Good afternoon – I’m glad to be here with you today, and happy to support this event to raise awareness about sexual assault and intimate-partner violence.
Our culture has become one that promotes rape; one in which sexual violence and violence against women is commonplace, and in which the media, shared attitudes, and practices excuse or tolerate this violence. Did you ever hear or laugh at those blond jokes – they’re always about a woman who is portrayed as stupid but sexy. We make value judgments about each other that promote these attitudes - have you ever been with someone who looked at a woman wearing a skimpy dress and heels and said, "she's asking for it" - "it" being sex, consensual or not? Movies feature women being beaten, maimed, and raped and we call this entertainment. Sexualized violence toward women occurs in cultures where women are judged as being sexually available simply because of their gender. Victim-blaming and the objectification of women are both behaviors found in rape cultures, and both problems are rampant in the US. Just last year, an article in the New York Times suggested that an eleven year old girl was responsible for her gang-rape by a group of men and boys because she sometimes wore make-up and dressed in what they called “suggestive clothing.”
When I was in thirteen years old, I was sexually harassed, abused, and molested almost every day. It happened at school and the culprits were boys I had known for years. Teachers and workers at the school knew what was happening. The school’s principal witnessed one of the events and walked by without saying anything as I was grabbed, held immobile, and touched. He took me aside later and said that what happened was my fault. I shouldn’t wear make-up, he said; I shouldn’t wear perfume, and I should keep my shirts buttoned all the way up to the collar. I shouldn’t laugh at their jokes or even talk to them. I was humiliated by his response and I began to blame myself for the way I looked, for the fact that my body had developed over the summer, and for the way they reacted to me. He told me that I was responsible for making them stop, and that if I yelled loud enough and hit back hard enough, they would leave me alone. I went home, devastated, and told my mom a little bit about what had happened. She replied that this type of behavior was normal for boys, and that I should learn how to deal with it.
So I tried doing what they said. I wore high-necked, long-sleeved shirts. I fought back when I was trapped and molested. I yelled louder and I hit harder. I tried to deflect the abuse with jokes or just by confining myself to the classroom instead of going to the gym or the cafeteria where they tended to congregate. But on the last day of the school year, I was cornered in a quiet, enclosed place, and I was sexually assaulted by this group of boys I had always called my friends. When I told my best friend what had happened, she said, “That’s sick – why didn’t you fight them off?” and then it was over a year before she even spoke to me again. Another trusted person replied, “Don’t tell me you got yourself ruined” when I began to disclose about the assault.
After that, I lived my life as a prisoner of fear. I was terrified that people would find out what happened to me. I couldn’t bear the thought that people would look at me with disgust or pity because I had been raped. I didn’t report the assault. For a long time, I didn’t even think about it, though it colored every single facet of my life. There was no part of me that did not change after I was raped. I lost my ability to plan, to set goals and achieve them. I lost my desire to excel. I didn’t want to see people and I didn’t want to be seen. I developed post traumatic stress disorder and I had lots of triggers, each of which I worked hard to avoid. I dropped out of college after two years, I got married and then I confined myself to the house. I didn’t work. I didn’t go out. Even talking on the telephone was an ordeal, because one of my triggers was hearing male voices without being able to see the source. I lived that way for about twelve years before I was able to find help in the form of an online group of survivors of rape and abuse. Sharing my story was the first step on the road to healing. I learned that what happened to me was not my fault. I discovered that I wasn’t crazy; I had PTSD and I learned how to manage it. Within a year I had found a job and began to find myself again. I could finally see how much of myself I had lost in the aftermath of trauma – I couldn’t even remember what my ambitions had been before the rape. I couldn’t remember what I liked to do. I had no sense of self at all – my entire being was wrapped up in those endless painful moments that still haunted me. But I got better. I found myself again, and I found that my marriage wasn’t working any more, that my coping methods were disastrous, and that I had the power to make decisions for myself. I left my marriage in 2009 and became involved with a man later that year who I believed understood and loved me for who I was.
