TW for discussion of being a rape survivor.
I have a friend who was recently raped. Right now, at this stage in her recovery, her primary response is compassion for her rapist: during the rape, he’d acted in ways that struck her as signs of an untreated mental illness. She’s going through a difficult process of convincing his friends to get help for him, without disclosing her rape (she doesn’t want to turn this into a referendum about whether she’s a lying whore) and without having to contact him herself.
And her boyfriend is like “why the fuck do you care? He raped you, you shouldn’t care about him” and had to be persuaded not to go over and punch the rapist in the face.
A lot of people feel the need to police the way survivors react to their rape. I mean, a lot of us have enough Rape Culture 101 to know that, say, a rape survivor choosing not to prosecute doesn’t mean they were Not Really Raped. But even then I think a lot of people think that survivors are supposed to sob in the shower and feel dirty, or shout “kill all rapists!”, or never have a moment of doubt about whether the rape was somehow Their Fault…
Hell, even this blog post might do it. Because I know there are people who would have read the story of my friend above and been like “see? That’s how you’re supposed to respond to a rape!” and set up that level of compassion as somehow Right and Moral and Showing That You’re The Bigger Person and shame survivors that don’t. Which is the exact opposite of my point. Compassion for her rapist is just what’s right and healthy and healing for my friend, right now, at the stage she’s in in her recovery. It is absolutely not ever a requirement for other people.
Sometimes survivors are angry– at their rapist, at the rape culture, at people who could have helped them and didn’t, at the world, at God, at themselves. Sometimes survivors are depressed. Sometimes survivors are afraid; sometimes they’re prickly and set up boundaries you might think are unreasonable. Sometimes survivors take risks that might be unwise. Sometimes survivors like or respect or even love their rapist. Sometimes survivors hate their rapist’s guts. Sometimes survivors are suicidal. Sometimes survivors aren’t really affected by their rape. Sometimes– shit, think of a reaction to a rape, it is probably something that someone has done. All of those happen, all of those are valid responses, and it is absolutely not the job of other people to be like “you have to do X or you aren’t doing survivor right.”
I worry, sometimes, about the legitimation of survivors’ anger in social justice communities– which is awesome and empowering and necessary, given a world where survivors are so often robbed of the right to their anger– setting up another bullshit standard for survivors to live up to, of being Properly Angry instead of Properly Sad or Properly Compassionate or Properly Broken. I worry about it giving permission to people to white-knight about beating up rapists rather than listening to the individual survivor about their needs.
I just want to say– to survivors, and to everyone else dealing with trauma or badbrains or anything else– whatever you’re doing, it’s okay, as long as you aren’t hurting anyone else. Whatever you’re feeling is okay. There are no standards to live up to, except for your own health and happiness. Don’t worry about giving credence to stereotypes or whatever bullshit. Just do what you have to to stay alive.
While I agree with almost everything here, and think a lot of it should be shouted from a lot more rooftops, I have some slight disagreementesque thoughts. Mostly, that I’m not sure I’m convinced that all possible responses to being raped are ‘valid’. Like, going out and kidnapping your rapist and torturing her (though arguments could be made that this is nontrivially similar to the basic model of the criminal justice system), or deciding to leave your rapist alone, but use his actions as internal or external justification to hurt other people (see; victimization-as-moral-authority problem of callout culture). If your meant something else by valid, than I’m perfectly happy to retract this point.
woop: hence the “as long as you aren’t hurting anyone else.”
Good post. Thumbs up.
I worry, sometimes, about the legitimation of survivors’ anger in social justice communities– which is awesome and empowering and necessary, given a world where survivors are so often robbed of the right to their anger– setting up another bullshit standard for survivors to live up to, of being Properly Angry instead of Properly Sad or Properly Compassionate or Properly Broken.
I feel this in a lot of ways. Because I’m not really a terribly emotional person, overall. I sometimes get a little yelly on the Internet but most of the time–and nearly always in real life–I’m rather quiet and accepting. I don’t think I cry or raise my voice (or want to) once in an average month.
And sometimes I feel like that means that nothing really bad could have happened to me. Like I wasn’t really abused or assaulted and I don’t really have any medical or mental problems, because I’m calm. Of course I have very much interest in keeping all these bad things from happening again or happening to other people, but it’s mostly a detached, political, analytical interest. I don’t find any catharsis in “we should set the bastards on fire” and I rarely feel sad or triggered or vulnerable or anything. It’s just… my history.
I hope this isn’t coming off as yet another bullshit standard, like now everyone has to be Properly Unemotional and people with anger or triggers are surviving wrong. Just that it’s yet another way people can react, and it bothers me when people imply that being unemotional means I must be super privileged or must not have had it so bad.
So sorry to hear about your friend Ozy. Hopefully she will heal in whatever way she needs to.
I spoke to someone recently who objected to a picture used on an article about rape statistics in our local paper. It was a huge picture of a woman with her head in her hands, sat on the floor looking completely destroyed. Initially I thought “well rape is obviously a big deal for survivors, the picture highlights the pain people go through, and objecting to it is minimising that”. But actually her point was that this trope of “rape survivor as utterly broken” is really fucked up and kinda omnipresent.
