Not Ready To Tell My Number
October 11th, 2007College Callgirl wrote a post on sexual assault that just choked me right up.
Unlike College Callgirl, I do not have a childhood history of abuse. But I have been told that I could not be raped. And that is bullshit.
I even got a comment to that effect. (See, your comments matter!) Here it is:
I am very sorry that this happened to you, but you obviously understand the difficulty of making any kind of complaint in the situation you allowed yourself to be in. I know everyone will say no is no etc, but I am guessing that you are smart enough to realise that while I agree with that, the nature of your association with this person is only going to trivialise what happened to you. I suspect that this person needs dealt with by members of your own community as the vanilla world will disregard any complaint!
Isn’t that a priceless work of art?
“It’s a shame someone slipped and fell between your legs. Of course I think it’s wrong. If you’d only covered up those legs, and not associated with those people, we’d be able to stick up for you. Better luck next time. Watch your drink, don’t stay out so late, and oh — have you considered a burqa?”
Fuck that noise.
My mother meant well by telling me not to wear makeup and to suspect all men, but she had it totally wrong. Women do not invite rape. (By its definition they can’t. How the hell could you invite something you’re actively uninviting?) Men rape women.
Unless of course, a man rapes a woman and there are extenuating circumstances. Variably, the value of sex with me is named as “less” — than a virgin, than someone of good virtue — or “none” — a whore can’t be raped, only cheated. How long until it’s only rape if the woman votes Republican, eats her broccoli and fills out her forms in triplicate?
When I hear this sort of shit, I want to scream and cry and break things. I want to talk about how it feels to live in fear: unfairness, powerlessness, nausea, blind fucking fury.
Or about how I soured on the “empowerment” of tease and denial when I realized what a sham it was, like so many other tropes of femdom (men ironing, anyone?).
Tease was one of my favorite things at first, no doubt because it scared me. I would tie clients securely (to a chair, to a bondage bed) and they would buck and grunt and beg. Veins would appear on their straining forearms, and their muscles would ripple as I had only seen in sports mags. They would rock the furniture trying to get that-much-closer to my breasts. It was violent, bewildering, heady.
I could not believe how helpless they seemed in thrall to their desires. Teasing terrified me. I felt as if I were playing with fire, that tease (which they were paying me for) was tantamount to consent to sex. Bound they couldn’t touch me, and they couldn’t force me, and I could provoke them as much as I wanted. Bondage was freeing — on them, for me.
How horribly, ironically ass-backwards that I felt empowered about not being raped.
(No, this is not the only thing to love about tease and denial.)
I had a whole post in the works about “affirmative consent”, but I’m so spitting mad, I can’t be coherent right now.
Edit: The sphere-o-blog is speaking out! If you notice any other recent posts on rape and rape fantasies, please let me know and I’ll add them here.
Policing Our Desires: Are Rape Fantasies Acceptable? (blogher.com)
When “No” Is Not A Safeword (bloodylaughter.com)
Pure Evil: How To Rape 100 (Cute, Educated, Upper-Middle-Class Girls) And Get Away With It (jezebel.com)
I want to… be raped (timeout.com)
My Number Is Eight (collegecallgirl.blogspot.com)
Not Asking For It (thenakedrhetoricaltruth.blogspot.com)
Rape (kinkinexile.wordpress.com)
No Means No (tempting-eve.blogspot.com)
Rape in its’ Myriad Forms (jadedhippy.blogspot.com)
October 11th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Obviously there’s no comment I can make to mollify your rage; it’s fully justified. I feel trite and stupid saying it, but surely you’re aware that those that know you and have met you think you’re anything but “less.” Hell, those that have just read yoru blog would likely stick up for your rights and integrity. Though nothing’s wrong with eating broccoli, lots of vitamins in broccoli.
Heheh, brutish male that I am, that teasing image is in my head. Maybe one day I’ll pay some nice dominatrix to tease me while my arms are tied behind my back, no need to bind a little guy like me to a bed or chair or anything, is there?
Though I’m not sure on reflection how ironic or assbackwards the empowerment from that scenario you described is. Given that it’s a consensual activity, you can frame it in a quite different way from any of the real dynamics of rape, or so it seems to me. Meh, I’m probably trying to wade through waters over my head here.
October 11th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
Its ridiculous how people can be about rape and assault, and blame it on ’situations’, such as the one mentioned in CC’s posts. Just because you do A, doesn’t mean that B is ok.
I was almost assaulted by a friend of a friend a year or so ago. We were all at a party, and he kept hitting on me pretty heavy. I kept avoiding him. The ‘owner’ of the party kicked us all out, and we moved to my friend M’s house, including the guy who couldn’t take no for an answer. When it was time for me to go home, M asked me to drive that douche home. I didn’t want to, because the guy gave me the creeps, but I trusted M enough that I didn’t think he’d put me in a situation where someone could hurt me.
