Day Six: Sexual Assault
Given the sensitive and potentially triggering nature of this subject, today's essay will be behind a cut.
This is the third time I've written the essay on sexual assault for 14 Valentines. The first two times, I wrote about statistics and percentages. I brought up that most rapes are committed by people known to the victims, people they are often emotionally or physically intimate with.
It's a horrifying subject and those essays were incredibly hard to write. This one will be too, but this isn't something that can be ignored, even if it is hard and horrifying to speak up.
...
I was raped.
My boyfriend raped me.
It happened around 2001 and I didn't admit it happened until 2005. I didn't say, type, or even think those words for over four years, because I didn't believe that it had happened.
Not the actual actions of the assault - oh, I knew those. I could remember all of that in great detail and I knew what had been done to me. I just refused to believe that my boyfriend had raped me. He was my boyfriend and afterward he'd told me that he loved me. There was no way, in my mind, that what happened to me was rape.
We live in a world where denial about rape runs rampant. We live in a world that loves to blame the victim. We live in a world that tells women that they control their personal safety, that certain behaviors invite rape. We live in a world where Whoopi Goldberg can talk about "rape" and "rape-rape", like they're two different things. We live in a world where elected US politicians try to differ between rape and "forcible rape". We live in a world where misinformation and lies are deliberately spread regarding the sexual assault charges being brought against Julian Assange, and where the women he is accused of assaulting have had their personal information spread across the internet. We live in a world where women are regularly intimidated into withdrawing rape and assault charges, where the vast majority of accused rapists will never stand trial. We live in a world where Roman Polanski has still not served his time for a decades old conviction, and where people actively attempt to excuse and deny his rape of a 13 year old.
We live in a world that is not kind to survivors of sexual assault. Is there any wonder that I didn't want to admit, even to myself, that I had been raped?
I don't know what flipped the switch in me, what made me able to face it. I do know that I have been incredibly lucky in having the unswerving support and love of my family and friends when I have told them. I know that after almost 10 years, I still use language that blames myself when I tell that story. This is a long struggle, to accept this as a part of my personal history and to not hold myself responsible for having been attacked. I'm doing better with that, and I'm doing better with forgiving myself for being afraid.
I know that I'm stronger than I thought I could ever be, and bit by bit I'll keep getting stronger.
...
At least a few of the people who read this essay will understand what I'm talking about in a way that I wish they didn't. The numbers of women who are raped, who are sexually assaulted, who are sexually harassed, are astronomically high - and most of those attacks will never be reported.
When it comes to this issue, it seems like there's two key questions: how do we help survivors, and how do we keep it from happening to more people?
Every rape survivor's path back from their attack is different, but they all need people to believe them, to provide compassion, to tell them that it wasn't their fault. That's where organizations like RAINN come into play. Even if you're not ready to say those words to someone you know, there are people who are there to listen, and who are there to believe. RAINN maintains the National Sexual Assault Hotline (1.800.656.HOPE) and the National Online Sexual Assault Hotline for survivors who are looking for someone to talk to.
I believe, strongly, that the answer to the second question, the answer to "how do we end rape?" is that we end tolerance for assault. We end the rape culture that we live in - and we do that bit by bit, piece by piece, through education. For me, there are few organizations that are more vital on this front than Men Can Stop Rape, which challenges traditional ideas of masculinity and mobilizes male youth to prevent men's violence against women.
...
I'm Bunny.
I was raped.
I survived.
It was not my fault, and if you have been raped or assaulted, it was not your fault either.