Another post about force
Re-reading this, I feel like I wasn’t as clear as I wanted to be in explaining the threatened and implied force that motivates a rape victim to cooperate during a “non-violent” rape attempt.
I started thinking about when I was a kid taking martial arts classes. My sensei frequently took the girls aside and talked to them about things he obviously thought were more relevant to us. For example, we learned long before the boys different moves to execute when you are pinned to the ground, and we were occasionally taught lethal or extremely injurious manuevers that were otherwise only taught to the adults. He didn’t make direct reference to why he was teaching us these things, but said things like, “If a man has you pinned to the ground,” or “If there is no other way to get away.”
He also taught us about body language, and how to recognize when another person is using physically threatening body language, and how to respond. One basic tip he drilled over and over: if you have to tilt your head back to look into somebody’s face, they are standing too close to you. You are in a vulnerable position, and an intentionally subservient position. Move away until you can look them in the face without having to tilt your head. I can’t count how many times that kept me from getting caught in the hallways at high school, from saying or doing things I didn’t want to because I was intimidated by somebody looming over me threateningly.
And that’s the thing. That kind of body language is a threat. Aggressive body language is used to imply violence that could possibly occur if you do not relent. There doesn’t have to be a verbal threat; a verbal threat is documented evidence of assault. Lots easier to just let a victim know you intend to hurt them, without giving them anything that can be used in a court of law. Can you imagine that? “Could you explain what you mean by saying *snigger* he leaned threateningly?”
This is what I mean when I say a rapist does not have to actually, physically employ violence in order to rape his victim. A rapist does not have to verbally confirm that he will use violence. What a rapist does is place his victim in a position where she knows she is at a physical disadvantage, and violence is not out of the question. Because nobody bothers to put you at a physical disadvantage if violence isn’t one of the possible outcomes in their mind. Then later, it’s much easier for others to justify to themselves that rape did not occur, because violence did not occur. The victim’s genuine perception of the threat of physical harm is considered invalid, while the rapist’s perception of full consent is totally valid.
I’d like to say something here about sex, real sex. Do you think you could have sex with somebody who was afraid of you, and not be able to tell? Do you think you could have sex with somebody who did not say yes, did not move, did not respond, was in pain? Do you think it would be possible for you to not notice if somebody was completely uninvolved in sex? The idea that anybody could “mistake” genuine consent is such a base and outright lie. People are remarkably good at reading the body language and cues and outright verbal expressions of people in all other aspects of life (think of your boss, your mother, your best friend, creepy guy on the bus). It’s only when a woman obviously doesn’t want sex that everybody is suddenly deaf, blind and dumb — how could I tell she didn’t want sex? She was only staring at the wall with a blank expression the whole time — I mean, that doesn’t tell me anything. Bullshit. It just doesn’t tell you anything you want to hear.
Okay, back to my point. Here’s the scenario I want you to imagine:
You get into a conversation with somebody at a party. The conversation winds around to something controversial, say, religion, or politics.
You and the other person have completely divergent views, and you’re both very invested in them. You begin to discuss.
Eventually, the discussion turns into an argument, and then a heated argument. Your voices get louder, your hand gestures more punctuated. Your civility is slipping as you start to refer to people who believe such-and-such as idiots, or arrogant, or naive.
Suddenly, the other person begins to move very close to you, very fast. You back away. They continue coming close, yelling, arguing, shouting. Eventually, your back is against a wall. They are standing over you, face red, chest out. They place one hand on the wall beside you, then the other hand on the other side. They lean closer. They begin to punch the wall for emphasis with each point. You can’t even get a word in anymore without them cutting you off, punching the wall.
You decide this is getting out of hand and isn’t worth it. You quietly agree with their position, tell them you guess you’ve got a lot to think about. They rant and rave a little more, and you continue agreeing, even when they stop talking about the topic at hand and move on more generally to talk about how people who believe what you believe are stupid.
It’s a week later. You are talking with a friend of yours about the same topic that started the argument. You again state your position. Your friend says, “That’s not what you believe.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it isn’t, I heard you tell that guy at the party that you didn’t believe that anymore.”
“Are you kidding? He was crazy. I just said that to get him away from me.”
“Well, why did you say it if you didn’t believe it? I don’t know, your story doesn’t add up. And if he was so crazy, why were you talking to him in the first place?”
“Well, he didn’t seem crazy at first.”
“Then why didn’t you stop talking to him when he got crazy?”
“I tried to, but he was all up in my face screaming, I thought he was going to hit me or something.”
“Oh, come on, that guy has never hit anybody.”
“Did you see him screaming at me?”
“That doesn’t mean he was going to hit you. I don’t know, it seems to me that if you really believed in a thing, you wouldn’t back down about it. You’d keep fighting. That’s what I’d do.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t see what he was doing.”
“Well, come on, it’s not like he had a knife to your throat or anything. You guys were just talking. You didn’t have to agree with him, you could have just walked away.”
You don’t know if you could have walked away. Looking back, it seems ridiculous that you didn’t. I mean, what was he going to do, beat you up? No way. Nobody does that, right? Over something so stupid? And he seemed like a nice guy, otherwise. Maybe there was something else going on. Maybe you were just confused.
And yet you know, you remember standing there that moment, pinned against the wall with this man screaming at you, you knew how much he wanted to hurt you. And you also knew how little chance you had of getting away, trapped between his arms and a wall. Maybe somebody would intervene. Maybe not. Nobody had so far. And was this argument, this little thing, really worth getting hurt for?
This is the situation rape victims are put in. They say no, and their rapist moves closer, too close. They try to move away, and he hugs them, kisses them, places them against a wall. They say they don’t want to, and he begins to take off their clothes. They shove, get louder, and he just lays on top of them, still kissing, still pretending this is sex. He does not need to say, “I am going to hurt you if you don’t let me rape you.” He does not need to physically attack them. All he needs to do is indicate that their consent means nothing to him. That their actions to pull their body away mean nothing to him. All a rapist needs to do is negate all other possible options for stopping sex. Now the only option left is a physical confrontation that will very likely result in an injury, and will certainly result in more trauma. A rapist is counting on a woman not to take this option; it helps him pretend what he is doing is not rape, and it helps him get away with it later, when everybody is asking the woman why she didn’t fight back, and was it really rape if she didn’t get a bruise.
A rapist who dismisses all other ways a victim has of saying no to sex indicates that the only way out is a physical fight. Nothing else will work. And he has placed his victim at a physical disadvantage — isolated, possibly undressed, possibly lying down, possibly drugged — in order to lessen the chance of a physical fight, and the chance of her winning. And as soon as it becomes clear to her that nothing less than a physical fight will stop sex, she knows what a disadvantage she is in. A rape victim who sees all her options outside of a physical fight ignored knows that to get away, she will have to risk being injured. And she may not get away, and be forced to have sex while injured, or (I don’t know if men can really understand or imagine the horror of this one) be forced to have sex that by itself causes physical injury. So suddenly this thing that seemed so important — the right to your own body — gets cast aside. You decide it isn’t worth it. You quietly agree to whatever they say.