The idea that there is One True Way to react to being raped causes so much damage. I like the idea of using expert witnesses to educate juries of rape myths like that in trials, from what I’ve read it seems assumptions of how someone who has been raped will appear factor into a lot of “not guilty” verdicts. But again even that could build a new bullshit standard.
Sucks that “hurting others” and “not hurting others” isn’t always as clear-cut as we like to think. And sometimes -gasp- we don’t even know when we’re being hurt because not everyone is that self-aware or familiar with activist-speak that was invented to help.
While there are no limits on how a survivor should feel, but there’s only one mention in your post that there are limits on how they should act – and there absolutely are.
A dear friend of mine was blackmailed by his accuser into writing a confession for her (a felony), and she and her friend have been harassing him ever since, including following him around and photographing him. While there are good reasons to believe the accusation was false in the first place, what she has done would not have been appropriate even if her accusations were true – and for a while, I urged my friend to put up with it because “a survivor is always right.”
I don’t understand your story at all, Tobias. You think the accusation was false but you also encouraged your friend to confess because a survivor is always right?
That seems like an extraordinarily convoluted way to get the topic of “BUT WOMEN LIE YOU KNOW” into a discussion about rape survivorship, as Internet commenters are apparently compelled to do.
That’s…really not my point at all.
When he initially told me about it it sounded like a misunderstanding, so I told him to do whatever she said she needed to heal, including writing out a confession. What he didn’t make clear at the time was that she had threatened him with going to the police if he didn’t write it.
The problem here is not whether the accusation was true or not, it’s that she committed felony blackmail to get that confession, a fact which has been shrugged off ever since because “she’s a survivor.” The stalking and harassment have been shrugged off for the same reason.
The only reason I bring this up is because of my own struggles with accepting that she had done something wrong. It caused a miniature crisis for me, actually, because I had always been told that survivors are *always* right. Social justice circles say it, revenge movies say it even more bluntly…there was no room in my mind for a case where a survivor really had crossed a line, and apparently none in the minds of most of the folks who know about the confession story.
What I’m saying is that I agree with Ozy’s post, and want to add my own story to the mix as context.
I don’t think that threatening to report a felony to the police is blackmail. It’s kinda what you’re supposed to do. If she’d done it to get money out of him that would be a lot iffier, but she didn’t. I agree that the harassment is wrong, although perhaps it’s in a context of trying to warn other people about him?
I’m touchy about this one because I’ve been in that situation–the one where someone makes you feel like telling the authorities about them assaulting you would be a horrendous offense against them, and how dare you betray the trust they put in you by assaulting you.
I also just, seriously, man, do not think every discussion involving rape in any way is an open invitation for “BITCHES LIE.” It’s not just you, it’s every damn time someone types the word “rape” on the Internet, Mr. “BUT BITCHES LIE” shows up like goddamn Beetlejuice.
::applauds::
Excellent post, Ozy. It’s been said many times in many ways, but people are different, and that’s fine.
Actually, it is felony blackmail in my home state. I checked the statute. Threatening to tell the police unless someone does something for you, regardless of how just that thing might be, is still blackmail. As for the harassment, the majority of it could not even be passed off as warning other people. (Chasing him out of official positions, photographing him while he’s eating dinner, etc.)
As much as I sympathize with your concerns, the solution is *more* stories, not fewer. You cannot reach truth, hash out policy, or even heal until you have listened to every perspective. Sometimes people do lie, or abuse the system, or lash out and hurt other people by accident, and that leaves real scars behind. When you tell other people not to talk about their experiences because of your pain you only worsen theirs, and, ironically, increase their determination to talk about it (and their belligerence when they do). That’s why I post here – it’s generally understood that stories, not generalizations, are welcome.
Sorry, to clarify the healing thing above, that’s not meant to be in reference to survivors, but for people who enter contentious discussions while wounded.
I would also tell people in a discussion about cancer survivors’ emotions not to talk about their experiences with Munchausen’s and with being scammed by cancer fakers. Those experiences may be entirely real and important to them but there are some nasty implications to interjecting them into that conversation.
Yeah no the “What about the false rape accusations?” line of conversation is OVER.
… Not even sure what is being said here?
Have heard claims that responses to trauma are socially influenced.
Krause: What’s being said here is “you don’t get to tell rape survivors that their feelings are incorrect.”
Which, you know, is just an extension of “rape survivors are human.”
That this is a apparently point of contention tells you something about our society’s attitudes towards towards rape survivors.
I was saying that about the discussion with Tobias. The point of Ozy’s post is simple enough.
That it is a point of contention does tell you *something* about society’s attitudes. I will speak no more of it.
“And sometimes I feel like that means that nothing really bad could have happened to me. Like I wasn’t really abused or assaulted and I don’t really have any medical or mental problems, because I’m calm.”
A bloke tried to rape me, and my response was to be really surprised and annoyed. Like, who the hell did he think he was, doing something so completely beyond reasonable social interaction. And I felt weird about calling it attempted rape, because it didn’t traumatise me or hurt me worse than a whole host of everyday annoyances.