“You call me a rapist and act like those words define my entirety. Do you forget all the rest of our relationship? We were dating, we were together.” (July 2015)
His message pops up on my screen. I can feel my heart beating and I’m shaking. It’s been about 4 years since he first raped me and about three and a half years since we broke up for good. The fact that he is a rapist did define our relationship from that point forward and honestly, pieces of every other person I’ve been intimate with since, but to be clear, I cannot recall a single instance where, in a conversation with the man in question, I actually called him a rapist. I have called my rape a rape, but talking to him, I am certain I’ve never used the word rapist.
Last week when I spoke with someone about the aftermath of my rape, she asked if I considered him a rapist.
I paused for a beat. He raped you, but do you consider him a rapist? That might seem like an odd question, because that’s the how it works isn’t it? If you stick something inside of someone without their consent, that’s rape, and if you rape someone, you’re a rapist. That’s how language and logic work. On paper at least. So why the question? Why does it feel more complicated than that? For me, taking what had happened and labeling it as rape was a scary step. Rape, it seemed to me at the time, was this terrible thing that happened to people on the news. It felt more complicated than that because saying I had been raped and labeling my boyfriend a rapist seemed like two disconnected things.
My boyfriend loved me. Rapists don’t love you.
“But if I raped you, then I’m a rapist. I can’t be a rapist. Rapists are bad people that go to jail,” is what he told me during the weeks following my rape in 2011.
He wasn’t just my rapist. He was my boyfriend. He was my best friend.
Let’s take a closer look at the language we use for a moment, as Jackson Katz explains in this Ted Talk. Take this example:
My boyfriend is a rapist.
My boyfriend raped me.
I was raped by my boyfriend.
I was raped.
I am a rape victim.
In this progression, “my boyfriend” becomes less and less vilified until he drops from the sentence completely. We start with the identity of him as a rapist and end with my identity as a rape victim. At the beginning, I was not in the sentence, and by the end, he is not. By the end, “my boyfriend” has dropped entirely out of the sentence and out of our minds. And so it is, years later I carry the trauma he does not. To him it is “that rape thing”, a blip from long ago. To him it’s not the feeling of being violated, the fear, numbness, and depression. To him, it’s not the broken promises and years of silence. To him it’s not panic attacks and chronic stomach and back pain from the stress. To him it’s not “I guess my family, friends, school, and the police all care more about my rapist than they do about me”. But it would be unfair of me to call him a rapist, right? He’s a good guy.
“Do you forget the rest of our relationship? We were dating, we were together. I know I always try to minimize the incident and whatnot, and obviously we both had different reactions to that.” (July 2015)
Whoa there buddy, you weren’t traumatized from raping me? From “the incident”? Glad to hear you’re doing well.
Not only is the protection of his feelings absurd, but by not labeling him as a rapist, our language perpetuates this idea that he isn’t really a rapist. It perpetuates the myth that because he may seem like an otherwise nice person, this somehow excuses or lessens him raping me. It perpetuates this myth that it’s normal and okay for rape to happen. This attitude it seems, makes him feel justified to tell me, after his so called apology, that while “[he] obviously crossed a line… [he] was also a horny 15 year old kid”. This thought pattern is what allowed the teacher I disclosed my rape to, to feel good about telling me he thought my boyfriend “really [cared] about [me]” and to give me a hug before I left the day I had to talk to the police, as if to make it okay. You’re traumatized by being raped, but there there, your rapist cares about you. As if being raped is an unfortunate but unavoidable part of dating a teenage boy. As if raping is a normal part of being a teenage boy. This is the attitude that supports my teacher thinking he had to tell me that I didn’t have look down and be ashamed when I saw him in the hallways, that he wouldn’t think any less of me. As if I had something to be ashamed of, forget my rapist.
Sorry about your trauma, but he is a victim of his own horniness.
How old were you when you figured out what I don’t want to do that meant? That’s the terrible twos right? Is it overly optimistic to expect comprehension from an almost 16 year old? It was my understanding our legal system thought so when I was denied the permanent protection order I filed for after being harassed by my ex-boyfriend.
“I have the actions of two people who were children, complete and total babies. And what happened to them, what they did to one another and the repercussions of that are being felt deeply by the petitioner. But what can happen with this order that, if entered, can have long-lasting repercussions on a life of somebody who could have been naive and ignorant and needs therapy or help or needs an attorney taking him out in the hall and telling him the truth of life.”
“I’m being honest with you, young lady, the reason that I don’t enter this order today is the effects that it can have on a person’s life. He won’t get a visa, can’t go to Canada, can’t go to Europe, can’t be in the military, can’t be in the police force, can’t be a fireman.” (August 2015)
Two quotes directly from the transcript I have of my first hearing.
