I haven’t written in a while because I’ve been consumed with my novel. It’s almost finished and ready for submission! Close enough I can taste it! However, I felt compelled to take a break to work through a statement that set me off. Actually, I’ve been mulling whether I want to write anything about this for four or five days. I decided I did. On the surface, the statement is nothing that significant. More a meaningless variation of a platitude uttered too many times in a day. That being said, this statement probably wouldn’t have bothered me if it hadn’t touched my life and my beliefs. But it did.
I found the statement lurking innocently in the A/N of a fanfiction. Yes, I read, and have written, fanfiction. No, I’m not on a rant against the evils of ff. It’s more a rant against the inadvertent damage we do with our blind mission to “speak no evil” and “hurt no one.” While I don’t advocate insensitivity, emotional cruelty, or hurting someone to satisfy base curiosity, everything that causes pain or offends isn’t automatically hate speech or one of those “sins” you shouldn’t do. While I know my take isn’t popular today, my perspective comes from the fact I’ve lived through what this young woman commented on in her Author’s Note.
It was words to the affect of, “That’s victim blaming. Don’t do it.” I believe it was those exact words or very close to it. Before you get your hackles up because I’ve dared say victim blaming is okay, that isn’t what I’m saying at all. I’m speaking as a Survivor who “victim blamed” myself for years so I don’t believe in victimizing a victim. I also don’t believe in being a victim when you can choose, over time with healing, to be a survivor instead.
This young woman clearly believes what she’s saying and it’s “right” on the surface. I don’t fault her for that. However, it’s also “wrong” when you scratch a little deeper because that attitude silences dialogue that has the potential to educate, share, and heal. Thank God other women, and a few men, were willing to listen to and talk with me over the years. Thank God I’ve been able to listen to, empathize with, and talk with other women who were hurting over the years. If you don’t think those conversations were painful, and sometimes offensive, they were. But they were necessary.
For the record, I’m not talking about therapist or counselors or abused women hot lines. While I’m grateful for those professional outlets, I’m talking about other human beings who’d lived through the same thing. Sometimes worse and sometimes not as bad; but still people with a frame of reference willing to help me navigate the darkness and worthlessness I was experiencing. Ultimately, it was up to me to work through my issues after that. But I couldn’t have done it without the compassion and understanding I would never have received if we hadn’t dared to open emotional doors and speak through the pain. I wouldn’t have been able to do the same for others if it hadn’t been done for me.
While I don’t fault this young woman for sharing the politically correct mindset so prevalent today, I’m writing from the perspective of someone who’s actually lived through what she feels so strongly about. Not someone who has a friend or relative who’s lived through “it” or read about it. Nope. As someone who has survived physical, mental, and emotional abuse at the hands of a spouse, actually two spouses, and being molested as a child and raped as an adult more than once. That being said, I’ve earned the right to my beliefs.
For the backstory, if you’re interested, this young woman wrote a fanfic in which the protagonist is raped. Nothing graphic. Just a blip on the screen to further the story line. Apparently someone wrote a review asking why this character didn’t do something to stop it. The author responded in her Author’s notes at the bottom of the chapter very emphatically that asking this was “Victim Blaming” and don’t do it. She further commented how even the strongest person can freeze at a time like this.
Okay, I’ll agree that victim blaming does exist. However, asking why the victim didn’t do something to prevent this isn’t necessarily victim blaming. It’s not the question itself that’s the problem. It’s the reason behind the asking that may be. Believe me, I asked myself that question for years and, from people I’ve talked with, I can tell you experiences differ from survivor to survivor. From my perspective, I never froze and I was never helpless. My mind was more focused on staying alive and not getting hurt more than I already was. For me personally, I never had a deer in the headlights experience. I also never had a “victim” experience. I had to see myself as a survivor to regain any semblance of self-respect.
For what I’m saying to make any real sense, you should know my first scrape with the “r” word happened when I was 19. I don’t remember much about it since some kind of drug was used and I “lost” several hours. The “friend” who’d orchestrated this event wrote me a letter years later apologizing for what she’d done; but she wasn’t willing to fill in the blanks so the flashbacks made sense. My next brush with rape was in my twenties. I was married and marital rape does exist. The last thing I wanted to do was have sex with the man who’d just beat the stuffing out of me for some imaginary slight like not dressing like a whore in public. (For the record we were both college educated, white collar professionals, from “good” – not wealthy – families so this nightmare should never have happened. Right? Don’t believe that one.) But, I did, and I pretended to enjoy it. In my world I had two choices, I could either perform “willingly” or perform unwilling after being forced.
Since my body was getting used either way, I chose the path of least resistance which was both shameful and degrading. I did it because I was 1200 miles from home, isolated, and at a physical disadvantage. It took me 4 years to escape that situation and it took me another twenty-five years to fully embrace those traumas don’t define me. But, I did, and that’s why I have issues with shutting down dialogue as victim shaming. Being able to share both heals and helps someone cope with the same situation or, better yet, avoid the situation all together.
My general problem with the whole no hurt, no offend, no harm, no trigger, no mention, no whatever culture I live in is important dialogues get shut down before they get started. If I’d lived in the culture I find myself in thirty years ago where no one reached out to me because they were afraid of the consequences of doing so, I would still be the self-loathing, wounded, angry, bitter, suicidal woman of little value to myself or anyone else I used to be. I’m grateful I didn’t live in that world and I’m asking you to take a look at the society we live in now. It’s taken what should be common courtesy and respect for another human being to a place that is both frightening and harmful. It’s a world where you’re reluctant to speak for the fear of being punished for daring to have an opinion that differs from the “norm.”
My norm is a little more compassionate and real.
Until next time,
Calla
Tori Lennox Author 