What My Survivorhood Means To Me
Apparently people doubt my motives as a writer, my motives as a woman.
Somehow, people think I do what I do as a survivor is to simply exact petty revenge on the man I say raped me.
I guess they’re kind of right in thinking that — I mean, who writes “vengeance demon / sexual violence survivor + advocate” in her Medium bio and doesn’t come off a little vindictive?
By the way, I think there’s a criminal defence lawyer and/or his client combing through my Internet presence, trying to prove that I’m just some hysterical woman trying to ruin some dude’s life. Best of luck to you.
In reality, I call myself a vengeance demon because really love Anyanka, a vengeance demon from the fictional television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I really identify with her inability to articulate herself without being terribly blunt.
So, why do I do what I do? What does my advocacy mean to me? Why am I constantly talking about rape? Why am I always fighting the system? Goddammit, why can’t I just let it all go?
I’m going to set the fucking record straight.
I think I‘ve been accused of hurting my rapist’s feelings by talking about my rape and calling him “my rapist”. I’m under the impression that he’s trying to silence me because I’m defaming him, and he fears for his privacy.
Saying I was raped is not defamation. Referring to him as my rapist is not defamation. I know without a doubt that I was raped. I know without a doubt that he raped me.
Let’s look at some stats, folks:
460,000 sexual assaults in Canada are reported to the police every year, and even a shit ton more go unreported. That’s a lot of rapists.
Funny that my rapist is concerned about his privacy. He thinks that out of the other substantially more than 459,999 rapists in the world, I’m specifically tweeting about him with the intention of hurting him individually.
I have no interest in naming him. I have no interest in violating his private life. I have no interest in sending a hate mob after him. I have no interest in revenge.
Let me be fucking crystal clear:
The personal identity of my rapist is fucking irrelevant to my cause.
I don’t want my rapist to be the next #BrockTurner.
I don’t want my rapist to be the next #JianGhomeshi.
He, as an individual human being with feelings, is irrelevant to me; just as I, as an individual human being with feelings, was irrelevant to him when he raped me.
I’ll spare him some pity. His life is surely impacted by the ongoing proceedings. He must be exhausted having to pay for a lawyer because he raped a woman. God, it’s been a year and a half since the rape — why does he still have to deal with this?! The charge was withdrawn a year ago too – he’s obviously not a rapist, so why do I keep calling him that?! He must be fucking exhausted. God, I’m such a bitch.
You know what fucking exhausts me? All of the above and then some, and the PTSD that he inflicted on me. Forgive me if I don’t give a single flying fuck about him or his fucking feelings. I’m not gonna stop talking about it. I’m not gonna stop fighting the system because he’s scared. I’m not gonna stop calling it rape, and I’m not gonna stop calling him my rapist because it makes him feel bad about himself.
You wanna know who I fight for and why? I fight for the other 459,999 people out there who have or will report being sexually assaulted in Canada this year. I fight for the hundreds of thousands of people who choose not to report. I fight for the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who are living with the pain I live with because no one deserves to feel like this.
As a feminist in 2016, as a survivor of sexual assault, as a member of the general public concerned about the political environment in which she lives, I feel a responsibility to do as much as is in my power to affect change.
I can’t affect that change if I don’t fight.
I’m entitled to protect my dignity. I have the right to fight for myself. I don’t deserve to be silenced. I don’t deserve to feel victimized by the systems I’m imploring to help protect me. No survivor deserves any of this — and my work as one involves fighting to push back against and change those systems so that in the future, no one has to do it all, or at least, won’t have to do it alone.
Survivors deserve to know what it is to have to cut through the red tape of sexual assault so that they can decide if this is a fight that they can fight. Publicly documenting my experience as a survivor going through the system is crucial to my work. Being transparent about and expressing my survivorhood is not only my right as a public citizen, but it is also necessary to my survival. Not only does the public deserve to know what’s going on in one of the most important social issues today, but I deserve support.
The support I get from people who read my work is healing. It is emotionally and mentally exhausting to have to fight structural powers that are designed to work against me. I get that support from communities I’m a part of like Femsplain and also from my friends and family. I don’t need them to validate my rape. I need them to support me.
My PTSD often makes me romanticize the concept of death because it means I would be able to rest. It means that this life would not my problem anymore. But because I am constantly surrounded by love and encouragement, I have never truly wanted to die. There are people in my life and in the world who think the work I do is important. The people who support me, who love me because they know I am a survivor are my strength. They keep me going. They are my life support.
Seeking support is very different from seeking validation.
Yeah, I fucking hate my rapist. Yeah, I’m pissed that he raped me and that as a result, I have to do this. But even more, I hate the institution that failed to prevent him and so many other people from raping someone in the first place. I’m not fighting to punish him. I’m not fighting to punish them, either. I’m fighting to dismantle the culture.
