Sexual Assault The Facets Of Rape

[joeylittle]

I've been thinking about this for awhile, and just would like to put it out there.

"It's my fault", "I was responsible", "If I hadn't (been there, done that)" - these are the kinds of thoughts that people have, after being raped. I don't think everyone - but many, enough to maybe say the majority of people who have been raped. I know I did.

"It's not your fault", "it wasn't your fault", "You are not responsible" - these are the most common responses. And they are true, but also, not.

There are many moments, many facets, to the thing we call "rape". I think this also might be why so many people end up not being sure if they were raped, or sexually assaulted, or whatever legally applies to a situation where parts of your body are taken from you, stolen and used by someone else, returned empty, or dirty, in pain. Troubled.

It starts with how we came to be where we were - and continues with what happened next, and next, and next, and next. Somewhere after all those 'next's, there is the moment when the thing itself happens. The thing where we know we were not in collusion, it was not up to us, and we wonder, 'was that rape'?

Sometimes, it looks very clear. I'll use a story of mine as an example, because it might be as clear-cut as they come.

I went down to put in a load of laundry. I lived in an apartment complex where the laundry room was in the basement of one of the adjoining buildings. To get there, I had to go out the back gate, about 20 feet down a semi-lit alley, through another gate that would lock behind me, another 15 feet or so down a narrow passage between the buildings to a short staircase down to the laundry room door, which was also kept locked. I had lived in this place for 2 years, had made this trip many times. So, it was 3AM, I couldn't sleep, and I decided to do laundry.

As soon as I was walking into the laundry room I was shoved from behind and fell forward into a table. Then, there was a man behind me, folded over me. He stuck his gun out in front of my face so I could see it, then pulled it back and pressed it into my neck. Then, he raped me. When he was done, he left. I waited there a long while, then I went back upstairs.

That's it, as far as the event goes. Straightforward, apparently clear - but for me, not really straightforward at all.

I know these things:

• I am not responsible for a predator being in the alley that night.
• I am not responsible for being shoved, nor for being groped, bruised, penetrated,
• I am not responsible for being left in shock - I don't expect myself to have been able to get up and chase after him.

(It took probably a year or more to know those things, by the way. They seem obvious, but they aren't.)

I have questions about these:

• I lived in a slightly rough neighborhood. Did I not know better than to do laundry at 3AM?
• Afterwards, I remembered seeing the van in the alley. Why didn't I pay attention to that?
• I didn't hear someone follow me down that 15 foot passage. How?
• I didn't fight. OK, the gun. But maybe worse than didn't fight - I made it easy for him. I co-operated fully. Why?

I did know better. And I need to come to a place where I can accept that I made a bad decision, and forgive myself for it. This part belongs to me, and I don't think the way through it is to decide that it belongs to him instead. I wish we lived in a world where anyone could go walking anywhere at any time of night, but the fact is, we do not. I made a bad decision. I did not deserve to be hurt as a result - but I was. Mine.

I don't know if I need to hold myself responsible for not seeing the van. Sometimes I think I do, sometimes I understand that it is hard to watch for detail in a super-familiar environment. Being told, "you couldn't possibly be responsible for that van being there" - well no, of course not. I know I didn't make the van appear - but I didn't see it. There are reasons for that, but the reasons don't wipe away the feeling that 'if only I had seen it, I could have turned around'. So, maybe mine. Probably, more just a mistake that it is easy to make, and so I could possibly forgive myself for it sooner, or easier that the facet of being in the alley at 3AM.

I do know better than to tune out my immediate surroundings. But there are reasons I might not have heard him, and they might not be up to me. I don't even know if he was wearing shoes. And what would have happened? Well, maybe he just would have turned and run away, if I turned and screamed. I'll never know. He chose to follow me - so in the end, maybe not so much my responsibility here. Probably not so much.

I co-operated because I had been raped before. But I am deeply ashamed, regardless, and I need to learn to forgive myself for that. Would it have changed the outcome? I don't know.

It is so much more than just, 'it wasn't your fault'.
And it's much more than, 'I blame myself'.

The best for last: I never did say 'no'. So, even the thing that can generally be the real test - 'did you say no?' - well, I didn't say no. I didn't say stop. I didn't say 'go', either. I was physically assaulted before it happened. I was threatened with a gun. Those things probably make up for my lack of 'no' in a court of law, but still...I wonder, often, why I said nothing like 'no', at all.

