An Unforgettable Event

I watched the first several episiodes of House of Cards on Netflix last night. In episode 2,  one of the main  characters reveals that she had been raped in college. She had kept it quiet for 25 years, telling no one but her husband, but then her rapist appears in her life again briefly. He acts like nothing ever happened and he even leaned over and kissed her cheek. A few days later, she publicly shared what happened and named her rapist.

Seeing him brought back the memories and the feelings surrounding the awful event, and finally, 25 years after the fact, she took her power back and put the pressure back on her rapist. Will that make her feel better?

Maybe.  Priobably not.  But it's worth it to her if there is any chance at relief. Relief from what?

Watching her situation play out triggered my own memories.  Her assault took place about 25 years prior to the accusation of her rapist. Mine was only 11 years ago. Writing that feels so strange. Eleven years. That was before my youngest child was born. That sounds like a long time ago, but it feels like last week.

I was just watching the show, excited that the new new season was finally here, and my heart started racing, I felt sick to my stomach, and my eyes quickly filled with tears. When that happens, I know I can't close my eyes because then the images will start flashing in front of of me, but the longer I hold out, the more likely it is that I'll start seeing the images anyway.

That's when the full blown PTSD hits. Then I can't see anything. I can barely breathe, and emotionally it feels like I'm right back there - fighting back until I had no fight left; feeling every blow, every cut, every thrust; wondering if I'd ever see my family again.

Sometimes it hits out of the blue. It will be sparked by a particular smell or the way shadows fall on the street or a man wearing a brown sportscoat. Then I feel a sense of panic and all that goes with it - rapid heartbeat, queasy stomach, sweaty brow and palms. Imagine the emotional and physical sensations of being chased by someone with a weapon who wants to kill you.  Then imagine them just erupting within you when you're not in immenent danger at all, just because you passed by someone in a the grocery store wearing a certain cologne or you hear a car door slam. Sometimes you have no idea at all why it hit you.

So you isolate yourself.  Sometimes it's isolation in a crowd, where you seem to socialize a lot, but you're careful not to let anyone really know you. You try to bottle up feelings that can't be bottled up. Eventually, they'll explode.  Until then, you'll be alone.

Over 22 million women in the United States have been raped.  That's about 1 in every 6 women. Almost a third of rape victims develop PTSD at some point in their lifetime and 11% still have PTSD today,

In addition, 30% of rape victims suffer from major depression. They are 4.1 times more likely than non-crime victims to have comtemplated suicide, and 13 times more likely to attempt suicide than non-crime victims.

And it doesn't only happen to women. Almost three million American men have been raped, going way beyond the estimated 600,000 inmates in the prison system who have been raped.

While only 70% of female rape victims withhold the information from their families, 90% of male victims don't tell anyone.  It took me 8 years to tell my husband and that was because the PTSD was so bad I had to either tell him or let him think I was crazy.

It strikes me that there are millions of women walking around as survivers of sexual assault who have PTSD and/or are suffering from other negative effects who are not even aware of what's really going on.

They don't want to say anything because they think they'll be judged, and all the evidence indicates that they are right. People expect soldiers to have PTSD, but they don't expect it from a homemaker or businesswoman.

What if we just assumed that whenever a woman exhibits behaviors like those I described above she just might be suffering from something?  What if we just assumed that she had suffered and was recovering from an unforgettable event?  What if we chose to be compassionate without knowing exactly what's happening?

For women who have been raped and end up with PTSD, recovery takes  place over decades, not months.  The impact of that one unforgettable event lasts a lifetime.

Miniskirts and Rape

It was reported several days ago that Swaziland had banned miniskirts, bare midriff tops and low rise jeans for women because those clothes provoked rape, or at least made the crime easier for rapists to commit. The consequence could be six months in jail for a woman who breaks the new law.

We learned yesterday that Swaziland officials say it was all a big mistake.  There is no such ban, they say, but there probably should be, and women should not expose themselves to rape by wearing those types of clothing.

I understand the problem.  Rape is out of control in many African nations.  In South Africa, a study by the Medical Research Council found that 1 in 4 men admitted to having raped at least one woman or girl. There's a huge outcry to address the issue and stop the problem.

Heck, rape is a problem just about everywhere.

But this approach is just logically wrong. If I leave my house unlocked and someone breaks in, should there be a law requiring me to keep my house locked at all times, making me the criminal if someone breaks in again?

You may say that rape is different because men just can't control themselves when they see women in miniskirts, but let's take my house analogy a bit further. What if I have a really nice house and you can see my expensive big flat screen TV and some other very cool stuff from the street because I have a nice big picture window. Does that make it my fault if someone robs me? What about all those law abiding people who could also see my stuff, but didn't break in? Why was the visual of my stuff just too much of a temptation and, therefore, the cause of the robbery for one guy, but not for the others? It wasn't. That would be blaming the homeowner, I mean, victim.

