So How Do We Talk About Rape?

[rax]

Lately I've been working on talking about things when I think it's important to talk about them, even when doing so makes me uncomfortable. I've also, very recently, been trying to be more frank about what I don't know, and willing to be publically uncertain. So here's a post that contains a bunch of things that make me uncomfortable to share, and that I have absolutely no idea what to do about. As such, it might also contain a lot of things other people have said before or said better; I might be totally off base or missing something obvious. Please let me know if so.

I roll with a pack of genderheads, and sometimes conversation turns to rape[1].I usually refrain from talking about my own experiences. Frustratingly, not talking about my experiences makes me feel like I am silencing myself; I often am actively preventing myself from participating in conversations. However, when I do come in and bring up my own experiences, I feel both silenced and silencing. If a conversation is theoretical or about a specific issue of policy or behavior, and I say "This one time that I was sexually assaulted, the following things happened," conversation often shifts radically to be centered around my own personal experiences of sexual assault. Everyone is so sorry that I had to deal with that, and I have no idea how to respond. How did it happen? What have you done about it? Who did it, so I can be mean to them? That's not actually what I wanted to talk about. I didn't share the anecdote because I was looking for sympathy; I gave you details because they were relevant. I wasn't trying to win the argument, I was trying to relate to the issue the only way I know how, as someone with personal experience. At best when this has happened I've felt like the thread of conversation got lost in people tripping over themselves to make sure I knew they thought what happened to me was terrible; at worst I've felt like I accidentally used "I've been raped" as a thought-terminating cliche, winning an irrelevant argument, and felt guilty about bringing it up at all.

At the same time, when someone says "I'm sorry that happened to you," I do appreciate it. And I've gotten used to it. I don't know what it would feel like to be talking with a group of friends and just be frank about my experiences and have everyone take it for granted. What if it actually felt really horrible? I don't want to take rape and sexual assault for granted, I don't want that sort of statement to be just part of the scenery, and I don't want my experiences glossed over as if they aren't important, either. If this sounds like I want it both ways, it's because I do; I want every assault to be treated as unacceptable but I want to be able to discuss them calmly and impersonally. I have no idea how to do that.

At this point, anyone sufficiently on the Internet to read this post shouldn't need me to tell them that rape happens to many people, regardless of age, color, creed... There are various blog posts and forums and LJ communities where survivors (I'm pretty sure that's the right term? I'm not really a part of this community) get together and discuss their experiences, and anyone who wants to have an absolutely depressing and reality-inducing evening can go and read them. Hopefully you already know that a number of the people in your social group have been victims of rape, and most likely some of them have been perpetrators, too. You'll note I didn't list gender; for the most part these collections of rape stories are very gendered. Partially this is because rape itself, as a cultural phenomenon, as an exercise of power, is gendered. What we know both anecdotally and statistically suggests that this is true: The lion's share of rapes and sexual assaults have male perpetrators and female victims.

I recently read something someone I didn't know wrote that said something like "No discussion of rape is complete without referencing the Ceretapost." (I don't remember exactly where it was, or I would reference it.) This sort of bothered me. I don't know cereta , and I think that her original post --- about men and rape culture --- was valuable and worth reading. The comments made me really upset, though. I didn't read all 4000 because, well, I have a job, but there were a few themes I picked out, that I've also seen other places where this topic comes up in conversation:

• The idea that women shouldn't have to feel unsafe walking alone at night, because most rapes are committed by friends and acquaintances. Yes, thank you, I know this; what I'm concerned with here is a feeling of safety, something that can't just be rationalized away, because most is so, so far from all, and even if I'm not likely to be raped, I may very well be harassed.
• The idea that considering men dangerous or as potential rapists first is bad. I really want to agree, but I have a lot of difficulty doing so. There's a part of me that thinks this is one of the ways sexism hurts men and that I don't want to be part of perpetuating that in the name of feminism, and a part of me that looks at the other part and says "Are you crazy? Can you really afford to give men the benefit of the doubt like that?" The answer is, I don't know.
• A small number of people came up with things like "What about men raped by women, or same-sex rape? Where does that fit into this?" To which the answer was "That doesn't fit into the topic of this post," with a side of "You're derailing." Now, a couple of those posters actually were derailing, but is the idea derailing? I don't know. Having been raped by a woman, and raped while not everyone around me considered me a woman, I feel left behind by this argument, actively pushed out of the conversation. At the same time, I just said above that I wanted there to be room for serious conversations about specific elements of rape issues that weren't focused on my experience. So shouldn't I be glad that this conversation didn't apply to all of my assault experiences, not angry at being excluded? Isn't it important to have these conversations that happen in broad sweeping gendered terms, even if they leave some people or experiences out? (I think part of the problem with that is that the same people get left out, time and time again, but I don't have a good solution for that, or even know if it's true.)

