Originally published on OpEdNews Nov. 6, 2012: When I Was Easy To Rape, It Was Still Rape
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I usually ignore politicians during election years because they say such stupid things. More than at any other time.
So while politicians give the media juicy phrases to fry them with … phrases like ‘forcible rape’ ‘false rape’, ‘legitimate rape’, and my own personal favorite ‘rape so easy’ I find myself pondering the question “How often have I been Easy to Rape?”
The answer was, repeatedly!
Apparently, I have been my version (which is slightly different than State Rep. Roger Rivard’s version) of easy to rape countless times in my colorful life.
Let’s go through them:
At five years old when my father took me into the cubby hole to stroke his penis I was EASY TO RAPE though fortunately I never actually was… raped.
At eight years old when my grandfather and all his drunken friends laughed at me as I chugged beer in the beer tent at the county fair and then had me drop my panties so they could all get a good look, I was EASY TO RAPE, but fortunately I never actually was … for it was only show and tell.
At twelve when my uncle barricaded me in the barn and dry humped me while squeezing my breasts and saying, “You’ve been asking for this all night!” I was EASY TO RAPE, though luckily I never actually was … it was only a full body massage.
At age thirteen when the class bully ripped my jacket off behind the school and forced his fingers in my crotch I was EASY TO RAPE, but ironically my dad showed up just in time to interrupt the tussling.
At age 15 by the time our local gym teacher took me into the sick room and told me I was beautiful I actually was EASY TO RAPE.
Finally raped I could follow the local police advice and just give in to anyone that felt intimidating. This became especially true after I ran away from home and found myself in need of rides; spare change, a place to sleep.
So I ‘gave in by complying’ over and over again. In fact, I’d comply if I even thought they might become intimidating. I complied before I was even asked because that felt like I had some measure of control over my life. I think they call this promiscuous.
Eventually I pulled it together. I even married a few times. My third marriage was to a man I loved in a hero-worshipping dreamy sort of way. He was obsessed with sex offenders and wanted to be a vigilante, so we had a pact that we would go on an offender-killing rampage when the kids were grown and gone. It was – to me– a harmless fantasy that proved I had finally found someone safe to be around. Until I found out that he wasn’t anymore.
One day my 13 year old told me that my husband had crawled into her bed while she was asleep and touched her underneath her undies. My safety net vanished. The world crashed down around us.
I put one metaphorical foot in front of the other as my husband, who tried to kill himself, was arrested. I was lost in confusion and knew only that I had to believe my child. Eventually we ended up in group therapy. That group therapy saved me, saved my children and all the other children that I would later save. That group therapy began the healing, but not for the reasons you might expect.
During therapy all the moms whose daughters had been sexually mistreated talked about themselves. The intention of therapy was to teach everyone how to recognize a predator. But the intention wasn’t being realized. I looked around the table and noticed something I hadn’t previously known: Every one of those moms had a history of being sexually and physically abused. Me too.
In that moment I understood the nest of predators I was laying in. In that moment I came to understand that I didn’t have to do anything bad for bad to happen because somehow my past had magnetized me to it. I would attract predators or become one myself. Slowly I started to grasp the degree to which sexually damaged people cluster together to protect each other even as the victims gather together and become easy targets. They do this because they are blind to the attractions of dissimilar nests, and see only the value in the pheremonally familiar.
The desire to hurt people surged through my body. I wanted to retroactively report every one of the molesters in my life as a way of wiping my future clean. But as I listened to the other women whine, I realized that I couldn’t help my daughter by talking about myself. I was certain of it. So I took this new understanding– that I might unknowingly attract molesters– and decided to keep men away from my children… unless I got married to one. Which I did – two more times – but that didn’t work either because it was a husband who had molested my child. Thus husbands were the most dangerous of all. So – since I still didn’t trust men – my next two marriages didn’t even lead to cohabitation.
Hence it is that I raised my many kids, adopted, and biological, alone.
The daughter whom my husband had molested repeated some of my steps and found herself having sex she didn’t want to have with a young boy who thought that no coerced into yes was consensual sex. Later she told me about it and I called the police. Finally one of us had been State Rep. Roger Rivard’s version of rape so easy: consensual sex turned against the boy. Unless of course, you have a more romantic version of consent.
That boys definition was push till she plays and the police advice in such a situation is always ‘comply’. So how does a young woman stay safe AND virtuous in such a situation? I had no real manual for what to do other than to not do it the way it had been done to me. (This was before the Internet … now the answers are easier to get, and they have changed. From comply, to fight and refuse.
So I wasn’t going to blame my daughter for the behavior of the man. I wasn’t going to not support her. And I WASN’T going to let my pain contaminate her life for the rest of her life. We were going to break the chain of abuse one link at a time.
My daughter and I went to court, which was traumatizing but necessary. She was called ‘coy’ and even now, 20 years later, when she uses the word she seems to want to spit it out with vehemence. I think if they’d had the phrase back then the defense probably would have called her EASY TO RAPE. I am glad he didn’t. She was hurt enough.
Since people who are sexually deviant, desperate, controlling, cruel, gather together and find each other through intuitive silent signals, they end up in tight little clusters of protective power. I know I mentioned this but it’s worth repeating. All important warnings are.
Imagine a ripe blackberry, with its little clusters clinging tightly to the core. Now, imagine being a microscopic insect burrowing through the mass of gelatinous flesh, and swimming in the sticky fluid of syrupy sex in an attempt to make it out of the rotting ooze. Imagine making it out covered in jizz but free. And now imagine that as you escape, you begin to see the light while the fruit behind you swarms with wasps and bees and flies and maggots. Then suddenly you feel a shadow and realize there is yet more fruit to be conquered and burrowed through.
And so it is as you find yourself constantly unveiling layer upon layer of nesting material, comprising nest upon nest of residents lunging for you with lecherous arms. Every time I found a new nest I dragged myself and my children though it. We persevered in our journey towards cleanliness of spirit, even as they screamed ‘everybody can’t be a molester’. Their resistance to my insistence. My response was simple and constant, “At the moment, most every body in our world is.” I knew this because – once I got the gravity of not helping my family get free of the cluster – I was tireless in my resolve to take action and recreate us again and again and again … until the day when no family, spouse, colleague, teacher, friend or enemy could touch my kids.
One thing I can honestly say is that when it comes to accepting or being defeated by the sexual status quo, I have NEVER BEEN EASY TO RAPE, regardless of words like legitimate, or false, or forcible to sugar coat the pain, rape hurts … each and every kind. In fact every one of these rapes hurt as bad as any other. Even the rapes that were mostly made of words, where poorly thought out commentary by political buffoons went blazoning through the media loud enough for me – the person with no TV – to hear them. The question remains: does being sensitive make me vulnerable and EASY TO RAPE or am I just asking for it?
Author’s Note: Helping my children – to not have to experience this for them selves – has required healing me. Unfortunately healing me came a little late for one of them. For me healing requires sharing with others so that I can hear myself. Thus it is that I have become my own teacher so that what I now know, I can immediately know it better. That is why I am a speaker for RAINN. That is why I reason, I speak out, I teach and I share. If you wish to hear more about the nesting effect in sexual abuse I would be delighted to speak at your event. ~Lynette