I was wrong. The relationship became abusive within a few months of its beginning. At first it was little things – he yelled at me when he was frustrated by his day. He threw things when he got upset. One night at around midnight, I left his house after a particularly bitter argument and he destroyed several of my belongings before begging me to come back. We reconciled and he agreed to get counseling for his emotional issues. He went to counseling, and things got better for a short while, but his anger returned. I backed out of the relationship only to have him turn up on my doorstep, drunk and clutching a half-empty bottle of rum. He forced me to have sex that night, and the next night he held a knife to my throat and hit me so hard that I was dizzy for a week and my head hurt for a month. He threatened suicide if I didn’t stay, so I stayed. After all the work I had done, after all the steps I had taken toward healing, I was still blaming myself for what happened, still clinging to that attitude that this must all be my fault and I deserved to be hurt. A month later, the relationship ended in a horrible day of violence when he wouldn’t let me leave his house for over ten hours, pushing me down and lying on top of me, touching and kissing me and begging me not to leave him – alternating his pleas with screaming and violence. He swallowed a handful of aspirin at about 2 am and while he was forcing himself to vomit, I stole my spare house-key from his desk drawer and left for good. He kept calling, kept turning up at my workplace. My tires were slashed, he hired a private investigator to follow me around and dig into my past. Six months later and with the help of Legal Aid, I got an order of protection against him and finally had some peace.
I believe that my experience as a child drove my experience as a woman; if I had not been blamed for the rape I would never have tried to take responsibility for the abuse I suffered later. But I know now that none of that was my fault. Sure, I made choices – we all do – but in the end, all my choices were taken away by people who felt entitled to abuse, to harm, to take whatever they wanted. And afterward, what little self-worth I had left was destroyed by our culture of victim-blaming. I should have been helped. I should have been nurtured. I should have been encouraged to report what happened to me. I should have had medical attention and treatment for the aftermath of the trauma. The system failed me, and that is the human cost of living in a society that allows and even encourages sexual violence.
Life in a rape culture affects all of us. The rape of one woman is degrading to all women; each time one of us is dragged down, the rest of us know a heightened sense of fear. Maybe this is why women indulge in victim-blaming too. Isn't it safer if we can reduce the victim, if we can make the rape her fault? If we are able to say "she shouldn't have worn that skirt" or "she shouldn't have painted her nails red and worn high heels" or "she shouldn't have been in a car with that man" then we are able to say, by default, that such a horrible thing could never happen to US. No, we are safe - we would have better sense than to wear a mini-skirt or have red nails and high heels, or to go on a date with someone who hadn't been thoroughly checked-out first. Wouldn't we?
The plain fact is that as women, we are all at risk. Deep down, we all live in fear of rape, and we all limit our behavior because of it. It's why we go to the bathroom in pairs, why we take our girlfriends along when we go to the movies, why we ask our husbands to accompany us to the laundrymat or the grocery store. The fact of rape holds the entire female population hostage, in a constant position of fear and subjugation, even though there are many men who do not - and would never - commit rape, and there are many women who are never victims of rape. This is the legacy of our culture; this is the legacy of "no means yes" and "she's asking for it".
So - what if we just stop?
What would happen if we suddenly stopped listening to jokes that sexually degrade women? What would happen if we refused to take part in conversations that objectify women? What if we stopped watching movies or television shows that promote violence toward women? What would be the result if we taught our sons to do the same? What if men defined their own masculinity and refused to allow stereotypical definitions of it to rule their lives and their actions?
Women, we need to think about it, too. Instead of saying that women should take self-defense classes or should be careful how they dress and where they go, what if we teach our sons not to commit acts of sexual aggression? What if we teach our daughters that they are worth more than casual, physical contact? What if we refuse to live in a rape-culture? What if we refuse to indulge in victim blaming and admit that we know rape can happen to anyone? What if we speak with our fathers, our husbands, our brothers, and our sons, and communicate to them that their actions shape our lives?
We are all responsible for the culture we live in. Every single one of us, every time we hear a sexually explicit and demeaning joke and we laugh instead of calling down the joker; every time we see a headline that says "Woman Claims Rape" and we question whether it really happened; every time we scrutinize the history, backgrounds, dress, and motives of a victim of rape, we ARE building the culture in which these crimes continue, unabated. We must work together to make this world better, none of us can do this alone.
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, but rape occurs all the time, everywhere, and can happen to anybody. One in four women will experience sexual violence. Before the age of 18, one in six men experiences some type of unwanted sexual contact. Sexual violence is a crime of rage, anger, and darkness and it engenders consequences that are life-altering for survivors. But we can bring light out of this darkness by raising awareness, by refusing to remain silent, by not allowing ourselves to be blamed for what happened to us. Together, we can make a difference to many people. Let’s work to end sexual violence on a cultural level, to support survivors, and to make our world a safer place.
Thank you.
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