I recently had a personal conversation with a good friend after having talked about one of my assault experiences. She felt strongly that I should push my friends to terminate connection with my assaulter, and to call my assaulter out on their behavior. I did not and do not want to do this; I do not feel the energy spent in making a big deal out of it is actually worth what little I might gain. After all, even if 100 people walk up to this person and tell them "You raped rax  and you're an asshole," I'm not going to be unraped. So I'd rather just let it slide and get on with my life. At first, I thought my friend was bringing it up on my behalf, and I tried to explain that it just wasn't worth it to me. After a while, I understood that it wasn't just about my experience --- it was also about her anxiety and her anger that someone could hurt me like that, and feeling of powerlessness in the face of horrible things happening to people she cared about. She expressed that she wished she knew who in her life had done such things so that she could call them out and ostracize them, and that it was difficult to not be able to, knowing that people she associated with regularly had gotten away with rape. And I feel bad, now, to be contributing to that; to some extent, it's like I'm defending and protecting them by not revealing them, even though what I'm trying to do is defend and protect myself. Oh, cultural systems of power, how clever you are at preserving yourselves!

So what do I want from people when I tell them this has happened to me? Mostly I want them to keep seeing me as a person, not as a "victim," not as someone needing physical or emotional protection, not as a shrill man-hater. Really it depends on context; I'm not averse to expressions of sympathy but if that takes away from the conversation, can we save it for later? Also, it's important to keep in mind --- but it's the sort of thing that I might forget if I didn't write it down here --- that not everyone's desires and needs in this space will be anything like mine. Maybe some people really want and hunger for that sympathy, that focus. Maybe some people feel very strongly that it should go completely unremarked, as if saying "Many years ago, I ate a sandwich." All of these things and more are valid, and I don't know how to handle them any better than anyone else, except when it comes to myself, really. [2]

So, given this, how do we talk about rape? How can we normalize these conversations so that we can be comfortable and make real progress? How can those of us with experiences share our experiences without centering them and without denying the trauma they contain? How can those of us without experiences express our opinions and participate in the conversation? How can we silence no one?

[1] I'm going to use "rape" here as shorthand for "rape, attempted rape, and sexual assault" both because it's convenient and because having a four-letter word to cover that seems valuable and maybe "rape" should be it? I don't know. I could write a whole post on that too except no thank you I have spent enough time on this already.

[2] What I do know is how I'd like you to respond to this post: Please, please don't comment and tell you how sorry you are that I was raped. I consider it safe to assume that you are displeased. If you really want to tell me anyway, send me a private message or an email. I'm much more interested in talking here about how we talk about rape and handle these conversations than in the particulars of my experiences or how terrible they must have been. Thank you.

Comments

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

... well, the reason I'd want to know if a person I knew/spent any amount of time around had committed rape/attempted rape/sexual assault is not just so I could break off connections with the person, ostracize them, or even express disapproval; it is so I could never be alone in a room with them again. Telling people about it when you know someone to be dangerous helps keep everybody safe.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I had genuinely not considered this reason, which now feels incredibly obvious, and I am glad I made this post if for no other reason than this realization. I need to sit long and hard and figure out if this changes my mental math. Dammit, and thank you.

[friode.livejournal.com]

I think there is also the question of whether this person needs cshiley's How Not To Rape and is merely misinformed, or if no amount of paying attention to How Not To Rape would improve this person's behavior in the future. But I suspect in the real world it's often hard to figure out which category someone fits into.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

Looking at the rest of this thread, I tend to agree with the tactic of not necessarily spreading it around publicly, but of warning people who are spending a lot of time with the person or considering a romantic relationship... mostly.

