Browsing Tag

sexual assault

Feminism

Pensacola Christian College & Me

August 2008-1
from August 2008, while I was still a student at PCC

If you’ve never meandered around xoJane, well, now is your golden opportunity. I’ve been a loyal reader for almost a year now, and it’s a pretty cool place. So, when an xoJane editor reached out to me and asked if I’d be willing to tell a piece of my story for them, you can imagine that my reaction looked a bit like this:

my little pony clapping seal

I’ve never really written out the entirety of what my experience was like after my rapist ended our engagement, although I’ve alluded to it a few times. I try to keep what I write about here focused on bigger-than-just-me things, although my story is a good example of what being at PCC can be like.

You can read the whole thing here.

Feminism

How Three Christian Colleges Sided with Sexual Assailants

ChristianColleges1

I’ve had a few incredible opportunities come from my original post about PCC. I was interviewed on a live radio show, and for the Pensacola News Journal, and now I have another guest post for Convergent Books. I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m a huge fan of this publisher– and yes, I’m one of those English nerds that have favorite publishers (Tor being my absolute favorite, just in case you were wondering).

“At these colleges, because the administration has a commitment to uphold strict morality codes, what were you wearing? where were you walking? were you drinking? become the automatic line of questioning. It often is found that the victim of sexual abuse did, in fact, commit a minor infraction. When that is the case, such an admission on the part of the victim is used to paint the victim as an equally guilty party . . .

Questioning of the victim can turn into a type of psychological warfare, in which the student is led to question who, in fact, was responsible for the attack. They are forced to ask themselves: “Would someone in the administration think I was dressed immodestly?” or “I know I wasn’t supposed to be in a classroom alone with him. What will they do to me if I tell them?””

You can read the rest here.

Feminism

Pensacola Christian College and Sexual Violence

crowne centre 2

It’s been almost a month since I asked for your help in exposing at least one of the problems at Pensacola Christian College: how they respond to and treat victims of sexual violence. Thank you, everyone– without you I could do nothing, and your help means everything to me. We worked together on this one.

Since then, I’ve been interviewing dozens of people and drafting articles, and I’m incredibly proud of all the brave, fierce, wonderful, magnificent people who told me their stories. Every single last one of you has my gratitude.

While I wasn’t able to find a major news source willing to publish it, Fred Clarke at the Slacktivist allowed me to do a guest post for him. I am excited that Clarke was willing to be a part of this project, and I think his platform will help get the story out. As Mr. Universe would say, “You can’t stop the signal.”

You can read the post here.

Now that it’s out, I want to ask you all for yet another thing: to help get this story out. If you’re the kind that uses social media, please think about sharing it. Talk about with people you know. If you hear someone considering to attend a college like this, please let them know about it. I couldn’t have a blog without you, and this story can’t go anywhere without you, either.

As a part of this process, I was extremely honored to be interviewed by Grace Wyler for her article at Vice, which I am proud to be a part of.

Again, thank you.

Feminism

this is what victim blaming looks like

[trigger warning for rape apologia, victim blaming]

When I announced rather publicly to the internet that I was going to be writing an article on how Pensacola Christian College has treated sexual abuse, assault, and rape victims, I expected to face some pushback. For the first couple days it was rather mild– all along the lines of “you’re sowing strife among the brethren” or “I can’t believe this could happen at PCC” or “PCC is a good school! How dare you!” It wasn’t really anything bad.

But, starting last night and continuing through this today, I’ve been  inundated with comments and e-mails.  I’ve blocked people here, in the comment section, for violating my comment policy. I will not ever tolerate rape apologia or victim blaming. I put up with a lot of stuff– sexism, racism, ableism… but only to a point. I believe in allowing people the opportunity to learn. That’s all I’ve been doing since I was a racist homophobic misogynistic ass, so I try to make sure that growth can happen here. I also love it when people disagree with me– as long as they’re not attacking my character. Disagree away, it’s fantastic.

So, while I will never allow someone to openly victim blame myself or any of my readers, I do want to take this opportunity to show everybody what victim blaming looks like. Normally I do not use comments for blogging fodder– I think that would make it more difficult for new readers to comment, and I don’t want to do that. However, two of the comments I got last night are a textbook example of what victim blaming looks like in real life. One I did not publish, the other I did (although I warned the second that what she’d done is called victim blaming. Since you can reply to her comment, please do not harass her. She’s been corrected already).

The problem with victim blaming is that, ultimately, it sounds perfectly reasonable, even common-sensical. Hopefully you’ll understand why it isn’t by the end of this post.

On to the first comment:

I went to PCC and the rules at that school make it nearly impossible to even get yourself into a situation like this. The school tries VERY hard to prevent it. You aren’t allowed off campus without other girls being with you. You can’t go to the beach without other girls with you. You sleep in a dorm with no one but girls. Guys are not allowed in the dorms. You are not allowed to be in any location with a guy alone; meaning you must be in a chaperoned area at all times, or you are breaking a rule. Cameras are everywhere. Motion sensors are placed on the fences. You scan in to leave the campus, you scan out to leave the campus. Your parking spot is checked by security guards every hour. Security officers patrol every empty building on an hourly basis. You are not allowed to touch members of the opposite sex. You are not allowed to talk in the unlit areas after dark. You are not allowed to stand around with members of the opposite sex after dark.

So I’m highly suspicious of this. And I think the faculty had a right to be somewhat suspicious, especially if the reputation of another person was at stake–and possibly a criminal investigation. So my plea to you would be to be very careful about casting a stone if you yourself are not at fault for bypassing one of these guards that the school put in place for your protection.