Everybody has their own internal barometer of what defines a thing, and it’s often at odds with what we know we “should” think. To many rapists, “rape” is something that involves an actual physical fight, that injures a woman. “Rape” is when the woman is crying or screaming. “Rape” is when there is a gun or a knife involved. “Rape” is not when a woman says “no” and is ignored — if she didn’t want sex, she wouldn’t have “let him” have sex with her. Many non-rapists, and rape victims, believe this, too. For a lot of reasons, but one of them, I think, is because if we believed that having sex with somebody who has not said “yes” is rape, then there would not be a single person in this country who does not either know a rapist, know a rape victim, or is not a rapist or rape victim themselves.
I also want to throw this in: this same thing happens with domestic abuse. People have an internal barometer of what “abuse” is, and often it must include a physical attack. Abusers believe this, too, and it helps them get away with an awful lot. Nobody wants to think of themselves or somebody they know as an abuser, or a rapist, so they come up with definitions of abuse and rape that preclude whatever they have done or witnessed. For example, Ike Turner once said of Tina:
“Sure, I’ve slapped Tina… There have been times when I punched her to the ground without thinking. But I have never beat her.
Flint never hit me. But I can remember many times where I found myself in exactly the situation I described — up against a wall, Flint’s arms on either side of me as he punched the wall to make his point. During one fight, he screamed how much he felt like hitting me. I wanted to yell back, “Well, go the fuck ahead!” But I stopped myself. Something in me said, “If you say that, he will hit you. And then it will be your fault, because you told him to.” Instead of today, where many people consider Flint’s abuse my fault, because he didn’t hit me, which ostensibly means I could have left at any time without fearing for my safety. Obviously I only stayed because it wasn’t that bad, and maybe because I secretly liked it. He believed this, too — when I finally did tell him I wanted a divorce, and he told me everything I would be missing, and everything I was cowardly and selfishly leaving behind, he also included, “You know, I never hit you. I could’ve, and I wanted to, but I never did.” As if this was a fancy thing, something I had not deserved and would not find elsewhere. To somebody who wants so much to hit their partners for refusing sex, or not doing the dishes, it probably is a special and unique thing in all the world.
Force and violence don’t come out of nowhere. There is a build-up that anybody can notice, from verbal warnings to aggressive body language to just the plain old vibe that things are about to become hairy. All these things are meant to forestall physical violence, to acquire whatever a party’s interests are without having to resort to an action that may injure them as well. Abusers who do physically attack their partners don’t need to do so every day; the threat of doing so will be enough to keep their partners frightened and compliant, because their partners know that the result of disobedience may be a physical injury or death. During the fight I had with Flint, where I knew he was about to hit me, I immediately de-escalated. I agreed with everything he said, I laughed the fight off as us both being stressed, and then I took him out for dinner and bought him presents. All to avoid a beating that never happened, and now, hopefully, never would. That’s a lot of benefit to be gained for little to no output — it’s no wonder he kept doing it. And because it never escalated to an actual physical fight, he could tell himself it wasn’t abuse, just as Ike never “beat” Tina (I’m sure we’d all be plenty horrified to know what his definition of a “beating” was), but managed to get what he wanted out of her “just” by slapping her down to the ground.
Rape can happen without “violence” or “force” because rapists are able to threaten violence without having to directly say so. They provide all the markers that we know how to read — and can read without conflict in other situations — as indicating a possible explosion of violence. That in itself is a use of force, the implication that if a victim does not do as a perpetrator wants, they are risking physical injury. Victims know that, and they’re behaving rationally to avoid injury and/or death. Only in our fucked-up cultural narrative, where all women are available for sex unless they are willing to be beaten, are rape victims to blame.
And people who have never thought of this dynamic in terms of domestic abuse or rape will find they actually quite readily understand it in another, almost any other, context. Anybody who thinks this doesn’t apply to domestic abuse, to rape, should look back on their years in elementary school and junior high and think about bullies. Did they have to hit you to make you do what they wanted? Or did they just have to pin you against a wall and sneer? Or throw something at you, something not even heavy? And then how did you feel after, when you had given in to whatever they wanted, and hadn’t even gotten hurt? Did you think you were a coward? Did you think you were thin-skinned, and weak? Did others tell you it was your fault, for not sticking up for yourself?
Welcome to ladytown, population: half the fucking planet. Think of that, the next time you’re tempted to think, “But why didn’t she fight back?”
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Wow, your posts are amazing.
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Thanks, that’s so nice.
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I found myself leaning my head back and flinching while reading this.
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Thank you for posting so much about this subject. I have been in the similar situation. I admire your strength and the depth of the rape that you go into. There was that time where I thought I was going crazy. He didn’t “physically force” me- but he did know that I didn’t want it but I got it anyway. Until I found your blog, I didn’t know that I was being raped. Your words have brought out the inner strength within me. I was being taken advantage of, I wasn’t consenting but didn’t call it rape until I read that what was happening was actually rape. I went through a time when I was just going nuts within myself wondering what was happening in my head- things weren’t right and when I would do searches regarding rape- it never explained my situation which is similar to your situation. My husband would wait until I was asleep so that I had no choice in consent. I would be angry and yell and was manipulated into thinking that this is what was supposed to be. You have taught me to trust what my intuition is saying to me. If it’s not right, if it doesn’t feel right, well that means that it wasn’t right. Thank you again.
Sirirad
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I just came here from StumbleUpon. You say everything that I feel about rape but can’t articulate properly when people argue with me about it.
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Thanks for posting about this. It is a rough subject for many people, and it’s taboo in much of society.
After hearing your thoughts, I was interested to know what you think of male rape. Where in a female rapes a man. I think that a lot of people don’t believe that is possible, and the best term often given for that kind of event is “coercive sex”.
I am wondering because I’ve wondered for almost a year now whether it happened to me. I don’t want to think that it did, but I’ve seen that I have a lot of symptoms of rape victims. Such as feeling cowardly for allowing it to happen, and I’ve had two panic attacks from feeling like a woman is getting too aggressive. Now I can barely stand if a woman even expresses a desire for sex. I’d sort of prefer to stay away from that situation altogether.
I am torn by the fact that your premise appears to necessitate a fear of physical injury. In my case, I’m sure I could have fought her off, but she still made the same threatening physical gestures, such as pinning me to the wall and undressing me as I repeatedly told her no. What really effected me most was in what she said. She disparaged my reluctance to have sex and told me just how sad my behavior was making her. She claimed that I must not find her attractive to not want sex, and she told me that once she had taken off all of my clothes and gotten me into bed, that I’d feel different about it all and come around to wanting to sleep with her.
