Dear Mr. Freeman,

I'm very sorry to be writing this letter. Or rather, I'm very sorry you gave me reason to. As a long-time fan of prof. Tolkien and his work, of Mr. Jackssons film adaptations, and now in the past year of you - seeing as you in such a wonderful way brought Bilbo Baggins to life - I am so very sorry to now have that admiration, and the legacy of the professor, stained by your words. I'm refering to your answer to the questions from danish TV on what you would do if you acctually had a ring that would make you invisible, and on which Middle-Earth race you would be more inclined to get romantic with. The professor wrote many letters, so it seems fitting I think, to adress this in letter form - allthough not handwritten.

I will start with your statement that you would look at naked women, should you be able to make yourself invisible. I'm sure you are aware that this sort of thing - unwelcome and in one way or another concealed "sneak-peeks" on women in private situations such as fitting rooms, changing rooms, toilets, even womens own bedrooms - is an actual problem that women face. It is something that happens to I dare say most women at least once in their life. What does this mean? I think there´s an honest chance you don't know, and I will get back to the reasons for that, but I will begin by telling you briefly what it means. Firstly, it means that women are constantly aware and on the look-out, when they are in these situations. Our freedom to act gets limited. Everyone has a private sphere which we want to protect, I doubt I need to explain that, anyone who has ever had to for example take off all their clothes for a doctors examination knows that you instinctively want to cover yourself. And because women know that someone might actually want to take advantage of the situation by looking through peep-holes, filming, or simply entering the room, we take precautions, scan our surroundings for exploitation potential that we would need to take care of before going about the business that we were intending to get done in the first place. Like something so simple as trying on a bra in a store, or changing clothes at the gym, or using the restroom at a restaurant. Sometimes, the potential for exploitation of our bodies by someone else, without our freely given consent, is so high, and our possibilities for removing that potential so low, that we will in fact decide not to try on that shirt, work out or go pee. Our lives gets limited.

Secondly, but no less important, these actions of nonconsentual peeking is based on - and recreates - the idea that womens bodies are there to please the male gaze (I will not elaborate on the term, if you don't know what male gaze is there is plenty of information to be found on the internet). Thirdly - and this might be the most important part - these actions are as I've said NONCONSENTUAL. These actions are based on - and again they also recreate - the idea that womens bodies are not theirs to decide over and to control, are not their own. These actions live on the notion that womens bodies are there to be always accessible, that men are always entitled to them - regardless of what the woman in question might think of the matter. Also, these actions of taking the right to look at womens bodies while they are not aware of being watched is about "the watcher" not having to be bothered with meeting the eyes of "the watched" or otherwise consider what she would think, and thus not having to accknowledge her as a human being whose thoughts and wants are relevant to take into account when acting. In sum, it is about women being regarded as objects, usually sexualised objects. These aspects of "sneak-peeking" are also very frequent in advertising (suggested reading: google "stop female death in advertising" - I think you will be chocked). And how does all of this have anything to do with your answer to the question? I promise I will get to it, but before I do I think it's best if I say a few things about this thing called rape.

Rape. We could make it about crime requisites, legal technicalities. I know a thing or two about it, since practicing law is what I've chosen to do for a living. We could also make it about labels, words, semantics. What should we call actions such as this, what should we call actions such as that? What should qualify to be labeled a certain way? Don't get me wrong, I'm very intrigued by words, their meaning, what we fill them with. Words are one of the reasons I love prof. Tolkiens work so much. But this time (although these aspects of course are not mutually exclusive, I simply don't have time to address all of them now) I would like to make it about culture. So for now, let's leave aside the question of whether something should be called rape or instead be given some other label in the "sexually based offences"-category, and talk about culture.

Rape culture to be exact. The term has been used for quite a long time now, but it was (I think at least) the Steubenville rape case (or rather the victim blaming and the perpetrator glorification from large parts of the community and the media in the aftermath) that made the term reach the creater public. I will assume you know about Steubenville, but if not - please google it. And Maryville while you're at it. And also the so called Roast Busters (ugh, just thinking about it makes me sick).

