What Sexual Assault Is Not About

This is a difficult topic to discuss.  However, it's certainly a whole lot easier to talk about than to endure, and so for all the folks I know that have endured sexual assault, and those who, unfortunately, will in the future, I want to speak out.  

We know that most of the men, women and children that have been assaulted don’t talk about those moments, or hours, of assault. There’s nothing new in the world about sexual assault; it’s been around for as long as the human race and I’m of the opinion that it’s about time we attempt to get real about it.

To begin, I hope to make sure we are on the same page and reading from the same playbook about sexual assault. I am writing today to emphasize just four main points, simple though they be.

First of all, no one is exempt from sexual assault. Neither race nor socioeconomic status, age, disability, nor one’s sex can provide immunity from being the object of sexual assault. As distasteful as this is to think about, this includes children. As a child protection worker, I met children as young as 4 years that had been victims. Later, while working with elderly, I met people as old as 85 that had been victimized. Most of my life as a medical social worker has been spent working with children and adults with disabilities. Sexual assaults occurred in those persons’ lives too. In fact, research suggests that people with disabilities are twice as likely to have been victims of sexual abuse as able bodied folks.

Although we may tend to think of women and girls first, when we talk about sexual assault, we know that boys are also victimized. Stories from the Catholic church have shown us that boys have long been abused, too. And unlike Jacob Wetterling’s story of kidnapping, assault and death, most victims do know their perpetrators. The vast majority of perpetrators are never punished or even charged with assault. And If we, the rest of us, cannot accept the truth that sexual assault exists, not as a rarity but a frequent occurrence, how are we ever going to be able to talk about sexual assault. And if it’s something that cannot be spoken of, then, I contend that silence makes perfect victims of us all. And tacit accomplices.

My second point is this. Many people reading this will tell themselves that they do not personally know anyone who has been sexually assaulted. You are undoubtably incorrect in that belief. I don’t care who you are—unless you have been living as a hermit in a cave, you do know someone who has been sexually assaulted, whether you realize this or not. I ask you to think carefully. Think of your immediate family members. Think of your aunts, cousins, your nieces, nephews, grandmother, your brother and sisters and your own parents. Think of all the people you have known in your lifetime. There are stories there that you have likely never heard. People that we know and know well have been scarred by sexual assault at some time during their lives though we may not ever hear their story from their own lips.

Over the years, my mental health clients have told me in anguishing fits and starts, their stories of sexual assault; whether as children in their own homes or churches, as adolescents at a party, or with romantic encounters gone south. They came to therapy with memories that still plagued them years after the events occurred They came surprised to find themselves with feelings and fears that they had thought were successfully shoved aside years earlier. They came reporting that old memories had been resurrected along with milestones in their lives— moving away to college, starting a new relationship. the death of a parent or the abuser, the birthday of their own child, or a new sexual partner, to name a few.

They often came weighted down with the burden of having protected the identity of the abuser for years--the college student whose father was a pastor back home, the young woman with mild cerebral palsy who believed that she was selected for assault by her teacher because of her disability, the young man who was assaulted by his middle-school track coach, the middle-aged woman who because of chronic back pain stood throughout hours of therapy and all but shrank into the wall as she wept through the telling of her story. The tears aren’t all about the incident of assault itself, but about the current inability to trust another person. They often report they cannot allow themselves to relax their guard enough to be intimate with another person. They report feelings of deep inadequacy, of loneliness, of living outside the circle of “ordinary” people.

Thirdly, if there is only one thing that you take away from this narrative, let it be this. Sexual assault is not about the sex act. Sexual assault is not about enjoying one’s sexuality. It is about power. It is about one (or more) person(s) of greater size, strength, authority, or mental capacity taking advantage of someone possessing less of one or all of the above. It's about having control of someone else. It's about using that size or strength, authority or mental capacity to do with that person's body as desired, without the permission of the other, without regard for the impact on the other. Sexual assault is an avenue to assert dominance, to massage a bruised ego, to prove superiority, to demonstrate hatred for the female gender, to cause another pain as retribution, to establish social standing within a peer group, to control the behavior of another person. It is a way to exact fear and compliance in another person or group.
Sexual assault does not occur because the victim “dressed too provocatively”, nor because mixed signals were given or she “changed her mind.” It’s not about the perpetrator being "oversexed," having too much of a sex drive, nor being too drunk to know better. And it is certainly not about “boys will be boys.” Those are all excuses that have been offered to justify behavior after the fact. Those are all ways in which we have collectively attempted, unwittingly or not, to place blame upon victims for bad things happening to them.

