so this word 'weakness', it's not working for me

Potentially triggery, kinda ranty:



Note: this is possibly the first time in years I had to get someone to read something for me before I posted it.

I'm probably going to say this wrong.

I'm getting more and more wary with each time the word 'strength' comes up in relation to victims of sexual crime in this post (Triggery, and warning for comments) and this post (Triggery, and also disgusting). By wary, I mean pissed off.

Strength of character really has shit to do with how you handle being sexually propositioned/sexually assaulted/raped. And maybe this is totally defensive of me, but I'm pretty sure I was filled with strength of character, and I still shut down when I was drunk and a guy shoved his hand down my jeans and into my underwear. Come on, fuck that bullshit, I was eighteen and I was drunk, but I was in a safe space in my own hotel room with my best friend on the other bed and this still happened and I still blanked out on what the hell I was supposed to do with this. Hand. Underwear. How did this happen?

Assault and weakness, coercion and weakness, aren't synonymous. I will happily listen while people talk about how they are stronger than they were the say x happen and I get that, I do, and I support it and I support them; they are stronger because of it. But I was pretty strong, and I was pretty good at saying no, and I'm five foot ten and I know perfectly well how to use my height to intimidate, and I know how to express utter disinterest and repugnance with my body language and I know how to close my legs. I know how to kick and how to scream and that day, at some point that night, I remembered how to stand up, go to the bathroom, and lock the door. Then I remembered how to get in an elevator (I'm severely claustrophobic) and ride it up and down until i thought just maybe, he wouldn't find me. Or I'd find somewhere that wasn't there.

I'm a woman; that means I've been trained all my life on how to avoid being sexually assaulted. I could PhD in it, in how to avoid, get away, get help, i know this shit cold. And yet.

It still took five minutes for me to do that and that's four minutes and fifty-nine seconds I can't account for.

I really wasn't upset after. I mean, sincerely, I hardly thought about it, ever, at all; it's funny. When I talked about this, this was my punchline, my joke, I made it for years and years until I stopped talking about it at all, when I was in Dallas this guy stuck his hand down my jeans while I was drunk and I ended up in the elevator and I'm claustrophobic! I did it for the claustrophobia bit; everyone always laughed. It's hilarious, honestly; if you've traveled with me, you know my love of stairs.

Now skip that.

It was maybe five minutes or less; I mean, five minutes is no time at all, really, it's like, the time it takes to cook two hot pockets. I couldn't think of anything. I don't know why I froze, I don't know why everything stopped, I don't know why I didn't pull his hand out of my jeans and strangle him, I don't remember being afraid, or upset, or angry, or anything. And on the scale from propositioned to torture-rape, it's like, barely a blip, five minutes. And it couldn't have been longer, he didn't even kiss me, unbutton my jeans, take off my shirt, my roommate would have noticed if had been longer, surely she would have.

The thing is, people who come out of a sexual assault are stronger than they were, but they sure as fuck didn't always start from a place of weakness. You freeze, you panic, you stop thinking and maybe when you can again, when it sinks in--he has his hand. in. my. underwear. wtf?--you can still get away. And then again--work with me here, five minutes--maybe it's too late and you can't. Five minutes, two hot pockets, and that was plenty of time to get my jeans down enough. It's forever.

You weren't, they weren't, we weren't hurt because of our skirt, the alley, our body language, alcohol, smiling, dancing, singing, or because we were weak and say that last part twice because it needs saying, we were not weak; it was because someone hurt us.

We were stronger afterward, right, but we were strong before, too.

Comments

[scrollgirl]

You are so right. Thank you for saying this. What other people do, when they hurtful things, has nothing to do with our own strength. It's them. It's on them.

[sami]

Yes.

Because. We were strong, but we weren't in a position to use that strength, at that moment, but if you weren't strong already, we wouldn't have made it to the point where we could say we were stronger now. You can't build muscles that aren't there at all, or something.

Sometimes I hate the "strength" thing, itself, though, because it seems like it's a pressure in itself. You're supposed to be stronger after it happened, you're supposed to be better, like that means you won.

Maybe it's just me (and I'm expecting to be checking into psychiatric hospital for depression and anxiety issues in the next few days, so, you know, full disclosure: my mental health isn't great right now), but sometimes I feel like there's this attitude that if you're not Stronger, if you feel like you were wounded by something like that, if you feel weakened, because there's a fear still there that wasn't there before... then, somehow, you're failing. You're inadequate. You should be better than that, you should be stronger.

We weren't weak. Or maybe some of us were. Some of us aren't stronger for it - some of us are as strong as we were before, some of us are weakened because we're wounded in a way we weren't.

And none of those make any of it our fault, and pretty much everyone is doing the best they can, and nobody else gets to decide what the standards are for how people "should" deal with sexual assault - either at the time or afterwards.

[auguris]

Exactly this.

Ugh, this whole situation is causing me alternate bouts of rage and minor depression. Mostly rage.

