Who Listens when Women Speak?
I’m a very lucky and privileged person, I want to acknowledge that upfront. I have also experienced child abuse, physical violence, sexual assault, 2 rapes, domestic violence, extreme poverty and numerous injustices that have been perpetrated on me by various organisations and state bodies. Some women I know who went through the things I’ve been through did not make it out alive. Some of them were murdered by their partners or exes, and some couldn’t cope with living in a world that allows so much injustice to happen to women and took their own lives.
I don’t blame them. I was ruminating today on the various events of my life and it occurred to me that in every single case of bad things happening to me the majority of those I told tried to silence, dismiss, belittle or negate what I told them. In EVERY case.
As a child I tried to reach out to adults to tell them what was happening to me, I was so desperate for help. I vividly recall specifically telling adults in detail what was happening. Not one of them helped. Each one negated and dismissed the abuse. This lead me to attempt to take my life at age 14. I’d had enough. I just couldn’t understand why no one would believe me and no one was interested in helping me. I thought that if this was what life was then it was shit and I wanted no part of it. Who could blame me for feeling like the only option left to me was death?
When I told people about the abusive relationship people did not believe me. “He’s such a lovely guy.” They said. I didn’t and don’t understand what that means. Does it mean if he is lovely then I am a liar? Does it mean, “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say what you said about him because I don’t want to be put in an uncomfortable position?” Does it mean “You must be overreacting?” or does it cast doubts on my sanity even? I must be mad to be saying that about such a “lovely guy”?
I weep when I think about the things he did to me. I would weep if I heard of any man doing that to any woman. I weep when I think about the things I had to do to leave him. My exit plan was created with the only people who did believe me, which was the domestic violence service. I realised I would have to pretend that I just wanted a break from him and that it would all have to happen very gradually, in order to be able to leave safely. That meant pretending that I was interested in “saving” the relationship. That meant I had to have sex with the man I hated, the man who had wounded me like no person ever has before or since.
I can’t describe what that was like, I don’t know how to put it into words that other people will understand…I had to barter my body in order to be safe. I had to allow a man who made me feel sick, a man who hated me - to penetrate me so I could get away from him. It is the most painful thing, the fact that I was forced to do that, because the type of abuse I experienced was not (and still is not) considered a crime here (though it is in most other countries) so I had no legal recourse. I could not apply for a safety order or a barring order, there were no options for me but my own wits to get out safely. I knew him and I knew how I could do it, slowly over time I could distance myself and build a new life for myself, away from him, but poverty and lack of support forced me to do it this way. I had no choice. The experience of that has wounded me deeply. It has also left me with huge anger that I was forced into feeling like that was the only option left to ensure my safety.
That I had to do that, have sex with a man I despised to get away from him — what does that say about how we treat women? What does it say about the supports available to women who experience non-physically violent forms of domestic abuse? What does that say about our society? I am so incredibly angry that I was forced to do that in order to be safe. It sickens me. In a way it was worse than the times I was raped because I had to act “willing”, I had to pretend. I had to allow it. This man had tried (and continues to try) to destroy me. He wanted to subjugate me. He stripped me of my humanity bit by bit. I guess in the end, in that regard he won. For I can think of few acts less humane than willingly having sex with the person you despise most in the world.
I tell you - strangers — and I suspect some of you will believe me (thank you), but the people who knew us, like the people who knew the other abusers in my life - so rarely believed me. How is it that we can believe a stranger but not the women and girls in our own lives? What will it take to believe the women you know?
I could cite here a hundred examples from my life and other women I know where legitimate concerns and abuses were negated or dismissed by the people in their lives. That each horrific life event for me is accompanied by the memory of my experience being negated by the majority of people I told speaks volumes.
Who listens when women speak? Who is ready to listen? Look at the silencing efforts of the powerful (and mostly male) over #MeToo and #TimesUp — the amount of dismissing of legitimate issues and abuses that went on was very telling. I am one woman, but the silencing and negating that happened to me has happened to every woman I know who has been brave enough to share her story and speak up.
It is like we have an unspoken collective social contract to not allow any cracks to show. Everything must be fine at all times, “don’t let the side down now by speaking out and making us all uncomfortable”…My overriding memory from imparting something awful that’s happened to me is the other person making me feel bad for even telling them.
It’s the energetic equivalent of them telling me to keep having sex with him if that’s what it takes to get out. Just don’t tell us. We don’t want to listen.
