The myth about false rape reports

I really enjoyed the last book I read (title omitted to prevent spoilers, but feel free to ask for it in the comments or email me if you want to know) until I got to the "girl who cried wolf" part. In a nutshell, a lust-driven 15-year-old girl chases after a married man, who turns her down appropriately, and then she (falsely) accuses him of being involved with her, i.e. statutory rape.

I'm really, really tired of the false rape cliche in literature and film. In this case, her motives were essentially revenge. It comes up all the time-- a female is rejected/scorned/broken up with and so she decides to get back by falsely accusing the male of rape, or the female and male have sex and she regrets it later so she calls it rape. False rape really doesn't happen as often as so many people think it does. Studies conducted worldwide (and summarized in this issue of The Voice, a publication by The National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women) point to a figure of 2-8%.

That's it. It's not 41%, as suggested by the severely flawed yet often cited Kanin (1994) study. Additionally, false reports almost always fit the stereotype of a sexual assault, the kind in which a victim can remain most "blameless" under society's flawed notions of what is considered sexual assault. False reports are almost never allegations against someone the victim knows, almost never "date rape" stories that are so often dismissed as acts of vengeance or regret. Actual false rape reports read along the lines of a "classic" (and actually very rare) scenario, involving a stranger or vaguely described acquaintance who is never named and use of a weapon and/or serious physical injury. The "assault" will only have included penile-vaginal penetration and the victim will say she struggled and physically resisted to the utmost. Essentially, the story painted will cast the "victim" in the most best light possible, with the least blame placed upon her by society. False rape reports are made mostly by mentally or emotionally disturbed individuals.

So this whole "women cry rape for revenge all the time" thing is complete and utter nonsense, yet people continue to perpetuate this harmful myth. When someone (a very brave someone) comes forth to report sexual assault by someone they know, one of the most common reactions is to doubt it, to look for other possible motives the victim might have to lie. Why? When someone reports being mugged, most people assume s/he is being truthful. What makes sexual assault so different?

The prevalence of false rape stories in literature and the media serves to keep this myth alive. It is always severely disappointing to me when "the girl who cried wolf" is used as a cheap plot point. False rape reports are not as widespread as most people believe, and they are almost never the ones people think are false (i.e. acquaintance rapes).


PS- The article I linked to above is a very good, worthwhile read.

"Hey, er, sweetie? I have something I want to tell you..."

The topic of this post was suggested to me by a friend. (Thank you!) It's a follow-up to my How To Tell A Friend post.

How Do You Tell A [Potential] Significant Other?

When do you tell him/her? What do you say? What reactions should you look for? How much can you expect?

The worries are endless. This is trickier than telling a friend, because on the one hand, you want to make this all work out and you hope your [potential] significant other will be fine with it, but on the other, you want to figure out right then and there if s/he is actually comfortable with it-- no self-delusion here. As sad as I would be if someone I was interested in decided he wasn't comfortable with me because of my passion for survivor advocacy, I would rather know now than be more hurt later on, because that's a part of who I am and I won't give it up. If someone rejects my friendship because of it, I would probably judge them for it, but I do try to understand and accept that not every guy is going to be the right kind of caring, interest, and support for me, and so he and I might just be better off as friends. The bar is higher for a relationship, and this is one test for you to see if s/he passes.

So, I'll be honest here-- I've only ever had to do this once, and I was so nervous about it that I wrote out a little script for myself. Let's start with that:

There's something about me that I want to share with you. Some of this you might have deduced from earlier conversations with me. You know that I took a year and half off, right? Part of the reason was that I needed to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and so I went out to work and explore different fields. I was also really burnt out from classes. But the main reason I went on leave my senior spring was for post-traumatic stress disorder-- for several instances of rape and coercion in my earlier college years, and the one final time my senior spring that set it all off.

I don't want to burden you with more information than you want to hear, but I am willing to share some of the details if you want to know. I am not ashamed of what happened to me, and I am willing to talk about it. I understand that this makes some people uncomfortable, though. This is why I wanted to tell you now, so you know, and so you can decide if you're still comfortable with me. I won't judge you or be upset with you if you're not. It's all right.

