Driving home last night, I saw a young woman walking in an undeveloped area of a very nice part of town. My first thought was to wonder if she needed a ride, and I would have stopped to offer her one if a) I hadn’t had my son in the car with me because what if she was a psycho? b) I had been traveling in the same direction, c) there had been a place to stop and turn around that wouldn’t have taken me ten minutes. It was after six, which means dusk in this neck of the woods, and undeveloped=hiding place for criminals in my mind. I have driven so many hoopty-mobiles and broken down and had to walk so many times, and had so many freaks come out of the woodwork to chase/threaten/scare the bejeezus out of me that just seeing a woman walking on the side of the road makes my pulse race.
Not that bad things don’t happen to men, but when I see a man on the side of the road, I’m not as worried. Actually, when I see a man on the side of the road, I am likelier to assume that he is there for some nefarious reason. Unless he looks like he’s trudging to a gas station, in which case, I feel badly for him and utter a silent, “Been there, mister. Good luck.”
I’ve been reading a lot lately about public figures or publications pointing fingers at women, blaming them for attacks perpetrated upon them, and those always hit a little close to home. Hours before I was date raped, my father had told me that walking out of the house dressed as I was, was asking for it.* (As an adult, I find this morbidly amusing, since my father had no idea of the body armor of foundation garments I was wearing. Seriously, Spanxlike hosiery under a catsuit isn’t exactly easy to penetrate.)
Let’s talk about this, though. I was 21. It was days away from my 22nd birthday. I was yet a virgin (I was terrified of unwanted pregnancy or venereal disease, and had some lingering attachment to the idea of chastity), but I had spent the past year pursuing and perfecting other arts that my then-psuedo-boyfriend found quite gratifying. It was the perfect arrangement, as we both got the full benefits of friction and I got to maintain a sense of moral virtue. He was a great trustworthy guy.
On one of our many breaks, I started dating a new boy. After several dates, and a few conversations about my physical boundaries, we went back to his place. Really, I could not have been clearer. I was always very clear with any date. I didn’t want there to be any confusion and was, frankly, blunt. “I do not want to get pregnant so you can put X here, but you cannot ever, ever, ever put Y here.” “I will happily do A, B, or C for your gratification, but I will not ever, ever, ever allow D unless we get married–because I am NOT getting pregnant.” And, if my date didn’t like that, then I didn’t date him. I mean, these are conversations I had before ever going out with a guy. I probably ran off a few prospective boyfriends by sheer intensity.
That said, by the time I started dating S, I was a college sophomore who had several of these conversation under my belt. Most of the guys I dated were okay with this. Only the then-psuedo-boyfriend ever saw any action, though, and was always a perfect gentleman about respecting my limits. He wanted babies less than I did.
I really liked S. S was a beautiful boy with black hair and blue eyes, and the kind of pretty features that land you on the cover of Tiger Beat. S was also a great kisser.
S had agreed with me that my choice of contraceptive was the best idea, so when we ended up in bed together, I didn’t think I had any reason to fear. I mean, we had talked this through. I had been clear. He had agreed. He had even shown a full understanding, and had agreed that my willingness to oblige his happy ending in other ways was quite reasonable. We were both adults, and both intelligent, and I was fairly self-congratulatory at the way I was handling my sexuality.
Imagine my surprise when he shifted gears.
I won’t go into detail other than to say that I did everything you’re supposed to do to make it clear that you want someone to stop. I said no, did the screaming, the fighting, the struggling, the calling for help from the people who were in the next room, and in the end, that didn’t do me much good. I went home bruised, dazed, and mortified with his parting shot ringing in my ears, “I guess you didn’t wait til you were married after all, huh?” Two days later he would tell me that he figured I wanted it, so he just did it.
I ended up telling a friend in front of a trio of strangers, and another friend, and the awesomely sympathetic psuedo-boyfriend. I did not tell my parents. Are you kidding? I thought my father would just tell me I had deserved it, and my mother would have ended up in the penitentiary. Since I had already taken the proverbial hot shower, there was nothing to take to the police, and I was afraid no one would believe me anyway.
It sounds unbelievable, doesn’t it? After all, I had had two glasses of wine that night, and I had ended up in his bed voluntarily.
One of the friends slut-shamed me immediately, telling me that I had been the one who was sending mixed messages, and that I had confused the poor guy, and everything else you hear directed at women after they say they had an unwelcome tab A inserted into slot B. It was a rough few days.
Ultimately, I made the decision to shut my mouth and deal with it. It had happened. Nothing could be done to undo it. I had nothing but my word against his (and some fading bruises) to back me up to the police, and I had seen enough Lifetime movies to know how much good those would do me. I chose, whether right or wrong, to suck it up and keep walking like it hadn’t happened.
Obviously, eventually I opened up about it. I don’t mind talking about it. It’s something bad that happened to me, like having people break into my house while I was at home, or like the attempted mugging, or like the inappropriate touching from a much older family friend, or the head on car accident, or any of the other rotten eggs life has thrown at me. But that’s all it is: Something bad that happened.
The hardest part was to accept that I hadn’t done anything wrong, or done anything to deserve being raped. The hardest part was to be able to say that this man raped me and to defend it against my catsuit wearing, wine drinking, blow-job giving self. I was afraid that it was just rape, as Whoopi Goldberg so famously defined, and not rape-rape. He had lied to me about his agreement that we would not have sex, then he had ignored and tried to incapacitate my clear protests against it, and that clearly outweighs the fact that I had run the gamut of the “bad girl checklist” in that I:
- was wearing provocative clothing on a date
- had been drinking
- went back to a man’s house with him
- had gotten into bed with him
- had voluntarily removed some of my provocative clothing
The hardest part was getting over the shameful feeling that maybe I deserved it as punishment for having dared to be a woman willing to travel outside of her own abode, without chaperone. It was something bad that someone else had done to me, for no reason or fault of my own.
No means No.
I am raising a boy. One day, that boy will be a man. I am raising him to understand that no one ever has the right to touch his body without his consent. I am also raising him to understand that he does not have the right to touch anyone else without consent. I don’t care how frustrating or uncomfortable, how intense or passionate, how angry or needy he is, unless he gets a verbal go ahead from a sober, conscious partner, he should not ever put his hands or anything else on their bodies.
I am raising him to understand that only losers penetrate unconscious or slobbering drunk people. I am raising him to understand that if he can’t charm the pants off of his intended, then those pants shouldn’t come down. I am also raising him to understand that unless he loves the top half of someone, he shouldn’t be trying to make love to the bottom half. I am hoping it sinks in.
But that’s the point of all of this. It doesn’t do any good to run the litany of safeguards women should take to protect themselves. It only does good to teach men (and women) that rape is wrong, and that we do not have the right to force ourselves onto other people. There is no such thing as a difference between rape and rape-rape.
Wearing provocative clothing isn’t wrong. Being promiscuous isn’t wrong. Drinking isn’t wrong. Saying yes isn’t wrong. Saying no at the last minute isn’t wrong.
Rape is wrong.
*As far as I know, my father does not really feel this way, and was speaking out of an inability to express his concern for my well being in any other way.
