Dear Fathers:
I have read your words. I believe you are good men, that your hearts are in the right place. You do not engage in victim blaming. You believe in the concept of autonomy over one's body. You want to believe in justice even when you know it hasn't been served. You are disgusted and appalled by the rapist and his father's lack of remorse and accountability. I hear you. But no matter your eloquence, no matter your intentions, my problem lies in the fact that I hear you. I hear you speak about a young woman who has been raped. I hear you say that this crime is "unspeakable," that the woman will forever live with "unthinkable trauma," that she is "horribly altered." I hear you say that her rapist has "robbed her of her dignity, her self-respect, her self-worth."
In a rare moment, and one for which I'm grateful, the victim of this crime had an opportunity to actually say how she has been impacted by it. There is no reason for conjecture; we can read it in its entirety. If she says that she has been robbed of things as a result of being raped, it is our responsibility to hear her and to believe her.
But I want to take you out of this particular crime, this particular moment. When you describe the impact of rape, you are not speaking about its impact on one woman who has already eloquently laid that out for us. You are speaking about rape in general, and its impacts. You are speaking about trauma, and what it does to a person. You are saying that because of this, such horrible crimes should be punished appropriately.
And this is where I stray from you.
First of all, rape is not unspeakable. Speak about it. Women do, all the time--when planning their buddy systems with friends, when talking about the "bad experiences" of their youth. Rape is not unthinkable. Think about it. Women do, all the time--when they are walking to their cars, sitting with their boyfriends, brushing their daughter's hair into a ponytail.
People are raped and they think about it and talk about it. Sometimes, they feel that other things are worse, more unspeakable and unthinkable. It's possible. It's their right. Sometimes, I am left with the feeling that men believe rape is the worst thing that could happen because men feel that primacy over their bodies and sexuality is a mark of what makes them men, and therefore, of what makes them WORTHY. You cannot imagine, can you, that a person could be raped...and thrive, and feel comfortable with herself. You are arguing that rape is a horrible crime because of what it does to a person. I am arguing that rape is a horrible crime. Period.
I don't know why this bothers me so much, but I want you to understand this: People experience sexual violence and hold on to every single aspect of their dignity, self-respect, and self-worth. Being raped does not mean you cannot have those things. Rape is not a crime because someone is robbed of those things. Rape is a crime because rape is a crime, regardless of how the person who experiences it processes it or lives her life afterwards. People who do feel robbed of those aspects of themselves are always justified in their feelings. But fathers--it is simply not for you to say that that is how it IS. It is not even for you to imply.
I have experienced a decent amount of trauma in my life, though far less than others, and even most. I have also learned over the years that I have not processed these things "Correctly." I have never been bothered enough, sad enough, distraught enough, depressed enough, anxious enough, traumatized enough, and I have never, ever--not ever--been ashamed, not even a little. This extends beyond sexual violation and violence, but it's true for that too. And because of this odd aspect of my nature (people have told me that I must have a chip missing), I have learned something interesting over the years.
We--and by we I mean all of us, society as a whole--expect, and even perhaps require, penance from those who suffer. We expect people who experience trauma to be forever altered by it, or at least temporarily waylaid, or we don't believe the trauma is real. We don't believe in injustice unless those on the receiving end are broken by it. And so, we only prosecute injustice if we feel that grievous harm has been done, and even then, as in the case you find so repugnant, we don't dole out the punishment accordingly.
We should not require victims of crimes to suffer in order to see justice.
