78 Books & arts The EconomistNovember 16th 2019
2Johnson Unspeakable things
The problematic vocabulary of sexual violenceI
t is acliché that three topics should
stay off-limits in polite company:
politics, religion and sex. But there are
times for hard conversations, and the
language used to talk about sex, and
particularly sexual misdeeds, remains
wrapped in a gauze of misdirection and
euphemism that risks contributing to
harm, even when intentions are good.
A recent case in Barcelona illustrates
the power of language. Five men who
gang-raped an unconscious 14-year-old
girl were convicted of mere “sexual
abuse”—not the graver “sexual assault”,
because technically they had not used
violence or intimidation, as required by
the statute.
The furious protesters who turned
out in Barcelona and other cities were
not angry about the court’s leniency per
se: the rapists received fairly long prison
sentences. Rather they are demanding
that the law be changed so that “sexual
assault” reflects the absence of consent,
rather than the use of force. In other
words, they are asking politicians to
redefine that term.
There is an irony in their protest.
Demonstrators shouted “No es abuso, es
violación” (it’s not abuse; it’s rape). But
the Spanish word “violación” itself clear-
ly displays its etymological link to “vio-
lence”, the lack of which was at the heart
of the controversy. Other European
languages also reflect a historical belief
that rape is, by definition, violent: Verg-
ewaltigungin German includes Gewalt,
violence, for instance.
Or consider the English word. Coming
from Latin rapere, its oldest sense in-
volves neither sex nor bodily harm; it
means to take something by force (as in
the adjective, “rapacious”). This repre-
sents the attitude of many centuries in
which rape was considered a propertytions. It gives women who have suffered
different kinds of harms an umbrella of
solidarity. Finally, victims who use “sex-
ual assault” may themselves not want to
be more specific.
But there are unintended conse-
quences. Sexual assault is usually de-
fined (for example, by American and
British authorities) as sexual contact
without consent. This means that the
gamut runs widely, from groping to the
most savage rapes. That can make it hard
for those not directly involved to un-
derstand the gravity of individual cases.
It might even let the most vicious rapists
take advantage of a perception that per-
haps they committed a lesser crime.
And the old words are often the most
powerful. Activists have berated newspa-
pers which reported that Jeffrey Epstein,
a disgraced and now-dead financier,
“cavorted” with “underage women”; he
raped and trafficked teenage girls. Simi-
larly, some want to ditch the term “child
pornography”, since it refers to a heinous
criminal enterprise, not consenting
performances as in the adult kind. It
sometimes seems people cannot talk
about sexual violence except in terms
adapted from consensual relations.
Now feminists are saying “we need to
talk about rape”, as Deborah Cameron, a
linguist, does in a recent post on her
blog, “Language: a feminist guide”. Ap-
plying the right vocabulary to a crime
will not curtail it, but the abstractions
and legalese common in the media and
politics can drain the task of urgency, by
making the scourge seem less acute. Just
as “murder” should not be routinely
dressed up as “homicide”, nor “torture”
consigned to the catch-all bin of “hu-
man-rights abuses”, so it is with the
vocabulary of sexual abuse. It is hard to
tackle a problem you are afraid to name.crime against a husband or father, robbing
them of a woman’s virginity or chastity,
which were the father’s to give away to a
spouse. It was not something done to the
woman herself.
Fortunately, feminists long ago suc-
ceeded in placing the woman’s experience
at the heart of the matter. But “rape” is now
such a powerful and painful word that
English-speakers have developed a hazier
vocabulary to talk about and around it
instead. “Sexual assault” rose in promi-
nence in the 1970s. Its adoption reflected
the fact that there were many ways to
commit, and experience, traumatic sexual
violence; the kind that could rob a woman
of her virginity was only one, and need not
always be privileged over others. Numer-
ous American states and Canada, for ex-
ample, no longer have a crime called “rape”
on the statute books, but rather varying
degrees of sexual assault.
The breadth of the label “sexual as-
sault” has its uses—for example, when
statisticians want to aggregate different
offences. It can convey the sense of vio-
lation that comes with all its manifesta-kets ever work—for example, by delivering
a seismic drop in global poverty since the
1980s. A parodic gibe at globalisation’s crit-
ics from an editorial in 2003 springs to
mind: “Show us an economic miracle, and
we will show you the failure of capitalism.”
Given its heartless perfidy, it is perhaps
odd that The Economistis read by anyone
outside the ermined ranks of “the aristoc-
racy of finance”, to quote Marx’s descrip-
tion of its audience in 1852. Yet it is. And ac-
cording to the Pew Research Centre, an
American think-tank, its readership in its
largest market skews left. Pew classifies18% of American readers as mostly or con-
sistently conservative, and 59% as mostly
or consistently “liberal” (in the American
sense, left-wing in the British one).
“Ideas have mattered most” to The Econ-
omist’s success, Mr Zevin believes. That is
questionable. Engaging with its editorials
is no doubt part of its appeal. Yet they ac-
count for only around 5% of articles; what
most distinguishes the rest is their way of
dealing with the news. Brevity abounds. So
do charts. Dispatches from 21 foreign bu-
reaus are, in a good week, put in a global
and historical context. There are, in short,more facts per square inch than in perhaps
any other weekend reading matter.
Mr Zevin is not the first to tie himself in
knots trying to define liberalism. The Econ-
omistsometimes does the same. He is to be
thanked for a critique of the paper which,
though skewed, pays it the compliment of
taking it very seriously. 7................................................................
Anthony Gottlieb
We identify the reviewers of books connected to
The Economistor its staff. Anthony Gottlieb worked
at the paper from 1984 to 2006 and is the author of
a multi-volume history of philosophy.