That said, the world is a wicked place and I would not be surprised if legitimate rapists attended that school. And I am not saying your story is not legitimate, but I think you owe it to the school to make share everyone gets the whole story here.

Let’s not pretend that PCC does not try to prevent this from happening. I cannot think of any other educational institution that goes out of its way to protect women like PCC does.

First off, his first paragraph is a pretty good summation of how crazy PCC is, which he rationalizes as good because it “protects” people. Some of these rules have softened in recent years, but most of them are still very much enforced exactly like this. It also completely ignores the reality of male-on-male, or female-on-female rape (which also, in an overwhelming majority of cases, has nothing to do with sexual orientation and everything to do with power, aggression, and dominance).

And while PCC is a fundamentalist college, how this person views the functions of PCC’s rules is not any different from how rape culture functions. The same exact argument is constantly made about rape victims in secular contexts. Were you drinking? What were you wearing? Did you lead him on?

The point of this line of questioning is: what rules did you breakAnd it’s all based on the assumption that Good Girls don’t get raped. Good Girls follow the rules. Good Girls obey the expectations of the culture. Only girls who break the rules get raped. It’s all over his comment, in how it’s “impossible to get myself into a situation” if I was following the rules like a Good Girl. And, since I obviously wasn’t a good enough girl or I wouldn’t have gotten raped, I owe it to the school to tell the “whole story”– the “whole story” including the part of how I am not a good enough girl. And, since I wasn’t a Good Girl, it’s perfectly reasonable for people to suspect whether or not I’m telling the truth about being raped. Good Girls don’t get raped. Only Bad Girls get raped, and Bad Girls deserve it. If I was stupid enough, or slutty enough, to break the rules, then I stepped outside what was put into place to protect me– so what else could I expect? Duh. Of course I got raped. I broke the rules.

Second comment:

It’s true that bad things happen and positive experiences don’t change them – you’re right. But do not forget to give the benefit of the doubt on both ends.There’s often much more to the story than “They were kicked out because . . .” I know because I have had friends who worked in Student Life who had to deal with situations that were severely misconstrued and turned into hateful gossip. The people at PCC love the students, and they do everything in their power to protect them and do what is right for them.

I can guarantee you that if a girl went to Student Life immediately after she were sexually assaulted, but had been obeying the rules of where she could go during what times with the correct number of friends (all rules set up for her protection), they would not expel her. I also know of people who were sent home to recover from situations, but people who did not care for PCC always referred to them as being “kicked out.” Remember that it’s easy to “tweak” a story so it sounds to be more in our favor – I’ve had to learn this many times even through friends, and constantly remind myself not to do it myself.

This is the same exact argument. If she obeyed the rules. If she told someone immediately. If she were a good girl. If she met with this person’s– or, in this case, Student Life’s– approval, and only then would a rape victim deserve not to be treated like a Bad Girl. If she did something, broke the rules, went anywhere alone, then she deserves to be expelled because she wasn’t a good enough girl. Bad Girls — and, by this definition, all rape victims are Bad Girls — deserve to be treated like garbage. Bad Girls don’t deserve help and comfort. Bad Girls don’t deserve justice or vindication. Bad Girls get expelled.

These arguments both ignore the reality that rape victims are raped because rapists rape them.

Feminism

let's talk about drunk people and sex, take two

alcohol

Back in November I wrote a post laying out some of the biggest questions I have about the “having sex while intoxicated” question; mainly that “how drunk is too drunk?” is a fundamentally flawed question and what we should be examining is “isn’t it predatory for people (usually men, not always) to target intoxicated people (usually women, not always)?” and “why isn’t enthusiastic consent the standard?” Neither of those questions are rhetorical, and I highly encourage you to check out the discussion in the comments– I think it was one of the best conversations I’ve had on my blog to date.

At the time I wrote it I was sort-of-not-really responding to the Emily Yoffe disaster, but yesterday something else started cropping up in my various news feeds: James Taranto essentially making the argument that if a drunk man rapes a drunk woman, there’s no crime (link is to an analysis, not original). In his view, both people– the rapist and the victim– should be held equally responsible, or not responsible at all. I barely managed to make it through Taranto’s Washington Post column; it took me a couple of tries to get all the way to the end.

So, I’m going to be responding to this general idea, but not really Taranto in particular, because it’s the narrative that makes his argument believable to people that concerns me.

Taranto compares rape to two drunk drivers who get into a car accident. This is not a new comparison, at least not to me– and if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard it trip glibly off the tongue of someone who is hilariously uninformed . . .

There is a premise backing up this statement, and it is a premise that a horrifying number of people– of all genders– believe. It is the idea that women who say they were raped while intoxicated are actually lying about having sex because they regret it. You can easily stumble across this argument almost anywhere– in living rooms, in bars, on the internet. This argument only exists because there is something even more insidious hiding beneath it, and this is the real problem with how Americans, at least, think and talk about sex:

Women only say no to sex because they are supposed to; it is the man’s job to do whatever he can to override that no. Women actually want to say yes, even when they are saying no.

That is the belief that allows us to believe all of the others– that the woman’s only job is to be the chaste, asexual gatekeeper, and men are the lustful, lascivious animals who are willing to go to any length– coercion, deceit, force — to achieve the ultimate goal of The I Had Sex with Her Trophy. It is the underlying rape-culture idea behind songs like Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young” and Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.”

Another fact that Taranto seems to be completely unaware of is that rapists are not just “people who are too drunk to realize what they’re doing and stop.” Rapists are predators. People who rape– and they are usually men, but not always– are a rather small slice of the population (3%-10%), depending on the study you read and the country you’re in. However, all the studies reveal a common pattern: predators and rapists target specific victims with only one goal in mind: to get away with it.

