when i was 18 i was sexually assaulted by someone i thought was a friend
“He knows there is no reason to suffer and that satisfies him.”
There are some things that continually get brought up time and time again when hanging out with my girlfriends.
Why is sex education so uneducational.
Pads vs tampons and our trials of Diva Cups and period underwear.
And what are some things that we do in order to protect ourselves.
Rebecca Solnit (author, historian, activist, and much more) wrote a book called, Whose Story Is This?, and I think the entire world should read it.
I think one of the reasons that I love this book is that Rebecca writes in such a way that it feels as though we are having a conversation – that I am contributing, but also that I am heard… even though I’m not the one speaking.
There is a chapter called “Nobody Knows” in which Rebecca shares her experience with sexual assault by intertwining it with studies and historical facts.
In this chapter, Rebecca mentions the strategies which women use to be safe, while for men, these strategies seem to be optional.
“There’s a college classroom exercise of asking all students what they do to try to avoid rape, which generally causes women to recite long lists of cautions and avoidances, and men to look blank” (Solnit 25).
“Don’t go out at night by yourself.”
“Make sure to tell someone where you’re going.”
“Make sure you tell someone who is going to be with you.”
“Make sure you tell someone when you plan on returning home.”
“Make sure your doors are locked.”
“Don’t answer the door if you don’t know who it is.”
“Check all your car doors before you unlock it and get it in.”
“If you are by yourself, and there is something on your windshield, don’t get out and take it off.”
“Lock your doors as soon as you get in your car.”
“Take self-defence classes.”
“Be aware of your surroundings.”
And of course…
“Cover yourself up.”
“Wear baggy clothing.”
This stayed in my mind, so I decided to see what else I could find on the subject, and I came across this article in The Guardian that was written in 2018, by Chris Linder.
“Telling women how not to get raped won’t stop sexual violence on campus”, is the title.
This article is powerful in expressing the need to shift from focusing on the victims and what the victims ‘did wrong’, and to start highlighting the offenders.
Chris states that in the United States, society tends to focus on the number of sexual assault victims, rather than the number of people who do the assaulting, and that this is a large part of the problem.
For example, if we started actively changing the phrasing from “one in four women will be the victim of sexual violence during their university career”, to “one in 10 men will commit sexual violence during his time at university”, the focus changes from the victims to the perpetrators (Linder).
Chris ends his article with:
“It is much easier to continue to teach people how not to get raped than to address perpetrators and potential perpetrators. However, if teaching potential victims how not to get raped worked, we would have eradicated sexual violence long ago. It’s time to try something else.”
This is something that I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while now as there was a time in my university career when I was raped, and I didn’t tell anyone about it until nearly a year later. When I did finally start telling people, the questions I got were the ones that I was dreading answering mostly because I didn’t have an answer:
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Why didn’t you call security?”
“Why didn’t you scream?”
“Why didn’t you charge him?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Although these questions are valid, not one question addressed him.
No one asked:
“Why did he do it?”
“Why didn’t he stop?”
Even though these are questions I continue to ask myself.
I used to ask myself those same questions that others asked me, but I realized the answer to all of them was – of all things – embarrassment. I was embarrassed that it happened to me. And I knew what some people might say about me because I’d heard others say it about other women. And that was enough for me to stay silent at the time.
In fact, the only reason I ever told anyone the first time, was because I ran into him a year later at a friend’s house and immediately had to get out of there. From that moment, it slowly started seeping into my artwork's content and themes. But I didn’t start getting confident enough to tell people fully until I began to hear the stories of others in the form of books and memoirs.
If you’re looking for another good book to start, check out, She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey.
I guess this is a part of why I wanted to write this blog. I know that hearing other people’s stories helped me heal and find a voice for what had happened to me.
I remember for the longest time I couldn’t say the word rape. I would only tell people that I was ‘sexually assaulted’ because I couldn’t say what it actually was out loud. And still can’t… there’s a reason this blog is written down, rather than a video.
Healing from violence is strange. You think you’re there and then something comes up and drags you backwards. Sometimes it can even be difficult to go to places or watch events where rape is mentioned – a trial, a march… hanging out with friends… – although I know my presence and story matters.