Stop Minimizing Barry Freundel's Actions By Saying He is Nonviolent
One of the most infuriating responses to the Freundel scandal
I‘ve heard is the argument, “But it wasn’t rape.” As if to say, what he
did was not such a big deal — after all it’s not categorized as a
“violent” crime. In one really frustrating exchange I had, a radio host
kept insisting that the requested 17-year prison term was too long
because “it wasn’t rape,” he said, “I would rather be watched than
penetrated.”
This comment is absurd in that it assumes that victims have a
choice about how to be violated and that one is “better” than the other,
but more dangerously it belies the very real and powerful impact of
this category of so-called “non-violent” sexual assault. This is a type
of assault that we need to understand better, because in this digital
age, it is likely to increase.
What is the damage that is caused to a victim of voyeurism? That
is the question that prosecutors in this case were trying to quantify.
The prosecutor’s brief, followed by victim testimony in court, painted a
portrait of sexual and spiritual trauma. It included victims who are
afraid to get undressed, who are having difficulty resuming their
intimate relationships, who have trouble trusting rabbis, who cannot
walk into synagogue, who cannot walk into a mikveh, who are questioning
their entire Jewish identity and religious practice.
Therapists have known for some time that emotional abuse can be
just as hard to heal from – if not harder in some cases – than physical
abuse. As a friend of mine, who had been in an emotionally abusive
relationship for 12 years before her husband hit her, told me: “When you
see a black eye, there is no denying that you have a problem that you
need to fix. But when it’s emotional abuse, it’s harder to know and
identify. And it’s hard to trust yourself.” The victim of so-called
non-violent abuse is trapped in a web of mind games:
What did I to deserve this? Why am I feeling so bad? Everything is fine, isn’t it? It’s my fault that I’m feeling this way.
Recovering from non-violent abuse does not involve surgeons or bandages
or rehabilitation. It requires taking ownership again of your own mind
and your own truth. It requires learning to trust yourself and trust the
world around you, even when the world proved itself to be unsafe. This
is the kind of challenge that, for some victims, can take a lifetime.
This particular crime of secretly taping naked women in the
mikveh is particularly hard because it violates women’s very basic
fears. In order for a woman to immerse in the mikveh – to stand naked in
front of a mikveh attendant who asks personal questions, plucks hairs
off her back and watches her get in and out of the water – you have to
consciously let go of the voice inside your head telling you that this
is a bad idea. The idea that I need to strip and be watched in order to
be religious is so counter-intuitive, and in fact such a basic violation
of basic dignity – but women who immerse systematically put all those
feelings aside and are taught that this is trustworthy practice, that
the mikveh is safe. No wonder so many women who were not directly
victims of Freundel were demonstrably shaken by this story. It proves
all the things that our deepest consciousness may have been telling us
all along: that going to the mikveh is probably a really bad idea. Who
to trust now? How do we make our way back to our religious lives and
identities? What is the recovery like for that particular violation?
Voyeurism is often seen as a kind of victimless crime. But that
attitude is a mistake. In the digital age, where we spend so much of our
day watching images and connecting in non-physical ways, there is a
tremendous need to understand how this kind of non-physical violation
can harm people. I think there are clues to this in the issue of
sexting, for example, where people share intimate photos of themselves
thinking that they are for private use but may end of being viewed by
others, sometimes virally.
Research demonstrates
a connection between depression – even suicide – and the sharing of intimate photos. In one study
teenagers involved in sexting were more likely to attempt suicide, and
were twice as likely to have depressive symptoms as students who weren't
involved in sexting. One psychologist described a sense of
disillusionment and a sense of betrayal” when the private image gets
shared, which leads to depression and regret. “These girls may act real
tough and say this doesn't matter but a lot of them do wind up doing
some sort of self harm…cutting, bulimia, burning themselves, pulling out
eyelashes or pubic hair, or some other sort of self-injurious behavior
like alcohol and drug use.” This psychologist is not describing healing
from rape; it is about healing from non-contact, non-physical sexual
violation.
Society must acknowledge the kind of emotional and psychological
scarring this kind of dynamic can cause. It’s not about physical
violence, but rather about a form of sexual abuse in which your body and
your sexuality is the object of gaze or conversation among people who
did not ask for permission to watch or talk about your body. In fact,
the most famous victim of this kind of “non-violent” sexual violation is
Monica Lewinsky, who recently gave a
riveting TED talk
about the impact of having the entire universe discuss your sexual
life. At times, Lewinsky couldn’t leave her house, and her mother was
afraid that she would do something drastic to herself.
Orthodox women and girls have a particular vulnerability to
non-contact sexual violation, and not just because of the mikveh
practice. It starts much earlier than that. In the Orthodox community,
commentary on girls’ bodies is so commonplace that most day schools have
staff members whose job description includes watching girls’ knees and
elbows for signs of exposure. The entire Orthodox community is taught
that this is okay, that it’s normal religious practice for adults to
comment on the sexual allure of girls’ bodies. The community never
bothers to ask how this practice affects girls’ relationships with their
own bodies, and certainly does not ask how it affects girls’ abilities
to know when their sexual privacy is being violated. I think that girls
who are forced to endure incessant commentary from adult teachers about
their skin and body parts are all victims of sexual voyeurism.
And it’s no wonder that so many women – myself included – found
ourselves shaking from the Freundel story. Trembling, actually. Our
bodies have been watched and measured by an entire community for our
whole lives. Pretty much every rabbi we know has used his pulpit or his
classroom to tell us what he thinks of our flesh. Of course we’re all
traumatized. Our bodies have been on communal display for a very long
time.
Freundel’s actions triggered some of our worst fears and
unleashed a lot of trauma. But it’s not enough to say, well, it wasn’t
rape, or it’s only one rabbi. These events should be used to instigate a
communal conversation about what so-called non-violent sexual assault
looks like, and what it does to a person. This is the right time for the
entire Jewish community to try to understand what really happens when
girls’ and women’s bodies are considered communal property.
SEE:
http://www.minddisorders.com/Py-Z/Voyeurism.html
http://forward.com/sisterhood/308634/stop-minimizing-freundels-actions-by-saying-he-is-nonviolent/
Friday, May 22, 2015
"Pretty much every rabbi we know has used his pulpit or his classroom to tell us what he thinks of our flesh. Of course we’re all traumatized. Our bodies have been on communal display for a very long time. Freundel’s actions triggered some of our worst fears and unleashed a lot of trauma. But it’s not enough to say, well, it wasn’t rape, or it’s only one rabbi.... This is the right time for the entire Jewish community to try to understand what really happens when girls’ and women’s bodies are considered communal property".
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