[justabi]

It's not weak to be stunned that something like that is happening. It's just that omgwtf takes a second or 300 to process, especially when you're drunk, or young, or just completely not expecting it.

[ide_cyan]

*nods*

[dragojustine]

Thank you so much for this.

[majoline]

This! SO VERY MUCH.

[sabeth]

Thank you.

[jetsilver]

Thank you.

[everysecondtuesday]

You weren't, they weren't, we weren't hurt because of our skirt, the alley, our body language, alcohol, smiling, dancing, singing, or because we were weak and say that last part twice because it needs saying, we were not weak; it was because someone hurt us.
This, this, this. Thank you for this post.

[cesare]

Yes.

[anatsuno]

So, so much yes. YES.

[rynia]

Yes, this. That story could have been mine. It's one I don't tell, in part because it was something that happened one time five years ago, and in part because I get tired having to listen to the little attacks that inevitably come with it and of every listener asking why at the end. I want to put your last two sentences somewhere I can see when I do think about it, though.

[the_shoshanna]

God, thank you for this.

[cereta]

Thank you. Just...thank you.

[swordage]

Thank you for this. Thank you so much.

[language_escapes]

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[kaz]

Thank you so much for this.

Via growing up autistic, this is one of the things I have been socialised into: if you make a decision based on your own internal sense of logic instead of what other people tell you is okay it will be horribly wrong and people will mock you and berate you for being stupid and say there is something wrong with you. Don't do it.

These days I am very careful to stay in my familiarity zone when out and about, to have back-up plans to deal with situations that can occur, to have people I can call and double-check things with, in order to as much as possible avoid getting into situations where I don't have a script. Because if I don't have a script to follow I *will* freeze.

I don't have a script for sexual harrassment. I know that if I am sexually harrassed I will freeze. This, you see, is the way society has damaged me.

And if you think that makes me weak, FUCK YOU.

[elizaria]

You weren't, they weren't, we weren't hurt because of our skirt, the alley, our body language, alcohol, smiling, dancing, singing, or because we were weak and say that last part twice because it needs saying, we were not weak; it was because someone hurt us.

We were stronger afterward, right, but we were strong before, too.

Summed up beautifully

[brownbetty]

One of the strongest people I know freezes when she's confronted by violence. I react back with violence, even when it's not appropriate or helpful. It's got nothing to do with strength of will, it's just that the part of my brain that makes decisions for me when the other 99% of my brain locks up in terror has somehow patterned on sheer blind fight-for-your-life.

(Which is why so many of my humorous anecdotes end with “and then I accidentally kicked him in the head.” They're humorous because I weigh about a hundred pounds, so it's a good thing the violence was inappropriate, and if it had actually been called for, it wouldn't have done me much good.)

[acrimonyastraea]

Thank you for saying this.

[daxion]

Yes, thank you. This needs to be said more often, that when things happen to you there is that second of "Wtf" that occurs, where your mind is blank because you can't quite process. And it's not because you are weak, it's because someone else violated your body and mind and they do not have the right. It's because they don't take responsibility for their own actions. And we shouldn't have to do that for them.

[princess]

Thank you for saying this. Thank you a million times.

[tricksterquinn.livejournal.com]

I admire you so much, just fyi. *hugs*

We were stronger afterward, right, but we were strong before, too.
Thank you for this reminder. I value the strength I have now as a result of my experiences and past pain, but you're right. The problem is not that I was weak before.

[piplover.livejournal.com]

I was assaulted by someone I trusted a few days before I left the Army. I sure as hell wasn't weak, but for those few minutes, I was stuck in wtf land.

I don't think it's a matter of weakness or strength. I think it's a matter of something happening to you that no one can anticipate, kind of like a car accident. You take the driving tests, you wear your seat belt, and you still get slammed into out of nowhere and have to spend the rest of your life wondering if you had just checked your rear view mirror a little closer, or maybe hadn't been checking it at all, if things would have been different.

For me, I'm neither stronger nor weaker for what happened. I'm changed, for good or bad.

So, I guess that was my long winded way of saying I agree with you?

[justascream.livejournal.com]

It took one minute of blank for me to have completely lost. It could take less. There is no weak or strong. There's just a moment, and in a moment, universes can end, and that's just the circumstance of that moment. And whoever fucking pushed the big red button.

I have always had an issue with the "strength" thing too, not because I don't believe I am strong, but because it's as if saying that I wouldn't be strong if I hadn't been raped. That one minute changed everything and I have no doubt that even now, if I went back in time knowing what I know now, I could not help losing that minute. All the minutes afterward weren't me proving I was strong by overcoming it or living in spite of it. It was just me still existing but with new big-red-button dents and paint coats added to experience levels that no one should have.

Strength ≠ strength against the weakness/evil of others. It only means the ability to persevere.

And I don't know if perseverance is truly strength, or just survival.