I’m sorry, is he a victim for sexually assaulting me?
Raping people is not normal. Let me say that again, because it seems to me that many people fail to grasp this concept. Raping people is not normal. In fact, it’s actually illegal. Shocker, I know, but raping people is against the law. It’s a choice that someone makes to break that law, to hurt someone else. Strange that responsible adults couldn’t seem to make these connections. But he’s a good kid, he cares about you. I’m not saying that he’s a bad person. I have trouble believing in inherent badness at all. But I think if you rape someone, you probably need to seriously reevaluate yourself and make some changes. I’m asking a lot, I know, but let’s revisit that first sentence. Raping people is not normal. So why are we acting as if it is?
In The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule recounts working nights at a hotline beside her compassionate coworker, Ted Bundy, as they talked people down from the edge of suicide for hours night after night, during the time an unknown serial killer was on the loose. She recounts her shock when Bundy was discovered to be behind the killings. It’s a shock to hear someone you know has done something terrible to someone else, but does Bundy’s work at the hotline somehow lessen or excuse these crimes? Not in the least. Do we consider him a killer, a murderer? Of course. Do we call someone who robs a bank “the bank robber” even if he reads bedtime stories to his kids? Why would we not? So why do these excuses and justifications get bandied about when someone we know turns out to be a rapist?
I have even at times been inclined to defend him. Well, rape isn’t that bad. Rape isn’t that bad? That is a ridiculous sentiment that comes from a place of denial and normalized violence. We’re in denial and we normalize violence because we don’t want to feel the weight of the pain behind it. We don’t want to be responsible for what it means for us if we acknowledge the violence. But we’re hurting ourselves and those around us more by not giving it the space and acknowledgement it deserves.
“I’m sorry that happened, it’s just that I see them as two separate things,” a close friend once told me- the two separate things being their friendship with my rapist and my rape.
Think about that for a second. This sentiment is yet another example of how the difference in the language of “I was raped” and “my boyfriend is a rapist” comes into play. As Banksy wrote in Gaza “if we wash our hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless we side with the powerful- we don’t remain neutral”. Separating my rape from the actions of the person who perpetrated it, washes your hands of the conflict. By doing this, you are complicit in my rape. By acting as if my rapist is not a rapist, you choose to participate in the culture that condones rape by not holding rapists accountable. I certainly hope that we don’t live in a culture where rape, violence, and misogyny are so ingrained in what we perceive to be normal that you have no qualms about being friends with a rapist. Rape is not a faultless tragedy.
This conversation is about forgetting the rapist in the conversation about rape. It’s about the disconnect between this friendly guy you know and the word rapist. Calling someone you’re friendly with a rapist probably leaves you with a sour taste in your mouth and a feeling of queasiness. People like to shake their heads and roll their eyes when semantics and political correctness come up. They get defensive and plug their ears, but language matters. Language is how we make sense of chaos. Language drives where we focus our attention. If our language focuses solely on me as a rape victim, where is the accountability of the rapist? If a rapist is not held accountable, we are by default condoning their behavior, allowing rape to continue. This language reflects how we treat rape as if it’s not something that someone chooses to do. It’s forgetting that there is someone at fault. It’s the language that reflects how we, as a culture, feel rape is merely the trauma of a hysterical woman and I am just the angry feminist.
Indulge me in a brief thought experiment. Your friend confides in you that someone else you’re friends with has raped her. What do you do? Do you interrogate her for details, asking her to prove her story? If you do, is that helping her or is that helping you? Do you discourage her from reporting to the police? Do remain friends with him? After all, he doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would do that. But who is “the kind of person who would do that”? According to an abundance of statistics, “the kind of people that would do that” are most frequently people we know and care about, they’re not the stranger in a dark alley. They’re the stranger beside you. Intentional or not, saying things that come across as blaming and invalidating are extremely detrimental to victims and survivors.
I urge you to think carefully and honestly about what you would do and consider the ramifications on the person disclosing this to you. The next time your friend comes to you describing something that doesn’t sound consensual, the next time someone confides in you they’ve been sexually assaulted, make sure you have already read about how to respond to them appropriately. Be a part of the world that supports them in having a voice and helps them get access to resources they need, because you’ve already educated yourself on how to respond in a helpful way. I urge you to read about how to talk to people that have been sexually assaulted with language that supports them. To support their decisions in how to proceed. To not blame them. To let them disclose however much THEY feel comfortable with. To tell them that what happened to them was wrong and it matters, to tell them that they matter. To tell them they have options. Ask how you can support them. Believe them and believe in them.
And to my ex-boyfriend, you raped me, so yes that actually does make you a rapist.
For more information:
http://laurelhouse.org.au/?page_id=28
Or also you can use Google. Happy learning!
