[this is in response to South Dakota State Senator Bill Napoli. promoted by BooMan]
The violence and control over women is becoming too obscene and too “the norm”. I do not write this for pity. I do not write this for sympathy or for outrage at Napoli and what the Red Haters are doing to us all.
It’s something that has come out as bits and pieces, posts and replies. Because I’ve never done it justice in court – nor even in writing. It’s my whisper that keeps screaming.
I write this as only as I can. As a story.
Let me tell you a story of this woman I know…
Somehow it’s our fault if one is raped and left by the side of the road half clothed. Counting the headlights that pass over you till you close your eyes. Hearing the tires crunch the gravel as a car finally stops. Hearing a best friend’s father speak to you. He doesn’t call your name because even though he has known you for years – he doesn’t recognize you at all.
They don’t cover you at the hospital as you enter. Only the coat of the man who found you as a make-shift skirt. You’re so tired of holding it tight against you. The bright lights reveal the blood and clots of dirt. You only have one shoe on. And oddly you wonder if you’ll be able to find the other one…
The little kid in the ER looks at you. The women, the nurse handling the phone – look away. They don’t want to see you. You can only stand there. Shaking. There isn’t even a place to sit. Your vision isn’t even good. The world looks so distorted. You just want to sit down. But you are left standing. Only a stranger takes your arm and leads you to a room with a door that will remain shut. After what feels like forever someone joins you. Where you will be asked questions that should never be asked. Along with:
Do you want to call your parents? Do you want to involve the local police? Doors. Decisions. All you want to do is shower. You want to sleep.
Don’t tell. Don’t ever fucking tell. And if you do, you’d better have a real fucking good reason why and how you got into such harms way. You’d better be ready to stand up for yourself. You’d better be willing to fight just as hard as one fights against a rapist.
And don’t you ever fucking speak up about women’s issues. How dare we fight to protect our daughters.
How dare we get upset because we still live in a country that whispers… only bad girls get in that “sort of trouble”.
Don’t tell one’s story. No need to. Society already has it allll figured out for themselves.
Do you want to hear more?
The man who took her to the hospital was very kind during that horrible night. Very kind. Stayed and called the parents to say that the girl would be spending the weekend with them.
After that, they were never contacted, called or anything. It was all kept very quiet. The silence is what makes some feel that they are a suspect rather than a victim. A perp rather than a patient.
Later it was learned the coat was thrown away. And for some sick, self-inflicting, society spawned reason … the girl felt guilt that the coat was “ruined”. She was told due to the rape she’d most likely never be able to have children… she cried over that. But sadly, she also cried over a damn coat. She cried that no one called her. She cried that obviously she mustn’t say a word about it to anyone. She learned from the doctors, the nurses, everyone in the ER room that night, and from the man who found her… don’t tell. It’s easier that way.
As easy as throwing away a coat. Gone and not thought about. Why would you want to bring THAT up?
Hows that for how we raise our daughters? A coat is worth more than their rights to be protected from such shitty thoughts and guilt-trips??? We can not allow this to continue.
Rage Rage Rage. We must never let them tell us to “shut the fuck up” or that our rights are “silly”.
Somewhere, even today, a young girl is worried about a fucking coat being thrown away “because of her”.
Shame. That is the key to it all. Why must we feel shame? Why must we feel compelled to not make waves, to remain quiet, to not speak out… too much?
A victim should never feel shame. But it’s such an easy way to shut out things we don’t want to deal with.
A patient would never be asked if she wanted to keep things quiet if she had been mugged and slashed while being robbed at an ATM machine? While being hit by a car on a bike path. While breaking their leg at soccer camp. There is no shame accompanying those matters. Why with rape?
We would never expect the code of silence over a mountain lion attack. One would never lay awake and wonder if the hospital will eventually contact your parents after a bike crash.
Shame never amounts to human dignity and human rights. Shame strips everything away. Shame controls us. Shame keeps us awake at night wondering why.
Are you still with me? Do you want to know how it ends?
It doesn’t end. Ever. She survived. She survives every day. Some days are better than others. Aren’t days like that for us all? The strangest things will remind her of how far she has come. It’s even more strange what will set off a panic attack. A need to run, to bolt, to strike out. She sees herself as a strong woman. A woman of love, a woman full of passion, a woman who radiates a need to keep on learning, growing and evolving.
She knows she’s not some victim, but she knows the rape changed her. It doesn’t consume her. But it has it’s marks. It’s tell-tale signs. Her head is always on a swivel, alert to the man talking too loudly in the diner. Aware of the man who is walking too closely.
She’s also aware that the sound of tires coming to a stop, crunching gravel… will always wake her up in a fit of terror. That she can still feel the magazines being forced into her mouth as a gag. Yet… she can still feel love, she can still look at her naked body as hers. Not as something that was damaged, tossed aside. It’s not a part of her, it doesn’t lay claim to her; but it is on small facet of her make up that provides for not only the beauty of her life, but also the brutality of her life.
Let’s go for a drive
A beautiful day. A day that can instantly be frozen when litter by the side of the road in some freakish way reminds her being tossed like trash. She sees the litter, goes through some instant therapy in her head to readjust her attitude, check her fear, … check the car locks – so she can then breathe. So she can hop out of the car and go see her friends as if nothing happened just then… 3 minutes ago in the car, due to a memory fragment from twenty years ago.
She’s also realizes that after 20 years, of being stubbornly strong – all it takes is some punk trying to break down her door – for it all to come cascading back again. Like a watefall of nightmares. Her husband knew before they married, but he hadn’t really had to deal with the terrors. The shakes, the sweats. The waking up from your own scream at not just the rape but of the “attacks” that she felt afterward. The panic resurfaced. He had to deal with the being lashed out at for not knowing the signs that she herself didn’t see or couldn’t bare to see… again. The waterfall.
Rape most violent. But what keeps it coming to the top is how women are treated. How women are seen. How we must apologize for being women. How we will even compare wounds, experiences and then JUDGE. Because we ourselves are used to being judged. Scorned, shamed and judged.
Rape isn’t a sexual act. It’s a crime of rage, a crime of control. Rape isn’t just ONE incident. Rape continues to rear it’s head. In memories, in nightmares, and in politics. The rape is a slow, life-long assault. It’s a single act that must be continually fought.
Are you still here? Do you still want to love me?
Unless we stop this. Unless we fight back. Unless we stop the shame. The control. The judgement.
We will always…
be left by the side of a road.