Warning: This article may contain triggers for victims of sexual abuse.
Last week I read a few news articles about Shia LaBeouf and how he was sexually abused during an art show of his in LA. The art show #IAMSORRY involved LaBeouf sitting silently behind a desk in a room in LA’s Cohen gallery with a paper bag that had “I am not famous anymore” written on it over his head. For five days, members of the public were able to queue up to sit alone with him in the room. There were some pretty weird things that went down during the show including an incident where LaBeouf was whipped and sexually abused by a female patron of the show. LaBeouf is quoted as saying…
“One woman who came with her boyfriend, who was outside the door when this happened, whipped my legs for ten minutes and then stripped my clothing and proceeded to rape me. …There were hundreds of people in line when she walked out with disheveled hair and smudged lipstick. It was no good, not just for me but her man as well. On top of that my girl was in line to see me, because it was Valentine’s Day and I was living in the gallery for the duration of the event — we were separated for five days, no communication. So it really hurt her as well, as I guess the news of it traveled through the line. When she came in she asked for an explanation, and I couldn’t speak, so we both sat with this unexplained trauma silently. It was painful.”
The details are a bit hazy about what actually happened but the whole incident has caused a bit of a shit storm on the internet. LaBeouf has been accused of using the incident as a publicity stunt to show how he’s willing to suffer for his art, others have accused him of complacency, saying he could have stopped the abuse but chose not to. Some people were outraged that he used the term ‘rape’ to describe his abuse even though specific details of the sexual act have not been released so it remains inconclusive as to whether or not he was actually raped in the technical sense of the word.
These are all valid points and the lack of details surrounding the incident makes it difficult to reach a solid moral position on it…. but I have.
Here’s what I think.
No one has the right to touch another person without their consent and silence is not consent. He had the right to sit in a room in a public building and not be whipped, stripped and abused. That is a basic human right. Regardless of any percieved embellishment or ‘milking it’ as one commenter said, LaBeouf is not the problem here. That woman and anyone else who displays such vicious and predatory behaviour is the problem.
The notion that he ‘should have tried to stop her’ is deeply troubling. What constitutes ‘trying’to stop her? I think some people are confusing trying to stop a sexual predator with succeeding in stopping a sexual predator. Just because someone didn’t succeed in stopping their abuser doesn’t mean they didn’t try. What does the act of ‘trying’ to stop a sexual abuser look like? Or sound like? Does anyone really know? Thankfully I can only imagine what goes through the mind of a victim of sexual abuse but I can say with absolute certaintly that there’s no ‘normal’ way to behave or react in a moment of trauma and it’s ignorant to suggest otherwise.
I saw a comment from someone on a related thread that likened dodging abuse to dodging a bullet. For example if someone aims a gun at you it’s obviously not your fault but you’d be a moron not to duck. This attitude is not uncommon but it’s an incredibly dangerous way to think about sexual abuse. Unfortunately, the reason why so many people think this way (and I’ve been guilty of it myself in the past) is because it’s ingrained in our subconcious as children. Take for example if you left a prized toy on the benches at lunch time in primary school and went off to play and it got stolen. The teacher most likely would have blamed you. Because you left something valuable unattended and if you hadn’t done that, then the thief wouldn’t have been able to steal it. If you hadn’t got so drunk, that guy wouldn’t have taken advantage of you. Too bad, so sad.
It’s such bullshit.
Self protection is an excellent lesson to teach children because bad people exist and we should learn to avoid getting hurt by them. However teaching children to respect other people, their property, their bodies and their spirits is a much more important lesson and this utterly essential life skill (yes it’s a skill – you need to be taught to respect people because you can sure as hell be taught to disrespect people) gets annihilated every single time someone says ‘She shouldn’t have gone home with him.’ or ‘What did she expect dressing like that?’ or ‘He shouldn’t have been that drunk or it would never have happened.’
Victim blaming seems to be getting worse and it’s starting to scare me. It’s so important to take care of yourself but it’s equally as important to take care of each other and that includes being more considerate than ruthlessly categorising an act of sexual abuse as a publicity stunt.
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