(Why would anyone be uncomfortable with me because of this, you ask? For some people, it's because they still believe myths about rape. Some people would feel like I wanted it, or enjoyed it, or deserved it. For others, it's because now I'm somehow sullied or tainted. But for many, it's just a general sense of discomfort, that somehow I remind them that anyone could be a victim of assault. I certainly talk about the issues of rape and sexual assault a great deal; it's become a passion of mine, and I am not ashamed of what happened to me. This makes some people uncomfortable.)

So I guess this is what I want to say: if this affects our friendship, I will be a little hurt. But I would understand if you would rather just be friends and not something more, because this is an important issue in my life. For what it's worth, I like you, and I'd like to see where this goes, but I wanted to tell you this now, so you can make a decision about whether or not you're still comfortable with me, now that you know this. If you have any doubts, better you acknowledge them now rather than later.

If you need some time to think about this, that's fine. I'll give you space until you decide you'd like to discuss it.

That general script worked out fine for me, I think, because he had already guessed to some degree. I talk about the issue of sexual assault and rape culture and PTSD a lot. To my friends, definitely, but in particular to anyone I'm interested in being more than friends with. I'm not sure if I do this on purpose or if I do it just because my passion about this spills over into everything (and sometimes I talk a lot), but it kind of primes them for The Talk, I guess? It's like testing the waters. If they seem okay with it from brief mentions and allusions, then I'll step it up a little more, then finally actually sit down with them and talk.

(Side note: It makes having this blog a little awkward, actually. It's my major project right now, so I like to talk to my friends about how things are going with it, but I try to make sure people know my story before they find this so they can hear it first from me and not just get overwhelmed by me doing nothing but talking about it here. While I do try to find the right time to tell friends, it's not something I stress about as much as trying to figure out the Opportune Moment to tell someone I'm interested in.)

So, yes, I don't really have great answers to all the questions at the beginning, because I've only ever had to do this once (and things with him didn't work out soon afterward for various reasons, so I don't even really have long-term feedback and success evaluation). I think the only tidbit I picked up from my one experience is that it's a good idea to try to test the waters little by little to see how your [potential] significant other responds, and then if things look good, talk to him/her towards the beginning of the relationship. You don't have to spill your guts, but at least put the notion in his/her head that a) this is a major part of your life and who you are; b) you are not ashamed of it because you shouldn't be; and c) it's up to him/her to adapt and respond appropriately. The ball's in their court now.

Thoughts?

"Hey-- I have something I want to tell you..."

Dear Readers,

I have a dilemma. When I become closer to new friends I make, I want to tell them about this part of my life. I want to share my story with them and help them see why this is an issue I am so passionate about.

I, however, am awkward. :(

I don't really know the best way to tell people. I feel like this isn't something I should just blurt out, so I try to preface it with "I have something I want to share with you." Isn't that an awkward phrase, in all its incarnations? I certainly think so. It's even worse if it's a set-up meeting, like if I email someone to say "I'd like to sit down and talk with you at some point." And then we meet up, and maybe they follow me somewhere, and they sit down awkwardly, wondering why kind of bad news this might be. To make matters worse, I'm usually never upset when I tell people-- I'm usually in a very calm, normal, even cheerful kind of mood. How's that for cognitive dissonance?

So what I've been doing lately is starting by asking if they remember how I took a year and a half off during my senior year. They pretty much all do, since I'm, y'know, a member of the class of 2008. The reason I've always given to people at first is that I was burnt out and having a change of heart with what I wanted to do after I graduated so I took some time off to work and get re-energized and re-organized. And so now I tell them that I also took the time off for medical leave, for post-traumatic stress disorder. This is usually when I start to see a look of increasing cognition in their eyes, the knowledge that I'm about to reveal something awful that happened to me at some point. And that's when I say I was raped. I usually only mention the occurrence my senior spring; I used to tell people it wasn't the first time, that I've been sexually assaulted in the context of a relationship before, but I've stopped doing so for several reasons: I've forgiven him, because I understand that it wasn't malicious, and because it doesn't usually help with the inherent uncomfortableness of telling someone to add an "And by the way, that wasn't the first time..."

