Speaking Against Silence

[CW: suicide, sexual assault]

Note: I’m not in danger, so please don’t be alarmed. I just think it’s important that those of us struggling with immense depression after the election speak out. I updated the popular vote totals after I wrote this. If you are struggling, please check out the National Suicide Hotline (1-800-273-8255) and The Trevor Project hotline (1-866-488-7386).

November 9, 2016; 2:55am EST

To the 60,071,650 of you who voted for Donald Trump:

You let me down.

First, let me make something clear: you’ve let more people down than just me, and I by no means comprise any of the main demographics targeted by Donald Trump’s rhetoric. I’m white and a U.S. citizen and have a tremendous amount of other privilege. I don’t want to speak for others, so I’m going to simply talk about why you’ve let me — a queer rape survivor — down. Big time. And why your decisions led me to consider ending my life tonight.

If you’re part of the 60,071,650 voters that saw Donald Trump as an appropriate leader of this country, you’re probably wondering what I mean by “rape survivor.” After all, you just voted for a man accused of raping two of his wives and a 13-year-old girl, and sexually assaulting over a dozen other women (which he bragged about on tape). I despise the way you categorize some violations as more valid than others, as if the torture of not being believed isn’t, in and of itself, its own violation. But for your reference, when I say “rape,” I mean your definition of it: a stranger when I was sober and fully clothed, physical violence that leaves me with permanent scars and ongoing (perhaps permanent) pain.

I’m also queer. I didn’t choose this; I wasn’t indoctrinated or forced. Growing up queer felt, in many ways, like a fight. I had to fight (peacefully, of course) for my humanity, to create spaces where I felt safe, to have people realize that I wasn’t a predator but just a girl who wanted to be with a girl in the future. And I managed to make it through middle and high school, to work hard and get good grades and be there for my friends when they were having hard times. When I made it to college, I tried to be supportive to other people. I found professors I trusted, friends I loved, and a community that gave me a reason to be excited to get out of bed most mornings.

But here I am staring down the orange barrel of a prescription pill bottle asking myself why I should live. How do I find some self-worth as a queer rape survivor in a country that just elected a rapist and a guy who used HIV/AIDs care money to fund conversion therapy?

If you voted for Donald Trump to be subversive or simply express displeasure at the state of our nation, all I can ask is: was the point you were making worth the lives of the queer and trans teens who have completed suicide since the election? Was it worth the lives of those murdered by bigots (who now feel empowered to commit violent acts)? Was it worth destroying the humanity of sexual assault survivors?

I wasn’t suicidal before Trump won. But you sentenced me and countless others to suffering or death. You sentenced queer and trans teens to be physically and emotionally tortured, Black people and people of color to be murdered with even more impunity, sexual assault survivors to back a rapist, and families to be ripped apart by deportations.

You might live through the next 4-8 years. If so, more power to you and to whatever circumstances you were given that allow you to survive. But not all of us are going to be able to do that. As someone who was just shy of the age of Trump’s youngest rape victim when she was first raped, as someone whose identity our new vice president deems worthy of scientifically debunked torture, as someone who has spent so many years of her life fighting just to get to this point, I don’t know how to move forward from here. All the people asking “How do I move forward?” after the election really piss me off, because my question is, “Do I move forward?”

Because you tell me: should I move forward? Why is subjecting myself to constant violence healthier than completing one act of violence?

I know I haven’t swayed you. Most of you probably think my death would be good riddance. I know you think I’m worthless, and I know that because you elected Trump and Pence, and seeing me as trash is implicitly part of the deal. But I’m not seeking your approval. I just want you to know that if I don’t make it through this presidency, my blood is on your hands.

Let’s call the deaths of those who Trump will hurt what they are: murder. Because I can tell you with certainty that your vote is going to be a factor in many suicides and hate crimes. Suicide wasn’t crossing my mind until you decided your ideals were more important than my life. And four years from now, when the 60,071,650 of you look back on the choice you made, I hope you stop to think about whatever positives you see in Trump’s presidency and compare them with all the people he harmed. Was the tradeoff really worth it?

Sincerely,

Good HuffPo article in light of the Stanford decision a couple days ago. Honestly, as all the links in here point out, what happened in the Stanford case (a 6 month sentence max for the perpetrator) is not uncommon — it happens all the time. Asking to remove the one judge from the case misses the point. This case is the norm, not the exception.

Content warning: sexual assault

A: Good question.

When I entered college, there was one statistic that haunted me: 33-50% of women who are raped before age 18 are sexually assaulted again later in life. Even though I know that no survivor is at fault for being assaulted or can prevent themselves from being assaulted, I kept trying to tell myself, “Well, if I do X, Y, and Z, it won’t happen to me again ... right?”

