He's Just Our Cute Neighbourhood Rapist

My uncle lives in a reserve called Marloth Park, where there are giraffes under your washing line and monkeys on your roof. Herbivores are welcome, but dangerous carnivores are moved to the Kruger Park lest they murder the residents.

Some years back, a crocodile found its way into a Marloth dam. The locals named him Charlie and collectively decided they wanted a carnivore in their backyards. The entire park learned the habit of silence. You did not talk about Charlie on social media lest the parks board remove him. You did not report him. You visited him and fed him offal as though he was a tree grazer who moved with the ferocity of a sloth.

Pervocracy’s Missing Stair speaks about how the kink scene learns to manage consent violators rather than ban them. Like missing stairs that everyone has grown used to, the community steps over them and warns vulnerable newcomers instead of expelling the rapist.

"He was fine so long as someone remembered to assign him a Rape Babysitter. People had gotten so used to working around this guy, to accommodating his "special requirements," that they didn't feel like there was an urgent problem in their community." - Pervocracy

Charlie the croc is a kind of missing stair. Like any kink scene rapist, he has teeth, but residents learned to coexist with him instead of banishing him.

They gave him a cute name, so he began feeling more like a pet than a croc. The more you visited him, the less dangerous he seemed. My uncle and I went to see Charlie on my last day in Marloth. He seemed absent, so we felt safe enough to walk along the dam wall. Then we heard a splash. Charlie had been right in our pathway. It’s all fun and games until the predator gets into your space. Even so, my uncle stood a metre away observing as though Charlie was a cute li’l floof.

If you’re around a predator long enough, you explain away the teeth. Days pass without an attack, and you develop a false sense of security. This predator isn’t like other predators. It hasn’t attacked anyone for years, so surely it’s just the cute monster in our backyards? If we feed it every day, it will grow tame and not eat the locals?

When I heard about Charlie, I had two reactions:

1. Ohmigod! Someone’s going to get killed by the croc!
2. Ohmigod! I wanna see the croc!

I knew the situation was dangerous, but I was hesitant to alert the parks board. I was a mere visitor standing against 300 residents, and surely I had no right to disrupt their environment? I wanted to report him and not report him simultaneously, so I resolved my cognitive dissonance by distrusting my own opinion. I told myself Charlie wouldn’t really attack humans. I began to see him as benign. Crocs are fine. Yes they are. They’re not dangerous at all.

Pervocracy’s Missing Stair is the most enduring post in the kink scene. I cite it every year, but missing stairs don’t have teeth. Crocs do. So do predators, so the metaphor doesn’t capture our tendency to transform dangerous animals into pets. It doesn’t address the cognitive dissonance or the fact that it’s been two years since I visited Marloth Park, and I still keep Charlie a secret from the board.

Yes, Steve the rapist is fine. He’s not as dangerous as those other predators. It’s all fun and games until the carnivore is right in your path, but don’t worry. He’s not that bad. He’s just our cute neighbourhood rapist.