When someone placed a gun at my temple, I was momentarily terrified, wondering if my life would be snuffed out on a half-empty elevated train car. That did not happen, and all that I lost was the contents of my bag. And yet, when talking to the police, I knew what I was supposed to do. I could tell by how they looked at us in the rear view mirror of the squad car that they were suspicious of us. We were both calm and conversational. I was not crying, or asking my boyfriend to hold me, or leaning on his shoulder. I knew that if we wanted sympathy, I should do all of those things, but I could not do them. When my neighbor had the police personally escort her every day for two weeks to the train after a chain had been snatched off of her neck, I knew it was because she was young and small and white and she cried, and instead of sympathy I felt nothing but fury. The crime that befell all of us--every single person on that train car was robbed at gunpoint--was so much worse, and yet nothing was ever done about it, because everyone else on the train thought the police weren't worth the trouble (true, in this case) and I couldn't cry; I watched an action movie with my ex boyfriend the next day as therapy instead and got on the same damn train the day after that. I never felt traumatized, and I don't think my boyfriend did either. I didn't change my behavior or avoid trains.
But it was armed robbery all the same. The police should not have ignored it because of my, or his, personality.
I've had cancer, but sometimes people have thought I haven't REALLY had it, not the way other people do, or at least it doesn't BOTHER me, right? Death might be coming for me whether I cry about it or not, whether I keep on doing things the same or not. The disease doesn't care about my temperment, and neither should you. When a physicians assistant told me she could reconstruct my nipple so that I wouldn't feel sad when I looked in the mirror, so I wouldn't feel "bad about myself," I know I should have said thank you, but I could not. Instead I said, "Don't presume that about me. Don't assume that I feel bad about myself, that I feel sad." I know it takes some women a full year to look at themselves in the mirror after having one or both breasts cut off. I think that is completely understandable. But it doesn't make my breast any less amputated, my cancer any less real, for me to rip the hospital gown off right after I stopped puking up my breakfast the morning after surgery, lean on my husband for help getting to the bathroom, look at my beat up, scarred, disfigured chest and shrug and say "huh. that's not so bad."
The fact that certain memories from being 15 has led me to a life of almost physical repulsion of drunk men does not mean that I have been unhappy, or lonely. Drunk men aren't that interesting, or necessary to a happy life. The fact that I do not watch basketball games in public, that I can't stand to be the only woman in the room, does not mean that I am broken, does not mean I don't love sex, or that I am ashamed or lacking dignity.
It also doesn't mean a crime wasn't committed against me that night.
When I had epilepsy, I wasn't ashamed. I didn't feel like less of a person because my brain didn't always cooperate. I didn't feel lessened by being in a wheelchair and being unable to walk. But you know what, that was a crime too. I was hit by a car, and it changed my life, and the woman who did it was never punished. The fact that I was happy, content, busy, isn't relevant.
We should not require those who suffer to prove it through their actions, especially when the suffering is brought on by the action of another person. When we do this, we are being selfish. I am sorry, but yes I mean YOU. We want so badly to separate ourselves from those who experience trauma. After all, if you survive something "unspeakable," and then carry on laughing and living out the promise of your life, what is the purpose of the whole struggle anyway? Do those who have had bad experiences also get to have good lives?
Rape is not wrong because it is a crime. Rape is a crime because it is wrong. It is a crime regardless of how the victim remembers it or experiences it. If the victim in this case or any other was happy the next day, having sex with her boyfriend, going to yoga, eating steak, cracking jokes, or any other possible series of reactions, it is not for us to say that she is hiding something, or in denial, or behaving strangely. It is none of our business how she behaves at all, and it is only our business how she feels insofar as we are human and should feel empathy when the situation warrants it.
The crime should be treated the same because it is a crime, and everyone knows it, whether we apologize for it collectively or not.
One of my favorite heroes to come out of our recent focus on/failure to understand sexual assault and rape is a young teenager named Jada, whose rape was recorded and shared online a few years ago. She was outspoken about the crime. She said this: "Everyone has seen my face and my body, but that is not who I am or what I am." And she is right. Terrible things can happen to your body, and not impact your sense of who you are. It doesn't work that way for everyone, and that is understandable too. But it is entirely possible to be content with yourself, happy, proud even, and for your rape to be just as real and the rapist just as deserving of severe punishment. This is so important, fathers. Do you understand what I am trying to tell you?
