A FOLLOW UP TO WE ARE NOT THINGS.

May 20, 2015 by Rowan in Culture, Feminism, Personal

I find it hard to write about my rape. Ive done it before, and Ill do it again, bu
t inevitably in the wake of writing an essay like that, I think about how I tell
the story. About what parts I leave in and what parts I leave out. About which
details you need, and which details are superfluous. Which things people are hun
gry for as titillation, for the shock value. For the crudeness.
I usually leave out the race of my rapist. The last time I talked about it, I un
fortunately found out a bunch of my friends were racists who were only too happy
to tell me so, thinking that I would agree with them, at least in this limited
case. That I would condemn all people of the race of my attacker. Or at least th
at Id be willing to say he was a terrible example of his kind.
I usually leave out the actual acts, and youd be surprised how many people ask me
. How many people want to know what went where, and how he did which things to m
e. Not law enforcement people or therapists who might have a reason to ask. Norm
al, ordinary people who think its perfectly reasonable to ask me, if he fucked [me
]. Sometimes I get sick thinking about how many people want to know every last de
tail of tabs a and slots b.
I usually leave out all the parts where I recriminate myself. I pretend to be st
ronger than I am (an echo of Black Widows its efficient). I cant handle the way peopl
e look at me with greedy eyes and tell me if I ever want to talk about it they h
ave a shoulder to cry on. Im not talking about fellow survivors here, Im talking a
bout all the random people Ive met who are hasty to express concern, their tongue
s not quite licking their lips. All the people who want to hear all the gory det
ails of how I feel guilty, how I think Im a monster, while patting me on the head
and feeding me platitudes and hoping the details still come out of me in a tumb
le of words I cant stop.
I dont talk about the rape that happened my senior year of high school. I dont tal
k about how I consider myself complicit in that. I dont talk about how fucked up
that situation was. I had my rapist friended on Facebook until earlier this year
, and I dont ever, ever tell anyone what he did to me. I dont talk about not sayin
g no. I dont talk about the pain I told myself I deserved. I dont talk.
I cant talk about these things.
As long as we live in a society where rape is considered a grand evenings enterta
inment, I cant talk about them. Not with people who arent part of the fellowship o
f the abused. As long as film and television and even popular music normalize ra
pe, while simultaneously casting it as a thing only evil people do, I cant be hon
est about everything that has happened to me.
My honesty is someones entertainment. The details of my violations, of the seizin
g of my power, the outlines of the abuses that were done to me become grist for
the voyeuristic mill. Im not a survivor, Im not even a victim, Im another exhibit i
n the Ripleys Believe It or Not! of life. Im something to be enjoyed from a safe d
istance, a piece of tragedy porn that can be easily forgotten when its time for s
upper.
Using rape as a lazy trope to make men in fiction evil, or to give women in fict
ion hard backgrounds that they overcome builds a narrative for me as a survivor
that I can never fit. But it also builds an expectation that my pain and strengt
h are for other people to peruse with sticky fingers and salivating mouths. It b
uilds an aura that I have to live up to, that I must be inhumanly strong, that I
must be irreparably broken. But it also builds an aura of desirability around m
e that I do not want. It works like a magnet or some sort of charm.

As long as women in fiction are raped for the entertainment of the masses, to fe
ed a bloodlust the entertainment industry nurtures and calls mature, it makes me
an object as a survivor. An artifact. A display.
But I am a person. Not a thing.