I started to feel like I was a fool that would be hurting her to say no, and even though I tried to stop her from removing my clothes, I wasn’t sure if maybe that was just how sex was. Maybe I was just unusually shy and I should “man up”. I mean, she was an attractive woman who obviously seemed to want me. I just wanted to keep sex out of it because I hadn’t done it before and wanted it to mean something when I finally did it.
Eventually she got me into her bed, and I was attracted enough to her for her to be able to have her way with me. As much as someone can when I wasn’t participating. I felt uneasy about her being over me, and I really just wanted it over with. I prefer talking or cuddling over that kind of thing. I feel bad because it did feel nice, but only she came. I was more interested in her ceiling and pillows than pleasure.
I just felt so horrible after that night, and I haven’t been able to get intimate with anyone since then. If a woman gets excited, I just freak out and panic. It doesn’t feel like it makes sense. I mean, I’m a man and I can barely find any information on it. Most of what I’ve heard is that since I relented to her advances, I must have wanted it. And since I’m a man, apparently I should just be glad I was with an attractive woman. It just doesn’t feel that way. I’ve been off since then, and my usually even temper hasn’t been what it used to be. It just seems like it’s either I was a wimp or some half-victim. It’s like everyone says a man can’t be raped, but it just feels so wrong.
Sometimes I feel like it was coercion, but then, maybe that’s just some odd seduction. I don’t know how to feel about it, and I can’t find anyone saying anything about it. I mean, why didn’t I fight back more? I could have gotten away. Since I stayed, does that mean it was just sex? She didn’t physically hurt me outside of a few accidental bruises. It has just been a long time, and your post made me think about how much I felt just like the women you mentioned. Just different enough for no one to seem to understand.
Thanks for your post.
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Mike,
What you have described to me sounds like rape. That doesn’t mean you have to call it rape, if you don’t feel comfortable doing so — many people don’t. And that doesn’t mean you have to do anything about it, if you do decide to call it rape. I just want to put that out there, because I know that for myself, the decision to label my experience as “rape” carried a lot of baggage — it meant I was now a “victim,” and I had to decide if I was going to tell people, if I should act like a “victim” when I told them, if I should talk to the police, etc. After my rape, I was way too freaked out to handle any of that additional crap. I had to wait until I felt safe and steady to really call it “rape,” and that was just how it had to go with me. So, while I would call what happened to you rape, you do not have to unless you feel that’s going to be helpful to you at this time.
I’m sorry for what happened to you, and I’m sorry for the additional trauma being raped by a woman adds. You’re very right that it’s considered somehow impossible for a man to be raped, or for a woman to want to rape a man. Many of the same gender stereotypes that encourage male-female rape — men constantly need and want sex, women are always too shy to say yes and need to be coerced, men are violent and women aren’t — make others think of your rape as an impossibility, or something “like” rape but not really. Your rapist used those stereotypes about men to rationalize her behavior, and as a result, caused you to question your masculinity for not “wanting” it.
I’m trying, on this blog, to write about my own experience, but I also try to open it up to a generalized experience, and some things get lost in the middle. I do talk only about women being raped here. When I started writing about rape on my blog, I considered making the pronouns gender-neutral. But the fact is, the majority of sexual assaults are perpetrated by men on women, and that was my experience as well, so I decided to stick with what was simpler grammatically and more accurate statistically. But I am aware that men can be raped — by both women and men — just as women can be raped by women. And I am also aware that these atypical rape victims experience even more isolation and less support than a typical rape victim, and that’s saying an awful lot. I’m sorry that I was, in some way, a part of that, though I hope you understand that I did not want to exclude other rape victims, or imply that they don’t exist. Since you found my blog and commented here, I think you do understand that, and I’m glad that you’ve found some experiences that are helping you understand your own.
Likewise, when I talk about a fear of physical assault, I’m trying to keep that somewhat general, and I’m also finding that I run out of words to describe what I’m trying to say. Some victims experience physical assault like we usually think of as “assault” — something that leaves a mark or draws blood. Some victims do feel a threat that without submitting, they will experience this assault. But I’m trying to make the idea of what constitutes an “assault” much broader, to encompass the threat many victims feel that doesn’t align with what we normally think of as “assault.”
A physical assault does not have to be something that leaves a mark, or draws blood. And a fear of physical assault does not have to be a fear of injury or death. It might be more accurate if I said a fear of physical confrontation. A physical confrontation may lead to physical assault, which may lead to injury, and the possibility that it may lead there creates a certain kind of fear and inhibition. But mostly, I think, the possibility of a physical confrontation leads people to rein themselves in and acquiesce, whether or not they feel that physical injury is likely. Physical confrontations are frightening — they’re meant to be — as well as confusing, and most people will avoid them if they can, whether or not they think the outcome of injury is very low. They avoid them because somebody who instigates a physical confrontation is somebody who has already shown you that they are unbalanced and willing to push things further than you are. Rapists — your rapist and mine — use this fear to their advantage.
I also want to point out something I’ve been trying to get across (I don’t know how well I have): an attempt at rape is itself a physical assault. I know we tend to think of an assault as involving real physical damage, but look at all the things you’ve experienced since your rape. Those symptoms didn’t appear out of thin air — they are the result of a physical attack, a physical assault on your body. We do not, in this culture, generally consider sex itself to constitute a physical assault, and especially if a man is being attacked, I think we expect to see some sort of larger fight occur before we call it assault. But unwanted sex, unwanted touching, unwanted anything between one person’s body and another is a physical attack, and creates the same kind of PTSD symptoms as a physical attack that draws blood.
Think of it this way: if you had been physically attacked in the way we are used to thinking of physical attack — bruises, broken bones, black eyes, blood drawn — you would have very little trouble identifying what happened to you as an assault. Likewise, if what had happened was wanted and enjoyable, you wouldn’t be experiencing all these negative after-effects. An attempt at rape is by itself a physical assault — a sexual assault — and a completed rape even more so. If it was not rape — if it was just sex — you would not be here, wondering what happened to you, and why you feel the way you do. And if it was a regular knock-down fight, you probably also wouldn’t wonder why you feel skittish, frightened, or confused — those are expected symptoms after a frightening experience.
But what you experienced was specifically meant to straddle that line — a physical assault masked as acceptable behavior. This makes rape a psychological assault as well. Again, if somebody just came up to you and punched you in the face, you would know two things: 1) you had been attacked, and 2) that person had done something aggressively wrong. But you were attacked in a much more manipulative way, and your rapists — as all rapists do — wanted you to think simultaneously that an attack had not occurred, and that the attack was your fault. She wanted you to think this because it’s what she had to tell herself in order to commit such a horrible act.
I know there are some resources out there for male rape victims, though I can’t tell you where or what they are offhand — but I am going to go looking and let you know what I find. I will tell you this: you are very brave, and very strong, and very smart, and I think you will get through this.
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Thanks so much for your reply. It’s been hard for me in defining what happened and what it means. I’ve struggled all of my life between being my honest self and manning up to get through things.