  • They spend time identifying vulnerable people.
  • They use cultural narratives in their favor. They find people who, by cultural standards, “deserve” to be raped– gay people, trans people, drunk people, alone people, “slutty” people . . .
  • They become acquaintances– or even friends– of the victim. They insinuate themselves into the victim’s group and deliberately communicate an image of being a “nice guy,” someone who is trustworthy.
  • They use whatever circumstances they can– making sure the victim is seen “flirting” with them, making sure their victim is drunk. . .
  • They do whatever they can in order to make sure their victim is discredited.

Remember, the ultimate goal is that no one believes their victim and that they get away with it. Rapists are not stupid. This is one of the reasons why so many rapes are linked to intoxication on college campuses: alcohol has become another weapon in a rapist’s arsenal– just like roofies, just like coercion, just like threats,  just like violence. They can use alcohol in order to get away with raping someone, because they know campus officials and police officers will ask “were you drunk?” and then dismiss anything else their victims say.

~~~~~~~~~~

Before we get into the discussion, I’d like to circumvent a few possible questions.

There is a gray area when we start talking about sex and alcohol. I’m not dismissing that. However, there are a few things to keep in mind when we talk about rape by intoxication.

First, if a person says “no” or “stop” or “I don’t want this” even if they have engaged in other sexual activities, anything that follows that “no” is rape. End of story. There is no other explanation, no surrounding circumstances, nothing. If they say no, it does not matter how drunk they are, it does not matter if they have been making out with you for an hour or just gave you oral, it does not matter. It’s rape.

Second, if a person is unconscious and you engage in sexual activities with them, you are raping them. That should be obvious, but thanks to things like Steubenville we know it’s not. It’s beyond all sense and reason that I even have to say this, but this is the world we live in, apparently.

Thirdly, the fact that they didn’t say “no” doesn’t mean they consented. Rape is sexual behavior that the other person did not consent to. Them “not saying no” doesn’t count. It’s insane that the only time we think of “consent” as being “they didn’t say no” is when we’re talking about sex. If some company dumps poison into my water supply, they can’t walk into court and say “welp, they didn’t say don’t dump poison into our water!” and get away with it. The same principle applies to sex: if they did not consent, then, legally, it’s rape. Consent is “yes, I want to have sex with you.”

And here is exactly where we run into the gray area, because consent can sound like and look like a lot of different things depending on the people involved in the situation. My partner and I don’t give verbal consent like that because we don’t need to– we know each other well enough where body language is enough. If you don’t have a trust-based relationship with the person you’re about to have sex with, make sure you get explicit, verbal consent. This is why I’m such a fan of enthusiastic consent— and why I’ve talked about it so much.

I want to address, specifically, this concept that people have sex, wake up in the morning, regret it, and then claim that they were raped. I’m not going to make the case that this never ever happens, but we do know beyond all doubt that it is incredibly rare. People have sex when they’re drunk and then regret it the next day all of the time. People have sex when they’re not drunk and then regret it all of the time, too. People make mistakes. They do things they regret. They also don’t usually wake up in the morning and say “I’m going to go accuse this person of rape for no reason!”

When a woman, especially, accuses someone of rape, it is an excruciating process. She is frequently ostracized and isolated. Her friends abandon her. The police intimidate and frighten her, and frequently accuse her of being a liar or an attention whore. She is slut-shamed, victim-blamed. Her entire life can be destroyed. Coming forward and saying this person raped me usually comes with so much risk and danger that most rape victims never report their rape.

There are probably a hundred other circumstances we could talk about concerning sex and alcohol, and they’re worth the conversation. I’m not going to say that having sex with a drunk person is always rape, because it’s not. Plenty of people have sex while intoxicated and it’s perfectly ok. However, and this is so important I’m going to be shouting about it the rest of my life, if you want to have sex with someone, get their clear consent. It really is that simple.

~~~

This is a moderated space. Please read my comment policy.

Feminism

sexual abuse, rape, and sexual coercion

chains
trigger warning for sexual assault, abuse, descriptions of rape, victim blaming, and emotional manipulation

Yesterday, one of my readers bravely allowed me to publish her story as a guest post, and I am fiercely proud of her for that. Telling your story in a public space is a daunting, overwhelming thing. Especially since there are people on this mostly-amazing internet that come to places like this one and jump in, feet first, with statements along the lines of “what happened to you was your fault. You should have ________.”

And, honestly, I expected a comment like that on her post because of part of what is in her story– part of what is in so many stories. And, lo and behold, I got one. I decided not to publish it because the women and men who will come here and read her story must have a safe place. They don’t need to hear that. They hear it from everyone else, and I won’t tolerate it on that post.

But, I wanted to write this because there was a part of Alena’s story that resonated with me on a deep, visceral, whole-body, gut-wrenching level. If you’ve ever experienced sexual abuse in a relationship, you might recognize it, too.

When he held me down, I was confused, even cried and begged him to stop, but he would keep going, He would try to coerce me, saying things like “don’t you like this?” I was weak in my protestations, speaking softly, trying to explain why I wasn’t okay with his actions even as he ignored me and did whatever he wanted. He drew reactions from me I couldn’t control, and that robbed me of the ability to think clearly. I judged myself weak and wanton, because he made me feel things against my will. . .

That part, right there, is the part of her story that grabbed me and wouldn’t let go, because I’ve been there. And I know, from experience, that so many of us have been there. For many of us, this part of our story is what keeps us trapped and silent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first physical thing that John*, my rapist, ever did, he did without my consent. We were in the orchestra pit, rehearsing for an operetta, and we were the only percussionists. It was dark, we were in the back . . . I stood up to flip the sheet music, and when I sat back down on my stool, his hand was there, palm-up, waiting to touch my rear end. He arranged it so that I would completely unknowingly sit on his hand and give him the opportunity to grab my ass.