So yeah. Now there's an awkward silence. There's always an awkward silence. This is when I add that it happened at my fraternity house, by a brother of my own fraternity. Aaaaand then I run out of things to say, so I fidget, and feel bad that I'm saying this all so matter-of-factly, and I muse about how it would probably have been easier had I been crying or somehow visibly upset because then they can give me a hug and not feel so awkward and useless as they stand there and try to figure out how to react.

For me, it's like telling someone about some events that happened at some point to someone-- not even really a story, because when I tell stories, I usually try to project and inflect and use my tone and body language to convey nuances of the story that my words overlook. But I don't know what nuances there are in this story, in my story. There is an event. There are some additional details. And there is awkward silence. What else is there? What more can I add? What else can I say?

I feel like I'm going about and doing this all wrong. Maybe I shouldn't make it so scripted, so set apart from the happenings of daily life. Maybe I shouldn't make a distinct decision to tell them at all, and just say it when it feels right. But I don't think there will ever be an appropriate moment to just suddenly inform someone that I was raped, at least not in any way that isn't antagonistic-- e.g. if someone makes a particularly tasteless rape joke and I feel like smashing the mood and grinding it to pieces beneath my heavy black femmenazi steel-toed boots. I just don't know. This is something I want to share with people. This is something I want them to know so they can be conscious of not just what I'm dealing with but really more of the issue in general. I want them to realize that rape is not something that happens somewhere out there to other people, not something that befalls women who may or may not have deserved it, not something that is wielded about gratuitously by angry butch feminists who burn bras and threaten to topple male society. Rape is real, and it does happen to people you know. That is part of what I want to say.

But they, these people I am telling, they are my friends. Most of them will be as sensitive and caring as they know how to be; they don't deserve to be the full target of my anger at other people who insist on denying and disbelieving. I feel like there has to be a way for me to drop the weight of this revelation on them without crushing them unduly. How can I make this a dialogue? How can I tell my story but also invite them to share their thoughts and impressions with me?

One thing I learned recently is that a reason TMI ("too much information") makes conversations so awkward is that the receiver of the information feels compelled to reciprocate. It puts the listener on the spot, and that's not my intention at all. To address this, what I've been doing is wringing my hands awkwardly  and trying, haltingly, to reassure them that they don't need to reveal something of equal magnitude to me, that they don't have to reveal anything at all. And then they look like they feel bad because they're listening but they don't know what to say, and I feel helpless because I don't know how to fix this situation.

I always wonder what they're thinking when I tell them. I'm sure many factors come into play, such as how out of the blue this conversation was, how well they know me, how much they've already guessed. I always wonder how odd it is for them to hear this from someone who is so calm and detached from their words, from someone who doesn't herself understand why telling people has become an emotionless recitation of short sentences and a puzzling array of silences around which to navigate. I don't know where my emotions are. I don't know if they are buried or simply not there. Maybe last year I cleaned the store all out and it hasn't restocked. Sometimes I think about crying, but I can't, because it's not thinking about the event anymore that makes me sad or angry or any kind of emotional (other than panicky, sometimes). It's thinking about the aftermath, and that's a can of worms I try not to open up on the first date with someone who didn't realize what they were getting into when they agreed to listen to me. Whenever I talk about the aftermath, the emotions bubble up and out and overflow everywhere, into my words, my voice, my tears, but it's like a floodgate opening, all at once and sudden and intensely drowning. But not the telling of the events of March 25-26. I don't have the emotions for those; I lost the tape for the audio book and can only show you the pictures and sentences on the page.


How can I make this better? Believe it or not, this is not a rhetorical question-- I do want your input. If I told you about this in person, do you remember how I did it? Is there anything I could have said or done to make it less awkward? Could I have made it more of a dialogue between us somehow? If I never had the chance to tell you in person and you found out through some online means, can you imagine a conversation we might have that would work out well?