The entire ride, he kept trying to touch me, and move closer to me. When we stopped, he wouldn’t get out of the car. I actually threatened to stab him if he wouldn’t get out of the car(at the time, I spent a lot of time traveling around alone, and carried a small knife with me at all times, until I got my pepper spray) He assured me he could easily disarm me (he was much bigger than I was) and finally, he said he would leave if I kissed him. Thank god, he did, and did go further. He got out, and I locked the doors and wheeled out of there asap.
If he had done anything worse, would it have been my ‘fault’ because I let him in my car? I’m sure many people would think so, and that fucking pisses me off. Granted, *I* would have known is wasn’t me or anything, and if he had tried anything else, I would have called the police. But its not fair that others get made to feel they can’t, or shouldn’t, or that it was ‘their fault’ somehow.
The crap that some of my friends had to go through too - in highschool, a good friend of mine was drunk and hanging out with some of her boyfriends friends (the stupid boyfriend, who is stupid for other reasons, was away at boot camp for the air force) and one of them raped her. And she never reported it, or told a soul other than me, because she was made to feel, for whatever reasons, that it was her fault, that she was drunk and shouldn’t have been there, that she must have led him on somehow, blah blah. She never even told the boyfriend, because he would have been mad, and probably not believed her.
It angered me beyond reason, that she felt that way, and that the douche bag boyfriend WOULDN’T have believed her, and WOULD have been mad that she ‘fucked one of his friends’.
My bff, too, I found out recently, was repeatedly raped by her boyfriend at the time. She wouldn’t want to have sex, and he would force her. She didn’t even realize, or perhaps didn’t want to realize, at the time, that it was rape. But it was, and she suffered. And I think she felt, though she never articulated it, that she wouldn’t be believed, because he was her boyfriend. She never bothered to report it.
(she’s out in Cali, and its a good thing for him, because I would have slit his throat myself and done the jail time gladly if they had been out here. She wound up talking me down from flying there and finding. Really, how many six foot two inch Gothic Mexican guys can there be?)
October 12th, 2007 at 1:42 am
A couple of months ago a report came on the evening news about a woman reporting that she had been raped in a bathroom at a downtown rec. area. She said it happened around four in the morning.
Now, wouldn’t you know that the first person that the news people interviewed for a public reaction about the alleged rape was a man, and just guess what he said….
What was she doing out at that time of the morning?
WTF?
I was so tempted to throw something through the television. It’s comments like that, that keep so many women from reporting rapes.
I don’t care if a woman was to walk down main street in the middle of the night completely naked, she doesn’t deserve to be raped. If she says no, then it’s no.
I don’t care if it’s a stranger, her boyfriend, her husband or a friend, if she says no, then it’s no.
Any woman, no matter who she is or what she does for a living, if she says no, then it’s no. Anything less than complying to her answer is rape and deserves the fullest of punishments that can be dished out either by her or the law.
Sorry about the rant, but this is also a hot topic for me.
October 12th, 2007 at 9:09 am
I remember sitting with a friend of mine in Dennys when we were in high school while she explained to me, matter of fact and with a smile on her face, that she was sexually frigid because she’d been repeatedly molested (she didn’t use the word rape) by a family friend when she was a child. No consequences for the friend. She figured it was something she just needed to live with.
And then, sitting on my friend’s bed in freshman year of college while she cried because the guy she’d gone on a date with the night before had fingered her, even though she kept saying no, but she was too drunk to stop him. “That’s rape,” I said, and I remember she got a scared look on her face when I used the word. I don’t think she ever told anyone else.
Good post. Righteous anger.
October 12th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
I made the comment you quoted in your post and am dissapointed that you have taken it out of context but unsurprised that you have used it to maximise the impact. The point I was trying to make is the situation was one that will be neglected by the authorities, if, as I remember this person already had a history of such innapropriate behaviour, then why is his continued presence tolerated. I have no tolerance for sexual abuse and to be perfectly frank find your use of my comments out of context the worst kind of wannabe tabloid sensationalism that I have seen on my limited time on the web. I was attempting to point out to you that rape victims have a difficult enough time trying to achieve prosecution in the most ordinary of circumstances. I didn’t mean to suggest that just because it happened in a situation that would raise eyebrows amongst the judicial system devalued the severity of the crime. I think you know this but chose to ignore it, so I must ask what is your motivation?
October 12th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Oh and by the way, I am also a victim of sexual abuse, was I asking for it…you tell me I was a five year old boy who had no understanding of sex at all. I have never told anyone about it and never will, I am 37 now and what good would it do to reveal what happened to me and also, yes I am ashamed of my weakness, I may have just been a child but at that stage in my life I had already been diagonsed as having a genius level IQ so you know what I felt? I felt guilt because I should have been smart enough not to be in that situation with two much older boys who I considered my intellectual inferiors.
