I binge watched Unbelievable this week. I started watching it because of, well, Toni Collette :-) It was quite cathartic (warning: the following deals with rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse).
Beth Dubber/Netflix
Dealing with having been sexually assaulted/raped/sexually abused is a complex experience. I know, because I’ve lived through it, several times. And I’m about to tell you my story. Just talking about it is complex. To start with, the language to explain it is inadequate. The context to understand it is warped. Trying to speak about it is like being on a wobble-board in a dream. Nothing is solid, nothing stays still or where it is supposed to. Unbelieveable delves into this murkiness and gives a refreshingly realistic portrayal of the experience.
Firstly, what do you call it? Rape? The word “rape” is so loaded as soon as I use it I’m dealing with people’s reactions, not my own experience. Sexual assault? Kind of like being punched, but sexually. It doesn’t convey the experience of disempowerment, of your inhabitance of your own body being of less importance than the perpetrator’s use of it. To be injured and treated like you don’t exist, at the same time, is not just assault.
How do you talk about it without shocking the other person into awkward silence? Better to spare people and carry your story on the inside. Only it’s not. It’s not good for the target who survived the rape/assault/abuse and it’s not good for all of us. When we maintain silence, we create a space where abusers know they will get away with it, precisely because we lack the ability to talk about it. Our silence gives them cover.
My story starts with an assault by an old guy in a pizza shop, very late at night when I was drunk. A “molestation”. It’s not rape, but it is sexual assault. Not like being punched, but having my personhood violated. In a way that he knew (correctly) that he could get away with. In a way that chipped away at my psyche, letting me know that my body was available for men to use, regardless of what I thought or wanted. That my body didn’t actually belong to me, that I did not have full personhood or autonomy and that in 1982 he and I were both living in a world that was ok with that. The fact that he did it in front of witnesses who did nothing about it, reinforced that message.
Leslie, well he was an opportunistic creep. Came to visit when my house mates were away and tried to turn it into an opportunity for rape. That wasn’t actually rape either though, because he only tried. Had a knife to my kitten to let me know that he did not intend to take no for an answer. It was only averted because my neighbour turned up. I went to stay at another house for the night. But there was no mechanism for holding him to account and for all I know he went on to perpetrate against countless women.
Walking home one night, crossing Melville St at the Elizabeth St intersection and the man who appeared out of the dark and grabbed me by the wrist and tried to pull me up the street. That wasn’t rape either, but his intentions were not in doubt in my mind. I did manage to get free and run away, terrified.
The gynaecologist when I was 18. He required me to be completely naked for the examination. Something I didn’t question then but I’ve since learned is not normal. So he has gloved fingers inserted into my vagina, part of a normal examination, and presses into my pelvis causing excrutiating pain. That’s good, kind of, we seem to have located the problem. But no, he locks eyes with me and repetitively presses into the inflamed area causing me to gasp and flinch and twist in pain whilst held down. He stared into my face the whole time. I am hurting and humiliated, I can tell what he is doing. I walked home reeling. My housemate did encourage me to report him, but I couldn’t see the point. That wasn’t rape, but it was sexual assault. Or was it sexual abuse? Or both. Is it abuse when you have a relationship with the person that entitles you to believe they will not harm you? He was a doctor.
I’ve jumped ahead. There’s the cute guy I went home with, Michael. Well, he offered to walk me home. I thought walk me home meant walk me home. So anyway, I was happy because I thought he was cute. He came in, he came to my bed, he had sex with me. I consented to all of that, in a vague uniformed kind of way, until it hurt. Then I asked him to stop, because he was hurting me. He instructed me to “grit my teeth”.
Can you hear the cacophony of voices saying how stupid I was, what did I expect, etc? I can hear them. But it doesn’t change it that I was being assaulted. It hurt, I wanted him to stop, he kept going. That was a physical, painful assault that I had no way of re-dressing or communicating about with anyone around me. I had no language to articulate it and no context that helped to understand it. A guy I thought was cute had sex with me. I was a virgin and it hurt. End of story. The fact that I had asked him to stop and he continued, didn’t rate a mention. Instead that knowledge sank inside me to poison how I understood the world and my place in it. He was actually my boyfriend for a few months after that. I hung out with him as if what happened between us was acceptable and normal. Imagine what that was doing to my psyche?
I was normalising violence against myself and lack of my own personhood and autonomy, just like the wider world around me did. If you have any doubts about this, just ask yourself what would have happened if I approached the legal system with a charge of either assault or rape.
