On Rape, Polanski, and Moving Forward
kickingpebbles.net archive from 30 Sept 2009
Biggish news of the week: Roman Polanski has been arrested in Europe, on charges stemming from the 1977 rape case he fled the US to avoid serving punitive consequences for. Bigger news of the week: people are talking about the incidentals of date rape… and despite my desire to whack many of these folks with a metaphorical CLUE bat, I am relishing the fact that folks are dialogging about this squeamishly uncomfortable subject that… well- most people just really don’t understand… and we kind of do need to talk about.
Debra Winger’s heartfelt plea from a Swiss film festival, addressed to the LA Attorney General asking that he drop the charges against Polanski, made my eyes roll & my middle finger twitch. What Whoopi Goldberg said, however, hit a very personal note. As much as I’d like to drop-kick her eyebrow-shaven self for having the audacity to evangelize such an uninformed, ignoramous perspective from her pulpit on “The View,” on another hand I do appreciate her for at least tossing the ball of uninformed-asshattery onto the dialog field. Sidenote: what’s the point of wearing glasses if they’re always at the bottom of the bridge of your nose?
Yeah- I sort of do have an opinion on the matter. I was date-raped at 15. He was my boyfriend, he was physically stronger than me. I think I eeked out “no” as best I could, and I did try to push him off- but I was also in shock. I’d trusted this person, he was my boyfriend- and he was a very confused, mal-nurtured 17 y/o boy with his manhood to prove to the guys taking the bong-hits in the room above us. I also barely remember the whole thing, and had zero memory of it for the first few years after—ohai survivor imposter syndrome!
Jason turned it around as he transitioned into adulthood, and I’m really proud of where he and his sister both landed as young adults, with childhoods that were both traumatic and misguided. At the time though, Jason was doing something incredibly painful that I didn’t want him to do- that he shouldn’t have done because I’d asked him to stop- but he still continued- and it was supposed to be something he’d want to do that I’d also want to do- it should have been different- there should have been emotional engagement- it was just weird, painful, and mind-numbing. There were no quaaludes, but there was also no knife or back-alley… and the guy was the 3rd most trusted guy in my world.
What Whoopi said that so pushed my buttons, was that Polanski didn’t commit “rape-rape.”
Polanski knew the girl, her parents had met him and had consented to the photoshoot, so therefore Whoopi is perhaps postulating that… it was somehow less traumatic? Less non-consentual? Medium-rare “No” versus well-done “No”? I think I know what she means… and I do agree that parents need to be held more accountable… but not it’s about the parents, it’s about the girl. It’s knowing so well that casual wave of the hand of… “eh, they knew each other… sure it was inappropriate, but… ehhh- rape? Rape is such a BIG word.” Later in the show, Whoopi stated: “We’re a different kind of society, we see things differently … would I want my 14-year-old having sex with somebody? Not necessarily, no.”
Sorry- I can’t really refer to her as “Goldberg.” That sounds too intellectual, makes her sound smart- learned- like a person deserving of respect. No, she’s an uninformed comedienne who’s on the gabby-girls roundtable morning talkshow, so I think “Whoopi” will suffice. If some creepy arty grownup guy with all the Oscar-worthy talent in the world got my 14 y/o to sit for half-naked photos and then had sex with her, I’d kick his ass to kingdom come… or something. I think Whoopi would, too- no “necessarily” necessary. I digress.
Some specifics on the case: Polanski was photographing a neighborhood girl who at the time was 13. He’d asked to photograph her in “art” style sittings (ie: topless), because you know- he’s such a creative genius (ok, he is- but- um, yeah- eww- she’s 13). On one such day, he gave the girl champagne that was laced with quaaludes… and asked the girl (as the world renowned director- she’s not gonna question the guy, DUH!) to undress for him to do more edgy creative shots. The ‘ludes kicked-in, Polanski’s lewd kicked-in, and the rest is history.
For several years after my rape, I was completely unable to remember anything (I dumped Jason the following week because he’d been a jerk at a party that weekend- ah the simplicity of being a teenager, when lousy judgement is just a part of everyday life). I’d blocked out everything from the point I’d entered Jason’s basement, thru ’till sitting on one of the bar-stools his mom had upstairs, while he called for a taxi to come pick me up… his voice blurry and distant-sounding, as I realized the intensely searing/dull/deep pain that set-in when I tried to sit down & rest my body-weight atop the traumatized flesh.
After several weeks of therapy many years later, I suddenly remembered the detail of both the volume of blood I’d left on his sheets, and the broad “spread” of the stain that came from my body being so hastilly jerked around as I fought back. That forensic tidbit was the sole clue that allowed me to believe that I hadn’t been ‘medium-rare’ Raped versus ‘well-done’ Raped, or Kinda-Raped versus Rape-Raped, but really, truly, simply and forever: Raped.
