recent suicide of Rehtaeh Parsons
in Canada, a teenage girl who was raped and had photographs of this rape spread
around her school, demonstrates rape culture. These cases are not isolated but
are forms of violence that women and girls face daily.
3. Defining a Rape Culture
Dr. Messina-Dysert defines a
rape culture as: “A culture where rape and other forms of sexual violence are common
and wide spread. In addition, sexual violence is condoned, it’s normalized, and
it’s encouraged by prevailing norms and attitudes. And misogynistic practices
are validated and rationalized through various acts of sexism.”
a. Societal Influences
Gina explained that a rape
culture has a high rate of rape, but a low rate of prosecution and conviction.
Victim-blaming and community rejection are experienced, as the two above cases
have shown. This rape culture maintains a cycle of violence against women, and
women lack full legal, social, and economic equality with men. Women are seen
as inferior and as deserving of the violence against them.
The factors that contribute
to a rape culture are numerous but include assigned gender roles, the language
we use to describe men and women, myths about rape, and society’s treatment of
victims of sexual violence.
Dr. Messina-Dysert encouraged
us to examine our daily surroundings and consider how rape culture is present
in ads and media because we engage with rape culture frequently and often in
ways we do not recognize. One example that she gave is the popular young adult
fiction series Twilight. This series
sends the message that women cannot live without men and that women enjoy abuse
as part of sex.
b. Rape Culture and Religion
Gina clarified that her
analysis of rape culture and religion will be limited to Christianity, the
Hebrew Bible, and New Testament. She points to other scholars work in the field
including Marie M. Fortune, Joy A. Schroeder, and Susanne Scholtz.
Gina Messina-Dysert discussed
the way that biblical texts support a rape culture giving the examples of Potiphar’s
wife (Genesis 39) creating the image of a woman “crying rape” as untrustworthy,
and Susanna (Daniel 13) putting forth the notion that rape victims should be
silent. Scriptural studies on rape texts in the Bible have neglected the
experiences of women. For example, traditional scholars of the rape of Dinah
(Genesis 34) have focused on this text as the rape of Shechem even though
Shechem is the rapist. In the case of Absalom’s rape of David’s 10 concubines
(2 Samuel 16), patriarchal biblical scholarship talks of a political coup
instead of rape.
Gina cited purity myths as
another key element in rape culture within Christianity. Purity myths perpetuate
the idea that women’s lives are of no value if she is not a virgin. The story
of Lucretia, a Roman woman who committed suicide after her rape, has been
repeated as an example for women such as the church father Jerome who said that rape is the
one exception to suicide because not
even God can heal a broken hymen. These stories support the idea that there is
nothing that women can experience that is worse than rape.
A third aspect of
Christianity that supports rape culture is the legends of the virgin martyrs
that developed out of the tradition of early Christian women’s martyrdom. These
legends show that women martyr themselves to protect their chastity, even if they
experience gruesome deaths. Eleven-year-old Maria Garetti is a modern example of
this. Maria “chose” (Dr. Messina-Dysert
used this advisedly) to kill herself instead of being raped. The Catholic
Church later canonized her for her protection of her virginity. She is lifted
up as an example for other women. We
carry these stories with us from an early age, reinforcing the notion that
virginity is more important than women’s lives, thus supporting rape culture.
4. Sexual Violence = Spiritual Violence
a. Double Victimization: Due to rape culture, sexual violence is different
than other crimes and has come to be understood as a fate worse than death. In
addition to the physical violence of the crime, the community in its rejection
of the victim commits spiritual violence. Double victimization means that
victims are “blamed and shamed because of the violence perpetrated against
them” as well as from the physical violence.
b. Han: Gina
believes the best way to describe the pain of rape victims is han. The Korean concept of han connotes a multiple suffering that compresses
the worst sufferings in the world—especially sufferings from social injustice—into
one suffering that damages the spirit. The spiritual victimization of han for rape survivors includes the rape
itself, the community- and self-blaming, the inability to articulate pain, and
the isolation and invisibility.
5. Healing: Han-Pu-Ri as a Model
Dr. Messina-Dysert asked, “What
can we do to find healing in a culture that perpetrates such an incredible form
of violence that is ongoing and relentless?”
Gina spoke of how impressed
she was by Han-Pu-Ri as a model that
can create healing in a rape culture. She cited the work of Chung Hyun Kyung on this topic. Han-Pu-Ri arose
from the Korean Shamanistic tradition to respond to han in order “to offer a voice to voiceless” and allow people to
speak about their han. In this
practice, the community is responsible to release the han, either by eliminating oppression or comforting those who have
experienced the violence. Han-Pu-Ri allows
for collective healing/repentance and spiritual healing.