There is an incident from my childhood I will probably never write about, because it took years for me to understand it as sexual abuse, until I was sexually active myself. I will not keep it to myself out of shame, or guilt. I will keep it to myself because I honestly did not experience any trauma or negative impacts as a result of it--because I did not understand it as sexual abuse at the time. Once I could contextualize it, I was not traumatized that this thing happened to me, but it did explain some things I had always questioned. I did not feel sad or upset. I felt angry, again, not that it happened, when I was so little, but that the bastard got away with it. And once I could think about it with an adult understanding, I realized something: I didn't know it was abuse, but HE DID. My response or lack thereof is irrelevant to the fact of his crime.
I say these things to you, fathers, because you might very well have daughters. You might have daughters who are led to believe, through everything down to your good intentions, that their worth is determined by their behavior, their purity, their bodies, their ability to control what happens to them. I am here to tell you that is false. People are valuable, people are worthy, people are entitled to dignity, because people are people; our common humanity entitles us to dignity, and worth, and value. There is nothing that can happen to a person that we should assume would take those things from them. It happens, and people feel those irrevocable losses. But don't concentrate there. Don't assume that people who suffer, or experience trauma, are broken, or lost.
I will leave you with two examples of what I am trying to say. My husband, who is a father who never had a father, had a strange upbringing, to say the least. As part of that, he spent some time in his youth hungry. He was not hungry in that trivial sense, but in the sense where his growth was stunted, and on some level he will always be the 13 year old boy who looked forward to the butter sandwich he got to eat that day. And here is my question: what of it? Is that sad? Is poverty sad, especially when it is so relative? I mean, he didn't have rickets, he didn't die. Today, he will eat everyone's scraps of food, even at a party, even if it's the food from someone else's kid. He will say things to our kids at the dinner table like "have seconds! you never know when you might eat again!" and then he will laugh at himself as they laugh at him. He was hungry, not horribly altered. Chronic hunger is a social problem that impacts millions, not a mark of shame or evidence of being a lesser person. We don't feel sad for him. We just pass the plates down his way.
And now to me. When I was a child, I had epilepsy. I had 100 seizures a day without medication. The medication worked, which was wonderful, but it also poisoned my liver and caused me severe pain. Every six weeks I had to go in for blood tests to gauge the level of the poison. I was tiny when I was six years old, barely 30 pounds. Nurses would place butterfly needles in my arm and take multiple vials of blood. I loved to watch the blood go into the tubes; I found it fascinating. After these tests, my parents would take me to 7-11 and allow me to get a candy bar and a slurpee for being such a "trooper." I understood even then what a trooper was--a person who did what she had to do, without complaining or asking questions. Being a trooper was neither good nor bad--it just was. And so, I would always look forward to my treat, and I always picked a Milky Way bar and a red-flavored Slurpee. It took me years to realize that my parents gave me those "treats" to bring my sugar up, to make sure I wouldn't pass out, as so much blood had been taken from my tiny body.
I didn't know that, and I didn't experience 7-11 as a consolation prize for my medical condition. That candy-slurpee combination remains impossibly perfect in my memory. The reason for it did not detract from its sweetness. Once this year, at age 40, I did something that until now I've kept a secret. While my husband was working, the kids were at school, and I was working from home, I drove to 7-11. I bought a Milky Way and a wild cherry slurpee, a combination I hadn't tasted in decades. I stood in the crowded parking lot and thought about all the things that have happened through the years, all the losses, all the hard things. I waited for the realization that the innocence or sincere happiness of my youth was gone.
I would have to wait a while longer. It was just how I remembered--how I always chose to remember. No matter what came before, the melted chocolate on my fingers tasted just as sweet. The ice in my throat still made me close my eyes and smile.
Dear fathers, remember that. You are there to offer consolation, not to tell her how it feels.