Reading so many of your posts, it’s clear to me about what happened, but you’re right about the act of calling it “rape”, it’s a difficult word to accept. I’m not sure I can fully accept saying that that is what it was, but I suppose I can accept an alternate phrase of “coercive sex”. Which, by definition, is rape, but I can’t wrap my mind around saying that that’s what happened to me. Maybe one day I’ll be able to, for better or worse.
Please excuse me for taking up your time and opening up this bit of my life. Few people know about it, but even fewer understand.
Reading through one of your previous posts, I was struck by the story of the two men at your work Guy 1 and Guy 2. Though I was with a woman, that description of events reminds me significantly of my own. I’ve blamed myself for not having the inner strength to push her off and run away, but that story illustrates my feelings perfectly. I am a muscular man whom used to play football, but I was subdued by an attractive young woman. What really seemed to paralyze me was the fact that I have known that woman since Elementary School. We grew up together. I never could imagine or could believe that she would be capable of what happened. I think that’s a big part of my denial on it. I can’t accept that my lifelong friend is that kind of person.
But she is. I can deny and accept it at the same time, because I know its true. Deep under my skin I know it. She lived a pattern of crooked coercion with my heart that sometimes feels like it crippled me more than any physical action ever did. After that night when she took me, she kept reeling me back in with her expounding of love and admiration, alongside cruel, careless comments that she would probably kill herself if she didn’t get to have me. She seemed to find it sexy to note how I was her only joy and greatest prize in life, the only thing giving her a reason to keep on going through the daily drudgery.
She mocked my personal faith and then apologized as though she were simply misunderstood, and once when she pinned me down and I froze, knowing some new terror, she caressed my hair telling me that I was damaged but would get through it eventually. Sometimes she seemed angry that I would shut down with her advances.
She even told me that she wanted to go get married; certainly that would help me be less nervous about allowing her to have sex with me. It was always about how much I was in the way of her getting what she wanted, and I felt bad that even my body was recoiling from her in fear. Panic saved me again and again, despite my mind telling me that I was drowning and dying with no place to get out.
After much prayer and focus, I eventually got up the nerve to tell her that she didn’t make me happy and I didn’t want to see her again. I also told her that something was wrong with her that she needed to fix before dating anyone ever again. I let her know that she would only bring sadness to anyone she was with if she didn’t get help.
Then she called me three weeks later to announce that she had met a new man and was already engaged. She begged that I come see her to wish her well and see her soon-to-be husband. So against my better judgment, I went to her home.
I spent some time with her fiance. A normal man who surprised me more by his lack of compatibility with her. He seemed too every day for that eccentric woman.
Then he left and I should have taken my leave.
She asked me about him, and I said he seemed to care about her. She then surprised me by kissing me and telling me that she really just wants to be with me. I am so shocked that I nearly freeze, but fortunately my fear wasn’t getting the best of me. I told her once again to not see me again, and I was outraged that she would abuse that man’s heart like that. I said one last time that if she cared at all for him and me, she’d get away from us and get some help. Despite her protestations, I fortunately made it out the door and drove away.
I haven’t seen her since. But every now and then I drive by her house on the way to the store(she lives less than a mile from me like some lurking shadow I can’t escape), and I cringe. I wonder what she is doing with herself or to someone.
One of my oldest friends. How can I accept that the same small girl who hugged my arm in 2nd grade is now a woman in her twenties that did that to me? That still does that to me in my head? She’s still in my mind, reminding me of how easily a woman could manipulate my desire to make her happy. How easily anyone I thought I knew could turn out to have a heart and mind that fills my heart with a deep chill of building terror. How perversion of love can become twisted obsession and drag two people down together, leaving scars I never want to even accept that I see.
It’s that fear and disbelief. That feeling like I can’t escape a looming problem I couldn’t even accept was there.
Thanks for listening to me. I am trying to deal with all of this in my own way, and it helps to know that there are people who understand the true mental toll of these acts, whether they occur once or are sustained over time.
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To Mike,
For what good it might do, please know you are not alone. Not only in what you are facing but in what happened as well. A male friend of mine went through it too. I believed him and I believe you. I don’t know if it helps but know you got one more on your side.
What continues to chaff at my mind though is how ANYONE can think that size and sex dictate what can cannot happen in terms of power and assault. How can anyone question the ability of a woman to do this after the pictures from Abu Gahrab came out? Anyone how has been to american public high schools knows that women can be masters at manipulation, mind games, and passive-aggressive cruelity.
Ok, getting off my soapbox now. Sorry if I hit on any raw nerves.
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Thanks Erica. It’s hard to find people that understand and are willing to listen; so I appreciate your support.
There is something sadly depraved about not only doing a horrendous act but then going through the motions of convincing someone that it isn’t evil. It seems like some of the greatest atrocities are those that go unspoken or kept hidden, as though manipulation and sheer disbelief are the proudest tools of deranged hearts.
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Mike, you are brave for talking openly about this and no, you are not alone.
Harriet, I remember having one of *those* discussions with a guy who insisted that if a man got pushy, all a woman had to do was give him a ringing, 1940s-movie-style slap to the face and that would immediately make her ‘no’ clear. It did not occur to this bozo that a rapist would take this as an invitation to beat her senseless (“she hit me first!”) or that a man determined to ignore a no would certainly not be put off by a slap. Or that a victim might be so afraid that she would be in no condition to react with violence.
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Harriet, your posts are amazing. I found your blog via Shapely Prose the other day, and every post in this series is brave and well-written and articulates the things that so many women have experienced in a way that helps us stop blaming ourselves.
I was date-raped in college, and I have to say, the 10 minutes or so of the actual attack was nothing compared to the aftermath, mostly expressed in people I trusted who supposedly cared about me second-guessing me and me second-guessing myself.
Keep blogging so that I don’t have to.
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Harriet, I would like to first thank you for explaining something that has confused me for years, namely, the invasion of personal space and the threat inherently involved in it. it is something I’ve seen for years in my studies of primates, primarilly the great apes, our closest biological cousins. The chain of events you described was presicisely what chimps, especially, do in any confrontation.
Now, I have wondered for years at the legal definition of rape, since I have been aware of the pressure women undergo to have sex, and have been uncomfortable with it. Your descriptions crystalized my awareness of the situation. Being 4’11” tall, I have been subject to similar pressure, not sexual of course, but of taller individuals, subconsiously or consiously, “looming” over me for advantage in a conversation,discussion, even debate. I can attest quite readilly exactly how unsettling this can be, even in academic circles, and have to most strongly agree that in a more relaxed setting, with fewer social restraints, the imminent threat of force or violence is most assuredly there.
You have also clarified the reasoning as to why more victims do not fight back in that situation. Now, if the legal system will accept ” the immediate fear for your life and well being ” as an arguement for self defense, I find it hypocrytical that the same cannot be said for rape. It’s a double standard that should not stand, especially in the light of how many rapes are followed by murder.