My fourth point, sexual assault does not require that intercourse have taken place. So, does this mean that having your butt slapped, or being rubbed up against (frotterage) in a crowd, or being “felt up”, pawed, grabbed, pinched, kissed, bitten, restrained, mouth gagged, neck squeezed, lewd things muttered into your ear, threatened, clothing torn, undergarments snapped--that all of these are sexual assaults? Yes, that is exactly what that means. Sexual assault also includes being forced to watch or to participate in sexual gratification of another, whether by physical force or by coercion through threats of harm or humiliation. These are all sexual assaults.

There's a phrase that I’ve heard used sometimes which actually diminishes the victims' authority to label a sexual assault for what it is. The phrase sounds innocent enough but it masks the reality of what occurred. The phrase goes something like this, ”He (or she) tried to... (take advantage of, feel her up, get in her pants, etc.)” Do you see? When we say "tried to" when what we really mean is that the perpetrator did do some of those things, we are diminishing the reality of an experience that was traumatic, or at the very least was frightening, humiliating or anger producing.

I do not mean to imply that I an an expert in the field of sexual assault and treatment. But I do mean to imply that I don’t have to be, nor do you, in order to be able to hear and to believe the reality of assaults. I beg you, if/when you hear of a person’s story of assault, do not automatically go to that suspicious place in your head where you immediately wonder if the victim is telling the truth. Please, please do not add more onto the assault. Please.

https://www.d2l.org/the-issue/statistics/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwguDeBRDCARIsAGxuU8a-B7QdDMTRBhxXgPgoLCB-7lG7W0jXQe4-dJCe4TCIAjZc6DjKYx8aApjXEALw_wcB

https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=317

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sexual-assault-statistics_us_58e24c14e4b0c777f788d24f

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/sexual-assault-victims/

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/21/587671849/a-new-survey-finds-eighty-percent-of-women-have-experienced-sexual-harassment

A Story of Power and Fear in America

A woman screamed at me yesterday while I was driving.  “You stupid-ass bitch,” as her car passed on my right.  We were approaching a lane closure, forcing traffic to slowly merge.  Perhaps I had failed to let her in ahead of me—I don’t know. I wasn’t aware of whatever it was I had done (or not done) that prompted the angry outburst. The other drivers around me were men, so the “bitch” must have been me.

Duluth from Enger Park

I’m sure it wasn’t only my driving that set the woman off. Maybe she had encountered this same scenario a few times before and was weary of how poorly Duluth drivers were adapting to the road closures. Maybe she needed to get somewhere really fast—-maybe there was someone bleeding in her car. 

Ku Klux Klan history, Little Rock
Historical Society

But what I really thought about was this, “What pile of injustices or abuses had this woman endured in her life? Something or someone had cut her so deeply that she could readily lash out to hurt another.” How have we gotten to this place in our country? I don’t mean JUST the name-calling, although that is certainly part of it. And I definitely do not mean just the road rage. I am talking about that flame of divisiveness that gets fanned into a roaring fire with so little provocation nowadays. 

Chicago neighborhood, 2018

The boundaries that we draw for ourselves, with such rigid determination— boundaries built of values and beliefs and dreams that help me define myself as part of this group vs. that group. I am attracted to people whose world-view aligns closely with mine and in that way I have established a social group that provides me a “safe” place to interact with the world.  

Outside of my group, I observe many whose world view differs so drastically from mine; I admit that that fact makes me nervous sometimes.  I’m sometimes disconcerted by others’ reactions to events—even incredulous and sometimes very angry.  I say things to myself like “You S***head” while watching or listening to news of the day. Sometime I say it out loud. 

Exploding Technology. Enjoy
internet via watch.

Access to social media has opened a worm-hole through which I creep or launch myself into the fray. Conversations that I would not engage in with a person sitting next to me can be undertaken with a stranger 20 states distant through use of a keyboard and the internet. 

Those who agree with my world-view are identified as being part of my “team.” Those who don’t are suspect. ”How could that person think the way they do,” I wonder. “They seem so bright otherwise—how could they believe the lies that are spewed at us these days?”  “How can they go along with the Conservative thinking about our nation, our world?” “How is it that they don’t recognize what seem to me to be crystal clear truths?” 

Memphis historical marker

I feel, in fact, as if the dark and filthy underbelly of our nation has been encouraged to crawl out of the sewer and into the light—only to display its’ depravity proudly. To promote the rights and privileges of those who already possess the most power so that they can guard and keep it. 

Herding cows, main street of Spring Grove,
MN c. 1870. photo: Giants of the Earth.