Now that it's been a year and a half later, I'm not just telling people because I need an outlet to share my pain. I want to tell people so they understand my intense drive to try to fix the world for rape survivors. I want to tell people so I can show them this blog and ask them to show others to spread the word. I want to tell people because this is part of who I am and I am not ashamed of it. There's so much I want that I don't know how to achieve. Please share some insight with me-- I'd appreciate it!


Sincerely,
Awkward in Amsterdam
(...except I'm not really in Amsterdam.)

Rape Jokes, Part 2 -- aka Women Are Not Always Right

Here's something that's been bugging me lately: people's responses to being asked to not make rape jokes.

Rape Jokes, Part 2: What To Do When Someone Thinks They Made A Funny

aka Women Are Not Always Right

Fugitivus has a brilliant post on this here. First, let's take a look at some of the options of the listener when someone else makes a rape joke (edited version of original post):

1. Say Nothing. Hope the conversation does not continue extolling the virtues of rape, making saying nothing harder. Hate yourself for saying nothing...Have minor flashbacks of what was done to you... Stop enjoying the day. Stop enjoying the company of your friend. Make a mental note to withdraw from others before they can casually, “jokingly” remind you of your rape. Feel bad...Feel angry...Feel alone and angry. Assume bitterly that you will feel this way forever.
2. Be Edgy! Jump in with some even MORE offensive humor! Run with the rape joke! Make it even more rape-y!...Settle in with the smug knowledge that you are not like those other broken, damaged, traumatized victims. Withdraw from “those” kinds of victims, who might try and drag you down into their hysteria with them. Throw them to the goddamn wolves. Throw your flashbacks to the goddamn wolves. Toast to rape!
3. Initiate a Very Serious Conversation, out of nowhere, like. Tell your friend that joke was not funny. Tell him rape is never funny. Keep talking after his face has pinched up in resentment and disgust, because you are RUINING his day and his BEER and his FUNNY. You know you are actually ruining his sense of himself as a good and decent person, but you cannot communicate that to him, because he is smug and disengaged, and you are shaking and stuttering and trying to explain the experience of women to a man who has grown up among women, known women, loved women, and somehow doesn’t know this already, which means he doesn’t want to know, doesn’t care. Feel vulnerable. Feel angry that you feel vulnerable. Consider stopping mid-sentence, getting up, and walking away. Promise yourself that after this you will never speak to this friend again. Immediately break the promise, because you know if you don’t, he will tell everybody that you stopped being friends because you are Andrea Dworkin all of a sudden.
4. Initiate A Very Serious Conversation Version II: Follow version one, except also disclose to your friend (who thinks rape is funny and exciting) that you have been raped. Be surprised, all over again, that this does not immediately change his perspective, the way it changed yours. Realize that to him, rape is conceptual, even when it has really happened, even when it is real. Wonder if he has raped, without knowing it, because it was just a concept. Realize you now wonder this about every man. Are you Andrea Dworkin? Do you have any right to ruin this lovely summer day by dumping your rape on everybody? Did he? After this, will he now tell everybody that you FREAKED OUT just because you were apparently “RAPED” and you can’t GET OVER IT when it was just a JOKE, SERiously? Will everybody know you have been raped? Will everybody think you are a humorless rape-bot from now on? Feel like shit afterwards. Be reminded that you cannot trust anybody, now. Because you were raped. Because you are Andrea Dworkin. Because you didn’t prosecute. The reasons don’t matter anymore; the result is the same. You are Angry About Being Raped, which just compounds the stain of Being Raped. Add in Unable To Take a Joke, and you are officially Female.
5. Find Some Other Way. Can’t count on this one; sometimes an alternative pops into your head, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you manage to say “Rape is funny!” and laugh away in such a sarcastic, biting voice that it communicates everything you wanted to say, and you all move on. Or you do what I did, which was threaten to break my beer bottle on the railing and stab my friend in the fucking neck with it if he didn’t shut his fucking maw. Ha ha! I said. A joke! Not really, man. Ha! Am I kidding? Am I? Fun-nay. The simmering rage remains, the distrust, the wondering if you should speak to this person ever again, the flashbacks. But the day moves forward rather than grinding to a screeching halt.

