[Possible Trigger Warning] Horrible Virginia Ultrasound Bill, Thoughts on Rhetoric
Caveat: I don’t say any of the following with the presumption that I have any particular skill/knowledge/relevant experience regarding sexual assault, the law, politics, etc. I say the following as someone who thinks about words and how we use them.
I predict that a lot of the arguments coming from this legislation are going to start to orbit around people responding to comparisons its detractors make between the procedure required by the bill and rape. I predict we’ll see people investing a lot of effort trying to refocus the debate to whether or not these comparisons are appropriate, veering into whether or not the procedure is “technically” rape.
I think there’s are aspects of the procedure outlined that differ from how we imagine rape in the popular consciousness, but frankly, the popular consciousness has some major misconceptions about rape.
Here’s the thing: if you find yourself focusing on whether or not this procedure “technically” counts as rape, or worrying that its detractors are “exaggerating” by making the comparison, I believe it would behoove you to take a step back and ask yourself why you feel the need to nitpick the ins-and-outs of a situation where legislative/economic/social/professional complexes much more powerful than a given individual feel entitled to present an individual with the following choice: accept an invasive violation of your biological sovereignty, or forego a medical treatment that may diminish a potential threat to your physical and psychological well-being.
Ultimately, if you’re making the argument that this isn’t technically rape, you’ve missed the point on why rape is a bad thing to begin with.
I don’t mean to imply that this is a rhetorical stance that will only be taken up in ill will. One defense we’re almost certain to see (one that’s probably popped up a couple of times somewhere already!) is that, by comparing the non-consensual vaginal ultrasound to rape, the bill’s detractors will somehow be “diminishing” the importance of “actual” rape. I think most of the people making the argument that the impact of “real” rape is being diminished will actually believe what they are saying. They will still be wrong.
What diminishes the idea of rape is the idea that some forms of rape can be written off simply because people who haven’t experienced them don’t find them sufficiently viscerally repulsive. There isn’t just one way of being sexually assaulted, and there is no degree of sexual assault that is “acceptable” or “less real” than any other. An assault that contains more overt physical violence is not altered in its magnitude simply because we recognize it as sharing vital similarities to an assault that depends on institutionalized violence and the desperation of its target’s situation. That’s not how words work, that’s not how ideas work. Even if it were, that’s definitely not how suffering works. And if your aim isn’t to diminish suffering, your scope is broken.
Edit to add: To be clear, I definitely don’t want this to be mistaken as a defense of the same hyperbole people use when saying a video game “raped” them or that George Lucas “raped” their childhood or anything like that. Those people are making an argument in knowing ill-will, with no reasonable analogy between their experiences and the experiences of rape victims in either structure or intensity. There’s a world of difference between saying the Star Wars prequels “raped” you and saying an invasive, unnecessary medical procedure you did not wish to undergo did.