Googled? Good. Reading up on these cases will already have told you a lot about rape culture, so I will try to keep it short. Rape culture is about a communitys culture being endorsing of rape and other forms of sexual abuse. Not in the sense that it is explicitly promoted. Nobody says outright that rape is okay and should be committed, of course not. Most people would - were they asked - say the exact opposite: rape is wrong. "I could never commit rape" is what most men would say, should they be faced with a direct question. Most men, I believe the vast majority, would never commit rape (could is another issue, on which I think the jury's still out. With would, I'm confident I dare venture such a guess, because I do have faith that most people truly want to avoid causing harm in any way to other people). All this is true even in communities with very distinct rape culture. But sexual abuse is endorsed in the sense that women are (as I've said earlier), in various ways, considered to exist for the benefit of the male gaze. Try beeing on twitter during a championship match in football/soccer, or tennis, or hockey, or curling or practically any sport you'd like. It becomes obvious, quite quickly, that there is a wide-spread idea that somehow these athletes are obligated to not only perform well in their sport, but to be pleasing to look at. They are obligated to be fuckable, no pardon whatsoever for my french (trust me, log on to twitter during an event, and you will see that using that word is in no way an exaggeration). This obligation is also evident when women are out on the town. Heard of cat calling? If not, please google it. So called compliments, that women are obligated to be grateful for - because if we're not then words that are far stronger than the one I used, and clearly misogynistic, tend to be tossed after us. Women are expected to appreciate male attention, we are encouraged to aspire to it. And we are expected to be graceful, to not let anyone down or hurt their pride. If attention is unwanted, and we should want to get rid of it, then we are expected to do so in such a way as not to reveal our lack of interest. For instance, playing the “boyfriend-card” is very effective, which basically suggests that it is not about lack of interest, but about already belonging to someone else who has claim over us. We are taught, in essence, that we should not say "no", at least not in a way that sounds like we mean it, or that it is our decision to make. Women are also taught that sexual desire and pleasure is shameful for women to aspire to – it is, at most, something to be given by a man, on his terms, and we are to be grateful for it. We are taught, in essence, that we should not say “yes”.

And what about men? In rape culture, mens behaviour is excused with different variations of "boys will be boys". In rape culture, men are taught that women tease, that women are afraid to go for what they want, that women say no when they want to say yes. In rape culture, men are taught that women are accessible, that they are entitled to womens bodies. Womens bodies are everywhere in public space, in movies, magazines, on billboards, in advertising. They are objectified, sexualised, brutalised (did you google "stop female death in advertising"? Trust me, you will think it's something out of Crime Scene Investigation, but it is in fact ads. For famous brands. Honestly, it makes me want to vomit.). So now we have women who are taught to be pleasing to the male gaze and taught not to say "no" nor “yes”, and men who are taught that they are entitled, that no means yes and that they can't really be held responsible for what they do. This is a recipe for situations where rape and other forms of sexual abuse happens. I think you can see that.

Now, to your answers. They were, apparently, intended to be funny. Jokes. I know that, and I know in what way they were intended to be funny. There is no need to explain the joke. I also don’t believe that you would ever consider slipping something into someone elses drink, in order to render them defenceless to sexual advances, or that you would think it was okay for anyone else to do so. But jokes is part of culture. What we joke about, and how, is part of culture. It both reflects culture, and affects culture. Jokes can contribute to normalising a rhetoric, a way of speaking about things. They can contribute to normalising and cementing that current state of society on which the joke was based. Of course, jokes can be very progressive. Humour is one of the most important and effective ways to bring about change, it can fuel revolutions. But progressive humour aims its kicks upwards, always. Rape jokes, and other objectifying sexist jokes, kick down by definition.

This turned out to resemble an essay more than a letter, even though I did try and keep it short. Lots have been said about this by others, probably more effectively and more insightfully than by me now. I’m not being modest, but simply understanding that perhaps the middle of the night is not the best time to write letters such as this. But I sincerely hope that some of what I’ve written, provided you have been patient enough to read this far, makes sense. And I hope, strongly, that you will reflect on these things and learn from it. I will end by asking you to read the poem you’ll find using this link: http://www.theawl.com/2013/07/rape-joke-patricia-lockwood.

Sincerely,

Sara Elofsson