Technically I've been raped.
Technically I've been raped a number of times.
Technically I've been raped by most of the people I've had sex with.
In fact, I told a couple of people that I wanted to write this post, and most recommended I steer clear of it because APPARENTLY rape is a little touchy.
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| Touchiness is kind of what makes it rape. |
And it took me six months of having a blog, but finally I've decided to talk about it.
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| Mostly because, at 23, I don't have enough energy to put shoes on everyday let alone appease people. |
So let's start this out on a high note: Rape is a funny thing.
And what I mean by that is, by even saying the word "rape" one is almost expecting an argument. It's provocative, it's shocking, it's a trigger -- a weapon. Rape has become a bad word. But we'll come back to that. First I've got to talk about my experience with this magical, dangerous 'rape' beast.
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| "In tonight's post, the part of the Rape Beast will be played by Nosferatu." |
So let me start out by saying most of the people who have technically raped me don't believe they've raped me.
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| Eh rapists, whataya gunna do. |
So unfortunately we're going to have to begin this discussion with a visit to my old friend--
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| And my only friend. |
-- Merriam Webster.
AND a followup visit to Dictionary.com:
Alright cool, that seems simple enough, right? So color me surprised the first time I had my vagina, anus, or mouth penetrated without my consent.
I remember it fairly well.
I was laying in bed, in my sexy pajamas.
And I was all ready to go to sleep.
My boyfriend at the time, however, was not ready to sleep.
CATASTROPHE!
But instead of say, reading the latest literature featuring talking cats, or playing a rousing game of Papa's Pastaria...
AKA, the thing I do at 3 am when I'm ashamed of still being awake.
He decided that he wanted to have sex. Unfortunately I, as the only other human in the room, did not want to have sex. This, one would think, was a simple problem with a simple solution.
But rapey boyfriend apparently had other ideas, namely, pulling down my pajamas, WHICH, in his defense were super sexy --
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| All those drawstrings and ducky prints, I was totally asking for it. |
This, of course, woke me up. And I'll admit, I'm a little grumpy when I wake up, and ESPECIALLY so, I've learned, when someone's taking my clothes off without asking and poking me repeatedly with their dick.
The proceeding conversation went something like this:
Me: What are you doing?
Rapey: I'm horny.
Me: I think if you speak to my friend Merriam you'll find the difference between what you answered, "how you are feeling" and what I asked, "what are you--"
Rapey: Let's have sex.
Me: Not right now.
Rapey: Come on, it'll be fast.
Me: Naw dawg. I'm sleeping.
But he persisted.
Now, this is when I discovered a crossroads I would soon become very familiar with. This was the point when I had to decide whether I was going to: agree, fight, or play dead.
If I gave in, I'd have to do the sex. Which, at the moment, was not ideal as I would have preferred to be unconscious.
And for all you folks who don't have a vagina, fun fact. If you don't want to have sex, sometimes your vagina will dry up and become tighter than an old British lady's mouth.
And if you try to stick things in it, it tears.
Now imagine little tiny tears right next to your pee hole. Then picture this: urine, like ungodly vinegar lava, flowing forth and filling those itty tears with the fiery wrath of Satan's cum.
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| Which I imagine is wrathful and fiery. |
These thoughts, along with the general desire to fall asleep and be left the hell alone, stopped me from just giving in right there.
His meaty, catcher's mitt hands had finished sliding down my pants as the second thought occurred to me: I could fight.
But how would I do that? I couldn't physically fight this guy -- he was literally twice my size. I'd already tried defensive measures, holding up my clothes, squeezing my legs together, but he had easily pushed past those. I was pretty sure I wouldn't last long if I decided to throw a punch.
So then what? I could yell at him? I could argue? I could pull out a dictionary and point to the word "rape?"
He already knew I didn't want to. Right? I'd said it, I'd taken defensive measures. So what would it do? It would mean at 3 am I'd have to get in a screaming match and then walk home? Because I promise you, had I accused him of rape, the only response he would have had was laughing or screaming.
