CN: rape
Just under a year ago I wrote an article about a personal instance of aggressive sex. At the time, I felt disturbed. I wanted to make a point: the incident in question felt far from natural within the sexual sphere I was comfortable with. I was subjected to a situation of pain and a complete lack of control, which, when without choice, is incredibly wrong to have forced upon oneself. I was scared by what the experience showed me. It seemed undeniably connected to much of derogatory mainstream pornography, and illustrated the alarming way in which this can alter people’s perceptions of consent.
As the months went on, the closure I had sought on this moment, in writing something, started to come unstuck. The more I thought about it, the less comfortable I felt. I realised that the issue I had begun to approach was only half the issue. I realised that, far beyond being purely subjected to something aggressive and non-consensually nuanced, I had in fact been raped.
It may seem discordant that I can claim that I did not realise that I had been raped. It remains discordant to myself too. But it is part of a greater issue – the issue that rape for far too long has been caricatured and manipulated into a singular model. This caricature is simple: dark streets, grey faces and certainty. What happened to me was with someone I knew, and in a location where I thought I was safe. Waking up, I felt unclean and incredibly confused. I put this down to the aggressive nature of the hazy frames my mind lazily presented me with. It was something I hadn’t wanted to happen. And it happened in a way that disturbed me to my core. But it wasn’t rape. I concluded how I was feeling was my own fault, and that I was foolish. I should’ve cried out and stopped it, so I had only myself to blame. I went home, after hugging everyone goodbye, including this very person. I got home, I put my pyjamas on, and I subconsciously decided to categorise my discomfort in the shallower level of what was problematic.
Recently I watched the BBC3 programme Is this rape? Sex on trial. The programme presents a fictional screening to a group of teenagers in which a girl is orally raped by someone she knows, at a party. One teenager, after watching part of it, concludes “if she definitely didn’t want it, she would’ve pushed him away”. There was a bite to this comment, for it is something that many people will have said to themselves, and wish they had done within such a situation. Hypotheticals are easy to stand by, and always seem perfectly logical, but it is only within a distant environment that telling someone to get off you seems easy. It is also far too simple to assume that if you ‘let’ someone touch you, you must be at least a little interested. Though it may seem logically sound, it still remains inaccurate. Submission is far from consent.
Sexual consent workshops have recently been under ‘scepticism’ from two Tab-famous students, who state that they know yes means yes and no means no. They hold up signs saying ‘This is not what a rapist looks like’, as if a rapist can be determined aesthetically. Through these signs and their sheer neglect to attend a workshop, they are buying into the caricature of rape. They of course, rather ironically, miss the point these workshops are here to make. That, as another teenager within Is this rape? Sex on trial said, “just because she hasn’t said no, doesn’t mean she has said yes”. Nuance, more than anything, dictates human scenarios. We do not live in a world of active hypotheticals. Consent is not that simple, and neither, I learn, is rape.
We need to start thinking about rape openly and broadly. When writing this article, I thought – do I accredit this to myself? What if prospective employers, family, tutors or people I don’t really know see it? It was an uncomfortable thought. But if I hid for these reasons, it would be because I was ashamed, it would be because I was assuming people would pin me down as indecent or in some way lesser. I am not saying that if you have been raped, you must stand forward. Far from it. That is a personal choice. But we do need to strive for a culture where, if one wishes to speak about their experience, it is not something to be terrified of admitting, or shaming to write about. I am facing this, and I am saying, right now – this is not about me.
This should not be read and reacted to with alarm or shock. This is about redefining. We need to be taught that rape is not simple. In instances where it does not participate in the dark-street-stranger caricature, it may be harder to define, but this does not soften it. This does not mean it qualifies as 60 per cent rape, 40 per cent the victim’s fault. Rape is always rape – in whatever guise it is presented, in familiarity or unfamiliarity. And I refuse to carry on placing myself within an infrastructure of blame, fear and uncertainty. That is how I have framed this memory for almost a year, but it is no longer how I will be framing it. I have argued before that we need to educate. But sexual consent education is not just about educating those who might inadvertently fail to understand the profoundly important barriers of human contact. It is about educating everyone, so that we can individually discern rape. We need to discuss barriers, we need to discuss nuance. And we need to take rape out of its very small and very definitive box.
