Should we be ashamed, or not?

Ok, so I've been thinking about this for a little while. Since undertaking this blog I've made quite a few different posts. Many of them have ultimately led to me taking a hit on the jaw. One of the most notable ones was another 'sleeper' as I've come to term it. It was a post that I thought was relatively innocuous but which ultimately had a larger effect than even I could predict. This one, in particular, detailed a discussion between my eldest son and I. It was a discussion about the effects of war and how, for some women, rape can feel worse than death. The title of that post was On young boys and rape.

It was that post that sparked one of my first 'real' influxes of trolls. That post, and the message contained therein, has been oft quoted in other people's blogs and on other websites. The responses were varied, I got emails from people telling me that I was right on the money, that talking to boys about rape and it's effects were important and necessary. Other emails told me that I would wind up raising rapists because I dared to tell them the reality of rape as it pertains to some victims.

Perhaps the most troubling idea though was the comments I've heard regarding the appropriateness of telling my boys that I had been raped at all. Some have even gone so far as to say that I was an unfit mother for talking, so frankly, about not just my experiences but the experiences of other women as I knew them.

That post dealt with the idea that, as parents, we can influence our children. We can talk to our boys about rape because it needs to be said and it needs to be impressed upon them when they are young. What I wanted to say, more than anything, in that post is that rape is not a crime about JUST women. Oftentimes that becomes lost, men are committing rape. Rape doesn't happen in a vacuum.

It never occurred to me that sharing my own experiences with my sons would be a 'bad' thing. Why would it? I mean, as a survivor I have been told time and time again that it was "Not my fault" that I have, "Nothing to be ashamed of", that it was "Him who did something to YOU". It took me a long while to absorb that message, but when I did I came to realize that I didn't have anything to be ashamed of.

I began to form words around something that had loomed, dark and large, in my mind. When I took that message to heart I decided that if my experiences were nothing to be ashamed of then I should be able to tell people about them. To express the pain that event and those memories had given me. With that in mind, I decided not to hide in the shadows anymore, not to hide my story and my experiences in the dark corners. I decided to stop hiding it from my family, from my boys and from people who knew me.

I wonder, as I think about those comments now, if anyone would accuse a mother of being a 'bad mother' for telling her children about living through an attempted murder? Would we condemn that mother? Tell her that she had no business discussing her experiences? What about a mother who told her children about being the victim of an armed robbery? Would we condemn her?

Then why, when a woman tells her children that she was raped, is she deemed 'unfit'? What is the mechanism behind the ball gag of silence that we insist that rape survivors wear in their mouths? Why do we expect them to maintain radio silence and never talk about what happened to them? What they learned from it? What they felt and how it impacted their lives?

This topic is closely linked to the idea of 'emotional blackmail' that I have heard bantered around in so many places. Some of the flak has come from that earlier post. When my son told me that rape is nothing compared to death I simply told him the numbers. I explained to him that some women do commit suicide over their rapes. I explained to him that, for me, as I was coming to terms with what had happened to me, I wished on several occasions that he would have just killed me.

Most of the time those occasions were when I awoke for the tenth night in a row, from a nightmare, or came out of another flashback sweating and shaking and scared. But the point must be made that while I no longer feel that way, I DID. It was REAL and I wanted, very much, to die in those moments of lingering terror. Those moments when I experienced everything all over again and felt as though I would never stop dreaming, that I would never stop being assaulted by flashbacks and smells and feelings. During those moments, it felt as though I was looking down an impossibly long, never ending corridor of horror, from which I would never escape.

The hopelessness and helplessness associated with those times, with being SURE that I would never sleep another peaceful night without reliving, in so much stark detail, the events of those times was enough to make me wish and pray for death.

I am always confused when a person looks at me and says that I am using 'emotional blackmail' for telling someone exactly what my rapes did to me. Rape is an emotional topic, how can we drain the emotion from it as though it didn't exist? As though it were irrelevant? Is the pain of a survivor, told to clarify what rape did to her, dirty pool? When she hears someone say something that she knows to be false and she corrects it by telling what her experiences were, is that 'emotional blackmail'?