October 12th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
I’ve deleted three comments today, because when someone’s writing leaves you speachless, it’s hard to say anything worthwhile. In lieu of that, Calico, thanks for writing. You rock my world.
Toni, I read your comment in its entirety and also the section she quoted. What you *meant* to say is clear in both, without your explanation. What you actually did say is also clear.
Sure, communities should take care of their own and be self-policing. This should happen because it should happen, not because the overarching authorities refuse to act. If the alternative communities only watch out for their own because no one else will, we’ve got bigger problems.
So lay off. Because we do have bigger problems. As much as I wish vigilante justice were the answer, it’s not.
October 12th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Maria,
I am not advocating vigilante justice but to be misrepresented in such a way is appalling, surely you must understand that. You know what if your community is so self-obsessed then perhaps, the twilight exsistence is where it belongs. I thought long and hard about revealing things about myself that I never have, and sure I post on enough blogs to know that other people will associate my comments with my otherwise cavaliar persona but I felt I had to defend my opinions, I do not condone sexual assault in any form. If you are prepared to use someones comments out of context, well then I don’t believe you should delete other comments. I believe that this editing and deleting of comments devalues the whole democracy of the web. Sure you may not like what the response is, but in real life you would be told to your face.
October 12th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
And by the way, what bigger issues you have to deal with than rape and assault, I would love to know about. Because last time I checked the association of S&M people in the world were not really dealing with the atrocities in Darfur or the sensless waste of life in the Middle East and as for global warming, all that pvc is a petrol by-product.
October 12th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Maria,
is this your blog? if it is then why don’t you just delete all my comments, including the one you used in your post. People like you sicken me, you talk a good story but you don’t really want to deal with the repercussions of what you say. Silly little girls should stick to writing in diaries and not post online where real people may comment and upset whatever delicate thoughts you might have about your sex life. Some of us heve lived through real life and don’t need your pathetic condescension.
October 12th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Calico:
I feel like I may have commented a bit too cavalierly or casually above. For whatever reason, I have difficulty in interpreting the tone of ANYTHING written in a blog as being completely serious, and with strong emotion. The same switches don’t get thrown in me because of the medium itself.
I’m sorry you had such a bad experience, one that’s obviously still on your mind, and that the situation puts you in a situation where you feel like you have no recourse, and might be faced with derision or shame instead of sympathy and help.
Toni’s comments are beside the point; in fairness I have to agree that his original statement is about practicalities and what he sees as realistic remedies, rather than any kind of normative evaluation. Your entry is in a sense a confirmation of his point of view, in that the people you are railing against do exist, and do put you in an unwinnable situation. And I agree that this is a terrible thing. But unless you actually want to file charges against this person and take society’s views head on, there seems to be little you can do except to try to educate those you can about the legitimacy of “alternative” lifestyles, and hope to be part of a gradual trickle of knowledge and understanding. Or go the vigilante route, I suppose, though in most cases that doesn’t seem wise. But your lack of practical options can only make your valid feelings of anger worse; would that things were otherwise.
But keep writing. Because I feel strongly that your words, ideas, and experiences are part of that trickle of understaning. Throw in your own cheesy water-wearing-down-rock analogy.
Toni: your words speak for themselves, and if they didn’t, well, you’ve taken care of that. Maria isn’t Calico; if you were misrepresented, it wasn’t by her; and I strongly suspect Maria means she started 3 times to write comments of her own, but wasn’t satisfied with them, not that she’s somehow deleting other people’s opinions. Furthermore, if she’s who I think she is, she makes great waffles. So let her be.
October 12th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Boston Boy, you seem reasonable enough and I agree with you that I tendd to ignore most blog entries, because lets face it, you can say whatever the hell you want. But for the likes of me who no longer have anyone else to confide in, I will say things that I will never allow to be revealed in normal life and I just cannot accept that honest comments that I will make can be used to justify a position I don’t believe in. I am very vanilla but I am open-minded. I understand that people may misinterpret what I say, but I am consistantly astonished that people in this community are so quick to judge others. The longer I read these blogs and websites the more I realise that everyone is just so concerned with t
October 12th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Toni, I think I used your comment in a perfectly appropriate and fitting context. If you like I’ll include a link to the original entry.
October 12th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Boston Boy - Your comments are welcome as always, and not offensive.
Of course teasing and denial, like everything else, is what you make of it. I enjoy it not because it’s “empowering” but because it can be hot. Ask Eileen and May for more on that!
Re: what to do about my own encounters, I don’t know. I really don’t. It’s not just that one bad time at an orgy — it’s so much more. An epidemic, not a single case of the flu.
Crap. I hate writing about my personal experiences, because I don’t feel like a victim (whatever that feels like) and because I hate to make it sound like it happened because of sex work (it didn’t). Maybe I will sometime.
