#YesMeToo

I was raped when I was twenty-one, a senior in college in Chicago.  I didn’t report it because I didn’t want to take the course of someone else’s life into my hands—or even just put it in the hands of the law.  This is important and I didn’t realize it until I was reading through #YesAllWomen articles online today.  At twenty-one, in the fresh aftermath of rape, my thinking was that my rape was an irreversible fact.  It was done.  And I wanted to be done with it.  I didn’t believe it would do me any good to report it and, if my rapist were convicted—which I understand, even then, was a very big IF—change the course of his life forever.  I hadn’t known this man until the night he raped me, but that night I had learned he was a successful investment banker who gave generously to charity and volunteered on weekends.  He Skyped regularly with his grandmother and he made frequent trips to his native Kentucky to visit his nephew.  He was what our society considers to be an upstanding citizen—except for the fact that he was a rapist.  But, at twenty-one, I was worried that just because he was a rapist, it didn’t mean he deserved to be labeled as one forever.   I wondered if maybe he couldn’t even be entirely blamed because maybe he didn’t know any better, maybe he had never received any sort of comprehensive sexual education in which he was taught that not only does “no mean no” but too weak to fight back does not mean “yes,” nor does accepting a drink at a bar or even a cab ride home.  I was worried about trying to punish someone for something that they might not have realized was a crime.

            I was worried about how I would live with the repercussions of accusing my rapist and, in doing so, possibly changing his life in a negative way, forever.  But that was before time started to pass and I started to realize that he had changed my life forever.  Rape is not something that happens and then ends when the rapist pulls out and the raped goes home and takes a shower.  Rape is something that happens over and over again, sometimes on a seemingly endless loop of days and nights and flashbacks and hell.  (Yes, hell.)  My rape happens to me all over again whenever I hear someone make a careless joke about date rape or Ruffies.  It happens to me in subway cars late at night when I am one of only a few women in a crowd of men.  It happens to me when I fall in love and have sex and go home and cry because the difference between sex in love and rape breaks my heart and triggers flashbacks and makes me wonder if I will ever truly be okay again.  It happens to me when I fall asleep beside a man I care about and wake up in the middle of the night, needing him to look at me and talk to me so I can remember where I am and who he isn’t.  It happens to me every time I come across a news story about rape or read about politicians debating the legitimizing circumstances of it.  Sometimes it even happens to me when I hear girls at a party say, “Ugh, I’m like so over feminism.”

            My rapist changed my life forever.  Even as I’ve started to find ways to move beyond experiencing regular flashbacks, I cannot return to the person I was.  My rapist, however, remains unchanged.  Raping me was just another day in his upstanding life.  And while I stupidly, sadly worried about taking the course of his life into my hands, I realize now that he was never worried about me.  He felt entitled to me.  He never gave a thought to taking my life into his hands and changing it.  While, after the rape, I tried to humanize him; I was always less than human to him.  That is an important point.  Rape is selfish and ego-driven and innately, indisputably violent—even when it leaves no surface wounds.  Rape is not sex.  It is not intimate.  It is not personal.  It is impersonal and inhuman.

            It is important to acknowledge that my life is changed and my rapist’s life is not.  It is important in the way that it is important to acknowledge the differences between the way men exist in our society versus the way women do.  Not all men are rapists, but all women live in fear of the ones who are—or who will be.  Not all men drug women at bars, but all women have to be wary of the ones who do.  Not all men catcall a woman as she walks down the street, but all women have been catcalled.  Yes, all women.  Old, young, pretty, plain…  Trust me.

            Research shows that rape is about one individual asserting his power over another.  I would agree with that.  My life as someone who has been raped has become very much about power.  I have become conscious of how powerless I was during my rape and how there is nothing much other than never socializing again that could entirely prevent it from happening again.  That is important.  All women have to worry if one night at a bar or a party will change their life.  All women have to worry that their choice to go out drinking will be translated into their rape being their fault.  How many men have to worry if a night out will change their lives in such a way, or incite others to question their character? 

            And now, when I have sex, I am acutely aware of the power of it.  There is power in choice—in choosing who you have sex with.  That, to me, should be a basic human right, as inalienable as such constitutional rights as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Unfortunately, for all women, their right to choose who they have sex with is not respected by all men.  Now, three years after my rape, every time I have sex with the man I am dating I am asserting my own power to choose.  I choose someone who makes me feel safe and valued and respected and empowered.  All, yes, all women deserve to choose; it’s part of one’s pursuit of happiness.   #YesAllWomen