The assertion is often made that death is worse than rape. Of course, nobody who makes that claim has ever actually experienced death, but many women have experienced rape and some of them have had dark moments in which they believed that death would be a release. When they tell that story, people around them bristle, they insist that the survivor is WRONG, as if they know what death is, they accuse that survivor of using 'emotional blackmail' to make a point.

Blackmail implies that a person is holding some knowledge, some unknown knowledge over the head of another person. That they are threatening to tell a secret in order to get what they want. Is that what we're saying that rape survivors are doing? Is the knowledge they hold so terrifying? Is the knowledge that rape is a horrible crime from which some women never recover blackmail material?

How can we, as a society, tell women that they shouldn't be embarrassed or ashamed of what happened to them and then, get angry when they tell? And it happens. It happens a lot. It happens every day in cafe's and bedrooms and on websites. When a woman tells her story in an attempt to show that what another person is saying about rape is false, the other person, who oftentimes hasn't experienced rape themselves, cry 'Foul!'

I suspect that this has everything to do with people not wanting to know what a horrible crime rape really is. So often people want to assume that they know what something feels like and a person stepping forward to shatter those illusions is a 'bad person' and they're using 'emotional blackmail' and 'low blows'. Is it a low blow to tell someone the truth when they are spouting inaccuracies?

The desire to define is a strong one. It is also a male-privilege (Damnit Dim, get that post done! *grin*), men get the power of definition and if women dare to say that their experiences don't match up with what a given man thinks they should be then she's automatically wrong.

Hell, some self-proclaimed feminists have accused me of being 'unfair' in that post and in that discussion with my son. Mind you, these are women. Women who are basically saying that another woman who brings up her story of rape and what it did to her during a discussion of rape is being unfair and manipulative. Just because it's something that someone else doesn't WANT to hear doesn't mean it's unfair, our out of bounds. Because, quite frankly, I don't care what anyone WANTS to hear, I'm not in the business of telling people what they want to hear. I'm in the business of telling people the truth as I see it.

I believe, and I will say this again. That it is not a 'low blow' for a survivor to tell someone that they were not affected in the way that a given person 'believes' they should be affected. As a society we rarely try to argue with someone when they say that their attempted murder was awful. We rarely tell them that they are wrong, that they're 'overreacting' for feeling the way they do, but it is another piece of evidence to sexism being alive and well that we DO think this way for rape survivors.

I posit that even more survivors need to make it known what has happened to them. Force the eyes open of the people around them, give them inside information and destroy their illusions. And yes, that includes my own children. I, for one, am tired of being told as a woman what I 'should' be feeling about my experiences. (Obviously, when it’s my children, I talk with them civilly and gently because I am worried about their feelings).

I believe that if we screamed the collective scream of the survivor instead of hiding in the shadows and letting everyone decide what is appropriate for us to feel, that we would split the ears of those who place themselves in the position of judge and jury.

You're damn right I talk to my kids. I have no shame. I am not ashamed of what was done to me. I refuse to allow my silence to turn into affirmation for someone when they claim knowledge on something they have probably never experienced. I refuse to allow anyone, my partner, my parents, my friends and allies, and yes, even my children, to assume what type of pain is 'appropriate' for a rape survivor.

My children deserved to know what happened to me and I am a teacher. I teach them and they absorb what I say and I want them to absorb just how devastating this crime can be to its victims. So, when my children, or my partner, or my parents or even my enemies, begin to state how I, or any other survivor, should feel, I correct them. I correct them quickly and I correct them with my story and if truth is 'blackmail' then so be it.

Rape is either a thing to hide and be ashamed of, or it isn't. If it isn't then telling people not to share their tale with others, yes, even kids, shouldn't be wrong. Rape isn't sex. Rape is control. Talking of rape to children (who are old enough to understand rape, obviously) is not akin to talking to them about sex. Rape is a fact of life for over 1/3 of our population and we need to make it a topic of discussion to everyone. Old, young, men, women, boys and girls.

If a survivor shouldn't be ashamed of what was done to her then she should also be free to talk about it whenever the topic comes up because her story is important. It's important because the other 2/3 has to know what the truth is and the truth is just as varied as the women speaking it. There is no absolute truth on rape, some women appear to do just fine, others internalize, others lash out and others break down. Some get angry, some want to die, some ignore it, and some build walls but ALL of them are affected and they have a RIGHT to tell anyone, anywhere, whenever the topic comes up just HOW they were affected.