Was I up to it?
Was it worth it?
I was between a rock and a hard place.
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| AKA, the wall and his dick which kept fucking poking me in the same fucking spot. |
Was I ready to potentially break up with someone? Was I ready to be known among his friends, kids I went to school with, as "the girl who cried rape?" Was I ready to stand up for myself against someone who could kill me with one hand tied behind his back?
As I continued to try in vain to press my thighs together and keep saying "no thank you, I'm fine" in a light enough tone not to wake the housemates, my decision was being made for me. Either I made this a big deal or I laid there and let him do what he was going to do.
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| Giving up was the fastest and easiest response. |
So I let him do it. I played dead, in a stunning display similar to an opossum I once saw him accidentally hit with a car, and hoped it would be fast.
I remember him whispering "come on, you'll like it, you'll see" as he finally pushed past my last defenses.
And want to hear a surprise? I didn't like it.
I suspect he didn't know that, because about thirty seconds after he was done, he zonked out and I had the pleasure of getting up to pee out Satan lava to ensure I didn't get a UTI.
Let me tell you, there are few more demeaning feelings than slipping back on your pajama pants and deciding to crawl back into bed with a person who just violated you.
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| But I've never been known for my dignity. |
(Not soon enough) that relationship ended and I was onto more. I was shocked and confused when almost identical events played out with several more of the men I'd later date.
It was so confusing-- these were men who identified themselves as feminists, who criticized people I'd dated before for being cruel, who rolled their eyes when I'd admit to the things I'd put up with before them.
This was a "thing," apparently. An epidemic.
If I said 'no,' that was just a starting point. They'd try to work me down until became a "yes." One boyfriend even laughed at a party as he told me a 'joke' he'd come up with--
"No means no, means no, means no, means maybe, means maybe, means maybe, means yes."
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| That was probably a red flag. Who knew? |
So as they'd poke me in the back with their man-batons, whining in my ear, "come on."
Very calmly I'd respond:
"You know this is technically rape, right?"
Well one was gracious enough to resheath his blade and stop being such a cunt muffin for the rest of our relationship.
Others sought to argue with me -- claiming I didn't know what rape really was or that they weren't doing what they were literally just doing. It stopped them in the short run, but man can rapey people be persistent.
Technically I've been raped, by multiple people, in fact. By people who I said I loved, by people who said they loved me, by people I dated for months and years.
I've been told that it can't have been rape because we were dating.
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| Phew! I was worried there for a second! |
I've been told it wasn't rape because I didn't fight back.
I've been told it wasn't rape because I don't have any scars.
Well guess what? Rape has a pretty simple, single definition.
And frankly, yeah, I came away from my situation unscathed. My experience with rape wasn't such a horrible one. People have had both different and worse physical encounters and emotional responses to it. So I don't claim to speak for everyone. Every situation is different and the category of "rape" can seem very broad.
I'm lucky, my pee doesn't burn anymore. I didn't end up being traumatized. I didn't get a uterine parasite.
Worse things, for me, had already happened.
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| "Quinn, we're out of Fancy Cakes." |
I dated them pretty happily and didn't pay much attention to what essentially felt like mostly just a nuisance.
The thing that frustrates me to no end though, is that somehow I still felt ashamed. I still felt sullied. I've had to sit down with myself and really ask how I've been impacted.
And why?
I've narrowed my shame down to two factors:
1) I've been taught that my sexuality is sacred.
Since I was very little it was implied to me that my vagina was a bad thing, that it should be hidden and never discussed.
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| Which is especially weird when you are born with a built-in pita pocket that no one will explain. |
Then I grew up and was taught that girls who had sex were sluts.
Which sounds fun except for, as I understand it, women who have sex are dirty, or weak, or stupid, or just trying to please men.
I learned that I wasn't supposed to show my vagina to people. So the idea of someone TAKING sex from me made me feel like those evil sluts my childhood had warned me about.