I'm glad that the public language around rape has become so staunch, so clear. Rape is never the victim's fault. You don't get raped, you are raped. No means no. No-one ever 'asks for it'. These statements are good, and important. People need to be educated - I cannot believe it, but it's true - people need to be educated on what rape is, what assault is, and why there is no reason for it, ever.

But the way we talk about it to ourselves, and the way we talk to other survivors about it, how we listen to each other, and what we offer up - these events cannot easily be distilled down to one moment in time, and among the many facets of rape, there will be bits and pieces where we might be justified in claiming responsibility for actions we took that make up part of the picture. I think that is a real thing, and claiming the parts that are ours doesn't mean we are claiming responsibility for the act of rape itself.

The only way to know, sometimes, is to ask us why we think we were responsible - responsible for being there, getting in the car, not noticing, noticing and ignoring, trusting, arguing, leaving too soon, leaving too late, and a million other reasons why we can rationalize that we were at fault.

Rape is not a single moment. I hope that soon it will be more acceptable to talk openly about how many facets there are, without undermining the necessary public messaging that keeps it clear and simple. But I think we can start with knowing, for ourselves and for other survivors and supporters, that it isn't a simple thing at all.

 

[Meadowsweet]

Thank you for writing this.

Iv'e felt, for years, excluded from 'real' sexual abuse or rape because people haven't understood or wanted to listen to my real thoughts or feelings about it. The same happens with domestic violence, if I'm honest about my real thoughts and feelings, people that are involved in that look at me like I'm mad and tell me what I ought to be feeling... ie, that it's not my fault and it's all about them.

But recovery is all about me, not about blame.

 

[Kefira]

I think part of the problem with the discussion in broader society is that it's reduced to sound bites and clear psa messages. That's where we're at. Because until we can talk about how it IS more complicated without people victim blaming due to lack of education/awareness that's where we're stuck. But it's more complicated than the caricature that most people are familiar with.

look at me like I'm mad and tell me what I ought to be feeling

Unfortunately this is one of the big problems with the direction of the current dialogue. People are so concerned with being politically correct or using their checkpoints of how to support a victim that they tell you how your feelings aren't valid without much thought. Where maybe if they were willing to listen and explore it everyone would benefit.

One of my experiences involved an assault by a friend. He drugged me. But I knew he had feelings for me, there had been an incident previous that should have made me wonder, and I went to his place alone late at night. He had me shower, I never reported it. "It's not your fault" is important. And it was necessary for me to hear. But one of the things that people having immediate reaction did was to shut down me working through my feelings about that night. Especially since often it's done with so much persistence it's almost anger and then it's made clear the discussion is closed.

 

[falling_wave]

All very true. I know that the people who raped me were responsible and did something wrong from day one but I also beat myself up about being in a house with people doing drugs and drinking and saying no despite pressure. I feel sick about thinking it was okay to fall asleep on laying on my stomach on the floor if the living room and expect them to leave me alone. I also hate that I never once tried to fight or say no. I was so scared I did not let on that I even woke up despite a lot of pain. The situation somehow gave me the strength. I didn't immediately feel broken up either. I felt violated and trapped but I felt shame. It kept me in that trapped feeling denying the effects for long time. I had a lot of physical problems because of it and grieving those physical struggles is what finally got me through the grief over the rape. It still has its effects mainly on my self esteem but I think I can think in facts more and that helps.

 

[Deleted member 29961]

I wonder, often, why I said nothing like 'no', at all.

I am going to see if I can shed some light on this one. I all my years of experience in street fighting, This is the one sure thing I know; patience, wait for your opponent to give you that opening, when they do, strike fast and strike hard. strike so fast and so hard that you leave them stunned, dazed and confused, then do not relent, do not stop until you are finished, not when your opponent stops fighting, but when you are finished.

this is what I gathered your assailant did, he hit you fast and hard and had surprise on his side and then he didn't relent until he was finished. you were stunned into disbelief already be the first blow and therefore already in shock. you would have had a difficult time trying to mount any sort of defense for yourself, weather it have been verbal, physical or some other form. Shock has that effect on people.