By now we are up to five counts, that were either sexual assault, rape, attempted rape, molestation or sexual abuse, depending on how you want to use those terms. To me they were all messages that there were males around me who believed I had no right to control and autonomy over my own life, and they would use pain, fear and humiliation to enforce that belief. That was a pretty toxic load to be carrying.
Next was a more serious relationship. I was in love with him and he was in a relationship with me. It was reasonable for me to expect the arrangement to be respectful. However it was abusive. The full gamut of the psychological, emotional and financial abuse is relevant, but it would take more time and effort for me to recount that than I’m willing to give it right now. I’ll stay on the topic. There was one sexual assault/rape. I said no and he pinned me down and had forced penetrative sex with me. He apologised “sorry about that but otherwise I would never have got my end in”. I can hear the cacophony again – why didn’t you leave him, it’s your fault for putting up with it. I challenge anyone to go through the experiences I did, and have your head screwed on right by then. Of course I should have left him. Anyone I care about, if they were in that situation, all I would want is for them to get out.
As I look back I can see I was living through a series of culturally condoned abuse events that were training me to forsake my personhood and subjugate my body to men. I was encountering men who agreed with this perspective, and were willing to act on it. The abuse in this particular relationship was hammering home that I was required to submit and be controlled, in all aspects of my life. The message was delivered past any barriers I had, via the intrinsic vulnerability of love.
I experienced it as a kind of “de-railment”. Life progresses along the typical events of growing up, you get to know yourself more and how to operate in the world, what you like, what you want, what you’re good at. For me, force being used against me to do what someone else wanted instead, “de-railed” me. It made me focused on what others wanted, rather than what I wanted. It made me anxious, and then depressed. It took years of work and psychological recovery to put my life back “on track” to where I get to make choices that suit me, to even know the person who I am and to feel like I’ve got a handle on this thing called life. I am flourishing, but it is despite the abuse.
Naturally I did eventually leave. However singledom also wasn’t safe. The next event was following an invitation to share a meal with a new acquaintance. I was visiting, and his five-year-old daughter was there. Seemed safe. His technique was quite sophisticated and so I assume he was practiced, that is, a serial rapist. It involved drugging me, which resulted in me being conscious but immobilised, a gun, holding me captive overnight, and raping me (that word again). It was traumatic. It sounds traumatic and most people understand it is traumatic. I’ve been through years of trauma counseling to recover. What I want you to understand is that, rape by someone you love, is just as traumatic. I know because I have experienced both.
Now you’ve heard my story.
What can you do now? Do you never mention it because it might upset me? Do you turn away because it’s too hard to think about it, it’s too complicated, too challenging? Do you minimise it so you can go back to your life and not be bothered by this?
This is what you do. You talk about it like it’s normal. You get used to it that some version of this story is normal, for most women. You understand that wrapping these stories up in shame and keeping them silent, enables abuse. You let all the people in your life know that it’s ok to talk about sexual violence. Let people know that you are a safe person. Be a safe person, support, believe and listen. Get used to the dream-like wobble board where nothing stays where it’s supposed to. Talking about this stuff comes in layers, and they’re tangled. Park your reaction. Make your friend a nice cup of tea. See a counsellor if it upsets you. Just stop making a world where those of us who have survived have to walk around carrying the weight of pretending it never happened.
And if you are one of the many who has had these experiences, I say to you – I am sorry that you went through that. I am glad you survived. I wish you all strength in your recovery and I encourage you to get professional help if you have not yet already done that. Please tell your story, when you are ready and when it is safe for you to do so (if you want to publish it here, I am happy to host your story here on my site). To the women who have come before me who have bravely told their stories - thank you. Every story I have encountered has helped me to lighten the load I carry, you have inspired me, and you make the world safer for the next generation of girls and women.
To my family, I know that you will feel pain reading this. I’m sorry. I would like to protect you from this pain, just as I know you wish you could have protected me. The pain to our loved ones is another ripple that is caused with each assault. Please join me in bringing this all out into the light. I’m ok now and this was all in the past.
If you are a perpetrator, your actions are really shitty. Stop! Get help, get better and get public about calling out perpetrator behaviour. Love other men enough to stop them. Hurting other people is a crap way to live your life.
PS Please only contact me about violence against men if you are a reputable activist in this field who has something constructive to say. If you merely wish to minimise what I’m saying with some “whatabout”ism, you are wasting your time.