Yeah. So. In the year and a half following my more overt and openly-acknowledged rape, I have been around several people who have made rape jokes. At first, I was so often shocked that I didn't say anything-- I did option #1, where I sat in silence and fought through my panic and depression and unwanted thoughts and memories and feelings on my own. However, I've started to realize that there's no reason why I can't point out their comments and call them out-- I can damn well tell them that they are being hurtful and I can request that they stop. So I've started doing that.

Some of them apologize for being idiots afterward, and while the apology doesn't stop the flashbacks or unfreeze me from my tense, dissociated state, it at least helps. But. BUT! On to the exciting part-- the people who get all defensive and start attacking me for requesting that they stop! I love these people. </sarcasm>


One day, I was walking back from dinner with a friend who has a habit of making off-color jokes because he likes to make people laugh. Of course, we got on to the topic of rape jokes, and of course, we reached the house before we finished and so the discussion continued on in the chapter room, where several other people were sitting. Keep in mind that everyone involved here knows that I was raped. They have seen me cry, and panic, and write livejournal posts about how f*cked up my life was in the months directly following it when I couldn't put my life back together. They know. So guess what some of their responses are?

Some reactions from people I used to consider my friends after I requested that they not make rape jokes, especially not directed at me (because it's happened! don't you love how sensitive people can be?):

• "My high school friends and I made this joke [specifically, "It's not rape if you yell surprise!"] all the time. I think it's funny, and I'm still going to say it if I want to."
• Shrug. Look bored and faintly amused at this silly girl who has been raped who thought it would be reasonable to ask you to not make rape jokes because they HURT.
• "It's so selfish of you to expect the world to revolve around you."
• "What, would you stop making a joke just because it bothers someone?"

To the last one-- yes! In fact, I would! If someone came up to me and politely asked me not to make x kind of joke because it hurt or offended them in some way, I would apologize and do my best to not do so, at the very least not in their presence. And if I slipped up, I would apologize. I would not get defensive and snippy or superciliously dismissive of their request. Because that's just plain rude and ignorant.

I still think about that conversation, and it infuriates me. And you know what? It wasn't even like those comments were made by ignorant, misogynistic men. They were made by women, women I know who claim to be feminists. Women who sneer outright at the possibility that a rape-culture exists, women who make the problem worse. Most of my male friends were supportive, sensitive, and caring to me during the aftermath of my own experience. Not so with many of my female friends.

Needless to say, they are no longer my friends. I found their reactions to be exceedingly repulsive and contemptible-- and I would have felt that way even if it had not been me who had been hurt by their comments, if it had been someone else whose feelings and polite request were so carelessly dismissed and trodden upon. These comments are steeped in undeserved privilege and refusal to acknowledge other people's experiences and feelings. And that makes me angry.


So I guess what I wanted to say in this post was that rape/sexual assault advocates and feminists often seem tied to man-hating and blaming male privilege and male culture, but men are not always the problem. The reason I had such a hard time healing from my own assault was the women in my life who minimized the trauma I lived through and made me feel like shit when I still thought they were my friends.

So, please, if you hear someone make a comment like that, stand up to them, even if the speaker of the comment is female. Being female doesn't automatically provide "get out of jail free" cards for hurtful, ignorant remarks. Call them out on it. And if they try to use their gender as a defense, tell them that's bullshit, because that's what it is.

Triggers and Responses

*trigger warning*

I saw someone on campus today who looks like the man who raped me my senior spring. FML.

Let's talk about triggers.

A trigger is something that reminds a trauma survivor of the ordeal(s) he or she has endured. Triggers can be external or internal, consciously recognized or unconsciously internalized.

• External: A place, person, object, time of the day/month/year, story, etc. that is somehow related to the ordeal.
• Internal: A feeling, thought, physical memory, etc. that is somehow related to what happened.
• Consciously recognized: The trigger can be identified. You know what it is that is causing your reactions.
• Unconsciously internalized: When you don't know the cause of your physical and/or emotional response, when it seems to be happening for no reason. 

