Monday, March 7, 2011
Bonkers!
So as I started reading this text, for the first time this semester I was literally laughing out loud at some of the metaphors presented. These conventional expressions are commonly used so I have heard some before, but even the ones that were knew to me made me laugh. So needless to say, I was enjoying and actually understanding it fine until I got to the last section entitled "Anger, Lust, Rape". I didn't really know what to expect here and was shocked by the turn this text took. In this, there lies this notion that there is an enormous social importance in rape, but most people rather not think about it. So then we get to the concept that lust and anger lead to rape, and although I might agree with this point to a certain extent, that a person is probably at a breaking point to have to resort to this, in no way is it a justification to the action as it is put in this text. All cultures have rape in their society, it happens on a daily basis and it's not something accepted by the American society...this is where I am confused. Is this author saying that American culture accepts these excuses and "justifications" (I absolutely hated that word in this text) for rape?? Any who, moving on to the physical force factor in the little synopsis given in the text. So this man in basically saying that if he were to think about raping this woman it would be because she's too sexy and she's tempting him...so he wants to hug her and kiss her. Now here, this man is not "mid-mannered", at least I don't think so, because for him to feel the need to feel power over this woman who is supposedly rejecting him is not normal..he's probably crazy or something more like "not mannered" at all. So then I think there was a question in this synopsis somewhere along the lines of "Is there such a thing as justification for rape"? and it goes on to say that women judge other women (in court cases as jurors) for being raped, as in, it is her fault she was in this position in the first place. I feel that there is so much more I could say about this, but I won't. All in all, I didn't like the fact that this issue was put in such a degrading way towards women by this author or the study he was conducting. There needs to be a more open framework here because it's not just women who get raped, it happens to men also and humans of ALL ages. I know there might not be much analyzing here but I just couldn't not blog about this.
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I was also shocked by the part about rape. I felt that it came out of nowhere and I do not understand why this particular example was studied. As in, why did he choose the 'justification of rape' given by the 'mild-mannered librarian'. I realize that Lakoff was analyzing the metaphors in the 'justification' (as you say, a very problematic word in this case...), but I feel that the example was an extreme case. To me it does not seem normal for a man to feel dehumanized because he is looking at a women he finds attractive and he can't have her. Furthermore, if you look at the metaphors of lust that he gives, many of them are very sexist towards men and women. In many of the examples, men are represented as animal-like while women are being objectified. For example, Men: He is sex-starved, He's a wolf, I've got the hots for her, etc. Women: She's hot stuff, She's a red hot mama, etc.
ReplyDeleteTomorrow, March 8. is International Women's day and I'm sad that I have to read a text about rape that is so disgusting and so sexist towards both men and women.
I'm baffled that he doesn't bring Sweden into the talk about rape, whose broader definition makes its victim percentage rape double that of the US. Lakoff leaves a lot out of his argument.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Lakoff is justifying rape. He is showing, uncovering, describing existing justifications. His work is descriptive, not prescriptive. The justificiations are not his, they are conceptual metephors embedded in language: men as animal, woman as object, lust as game, lust as insanity. He is commenting the the language. Linguistic metaphors uncover conceptual metaphors. The man's testimony in justifying assault is based on the conceptual metaphors, and these are the metaphors which need to be addressed. He is showing the process by which a potential rapist comes to justify rape. He is showing the assumptions of the rapist or of a woman juror who would have internalised these conceptual metaphors based on folk theory, which is after all, only folk theory (limited and certainly embedded with ideology). By confronting sexist linguistic metaphors and eradicating them from our vocabulary, we might be able to attack corresponding conceptual metaphors, but even that is not clear... But we need to expose them first.
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