At the time, I didn’t think much of it. I blushed, slightly uncomfortable, but . . . he hadn’t really done anything. It was perfectly innocent, right? He didn’t mean anything by it. Of course he didn’t. And so, I didn’t correct him, didn’t even comment on it.

He did that intentionally.

Like most abusers and rapists, he set up a situation in order to gauge my response. How would I react when he did something without asking me first? Would I call him on it, or would I let it go? If I did get upset about it, how easily could he convince me that it wasn’t worth getting upset over?

I didn’t say anything. I let it go.

And it escalated. Slowly. Little things, harmless things, innocent things– all things that on their own I could brush off and ignore. I wasn’t asking for any of it, didn’t want any of it, and any time he did something my reaction was never positive. It was clear to him that I didn’t want it, but the only thing that he cared about was if I was ever going to say anything. How far were my limits? How far could he push me?

We dated for almost three years. And in those three years he sexually assaulted me well over a hundred times and raped me twice. But, to people like the man that left that comment here last night, I am being unfair.” He didn’t actually assault me. He didn’t actually rape me. It’s my fault, because I didn’t tell him no “clearly” enough. I didn’t “stand my ground.” I didn’t make sure he knew I didn’t want what he was doing.

To women who have been in sexually abusive relationships, that is a gigantic, heaping mound of horse shit.

Because there is no “No.” It’s a word that doesn’t exist, because our abuser has purposely stolen it from us; robbed us of the ability to think it, let alone say it. There’s actually a term for this predatory behavior: it’s called sexual coercion. Simply put, “sexual coercion is the act of using pressure, alcohol, drugs, or force to have sexual contact with someone against his or her will.” Pressure, in the case of sexually abusive long-term relationships, usually comes in the form of emotional abuse and manipulation.

In my relationship with John* I performed many, many acts against my will. I had no desire to engage in the sexual behavior he insisted on. The thought of performing fellatio on him nauseated me in the extreme– but I still did it. I did it without him hitting me, or forcing me in any physically violent way. Any time he touched me made me sick. The thought of kissing him turned my stomach into knots and made me want to vomit. But I kissed him anyway. I “let” him touch me intimately because I had been groomed, for months on end, to “let” him do whatever he wanted because he wanted it. What I wanted didn’t matter- not even to me.

When he had escalated the physicality to the level where he would touch me intimately is where everything goes crazy inside of my head. Because, for a very long time, he didn’t ask me to do anything to him. He didn’t force me to stroke him. He didn’t force me to perform fellatio. He didn’t force me to do anything– to him. What he did do, however, was force reactions from my body that were completely outside of my controlHe would hold me down, and he would start convincing me. “I just want to make you feel good,” he would say, over and over, all while never caring if I even wanted it. Oh, but he knew exactly what he had to do in order to trigger a chemical response from my body that I didn’t want. “Doesn’t this feel good? I can feel you getting wet,” he would say, over and over and over and over . . . And he would never stop, not even when it became painful, not even when I started flinching and pulling away. “Just let me make you feel good,” he would start until I just gave in and stopped trying to resist, confused and afraid and lost.

But, according to men like those from last night, I had the power to stop it, right? I could have said no. I had the option of not letting it continue. Secretly, I must have wanted it. I was sending “mixed signals.”

The first time he raped me– men like those who left that comment last night, if they were standing in that room, probably wouldn’t even call it rape.

We’d gone to a funeral, and made it back to his parent’s home well before he expected them to arrive. He pulled me into the room I’d been sleeping in, told me to get down on the floor and begin masturbating. And I did it. When he told me to pull my underwear down, I did. When he got on top of me and told me to stroke him, I did. When he told me to start trying to put him inside of me is when I hesitated— and instantly the same tired threats began. He started cursing at me, verbally abusing me, making it clear what would happen to me if I didn’t do exactly as he said right fucking now, and so . . . I started to try.

But I stopped. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to have sex with him. I started sobbing, begging him not to make me do it. I pleaded with him the entire time while he started stroking himself and forcing himself inside of me.

It was the first time I’d ever really said no. It was the first time I’d ever said “no” and he didn’t even bother trying to convince me. He’d done what he had intended to do all along. He’d taken “no” away. He’d made “no” meaningless. He’d made it so that when I said “no,” all he heard was “push harder.”

So, you, men and women of the internet who think that all we have to do is “say no”?

You can go fuck yourselves.

Feminism

First Kiss: why rape myths are so dangerous

silenced

Trigger warning for child abuse, sexual assault, and victim blaming.

Alena wrote her story in a comment on my post future husbands: your future wife does not belong to you.” Reading it moved me to tears, because her story is very much like my own– and it is very much like the countless stories I’ve heard in the past four years. For women raised in the conservative evangelical “purity culture,” our stories have similar patterns. I hope that Aletha’s story can bring comfort, understanding, and healing to women who carry the same stories inside their hearts.

A few weeks into my relationship with my now-husband, he shared a funny story about our first kiss, commenting on how sweet and special he thought it was that we had each been privileged to share our first kisses with each other. I was confused, at first, wondering how he got that idea — and then remembered back to the kiss: we kissed, and he smiled at me and asked if I had enjoyed my first kiss. I had said yes, and he said, “Me, too!” It was a very sweet moment – and one I had misunderstood. I thought he was asking if I enjoyed our first kiss, when he was actually asking if I had enjoyed my first kiss—ever.