The three steps of Han-Pu-Ri are:
1) Speaking and hearing: Opportunity
for victims to speak the oppression and to be heard by the community.
2) Naming: Allows the victim
to identify the source of the injustice.
3) Changing: The attainment
of peace by the victim through transformation of unjust situation.
Dr. Messina-Dysert suggests
that women who are victims of sexual violence can come together in a process of
accompaniment as they release their han and
experience healing. Take Back the Night exemplifies Han-Pu-Ri in
many ways. This process can also take
place on a smaller level because community can be between two people.
1. One woman shared about her website Our Stories Untold that provided a space to talk about
sexual violence in the Mennonite Church, a place where these stories could be told.
She struggles with how to encourage women to share their stories.
Gina’s work for over a
decade with rape survivors has shown her the importance of survivors telling
their stories, even if only to one person because it allows for healing. Asking
women to share this is delicate because it can be powerful for others to hear
but it also can be painful. It is always appropriate to encourage survivors to
share because it to helps them and other women heal, but rape culture also
makes it difficult to share. She explained that when we say, “Break the
silence” and “Speak out,” it sounds so easy, but is really terribly difficult
because we have a long way to go to remove the shame from this.
2. Another woman asked, “What do we need to say about men in this?” If
there is spiritual death, then ought we also talk about spiritual homicide
committed by men? She noted Carol Adam’s
use of the “absent referent.” She also raised
concern about generalizing about women’s experience of rape where all women may
not experience spiritual death in such a way.
Dr. Messina-Dysert clarified
that it is not just men doing the killing but the rape culture. We all
participate in a rape culture, and we need to recognize how we operate in this
rape culture. She acknowledged that we are constantly telling women and girls
how not to get raped as opposed to telling men and boys not to rape. We need to
breakdown the culture that causes men to treat women like objects.
Gina explained that spiritual
death is not a universal experience. She said that people have different
experiences in coping with sexual violence, but patterns of blame, isolation, and
shame can be recognized from testimonies that are shared. Gina pointed to the
work of Traci C. West who has discussed race issues and victimization and how white women
often do not address how experiences differ due to race, sexuality, class,
religion, etc.
3. Another woman followed up on the previous question and appreciated the
focus on community of Han-Pu-Ri. She asked about where justice-making and accountability
for the perpetrator and the culture, which is an important part of healing, fits
into the Han-Pu-Ri model.
Gina agreed that accountability
and justice making are key components. In Han-Pu-Ri,
hearing in step one is crucial because it calls upon the community that commits
this violence to hear what is wrong and to collectively repent of this wrongdoing.
Part of this is to acknowledge what it means to prosecute these crimes because sexual
violence not taken seriously as exemplified by reports discussing the ruined
lives of football players in the Steubenville case.
4. A participant said that she found the talk liberating and empowering as
a survivor of rape by an Episcopal priest. She expressed that the retaliation
from the hierarchy was dehumanizing and painful. Because so few people report
the sexual violence against them, she asked about how we might challenge the
status quo in order to give survivors a safe space to speak. She also asked
about Gina’s thoughts on the relation between war culture and rape culture that
both devalue the bodies and lives of women.
Gina thanked the woman for
her courage of sharing the story, especially about the retaliation that she
faced. Dr. Messina-Dysert asserted that to make safe spaces for sharing we have
to transform the culture. We also have the responsibility to recognize how our
own voices are important in this situation and the ways that we are involved in
the culture. One way to go about this is to do more training with law enforcement,
police officers, medical personal, etc. to challenge biases and assumptions
about the victims because these are often the first people to respond to
victims.
As for the second question
of rape culture and war culture, Gina preferred to answer via email because of
the importance and complexity of the question.
5. Another woman asked about what Gina would teach teachers to counteract
rape culture?
First, Gina suggested that
teachers need to pay attention to dynamics in classrooms between boys and girls.
Also consideration of the content of work in the classroom is important. Focusing
on male characters due to the belief that boys won’t be interested in female
characters because women are not as strong does not help. Another element is to
be a good listener to children without making accusations.
6. The final question asked was about what liturgical and ritual resources
are available for survivors of rape?
Gina recommended Marie
Fortune and the FaithTrust Institute’s resources. With respect to Christian resources, Gina said she focuses
on the liberative teachings of Jesus as foundational to Christianity. Diann L. Neu also responded that
within her work, she focuses on healing and reclaiming the body.
WATER thanks Gina
Messina-Dysert and wishes her well on her new position at Ursuline College.
Please feel free to share
this teleconference with friends, colleagues, students at http://www.waterwomensalliance.org/teleconferences-audio-and-notes/.
Join us for our next
teleconference with Jeanette Stokes, director of the Center for Women and
Ministry in the South, Wednesday, May 29, 2013, 1 PM EDT.