When things happen I’m never sure I did the right thing, or that I am doing the best thing by talking about it, or that I did enough. But I am starting to think that everyone feels that way. Rape is a crime defined by what the assailant did, not what the victim didn’t.
A lot of us who blog feel that in some small grassroots way, spreading knowledge and letting people hear us is change and activism. Maybe it’s not enough, but it’s something.
October 12th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
It breaks my heart that everyone has a story to tell.
October 12th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
At its roots, rape and sexual abuse of all kinds stem from sexual and emotional ignorance. It is precisely that ignorance which speaking about the issues—largely, thankfully, regardless of that speech’s content at this early point—is fighting.
October 13th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Z at The Naked Truth has also picked this thread up and written about it:
Not Asking For It.
October 13th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Some years ago, I met a girl at a friend’s party, and we went out and were both attracted and soon after, I was spending the night with her. We were making out, got our shirts off, went a little further, just having fun for a while, and then she said, completely out of the blue, “okay that’s it, I’m done”. So I stopped, ready to settle in to cuddle.
She looked at me curiously. Why did I stop so quickly, why did I just say “okay”? Didn’t I want to play with her more? Yes, of course I did, I told her, but she’d just said she was done and wanted to stop. She wasn’t serious, she said! She wanted to have fun with a bit of teasing, see what I’d do to get her to keep going.
It’s been a long time but that incident sticks with me, much more than anything else we did in bed the few times we stayed together. Some thoughts:
- Her genuine surprise indicated… what? That she didn’t expect guys (or people in general) to take no at face value? How does that kind of expectation get created? How does it affect one’s partners?
- If someone I have some experience with wants to play with that kind of teasing, it can be fun. If we know each other, know what we’re doing and what we mean, we can get away with it. But there’s no way to do that safely the first time in bed with someone new.
- On the other hand, if you do that with someone new, it *might* be okay. It might even be hot. You make a guess, they make a guess, your guesses match up, you have a great time. There’s an interplay of expections you’ve built up with other people, not with each other, but they might just be on target.
It’s not something I’d risk, but I think it is something a lot of people do risk, maybe without even realizing what risk they’re taking: hey know their own desires, they assume their partner’s desires, they are either close enough to right or don’t find out they were wrong, and don’t think about the other possibilities that might be in the other person’s head. Especially if experience suggests doing *this* leads to hot sex and a happy partner once… twice… three times… Is that how some expectations and patterns of behavior get built up that lead to disaster later, with someone else?
October 13th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Cos, you’ve brought up a great point. That’s the issue I originally wanted to talk about.
A lot of women feel that saying “Oh, no, I couldn’t … well, maybe … oh but wait … I don’t really think … ooh, just a little” is synonymous to “Yes”. What’s more, it’s preferable to yes: it produces better results, keeps them in control, and reflects better on them as women.
The crappy side of this? Oh, everything. It encourages men to disregard all “No”s, encourages game playing instead of clear communication, fosters a view of men as brutish idiots who require manipulation since their desires are incompatible with women’s, and perpetuates sex-negative attitudes since it’s okay to do it as long as you do it over your protests. In effect, it makes the “no” useless and it removes the “yes”.
I am very familiar with what you describe. I think it’s a standard issue encounter. But I’d love to change that.
October 14th, 2007 at 12:44 am
Kink In Exile has picked it up as well:
Rape.
October 15th, 2007 at 10:33 am
I read your post, and the related links, and went and got my back up. I am a rape survivor, so I am especially angry about this particular topic. So I went and blogged about it, and referenced you. I hope you don’t mind, I just feel that your anger is entirely justified and it helped me get the courage to put out my own experiences and thoughts on the matter. So thanks for that.
Here’s the link if your interested: http://tempting-eve.blogspot.com/2007/10/no-means-no_15.html
October 16th, 2007 at 11:56 am
So your provocative post and complete misinterpretation of what I said has been widely received by your fellow blogging community. I am sure that you feel you have achieved something but your injured indignation does you few favours. Feel free to post exactly what you think I meant and in what context. And as for your sorrow over the sob stories of abuse, while I have no doubt it wasn’t intended for me, save it for someone who doesn’t doubt your sincerity.
October 16th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Widely received? Toni, you flatter me.
October 16th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
I also put up a post on the topic: http://jadedhippy.blogspot.com/2007/10/rape-in-its-myriad-forms.html
And Feminist Review did a review of the Time Out New York article talking about rape fantasies: http://feministreview.blogspot.com/2007/10/time-out-new-york-sex-issue-oct-4.html
October 16th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
I stand by my comments in the earlier post. Convictions in a court of law are not the only way to measure the effectiveness of reporting things to the authorities.
As for sensitivity regarding terminology. Call it “sexual assault” if you are uncomfortable with the term “rape.”