I will be the first to admit my views are not completely accurate, I am a male, and therefore, at least in part, party to the society that stigmatizes victims; I have in the past blew off reports of assault, at least, until it happened to both family and friends. You are right in your other posts how that makes it “real”, or brings it into focus. Also, I had an unusual upbringing, I was raised in 2 countries, part of an old family with knightly traditions, started martial arts training when I was five, and have a stubborn streak a mile wide. I have never accepted abuse from anyone, because I was raised that it should not be tolerated, ever. I was raised to protect those younger or weaker than me, and to stand up to the “bullies” as it were.
This attitude decimated my family in the late 30′s and early 40′s cause we actively joined the partisans against the Nazi’s, but at least we stood up to what we saw as evil. I was raised that ” All men are created equal, with certain inalienable rights from their creator”, which is why I consider Free Will the greatest gift from our creator, and why I am horrified by rape. It’s a worse crime than murder, because it haunts it’s victim for the rest of their lives. I also cannot wrap my mind around the concept of sex with an unwilling/ terrified/ nonparticipating partner. It is quite incomprehensible to me how any man can participate in this type of activity. Maybe it’s a failing on my part, but I cannot conceptualize this. The thought of being with an unwilling partner is literally revolting to me.
Your posts have made the methods decidedly clearer for me, and give me something to watch for, maybe I can be the person that steps in and says “stop”, I have many faults, but complacency is not one of them. And awareness of the problem and methods is a step in the right direction to hopefully correcting or stopping them. Just know you are not alone out there, there are a few decent people who will help; we just need to know what to look for.
Brightest Blessings to you all, Tomas Andreas
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Nice blog
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Thanks Mike.
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Hey Harriet, I’m glad I read this. I was just thinking about this exact issue and how it related to my experience. And still I often have to battle doubt in my mind like “Was I really raped? Did I really do all I could? Because I enjoyed the kissing was the rest of it rape? Could I have gotten away?”
But then I remember what I did that night, and I am glad you asked the question, “Could you have sex with someone who clearly expresses disinterest in having sex?” Because I was wondering, since I said no so many times, and because I was totally not participating, and then because I started crying hysterically while trying to get him off me, and then after he held me down and made me fear for my life until I agreed to let him finish, WHAT KIND OF A SICK FUCK WOULD STILL BE WILLING TO FUCK A GIRL WHO WAS CRYING AND CLEARLY EXTREMELY UPSET ABOUT THE WHOLE THING?
Obviously, my actions indicate to me that I REALLY didn’t want to do it, and yet allowed him to finish because I was afraid. And the fact that he COULD finish just shows you right there what kind of a twisted rapist mentality he had. He was so messed up, I didn’t realize until NOW why he insisted that I was having orgasms when I told him I wasn’t (I’m not a faking kind of girl). And why after that fucking horrible night he followed me around the cruise ship like we were a fucking romantic couple. I guess those stupid assholes really like to think that they are having some sort of romantic affair and that the woman is really enjoying herself, even if all the signs point to the opposite. Anyway…I needed this. It’s been over 8 years and I had started to think that maybe I wasn’t really raped, and maybe it WAS consensual. I guess I never had anyone intelligent to talk to about it before.
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I’m sorry for what you went through. You didn’t deserve it.
It’s funny how split up your mind can get. I always knew what happened to me was rape. There was never any real doubt in my mind. But there were still times that I questioned other aspects of it. Was it really that bad of a rape? Is it a rape I should really be this upset about? I mean, it was a pretty blase rape, as far as rapes go, so I should probably just stop thinking about it. Once, to my bear’s horror, I questioned aloud whether I should really be calling it a rape, not because I didn’t think it was, but it just seemed like it would be so much easier to deal with if it didn’t have that word attached to it. I couldn’t realistically call what had happened consent, but if I could find some way to make “rape” not so bad, I mean, that was almost as good as consent.
At the same time, I felt all sorts of shame for going through those mental acrobats. I mean, I was raped, I should prosecute, I should get angry, I should fight back. What the hell was wrong with me that I was laying down for all this?
One day it occurred to me that all the excuses I was using for why it wasn’t really rape-y enough were the exact same excuses my rapist was using. And all the shame and self-hatred I felt for not fighting back were the same feelings he had towards me that allowed him to dehumanize me enough to go through with it. I just felt this sudden connection to him — oh my god, man, this is what you think, this is what you feel all the time — and though I didn’t have what you might call empathy (empathy has a sort of kindness in it), I had something like understanding. At least, enough understanding to stop feeling like it was this totally random chaotic thing that came out of nowhere and shook up my life and would never ever make sense. I realized I didn’t need to be reading a thousand books about rape to understand what happened, as though only an educated expert could possibly be qualified (though it didn’t hurt to read those books); I just needed to listen to my own thoughts, and understand that they were the same thoughts going through the heads of other rape victims and other rapists. And the most lasting “fighting back” I could probably manage in this sucky hand of cards was changing those thoughts.
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Thanks, Harriet. That’s kind of a sucky revelation, to realize that we are guilty of thinking about ourselves the same way that rapists do.
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It doesn’t make me excuse rapists in any way, but it does make them less unknowable and alien and frightening, in some ways. And it makes me all the more dedicated to changing those beliefs, and their pervasiveness. I look at my own thoughts, and I look at the thoughts of a rapist, and I think, “Here we hold these same beliefs, and they caused you to commit an unspeakable crime against your own humanity and mine, and they caused me to feel I deserved it, and it caused people who cared about and loved me to lose my presence in their lives entirely because they felt I deserved it, too. I have to stop this thing that created these beliefs so that you and I no longer live this way and do these things.” And it makes me feel less powerless. Taking down a whole patriarchal institution? Yeah fucking right. Deeply analyze my most unexamined beliefs and request that others who want to be in my life do the same? That I can do.
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Thank you for writing this.
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This is a very insightful post about the subtle nature of force. I’d like to share a pair of stories, which are not about rape, but are about force subtle and otherwise, and about people’s judgments about the same.
Hopefully they can help people (as rethinking them helped me) generalize beyond the sexual and gender context of rape to understand better by way of analogy.
A few months ago I was robbed by a pair of adolescent boys. I was approached by them, they asked for my cellphone, I said “no” so they beat me up, took my wallet and ran off. This is not terribly uncommon.
What is telling is what happened when I went back home with a black eye and had to explain myself. I was telling the story to my uncle and in place of sympathy I was being told what an idiot I was that I had resisted, that you should never resist, and that don’t I know that I could have been killed if they’d been armed with more than fists?
In addition to being a reverse of rape’s “blaming the victim” (you’re supposed to fight back, I wasn’t supposed to) there was an additional element of uncertainty that you alluded to regarding not knowing what they’re going to do.
