By Kati Lewis
We’re just finishing up the zombie section of my monsters popular literature class. As a class, we’ve been exploring the appropriation of the zombie from its origins in Haitian cultural and religious traditions and its modern-day use as a metaphor for mindless consumption, the fear of cultural infection, and the fear of losing one’s identity as well as the fear of becoming a slave forever, which comes from the original Haitian tradition. For the last month, we explored the various representations of zombies in several short stories, excerpts from “World War Z” by Max Brooks (the novel is nothing like Brad Pitt’s ridiculously lame film with the same title), and Colson Whitehead’s very literary zombie novel, “Zone One.” We’ve had some thrilling and in-depth discussions on how zombie texts reflect the cultural anxieties and fears of the time period in which they’re created and how these texts can reaffirm, subvert, and complicate cultural ideologies like patriarchy, capitalism, racism, heteronormativity, and more. Studying zombie literature offers keen and disturbing insights into the deepest recesses of our cultures and ourselves.
Our last class session on “the zombie as the cultural ‘other’” will focus on slaying a variety of zombie theories in Western culture. I took the concept of “zombie theories” from Dr. Marshall Shepherd’s 2013 TED Talk, “Slaying the ‘Zombies’ of Climate Science.” In the TED Talk, Dr. Shepherd defines zombie theories as ideas that cannot be killed regardless of how many times they’ve been thoroughly debunked by the facts on the ground. I’ll save the exploration of zombies as a metaphor for the human impact on the environment for class. It’s here that I want to discuss the zombie theories that have refused to die in our cultural responses to sexual harassment and assault. The reasons why we need to discuss these zombie theories are too numerous to list here; however, it’s likely obvious that several reasons center on the horrific and credible allegations of sexual harassment and assault leveled against Harvey Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly, and so many other prominent men who have been part of America’s cultural and political fabric for decades.
I’ve been teaching college-level writing and literature courses for almost a decade. In that time, I’ve worked with many women on how they can use writing to begin or continue to heal from the trauma caused by sexual assault and rape. Their stories are always harrowing, haunting, and born from a deep need to be heard and believed. Being heard and believed is a critical part of the healing process for any who have had the uniquely heinous experience of having their choices and bodies violated. You can only shout and scream and cry from inside your blood and bones and synapses for so long. For the women I’ve worked with, there is a point when they needed to talk about it. I encourage these women, who have so bravely trusted me with their stories, to use writing as a mechanism for talking to their trauma so that they can talk about it with others if and when they are ready.
Another theme that marks all of the stories that have been shared with me by survivors is victim blaming. Victim blaming creates the most prevalent and hard-to-destroy zombie theories about sexual harassment and assault. These zombie theories look and sound like this.
Sexual harassment, assault, and rape occur because of the following:
—A woman is wearing clothes that are too revealing, not revealing enough, too tight, too loose, or “too” whatever. Mayim Bialik’s recent opinion piece in the New York Times gave this zombie theory new life.
—The woman is either beautiful or not beautiful. And Bialik’s op-ed piece brings yet another zombie theory out to roam.
—A woman didn’t trust her instincts. I saw several posts on Facebook suggesting that instances of harassment, assault, and rape are due to women not trusting their instincts. Many of these posts were offered in response to the #metoo status updates that flooded Facebook for almost a week. Harassment, assault, and rape are about manipulation and power. Trusting your instincts can get some women out of some situations; however, what if the situation involves someone you trust? What if it involves someone you’ve been told you can and should trust? What if the situation involves a work, religious, school, social, or family event in which you would never expect someone to violate your trust or just common decency? Should you just always be on your guard? Although things are changing, women have been conditioned to doubt themselves and their self-worth. This doubt tears at the “trusting your instincts” theory.
–A woman was somewhere she shouldn’t have been. If you’ve read the victim-impact statement written and read by Brock Turner’s victim, you know that this zombie theory hinted at by Turner’s defense attorney. If men can go to parties without worrying about getting raped, shouldn’t women? Here’s the trick: Don’t rape anyone when you’re at parties, or anywhere. Ever.
—A woman lacks morals or ethics. This zombie theory was trotted out quite a lot during Turner’s trial, with the defense questioning the morality of the victim because she drank too much at a party and she sent a text to her boyfriend that contained a sexual innuendo. None of what Turner’s victim did makes her immoral or unethical — it makes her a young woman wanting to have a fun night out with her sister at a party. All of what Turner did to her that night and during his trial makes him remarkably immoral and enormously unethical.
—She was asking for it. This connects directly back to the zombie theories above. No one asks to be harassed, assaulted, or raped. What a woman wears, how a woman looks, what a woman drinks, who a woman wants to have sex with or doesn’t want to have sex with, or where a woman goes does not equal “asking for it.”
—“He’s a good man who made a mistake,” He grew up in a different time,” “Men have needs,” or “That’s just the way things are.” Harassment, assault, and rape are not mistakes a good person makes. Rape and sexual assault are heinous crimes that really bad people commit.
What usually come out of my collaborative writing with other survivors are friendships born from trusting each other with our individual and shared trauma. We, the survivors, trust each other with our pain. That trust comes from destroying the brainstem of these zombie theories together — it’s the only way to clear them out so that we can move beyond constantly combating the guilt and shame that these theories foist upon survivors. To destroy the brainstem, we have to unpack where the theories come from and how they get perpetuated.
What perpetuates these theories about why women experience the violence that is harassment, assault, and rape?
We do.
We do it in the language we use to talk about women, especially women’s bodies and sexuality, and that language is not simply locker-room talk. We do it in our churches, politics, schools, and legal system. If you need evidence that points to how these zombie theories proliferate into every facet of culture, simply refer to Brock Turner’s sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, to the comments that Judge Low made during Keith Robert Vallejo’s sentencing hearing for a rape conviction, to the “I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s” excuse Weinstein offered for his behavior, to then-candidate Trump’s advice to Billy Bush about grabbing women by their crotches, to the emphatic silence from most of our political leaders on pervasive sexual violence against women — and the list could go on and on.
The list goes on because the zombie theories refuse to die, because we keep re-animating them. We tend to make judgments first and listen later (if we listen at all). We need to listen first. We can and should examine the evidence, later. Unpacking the evidence means not invoking any of the ideas from the zombie theories. Those theories are not evidence; they’re giant pits of cultural nonsense intended to shift the blame from the perpetrator to the victim.
Our culture created the zombie theories that help perpetuate rape culture and silence survivors. Our culture can slay those theories. We can start by listening. We can do that. We must do that.
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