1998 november 05

the r word

so i am reading the cnn website, as i am wont to do in the morning, and i see a headline that reads, Caldor apologizes for ad that had 'rape'. upon clicking the link, i was greeted with Scrabble board in circular advertisement shows smiling boys and the word "rape".

so i'm looking at the ad in question, which was part of an advertising circular, and i can't make out any of the words on the board, but maybe the picture is clearer in the circular and it is easily discerned. matters not.

it is a word. it was used in the advertising of a word game.

perhaps the smiling boys were europeans and were referring to rape, the plant which yields rapeseed oil. of course, in our puritanical society we can't say rapeseed so we call it canola oil. perhaps they were thinking of grape pomace. there are four legitimate definitions for the word rape in my handy-dandy webster's and as far as i can remember, if it's in the dictionary, it's fair game in scrabble.

just to clarify: i do not condone rape. i do not find rape to be a subject of smiles. having survived a sexual assault at age fourteen, i know what rape is.

i was not assaulted by a word.

i believe there is power in words, certainly. i also believe that by giving certains words the connotation of "bad" we shut down avenues of discussion about not just the words, but the concepts for which they stand. if the word rape cannot be used in mixed company, then discussions about rape, about how to prevent it, about how to deal with survivors of it, about how to prosecute it become discussions whispered behind closed doors and never outed in the public venue.

as far as what i don't believe, i don't believe that showing two smiling boys playing a spelling game in which the word rape was used is indicative that they are sexual deviants secretly salivating at the thought of committing crimes against all the little girls on the playground. this hearkens back to my rant about my black eye; we have become a society that assumes the worst.

when i play scrabble, all words are fair game. if i can place the tiles for "sodomy", more power to me. if i can drop the tiles for "deviant", especially if i can play off an existing "him," giving me "id" and "me" and a 50 point bonus for using all seven letters, excellent. if i can tack "ist" on the end of "rap" and grab a triple word score, you bet your ass i'm gonna do it.

riding high on the 324 i scored last time i played, claire