 

[Weemie]

once i was idk, fake-raped, guy had me in the back of his car drivin' around. i said listen dude, i'm not doing this. i got a hundred bucks in my wallet and i'll f*ck you. drove into the back of this bar and did the deed. taking control in the smallest of spaces, y'know? do i frame that as rape? we all make choices, when we're in those moments. we make the choice to survive, we endure, we get out alive. i made a lot of choices that got me the f*ck outta there when push came to shove. am i just enabling it? is it rape if you give your consent? is it rape if you grew up in it, and it's all you know, so it's not even really phasing anymore? if you figure rape is less traumatizing than death? if you become their best friends, their confidantes, their soulmates? eh, i dunno. there's layers.

 

[RussH]

If you give consent under duress, then it really isn't consent

 

[Born to Run]

I find you are quite harsh on yourself, and what came to my mind with regard to your questions is the dynamic of revictimization over which we have little control. Unconsciously you made yourself vulnerable, and missing those cues contributed to this. Already being a victim we often find ourselves in repeating/recreating trauma. This goes beyond our rational mind.
As traumatised people we send out signals to the world, not only verbal, but also on the subconscious level, which often presents in bodily expression or posture that may show our vulnerability. For example, one may feel fearful, have low self-esteem, etc., which could manifest in a weak posture of shoulders, of back, of head, of gait, of stare. These type of signals are what perpetrators look for. I don't know the facts and figures, but is it not that when you are sexually abused once, you have a much higher chance of having this trauma repeated.
As your boundaries had been violated in a similar way before, it seems likely that you instinctively knew you could not get out and froze. Did it make any difference to the outcome in the past when you said no to your abusers? I assume not, so you didn't say it.

"Serial killer Ted Bundy once stated that “he could tell a victim by the way she walked down the street, the tilt of her head, the manner in which she carried herself, etc . . .” (from below article).

http://www.scribd.com/doc/216896183...-Use-of-Gait-as-a-Cue-to-Vulnerability#scribd

This is not my field of abuse, so forgive me if there is anything that I was insensitive to.

ETA: the paper above is just what I could find as a pdf, and there may be much better papers in the references or other sources.

 

[Lucycat]

I went down to put in a load of laundry. I lived in an apartment complex where the laundry room was in the basement of one of the adjoining buildings.

I don't mean to take this thread off track, but I am intrigued by this. Is this an American thing not to have your own washing machine in your flat? I don't know of anywhere here - other than communal student accommodation where people have to share laundry facilities.

I am not for one moment judging your decision to do the washing in the night. I have certainly done so, in the safety of my own kitchen. But it does seem to me that this was of living predisposes to risks - and not just of rape. What of muggings, murder or even theft of the possessions (or do you stay in the laundry room and wait for it to finish?) You say it is in an adjacent building - so is it all secure and how many people share it?

As for the 'why did I not say no?' it really isn't that easy is it? Power, position of responsibility, control and strength all play a part along with fear, freeze response and ignorance of what is occurring.

It took a long time for me to acknowledge what happened to me was sexual abuse although I always knew it was wrong.

 

[ihateusernames]

I'll answer this.

Is this an American thing not to have your own washing machine in your flat?

It varies. There are apartments with no washer/dryer connections, there are some apartments that have the hookups, but you have to buy your own machines (like mine), and there is also the rare rental that actually has a washer and dryer equipped. I've lived in all of 1 of those. Most complexes have a communal laundry facility. If you're not in a complex large enough to have a laundry room you take your stuff to a laundromat.

I don't know whether that's specific to the US or not. I would have just assumed it was that way everywhere. LOL

As to the OP- I don't know how I'm "supposed" to feel, I don't know whether what I do feel about it is "wrong," so I mostly just avoid telling people about it. My husband knows. He's the only person on the planet I have told (aside from you guys in passing.) I don't trust my own story enough to tell other people, considering what they would expect to hear. So, yeah.

 

[Friday]

@lightraze LMAO... I have so done that before. Couple of times if I'm super honest about it. I was just all out of f*cks to give. Although, apparently, not literally. Perhaps bad word choice, but I don't know how else to phrase it.

 

[Weemie]

@FridayJones for f*ckin' serious, eh? it's hard to dissect what's us and what comes from someone else. what's our pattern, what's our habit, what's our knowledge. does that lessen it, mitigate it? make it less harmful? we just don't know.