We are often criticized for listening to someone else’s story and responding with our own story. That isn’t listening as much as it’s interrupting. I understand that. I also understand that sometimes the best way to empathize, and the reason why some stories resonate with us so very strongly, is that we remember ourselves in them.
When #metoo began, I remember thinking that it was crazy how many women had stories. I overlooked for a second that I, too, had a story – more than one, if the criteria was just feeling powerless and sexually targeted; just one if the criteria was actual rape; maybe a few if the criteria was unwanted touching or being shown someone else’s genitals.
My rape was that “friendly” type known as “date rape” where you agree to go out with someone and then things go awry. And often – at least, in my case, and Jane Doe’s – that rape is preceded by consumption of alcohol and then some kissing, etc., so, you know, it doesn’t make a strong case when the girl wants to explain to police or a courtroom that she showed up to the date trying to look her best (a little sexy, sure) and she had some drinks, and she agreed to some sexual activity, but it was very defined, and then the specific thing she said no to (sexual intercourse) happened, and that’s where she drew the line, but by then, nobody was listening, because she asked for it, right? Come on, lady! What were you thinking?!
She thought it was a date. She thought she was in control. She thought she had the discussion beforehand. She wasn’t drunk. And even if she was, and even if she was naked and drunk – she was clear. She said no to sex.
I am not Cornell’s Jane Doe. I will always understate what happened to me because it was, in so many ways, so mild compared to stranger rape, to gang rape, to countless other rapes I don’t wish to contemplate. But then the internet won’t stop telling me what happened to this poor college girl who was roughly the age I was when something happened to me, and…I feel things. And I remember things. I remember people saying they wished I hadn’t put myself in that position. I remember calling the police to ask questions, knowing it would have been an uphill battle to pursue, and being told I couldn’t play games with the system. And I know today that Jane Doe has an uphill battle, and that she is being judged for her own decisions that should have been hers to learn from, which becomes a distraction to the cruel things other people chose to do to her. Did she drink too much and snort ketamine? Seems like it. Did the men who then used those drugs to rape her and invite others to do so also drink too much and snort ketamine? Seems like it. So I guess we’re even on who made bad choices about sobriety that evening, but pretty far apart on who went on to be anywhere near a decent human.
Jane Doe’s memory is already being challenged incessantly, and I cannot argue against the validity of that given the substances consumed and the time lapsed. But will her attackers’ recollections be challenged the same way?
I am writing and reacting from a position of assuming that Jane’s story is true. As much as I am enjoying the vigilante justice for her online, we keyboard warriors were not there and we don’t know what happened. We have seen, in writing, a disgusting SnapChat screen shot that is enough for me to say I don’t want to spend time with whoever was involved in it. But every time there is a sensational case like this, people have determined the truth of the matter regardless of how little they actually know. And that is also important to remember. If what I am currently understanding to be true happened: that this girl was drunk off her ass, subsequently induced by her friend-then-abuser and others to be incapacitated beyond all defense so they could rape and take advantage of her sexually in other ways; if she was then largely ignored by her college when she had the memory and ability to tell the college what happened, and then forced to stay at the scene of the crime, essentially, because God forbid the college lose its tuition money – I want significant justice for this girl. What I do not want is for us to also become the monsters and for us to become so caught up in her pain and in justice for her that the exposing of her attackers leads to additional crimes. That is not the system I believe in, even as it is clear that the system I believe in sucks big hairy balls and lets sexual assault and rape victims down on a regular basis.
I fully support this from @jordanphilpot on Instragram:
The apparent repeated shortcoming of justice – the difficulty in not only telling a story so painful and personal, but then being believed against someone who is arguing just as hard that it never happened – is, also, why I write. And why many, MANY of the posts I am seeing are from other victims of sexual assault and rape. Because we exist and we want you to know that we exist, right next to you. We are not a story online. We are not a bestselling book or hit movie or documentary on Netflix. We work with you. We live with you. We are your family and friends. And while just living our lives and being ourselves, someone took advantage of us. And while you might want to fight like hell to protect us when you hear what happened to us – you could not at that moment. We could not protect ourselves at that moment. And the authorities we turned to, perhaps, did not do what they could to help us in the days, weeks, months, years after. Or maybe they did their best and it just wasn’t enough. Or maybe, we just kept it to ourselves because we had been through enough, and it was only later that we could really talk about it.
A critical way of combatting rape culture is to stand up to it while it is happening. I know “rape culture” can sound dramatic, but there is a culture that exists when a group rape can be blasted on social media as casually as free food available for the taking. Sometimes the support is small. Don’t laugh at the lewd joke. Does someone seem uncomfortable? Intervene. Did you get a message about a group sexual encounter, some free p*ssy? Look into that. If a woman wants to give away her body to a dozen people, that’s her right. If you find a woman hiding, so fucked up she probably couldn’t get out of that room on her own two legs, you have a duty to intervene. YOU HAVE A DUTY TO INTERVENE. WE HAVE A DUTY TO INTERVENE. That is our duty – not to write about it later – but to intervene when we have a chance to stop it from happening at all.
And, no – it is not all men. Of course it isn’t. I absolutely refuse to fear and despise a specific group of people because of the despicable acts of some of them. I have never found that to be the solution. A lot of the posts and backlash I am seeing this week are from men – men who, I think, are appalled by what the Cornell 7, and probably others adjacent to them, including the Cornell faculty, did to Jane Doe – her rape and the handling of it afterwards. I am married to a man who would not have gotten a group text (Snapchat, whatever) about a gang rape and thought, “Nah, not tonight,” and just gone about his merry way. I have friends and other family who would have gone out of their way to help that girl, had they known. Possibly I also know people who would have stayed silent, stayed out of the way, not known what to do, and realized only now that they had a chance to do something and instead let something terrible occur. What would I have done? What information would I have had? 20/20 hindsight is a beautiful and terrible thing.
I also understand that the feelings I have right now (and I guess will forever have), and the feelings Jane Doe has had since she was raped (and will forever have), are largely incomprehensible to men in general. Men (outside of incarceration) don’t spend most of their lives hoping to avoid rape, and women do. And I might think our fear is overstated, similar to fearing a shark attack, if not for everything I have written in this post, and so much I have not written and so much I have read, heard, and experienced in my 51 years. Again – that is why we write, and that is why we share. I can only speak for myself, but I don’t put this out there because I want sympathy, or because I enjoy sharing what happened to me roughly half my life ago. I don’t want this associated with me any more than Jane Doe or Chanel Miller or countless other people do. But it is part of my story now. It seems unfathomable to me, even now, that it happened, but it isn’t. It’s very real. It’s happening every single day to women we all know, and we cannot pretend otherwise. #metoo was very powerful. It changed things. Let’s keep turning things around. This behavior no longer stands – not in words, not in physical acts, and we will no longer be powerless when the predators come. I leave you with this:
