When I started this blog, I didn’t intend for it to be used as a “Dear Diary” but there is something eating away at me that, the more I ignore it, the more persistent it becomes. This may be a good opportunity to not only share my own experience but to speak about the cultural reasons that have prevented me from talking about it. I casually slipped it into the previous post but there is nothing casual about it. It needs to stand out, in stark text on its own:
I AM A RAPE SURVIVOR.
We all have ideas in our heads about what exactly rape is. Some people conjure up images of a dark alley and a woman walking alone down an empty street at night and being grabbed. Sometimes this is the case, but not usually. Most often, rapes occur between parties who are familiar with one another, a concept known as “date rape” or “acquaintance rape”. This happens in about 2/3 of reported assaults according to statistics published by the U.S. Department of Justice. And 2/5 of rapes occur in the victim’s own home…just like mine did.
My rapist was my own boyfriend. His repeated assaults occurred in the apartment we shared, in the place where we laid our heads down together at night; where I should have felt the safest and with the person who should have protected me.
I think it’s important to first clarify precisely what constitutes rape because our culture seems to blur the issue. According to the FBI’s definition, rape is:
“Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
This definition was modified in early 2013 to include the rapes of males by other males and by females, rapes with non-phallic body parts and with foreign objects, and rapes of orifices other than the vagina. It also expanded upon notion of consent. Consent is not a “gray area” issue, it is the presence of “yes”, not simply the absense of “no”. As further defined by the FBI, physical resistance is not required on the part of the victim to demonstrate lack of consent. Inability to consent includes the following: an individual who is under the age of 18 (or 16 in some states) or who is incapacitated due to mental or cognitive defecit/disability, physical disability, under the influence of drugs/alcohol, or who is being threatened/coerced into giving consent against his/her will. There are some variations by state but these are the general guidelines regarding what constitutes rape and consent in legal terms in the United States.
Because we live in a culture that tends to be lenient with the definition of rape, and in some cases, excuses, glorifies and even rewards it, it has taken me 4 1/2 years to remember and then fully admit to myself or anyone else that this is what happened to me. My ex-boyfriend was abusive, to say the very least. I was isolated from my family and made a virtual prisoner in our apartment, verbally abused on a daily basis until that wasn’t enough and the physical abuse started, under so much stress that 70% of my hair fell out and my weight plummeted, screamed at and told I was crazy until I started literally going insane. I would hallucinate things like the sound of men fighting, parades marching, or flocks of birds in the apartment or I’d see blood dripping down the walls or tarantulas crawling on the TV or huge, beastly-looking dogs in my bedroom. When I tried to go to sleep at night, it was like a Rob Zombie film was playing in fast forward in my mind but when I opened my eyes to stop it, the terrifying images were all still there.
My doctor prescribed me the sleeping pill, Ambien, to help me escape the nightmare I was living. And that’s when the rapes started happening. One morning after he had left for work, I discovered a used condom in our bathroom garbage. I panicked and spent the entire day in tears because I thought he was cheating on me. When he arrived home later, I confronted him. He told me we had had sex the night before, like it was no big deal. I was speechless. I remembered nothing. Of course, seeing how he had me convinced that I was a crazy person, I figured that my memory was starting to fail me or something. But I do remember having enough sense left to tell him that if I was taking a sleeping medication, it meant that I COULD NOT give consent so don’t have sex with me if I’m taking it.
He didn’t care. I kept finding used condoms in the garbage with no memory of having sex. I’d wake up in the mornings with bite marks on my neck, chest and shoulders, bruises all over my body, and inexplicable soreness that caused difficulty walking. Once, I remember suddenly becoming lucid while he was on top of me and pushing him off, screaming because I thought I was being attacked. Technically, I was.
I have no idea how many times he did this. Because of the amnesia-like side effects of Ambien, coupled with the other horrendous things he did to me, I didn’t even remember these assaults until recently. There have been bits and pieces of these memories that have come through over the past few years but I pushed them down, thinking maybe they weren’t real, and didn’t give them much thought. Over the past few months, the gaps in my memory have filled in and now, I’m left with the reality that I am a rape victim, rape survivor, special victim, I don’t even know what to call it.
He will never spend a day in jail, just like 97% of rapists. Why do most rapists go unpunished? Well, in my case, he was very crafty about what he did, wasn’t he? He took great measures to make sure I wouldn’t remember what he did and even if I did recall it, I was crazy anyway, right? I can’t report anything he did now. I have no dates, no physical evidence, no timeline. Just a bunch of details that are falling into place almost 5 years after the fact. So that’s the reason why my assaults will not be reported.