They have a right to do so if they feel the need and have the courage. They have the right to do so without being shouted down by people who don't like what they have to say and therefore tell them that they're being 'manipulative' and 'blackmailing' them. They have a right because their stories are FACT. Their pain is FACT. Their lack of pain is FACT. It happened to them, they should know.

I will state this right now and let the flames begin. ANYONE who says that a rape survivor is using 'emotional blackmail' (or some other thinly veiled way of saying 'Shut the fuck up')when she tells her story during a rape discussion is not only NOT a feminist, but they are also a rape apologist. You are trying to tell the survivor that what a man did to her is less than what she says it is (if it wasn’t then why would you be telling her not to talk about it during a discussion of rape?). That it’s not as big a deal as she says it is. That her emotions don’t matter in a ‘rational’ discussion of rape. That her feelings have no place in a discussion of rape. That her individual experiences do not matter in a discussion of rape. This is the definition of rape apologist.

I refuse, utterly and completely, to allow anyone to labor under a mistaken impression of what rape is and what its consequences are to some of the women who experience it. I refuse to allow the cloak of silence and denial to lay over people who are engaged in a discussion about rape. When rape is a topic then *I* have something to say about it. And you better believe that if I hear something that is a direct contradiction to the facts of my situation I will correct them. I will correct them as loudly and as angrily as I have to because I am no longer a passive ‘victim’, I’m a pissed off survivor. And make no mistake about it, my experiences are FACT.

It is pure fact that I prayed for death. It is pure fact that I stood outside my home at night after waking from another nightmare in which I relived my experiences and watched semi-trucks barrel past the house. It is fact that as I stood there I cried and felt terror at the thought that these nightmares, flashbacks and anxiety would never go away. It is fact that I fought with myself to keep my feet from walking onto that highway and ending up on the grill of a speeding truck. That is FACT.

When someone tells me that rape is never worse than death I have every right to tell them, that for me, rape WAS worse than death, at least for a time. And that night, on my front lawn, for a few moments anyway, rape WAS worse than death. And that, my friends, is FACT. There was but one reason that I didn't walk into that truck that night, a reason I'm not going to get into right now, but what I know is that some women DON'T find a reason. They do walk in front of those trucks.

As a society we need to determine, once and for all, if rape is something that IS shameful, or if it's something that ISN'T shameful because right now, we're stuck in a pattern where our words do not match our deeds. Telling women that they shouldn't be ashamed and then ostracizing them when they tell the 'wrong' person is double-speak, plain and simple. We need to stop thinking for rape survivors and stop telling them what to think. And more than that we need to pull the tape from the mouths of the victims. We need to LET them speak. We need to ENCOURAGE them to speak and damnit; we need to do it without reservation.

As it stands I’m not a ‘typical’ victim, but then, we just heard the flak that another ‘atypical’ victim got. She got charged with a crime because she didn’t exhibit the appropriate response.

To those of you who would say that I have no business being open with my family, my children and my friends about my experiences I say “Fuck you”. The things that happened to me are facts of my life and I bear none of the responsibility of what those men did to me. I refuse to be a quiet, introspective, weak ‘victim’ of rape. I will be a loud, in your face, mad-as-hell survivor and I believe that telling children, yes, even MALE children, the pain that rape can cause in a mother, sister or grandmothers life, is nothing to be ashamed of.

If they’re old enough to understand what it is then they’re old enough to hear that it happened to someone they know. They are also old enough to know the details of what it did to me, how it made me feel, how it affected my life. They deserve to know and they need to know because chances are very good that they will encounter other survivors in their lifetime and they need to know just how painful a crime this can be.

Doing anything else continues the myth that rape survivors are quiet and meek. That they are nonexistent and they can be forgotten or not thought about.

I will not be forgotten. And I will not be silenced and if me telling the truth in a discussion of what rape ‘should’ do to people is blackmail or a low-blow, then get the hell over it because I, for one, am NOT going to shut up