The exception to the mostly is highly specific and individual, and is, for example, me. I have a trauma history; I have an extensive and violent and nasty trauma history; I, personally, due to my history, have a fairly serious zero-tolerance policy about being around people who have committed sexual assault, as in, I guess I could see someone who had managing to convince me that they had changed and would never do it again and really felt bad etc., but we would be starting from a position of me not wanting to speak to them at all so it would be hard to do. Maybe that makes me a bad person in some ways, I don't know. The point is, many people with trauma histories have much firmer zero-tolerance policies about this sort of thing than people in general do, I know that's not just me; many trauma survivors also work very hard to feel safe(r) on a day-to-day basis, and finding out something like this about someone one has already been around does not help with that. So when you're aware someone has a trauma history, you might consider telling them this sort of info about a person even if the social contact between the two is fleeting and tangential.

Or you might not; I don't think it's a moral issue, I think it's a case-by-case social thing.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing this. I think that's a very good point, and I'll add it into my mental math. I think the end result is likely to be "no change in current behavior but lower threshhold for change of behavior" but I won't know for sure what I'm going to do for a couple of weeks while my subconscious churns.

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

Yes, thank you, THIS. And also for warning my friends not to be alone with them.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Thinking more about this, and replying here because of the conversational thread rather than because I expect an answer from you necessarily, though I'm curious what you think: Is it reasonable to attempt to warn strangers, or is this something that works within a social group? I feel waaaaaaaaay unsafe just publically saying "here are some names, don't get in a room alone with these people" but I do feel more comfortable approaching people and saying "hey I noticed you've been hanging out with X, you might want to know about this thing that happened, I'd appreciate if you could stay quiet about it."

I do also worry, as all of my experiences are at least five years old --- what if people got better? Is it appropriate to endeavor to blacklist people on this basis? (I mean it's fair to just say YES RACHEL IT IS in all caps, but part of my brain is genuinely unsure.) I guess at the very least if they have gotten better they can work to make people trust them, but don't deserve to start with the benefit of the doubt? I don't know. I guess I go through phases where I am like "X raped me, I hope X falls in a well and drowns" but I'm not in one of those right now.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

I think... we have to be *really* careful with blacklisting people. People can make mistakes, people get better, people get treatment for their mental health issues. And sometimes, certain relationship dynamics cause people to break in ways they never otherwise would.

For instance, there's plenty of people who have nonconsensually had sex with someone who I'd be perfectly safe with; I'd be in a totally different context.

like... don't date the crazy, but sometimes it's ok to be friends with it.

And people react really, really strongly to allegations of rape. I mean, the people here are basically saying "give me names so I can never talk to them again and tell all my friends to stay away, because they are BAD PEOPLE."

I think, personally, I would tell close friends that someone is PNG. (in my case, "Not Welcome In My House", and it can be for more than sexual assault.) I would consider telling people the person is dating, if you happen to know about it and are in a position to influence them (but often people will ignore you and it will turn into Dramaz.)

Finally, if you believe that the person is a possible threat to people they're not in a dysfunctional relationship with, or if the attack was unambiguous or violent, you might consider a louder broadcast. I'll just let you know, though, that even broadcasting "JonMon Is Sketchy" cost me some social capital.

From my understanding of your situation (and I don't remember the details clearly), if you asked me, I'd say not to broadcast the name of your first rapist (maybe broadcasting where appropriate that at least a few years ago, it was full of TEH CRAZY), but considering broadcasting the name of the second. Oh, and also, I think most of the math ought to be about your comfort, unless you believe someone to be a no-shit sexual predator.

When I was younger, I did ostracize people based on allegations of less.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I think gaudior's post says a lot around this. Personally I have a lot of trouble PNGing people and mostly haven't needed to, but sometimes I am tempted. Maybe I should be more willing to do so for my living environment.

With regard to my situation personally, the number of the counting is three, so I'm not sure which one you're missing; would it be OK to ask your opinion sometime out of band? I don't think I want to go into detail here.

[baniszew.livejournal.com]

I haven't personally had any assault experiences, but I generally avoid publicly spreading around the names of the people who I have been told have committed sexual assaults, mostly because I've felt like it would bring more unwanted attention upon their victims.

On the other hand, I have had private conversations of the sort, "You seem to be spending a lot of time with X. X was involved in a situation a while ago where they may have sexually assaulted someone they were dating, although I don't think they understood what they were doing at the time. I don't mean to tell you that X is a horrible person, but please be careful."

I know that publicly outing assaulters could warn a lot more potential victims than privately saying something when I happen to notice a potential bad situation, but it also seems like it would cause a lot of larger social strife. I feel like there's a degree of social ostracism that can make someone realize that they really committed a sexual assault and they were wrong, but there's also a degree which can make them too defensive to think about their situation. I don't really know where the happy medium lies.