But just to drive a nail in the coffin of the argument that miniskirts cause or "provoke" rape, what about all of the women who have been conservatively dressed but were raped anyway? This by far represents the majority of rape victims worldwide. What provoked those rapes?

To be fair, if I knew I were in a place where there was a high incidence of rape, I would not be wearing revealing clothes anyway, not because I think miniskirts cause rape, but because being more conservatively dressed would make me feel more secure and because, if I were attacked, I wouldn't want to make his job any easier. The more time the criminal has to spend fumbling with my clothes means I may have just a few more seconds to get free and get away.

So, if it's not about miniskirts, what is it about?  Honestly, I'm amazed that we, as a species, are still having this conversation, but clearly we need to.

It's about the violence.
It's about the violent domination of women.
It's about  power.
It's about hopelessness and attempting to regain power.

Power is the need that is filled, if only temporarily.  Violence is the strategy.  Sex is the weapon.

Let me share a story to illustrate my point. It's a pretty horrific story; forgive me for that, please. A 76-year old woman in Sacramento was raped in her home in November 2010.  I strongly suspect she was not dressed like a hoochie-mama. She couldn't help much with the investigation because she had suffered a stroke.

In September 2012, he raped her in her home again. Yes, the same guy. They confirmed it with DNA evidence. Then they finally put in some surveillance cameras and, just a few weeks ago, he came back to rape her a third time, but this time, they caught him on camera. By the way, it turns out that he was a police officer. He's not anymore because he was fired the day he was arrested.

Do you think it was all about sex for him? Or how suggestively the 76-year-old stroke victim was dressed? Unlikely. And it's pretty obvious that she didn't bring this on herself.

I applaud folks who are proposing solutions for the rape epidemic, especially in Africa, even if the ideas are not good ones. Taking rape seriously is an important start. But it's time to move beyond the belief that women provoke rape.

To go back to my analogy, we would never say, "Well, the owner of that house (locked or not) is responsible because she has such nice stuff." I may be stupid if I don't lock my house, but that doesn't make the robber less of a criminal.

There is so much to say on the topic in general that I'll be sharing a few more posts with you on related topics like the difference between rape fantasies and real rape (nothing screws up a good rape fantasy like really getting raped...seriously) and that fine line between holding rapists responsible for their behavior and demonizing all men (the first is good, the second is not).

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic, Prowlers (not the topic about locking my house, but the one about miniskirts and rape).

For those of you moaning, "Why so serious, Kat?" Don't worry. There's always plenty of naughtiness to come.

Offensive or Hot?

This cover of Vogue is getting a lot of attention. Women's advocacy groups around the world, including the National Organization for Women in the U.S., are arguing that the cover photo sexualizes and glamorizes domestic violence and rape.

Huh?  I just don't see it.

Okay, I don't get why the guy is apparently sucking on his own finger, but that is beside the point.

What I see is a very hot depiction of consensual sexual domination.

Let me be clear.  I am not an advocate of domestic violence or rape in any way. I can say from first hand experience that there is nothing sexy about rape and there is nothing erotic about domestic violence.

That's not what this photo is showing. It's obvious because there is no sense of fear in this photo. No look of fear on her face, no panic in her eyes.

Just as some of those women's groups are upset at what they perceive as the sexualization of domestic violence, I am deeply offended by their efforts to pervert sexual domination and submission into something violent and dirty. It's not. They fact that they can't see that this photo is obviously not about violence is also disturbing.

I'm not being facetious when I say that I suspect they have been so sheltered, sexually speaking, that they cannot even understand what a full, passionate, exciting, varied, and invigorating sex life can be. To them, anything that's not plain vanilla is evil and an affront to women. They are so uneducated, deprived or intolerant that even french vanilla (which is all this photo is, really) is scary for them.

What's next? Are we getting to the point where if a man even touches a woman  somewhere other than her hand without her screaming, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" that it will be considered a sexual assault? Needless to say, I think it's going too far.

The women's movement is all about allowing women to have choices. That also means that women should have the right to choose to be sexually dominated by a man without the implication that she must have a psychological issue deeply rooted in a troubled childhood. And it means that the man she chooses to engage with sexually in that regard is not a rapist.  Oh yeah, and he's not a psycho for liking it, either.

Unfortunately for the prudes of the world, they can no longer say that women (and men) who enjoy BDSM to any degree are a kinky fringe minority with a sick sense of sexuality.  Fifty Shades of Grey debunked that myth. Millions of people are either into it or turned on by it and want to try it. Millions of people don't see it as rape or domestic violence. Because it's not.

The range of "perfectly normal" in human sexuality is broad. We're just learning that some of what we used to think was really kinky and unusual is actually much more common and, yes, normal.

I'm not a pervert for wishing I were the woman in that photo (but I'd pick a different guy) or for loving a good, hard, hair-pulling, ass-slapping, gagged fuck. The people who try to make me and millions of others feel dirty for liking it - they are the perverts.

Your thoughts?