In terms of the first impression, I feel that this may happen sometimes. However, an individual would need to be living in a cultural vaccuum to feel that this is why a six year old tells someone that she was “touched and it hurts,” or the nun found battered and bruised that reports that she had been sexually attacked with a 1 year old.
And the next belief?
Can you imagine the burglar sitting in court and saying,”Your honour, frankly, I mean how TV was put in that screen window, all sleak and shiny and with such a fine picture tube and all – I mean, c’mon your honor, it was merely asking to be stolen.” Can you? Among those’things’ that put me on the street I finally followed in becoming a police officer, bodyguard and self defense teacher, is my very own inherent’distrust’ and rebellion against what we’ll call traditional wisdom.
The pain
I can not tell you how painful it’s been for me to hear law enforcement officials, attorneys, judges and even so-called self pros expressing either or both of the exact beliefs. Especially in light of all the evidence that is available. Anyway, one day, several years back, minding my own business, I find myself at a McDonald’s restaurant.
While enjoying lunch with my wife and two kids, I pick up on what seemed like an evangelical demonstration at a table across from where we’re sitting. This, coupled with the obvious distress exhibited by the bodies and faces of the man and girl that were the recipients of this message, caused me to provide the dialogue more than casual attention.
At the moment, I was a national police officer about six decades of road experience under my belt, so disturbances like those were something that I obviously and instinctly tuned in on. What I discovered when I looked was a little woman, roughly in her late twenties but no longer than thirty, speaking to a couple at the next table. The look on the woman’s face was no less than enthusiastic and her tone was quite straight – almost panicked. But, not for herself, for the man’s female companion.
Choices
What I heard next, forever changed the way that I’d discuss the topics of rape and women’s self-defense. You see, this girl, we’ll call her Susan, had been the victim of rape. By the time I met her, Susan had recovered significantly from what could be described today as post traumatic stress disorder – the traumatic psychological and psychological aftermath of what started as a physical assault on her body. Unlike many victims of rape however, Susan had taken it upon herself to tell every woman – and man or men attached to her story, the lessons she’d learned, first and foremost, to learn how to protect herself! Actually Susan was on a crusade.
She gave talks to schools, classes, and yes, even the impromptu presentations such as the one I was watching, at a McDonald’s restaurant. And, she was really good at it. Because for Susan, it was private. I believe that part of the reason for the distress in Susan’s listeners was that Susan was talking about a topic that’s taboo, and especially with strangers.
Rape?
I mean, actually, rape? That’s sex, right? Yeah, sure, it is a crime, but it is a”gender” offense -“gender” – you do not talk about that, right? But Susan did, and she was passionate about it. Susan was passionate about it since this one episode, this one kind of attack that is routinely trivialized and ignored in our homes, in our schools, and, yes, in our courts, had shattered nearly every belief that she had about the offense, who it happens to and her own ability to deal with this. She had been looking at and talking to the guy when I came into the conversation.
All the while his companion snuggled close to him, nodding in agreement, but abviously preventing the dedicated look in Susan’s determined eyes. The very words stab to a guy’s ego and the look on her target’s face told me that this was a sensitive issue and one which wasn’t open for discussion.
Because for him, and many men generally, protecting one’s loved-ones isn’t a possibility, it is a given. But, Susan was unstoppable. Then, came Susan’s personal narrative of trajedy in the face of what she’d held to be authentic for her whole life. Everything she was taught: good girls do not need to be worried about rape, just the fairly or promiscuous women get raped, if it will occur just give him what he wants and you will be fine; each belief she could think of the encouraged her self-assurance that’she’ wasn’t and never would be a goal, was crushed and shattered by the fact she had never been educated and for many women, never approved.
Talk about it!
She informed the couple that, before her attacker’s brutal assault, she too held the beliefs that she had been hearing from them. She informed them that their answers weren’t unique. She heard them from just about everybody, everywhere she went. But, as Susan discovered, these answers where just offering a false sense of security – security that had at it’s base not mortar and stone, but toothpicks and glue. And, if her listener’s did nothing to fix those beliefs, then they would find themselves in precisely the exact same condition she had been left by her attacker – used, confused, and feeling lost and empty, with nowhere to hide.
As Susan’s story went on, we discover that the physical wounds from rape cure very quickly in comparison to the invisible scarring which, like seeds awaiting Springtime, lies dormant beneath the surface – concealed from the world – until the perfect time. As Susan pointed out, what she did not know about rape along with what she did not understand about how her body could react to it, caused her more harm and suffering in the long run than the actual physical action.
Susan told her listeners that, she didn’t resist her attacker. After all, he just wanted sex, right? It’s just about the sex. She didn’t resist, consciously. Well, not until he began beating her. Susan’s story shows that rape isn’t a crime of sex, it is a crime of violence. I know you have heard this before. It’s the cornerstone of the entire rape-prevention educational system now and is in the forefront of programs given by rape crisis centers in many places on the planet.
Final Word
And, while this isn’t the truth in every situation, particularly in date rape and rape between college girls where the guy does want the sex and is willing to receive it by force, in Susan’s case, her assailant did not want sex for the pleasure of sex. No, to him, sex was a weapon to control, humiliate, and control a girl as it strikes her at her very heart. To some rapist, sex is a tool which, when used this manner, violates that one part of a woman’s body and her inner-self she believes she has complete control of.