All of these are legitimate kinds of triggers. Here are some of my own personal triggers (in no particular order):

• Seeing someone who looks like him: short dark hair, slightly balding, large widow's peak, long oval-shaped face
• Being around someone who is tall, heavyset, and physically intimidating (think football player)
• Friday nights
• Any anniversary of March 25-26
  
• Being in the room where it happened, especially seeing the bench
• Hearing his name, or even just part of his name
• Mentions of rape/sexual assault in books, online, the news, or by people
• One particular sexual position
• Sharp pain during vaginal or anal intercourse
  
• Intrusive thoughts and memories of the event, of his face/body/voice
  

My responses to these triggers tend to be pretty universal. They have gotten better over time, thankfully. In the months following the assault, I had very sudden, intense physical and mental responses. I would abruptly go numb; my heart would start to pound; I would tense up and usually dig my nails into my palm or clutch a part of my shirt; and I would try to find somewhere in the room where I could curl up as small as possible with my back to something and still be able to see most of the room. Sometimes I would have hot flashes or cold flashes. I would be both disoriented and hyper-focused; disoriented because I felt detached, like somehow I wasn't in my own body, and hyper-focused because I was taking in every sound and every movement near me, and every stimulus was amplified, as if all my filters and protections were down.

Sometimes it would be a little different; I would become numb, detached, silent, and depressed. This type of response happened more when I was triggered by a solitary activity where I was already alone and quiet, such as reading. I found myself triggered by everything from academic treatments of sexual assault to fiction about trauma to normal novels that just had to put in references to rape and assault. I could feel myself sliding into that somber glass case, the walls closing in; I would start to shut down, feeling a heavy weight, a darkness, descend on me; I would be compelled to keep reading, thinking, feeling, remembering.

Time does help heal things a little bit. My responses are not quite so extreme anymore. They certainly still occur, but they no longer seize control of my life and force me to stop whatever I was doing to suffer for a surreal time.

I saw someone who looked like him yesterday, too. When my mind made note of him and started to flail, I pursed my lips with grim determination and settled for being a bit detached and depressed for a while. This morning, when I left the house to go to class, I saw someone else who looked like him. No idea if it was the same person or not. I started to panic, and walked a full block while thinking about him and the assault, but then I calmed down and everything got better.

Triggers-- I will probably always have them, but the best thing I can do is to learn to live with them.

Only rapists can prevent rape

You've all heard it before: "10 Ways to Be More Careful and Not Attract Rapists" and all other similar incarnations. Don't walk alone at night. Don't wear earphones while jogging. Don't leave your drink unattended. Don't wear a short skirt. Don't grow your hair out long. Don't don't don't. The burden falls on us, the potential victims, to keep ourselves safe. Why? Because no one is teaching potential perpetrators how NOT to be rapists. Because no one is plastering this all over men's magazines and sports shows and bars the same way that women's magazines overflow with warnings and tips and tricks to help us survive each night unharmed. But they should be.


From lickystickypickyme:

Only rapists can prevent rape:

A lot has been said about how to prevent rape. Women should learn self-defense. Women should lock themselves in their houses after dark. Women shouldn’t have long hair and women shouldn’t wear short skirts. Women shouldn’t leave drinks unattended. Fuck, they shouldn’t dare to get drunk at all. Instead of that bullshit, how about:

If a woman is drunk, don’t rape her.
If a woman is walking alone at night, don’t rape her.
If a women is drugged and unconscious, don’t rape her.
If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don’t rape her.
If a woman is jogging in a park at 5 am, don’t rape her.
If a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you’re still hung up on, don’t rape her.
If a woman is asleep in her bed, don’t rape her.
If a woman is asleep in your bed, don’t rape her.
If a woman is doing her laundry, don’t rape her.
If a woman is in a coma, don’t rape her.
If a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don’t rape her.
If a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don’t rape her.
If a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don’t rape her.
If your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don’t rape her.
If your step-daughter is watching TV, don’t rape her.
If you break into a house and find a woman there, don’t rape her.
If your friend thinks it’s okay to rape someone, tell him it’s not, and that he’s not your friend.
If your “friend” tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.
If your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there’s an unconscious woman upstairs and it’s your turn, don’t rape her, call the police, and tell the guy he’s a rapist.
Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it’s not okay to rape someone.
Don’t tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape.
Don’t imply that she could have avoided it if she’d only done/not done x.
Don’t imply that it’s in any way her fault.
Don’t let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he “got some” with the drunk girl.

