A little over a year ago I was sexually assaulted. I won’t go into
details, but I will say it was someone I knew and someone who I had
explicitly said no to prior to the assault. It was not pleasant and I
felt betrayed by the person who assaulted me. I felt icky for a few days
and then moved on.
So how did I manage to move on so quickly without feeling victimized
or violated? How is it that I am able to sit here and write about this
without it evoking horrible memories or making me feel like less of a
person?
Well, it’s easy. I chose not to let one small incident affect me for the rest of my life. I chose to
look at it from a different perspective than most and that perspective
is what has allowed me to move on and not obsess about a single moment
that literally was not one of the worst moments I have experienced in my
life.
First of all, I don’t see my vagina as anything sacred. It’s an organ
made of tissue, muscle, etc… To me it is not any more sacred than my
nostrils. I have had 4 kids pass through it, it irritates the fuck out
of me once a month, and it is a general pain in the ass. There is
nothing wonderful about it. Sure it can give great pleasure when having
consensual sex, but that’s pretty much where anything positive about it
begins and ends. Just because society has taught us women that it is
supposed to be something ‘special’ or ‘sacred’ doesn’t make it so. So
when I was sexually assaulted I did not perceive it as much of a
violation of my vagina. I actually didn’t care about that.
What made me feel the most betrayed was the fact that the person who
did it was someone I knew, and someone who ignored me when I said ‘no’.
And that feeling of betrayal only lasted a few days because I am not one
who wastes much time on things that one cannot change. It happened, and
there is nothing I can do to change that. What I can change is my
outlook on the situation and decide to either let it ruin my life, or I
can just chalk it up to a momentary negative moment in my life and move
on. I chose the latter.
In my mind, the only one who can victimize you over a long period of
time is yourself. You can let that one moment ruin you, or you can move
on. These are ultimately your choices to make. Sadly many choose to let
those negative moments ruin their lives. Yes, they were victimized for
the duration of the assault, but after that it is their choice as to how
long it will continue to victimize them. To remain a perpetual victim
was not appealing to me, so I chose to move on and leave it behind me.
It’s not that hard to do, yet many who have been sexually assaulted will
claim it is. That it’s almost impossible. I however disagree and will
tell you without hesitation that it is you who refuses to make the
healthy choice to move on.
Look, there are things that are so much worse in this world than
sexual assault. Personally I would rather be sexually assaulted once a
week than have had to watch my father suffer in absolute agony for
months while he was dying from stage 4 lung cancer. To watch him cry and
writhe in pain every single fucking day. To watch him be tortured with
indescribable pain daily for months. Yes, I would rather be sexually
assaulted than carry those memories with me every day. And don’t tell me
that sexual assault is worse, because it just fucking isn’t.
No one promised us that, from the day we were born, our lives would
be easy. Shit happens. It’s what you do after that shit happens that
defines you. Lay down and let it destroy you, or get up and keep moving
forward to better days and happier moments. That is what I chose to do. I
chose life and happiness. I chose to get up and keep moving. I chose to
enjoy every moment I possibly can while I am here. And no one is ever
going to define me but myself.
The predictable victim-feminist response would be "Well, goody for you. But some of us CHOOSE to be victims, and you need to respect that. All your blather about recovery and self-esteem is making things harder for those of us who choose to wallow in self-pity. In short, You're Not Helping, you gender traitor, you. Now sit down and shut up so women can be heard."
ReplyDeleteThank you for this. I have been sexually assaulted multiple times but I do not let that define who I am. I do not expect sympathy but prefer to move on with my life since I feel that life is already too short and I would rather enjoy it as much as I possibly can. It was wonderful to see that I am not the only one who feels this way. Thank you again.
ReplyDeleteThat's the part I don't get. When people who have suffered sexual assault, for whatever value of that they dealt with, be it rape to molestation over a long period of time say "it is possible to leave it in the past just like every other bad, or good, thing that happened to you, and meet life head on", they're dog-piled by the victimoids all screaming "YOU'RE DIMINISHING OUR SUFFERING, YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND"
ReplyDeleteWell, no, we're not. We aren't diminishing shit. We're saying "hey, what happened to you was horrible, and it sucks, and in a way, it always will suck, but it is fundamentally unhealthy and bad to let it be the center of your life for the rest of your life. If hearing the word "rape" or "cunt" puts you back in the middle of that, then you absolutely need to seek actual professional help to move on to where that doesn't happen. If you live in the past, you destroy your future.