The reason I fought back (said no and tried to protect my belongings while I was punched and kicked) was that *it didn’t feel like a robbery at first*. I live in a big city where people come up to you all the time and ask you for stuff, try to sell you things often aggressively. I reacted the way I usually do, told them no and tried to ignore them. By the time it became clear to me that they were going to take it by force it was too late to quietly surrender and I had to “fight” (insofar as you can call what I was doing fighting). Like you say, you don’t exactly stand back in these situations and make cost-benefit calculations like “will a few bruises be worth extra evidence in court” or “what is the percentage risk that this will end in my death”. It’s all fight or flight instinct.
My response to my uncle was “so what I’m just supposed to give all my stuff to any asshole who pretends like he might have a weapon?” My uncle’s answer was yes absolutely.
This infuriated me at the time, but now it helps me understand what you’ve said about sex with your abusive ex-husband: an explicit palpable threat is not always necessary for rape. And if we say that your consent under duress was not rape then we could say that if I’d done like my uncle said and not resisted, but given them my phone before I was clearly threatened with violence, it would somehow cease to be robbery and become charity. Yeah right.
Which brings me to my second example.
Months later I was walking across an open plaza and was approached by a man who asked me for money. Normally I wouldn’t have responded but I had headphones on so I had to stop and take them off to hear what him at which point I was already stuck. I asked how much and he said 10 dollars, which is more than I was interested in giving him. And then he kept insisting “c’mon man I don’t wanna steal, I’m a good guy, I don’t wanna steal”. Sounds nice, but implied in that plea was a sense I got that he would steal said money if I didn’t give it. I finally pulled out a 10 just to get myself out of an uncomfortable situation and he immediately said “give me thirty” and I was so terrified that I did. Then without thanks he quickly turned around and walked away.
In this example there was neither violence nor any explicit threat. And yet it was most certainly NOT charity any more than your stories, or the stories of the other commenters were consensual sex. I gave him the money based on feelings of duress and fear—my heart was pounding as I was talking to him and I was doing a quick inventory of the things of value I had on my person. This is not what goes through your mind when you’re making a charitable donation. And yet if I tried to tell someone afterwards that I was just robbed they’d say “but in broad daylight in a busy plaza…and he didn’t have a gun or threaten you or anything? Dude you weren’t robbed you’re just stupid.”
So on top of it I left the transaction feeling ashamed, feeling angry, like I wish that I’d kicked him in the balls and ran away, which I wouldn’t have felt if there’d been the obvious threat of a loaded gun. And as with these stories of rape, he was now able to frame it in a way that made it seem like he wasn’t doing a bad thing. “I don’t want to steal. I’m a good guy”. Bullshit.
I should add that I don’t mean to say with this that “I know what it’s like to be raped because I was robbed a few times”. What I am saying is that thinking about these experiences helped me to get, as a man who has never been raped, some of those difficult gray areas that cause victims confusion, friends and family misunderstanding, and perpetrators justification and willful ignorance.
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After I escaped my abusive ex, I learned something (well, I learned a whole lot of things, but here’s one of them): physical abuse is not limited to a person physically attacking your body. Throwing things aggressively (even if it’s not at you), driving erratically when he knows it frightens you, punching walls in your presence…those thing all constitute physical abuse. Not that the law sees it that way, but it cleared a lot of things up for me mentally when I realized that.
People who do not understand the dynamics of abuse often say things like, “I don’t understand why someone would stay in a situation like that. The very first time my partner hit me, I would leave.” What they are not taking into account is the slow escalation of physical intimidation that puts an abused partner in fear and conditions her to accepting worse and worse treatment. And the first time my ex physically attacked my body, he did not hit me. He pushed me. Just barely. It was no more remarkable than a person in a crowded subway station bumping you rudely as he or she hurried onto a train. Not nice, certainly, but a reason to leave? After all, I hadn’t left when he punched a hole in the wall or when he threw a dish in my general direction and broke it or when I begged him to slow down his driving because he was scaring me and he sped up instead. By the time the attacks became more violent and frightening, it seemed like my own fault for letting it come to that. When all of society seems to agree with your abuser that you’re somehow bringing it all on yourself, it’s hard not to question whether they’re right.
But as you have pointed out, even those forms of physical violence which do not constitute actual bodily harm aren’t necessary in order to intimidate, manipulate and traumatize someone into letting them get whatever it is they want at a given moment (or keeping someone in fear in the hopes that they’ll get it eventually). This post gave me a new perspective and helped to really clarify my thoughts on a particular aspect of what I went through after I left.
I have a protective order against my ex. Among other things, it prohibits him from contacting me in any way besides in writing and about anything at all besides the care of my child (he is unfortunately her biological father, and though I have sole custody, he still has certain “rights.” It has been explained to me that he will never lose these rights unless he basically actually kills one of us).
Shortly after I got the PO, he began calling me to “talk.” During my relationship with him, it was a matter of survival to keep abreast of his moods, his thoughts, his feelings. It was one of the only ways I had to try to protect myself against frightening situations. When something becomes so ingrained, it should not surprise anyone that despite everything, I picked up the phone when he called the first time. He proceeded to start talking about what a mistake I was making and how he hadn’t done anything wrong. He also stated casually that he’d found out where I was staying (my address was protected) and then hastened to add that he was just worried about me and was happy I was in a safe place. I firmly stated that he was not supposed to contact me about anything besides our child and that I would not have this conversation with him. He kept going, and I kept saying the same thing. Finally, I hung up.
Afterward, I debated whether or not to report the violation. I felt it was at least partially my fault for answering the phone and then for not hanging up immediately. I didn’t think the police would take me seriously. I sat paralyzed for several hours, wondering what to do and feeling terrified that even a PO had apparently not dissuaded him from feeling entitled to me, until my friend came home from work. I told her what had happened, and she convinced me to call the police.
The dispatcher was impatient. The first thing she said after I told her why I was calling was to ask, “This happened how many hours ago? And you just suddenly decided it was worth reporting now?” She listened to my explanation of the events and then informed me that there had been no violation, so I pulled out the PO and read her the terms, word for word, which stated explicitly that he was not to discuss anything at all with me besides the welfare of our child. She berated me for having picked up the phone. She then asked whether he’d made a direct threat on my life. I said no. She asked whether he’d physically showed up with a weapon. I said no. She told me there was nothing she could do for me in a voice that let me know she wasn’t happy about me wasting her time like this and then hung up before I could say anything further.
After this happened several times (the subsequent times, I was reporting missed calls and voice mails, as I’d decided it was not going to be in my best interest to answer the phone), I gave up on looking to the police for help. They made it very clear that they were not going to do anything until something bad enough happened that it would most likely be too late.
What your post helped me clarify is why this was so messed up. By violating the PO, my ex was letting me know that he could find me, he could hurt me, I wasn’t safe, and that he felt secure in the fact that no one would do anything about it. He didn’t directly threaten me. He didn’t have to. The implications were more than enough to terrify me and keep me caught up in the psychological bonds he’d formed during the relationship.