But we also live in a culture that likes to blame rape victims for their own assaults, that places the burden of the attack on them rather than on their rapist. This is not done with any other crime but rape. How often do we hear in response to a report that a woman was raped, “What was she wearing” or “Was she coming on to him” or “How many drinks did she have”? None of these are an invitation to rape a person. Even a drunk, naked body is not a flashing neon “rape me” sign. The ONLY person responsible for rape is a rapist.
We don’t do this to victims of, say, a home invasion. Watch how ridiculous: Mr. and Mrs. Brown’s home is broken into while they are out to dinner on Saturday night. The burglar steals their Blu-Ray player, Sharp 52″ HDTV, a set of heirloom silverware, a 32G iPod, and Mrs. Brown’s grandmother’s engagement ring. The police ask them what they thought they were doing having such nice things in their house. Why they felt it was appropriate to leave their attractive home unattended and vulnerable to the whims of a criminal who “couldn’t help himself” when he saw all those nice, shiny, expensive items through the window.
See how ridiculous that is? But this is done every single day to victims of sexual violence, particularly rape victims. It makes victims feel that their rapists were right in whatever it is they said to them. That they deserved it, that they are a whore, that nobody will believe them, that they made him/her do it or he couldn’t help himself. And this leads to rampant underreporting. So any statistics that you read regarding rape, know that they are not accurate. They only account for the rapes that are reported. The actual statistics are much higher than whatever we are reading.
In addition to our tendency to blame victims, we also like to shame them, particularly male rape victims. Our society applies strict gender roles to people and men are “supposed to” be strong, able to fight, not fall victim to an attack. To many people, it seems almost unbelievable that a man can be raped. It seems downright impossible that a man can be raped by a woman. Both of these scenarios are possible. Not only do they happen, but it’s more common than we all realize. With it seeming “impossible” that these can happen, men almost never report, or even reveal when they’ve been attacked.
In cases of female on male rape, a very common misconception, especially among victims, is that sustaining an erection during the attack must mean that he was aroused and therefore he wasn’t raped or that he wanted it to happen. This is entirely false and is not evidence of consent or of a victim’s willful participation in or enjoyment of the attack. It is simply the human body’s physiological response to stimuli, in the same way that our flesh reacts to cold by getting goose bumps or our pupils dilate when exposed to light. It is, however, a tactic used by female rapists to convince their victims that what they did was not rape. This is false.
Our rape culture does not just apply to the way we blame and shame the victims. It also pertains to the way we make excuses for the attackers, how in many cases they are glorified and rewarded, how their rights are more protected than the victims’, and the rapist comes out looking more the victim than the actual victim.
Take, for example, the case of Jameis Winston, star quarterback for Florida State University. Ahh, how America loves football, especially its young, collegiate athletes who are so full of talent and promise of what they might bring to the NFL, giving us something to shout at on Sunday afternoons while we drink our beer and eat our wings from the comfort of the couch. At age 20, Winston is a Manning Award and a Heisman Trophy winner and the pride and joy of FSU. He is handsome, popular, and was named both AP Player of the Year and Sporting News Player of the Year in 2013.
Except that in December 2012, he reportedly raped a female FSU student in his off-campus apartment and what followed was one of the most pathetic “investigations” in the history of reported rapes. His victim contacted Tallahassee police within an hour of the alleged attack but it took ELEVEN MONTHS before the case made it to the State Attorney. The officer who took the victim’s statement failed to follow up on several glaringly obvious leads that even the common reader can see by looking at a copy of the report. Cell phones that reportedly recorded the attack were never subpoenaed and by the time Officer Obvious bothered to investigate, they had – shock! – been erased. All the surveillance videos from the bar where they had been drinking earlier that night had been destroyed deleted, too, by the time the police requested them months after the fact. Tallahassee police claimed they suspended the investigation due to the victim’s uncooperative nature. She has her phone records showing her regular, repeated calls to them following up on the investigation, all of them unreturned. It goes on and on.
It must be pointed out also that amidst this virtual non-investigation, shortly after Mr. Winston was indentified as the suspect and it was subsequently announed that the State Attorney’s office lacked the balls evidence to prosecute, he went on to lead FSU to the state championship. Because wouldn’t it be terrible if the school’s QB couldn’t play in the state championship game if he were suspended pending a rape investigation? Yes, that would be a pity.
This is not the first time, nor will it be the last that a college sports player has committed an act of sexual violence and either completely gotten away with it or received nothing more than a spank on his hiney. And yes, that last sentence presumes that Mr. Winston did, in fact, rape his accuser. His semen was in her underwear. She was intoxicated enough that her memory was impaired, a fact to which she admitted but that also raises major consent issues. Her account of the event only changed as more details came back into focus for her, but never as to what actually occurred that night. And the incidence of women falsely reporting rapes to the police is as low as 2%.
