Sue Coe, Woman Walks into Bar — Is Raped by Four Men on the Pool Table — While 20 Watch, 1983. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Yesterday Missouri GOP U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin said that victims of “legitimate rape” do not get pregnant and that women have a biological defense that prevents them from becoming pregnant if raped. According to the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 32,000 American women become pregnant each year after being raped. Last year presumptive GOP vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan tried to re-define rape to require “force,” whatever that means. Presumably this counts?
You should read what Coe said about this painting here. It’s pretty astonishing.
Sue Coe: “This was painted in the time of Ronald Reagan and it was times of great lack of compassion.” Seems those times are still with us.
While I admire what Coe was trying to do here, graphic portrayals of rape actually achieve little else than allow male viewers to vicariously participate in attacking women, and trigger traumatic memories in female viewers.
It’s sad but true that no attempt by a woman to prove to the world how soul-destroying rape is will ever succeed in getting the point across to men, because they are the owners, operators and beneficiaries of rape culture. The male gaze interprets everything as wank material. It’s just as true of polite liberal sexists, who love to pretend that only the conservative brand of sexism really exists and that their own rape talk and extensive collections of “erotic” art are OK.