Why Do Americans Degrade Each Other?
How Violence is the Force that Makes American Life So Dystopian
I woke up to a horrific headline today: a man in Philadelphia raped a woman on public transport last week after she rejected his advances. The attack went on for 8 minutes — but the train wasn’t empty. There were multiple bystanders. And yet, for 8 minutes, no one stopped this man, until a public transport employee — a woman — saw what was going on. What did the bystanders do instead? They took video. Some uploaded the video to social media.
It strikes me that America is a uniquely violent, a uniquely rapey society. Nowhere else in the developed world would something like this happen. Hell, this would barely happen in many poor countries. (If you don’t believe me, a man tried to attack a woman on the London tube the other day, and passengers rushed to her aid.)
(I want to warn you that you’ll find this essay quite horrific, so I urge you just to skip it, if you’re the kind of American who can’t bear a single grain of self-criticism, which is too many of us.)
America is a uniquely violent society. But more than that, it is a deeply rapey society. I don’t mean that in some light way, I mean that violation and violence is deeply ingrained in American institutions, norms, and culture. A rape on public transport — while bystanders watched. A Louisiana school had two school shootings in the space of a week. A sitting Supreme Court Justice — Brett Kavanaugh — who was confirmed despite being accused of gang rape. A congressman — Matt Gaetz — is involved in a sex trafficking investigation. And a former president — Donald Trump — who won the presidency despite being found on camera, saying “grab em by the pussy.”
The Supreme Court. The GOP. The former president, whose return is looking more and more likely by the day. What are we to make of all this? Is it just — as American pundits go on crowing — it’s just a few bad apples?
Is it really just a few bad apples when a country’s entire power structures are… rapey? Is it really just a few bad apples when a woman can be attacked on public transport and bystanders do nothing? I can go on. The media is notoriously rapey — from Weinstein to Cosby. Silicon Valley’s if not rapey, then at least…
