i am not sure i am ready to make this post. in fact i am not altogether sure that i haven’t already… probably if i did the old version will be better than this one. but anyway.
someone commented on a recent post that every woman he knows claims to have been raped and asks if women actually know what rape is. it pissed me off, but it got me thinking (again) about this touchy subject. and here is what i came up with.
from rainn.org (rape, abuse, & incest national network):
[...]RAPE is forced sexual intercourse, including both psychological coercion and physical force. Forced sexual intercourse means vaginal, anal or oral penetration by the offender(s). This category includes incidents where the penetration is from a foreign object such as a bottle. This definition includes attempted rapes, male and female victims, and heterosexual and homosexual rape.
SEXUAL ASSAULT includes a wide range of victimizations, distinct from rape or attempted rape. These crimes include completed or attempted attacks generally involving unwanted sexual contact between the victim and offender. Sexual assaults may or may not involve force and include such things as grabbing or fondling. Sexual assault also includes verbal threats.
These definitions are the same ones used by the US Department of Justice’s annual National Crime Victimization Survey, the most comprehensive study of the incidence of rape. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics on RAINN’s website are based on the above definitions.[...]
now i think that the “psychological coercion” thing is extremely vague. i was once in a relationship for two years where i slept with my boyfriend every day whether i wanted to or not, because if i refused, he would pretend i didn’t exist, literally. the only time i was exempt was if i was having my period, which grossed him out. i would not presume to prosecute him for that, since i stayed there of my own volition. when i got really sick of it, i left him, and that was that. however that argument does not apply to victims in physically abusive relationships although they often choose to stay. i guess they are understood to feel that their leaving the perpetrator would be potentially dangerous to them based on the abuse itself and the usual threats; there was no reason to think that he would stalk or attempt to physically harm me if i left. and he didn’t.
there was also a guy that i knew from school who waited until i’d had a few beers to get me alone at a bonfire party in the woods. we took a walk and talked and after a while he told me to take off my clothes. i balked, and he told me that he knew where i lived and would come kill me while i slept if i didn’t go along. he was smaller than me and i probably should have thrown him in the river, but i was somehow too scared. he didn’t have a weapon, but he had threatened me. my fault or his? (please don’t answer that.)
there was the time i was in the pool at my friend’s house and two guys (who were normally cool and did not act this way) grabbed my arms and legs while a third ripped my swimsuit off in front of everyone. the third guy’s girlfriend actually got mad at me for asking if it didn’t bother her and urging her to bring it up to him. my boyfriend of the time watched and said nothing. i freaked out, and the host threw us all out. at which point everyone got mad at ME.
there was the time i got drunk and passed out at a friend’s house and woke up with a coworker’s fiance on the couch next to me, sliding his hand up and down my pants leg around my ankle, and moving up to my ass. and i was so physically ill that if i moved i was sure i would have thrown up everywhere, and i didn’t want to do that. so i lay there and pretended to be asleep and hoped someone would catch him, but nobody did.
there was the time that a guy i was sleeping with wasn’t ready for me to leave to run an errand just yet (even though i promised to come back right away) and wouldn’t stop until i pushed him off. which pissed him off to the point that he physically restrained me while he forcibly penetrated me anally.
not one of these men was a stranger to me. NOT ONE. this does not include the varying instances of sexual harrassment or peeping or crude innuendo, which number in the hundreds. i am not especially beautiful. i am not especially endowed.
do men know what rape is? i found a study several years ago that gave shocking results. when men were asked if they had ever raped anyone, they all said of course not. when they were asked if they had ever had sex with someone who had said no, a lot of them said yes. they were further asked if they persisted after she said no, and if they continued despite her asking them to stop, and a lot of them said yes. they do not know, because our parents spend more time teaching girls to keep their heads up and their eyes open in parking lots than they do teaching boys how to respect other people sexually, or teaching girls how to respect themselves, period. parents teach about peer pressure, not about coercion. our entire society still supports the theory that a sexually active guy is a stud while a sexually active girl is a slut.
do women know what rape is? a lot of us don’t, even after it happens to us. we are raised to think that it will be a stranger, a man with a mask and a weapon who finds us when we are somewhere we are not supposed to be and it is past our curfew. (this is mostly to scare us into keeping our curfew and behaving ourselves. ahem.) however, according to rainn, in 2000, four of ten rapes happened in the victim’s home, while only one in twelve happened in a parking garage. so when it isn’t the armed masked stranger, when it is someone we thought we knew and could trust, it has an unreal quality which makes it difficult to define. i actually looked it up in the dictionary when it happened to me.
i have no conclusions, except that it is fucked up. it is fuzzy. it is a double-edged sword. but it is out there. it is real. and it is painful. it happens a hell of a lot more than you think, to the people you would least expect.
i am idiot for writing this. rude comments will be deleted.
so there.
