We Need to Talk about the History of Rape

By Ana Nenadović

Language as a medium of narrativisation can perpetuate patriarchal structures and violence. But contemporary representations also challenge these. In Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s novel The First Woman, for instance, the protagonists Nsuuta and Kirabo reflect on the power of storytelling through storytelling. Nsuuta, the grandmother, shows Kirabo how stories have been used throughout time to create gender norms and ultimately contribute to the subjugation of gendered persons.[3] In this article I interrogate the ubiquity of representations of rape across the history of humankind in stories, paintings, music, and films. A critical engagement with these representations is necessary because they determine our understanding of sexualised violence to a large extend. Here, my objective is to examine representations of rape, and to juxtapose aestheticised representations with critical portrayals of sexualised violence, and where better to start than religion and myth.

Whether it is Christian biblical stories of Lilith or Judith, the varied stories of the orishaYemaya in Western Africa, the Caribbean and Brazil, or ancient Greco-Roman mythical figures like Europa or Medusa, mythologies are permeated by rapes. [4]  They are neither questioned nor critically examined, but simply accepted as part of gendered bodies’ lived experiences and this cosmological place. They are constitutive for the preservation of rape myths and the normalisation of sexualised violence against gendered persons. In her article The Virgin in the Mirror, Elizabeth Pérez summarises the stories about Yemayá in the Afro-Cuban santería tradition as follows:

One might wonder how Yemayá became a mother if, as her mythology asserts, she had little desire for men or interest in attracting them. Her myths answer the question straightforwardly: Yemayá was raped. The subject of violation pervades the mythology of Santería related in divinatory verses and ritual utterance, but seems peculiarly pronounced in the case of Yemayá.[5]

According to the myths, Yemaya was raped. However, the accounts vary on the question of the perpetrator; it is either her son, her husband or other orishas who rape her.  If an orisha can bear rape and birth other orishas and the ocean (Cuban version) or the river Ogun (Yoruba version), then shouldn’t humans silently bear sexualised violence as well? In some versions of the rape of Yemayá, the creators emphasise her repulsion and her intention to flee from her rapists, including her firstborn son.[6] But this should not be taken to imply a critical deconstruction of rape in the patriarchal understanding. On the contrary, it again centres the gendered body in the rape narration and neutralises the perception of the perpetrator’s active role in rape. Thus, historically and mythologically, rape became a gendered persons’ problem that simply happens to them, a phenomenon often reproduced in media and societies to this day.

Rape has not only been present in human history, it has been used to explain shifts in history. The Roman empire being a notorious example for (mis-)using stories of the rapes of women to account for structural and political changes. Sextus Tarquinius’ rape of Lucretia, a noblewoman in the monarchical Roman empire, and her subsequent suicide are adopted as explanation of the empire’s transition from monarchy to republic (res publica). The story that has become a frequent motif in visual arts (Rembrandt’s Lucretia from 1664)[7], music (Benjamin Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia) and literature (William Shakespeare’s long poem The Rape of Lucrece).[8] By aestheticising the crude gender-based act, the violence is neutralised and what remains is a romanticised encounter between Sextus Tarquinius and Lucretia. Though something dishonourable lingers, it is Lucretia who is overcome by feelings of shame and guilt that finally lead her to suicide. The victim is the centre of attention, and it is up to her to find a solution that will re-establish her honour. The notion of rape as the fault and responsibility of the victim finds one of its strongest and most persistent examples in the myth of Lucretia.

Despite the prevalence of sexualised violence, it has been a taboo subject throughout history. Most importantly, it has been constructed as a problem that concerns gendered persons, not ‘normative’ people, that is, men. Only recently has the burden of blame shown signs of shifting to the perpetrator. Campaigns on social media such as #NiUnaMenos (2015, Argentine), #EndRapeCulture (2016, South Africa) and #MeToo (2006/2017, USA) have given some victims of sexual harassment and sexualised violence the possibility to share their stories and raise awareness of the power of representation. But it has taken decades for victims and their allies to gather this strength. The validity of the male gaze, a term coined by Laura Mulvey in her 1975 article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, has been critically examined and subverted in productions of the past few years. A notable example is the film Citation (2020, Nigeria), written by Tunde Babalola, directed by Kunle Afolayan and starring Temi Otedola. Citation depicts the prevalence of rape culture on university campuses and deconstructs various rape myths all while demonstrating how these are intrinsically embedded in patriarchal structures and hierarchies.[9] Citation also emphasises is that we are not yet living in a post-rape and postfeminist era, but still in an era of rape culture(s).

Needless to say, these few examples are only a glimpse of historical representations of rape continue to pervade the modern psyche. The inherent links between discourse, representation and perception of sexualised violence show us how each element impacts the others. Hopefully, this brief reflection on rape and its representations demonstrates that talking about rape culture(s) needs to continue.

---

SOAS History Blog, Department of History, Religions and Philosophy, SOAS University of London