It shouldn’t have been a big deal to fix the misunderstanding, but I was eaten up by guilt. One of my girlfriends, who was with us at the time and knew that not only was my kiss with Nick not my first, but that there were a lot of other “firsts” he didn’t know about—“firsts” I’d had with my previous boyfriend, R*. She took several opportunities in the months that followed to tell me that I owed it to Nick to be honest and come clean about my sins, and that he deserved to get to choose whether or not to forgive me before he actually married me. If he didn’t want to marry a woman with a “sexual history,” he needed to know so he wouldn’t be “stuck with me forever.”

I already carried a great deal of regret about not coming to my marriage a virgin—since I was sexually abused as a child—but Nick knew all about that and repeatedly assured me that I had nothing to be ashamed of, and he had nothing to forgive. I had trouble accepting that, because many people, including my girlfriend, said that I was guilty because I did not “fight back” enough. It didn’t matter that I was 3, or 12, and that I had tried to tell my mother what had happened . . . I was responsible because I hadn’t fought ‘til my dying breath. Nick telling me something different was difficult to believe. The fact that he didn’t know about what I’d done with R* made it all so much worse.

Months passed, and guilt was practically eating me alive. Despite our mutual goal of virginity on our wedding night, we messed around more than we wished we had (although, to be clear, we don’t beat ourselves up about it). Every time we did something, however, I had intrusive and vivid flashbacks to my time with R*, my ex . . . but rarely did I have flashbacks about my childhood abuse. Finally, a month before our marriage, I couldn’t stand the guilt. Nick seemed so happy with all of our “shared firsts” . . . so I confessed to him about R*, in the middle of his mom’s front yard, at one in the morning, in the rain. I was sobbing, he was shocked and confused. When I told him he didn’t have to marry me, he became angry and took me in his arms, and told me that he loved me, that he still wanted to marry me, and that he forgave me. I went home and then we entered the madhouse of the last three weeks before our wedding in another state and all that entailed.

We got married, and everything seemed like it was going to be ok.

Six years later this whole thing came back to us again.

Over the first six years of our marriage, I was repeatedly assaulted by intrusive and vivid flashbacks of my time with R*, to the point that more than once I broke down crying in the middle of sex. I frequently felt dirty and unworthy of the love of my husband. Never once did Nick ever give me reason to feel this way, and since I refused to talk about any of it most of the time, he rarely even knew who the flashbacks were about, and assumed they were about my father, who had abused me as a child. But . . . I was having flashbacks about both. Sometimes they were mixed, and that was frightening.

One day, I started seeing a new counselor, and for some reason I brought up my relationship with R*. She asked me a lot of questions that were very baffling and scary at the time, and then shocked me to my core by telling me that she believed that I had been a victim of sexual assault in that relationship.

What? What the– ? Could it? No – wait, but . . .

I started remembering.

I thought back to our first kiss, which began as a romantic moment. It was the first and only time I’d ever seen the Northern Lights, and I can’t even describe how beautiful they were. But his kiss quickly turned confusing and scary when he deepened it to a full French kiss that lasted for several minutes, despite my attempts to step back. It was . . .exciting . . . but I had only known him for a couple of days, and earlier that evening had told him I was saving my kisses for when I got married. I was afraid—excited, but afraid– but he took control, ultimately, because he was a bigger than me, and I was more afraid of making a guy mad than I was of being kissed against my will.

I told him, the next morning, that I was not okay with being physically intimate before marriage, and that I was sorry that we had kissed. He was quick to assure me that kisses weren’t that big of a deal. From there, it escalated quickly. I won’t go in to detail, but I will say that he initiated every single physically intimate thing we did, and overrode my protestations each time with charm, insistence—or just by sheer size. He did what he wanted, because he could.

I never saw anything that happened as anything more than me being incredibly weak willed, until I spoke with my counselor about it.

After all, I didn’t scream. I didn’t call him names. I didn’t claw his face, or kick him where he’d hurt so I could get away.

He never verbally assaulted me, ordered me around, or physically abused me.

When he held me down, I was confused, even cried and begged him to stop, but. he would keep going, He would try to coerce me, saying things like “don’t you like this?” I was weak in my protestations, speaking softly, trying to explain why I wasn’t okay with his actions even as he ignored me and did whatever he wanted. He drew reactions from me I couldn’t control, and that robbed me of the ability to think clearly. I judged myself weak and wanton, because he made me feel things against my will. . .

It was very healing to talk and cry about it, especially after my session with my counselor. I spoke with my husband about it, too, and that was an eye opening conversation! You see, it turns out that all those years ago, when he held me in his arms, assured me he still wanted to get married, and forgave me…? He was only forgiving me for lying by omission. When I told him what the counselor had said, and for the first time elaborated a little bit on what had happened with R*, and my actions in those moments, he agreed with her completely that it had been sexual assault, and six months of abuse.

Those conversations took place less than six months ago. I am still processing things, though a family crisis this summer superseded everything to the point that I haven’t really thought about it for months, until reading this post. I haven’t had any flashbacks since then, though I can feel them lurking in this moment, after writing all this.

Until reading this, I didn’t realize that it all went back to the patriarchal attitudes with which I was raised, but it makes so much sense. Had my friend not applied so much pressure and condemnation to confess my sins to Nick, had not brought up what had happened to me when I was a child and insisted that I was not “sexually pure” because of it, had not tried to convince me that I had sinned against Nick because of what my father had done and what happened later– I would have likely told him right away that there had been a misunderstanding, though I know that I would have still felt a lot of misplaced shame over my relationship with R*, because of the unresolved issues there. I certainly wouldn’t have considered calling off my engagement at the last second because I felt that he deserved a virgin, had I not been heavily influenced by the concept of “future-husband ownership,” or by the teaching that “losing” my virginity—however it was “taken,” consensual or not—makes me less valuable as a woman, as a person.

