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| As Sylvia Plath knew, if you’re going to be a victim, you’d better be a good one | As Sylvia Plath knew, if you’re going to be a victim, you’d better be a good one |
| (30 days later) | |
| A new volume of letters by Sylvia Plath is published in the US this month (it came out earlier this year in the UK). Excerpts in which she alleges domestic abuse by Ted Hughes remind one of a single element of Plath’s image: that of a woman who knew how to wear her victimhood in a way that was neither too glib nor too leaden, but angled always with an eye to the audience. | A new volume of letters by Sylvia Plath is published in the US this month (it came out earlier this year in the UK). Excerpts in which she alleges domestic abuse by Ted Hughes remind one of a single element of Plath’s image: that of a woman who knew how to wear her victimhood in a way that was neither too glib nor too leaden, but angled always with an eye to the audience. |
| For Plath, this was partly about aesthetics; her letters, mainly to her mother, but in the case of the Hughes allegations, to her former psychiatrist, fed into the curation of a person to whom, as she herself put it jauntily, “things happen” but for whom it was important to appear chipper, perky, at worst, brittle, but rarely that unacceptable thing, self-pitying. And if she was angry, that anger was chiselled down, always, to a well-expressed point. | For Plath, this was partly about aesthetics; her letters, mainly to her mother, but in the case of the Hughes allegations, to her former psychiatrist, fed into the curation of a person to whom, as she herself put it jauntily, “things happen” but for whom it was important to appear chipper, perky, at worst, brittle, but rarely that unacceptable thing, self-pitying. And if she was angry, that anger was chiselled down, always, to a well-expressed point. |
| More broadly, however, the question of the good victim – of the stylistic demands placed on victims in order that they be considered not just credible but attractive enough to invite empathy – is one that women, and to a lesser extent men, continue to reckon with. During the Kavanaugh hearings in the US, male and female victims of sexual violence were cherry-picked by activists and flown to Washington in the hope of arousing the sympathy of those senators with a power of veto over Kavanaugh. What is interesting is the criteria by which those victims were chosen. | More broadly, however, the question of the good victim – of the stylistic demands placed on victims in order that they be considered not just credible but attractive enough to invite empathy – is one that women, and to a lesser extent men, continue to reckon with. During the Kavanaugh hearings in the US, male and female victims of sexual violence were cherry-picked by activists and flown to Washington in the hope of arousing the sympathy of those senators with a power of veto over Kavanaugh. What is interesting is the criteria by which those victims were chosen. |
| It is well enough established by now that female victims of sexual violence must have a clean sheet in terms of booze, dress code and proximity to their attacker (preferably a stranger and not, for instance, a husband or boyfriend), in order not to be implicated in their own attack. They must be attractive enough to elicit sympathy – recall the “too ugly to rape” line used on everyone from Andrea Dworkin to Tarana Burke to women with opinions on Twitter – but not so attractive as to invite hostility. | It is well enough established by now that female victims of sexual violence must have a clean sheet in terms of booze, dress code and proximity to their attacker (preferably a stranger and not, for instance, a husband or boyfriend), in order not to be implicated in their own attack. They must be attractive enough to elicit sympathy – recall the “too ugly to rape” line used on everyone from Andrea Dworkin to Tarana Burke to women with opinions on Twitter – but not so attractive as to invite hostility. |
| If #MeToo is to work, we must call out the men we love | Sonia Sodha | |
| Less talked about, perhaps, is the necessary editing down of the details of abuse. Christine Blasey Ford’s ordeal was considered by some too trivial to matter, but there are dangers at the other end of the scale too. An audience may sympathise with a victim up to a point, beyond which, rather than eliciting empathy, she risks triggering revulsion, or horror, with her account of what happened to her effectively placing her outside the reach of imagined experience. | Less talked about, perhaps, is the necessary editing down of the details of abuse. Christine Blasey Ford’s ordeal was considered by some too trivial to matter, but there are dangers at the other end of the scale too. An audience may sympathise with a victim up to a point, beyond which, rather than eliciting empathy, she risks triggering revulsion, or horror, with her account of what happened to her effectively placing her outside the reach of imagined experience. |
| I felt this in the stories of the West Yorkshire grooming gangs, in which the brutalisation of girls combined “unsympathetic” victims with a scale of abuse that invited less empathy than dehumanisation. One could imagine any of those victims, eyed through the lens of, for instance, a commercial publishing house, being rejected as too unpalatable to sell. | I felt this in the stories of the West Yorkshire grooming gangs, in which the brutalisation of girls combined “unsympathetic” victims with a scale of abuse that invited less empathy than dehumanisation. One could imagine any of those victims, eyed through the lens of, for instance, a commercial publishing house, being rejected as too unpalatable to sell. |
| Chipperness, moderation, self-control and the rest of it undoubtedly have their internal benefits. But the credible way to wear victimhood is so narrow that it takes into account none of the behaviours that commonly come out of trauma, and tends instead to leave only this: as Plath herself wrote, “a black, airless sack with no way out”. | Chipperness, moderation, self-control and the rest of it undoubtedly have their internal benefits. But the credible way to wear victimhood is so narrow that it takes into account none of the behaviours that commonly come out of trauma, and tends instead to leave only this: as Plath herself wrote, “a black, airless sack with no way out”. |
| • Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist | • Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist |
| Sexual harassment | Sexual harassment |
| Opinion | Opinion |
| Sylvia Plath | Sylvia Plath |
| Brett Kavanaugh | Brett Kavanaugh |
| Women | Women |
| Ted Hughes | Ted Hughes |
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