In
my CSL placement with the Elizabeth Fry Society, I spend most of my time in
court watching cases. Most of the time, it’s lawyers, crown prosecutors and
judges dealing with scheduling issues, with victims and perpetrators left
invisible in the process. However, every once in a while, there is someone who
wants to represent themselves or speak to an issue that their lawyer is
addressing. Most of the time, this results in the clients metaphorically
shooting themselves in the foot by accidentally admitting to breaching
conditions or committing other crimes. For instance, last week, there was a
young man who had been charged with assaulting is partner, whose lawyer was
speaking to the court to discuss the elimination of the “no-contact”
conditions. After being unsuccessful and having the matter pushed over two
weeks’ time to come up with a new negotiation, the young man decided to speak
for himself, under which time he admitted to having been living with his
partner for the past three weeks, breaching his “no-contact” condition. The
court reprimanded him for breaching his condition, but let him go shortly after
with a warning. His partner, who was in the court at the time with him, exclaimed
“I told him so!” and they both left the courtroom seeming quite unhappy.
Not
only did this event make me wonder how effective law is to keep victims safe if
conditions are set and can so easily be ignored, but it also made me think
about this week’s reading of unwanted sex and how gendered norms affect women’s
ability to refuse their partner sex—or in this case—a place to stay. In a society
where we live under conditions of male dominance, women’s agency and women’s
sense of identity are constrained. In Gavey’s article, she uses the example of Pat
conceding to unwanted sexual
and
the partner’s experience to explain how gendered and conversational norms
affected her choices. Pat found “it very difficult to say no to a guy who wants
to go to bed with [you]…practically impossible…[that] if you’ve been to bed
with them once, then there’s no reason why…you shouldn’t go to bed with them
again” (Gavey 144). Gavey demystifies why Pat probably finds it difficult to
refuse sexual activity through her exploration of “the norms of femininity”
(Gavey 144) and the “norms of everyday communication.” (Gavey 144) Conversational
analysis of conversations shows that in the norms of everyday communication, “refusals
are, in fact, typically not accomplished through the bare linguistic act of
saying “no.”… “dispreferred” responses to requests…are more complex, hesitant,
and indirect.” (Gavey 145) This indirect language of refusals in everyday
conversations greatly influences people’s ability to refuse a request,
particularly if their complex, hesitant response is proven by the asker to be insufficient.
Gavey’s examination of the norms of femininity states that femininity typically
“include[s] nurturance and a certain gentleness that are not embodied by
actions which are too bold and forthright” (Gavey 145) which can make an
explicit “no” contradict norms that define how the feminine subject should act.
A comparison could be drawn between
Pat’s experiences with unwanted sex and the partner’s feelings about allowing
her assaulter to stay with her. First of all, it is very difficult to say no
forthright, and from the “I told you so” remark, it seems as if the partner
really did want to say no, but had difficulties saying a direct no, so brought
up the condition breach that could possibly occur. However, with that
overturned by her partner, who did not recognize that as part of the
conditions, the norms of everyday conversation would have made it very
difficult then to provide an appropriate reason to say no, once the hesitant
“dispreferred” response was disproved. Secondly, the idea that in
relationships, it is women who are gentle, and nurture men when they are having
difficult time, creates a specific feminine gender role that maybe the partner
felt tied to making this internalized feminine role difficult to overturn. Gavey’s
reading was very helpful in understanding how difficult it is, even in
situations of violence, to refuse interactions with assaulters. I was also
curious if a relationship could be created between the event I witnessed and
some of the other discourses (particularly the permissive and sexual imperative
discourses) Gavey noted in her unwanted sex article. On the other hand, maybe I
am way off the bat, and a comparison does not make sense in this situation.
Thoughts?
Works Cited
Gavey, Nicola. “Unsexy
Sex: Unwanted Sex, Sexual Coercion and Rape.” Just Sex?: The Cultural Scaffolding of Rape (New York: Routledge,
2004), pp. 136-165.
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