Arm your daughters — With words.
Original Essay: The Not Rape Epidemic
I was not-raped, once when I was twelve, and several times when I was (barely) fourteen. The details of those events are not part of this post, which is “squick safe”. The article linked above is awesome, but might squick you, fyi.
At the time those incidents happened, I didn’t know how to say “this is coercion”, “that was sexual assault”. I’d never heard those phrases used in context, in spite of having lawyers in my family, and I’d never been told who to tell them to or how.
In spite of the fact that I barely knew what the words meant, I did know that they weren’t really important, to adults or to society. Rape was important, or at least usually important enough to sue over (but not if it was just “your word against his”, because then you wouldn’t win and the attorneys would make you look like a slut in front of everyone — I knew that at that age, as did everyone who owned a TV). But if it wasn’t rape — if you weren’t held down and penetrated, in front of witnesses, all while screaming “no” and wearing conservative clothes — then it wasn’t worth mentioning, or rather mentioning it would only make you look bad. Talking about incidents of harassment or assault, other than in whispers to your closest (female) friends, was somewhere between needless bitching and outright slander of the men involved. Other men, and sometimes teenage boys, sternly looked down upon such talk, especially if it involved naming names.
I had nearly fifteen therapists during my teenage years. None of them ever asked me if I’d been not-raped. Well, one did, but she meant by my dad — the context of which question is quite enough to put anybody off the topic, you know?
My daughter will know what not-rape is. She’ll know what “assault”, “harassment”, “coercion” and “statutory rape” are, and she’ll know that all of them are illegal and who she can talk to if any of them happen. (Oddly, she won’t be told to go to the police, whom I feel I can trust completely to make such a situation worse. She’ll be told about the relatives and friends of the family who are trustworthy, and how to spot other adults and groups who might be.)
And she won’t know when she’s sixteen, when it’s more comfortable for me to raise the topic. She’ll know before she’s twelve, because that’s the first time a man held me down and groped me in the public swimming pool. Parents who suppose that they’ll keep their daughters safe by keeping them away from “drug parties” and the like are fucking morons, I think. As if predators don’t ever go seek prey.
And lest you think, out of ignorance I hope, that not-rape doesn’t ruin lives, I suggest you think again. Not-rape leads to phobias, deep trust issues and relationship problems, and shattered self-confidence (usually at exactly the time in a person’s life when the shattering is most profound). It took me years upon years to even begin to feel that I was on my way to being over it.
Hell, this is the first time I’ve ever spoken of it “in public”.
See what power having the words, and a place to speak them, can be?
My daughter will also know kungfu — and believe me, my experiences in not-rape do play into that — but if I could give her only one thing to help her prevent and deal with not-rape, it wouldn’t be self-defense lessons, which can only help some of the time. It would be knowledge of the words, and where to speak them.
What about your daughters, sisters, nieces, friends, students? Will they struggle through it alone for decades, unable to think anything other than that they deserved it somehow, or will someone give them the words?
And what about the boys and men — the only people who can realistically stop not-rape? Will they ever be taught how harmful those actions can be, and that they’re not acceptable even a little, and that the victims are never to blame for them?
I guess time (and words) will tell.
4 comments
I’m very sorry to hear what happened to you. You didn’t deserve to be treated that way. I admire you for speaking openly about it. Here (in England), the law isn’t any better- ‘we’ (not bloody me) protect the guilty. I believe we should believe in the victim, until strong evidence shows otherwise. Y’know- care for someone who says they’ve been attacked. Treat them with respect and protect them. NOT treat them like a suspect.
I’ve a good background in martial arts. If you ever want to e-talk, you’ve got my address. I can give you some practicalities.
Thank you for having the courage to post this article.
I’m always torn on aspects of this issue. I am very sorry to hear what happened to you, and I agree that there needs to be a better way to educate, and prevent that sort of thing from happening. However, I don’t agree with Nick’s statement “I believe we should believe in the victim, until strong evidence shows otherwise.”
I have a cousin-in-law who worked at a center for troubled youths. He was accused of sexually assaulting a troubled teen. The accusation was a total fabrication. The accuser admitted as much once it got to court. Just the process of being accused, even though it was throw out of court, and strongly proven to be a lie, ruined his life. He was released from his job before the court proceedings, and unable to get his job back afterward. No other facilities would hire him, based entirely on the fact he was accused. He was forced to change careers, and essentially lost all the time he had invested in getting his social work degree. All because some teenager didn’t like him, for his efforts to clean up her drinking problem.
I think something needs to be done to make sure all these true offenders are caught, and punished, but at the same time, I think there needs to be better safeguards for the falsely accused. That is why the issue is an extremely difficult one. It’s a very difficult thing to balance.
I think the dichotomy can be handled like this: First, victims should never be *treated* like they’re lying, under any circumstances — the damage this causes, both to the victim and to all the other women in society, is too great. Cops, doctors, and others who come in contact with a victim (of rape *or* not-rape) need to be trained to watch their attitudes *closely* and avoid ANY hint of “you-deserved-it”. (This itself will be a mild deterrent to false accusations: the more nice people take you dead seriously, the worse you’ll feel about lying.) An accusation of either rape or not-rape that’s made officially should be immediately–before court or anything else comes into play–be accompanied by mandatory counseling for both parties. (Again, this will deter false accusers, since who wants to land themselves in counseling? But more importantly, it also provides much-needed emergency counseling for real victims, and will likely deter further predatory action from a real predator for a while–if you’re guilty and in counseling while you await trial, you’re probably not going to go to the dance hall looking for more action that weekend.)
The last thing that needs to happen is for the legal system to get a LOT BETTER about handling both rape and not-rape. It should be at the very least inadmissible to discuss the victim’s clothing, sexual history, or other such ridiculousness. In cases of “he-said-she-said” with no proof, certainly you can’t just jail the accused; that goes against our legal system. But you can put both parties in some heavy-dirty counseling for a while–again, to the benefit of both, whether the accuser is lying or not; and also a deterrent to a lying accuser — and put the accused on a type of non-reporting (i.e. does-not-ruin-your-life) probation that increases the penalty if they’re subsequently caught harassing anyone else.
I think the problem that stories like yours, where the accuser is lying, cause is mostly one of confusion. It’s like when people point out that one time they knew a guy who was beaten by his wife. It’s not that it doesn’t happen; it’s that it’s SO RARE compared to the times it DOES happen — because seriously, the number of times a woman lied and ruined a man’s life is DWARFED by the number of times a man ruined a woman’s life with rape or not-rape and got away with it — that using it as a reason why victims shouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt and access to the most rigorous legal resources is both flawed and harmful.
I think it’s quite obvious that if *I* can come up with good ways to deter false accusations while respecting victim’s rights, then surely the experts can too.
Thanks to both of you for your comments!!
PD
puredoxyk:
I agree with you, except some little thing:
“It’s like when people point out that one time they knew a guy who was beaten by his wife. It’s not that it doesn’t happen; it’s that it’s SO RARE compared to the times it DOES happen[...]“.
That is a “bad” comparison: It is not that rare [that men are abused by their wives], since more recent studies say that domestic violence equals “husband beats wife” is far from true. The numbers vary, but it seems not unlikely that 25% of victims of domestic violence are men (averaging over all the 0%…50%) (see, for example http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm).
(on the other hand, I think you are right with “the number of times a woman lied and ruined a man’s life”)