“They ‘forced her a little’, they were ‘a little bit assholes’, she was ‘too drunk’or she was a nymphomaniac who pretended she didn’t want to: but if it could be done, it’s because in the end the girl was consenting. That there is the need to beat her up, to threaten her, for there to be multiple people to force her and for her to cry before and after doesn’t change anything: in the majority of cases, the rapist has a clear conscience […]”
Author, director and a great free-spirited French, Virginie Despentes recounts her experience as a prostitute, when on one occasion she was even raped, in King Kong Theory, her book published in 2007.
With a direct and uninhibited style, Virginie Despentes hits the centre of the target: she destroys the mutual silence that makes victims and rapists revolve around a single word: rape.
“No woman” tells Despentes “after having lived through rape resorted to words to make it the subject of a novel […] no indication of knowing, nor indications of survival or simple practical advice.” From right here the journey of Virginie Despentes begins. It’s necessary to understand, learn and talk about it.
As she reveals herself in this short and raw autobiography, in the beginning all women who are victims of abuse believe that it’s useless to reveal that they have been raped: why go from the hands of the rapist (man) to those of the a policeman (always a man)? Why let other people point at you as “the whore who went to look for it”?
It’s July 1986 when Virginie and her friend are coming back to Paris hitchhiking and begging for money between a trip and another. They manage to get a ride from three men, “typical suburban white kids”. In the beginning they refuse their help, then they pull themselves together, already knowing how it would end and that it was “bullshit”. And in that exact moment, when the three men find themselves alone with two women who are wearing miniskirts, their complicity strengthens based on the woman’s physical inferiority.
Virginie defines this as “Damocle in between your tighs”, the obligation that a raped woman must suffer, can neither take revenge nor defend herself, and must keep quiet.
Viginie Despentes was seventeen when she was raped. At the time she wasn’t a feminist yet, as she believed it was “a proper topic” and did so for a few more years, at least until one of her friends was raped as well. The scar Virginie was left behind with from the rape in 1986 hadn’t healed, but that event – the rape of her friend – reopened the wound uncontrollably, oozing drops of blood necessary to make her change her mind, and make her become the woman who is known to be the anarcho-feminist of France.
“Considering you kept on hitchhiking, if you didn’t decide to then take it easy, it means that you must have liked it” she was told during an interview.
Yes, Virginie continued to hitchhike, she continued to go to concerts without paying for the train ticket and she never told her parents what had happened; she just wanted to continue to be free,
And no, she didn’t like it.
Many are the women, says Despentes, who believe that violence is unnecessary during rape. “And the day when men will be scared of having their dick shredded into a thousand pieces […] they will learn how to better control their manly urges, and they will understand what “NO” really means.”
That night in 1986, Virginie was carrying a knife hidden in her pocket, but she didn’t use it. In those minutes during which she felt like a “woman” in the medieval sense of the term, the stereotype of the woman submissive to the man triumphed: she was scared and did not defend nether herself nor her friend, afraid that that gesture could backfire on her at any point.
It’s a fear shared by all women, that of death. A fear that “makes rape a toment”. A fear that’s understandable, but that should not turn into an obstacle to pressing charges, to testimony.
In King Kong Theory, as well as in many interviews, Despentes has never been ashamed of her past as a prostitute but rather, she has always wondered why the men or women who decide to take up this profession are pointed to by society as “dirty”, while the men or women who pay these same people are not even taken into consideration.
“To say that one now ‘has customers’ means to exclude oneself. To say one goes whoring, is a different thing.”
Along with the drama of rape, Virginie devotes many pages to free prostitution seen as an act of female empowerment: “What disturbs the morality of paying for sex is not that the woman does not enjoy it, but that she moves away from the family unit and gains her own money.” It’s starting from this statement that Virginie tells us of her life as a prostitute, of how hard it was to stop this activity that was considered to be so terrible by society, but that allows one to earn a lot of money with little effort.
It’s only fair that a woman can decide freely: every part of the body of an individual is his/her own and it’s right that one does what he/she wants. At the same time, an individual who autonomously decides to become a prostitute has the possibility to emancipate himself/herself by choosing his/her partner and deciding how to continue the sexual relationship; one can simply say no if something is not wanted, and the woman would have full autonomy thanks to her decision-making power.
For centuries many men believed that sex was a male prerogative, that women do not enjoy sex as much as a man does.
Sexual education for women was never created, therefore they found themselves having to sell their bodies only as objects.
In King Kong Theory, Despentes doesn’t only talk about female emancipation, but also about male emancipation.
What does it mean to be a man, a real man? To repress all emotions, to not show one’s vulnerability, to “be ashamed of one’s own fragility (…) to wear dull-coloured clothes, to always wear the same pair of boring shoes, to never fiddle around with one’s hair, to never wear rings, bracelets, etc, to not wear makeup. To be the one to make the first step, always. (…) To prove one’s strength. To fear one’s own homosexuality because a man must not be penetrated.”
Often one can come across discussions like: “No, but feminism is just for women!”.
No. A feminist is anyone who believes in the equality of human rights, and therefore anyone who thinks it’s right that also a man can cry, can wear heels or doesn’t know how to fight.
King Kong Theory is pure feminism and Despentes, in the end, simply wants to explain what it really means to be a male or female feminist.
It’s a short yet intense book of the kind of cultural revolution that many of us carry forward and can not help but recommend to everyone. It’s a piece of work written in such a style that could be considered vulgar, but that I believe is perfect to internalize the story of an individual that every day, with her work, fights for everyone, not just for women.