It has become acceptable in some places and circumstances for people in authority to treat people of color very badly, even to death. Our nation found it acceptable to treat immigrants as one might handle a herd of cattle—separate the young from the old with indifference, without apology. Who apologizes to cattle? 

Weapons loading competition, Minot AFB, ND c. 1978

Somehow, those with the most power have dispensed with even the appearance of caring about the People. The Second Amendment rally cry is said to be synonymous with a cry for freedom. Freedom? To me, it rather seems a symbol of our fears. Instead of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” we have substituted “fight, intolerance and fear of want.”  

Quote: "If the bees all die, we're next."
Ardys Richards

I fear nuclear war. I fear that good education is becoming the privilege of those who have money. I fear that we will reserve health care for those who can afford to pay. People have reason to fear going to public places like schools, churches and theaters. 

I fear that our planet will not sustain our descendants far into the future. If you fear those things, too, I would identify you as a member of my “team.”

The U.S. Capitol at night, May 2018

Yesterday my “team” received a swift kick to the gut. I'm not talking about the woman who cursed me. It’s what I saw, courtesy of social media—a roomful of predominantly white men who wield a great deal of authority in our nation’s Capitol. I saw them fumble clumsily with the task of displaying simple human decency. 

Little Rock, AK Historical Society

The situation required at the very least, a respectful ear for a woman’s history of sexual assault as a young girl. For these rude men, she relived her nightmare of fear, vulnerability, of being grabbed and used, of being “taken” like a prize for the conqueror. The men seemed unable to conceive of the harm done to this woman as a girl. 

Oregon City History Museum.  Brewing after Prohibition.

Or, they saw themselves as the young man in the story? They removed themselves from the reality of her testimony as far as they possibly could by saying,  “IF this was done to her, it certainly had nothing to do with my candidate for the SCOTUS.”  

Turtles can tuck their heads inside
to ignore things.

This brave woman relived the ugliness for the edification of these men. She relived it because it was the right thing to do. And for their part, they refused to look at her.  Refused to address her. They sought to make her invisible, an obstacle to their singular goal. In return for the woman’s sacrifice of privacy, her sacrifice of innocence, she has been belittled, discounted, and has had to hide with her family because of threats to their safety. Her life will never return to what it was before this day. 

The future of our country. graduates of Spring
Grove High School, May 2018

As a nation we have learned so little. The collective United States (the big WE) still believe that our nation for which we have fought multiple wars, the nation that has been there to help around the world in the most desperate of times; we still believe that everything, every “thing” is there for the taking, including the women “things.” Have we learned nothing about humanity? 

Girls' Night Out on Beale Street, Memphis. May 2018

Have we not learned that really bad things do happen to people? These are not things that happen just to those other people. And how have we not learned that when bad things happen to the most vulnerable among us, that it is the responsibility, even the honor, of the others to hear them and to protect them from further abuse. 

In honor of the local war dead.

I vigorously dislike labeling women as “vulnerable” for two big reasons: One, because women can be the sexual/powerful aggressor, just as a man can be. But the second reason is because I don’t want to be vulnerable and I don’t want men to see women as vulnerable. But it is the women, not the men, who are taught how to protect themselves. 

Little girls playing in Spring Grove City Park 

“Don’t walk alone in dark places.” “Go to public restrooms in pairs.“ “Car keys held in a fist with the point protruding between the clenched fingers is a weapon.” “Keep mace in your purse,“ “You can’t run wearing high heels,” “If you are grabbed by a man… act bizarrely, scream for all you’re worth, bite him, pee on him, fingers in the eyeballs, kick the groin, become dead weight, and whatever you do, do not get in the car.”  

Portrait of U.S. Presidents, painted during last Bush Administration, displayed
in shop on Annapolis waterfront.  Artist unknown.

If privileged white men are able to discard the testimony of this brave woman, because they think that they are removed from such raw things, or that such events are insignificant; or if they think that they do not know any women in their lives that have been assaulted, they are badly mistaken. 

Photo: Little Rock, AK Historical Society

These women of whom I speak might just be their grandmothers, mothers, sisters, good friends, wives and daughters. And without even understanding what they have done, these men threw aside the most important women in their lives—all of the women who have never told a soul what happened to them. Many if not most women will take their assault stories with them to the grave, and for good reason. 

Grave of Lucy McLean Davis. 
"She hath done what she could"

These powerful white men, if they were to understand the discomfort spared them by the silence of the women they love, would they be glad to be unencumbered by that knowledge? Oh, what a blessing for those with the greatest power in the land.