The key that unlocked my ability to heal, was first just allowing myself to believe that this worst-ever word in the English dictionary, had really happened to me- that I wasn’t some self-pittying hypochondriac nutjob who needed to be a victim… but that this awful thing had happened, 100%, and not in some half-baked kinda-sorta fashion… but 100%… because emotionally, it’s a binary thing: you’re violated or you’re not. As Anorexia is an emotional disease of self image more than it is a physiological condition (the endured self-starvation then, a physical consequence of the root problem), Rape is a crime that first and foremost violates trust, before it commits the physical act. That violation could come in a dark alley and with a knife, or in Jack Nicholson’s livingroom with quaaludes, or in a boy’s basement with consent leading the way up until his teenage libido and need to be physically domineering overtook.
You trust an alley can be walked-through safely, but the man holding the knife to your throat turns that one upside-down. The knife threatens your life, and so you do what you’re told despite hating every moment of it. The movie-star’s house should be safe and you trust the famous director you’re sitting for, but the ingestion of drugs hidden in a beverage you’re too young to know the consequences of, revokes your physical ability to give or deny consent… and so like a woman with a knife to her throat, your body is poised to do “whatever,” similarly.
In the years between the rape and my concession to get therapy, I experienced the first (and hopefully worst) symptoms of the PTSD I now live with, as a result of my :30-or-so-seconds of trauma, 20 years ago. If you’ve come onto my blog as someone interviewing me for a job, curious about my embrace of User Centered Design practices, or interested in learning about my design process… um, yeah, sorry if this is a bit TMI personal… but I guess I’m just tired of Whoopi and everyone ignorant doing all the talking, while most of the folks suffering and in need of help it seems are left to sit in silence with self-doubt and insecurity as the sole voices in their internal conversations processing their trauma… and a generally clueless public to open-up to, in taking the first steps to exit the chaos of isolation.
Because my ‘assailant’ (I even have a hard time using that word, 20 years later!) was my boyfriend, every boy I dated in the few years that followed, I’d randomly find myself swinging into physical attack-mode with: makeout session one minute, and on the turn of a dime and with no identifiable provocation I’m swinging punches, throwing kicks, and he’s one confused dude either trying to restrain me, or running into a corner while screaming at me to snap out of whatever trance had overcome me. In the end it’d always be the both of us crying, me in heaving sobs trying to understand why I’d so randomly gone into fight mode, and for weeks after feeling like some bizarrely broken ’something’ who was just never meant to have non-violet relationships…??.
It made so much sense when my therapist cited these seemingly random Jeckyl/Hyde outbursts as symptomatic of the same condition we all speculated drove my 7th-grade shop teacher to go kamikaze-crazy when we’d twirl our rulers on the tips of our pencils. Mr. Kaminska was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam… and odd coincidence, used to get stoned with Jason after school. I think a lot more people in Michigan smoke pot, than folks would like to believe. Not much else to do there in the winters, honestly. Well, ok- hockey, if you don’t have a beer gut. Punk rock, too! Oop, again I digress…
For the first 10 years or so after, my PTSD symptoms were pretty severe. It took the first 10 years to just accept that I’d been “Raped” and not a watered-down variance of having been only ‘technically’ raped. Once I’d made that critical step in accepting what had happened, I was able to get therapy to help me cope with finding peace with the mess it created in my head & heart, and with managing the PTSD moving forward. None of it has been “linear” or “logical,” and none of it has mapped to “oh, Betty Ford went through that… Angelina Jolie is adopting a kid with this…” instances of others in the public eye suffering & coping. Now that it’s years later and everything is in mellow/stable movin’-on-with-life mode with my ‘recovery,’ (geh, even saying the word “recovery” sounds wussy), I’m mostly a spectator of culture… watching, listening, hoping that things will change with time & public shifts of values and what we’re comfortable discussing vs. what still makes us squirm.
I love my career, I love being taken seriously as a Designer, as an Artist, as a Goofball, as a Person, and have never wanted the shadow of “ugh- soapbox shouting bra-burning Rape survivor… Nina makes me uncomfortable, good for her, but- um, yeah” following me.
Roman did it, Whoopi said it… so I’m not really sorry, but maybe for making some folks squeamish I am: we gotta talk about it, it happens. Girls are hurt, boys are hurt, women are hurt, men are hurt, in coping we have conversations with ourselves in isolation… but coming out and having those conversations with friends, with family, in public- we’re still clearly not there. We need to be. So, let’s please keep the conversation going with others, and make it be.
- This article was originally titled “Romanesque Collusion,” and was widely circulated—much to my surprise and delight. Being an outspoken activist with words is not nor ever has been of interest to me. Conversely, I’ve also learned that by remaining silent, all folks who’ve experienced sexual trauma, have misled the world as to it’s prevalance and impact on society. Thank you for reading!