Our culture unashamedly makes excuses for rapists who, in some other way, provide a valuable service to society. When that service is the American pastime that cultivates multimillion dollar contracts, product endorsements, guaranteed TV ratings, and idol worship, the excuses become rewards. But what message does this send to both the rapist and the victim? It tells them both – clearly and unapologetically – that as long as you are considered an asset to society, you are above the law, no matter how heinous your crime. It tells victims that nobody is willing to protect them when something that is viewed as more valuable than they are is at stake.
This blogger has done an unbelievable amount of research in compiling an astonishing and jaw droppingly long list of the reported rape cases involving college football players. The cases are so numerous, they had to be sorted by decade, starting with the 1970s. As is displayed by this pitiful list, Mr. Winston comes from long line of shameful men before him whose crimes were treated with a “boys will be boys” attitude by nearly everyone involved – their schools, their communities, and the criminal justice system. Keep in mind as you scroll through the decades that this is only a list of college football players. It does not account for any other collegiate or professional sports.
However, there is some progress being made in terms of how rape cases are approached. This Slate.com article underscores some of the reasons for underreporting and of rape culture themes I mentoned earlier:
“Surveyed about why they didn’t want to pursue a report, most victims said they worried that no one would believe them. This is rape culture in action. It puts the burden of proving innocence on the victim,”
But it also explores the fascinating neurobiology of a victim in the key moments after an attack, how the brain functions and the way it affects behavior and memory. This is giving law enforcement new ways of conducting investigations that focus less on timelines and more on sensory-based recollection. It also provides new explanations for the wide and often surprising variety of victims’ emotional responses while recounting details of their attacks. Using this approach, there is less of a tendency to blame the victim or make the automatic assumption that s/he is lying based on atypcal behavior. Where formerly, certain behaviors would destroy a victim’s credibility, now they are being re-examined and cases are even being reopened to look at these behaviors from a new and more panoramic angle.
To date, only modest efforts are being made around the country to train police departments in these new investigative techniques but it’s a start. The real work is pushing our cultural attitudes to catch up with our justice system or better yet, surpass it.
Rape culture is a real thing. It’s the force that prevented the Tallahassee police from investigating the report against Jameis Winston in December 2012 that was filed an hour after the incident occurred and instead, allowed him to go on to win the state championship for FSU.
Rape culture is what allows there to be thousands of other cases similar to Jameis Winston’s.
Rape culture is what compels people to ask a woman why she was wearing a tight dress and expecting not to be raped. Everyone is within their human right to expect not to be raped at all times. For any reason, for no reason. Period.
Rape culture is what makes people falsely believe that a man can’t be raped, or that it can make him gay, or less of a man. False, false, false.
Rape culture is what causes people to think that a “yes” cannot be revoked at any time. It can. “No” also means “stop”.
Rape culture is what causes people to think that “I thought s/he was 18” is a viable excuse for statutory rape. Wrong. The burden of knowledge is on all of us to know who we are having sex with.
Rape culture is what instills in people’s minds the ludicrous notion that victims are to blame for their own attacks. They aren’t. EVER. This idea needs to be abolished from our collective mind.
Rape culture must be challenged at every opportunity. Rapists should not be rewarded or excused for their actions. The cultural definitions of rape and consent should not have elastic edges that allow their meanings to suit the situation or the person of interest. They are what they are. No more excuses.
My rapist will never see a day inside a jail cell. But as a small effort to try to help other victims, I have started my own campaign through the largest sexual violence advocacy agency in the U.S., the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN). RAINN offers a wide variety of services to victims of sexual violence including a 24-hour hotline for those in crisis (1-800-656-HOPE), the most up-to-date Department of Justice statistics, volunteer opportunities, community education and outreach, counseling services, information on how to improve public policy, services for victims’ family members, etc.. Through their RAINNmaker program, volunteers can set up a web page for donations to directly benefit victims of sexual violence. Every dollar makes an impact in helping a victim reclaim his or her life. I named my campaign after a song from my favorite movie and because it is a symbol of how things always get better and more beautiful once the storm passes. Here is the link:
If you or someone you know, are in crisis or have been the victim of sexual violence, RAINN’s anonymous hotline (1-800-656-HOPE) and online support are available 24 hours a day to offer guidance from trained advocates and to help find services in your area. It doesn’t matter if your attack happened 5 minutes ago or 50 years ago.
The only way for us to make an impact on rape culture and on sexual violence is by having honest discussions which is why I needed to finally share what happened to me. By not talking about it, the only person I was protecting was the man who did this. But in being honest with myself and with others, a dialgue is opened. One person talks, another person talks, then another. Collectively, we can start to realize that this is far more common than we think it is, we can develop more rounded and accurate statistics, we can implement effective support networks for victims so that they never feel they are in a position of not being believed, we can get serious about who is really to blame here and then finally, we can get serious about doing something about it.
To Be In Silence 