Note:
This goes for any gendered rape, male on female or female on male or female on female or FTM on MTF or non gendered to dual gendered and so on and so forth….

Uncertainty, Doubt, and the Search for Validation

I wrote two short pieces for the Speak Out event this past February. Here is one about guilt, uncertainty, and "was it really rape":

“Hand over the money.” You're being mugged. Maybe you see a weapon, maybe you don't. You freeze. You hand over the money, maybe even a watch or necklace. If you're lucky, you get away safely. When you get home, everyone is relieved you're okay, and no one questions your cooperation with the mugger. If you choose to go to the police, they'll probably support your decision to not fight back, too. It's all pretty clear-cut. You were the victim of a crime. You didn't ask for it. Nobody doubts your story, and you don't spend the next few years blaming yourself for having a wallet.

The instinctive act of freezing is called tonic immobility. It is a common, normal, even adaptive, response to threat. It's okay to freeze during a mugging, and it's okay to freeze when confronted by a rapist. It’s still a mugging and it's still rape. You are a survivor, and the mugger and the rapist are entirely to blame. Not fighting back or screaming during an assault does not mean you wanted or deserved it in any way.

I was raped almost a year ago, and I still struggle to believe this on bad days. Sometimes it feels like all the stories I hear are about women who fought tooth and nail against their attacker. I think about how I just froze, and I feel so small and unsure about myself. Once he started getting too close to me, I went numb. He knew I didn't want it, I knew I didn't want it, but my mind shut down and I couldn't speak up. I honestly cannot say if I had any conscious sense of fear; I just couldn't feel anything. It was only when I felt pain that I could free myself from that debilitating numbness and say no. To this day, I still wonder what would have happened if he hadn't been careless and hurt me suddenly. I don't know if I would have broken out of my dissociated state and said no at all. That uncertainty has been unwanted company through endless days and long, painful nights.

Having struggled with that kind of guilt, this is something I need to say. Not putting up an epic struggle does not make you any less a victim and survivor. It's still rape even if he didn't hold you down and muffle your screams. Contrary to what textbook-definitions of trauma seem to require, not everyone's terror has to come from immediate, conscious recognition of threat to their life. It certainly didn't go through my mind; I don't think he would have physically harmed or killed me had I struggled, but the aftermath of my assault still hurt. Coercion has many faces, and threat has many forms.

I wrote this for all the survivors who ask themselves if it was really rape. When I was raped, I wish someone had told me this, loud and clear, because I needed to hear it. Your pain is legitimate, and hard enough to bear already without having to struggle with self-doubt. Sometimes it feels like every story but yours is clear-cut; sometimes it feels like there's no definition of rape to cover what happened to you. But it is rape, it is real, and you are not alone.

This was one of the first pieces I ever wrote about my experience.

Let's talk about consent

I haven't figured out the balance between personal and educational with this blog yet-- e.g. I was thinking about whether or not I wanted to write a post called "Let's talk about PTSD" in order to explain the definition of PTSD, common misconceptions, my personal experience with it, etc. While I was thinking about that, I decided to write a post about something both personal and educational: consent.

Sounds simple, right? No. If everyone held identical conceptions of what equals consent, then rape victims wouldn't feel so lost in their search for validation. Guilt and self-blame are two of the many horrible feelings that plague rape victims. I struggled for months trying to find something that felt concrete that would tell me for sure that it was really rape; I felt so alone, thinking that my experiences "didn't really count."

Finally, one day, I found it. I was practically blubbering with joy and relief when I came across this page.

