So this is terrifying and it shouldn't be and that's why I'm posting it
I've been thinking about this for a while. I've been trying to come to grips between the things I have been hearing, learning, now as I grow older, as this generation becomes more vocal, and the things I had been taught before. Not by my parents. Not by anyone specifically, even. By society. Those ingrained lessons you learn as a child. Girls don't like sports. Boys don't cry. Women should be beautiful. A catcall is a compliment. What you are wearing is a significant factor in whether or not you are raped, and you are responsible for that. There is no such thing as rape in a relationship.
It's that last one I've been thinking about. And it makes me uncomfortable. I feel as if it's a grey area; that in some relationships, yeah, a man will take it too far. Isn't it the statistic that most women are raped by someone they know or are dating? But in other relationships, maybe there are other things that don't count.
I've been learning a lot about consent in the past year. I realize I haven't always practiced it, and that even now I have a hard time practicing it. It helps that I'm with someone who practices it openly and constantly. He will always ask me. Even when I don't want to be asked, when I feel like I am being pretty explicitly implicit about what I want. He always asks. And I appreciate it because I had never had that experience before. And it makes me uncomfortable, because I realize how long I went being touched in my life without being explicitly asked if I wanted it.
I feel still that what happened to me on many multiple occasions over several years isn't really 'rape.' I mean, I didn't say no. I never said "Stop touching me," "Don't do that," "I'm not okay with this," because I wasn't supposed to, right? I was in a relationship. I was supposed to want him. I was, in a sense, obligated to have a sex life.
Now, part of me realized at the time how ridiculous that was. I knew I wasn't obligated. But I loved him, and he put so much importance on the frequency of sex that I didn't want to disappoint him. I felt like I was failing the relationship if we didn't have sex every other day, that somehow I, by my lack of interest and energy, was contributing to a slow decay of us. And he was never ever violent. I didn't see the requesting of a blow job if I was too tired to have sex as emotional abuse. I didn't think of the way he would constantly ask me for sex and get really disappointed or sad or distant as emotional abuse. I honestly don't think he did either. We grew up together in this long long journey of a relationship. We learned from each other. I did him a disservice because I didn't try to educate him, to share with him the things I was learning in college, in class, online, from my friends and colleagues.
So I still struggle with the idea that I was repeatedly raped by a man I loved and was very close to, because I know he never intended to rape me. He would be horrified if he ever thought of it like that.
But that's what it is. There is no excusing it. And it took someone outside to point this out to me, to look at me wide-eyed and alarmed when I said I spent a lot of time living the phrase "Lie back and think of England."
And this is how I know rape culture is endemic in our society. Because I, a white, privileged, cisgender, educated, feminist woman with a wealth of support didn't recognize rape for rape in my own life, or take steps to stop it; and because I still feel as if it was my responsibility to stop it, instead of his (and mine) to ask and to respect the answer.
It's that last one I've been thinking about. And it makes me uncomfortable. I feel as if it's a grey area; that in some relationships, yeah, a man will take it too far. Isn't it the statistic that most women are raped by someone they know or are dating? But in other relationships, maybe there are other things that don't count.
I've been learning a lot about consent in the past year. I realize I haven't always practiced it, and that even now I have a hard time practicing it. It helps that I'm with someone who practices it openly and constantly. He will always ask me. Even when I don't want to be asked, when I feel like I am being pretty explicitly implicit about what I want. He always asks. And I appreciate it because I had never had that experience before. And it makes me uncomfortable, because I realize how long I went being touched in my life without being explicitly asked if I wanted it.
I feel still that what happened to me on many multiple occasions over several years isn't really 'rape.' I mean, I didn't say no. I never said "Stop touching me," "Don't do that," "I'm not okay with this," because I wasn't supposed to, right? I was in a relationship. I was supposed to want him. I was, in a sense, obligated to have a sex life.
Now, part of me realized at the time how ridiculous that was. I knew I wasn't obligated. But I loved him, and he put so much importance on the frequency of sex that I didn't want to disappoint him. I felt like I was failing the relationship if we didn't have sex every other day, that somehow I, by my lack of interest and energy, was contributing to a slow decay of us. And he was never ever violent. I didn't see the requesting of a blow job if I was too tired to have sex as emotional abuse. I didn't think of the way he would constantly ask me for sex and get really disappointed or sad or distant as emotional abuse. I honestly don't think he did either. We grew up together in this long long journey of a relationship. We learned from each other. I did him a disservice because I didn't try to educate him, to share with him the things I was learning in college, in class, online, from my friends and colleagues.
So I still struggle with the idea that I was repeatedly raped by a man I loved and was very close to, because I know he never intended to rape me. He would be horrified if he ever thought of it like that.
But that's what it is. There is no excusing it. And it took someone outside to point this out to me, to look at me wide-eyed and alarmed when I said I spent a lot of time living the phrase "Lie back and think of England."
And this is how I know rape culture is endemic in our society. Because I, a white, privileged, cisgender, educated, feminist woman with a wealth of support didn't recognize rape for rape in my own life, or take steps to stop it; and because I still feel as if it was my responsibility to stop it, instead of his (and mine) to ask and to respect the answer.