Feminism

he would say I "cried rape": false allegations and rape culture

prosperina

serious trigger warning for verbal abuse, psychological abuse, emotional manipulation, sexual assault, rape, and rape apologia.

I’d never seen so many fireflies in one place before. It was early summer in Virginia, and I was sitting, sheltered under a gazebo, watching golden lights flicker on the undisturbed, clear surface of a pond. It was one of those perfect summer evenings, when the gentle breeze feels good brushing against your bare arms, and the air feels close and warm, like a light blanket fluttering around you. It was one of those moments when silence felt comfortable, when words hung motionless in the air.

The words I’d just spoken seemed to surround me, hanging like broken ornaments from silent strings.

He raped me.

It was the first time I’d ever said the words out loud, to anyone. Ever.

I’d known it was the truth for a few months now. The words had been rattling around inside of me, glass shards I shied away from touching, from letting come up my throat and exist outside of me. But, I’d said them, and the trueness finally settled inside of me, and it was like I hadn’t really understood them before I’d said them, out loud, in a place where someone was listening.

It didn’t take very long for that to shatter.

You’re lying. Insidious, and the accusation felt more real to me than the fragility of my words.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A while ago I wrote a post about consent, and what it has come to mean to me. It’s the most healing word I own, because it tells me that what happened to me wasn’t my fault, that it happened to me, that it was not what I justly deserved. I had never given him my consent, but that didn’t matter when I was on my back on the blue shag carpet, and I said the words please, please, stop, I don’t want to do this and he used his watch to cut my knee open and then called me a goddamn fucking bitch.

And, on that post, just like every post I’ve ever seen when a woman dares to talk about rape and consent, a man who had never commented on my blog before, who had never liked a post before, who I’d never heard of before, anywhere, and who has never commented since, deigned to comment to tell me about false allegations and how horrible, how awful, how destructive they are.

I did my best to be civil. But, by my last comment, you can tell that I was angry.

Let me be absolutely clear: false accusations are horrific. I would never deny that, would never try to argue that they aren’t.

However, there is a reason why I, personally, react to them consistently being introduced into conversations on rape and consent on a visceral, whole-body level. Hearing about them makes me physically ill– to the point where I have actually vomited because of discussions concerning them. Any time I try to talk about it with Handsome, I end up shaking and weeping, fighting off a panic attack.

A few days ago, I realized why.

I was engaged to my rapist– had been engaged to him for almost a year by the time he raped me. He sexually assaulted me… I honestly don’t know. The number of times is probably in the hundreds. Looking back over our relationship, he had been grooming me for that moment for literally years. It had started small– minor things I could brush off as cute, as innocent, as harmless, but things still done to me without my consent. Slowly, so slowly I couldn’t tell what was happening, everything intensified. And, through it all, he made absolutely certain that I knew beyond all doubt that there was no such thing as no. If I said no to anything— if I didn’t instantly answer when he called, if I didn’t immediately change my clothes when he told me to, if I didn’t comply with every request the second he made it, I was punished.

He also made it brutally, horribly clear that he was not interested in only demanding and taking– if I was not at least a semi-active participant in my own assault, he would punish me for that, too.

That part of my story is usually the one I can never talk about. I’m shaking, right now, as I write these words. Today, I can say the words “I was raped” and talk about my experience with some measure of calm, almost detachment. But this? How I engaged in my own assaults? How I deliberately ignored my feelings of revulsion, of disgust, the intense nausea? How I initiated sexual encounters with him, even though I didn’t want to? How I did my best to be sexy for him? How I did it all knowing if I didn’t, that he would punish me, or even worse. leave me?

This has left me with deep psychological scars that appear in my life as neuroses. Some of the most humiliating experiences of our entire relationship occurred in bathrooms, and, because of that, I cannot, cannot, take a shower in a strange place without struggling with flashbacks and panic, and I can barely get in and out of my own shower without spraying it down with Lysol before and after, although I am slowly getting better.

I say all of that to say this: if I had known that what had happened to me was rape, if I’d had any understanding of what consent was, if I’d known sex you don’t want to have is rape, maybe I could have done something. I could have gone to the police, filed a report. I could have gone to my college’s student affairs office and asked for help.

But, I know what would have happened.

Anyone involved would have gone to John*. And he would tell them that I was lying, that I was his fiancé. He would have directed me to his parents– because he had made sure they witnessed me “initiating” physical things, like cuddling and touching and kissing. He had the entire campus on his side– he leveraged his popularity and his fame against me, deliberately doing everything within his power to discredit me as that “crazy bitch.” Years after I’d graduated, students still knew who I was, and what I’d done to him.” And the police would have marked my report a false allegation, and I would have been dismissed as a liar.

The student affairs at my college would have expelled me for sexual misconduct, and almost four years of college would have disappeared, with unaccredited, nontransferable credits.

I know this because it happens every. single. damn. day.

I know this, because I took one of my friends to the hospital to get a rape kit, and they took pictures, and the police interviewed her. But then her case was dismissed, and when she asked them why, they told her they had talked to her ex-boyfriend, who told them she was lying, that it was consensual, and he had witnesses of her kissing him, and, then the officer started yelling at her for treating the police like her own personal puppets and they have “better things to do then waste time on attention whores.”

I know this because another one of my friends went to our college administration to ask for their help, and told them what her boyfriend was doing to her, and they expelled her for “sexual misconduct,” and her family kicked her out of their home.