On the other part, the "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND" part. No, I don't, not really. I will never really "understand" what happened to anyone who is not me. I dated a woman who had been violently raped by her stepbrother across many years when she was a young child, and when her father discovered it, called her a slut. I will never understand that. Doesn't mean I can't show empathy, but I literally cannot understand that. (also, anyone who tries the perpetual victim card with her gets messed with BAD: "ah, yes, my first time. My stepbrother, so gentile and caring, the caress of the gun against my head as he raped me. you never forget your first time, it's so magical." Oddly, people are never ready for that. Dunno why.)
I also can't understand the desire to live in that moment or that time any longer than you have to. The idea that I would hold on to something that bad that long just makes no sense to me. It happened, it sucked, but I got better. It gave me a different view of the world than many people.
Oh, and on the idea that people who weren't victims have some kind of magically good life? GOOD FOR THEM. I don't view what happened to me as some kind of fucking badge of honor. I hope, with all my being, that everyone not me will NEVER have to experience that. I WANT them to be privileged in ways I was not. I hope that privilege is a part of every person's life, and that no one ever has to gain the kind of understanding I or anyone else who's been assaulted gains. Fuck me, I don't often encourage ignorance, but in this case, I wish it upon everyone on the planet.
Well said. "Respect my victimhood" is something that, ironically, always ensures that I lose all respect for the person saying it. All the nonsense about 'trigger warnings' is one obvious manifestation of this permanent-victim mindset: "Warning: the following passage includes the letters R, A, P, and E, which can be very very upsetting to some entitled morons who want everyone to submit to their authority."
DeleteI'm tempted to add a signature line to my profile: "Trigger Warning: I disagree with you." Because really, that's what the core complaint is--they get upset when they hear anything they dislike, and they want to control the conversation to outlaw such things.
I"m hoping that Copyleft is just being fecetious and is not counseling other victims of assult. I was assulted when i was young and even then knew i did not want to live as a victum for the rest of my life, even after informing my mother and her asking me "What did IIII do to make this happen to me" Goodness i was 9. The only regret i have is not informing anyone else. Just glad he got caught a few years later after molesting others. Ever since i have always spoken up when i feel a wrong had been done to not just me but anyone in my life. Great read Wooly your a beautiful person!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing that. I'm a gay guy who's been sexually active for 20 years now, and I've been sexually assaulted twice in my life. I'm 1.83 meters tall and 77 kilograms, so I imagine it happens to smaller guys more frequently.
ReplyDeleteLike you, I didn't curl up in ball and feel sorry for myself, feel that my life was ruined or that I was damaged. I did worry for a couple of weeks about HIV-as neither man wore a condom-but was lucky in that I had access to the RNA test which doesn't have the 3 month long window of false negatives that the antibody test has. I also didn't think that this was a hate crime, or a crime of power completely divorced from lust and sex. I didn't think either guy hated men or specifically gay men, and were lashing out at ALL gay men. I simply had the misfortune to encounter 2 guys-not simultaneously-who were bigger and stronger than I was, selfish, had no respect for other people's boundaries, got off on sex being a little rough and didn't care that I didn't. And while I don't blame myself for either incident, I do acknowledge that I took some stupid risks in how I met these guys-risks I still occasionally take because life if full of risks-and that sometimes when you risk there are consequences.
I think women who become broken by being assaulted this way are reacting to their fear in how it will be perceived by others. "People will think I'm responsible!" "People will think I'm damaged goods and no man or woman will want me!" Or perhaps conversely they feel that wallowing in grief and fear is the way that good people are supposed to react when assaulted. And i don't completely disparage those feelings. In the past when rape was considered a crime of property-against a father or husband usually-those reaction fears were valid. A women who was raped would be lucky to survive judgement in the Abrahamic cultures, or suffer a reduction to their already abysmally low status in the other cultures of the west.