People have occasionally told me
that I am a bit flippant about how I discuss having been sexually abused. I
guess people think that it’s odd that I don’t try to hide the fact that I was sexually
victimized. No one else tries to hide it when they’re victimized in other ways,
though. I don’t know of anyone who covers up that they were physically
assaulted or robbed or defrauded. No one feels shame in saying that some
asshole broke into their car or stole their wallet.
That must be the magic word, though:
shame.
I don’t feel shame about having been
sexually victimized because it wasn’t my fucking fault. I did nothing wrong. I
was the victim of a crime, just like any other victim, and I refuse to hide it.
It might make people feel uncomfortable for me to be so frank about the
situation. It might make some people view me as damaged goods. Fun fact: I am.
But you would know that whether I was hiding shit or not.
If I speak openly about my abuse,
others might realize they need not feel shame. At that point, healing can
happen. The more often people speak out about their experiences, the less
afraid they have to be.
I’m not over-sharing, I’m showing
others it’s fine to speak up. If you can’t handle hearing about something bad
happening to me, you aren’t my friend. If you like me less because I’ve been
the victim of sexual assault, you aren’t anyone’s friend.
A crime that happened to me sucks,
and it affects me, but it’s no source of shame and it’s nothing to hide. That’s
a change that really needs to be made. It’s not as simple as blaming “Rape
Culture,” because rape culture is a symptom of an ingrained desire to
victim-blame, no matter what the crime. It’s the innate response called
counterfactual thinking, and it’s going to happen; it’s a coping mechanism.
What we’re doing is trying to
imagine a world in which bad shit doesn’t happen, basically saying that if we
had done A differently, Bad Thing B wouldn’t have happened. Example: I once
left a Discman sitting on the passenger seat of my car, and someone smashed my window
apart to steal it. What did everyone say? “Shouldn’t have left your Discman on
the seat.” Not “that guy shouldn’t have stolen it from you,” because criminals
are criminals. No, what they were doing was offering what they thought was
advice so it wouldn’t happen again, and trying to reaffirm that the world is a controllable,
predictable place. It’s our stupid way of trying to feel in control. Our duty
is to not let this override good judgment and to realize that our coping
mechanism can sound pretty shitty when we don’t frame it right, especially with
emotionally raw issues like the violation of sexual abuse.
There is nothing anyone can say that
will make me think that what happened was my fault. I’m not ashamed of my past,
and I’m not afraid of it. It’s there and it’s real, but so is my future, and
that is far more important to me.