The way our legal system copes with rape and abuse has got to change, beginning with a comprehensive education on the dynamics of both for anyone who may ever come into contact with an abuser, rapist, or a victim, including court personnel, judges, police, attorneys, CPS workers, therapists, etc.
By ignoring all forms of psychological and emotional manipulation and intimidation and the consequences thereof, our legal system, society, and culture are actually aiding and even encouraging rapists and abusers. When it becomes clear to a victim that seemingly the entire world is allied with the rapist or abuser and not her (or him), it’s an understandable and even sometimes necessary reaction to simply give up and focus instead on immediate survival. It also becomes very hard not to begin the process of second-guessing and self-blame.
And so it really shouldn’t be any wonder at all that women stay in abusive relationships or that they overwhelmingly do not report their rapes. Until the law in particular and society and culture in general begin to see past the cultural myths and stereotypes surrounding rape and abuse, I don’t expect that any of this will change.
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Aestas, please do not take this as blaming you in any way, but merely as a suggestion of something that may or may not work for you, and one that you certainly do not owe me an explanation of as to whether you will follow it, won’t follow it or for that matter even think about it.
Instead of going through the dispatcher, would it be possible to go directly to the police station, perhaps at a different time of day? Depending on where you live, it is possible that the issue is a particular idiotic phone dispatcher, and a live person at the police department – perhaps a police officer – may be more sympathetic and helpful.
Back in the day when I volunteered at law school at the legal aid clinic, 99% of our caseload was helping women get out of abusive marriages. (Not because that was our mission. Because we were doing triage.) And it was a gallows-humor joke that when a client dealt with a police officer or employee who was unhelpful or obstructive, we’d say “Tell her to move to a different precinct.” Some police officers took restraining orders seriously; some didn’t. Some would respond promptly to a 911 call from a battered woman; some wouldn’t.
Even though things still suck, most police departments are more progressive now than they were in the mid-80s (they could hardly be LESS progressive, ha ha ha). Maybe you are running into a roadblock in the form of a fossil, one that can be gone around. I’m sorry.
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The reading of your article brought back so much pain. After sitting here reading all of the responses and the pain that is worse, usually, than the physical attack in the aftermath, I have to ask:
Has anyone re-victimized themselves as a form of self punishment when nobody believed they went through the rape in the first place?
I have. When I was raped, I did everything I was supposed to do. I reported him to the military police and sat for 5 hours until I had to pee so bad I couldn’t hold it anymore. The evidence got mostly flushed. They said because I was a civilian, the civilian police would have to handle it. They told me they wouldn’t prosecute him because if the military wouldn’t do anything, then clearly it wasn’t a crime.
I called crisis centers, counselors, the hospital administration, the lawyers in the area, but nobody would help put that man behind bars.
He called and said he wanted to apologize for any “misunderstanding” that may have taken place. I thought I was safe at my friend’s house, but I wasn’t and it happened again. I didn’t report it that time. What would be the point?
Months later, I heard through the grapevine, that he’d hurt another woman bad enough for her to have bite scars on her body (one of his subdue methods). Nobody but me heard her screaming. I didn’t even take joy in the fact that she was one of the people who said I made it up.
What’s wrong with me that I’d allow it the second time?
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If you “allowed” it, it wouldn’t be rape. Rape and consent are mutually exclusive. If you’d “allowed” it, you wouldn’t be doubled over in pain, beating yourself up, wondering what was wrong with you, because if you’d “allowed” it, it would have just been some sex you’d had. And you probably have never reacted to sex the way you are reacting to this; that’s because this is not sex.
There was sex I had with my ex-husband that was more or less consensual. Considering the context of our relationship, there was nothing that could really truly approach consensual, but it was sex that happened when I was actually wanting sex, and it somewhat fulfilled that need. When I think back on that sex, it doesn’t make me feel bad (aside from it being my ex, and gross). It doesn’t feel painful to remember. It wasn’t great sex, so it’s pretty much just a blah memory.
The sex that wasn’t consensual is burned in my mind. When I think of it, when I remember it, I feel physical pain. I get panicky. If I’m not careful and gentle with myself, I will immediately descend into a spiraling pit of “what’s wrong with you, you fat bitch, why didn’t you fight him.”
A welling-up of self-hatred is probably the best indicator you have that something was done to you. Done to you. Not “something you did.” It can be hard to see that, because the self-hatred keeps the blame from heading outwards. That’s what it’s designed to do. It works out well for the rapist if you blame yourself (he’ll encourage you, by blaming you as well), and it also fulfills some needs you might have, such as the need to feel in control. You encountered so many obstacles to getting help. All the people that were supposed to support you didn’t. So you deal with the trauma of rape, of having control of your actual physical body taken away from you, and then you deal with the trauma of having the support net you believed existed taken away. Your ability to protect yourself and influence the world around you was deflected at every turn.
Out of all that’s been taken away, the one thing you have left to control is your mind. If you can hate yourself, if you can convince yourself it was your fault, and that you deserved it, then you can take back some control. You can tell yourself that if you had only done this or that thing, the rape wouldn’t have happened, and people would have helped you afterwards. That can be more comforting, sometimes, than believing that your physical body is unsafe, and there is nowhere you can go for protection, and there is absolutely no good reason for any of that. That’s a really chaotic and unstable and unpredictable way to think of the world. It can be easier to think of the world as a place that makes perfect sense, and has rules that will be followed, and has authority that will be listened to, provided you just do the right things. You can either live in a world that’s chaotic and frightening, or you can convince yourself that you’re the chaotic and frightening one.
I think, in the long run, it’s healthier to confront the fact that the world is an unfair place. But that may not be where you are right now, and that’s okay. Working through crisis mode is different than working through your problems when you feel safe and stable. If it makes you feel safer to blame yourself right now, that’s just how you need to cope right now. You only need to do what’s right for you. Once the crisis passes, you may find you don’t need to blame yourself anymore. You may find that what felt like self-hate is actually anger that had no good way of coming out. How can you express anger if you have nobody who will listen? Nobody who will empathize? Nobody who makes you feel safe enough to express a vulnerable, painful feeling? Over the course of your life, you will probably find people who can hear your anger, can empathize, can make you feel safe. And you will probably learn that you can be that person for yourself. But until you can do that for yourself, or find another person to listen, you will have to deal with these feelings in whatever way feels right to you.
I don’t know if you’ve read this post yet, but it might add some extra depth to what I’m trying to say here:
http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/some-thoughts-this-weekend/
I’ve known many girls who have been abused, and seem to put themselves into bad situations over and over again. It’s easy to say “they want to be abused.” Nobody wants abuse. It wouldn’t be abuse if you wanted it. Which is kind of the point of putting yourself in a bad situation where abuse has a high outcome. If you believe that you cannot escape abuse, you cannot control it, you cannot be saved, then you either have to live in the knowledge that a horrible thing will/can/keeps happening to you and it’s not fair and you can’t stop it, or you can re-define it as “not abuse.” And you can redefine it as “not abuse” by volunteering for it, because nobody volunteers for abuse, right? It can’t be abuse if you want it. So you volunteer, and it’s not abuse anymore, and you can stop having to deal with the horror of being abused. It’s pretty logical, especially if you have begun to expect abuse.
