Language, Rape Culture and Post-Colonial Asia

"Stay Safe" poster

A new public awareness campaign, called “Stay Safe,” was recently launched in the Singapore subway. All of the Stay Safe posters feature traffic sign-like warnings, one of which shows a man touching a woman’s behind. The poster is meant to tell readers (presumably female ones)  how to prevent “outrage of modesty” – by, for example, not walking home alone at night.

It’s a creative take on crime prevention in this famously safe city, but the question is, how many people understand what “outrage of modesty” really implies?

The term “outrage of modesty” (or OM, as it’s known in acronym-friendly Singapore), which means “molestation’ or “sexual assault,” is just one example of the host of dated terms Singapore legalese has inherited from the British colonial era. Another example is the use of “insult of modesty” instead of the more modern “sexual harassment.”

These obscure terms date from the Victorian era – to be precise, from the Indian Penal Code of 1860. Both phrases assume, of course, that a person has some inherent trait that can be considered “modesty” to begin with. Singaporean law (under Section 157(d) of the Evidence Act, which is based on the Indian Evidence Act of 1872) also refers to “morality” by allowing for the examination of the sexual history of a rape victim in order to demonstrate that a victim was “of immoral character.”  (Thankfully, in large part due to the campaigning of local NGO AWARE, Law Minister K Shanmugan has announced his intention to repeal this section by early 2012.)

It’s not surprising that references to modesty and morality existed in the legal language of British-administered colonies back in 1860. That was a time period when women were overwhelmingly viewed as weak, vulnerable and in need of protection. The question is what impact the use of such terms in today’s world has on our perception of these crimes.  Language about modesty and morality is, after all, loaded with social assumptions about gender.  While outrage of modesty can be committed against a man, the Stay Safe poster depicts a female victim – and few people would ever imagine that the advice on the poster might be provided for anyone but females.

In this way, it could be argued that the use of a term like “outrage of modesty” puts the spotlight on the victim-survivor and her behavior (modest enough? decent enough? moral or immoral?) rather than the crime itself, or the criminal.

Similarly, in India and Bangladesh, the popular use of the euphemistic term “eve teasing” (which can refer to both sexual harassment and assault) has been said to lessen the gravity of the actual offense, making both the general public and the authorities less likely to condemn it as a serious crime. Pratiksha Baxi, Assistant Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, notes that:

As a cognitive category, [eve teasing] constitut[es] women as ‘eves,’ temptresses who provoke men into states of sexual titillation. This popular perception of sexual harassment posits the phenomena as a joke where women are both a tease and deserve to be teased. […] Eve teasing then acts as a control on most women by censoring their general mobility in and accessibility to public spaces, thereby affecting their sense of personhood and security.

The continued mainstream use of “eve teasing” shapes society’s perception of the crime – not just who is responsible for the crime (the eve-temptress), but also the gravity of the crime (very low, because it’s just teasing). Using legal and popular terms that accurately reflect both the reality of crime and its gravity would go a long way in helping shape more accurate perceptions of sexual crimes.

But in addition to the choice of the actual term used to describe the crime, the overall approach we use in talking about such crimes is just as crucial. Too often, sexual crimes are accepted as inevitable, perhaps even inherent to human nature (as when theories on coercive copulation in the animal kingdom are invoked to justify rape among humans). When violence against women is considered inevitable, apathy on the subject increases, and responsibility for the crime is taken away from the offender. Discourse then revolves around the victim.

Singapore police brochure

As a case in point, let’s look at a brochure published by the Singapore Police Force entitled “Protect yourself against sexual offenders.” The brochure states that “Rape and OM affects all women irregardless [sic] of their age, race or economic status,” thus introducing these crimes as universal occurrences. It goes on to list measures women can take “to prevent this crime,” such as sitting close to the driver when on public transportation.

Since it’s clear that a rapist will rape if he has the intention to do so, it’s interesting that the brochure implies that women can “prevent” rape from occurring (this is also the slightly less explicit implication of the Stay Safe poster). It would be more accurate to say that the brochure tells a woman not so much how to prevent the crime from happening, but how to prevent the crime from happening to her.

Of course, it’s understandable that a police force would want to publish information on precautions citizens can take to ensure their safety. But by recommending that women let a stranger take the lift while she waits for the next one, never nap while traveling (which virtually all Singaporeans do), and stand near the control panel of a lift to be able to hit “Door Open” quickly, the brochure reinforces what society has been telling most women across the world since their childhood: that it’s essentially their responsibility to not get assaulted, and that this can be achieved by censoring one’s own mobility.

Ideas like rape apologism and victim-blaming are so novel to many that the gut reaction to them is sometimes one of virulent opposition and disbelief.  The SlutWalk in Singapore, whose goal was to raise awareness of victim-blaming, became a good illustration of this when it was widely misunderstood as demanding women’s right to “dress sexy.” (Numerous others simply said that there was no need for the demonstration to take place in Singapore – that it was just a copycat idea taken from the West.) Debates about victim-blaming did take place in a few small circles, but the name of the event was so shocking to most that many never even got around to trying to understand the goal of the event.

Theories of combating violence against women (VAW) often talk about the four P’s: Prevention, Protection, Prosecution, Partnerships. So far, Singapore has focused efforts to combat VAW through a Protection approach: by for example providing services to survivors of domestic violence at the Centre for Promoting Alternatives to Violence (PAVe Centre). AWARE, on its end, recently set up the first support network for survivors of sexual assault.

These are laudable and essential steps in combating VAW. But what can Singapore do to incorporate the other Ps, and in particular the Prevention aspect?

A first step would be to shift our focus towards those at risk of committing VAW  – for the discussion to become perpetrator-centered. Dialogue should  focus on the reasons, origins, and prevalence of VAW; essentially, on why VAW is committed in the first place.

Another step would be to publish information on VAW prevention that targets men, or – even better – conduct workshops and training for boys and men in schools and in corporations.  We know that men influence men, so engaging men as positive role models of non-violence for other men is capital to preventing VAW.

Finally, the use of British colonial language in contemporary Singaporean law needs to be reviewed. By discussing the implications of using terms that date from a different historical period, and by analyzing the social assumptions these terms bring with them, we could begin to question the common perception of the inevitability of sexual crimes. The replacement of outdated terms with strong, unambiguous ones – such as “sexual assault” and “sexual harassment” –  would ensure that the reality and gravity of these crimes are precisely and effectively conveyed, and that VAW is understood as a crime committed by a criminal, not a crime brought on by the victim.

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