Telling Our Stories

A reflection on "The Not-Rape Epidemic" by Latoya Peterson

(page 211) "No one escaped [not-rape] --all my friends had some kind of experience with it during their teen years."

When I was in junior college taking a creative writing class, I wrote a rape story. A male classmate scoffed, because just too many chicks wrote rape stories and he was tired of hearing them. They were "cliche."

Talk about privilege.

(page 216) "This is how the not-rape epidemic spreads--through fear and silence. Women of all backgrounds are affected by these kinds of acts, regardless of race, ethnicity, or social class. So many of us carry the scars of the past with us in our daily lives. Most of us have pushed these stories to the back of our minds trying to have some semblance of a normal life that includes romantic and sexual relationships. However, waiting just behind the tongues are story after story of the horrors other women experience and hide deep within the self, behind a protective wall of silence.
"When I first began discussing my not-rape and all of the baggage that comes with it, I expected to be blamed or to not be believed.
"I never expected that each woman I told would respond with her own story in kind."

Want to hear fewer rape stories? Work with men and advocate against rape and not-rape. Let men know that such practices as asking for sex multiple times an hour until at the end of the night she says yes just to make him shut the fuck up.

Silence quietly condones rape and not-rape. Silence allows it to continue. We need more rape and not-rape stories to circulate. The more we talk about it, in mixed company as well, the more awareness and less victim-shame there will be.

(page 217) "Not-rape comes in many forms--it is often known by other names. What happened to me is called sexual assault. It is not the same same as rape, but it is damaging and painful. My friends experience statutory rape, molestation, and coercion."

My first sexualized experience happened around the age of six, when my mother's brother began to molest me. My memories of it are scattered, snippets of this and that. I think I remember my mother spotting it once (on my sister, not me), telling her brother that she'd better not have seen what she thought she saw, but somehow convincing herself that it didn't happen.

An aside: at least two people I spoke to about my experience thought that because he was retarded--with perhaps the mental facilities of an 8 year old--that I should think of this as "playing doctor" between kids. However, when it was happening, I looked up to my uncle and did not comprehend his differences from other adults. If anything, this thoughtway has added to my confusion and difficulty in moving on. Like I should be ashamed for thinking it was molestation at all.

The molestation culminated in a single incidence of oral sexualization. It completely disturbed me. I did not like it. It felt Wrong. It gave me the voice to say never again.

Eventually I worked up the courage to tell my mother. I was nine. She went on warpath, furiously confronting him, and like any child confronted by a raging parent, when asked if he did that, he stammered no.

That was enough for my mother. She whirled back to me and called me a liar. This was something the neighbor girls and I made up, because we hated her poor, stupid brother. If I ever spoke of it again, I'd wish I hadn't.

(page 212) "My friends and I confided in one another, swapping stories, sharing our pain, while keeping it all hidden from the adults in our lives. After all, who could we tell? This wasn't rape--it didn't fit the definitions. This was not-rape. We should have known better. We were the ones who would take the blame. We would be punished and no one wanted that. So these actions went on, aided by a cloak of silence."

I buried that memory until I read a magazine while in high school about victims of sexual abuse. My stomach dropped, a chill down my spine, and I had a name for what happened to me.

And then the shame came. Why had I allowed this to happen to me? It ended so easily the moment I said stop. Why hadn't I said stop sooner? If escape was so simple, why had I not even tried? Worse, on a purely physical level, the touching had felt goo. We are wired that way. Had I WANTED it to happen? I wanted desperately to talk about it with someone, but is was ABUSE, so I couldn't, because it would be reported and would destroy my family. Didn't the shame belong to me, and me alone?

(page 217) "Internalized shame is what I experienced, that heavy feeling that was it was my fault for allowing the sexual assault to happen. So many of us are conditioned to believe that these actions are our own fault, that if we had made a better choice, if we had been smarter, then we wouldn't be in that situation."

Is it any wonder that I spent years wrestling with suicidal thoughts? Is it any wonder that I spent years plotting the murder of my entire family, which I'd hide by burning down my home?

The consequences remain even as I am an adult. I've had flashbacks during tender oral sex, tongue stroking me. Oral sex, especially spontaneous oral sex, got me flinching. It took me years to get up the nerve to express why I'd gone from loving to dreading oral sex.

I've nearly overcome this. I've requested my lovers ask/warn me before diving in. Even better, rougher, more frantic, enthusiastic, angular oral sex has allowed me to enjoy, and even love, oral sex again. Back to front gentle tongue strokes still give me problems from time to time, and my confidence in requesting a different approach sometimes wavers.

By the way, my mother's brother--he died. I learned about it on Facebook. That's how close I am to my family, and the sexual abuse is one of the biggest reasons why. I was never offered help, and when I was finally unable to continue coping with living with them, revealing my depression and suicidal thoughts led to my mother shaming me again. What would my neighbots and family think? I was weak. I needed to be silent (and go on medication).

And sometimes I still wish my family dead. But I forgive myself for that. I'm still working on forgiving myself for letting it happen.