Reality Show: Survivor

Sometimes there’s a news story that sets off a chorus of voices from those who have been touched by a sense of sympathy. Sometimes, they are motivated by outrage. Sometimes, a shared sense of humor. And every so often, there is a story that finds itself raising a cacophony out of common experience, and the sound of those voices, the roar caused by the sheer number of those who have something to say on an unspeakable topic, can stop you in your tracks.

Amanda Marcotte, rape survivor: I wouldn't have prosecuted except I couldn't bear the guilt if he did it to someone else. I still almost didn't, except at the insistence of my boyfriend at the time that it was wrong to just roll over and pretend it didn't happen. It took me a week to work up the courage. I wouldn't have done it if I'd thought I'd get in trouble with the law for seeking justice.

Lauren Bruce, rape survivor: I, after I was raped, was not believed either. After all, I turned around from the incident, cleaned up the blood, and went back about my family vacation like nothing had happened because I thought I had done something wrong and didn’t want my parents to know. I was barely thirteen. Nevermind the promiscuity and drug addiction that followed, by god, I wasn’t traumatized and therefore was not raped.

I have a particular therapist to thank for convincing my support system not to trust me, the unqualified piece of shit. Shame, shame on this judge.

Shakespeare’s Sister, rape survivor: There is no such thing as a “typical” response to rape. Immediately following a rape, some women go into shock. Some are lucid. Some are angry. Some are ashamed. Some are practical. Some are irrational. Some want to report it. Some don’t. Most have a combination of emotions, but there is no standard response. Responses to rape are as varied as its victims. In the long term, some rape victims act out. Some crawl inside themselves. Some have healthy sex lives. Some never will again.

Trish Wilson, rape survivor: I can relate to not acting traumatized. I was raped. I went into auto-pilot, called the police, and was coherent if a bit detached when reporting the incident at the hospital. I knew enough not to take a shower afterwards because I knew the police and hospital personnel had to gather evidence. I didn't cry, tremble, or break down, which I suppose is what it means to "act traumatized". I made the big mistake of dropping the charges, under pressure by people who sided with my attacker. I don't want to go into much more detail than that since this is very personal, and I don't like to get very personal on my blog. I'm fortunate in that the police and the hospital personnel believed me, even though I didn't "act traumatized". What scared me in retrospect is that my rape rested on whether or not I was believed by other people based on the way I acted after the rape. I didn't know there was a way that rape victims were "supposed" to act. I just went on auto-pilot, and did what I thought I was supposed to do. I know that I could easily have been seen as wanting to create a false report because I knew enough not to take a shower immediately after the rape.

The Fat Lady Sings, rape survivor: You see I am a rape survivor – as is Shakespeare’s Sister, Klondike Kate, Amanda at Pandagon, Lauren at Feministe and about 100 million other women in this country. I was raped more than once – and, like the victim, I wasn’t believed. I was a child, and the religion my family practiced always considered the female to be the whore in any sexual circumstances – no matter the age.

So my rapists went free – and they did rape again; and again, and again – as will the men who brutalized that young girl.

Klondike Kate, rape survivor: Over 30 years ago throughout circumstances that stretched over a five-year period of time I was raped four times. … When I tried to call once, after being held on the frozen ground at knifepoint (I still had mud, leaves, and a trickle of blood running down my neck,) I was told not to bother: since I was hitchhiking -- I was "just asking for it." … Have we really come a long way since then? It would appear not. I feel such a deep sadness for all the women of the world who go through this act of soul-killing violence, perpetrated every single second of the day.

Pia Savage, rape survivor: I felt better after I bought new clothes, and while I didn’t equate being raped with sex because it had been so violent was turned off sex for awhile, and only dated boys who were closeted Gay for several months. I was young and resilient but I did carry that shame for many years. No, not the shame of the rape; the shame of not being able to tell a policeman.

Rape is talked about in laws and statistics. Numbers are debated. Hands are wrung. Heads are shaken. While the abstract discussion of rape in the public sphere goes on, groups of rape survivors have met in rooms that smell of coffee and cigarettes to share their stories, and individual victims have cried into their pillows and held themselves together with nothing but a lack of options and walked out into the world to get on with it.

These individual stories are murmurs of a larger story waiting to be told.

More from The Heretik. Also: Kevin at The American Street, Dave at Seeing the Forest, The Heretik, Amanda at Pandagon, Lauren at Feministe, Once Upon a Time, Liberty Street, Radioactive Quill, Ded Space, My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, Alas a Blog, Trish Wilson, I Blame the Patriarchy, Brilliant at Breakfast, Pam’s House Blend, The Green Knight, Media Girl, Lawyers, Guns & Money, Night Bird’s Fountain, King of Zembla, The Left Coaster, Loaded Mouth, BlondeSense, NewsHog, Evil Mommy, Agitprop, Deborah Lipp, Laughing Wild, Washington Monthly, Zoe Kentucky at Demagogue, Majikthise, Recidivist Journals.