Sticky Thicket of Words…

because it is important to be precise

The things I find when I sign into Medium. This, Sherry, was 1st in my feed. It is as far as I got and as far as I will go, at least tonight.

In some ways, the ways of my father, I was raised stronger than most girls of my generation when I was 17 in 1972. I was because he was proud of my “smarts”. I was because he said, and I believed, I was beautiful inside and out. And more.

I tried to read more of this conversation, especially because you and Mike are involved. I love you very much. I enjoy Mike’s work, especially his poems. I did try to read more.

I decided I didn’t need to. Although I could be wrong, I believe I have heard it all before.

Here is my take, not that anyone asked: I said…and then I yelled and then I screamed “No, No! Stop! I do not want to do this!” and I fought like a hellcat, too, until I was silenced and afraid to fight. I was silenced and afraid not because of culture, but by a .357 Magnum shoved into my virgin self’s 17 year mouth. I assumed it was loaded even before I was told it was by the 24 year old, well, he claimed to be 24…he claimed a lot that wasn’t true so I can’t be sure…let’s just say that I was legally a minor and a virgin and had done absolutely nothing wrong and played no game. He wasn’t a minor. And he played the game called grooming for almost 2 months prior. He did plenty wrong, immoral, manipulative and played a very perverse and ugly game.

Since he lied about so much, perhaps he lied about the gun being loaded, too. I did not care. My life was, at that point in his hands. I wanted to stay alive. Perhaps that was my “game” or my “mistake” or “come on”, that I wanted to stay alive. Like wearing a low cut blouse or tight skirt, I chose to live. And for the next I am not sure how many hours I was repeatedly raped, beaten (but never where my clothes wouldn’t cover the bruises) and perversely required to tell him I loved him when said gun was removed from my mouth for seconds at a time.

For this response, I will spare you the details of the after: the hospitalizations, the suicide attempts, the chronic migraines and the PTSD that followed until I was 25. And I chose to get help.

Culture did not cause my beatings, my rape, my hospitalizations, my chronic migraines or my PTSD. He, his grooming , beating, torture, threats and rape, not culture, turned me into a self-questioning, self-destructive, soulless, worthless beautiful intelligent no longer innocent girl. I can still feel the cold marble of the floor and see the mirror and the antique table above which it hung.

That is not to say that I do not get your good point. I just have a point of my own to add: maybe we need to blame rapists for raping people.

Perhaps culture told him it was OK to treat me as a soulless, unworthy piece of meat so, because I felt less plastic that a blow up doll, all the better to get his rocks off. I guess in too many ways our culture, then and now, hangs signs on us akin to “rob this bank” but up to that time and since no other man has again tried or succeeded in raping me because most men, I believe, even if they saw me, or any woman or girl, wearing a sign that says, for all intents and purposes, “Rape me, please” would do nothing of the sort. And if I have to explain that to anyone, go see a shrink, please: you have a problem that may be enhanced by culture but comes from a depravity so deep it needs immediate professional attention. I am dead serious.

Like 90% of children, boys and girls, and adults, men and women, I was raped by someone I knew. And I was groomed. And while today at 61 and for most of my life since that night, I do not live in fear or cross to the other side of the street when I see a man approaching. Had I not gotten help, I might. But it wouldn’t be and never was in avoidance of a Black man. I ran to them for safety.

A White man armed with a gun, a knife and a broken bottle of 1961 Chateau Lafite Rothschild raped, beat, tortured, and threatened to kill me. An auspicious year, that Rothschild. A Rolls Royce Phantom, I think it was called, sat in the garage. And once he realized I was in the hospital I truly tried to avoid because he threatened to kill my parents and sisters if I told a soul, he sent his mother to my hospital bed to beg me not to press charges against him.

Did I “play a game” by going to the hospital? Should I have “minded” him as any good girl, any girl unworthy of rape, surely would have? (I wrote the previous sentence facetiously in case anyone does not understand that.) I believed him. I didn’t want to see my parents and sisters die but I passed out 2 days later from loss of blood due to permanent damage he did to my bladder. In a restaurant. The ER doc saw the bruises and that the blood came from my urethra.

I learned a lot from that experience. Because of who I was, of who I am. Because I am my father’s daughter.

I am not even afraid of rich White men.

But I am sorrowful and sad for anyone who believes that anyone “asks for it” or believes that one about to be raped bears some responsibility for an act that can only be performed by immoral, depraved subhuman.

Fear keeps one silent much better than cultural messages. Fear may keep some, if not most, from saying “No! Stop!” And not just fear of not being cool or accepted but fear for one’s life.

Because a person who doesn’t hear “No!” or isn’t intimate enough to feel it isn’t going to stop if one screams “No!”

We woman must be some powerful creatures for some men to be so scared that we manipulate them and/or play some game to which they are victim.

If and when Eve offered that Apple, all Adam had to do is say, “No, thanks, dear!” yet still we, who incubate and deliver life, are blamed. For everything that goes wrong. But not by all men.

I am inclined to wish that those men who don’t would take responsibility for themselves, who enjoy seeing themselves as victims in an ongoing creation myth would instead take responsibility for themselves and see us as independent, human beings with souls who have a right to pursue life and liberty and love. But I guess it is easier to to blame that take responsibility, for some.

Thank goodness most men are not predators. I would not dare tar them with a brush they’d never use. They take responsibility for themselves and live by morals they deeply feel.

But my main point is that rapist should be blamed for raping. Yes, we should clean culture up. But even now, the vast majority of men do not take, date rape, drug to rape…the responsibility for rape lies solely with the rapist.

If I missed the point of your response and conversation, I apologize but I think I didn’t. You are always so kind. Usually I am, too but I do not think, in the long run, it is kind to give a rapist an excuse. I DO NOT believe that’s what you did in this response about cultural messages. And I agree with your points. But people who rape twist everything and may use culture as an excuse to claim it isn’t them, to claim we wear signs.

It IS them.