Personal Experiences with Rape Culture

So I haven’t shared my rapes (there are two) with you all and, in fact, I’ve only shared them with about two people.  Even my husband didn’t know about this stuff and he and I were together for 11 years… so here goes…

I was young, I was about 6.  There was a neighbor boy who I would play with regularly because he lived in the house behind ours.  He was 10, much older than me.  One day we were at the side of my house and he asked if he could kiss me.  I didn’t actually say no.  I was young and I knew he made me feel uncomfortable and that I didn’t want to kiss him.  The thing is that he also made me feel scared.  I felt like I couldn’t say no to him (it’s not consent if you make me afraid to say no).  I felt like if I said no I’d hurt his feelings and I couldn’t do that.  I’d been raised to always be kind, to never be “mean,” that “if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all.”  So instead of saying “no” I said that I couldn’t, that I wasn’t allowed to, that my dad would get really mad.  He said it was fine, that nobody would know.  I was scared and I didn’t know what to do.  I kept saying that I couldn’t, I kept making excuses, I kept lying to spare his feelings.  I honestly don’t know if I ever actually said no or not because 22 years and tons of repression later some of the details are still fuzzy.  I do know that I never said yes.  I never consented.  He didn’t care.  

He kissed me and it made me feel even more scared and uncomfotable.  Now I knew that I’d be in trouble, I knew that kissing boys was bad.  I knew that I wasn’t allowed to kiss boys and I knew I’d be in trouble if I told anyone what happened.  Then it got worse.  He put his hand under my dress and inside my panties and … I don’t know what he did in there but I know that I didn’t want it, that I was scared, and that I just stood there, numb, terrified, and let it happen, too scared to run away.  Then he pulled down his pants and put my hand on his penis and essentially made me stroke him.  I had no idea what was going on and I was so scared I couldn’t function.  That was pretty much it and it was traumatizing.

I became really withdrawn after that, I refused to play with him ever again, I stayed in the house all the time and never went outside, and I acted weird.  My parents tried to get me to tell them what was wrong.  I wouldn’t.  I knew that I couldn’t.  I felt that if I did they’d blame me and I’d be in trouble.  I knew doing that stuff was wrong and bad and I feared that they would punish me for “letting” it happen, for being a part of it.  I couldn’t cope and they tried everything to reach me.  They grounded me; I still didn’t talk.  They took away my books; I still didn’t talk.  They spanked me; I still didn’t talk.  They did everything they could think of and I still wouldn’t talk.  Eventually (weeks, months later) I guess I got over it (managed to repress everything?) and started acting “normal” again so they gave up.  

I’ve still never told them to this day…

Thinking about it all still makes me nausea and scared.  I feel a pit of terror in my stomach as I write this and, frankly, it’s hard to cope even though it’s been 22 years…  And, of course, I still blame myself for freezing up and not standing up for myself and fighting back or running away…  Even though I know it wasn’t my fault…