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

[fairestcat]

I've had this post sitting open in a tab for the last two days, waiting for me to decide whether or not to make this comment.

I've been thinking about my five minutes story, and why it is that I've never told it to anyone. As in, I just told my wife earlier tonight.

I was drunk, we both where. We'd just been to the going-away party of a friend who was moving out of the country. I think my roommate had been the designated driver, and he had stashed his car at our place with the plan of crashing on the sofa and driving home in the morning, but I may be misremembering the precise logic of events.

We were in someplace I felt safe. In this case the living room of the apartment I was then living in. And my roommate was asleep in the next room. It was a one bedroom apartment. My roommate had the bedroom, I had a futon in one corner of the living room, and He was supposed to be staying the night on the couch. Instead he followed me to bed. He wanted to make out, and I wasn't at all interested in him, but I was drunk, and flattered that anyone was attracted to me, but I wasn't interested in anything more than that.

And when he tried to push it further I froze. I suddenly didn't know how to say no. I couldn't think of a way out. It never occurred to me to make a fuss or to call for my roommate. He was a friend after all and, just to complicate things further, someone said roommate had expressed an interest in. I know better than that, even then I knew better than that, and yet, I froze. I didn't want to make a fuss, or get him in trouble, or wake my roommate up.

And he got as far as his hand up my dress before I unfroze, before I figured out how to get away. I think I mumbled something about needing to go to the bathroom, and I just shut the door and didn't come back out, and hoped that he was drunk enough to just fall asleep. I remember sitting curled up on the bathroom floor, wondering how long I could stay there or if he would come looking for me. He didn't. I don't know when he fell asleep, but I know he was still in my bed when he did. I wasn't. I don't know how long I stayed in the bathroom, but eventually it occurred to me that somebody else was sure to want to use it before morning, and I didn't want to explain, but I didn't want to go back out there even more. So, I slipped into my roommate's room and curled up on the far edge of her bed and didn't really sleep at all.

And the thing is, we never talked about it. She never asked why I slept in with her that night. He never asked where I'd disappeared to. I never confronted him, and I never told her or anyone else in our friendgroup. Because nothing happened, so what was there to tell? Which is fucking stupid, because something damn well happened! I look at it spelled out like that, this is the first time I've ever written it down, and I can remember how terrified I was, and how cold it was huddled on the bathroom floor, something goddamn happened. And yet it's only within about the last year that I've been able to put the label "sexual assault" on and accept that it fits.

And within a few months that whole friend group moved to livejournal together. And most of us are still here. I mostly cut ties pretty thoroughly with that group when I moved a few years later, but I still have some friended, and some still have me friended, and some of those are still his friends as well, on and offline In fact HE still has me friended, which I had forgotten until I just looked at his journal to see if he's still active here. (Last update April 2009).

And so I never told the story. Every time a discussion like this came up in fandom I thought about it, but I stayed silent. Because I didn't want to make a fuss, because I didn't want to make drama, because I didn't want our mutual friends/acquaintances to be upset. And I was afraid the person they'd be upset with was me. I didn't want that former roommate (still active in fandom) to see it, because I wasn't sure how she'd respond. And it's all so fucking stupid and FUCKING RAPE CULTURE, and I hear these excuses coming out of my own head and I just want to hit something.

So instead I'm spamming you. Sorry :) and in conclusion FUCKING RAPE CULTURE GODDAMMIT.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Not that you don't know you're not alone, but you're not alone (http://commodorified.livejournal.com/323533.html).

[mslinda.livejournal.com]

I wanted to highlight a sentence or a paragraph that I found particularly meaningful, but I would have ended up quoting the whole thing.
Thanks for posting.

[seergirl.livejournal.com]

I agree with alot of this. And it is awesome when you say it. Being hurt doesn't mean you where weak or somehow less it just means you where hurt.

Although it has reminded me how much the experience and the dialog changes when you where a child rather then an adult at the time of the attack.