Our Bodies, Ourselves (149 page)

You deserve support.
Connecting with people who believe you and who can provide support and comfort can help you heal.

Rape crisis centers and domestic violence organizations are available and often will help without regard to immigration status. A family member, friend, clergy member, or counselor may also be able to help, particularly if she or he has a real understanding of the dynamics of violence. For many, connecting with survivors online is a huge help. You may decide to try other kinds of healing based on art, music, writing, physical activity, or meditation.

Rape, one of the most common forms of sexual assault, is defined slightly differently in each state. Most state laws define rape as penetration with the use of force and without the person's consent.
*
Penetration in the vagina, anus, or
mouth can be committed with a body part or instruments such as bottles or sticks.

The National Violence Against Women Survey reported that almost 18 percent of women said they have experienced a completed or attempted rape at some point in their lifetime, and most of these women were raped by someone they knew.
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Rape can be committed against us at any age, but girls and young women are at particular risk. In this same survey, which interviewed only women over eighteen, almost 22 percent reported that they were younger than age twelve when they were raped, and over half were under age eighteen.
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During rape, as in any sexual assault, survival is the primary instinct, and we protect ourselves as best we can. Some women choose to fight back; others do not. Choosing not to fight back is also a survival strategy.

Women are often blamed for rape and attempted rape. The media, and even family and friends, may look for what we did to encourage it.

Because we live in a culture that blames women for sexual violence and downplays the actions of perpetrators, and because so few of us get comprehensive sex education that would teach us about rape, we may not realize that we have been sexually assaulted until sometime after the incident(s).

No one had a frank discussion with me about how abuse happens. I had no idea what to do when I found myself in an abusive situation and could not even identify what was happening as abusive because I foolishly believed that you can only be abused if you are weak or stupid, and I saw myself as intelligent and strong.

This does not mean that the assault was not real, but simply that cultural messages are difficult to unlearn.

“‘Rape' is only four letters, one small syllable,” writes Latoya Peterson, a hip-hop feminist and editor of Racialicious (racialicious.com), “and yet it is one of the hardest words to coax from your lips when you need it most.”
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Having been taught as teens that rape involved attack by a stranger, she and her friends experienced many assaults that they did not recognize as sexual assault: “Being pressured into losing your virginity in a swimming pool pump room to keep your older boyfriend happy; waking up in the night to find a trusted family friend in bed with you; having your mother's boyfriend ask you for sexual favors; feeling the same group of boys grope you between classes, day after day after day.” Peterson and her friends told no adults about these assaults. “After all, who could we tell? This wasn't rape—it didn't fit the definitions. This was not-rape. We should have known better.”
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One woman who was repeatedly assaulted by her long-term boyfriend before she finally ended the relationship experienced a similar sense of disconnect:

© Wendy Maeda

Rape kit, courtesy of the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center

At that time I knew that rape and physical assault were inexcusable acts of violence generally committed against women. I just didn't realize that what was being done to me was rape. For that reason, it took me years to realize why I felt so traumatized.
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When rape happens in a long-term relationship, it is a form of domestic abuse (
“Intimate Partner Violence,”
), and support can be particularly difficult to find.

Rape is the most common violent crime on college campuses today.
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The National Institute of Justice estimates there are an estimated 35 rapes per 1,000 female college students per year,
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yet only 5 percent of the attempted or completed rapes are ever reported to law enforcement officials.
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Colleges and universities are required by federal law (the 1990 Clery Act) to have a policy in place that addresses rape and sexual assault on campus. This policy must include a disciplinary procedure against the perpetrator that is separate from what happens if the crime is reported to the police.
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Students who choose to report a rape or sexual assault to campus police personnel or a campus official do not have to decide at that moment whether to file a criminal complaint.

Many college administrations underreport or play down sexual assault incidents so as not to harm the school's reputation or finances. If the school's sexual assault counselors are administrators rather than service providers for sexual assault survivors, their priority may be
the interests of the school, not access to justice. If you feel your college is not responding to your concerns, or that you are being dismissed, contact one of the organizations listed above.

Most of the rapes that happen on campuses occur between people who know each other. Schools are required to let students change dormitories and to grant a stay-away order against the attacker.

One college student who was raped after drinking at a party eventually decided that she wanted to confront the rapist. Because he was a fellow student, she knew how to contact him:

I saw a counselor a few months later and finally after seven months of not going out, had a mutual friend help me get my rapist into the counselor's office for a session. I confronted him and told him how I felt about what happened, the results of what he did (nightmares, sexual fear in certain positions), and that next time he wanted to have sex with a drunk person, to just get her a cup of water and tuck her into bed instead, waiting until she was sober to make advances.

Anti-rape activists have worked for years to make date (or acquaintance) rape understood as the crime that it is. Then in 2007, a
Cosmopolitan
article by Laura Sessions Stepp, “A New Kind of Date Rape,” stirred the waters by asserting that “gray rape” “falls somewhere between consent and denial” and happens owing to “casual sex, hookups, missed signals, alcohol.”
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By implying that certain rapes happen because of miscommunication or because of what a woman does, the idea of gray rape influenced many people and gave victim blamers fresh fodder. The term gray rape masks the reality that any nonconsensual sexual activity is sexual violence, period. It makes it easier for us to blame ourselves (and for others to blame us) for all but the most obvious sexual assault. Gray rape is really date or acquaintance rape with a misleading name.

Sometimes we don't want to think of unwanted sexual activity as rape, because we don't want to see ourselves as victims. Yet by not seeing nonconsensual sex for what it is—sexual assault—we risk feeling the effects for a long time, and we also risk not knowing what wanted, consensual sex can feel like.

Although the majority of rapes are committed by men, women do rape. Rape by a woman can happen to any woman, regardless of her sexual orientation. Because of widespread ignorance and denial surrounding sexual assault of women by women, a woman may feel that no one will believe her if she reports what happened.

I kept it to myself because it was an embarrassing thing: I was bigger than she was. When people hear about rape, they think of a man raping a woman. It's hard to envision one woman raping another.

One woman lived in an off-campus group house where friends of friends passing through town often stayed over:

I set up the sofa bed for [my housemate's guests] and retired to my own bed in another room. I awoke to find one of the girls on top of me having sex, my body responding and feeling horrified, violated, betrayed by my own body and knowing I would be the only person in the world who would see this as I experienced it, rape.