This isn’t very different than all the times I consented to sex with my husband not because I wanted sex, but because I knew saying no would make it rape. The sex was going to happen whether or not I wanted it, and the only thing I felt I could control was whether or not it was undeniably rape. Because I didn’t want to deal with being a rape victim, I just said yes, and made it “consensual.” It wasn’t consensual, because I never had a choice. He decided that sex was going to happen, and anything I said or did wasn’t going to change that outcome. If the sun is setting, and you say, “I am making the sun set!” that doesn’t make it so. The sun was setting no matter what you felt or said about it. But you can make yourself feel like a real wizard and a half if you pretend that you were responsible.
But that’s all about your internal motivations. And your motivations have nothing to do with another person’s actions. You can’t control other people. I have been in multiple situations where it would have been easy for male friends to rape me, because I was self-destructively drunk. In some of those situations, I was subconsciously hoping something bad would happen to me, because I felt I deserved for bad things to happen to me. But none of those male friends raped me. It didn’t matter how intense my intentions were; they had full control over their actions, and they chose not to rape me.
I did not want to be raped by my husband. I had incredibly strong intentions to not be raped by my husband. It didn’t matter how strong those intentions were. He made a choice to act as a rapist. He didn’t have to do that. He had a choice, and he chose the thing that would cause me immense pain, because he felt I deserved it, and/or felt that my pain didn’t outweigh his desire. I could not influence or change his decision in any way. He was going to have the sex he felt he deserved from me. That was his responsibility, his choice. I did not have a choice in becoming a victim. I only had a choice in how much to struggle, which wasn’t a choice about ending the rape, but a gamble on how violent he was willing to make the rape. I chose not to struggle. I’d rather be raped than raped and dead.
You may have put yourself in bad situations. You may have done so because you believe terrible, hateful things about yourself. You may have thought some things about yourself, or wanted things, that make you ashamed. That has no bearing on what your rapist did. Your rapist chose to rape. You couldn’t have stopped that choice. You have no power over his choice. You can hate yourself all you want, you can make self-destructive decisions all you want; that’s all your bag, all your right, all your responsibility. You don’t have the right to destroy somebody else, but you have every right to destroy yourself.
For somebody else to act upon you, that’s their decision. It has nothing to do with the thoughts in your head, your feelings toward yourself, what you were wearing, who believed you. Only one person had the choice over whether or not your rape happened, and that was your rapist. Without him, there would have been no rape. Without him, there would have been a sad, terrified, angry, vulnerable woman, but there would not have been a second rape. Rape only happens when rapists are present. It does not happen every time you think about how much you hate yourself, or how much you deserve it. Rape does not happen every time you get drunk and walk down a dark alley. Rape does not happen every time you are happy and blissfully unaware of how vulnerable you are. Rape only happens when you do those things in the presence of a rapist. He made the choice to become a rapist, and he made the choice to use you as his victim. You made the choice, today, to survive with that knowledge. Tomorrow you will get to make that choice again. And each day, you will get to choose all over again whether to survive, and how. That’s a heavy burden to carry, and it’s not fair. It’s not your fault, and that’s why it’s not fair.
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Whenever I start down that path of “I could have fought harder” I try to remember that NO ONE should ever have to say No more than once. The fact that we feel it’s our fault on some level (whatever conscious or unconscious level that may be) is due to conditioning by rape culture that the victim is to blame, that the onus is on women to prevent rape.
But the men who don’t listen when you say No once aren’t going to magically stop when you say it five more times, or say it like you mean it. Or cry. Or give in out of fear or the desire to get away (like I did). They don’t care what we say or how much we hate it as long as they get what they want. I think they know damn well (as Harriet says, how can they NOT know?? it’s really fucking obvious to anyone who doesn’t have a vested interest in pretending otherwise) that it’s rape and they are deliberately taking advantage of/ playing on our societal conditioning to make us be quiet about it.
As they say in 12-steps, No is a complete sentence.
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I hadn’t heard that last bit there. I really like it.
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Late to the party on this one, of course, but I had a relevant experience with these ideas about force, for the first time since I’ve understood them completely.
My boyfriend is an avowed pacifist; he’s short-ish and pale and a little pudgy and wears glasses and generally is awkward and nerdy-looking. I love him dearly and trust him about as much as I can trust anyone. I am fully confident that he would never become violent against a woman.
The other night he came over to my apartment for dinner, and we were cooking–separately, as we have quite different tastes. I was standing by the counter salting my finished food and he was a few feet away at the stove, browning some sausage. Suddenly there was a loud clattering and his skillet flipped off the stove and sausage flew everywhere. He yelled “Jesus FUCK!” and jumped away from the stove. Sausage and oil all over the floor, open gas burner still running, he cursed and sighed really, really angrily for several more seconds. Then he became rather violent, just in the way he moved and the way he THREW his spatula sharply into the sink, SLAMMED the skillet back onto the stove, GRABBED the broom and dustpan that I offered him, KICKED the garbage can as he tossed the sausage into it… etc. etc. etc. All the while with the cursing, angry movement and whatnot.
Now, I have a few angry friends. One of my best girlfriends in particular will kick a chair or throw a pillow at the wall forcefully if she’s ranting about something that makes her mad. But nothing from my girlfriends, however overwhelmingly angry they get, made me feel like this.
In my conscious mind I *knew* my boy wasn’t going to throw anything at me or hurt me or threaten me. But reflexively, uncontrollably, I shrank back, I cowered in the corner of the kitchen. I scurried behind him to turn off the burner, because practically I was afraid he’d drop the spatula into it or something; I offered him the broom so that he didn’t have to pick all his sausage up with his hands; I murmured “I’m so sorry dear”, knowing he had been really looking forward to a tasty and expensive meal. But I did all these things from a distance: because in the pit of my gut there was a terrible wrenching twisting fear. The way he was moving and throwing things around indicated something to my monkey-brain that I just couldn’t turn off, and I could hardly move, breathe or talk normally until he had calmed down.
This has happened a very few times before in the last couple of years, in similar contexts–very upsetting momentarily, but totally impersonal and easily resolved/gotten over: everything from an accidentally-missed deadline for a minor project, to a major video game loss just before a save point. Never, ever when the two of us are in conflict–if we’re fighting, or maybe just borderline-annoyed with each other, he keeps his body calm and gentle and never does anything physically threatening even when being vocal about the issues.
Just made me think of this post. It helped me understand why I feel so afraid when he is (very briefly, very rarely) violently angry–even though I know it would never escalate and it’s never actually in relation to something for which he’s finding fault with me.
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