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That’s not what I asked for!
It’s been one of those weeks. A week when the column just about writes itself. Actually, it’s been a week when there has been no doubt in my mind that I would write about “why women don’t tell”. The problem is I know lots of men who didn’t tell, but I’m not writing about them. I’m writing about us. I’m writing about the women I know. I’m writing about the women who have finally spoken up about the abuse they’ve endured.
When I was a kid, probably about 10 years old, I overheard the adults, sitting in our kitchen, talking about a woman who had been raped. They may have been discussing a story from the newspaper, although I doubt it would have been. It may have been a person they knew. My point is, and I do have one, I learned not to tell anyone about “private stuff” because of what I heard that day. I didn’t know what “rape” meant, but I did know it was something that happened to women, it seemed, and it wasn’t nice. I do recall one woman quietly hissing the word “rape”, like it would bite her if she said the word too loudly. And I remember another person murmuring “Uh huh, you know what she’s like” and then some banter about the way some women dress and how they “ask for it”. The conversation seemed urgent and dangerous. Later, while playing with my older sister, I said the word “rape” several times. I suppose I was hoping she’d know what the word meant and she’d tell me. She probably knew as much as I did, and told me it was a bad word, “rape”. She said I’d better not say it around Mom and Dad or there would be “big heck to pay”. I trusted her and I was right. Rape was something urgent and dangerous. It was something women got because of the way they dressed. It was something that happened to women because they “asked for it”. I was never going to ask for it, that’s for sure.
When did I learn what rape meant? I don’t remember exactly. Maybe I was 15 or so. I think it was something I slowly figured out over the years. I did figure out a woman wouldn’t be raped if she didn’t act like she wanted to be raped. That’s what I learned. And the message stayed with me for at least a decade. So many jokes have been made about what essentially is a crime. So many adults I knew then, and know now, thought it was okay to joke about nonconsensual sex. Once I heard a male relative say, “She just needs a good screw. That would sort her out.” I knew what “screw” meant, but didn’t understand how it would solve anyone’s problems. Let’s just say almost everything I heard as a child and as a young woman about sex, was a bit biased toward a male getting what he wanted and a female getting what she either needed or deserved.
I’ve learned a lot since those “good old days”. But women still have a problem if or when they speak out about abuse of any kind. The old responses are still deeply entrenched in our minds, and we still pass those notions along to the next generations. We can hardly hear a story of sexual abuse against women, without a nanosecond of wondering what the woman did to bring it on. We’re still on that page. Some of us can shake that baloney out of our heads and show some healthy indignation, revulsion and, even, fight back. And some of us can still only pay lip-service to the wrong that is done, the crime committed when it happens. It takes a long time to change the world’s collective frame of mind. Each of us has an obligation to listen, to understand, to believe and not judge victims. We must hold those who commit sexual violence accountable, regardless of their power, fame or wealth. We must support change and education in our communities—a better understanding of which acts constitute sexual harassment and assault so we can effectively speak out against it.
It will take each and everyone of us to create a world that recognizes and no longer puts up with sexual violence. We can do better.
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