Wrong.

So that’s where I’ve been — trying to figure out how to function with new flashbacks, new triggers, new pain; new perpetrator, new location, new shame.

Because it just happened to me again.

Posting this feels surreal, partially because I’ve been living with the same flashbacks for so long that I don’t even know what to do with new ones, and partially because someone I know in real life knows I’m the author of this blog. I don’t think Tumblr is the most eloquent way to tell people I know that I was raped again, but I guess I’ve passed the point of caring about eloquence.

I don’t know if there’s any good way to tell someone it happened to me a second time, especially since I just got done telling everyone about the first. It sounds absurd. Two entirely different ages, perpetrators, locations ... everything. Many were largely supportive of me the first time I was raped (or rather, when I told them about the first time I was raped, since they didn’t notice otherwise), but now I’m clearly the only common denominator between the assaults. I don’t know if that means people will believe me less or blame me more or both. I don’t have the guts to tell anyone to find out.

I promise I’ll get around to answering people’s asks and posting the stories you’ve been brave enough to send to my message box in a couple days. I’m just temporarily milling about unsure of who — or if —to tell or what to do.

Thank you for your patience,

Content warning: sexual assault

Mom: I want you to have a healthy sex life. I know you haven’t had sex yet ...

Me: *ignores impulse to ask what my mom thinks I meant when I said I was sexually assaulted* It’s stunning to me the assumptions people make unless I explicitly use the word “rape.” Saying “sexual assault” can mean many things, but rape is included under that umbrella. People are so unable to cope with rape that they assign experiences to me that aren’t my experiences.

If a friend tells you they were sexually assaulted, don’t assign truths to them that aren’t their truths. Don’t let yourself use delusion to cope with their realities.

Content warning: sexual assault

Parent: Your aunt called and said [the person who raped you] was admitted to the hospital last night with renal and heart failure and …

Me: *internally singing “We Are the Champions,” hanging up party streamers*

Parent: He’s totally fine now. Didn’t need dialysis or anything. He’s been discharged.

Content warning: sexual assault

Dear Anna,

You’re going to be born tomorrow. You’ll be given a stuffed tiger and wrapped in a pink blanket.

But I’m not writing to you to tell you about your birth. I’m writing to tell you that in a few years, you’re going to be raped. I wish I could tell you that your life will just be full of hugs, drinking mint chip milkshakes, and telling bad jokes, but I can’t do that. The only things I can tell you are not comforting: knowledge about your rape and how you’ll fall apart after.

It’ll happen to you when you’re young but old enough to remember. It’ll start with your perpetrator pulling on your leg. You’ll laugh because it’ll tickle. And then you’ll be in pain. Try to focus on meaningless things like the feeling of the rug underneath your back, your fear of spiders, and the dust particles floating through the stuffy air. Those things won’t make the pain go away, but they’ll make the time go by faster.

You’ll first find out what happened will destroy you in the car on the way to school when you’re twelve. Your younger brother will ask your mom a question about why children don’t make babies. Your mom will say that when children do those things, they’re “messed up forever.” It’s then you’ll think to yourself three words that will haunt you for years: “Then I’m screwed.”

You won’t try to tell anyone about your rape until middle school sex education. You’ll submit an anonymous index card that says you were raped, praying someone will recognize your handwriting. However, no one will make any attempt to find you or talk about resources for survivors. You’ll do your own research and start intellectualizing your rape. You’ll fill in details you think fit. You’ll assign a name to your perpetrator; you’ll be too embarrassed that you can remember what he smelled like but not his name or the color of his eyes.

You won’t feel safe directly telling anyone until you are a few months shy of your eighteenth birthday. You’ll Google your camp counselor and discover she refers to herself as a “survivor” in news articles. You’ll burst into tears and know then that she’s someone you can tell. You’ll write her an anonymous note and slip it under her door. She’ll know it’s from you and talk to you the next night. You’ll have trouble hearing her over the sound of your nervous heartbeat. Later, when someone pulls on your leg and triggers you, she’ll take you to the gym so you can try to run out of your body.

A couple months later when you turn eighteen, you’ll call the local rape crisis center and ask for help. You’ll go to free peer counseling sessions after school where you’ll hopelessly try to talk away the nightmares. You’ll hear about an evening support group and tell your mom you’re “volunteering.” She’ll believe you and pick you up at the door for weeks, ignoring your tear-stained face like she ignored your bruise-stained body.

Six months later, you’ll write a story about that notecard in sex ed and submit it to a writing contest. It’ll win. You’ll panic because that will mean it’ll be published. You’ll send an e-mail with the story to a teacher you trust and she’ll be shocked. She’ll ask you for details, but don’t give them to her; she deserves better. She’ll also ask you why you didn’t report it, and you’ll say no one will believe you because you’ll be too ashamed to say you think it was your fault.

You’ll then tell your parents in an e-mail. Much to your surprise, they’ll respect your request for silence. You’ll be silent too, even when your mom refuses to pay for a car ride back from support group but later agrees to spend that same amount on a pair of leggings.

However, don’t let your success telling your family fool you; speaking out is dangerous. A different piece you’ll write about being a survivor will get published. Suddenly everyone at school will know you were assaulted. A day later, you’ll find a box of condoms in your locker with a note: “Loved your article.” Then you’ll find two graphic notes that correctly guess details of your rape. Even though the notes were lucky guesses, you’ll collapse. You’ll stop sleeping. You’ll stop talking. And for a long time, you’ll stop writing.

After graduation, you’ll channel your feelings into a blog about being a survivor. You’ll start to feel safe writing again. You’ll feel compelled to write a letter to your younger self to warn her about her upcoming life. This, Anna, is that letter.

I’d love to tell you that you’ve stopped blaming yourself for your rape, but I’d be lying. You’ll blame yourself for your body reacting, for not resisting, and for seeking out contact with your probable perpetrator again. You’ll spit out fiery Facebook posts about assault cases — St. Paul’s, Vanderbilt, Bill Cosby — that distract you from your own.

But that’s okay. Being a survivor is messy. You’ll have days when you’ll love your life and days filled with violent flashbacks. That’s how it works.

You’re going to be raped, Anna, and it’ll be ugly. But please know that it doesn’t make you ugly. You’re more than your rape. While I don’t know if you’ll ever fully forgive the parts of you that didn’t fight back — the legs that could’ve kicked, hands that could’ve scratched, and mouth that could’ve screamed — you’ll learn to love yourself. It’ll take time, but I promise you’ll get there.

For now, just close your eyes and think of the feeling of the rug underneath your back, your fear of spiders, and the dust particles floating through the stuffy air. Those things won’t make the pain go away, but they’ll make the time go by faster.

Love,

Hi anon,Thanks for talking about your experience. I don’t know if you’ve heard of new affirmative consent policies, but they basically revise the old saying “no means no” to “yes means yes.” In other words, both parties need to maintain clear, enthusiastic, non-coerced consent throughout the encounter for it to be consensual. What you’re describing sounds non-consensual based on that. While you may have been telling your partner yes, if you weren’t enthusiastic and not-coerced (which are fancy ways of saying really wanting it), it absolutely “counts.”

Intimate relationships pose a challenge when it comes to talking about assault because partners so often assume they know what their partner is thinking and feeling. However, the fact that you were dating them doesn’t give them the right to assume you want something, make you feel pressured into doing something (even unintentionally), or overlook the fact that your “yeses” were not genuinely enthusiastic and not-coerced. What you want and feel matters, and what you wanted and felt was ignored. That also matters.

I’m sorry that you went through that experience, and also sorry that you’re dealing with triggers related to it. While I can’t make the triggers go away (though I’m going to do a post on things I do when I get triggered soon), I hope that my answer here can at least give you some validation. Calling it what it was doesn’t make the pain go away, but it’s an important start.

Hi anon,Thanks for reaching out, and no need to apologize for talking candidly about your experience. My triggers are very specific to my assault (though I always tag any posts with personal stories with #tw in case the same isn’t true for others), so I’m always fine with people sharing however much of their stories they feel comfortable with. My answer to you would be the same regardless of your age or intoxication level: if you didn’t want him to do what he did, it’s sexual assault, hands down. (The fact that you were intoxicated would also make it assault, as would being 17 in some states depending on his age, but again, both of those things don’t change my answer.) I know people tend to categorize assaults in terms of severity, but I don’t like doing that because all types of sexual assaults can have equal impacts. Any emotions you’re experiencing are valid and important, no matter how much you did or didn’t fight back or what type of sexual thing he did or didn’t do.

And I also hope you know, despite what it may sometimes seem like given what we’re told about sexual assault, that what he did wasn’t your fault, even though you were drunk.

Hi anon,Thank you for reaching out.

The number one most important thing: it was not your fault. You have nothing you should feel guilty about. Nothing.

Second, your feelings are absolutely not “wrong.” What happened to you is not okay, and any emotions you feel as a result of that are completely valid and important. What happened to you was assault, and there’s no right or wrong way to process it — no emotions you should or shouldn’t feel and no time frame in which you must feel them.