I didn't have control of this atomic bomb attached to me, a terrible thing I had kept in a bunker since I was a kid. Adults freaked the fuck out, code red-ing the shit out of my kindergarten if I just took my underwear off once during nap time.
So I reminded myself -- sex isn't something to be ashamed about. I wasn't the one who did anything wrong.
2) It made me feel like a second-class citizen.
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| I know, I know. Take your red pill and calm the fuck down. |
The fact that someone would just adamantly override my wishes about my own body because they didn't agree was horribly frustrating and scary.
They didn't even think about what they were doing. There was no respect or awareness for the fact that my body was mine, and they weren't allowed to make any decisions regarding it. They just didn't understand that, or didn't care.
This is part of what people complain about when they say they are objectified. You literally feel like an object.
When my boyfriend pulled down my pants as I was saying no, when he kept trying to convince me of something we both knew I didn't want... I felt like a toy. Like I was something he had bought. We'd had sex before, so why not now? My body had already belonged to him.
So my saying "no" now didn't really factor into his plan. He wanted to do something and that was his business, I didn't have a role even if my body did.
When I realized that not only did he look at me that way, but that several people I dated did, it really got me concerned.
How could this happen? How could educated, adult men not even really grasp the definition of rape?
And I fully believe that they just didn't understand.
Be it an issue of them thinking rape only happened in dark alleys with strangers, or if simply they didn't see themselves as rapists -- they couldn't grasp the idea that they could do that horrible thing to someone.
Which brings me back to my other complaint: the word 'rape.'
It has become something so horrible, so dastardly, so impossible that people can't imagine themselves being rapists -- even when they're committing rape. It has become both an insult to the perpetrator and the victim. It's a bad word that you can't say in front even your friends. Not even Merriam Webster is willing to be upfront about it.
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| Fucking pedantic scumbag. |
That's why I hate the word rape. I wish we could all just call it what it is: battery. Assault. Abuse.
No one bats an eye blaming someone for punching someone in the stomach, but shove something into their unwilling orifice and, bam, there are all these caveats. Suddenly there's blame and shame and denial. You have to explain that even though there isn't a trial or scars that you were "technically" raped.
I think we're doing a disservice to everyone who is raped by treating their abuse as if it's a disease. It's taboo. It's questionable. The word rape has, unfortunately, become inextricable with these feelings of shame and distrust. We're forcing a scarlet letter onto people for the rest of their lives by calling them "rape victims."
It's a title, an identity. It's fucked.
I think, as unpopular as it is, we're also doing rapists a disservice that ultimately helps no one. By forever treating them as monsters, as people who can't be redeemed... it makes them unwilling to admit the truth even to themselves. "Rapist" is a lifelong title too, and I'm not sure a worthwhile one.
Subdue criminals without acting like they're otherworldly beasts. Treat the crime as it is and let them learn or be punished from that. If they can't even recognize their behavior, they're never going to stop.
I don't think the people who 'raped' me are monsters.
I don't think that abuse, as shitty as it is, defines who someone is.
Now I wish they'd stop being assholes, but that's another story.
I think we'd be doing everyone a favor if we took a step back from this amorphous, monstrous idea of rape and chose instead to just look at the facts.
Yeah. It's super not cool to do things to people that they don't want.
If you do not want things randomly shoved in your orifices, then don't randomly shove things into other people's orifices.
If you break this simple rule, then you have committed battery. If you wouldn't punch someone, don't cram your dick into them.
I think the answer is not to point fingers and start straw man arguments about what rape really means, it's just to educate people on the literal definition. Make them understand why it's not okay on the most basic human level.
Then again, screw it, I can't erase a word from the dictionary anyway, so what am I complaining about?
No, the thing I find more troubling is: if this is happening to me, I hate to think of who else has experienced it too.
Because it didn't happen to me once -- in my life, it's been the rule not the exception.
And that's the really scary thing.