What is not consent:
If your partner has sex with you under any of the following circumstances, it is rape/sexual assault:

• Physical violence (e.g. hitting, choking)
• Threats with weapons
• Continuing sexual activity after you have indicated you wish to stop. (It doesn't matter if you initially consented; people change their minds for a number of reasons all the time. Your wishes should be respected.)
• Overpowering you with physical strength, pinning you down
• Threats to harm you or a third person
• Threats to your property/pets
• Threats to rape you if you don't give in -- that basically says "let me rape you or I'll rape you" - sex gained under such a threat is rape.
• Depriving you of liberty until you acquiesce to a sexual demand-- e.g. "you don't leave this room until I get what I want."
• Having sexual intercourse with you while you are sleeping or incapacitated by drugs/alcohol to the extent that you cannot give or withdraw consent
• Refusal to allow you to sleep until you give in to sexual demands (note: sleep deprivation is a recognized form of torture)
• Sexual activity after continuous pressure on you to have sex before you are ready, to perform acts you have stated you don't like, or just going ahead and doing it.
• Putting you in a position where you must engage in one form of sexual activity to prevent something "worse" from happening i.e. you have to engage in oral sex in order to avoid anal rape.

It is important that you realize you do not have to have physically fought or even said "no" for an act to be regarded as sexual assault. Tears or other expression of discomfort are more than reasonable indicators that you do not want the sexual activity. Often, sexually violent partners do not actually seek consent, or if you do say no, it is not taken any notice of. Remember that submission is not the same as consent.

Some of these seem obvious, but others not so much. All of the above manifestations of rape can lead to PTSD.

Rape jokes aren't funny.

So, why am I still up at stupid o'clock in the morning? Because a friend of mine made a rape joke last night. Har har, non-consensual sex. That's a riot.

</sarcasm>

Okay. I get that some jokes are funny because they address taboo subjects and make people uncomfortable. Do I still make off-color jokes sometimes? Yes. Did I used to make rape jokes? Yes, I am ashamed to say I did. This is why I am not trying to take a moral high ground here. All I am asking is for sensitivity. Other strong, brilliant feminists who possess a far sharper wit and snappier way with words than I have written many posts about rape jokes and rape culture. In my currently triggered and sleep-deprived state, I have nothing to add to the academic side of the argument. However, I can make this personal.

From Fugitivus's post:

Let me tell you a thing you might not know: the inability to hear rape “jokes” without flashbacks, Hulk rage, and “air quotes” is one of the enduring parting gifts of a rapist.

and

For those of you who wonder why rape victims get all super sensitive about rape jokes ‘n shit, well, this is why. Before you’re raped, rape jokes might be uncomfortable, or they might be funny, or they might be any given thing. But after you’re raped, they are a trigger. They make you remember what was done to you. And if the joke was about something that wasn’t done to you, not in quite that way, you can really easily imagine how it would feel, because you know how something exactly like that felt. Rape jokes stop being about a thing that happens out there, somewhere, to people who don’t really exist, and if they do they probably deserved it, and they start being about you. Rape jokes are about you. Jokes about women liking it or deserving it are about how much you liked it and deserved it. And they are also jokes about how, in all likelihood, it’s going to happen to you again.

Do you know why I'm not asleep in my warm, cozy bed right now? Why instead I'm sitting with my laptop, surrounded by stuffed animals and feeling sick to my stomach? Because someone made a rape joke at 10:30pm and it triggered me. Eight-and-a-half hours later, the effects are still here. It made me think of what happened last March, and of what I lived through my sophomore year. It made me tense, anxious, and nauseated. I can't sleep, and y'know what? I'm angry.

Why?

Because rape jokes aren't f***ing funny. Because I shouldn't have to explain to a "friend" multiple times why off-handed rape remarks are hurtful and insulting. Because I am sick of seeing how prevalent rape jokes are in everyday life and media. So, please, do your part and don't make rape jokes. This isn't just about "being a politically correct person" or trying not to offend some rape victim out there. If you need it to be less abstract, here it is:

I am a rape survivor. I am a real person sitting on a couch at 7 in the morning because a rape joke brought back an overwhelming onslaught of feelings and memories of traumatic events. Every time you make an off-handed remark about rape, someone who hears it might be triggered. Someone who hears it might have a friend or family member who lived through sexual violence, who remembers what it's like to try to console a distraught person suffering from flashbacks and crippling depression.

Rape is not an abstract concept that just "happens to other people." It happens to people you know. So think about that next time you're about to make a rape joke or you hear someone else make one.