I’d love it if I could tell you that you’ll reach a point where you can let go of it, but I can’t because I haven’t been able to do that myself. What I can tell you, though, is that while it may never go away, it does get easier to deal with. For me, tough days now come in waves instead of all the time. I have days where I fall apart, but many days when I can function. Acknowledging what happened to you is an important step, and one that you’re doing just by reaching out.

Intimacy is challenging. I myself haven’t reached a point where I feel like I want to have a sexual relationship with anybody, but I know survivors who have reached that point. You’re definitely under no obligation to have a sexual relationship with anyone if you aren’t comfortable with it. If you want to have a sexual relationship, though, that’s definitely something that talking to someone who’s specifically trained with deal with trauma survivors can help with. (Often, you can get free counseling at your local rape crisis center.) But again, don’t feel pressure to have sex. Anyone who tries to pressure you isn’t someone you should be with.

Hi anon. Good question. Is it possible? Yes, absolutely. Does it excuse what your abuser did? Absolutely not. I’m going to loosely quote a saying in U.S. criminal law: “Ignorance of the law is not a defense.” Basically, it means that it’s everyone’s job to know what they should or shouldn’t be doing. If they don’t know what they’re doing is wrong, that’s their problem and they’re still completely responsible. You have every right to blame them, be mad at them, not forgive them, etc.

Hi. Thank you for reaching out to me. What happened to you is important. There’s no rule anywhere that says that rape is always “worse” or more traumatizing than other forms of sexual assault. You are just as entitled as those who have been raped to feel the effects of what happened to you. Everyone responds to assaults differently, and any emotions you’re experiencing are valid. You have to deal with a whole added component of society telling you that what you experienced is somehow less traumatizing/valid than what survivors of “violent rape” experience, which adds a whole new roadblock to your healing process that those who have been raped in the ways people assume are objectively severe do not have to deal with. My rape was objectively somewhat violent (though not as violent as what many others experience), and I’m telling you from the bottom of my heart that I think your experience is as equally valid as mine, and that my assault is not objectively “worse” than yours just because I was raped.

I also want to say that it’s quite common for people to continue to date/remain friendly with those who assaulted them. A couple years ago, I elected to fly halfway across the country to meet my rapist again. Most people would call that ridiculous, but I was curious what he would be like. Many others stay friends with their perpetrators, even continuing to date them. Many continue to love their perpetrators. That doesn’t mean you were any less violated or don’t have the right to feel hurt/confused/angry now. You don’t forfeit your right to call yourself a survivor by loving your perpetrator, dating your perpetrator, talking to your perpetrator, etc.

You’re a strong survivor and I sincerely hope you are able to find people in your life who validate your experience, if you haven’t found people like that already. You can always reach out to me again, of course, but you deserve support offline too. You’re very resilient, and I admire your bravery.

Love,

Thank you for reaching out and for sharing your story. I’mhappy this blog has helped you and, most importantly, that you’re making greatprogress in coming to terms with what happened to you. Accepting that ithappened is an enormous step that takes a lot of guts, and while I’m sorry thathappened to you, the fact that you’re coming to terms with it makes meincredibly happy for you.Love,

Hey. Thanks so much for reaching out and for sharing yourstory.

The most important thing I want to tell you is that youshouldn’t feel guilty. Acting out sexually after being assaulted is quitecommon. When people are assaulted when they are very young, they reasonablydeal with it in a variety of ways and do the best that they can to understandthe situation. Sometimes that manifests itself in trying to make sense of whathappened by repeating certain sexual behaviors on others. It doesn’t mean thatyou’re a bad person at all — it means you were just trying to cope with whathappened to you. You were a child. You can’t fault yourself for reasonablybeing unable to comprehend such a traumatizing and horrific experience.

It’s also not uncommon to think back on assaults in a sexualnature. I wrote a post a while back called “Why did my body betray me?”where I talk about being aroused during my rape and sometimes when I flash backto my rape. I feel guilty/disgusting because of that every time it happens.However, I know intellectually (even though it’s hard to believe itemotionally) that the reactions of my body during and after my assault arepurely biological and do not mean I deserved what happened to me. The same istrue for you. Remembering your assault or you acting out parts of your assaulton others with feelings of arousal doesn’t mean you’re a bad person,disgusting, or a pedophile. Again, it’s a product of your mind trying to cometo grips with something that’s impossible to understand.

Be gentle withyourself and remember that you were only nine when you were assaulted. Youmanaged to make it to this point, which demonstrates incredible resilience andstrength. Whatever coping mechanisms you used, they worked, and you’ve made itto where you are today. You should be incredibly proud of yourself and all youhave survived.

Love,