I was raped once and I kept quiet about it. In my head, it was partially my fault. I’d been drinking and had said yes to some things and even though I said “no, no, NO!” when he pushed it too far, it was my fault. He was a friend of a friend, vouched for, older and cooler. He couldn’t have done that, couldn’t have meant for it to happen.
Or at least, that’s what I kept telling myself after I came home and showered and curled up in a ball on my bedroom floor. I walked miles and miles in the following days, trying to literally distance myself from the scene of my shame and my pain.
It happened years ago, lifetimes ago, but I can still picture every moment of it in perfect clarity.
A few months ago my Facebook friend request icon lit up. It was the common friend, the weak link between myself and the teenage boy who made a permanent dent in my psyche. “I don’t need that sort of negativity in my life,” I stabbed the block button as hard as I could. Twenty years have passed, and I still cannot bring myself to even speak to the former friend, never mind connecting with the actual perpetrator of the crime. I’d probably incinerate him on the spot.
It galls me that someday I’ll have to tell this story to my daughters, and I’ll have to explain to them that mommy was lucky. Mommy got to move thousands of miles away and cut any common friends out of her life.
They may not be so lucky.
They might be like Ke$ha. They might get raped or harassed or mistreated by someone who is older, cooler, more powerful, and they may not get lucky. The almighty corporate dollar will demand that they work with their rapist. That they have to continue sitting alongside the asshole who hurt them. They won’t have a choice.
They might live under the rule of President Trump, a man who is so misogynistic that they should add his last name to the list of synonyms in the dictionary. Or maybe someone just like him. They’ll grow up alongside boys who’ll learn that being a judgmental asshole is “refreshing” and putting women down is “good political strategy.”
Maybe they’ll be like the Cosby victims. They’ll be so ashamed or have so little faith in justice that they won’t say anything at all. They’ll huddle in the dark next to each other and count themselves lucky because no one else knows the bad thing that happened to them. Rather than speaking up, there will be a single, silent, empty chair in a courtroom to represent their pain.
THIS IS NOT A CONVERSATION I WANT TO HAVE WITH MY DAUGHTERS.
I don’t want to send them off to college with a rape test kit tucked away in their suitcase. I don’t want to raise my beautiful girls in a world where the victim is the only one carrying the burden. I can’t live in a world where is isn’t a question of “if” it will happen to them…. it’s only a matter of “when.”
But if we don’t step up and do something about this, I’ll have to. And so will you.
For the last twenty years I’ve been sitting in my victim’s chair. Not anymore.
Now I’m standing on it.
#istandwithkesha #istandwithmegyn