I know this because another woman on my campus was being sex trafficked, and when our college found out about it, they expelled her, and not only did they expel her, they splashed her story around the entire campus and every single last woman on campus was explicitly told that if we are sex trafficked it is our own fault.

I know this, because when a woman says I was raped the very first thing that the entire world starts screaming at her is you’re a liar.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is why bringing false allegations into conversations about rape and consent is so damaging. We aren’t reacting negatively because we don’t think that false allegations are horrible, or that false allegations are insignificant and easily dismissed, because they aren’t. We are reacting this way because we live in a world where false allegations are the dominant narrative. Because false allegations are a nearly-universal part of any conversation about rape, when a woman says that she is a rape survivor, one of the first things that becomes a part of that conversation is suspicion, cynicism, and dismissal.

We are told that if we didn’t handle the situation exactly the way some person on the internet thinks it should be handled, then our credibility is questioned. If we answer the invasive, boundary-violating inquiry “did you report it?” with “no,” then everything about our story is frequently dismissed. Because reporting a rape, to these people, is just as simple as reporting any other kind of crime, and why wouldn’t you? The only reason why you didn’t report your rape is, secretly, you know you wanted it. People who are true rape victims would have no problem with reporting it. And if you were really raped, you don’t have to worry about being dismissed. Any woman who’s worried about being called is a liar is only worried because she actually is one.

I understand why men are so afraid of false allegations. I get that, I really, really do.

But we desperately need an alternative. Right now, the conversation is completely polarized, and the story of the woman who “cries rape” is winning. Because rape victim and liar are so close together, so rhetorically linked, we live in a world where reporting your rape can be one of the most violating, horrible experiences of your life. Where up to 95% of all rapes go unreported because of what happens to women who come forward.

That is a world we need to change.

Feminism

learning the words: consent

hilary in pantsuit
[trigger warning for rape, sexual assault, and victim blaming]

 “Learning the Words” is a series on the words many of us didn’t have in fundamentalism or overly conservative evangelicalism– and how we got them back. If you would like to be a part of this series, you can find my contact information at the top.

I uploaded the above picture to my facebook this time last year. I’d spotted it, I don’t remember where, thought it was one of the funniest things I’d read on the internet and decided I’d share it with my friends– many who were just going through detox from our IFB college (a place where all women were required to wear skirts).

The comments exploded. In a matter of what felt like minutes, there were huge debates raging between maybe six different sets of friends. I hadn’t exactly expected that.

What I especially didn’t expect was for almost all of my friends who commented– men and women I respect, love, and admire– to instantaneously leap into deep victim blaming territory. One of them cited the supposed popularity of mini skirts in Japan and the problems the country has with upskirt photos and sexual assault on their subways. Another quoted a political leader in the Philippines as blaming their rape epidemic on mini skirts.

At that point, I interjected. I denounced the victim blaming that was happening and made this statement:

A victim is never responsible for his or her rape. 

It seems like a simple idea, but it’s not. It wasn’t even an idea I would have been capable of articulating even a few months prior to this– because of the simple fact that I blamed myself for my rape. Because of a whole host of ideas– ideas like it’s the woman’s responsibility to set up physical boundaries, and if a man ignores those boundaries, it’s the woman’s fault, because she didn’t set those boundaries up clearly enough. After all, “a man will only go as far as a woman will let him.”

A comment I got on a post I wrote on the link between the purity culture and abusive relationships made me cry. Because my story was almost exactly the same as the one left in that comment– I’ve been there. I’ve been terrified, and confused, and lost, and not able to really understand what had happened to me and how to deal with it.

The reason why I couldn’t understand what had happened, and why I blamed myself for my rape for so long, was because I didn’t understand what consent is. For me, personally, consent is the most important, most powerful word I have now.

First, let me make this brutally clear:

Rape is non-consensual sex.
Rape is having sex with someone who doesn’t want to have sex with you.
Rape is having sex with someone who has not given you a clear and enthusiastic yes.
Rape is having sex with someone in a way that he or she does not want to.
Rape is continuing to have sex with someone when he or she has withdrawn his or her initial consent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Consent is based on the idea that, as a person, I have the right to determine what happens to my body. It is my body, and it does not belong to anyone else. I get to decide what I do and who I do it with–always. No exceptions. Any time that any person does something to my body that I don’t want to happen, it is sexual harassment, sexual assault, or rape (and yes— this includes how someone else looks at my body. I get to decide how people look at me and what I find acceptable, and absolutely nothing I do, nothing I say, and nothing I wear changes that. Ever).

Consent means that I get to decide when I have sex, who I have sex with, and how that sex happens. If at any point during sex something happens that I don’t want, I have the right to say “stop.” If my sexual partner continues in the behavior, that is rape. Because it has moved from consensual sex to non-consensual sex, and non-consensual sex is rape. And let me make it plain so no one suffers any delusions: consent is not the absence of a “no.” Consent is saying “yes.” Consent can only be a “yes.”

When I am consenting to sex, I am only consenting to how I want to have sex. Consent is not a blanket that allows the sexual partner to do whatever the hell he or she wants without consulting the other.

It is also not exclusively my responsibility to make sure that I have communicated my consent clearly enough. It is primarily the responsibility of the initiating partner to ensure beyond all doubt that the other partner is interested– and continues to remain interested.

This means something really simple: ask. And guess what you have to ask? It’s really easy:

Do you want to have sex with me?
Is this ok?

If the answer to these questions is no, going past the “no” in any shape or form is sexual assault or rape.

