by Dish Staff
A reader writes:
I felt a slow-creeping horror building in the pit of my stomach when I read your reader’s incredibly brave essay “No. No. No.” It wasn’t the same visceral horror the men who wrote to you felt, though I’m grateful the piece could shed some light for them. Instead, my horror came from the fact that all I could summon up from this harrowing story of trauma was a dull, familiar ache.
I know this story.
To be more accurate: I know several versions of this story. One of my closest friends told it to me, twice, and is currently telling it to a team of therapists after years of abusive relationships and self-destruction. Another told it to me with a practiced shrug, like that’s how she meant to lose her virginity all along. I tell it to myself as a cautionary tale whenever I go out, because getting away from the guy who drugged me before it was too late doesn’t mean I’ll get that lucky again — as if “luck” has anything to do with conscious decisions that cowards make.
These are just the assaults I know of that included drugged drinks.
And I’m just so tired.
This shit is exhausting. The shame and the fear, the second-guessing, the disbelief that the after-school special everyone laughed through in health class might have actually happened to you. Then, should you choose to share, the inevitable reaction: a mixture of sympathy, pity, horror, and, as always, doubt.
And I keep thinking about how the friend of this woman’s rapist said, “he can be a little aggressive.” It’s true. He can be a lot aggressive, because he can get away with it. Because there’s the steadfast contingent that insists “ladies could still pay more attention to their surroundings,” never mind that all ladies do is pay attention to their surroundings whether they realize it or not. Whenever I walk anywhere alone – no matter if I’m in an unfamiliar neighborhood or right outside my apartment – I slide my keys in between my knuckles, quicken my step, and listen for telltale footsteps behind me. It’s an instinct that goes back as far as I can remember. Sometimes I make sure to have a cigarette, because I figure if the person with those footsteps becomes a problem, I can put it out on the fucker’s face.
It’s a cruel joke that women always have to watch themselves this closely, even when they’re out with their friends trying to have fun, or forget just for a second how bullshit this world can be sometimes. Because everyone’s been directed to question what victims could have done to prevent their assaults instead of the piece of shit that decided to carry them out. Because when we talk about our assaults, we so often let the perpetrator off with the passive voice: “I was assaulted” instead of “someone assaulted me.” Because this story is so common that we basically accept it as a fact of life. Because when reading “No no no,” I felt a dull, familiar ache that meant I’d adopted that same resigned mindset: “It’s horrible, but it happens.”
And that’s just completely fucking unacceptable.
The Dish 