Also, just to be clear– I say all of these things as a monogamous married woman. And everything I’ve said here still applies. Signing your name on your marriage license is not eternal, blanket consent to any time your husband or wife wants to have sex. Consent is an ongoing process- it happens before sex, and it needs to happen during sex, too. And just because I’ve agreed to sex before does not mean that I’m going to– or somehow obligated to– agree to sex again.

I’m not really concerned with the legal definition of rape, mostly because in many states that definition (hint: it usually includes the word “forcible”) is based on a myth. I’m also not concerned with the legal definition of consent. And no, I’m not saying that sexual partners have to ask for and gain a verbal consent every single time they have sex, especially after a relationship and trust is established. However, there are nights when I initiate sex with my husband, and if I sense anything that could remotely be a lack of desire, I ask. Usually he just looks at me like “are you kidding?!” and that’s enough for us.

However, this is where our definition of consent needs to begin.

Not in “well, she didn’t say no.”
Not in “but look at what she was wearing!”
Not in “her body language said she wanted it.”

And most definitely, it is not in “but she got wet” or “she got off on it.” Physical arousal has NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING to do with consent. At all. Period. End of story.

And for all those types who say “but stopping and asking will ruin the mood,” I say bullshit. Bullshit bullshit.

Do you know what does ruin the mood? Rape.

Feminism

a fate worse than death

goblin market

[trigger warning for sexual assault, rape, and rape culture]

I was raped.

There are many days when I have to stop and admit the truth of that sentence all over again. Days when all the voices come back and ask me what in the world it is that I think I’m doing– why are you talking about this? You know what you did. You know you’re responsibleYou’re doing all of this, saying all these terrible things about an innocent man to get attention.

And, when I start thinking these things, sometimes I ask myself– why? Where do all these thoughts come from? And the answer echoes back– you wouldn’t have to deny these things so hard if you knew they were false. There’s a part of you that knows that it’s true. If you really were raped, you wouldn’t have a problem talking about it. Your conscience would be clear. You wouldn’t be second-guessing yourself, worrying about John* coming after you for making ‘false’ accusations. He could, you know– you’ve shared your blog on facebook. You still have mutual friends. You even have a page now. What’s to stop him from coming here?

This is The Lie.

It’s the biggest lie I know, and I believe it– sometimes. Because I grew up knowing about a fate worse than death.

We’re all familiar with this myth– it shows up in our books, our television shows, our comic books, and our movies. We read it in our histories, like Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, when Roman women were “exposed to injuries more dreadful, in the apprehension of chastity, than death itself.” It’s used as suspense in pretty much any Damsel in Distress Trope that appears in video games and film. We see it in almost any movie or book that has a love interest that gets kidnapped. The hero must save her before she suffers a fate worse than death.

It’s a euphemism for rape.

It’s our society’s method of cloaking what it knows is a horrifying assault on the agency of a human being. Some could argue that it’s an apt euphemism– they could say it accurately describes the long-term consequences and damage that result from rape. That rape, especially the rape of children, can result in a harm to the soul that is so deep, some are never capable of a full recovery. They might suffer from PTSD, from depression, for the rest of their lives. Which is all hideously true. Rape can do all those things. Because, instead of killing a person, what rape does is tell a woman or man that what they want doesn’t matter, that they cannot control what happens to their own bodies. It’s a violation so deep, so profound, that I have a hard time communicating the extent of how awful it is to someone who’s never been there. That’s why this euphemism exists– and it exists, some could say, for good reason. It’s apropos.

I wish this euphemism, this phrase, would die a horrible, screaming death by fire and torment, because that’s the only thing it deserves. Because this phrase doesn’t really tell rape survivors that our society sympathizes with us. It doesn’t tell us that our culture has a deeply buried rhetoric that acknowledges the pain of rape and sexual assault. It doesn’t tell us that we have a culture that will stand with us and help us face the long-term fallout of what happened to us.

No, it tells us, especially women, that what happened was our fault.

I know that seems like a leap, but hopefully you can feel the intuitive, natural connection. Because rape is so horrible, so horrific, so violent, that if we walked away from it in once piece– well, it must not have been rape, then. It’s a fate worse than death, how in the world could a woman have survived it? Either the rape itself was horrible enough to cause visible, permanent, physical and lasting damage, or the woman fought back against her rapist and gained bullet wounds or knife slashes– or at least a bruise or a black eye. It’s worse than death— the rapist should have needed to subdue her (or him). It’s the fight or flight instinct, which clearly shows that if you’re only facing death, you fight back. If you’re facing something worse than death itself ? . . .

What this Lie does is tell those whose rape weren’t at gun point, under threat of death, after we’ve been beaten into submission–that we weren’t actually raped. I was already on the floor when he raped me. I had already supposedly “consented” (under coercion and threat of physical and emotional harm, although I was incapable of seeing it that way at the time) to other sexual activities, so when he raped me, even though I was whispering, terrified, begging him, please, no, I can’t, please stop, don’t do this, don’t make me and it was over so quickly it took me hours to even figure out what had happened, after he climbed off of me and called me a bitch and a whore, I couldn‘t see it as rape.

Rape only happens when it is worse than death. I survived. I picked myself off of the thirty-year-old blue shag carpet, dragged myself to the bathroom to clean myself, and then pulled myself to the living room to wait for his parents to get home. It wasn’t rape. Not really. He’d done something to me that I didn’t want to happen– but it wasn’t rape. Because, with the exception of a deep gouge in my knee, I wasn’t bloodied or beaten. I walked away, supposedly in “one piece.”

This, I believe, is one of the most damaging rape myths our culture tells us. This narrative exists, and it’s why we don’t believe that one quarter of the women in this country are raped. It’s why 97% of rapists will never go to prison. Because we know what “legitimate” rape is, and it’s worse than death itself.