“We're making a
better world. All of them... better worlds.”
Serenity.
Before I even start, I want to
answer a question many people are going to ask, probably in rather unkind
tones: who the hell am I to talk about rape?
I am not a rape “expert.” I have not studied it, I have not gone
through systematized advocate training and I have not worked in support
organisations. I am just a person who
spent a lot of time with people whose lives have been overly eventful. I have been honoured by people sharing with
me their experiences when there were no inducement to – and I mean “honoured”,
because they did it by their own choice.
I had nothing to offer but my ability to listen. I have also been the person who was deemed
able to help people in times of need, when they needed someone to lean against
whilst navigating the official support system.
“The plural of anecdote is not
evidence”, I know. But what I have seen
and heard happened; and no amount of accepted theories and peer-reviewed papers
is going to make me discount it.
Furthermore, yes, I am an amateur at rape support. That also means that I have never operated
within an ideology or a system. I have
never been officially indoctrinated about what rape is or isn’t. I am not engaged in a moral crusade against
it – which DOES NOT mean that I condone or support it, merely that my focus is
different from that of most specialists I have met. The only thing I ever cared about was to help
people recover, as much as they could, as quickly as they could. I have never been guided by accepted best
practices or lofty ideals. I just tried
to do whatever needed doing to help them get their
lives back together.
Also, if you think that I am
talking about the subject in a cold and unemotional manner, please believe that
this does not come without some serious, deliberate effort. I am doing so for two main reasons. Firstly, I believe people are entitled to
hear my thoughts, not my feelings.
Venting how I feel about the issue is not going to help anyone other
than me. Secondly, the way I feel about
the issue, if left to guide my writing, would result in a lot of vehement and
vulgar language. I know that it would be
a barrier for a lot of people. The
bottom line is: it’s not that I don’t care.
It’s that I care enough to make the effort to try and present the issue
in a coherent, polite, controlled manner.
……………
I have some serious reservation
about whether the current accepted strategies for rape support are helping
survivors recover as well as they could.
In fact, from my limited experience, some of the accepted methods seem
to actually increase the likelihood of survivors suffering long-term
psychological effects from the event; in actuality, they may be turning the
survivors into victims, rather than the other way round.[1]
Firstly, and it is almost an aside,
post-rape support in this country (UK ) is that it is often tightly
linked with the reporting system. The
accepted strategy is to contact the police; they will then arrange all
necessary medical follow-up procedures.
This is great if a survivor wants to report. If, for whatever reasons, the survivor does
not want to report, accessing acceptable medical support can be an ordeal, and
I don’t use this emotive word by accident.
The medical system often does not appear to be geared up to handle this
kind of emergency. The most significant
issues I have noticed are as follows:
- Hospitals and surgeries unable or unwilling to offer the option of picking the gender of the doctor, and/or to have a same-gender nurse present, and/or allow someone supporting the survivor to be present. Quite often, the last thing a recent rape survivor needs is to have one’s private areas examined one-to-one by someone the same gender as the rapist.
- Medical professionals not having the skills to talk to rape survivors. Some of the comments I have heard were quite staggering, ranging from the dismissive to the insulting to the plainly, obviously disgusted or terrified. I have also seen plenty of professionals handle the situation with great aplomb and professionalism; however, the fact that some of them don’t know what to say and don’t seem to be able to keep quiet or hide their feelings on the subject can be a real issue.
- Medical professionals telling survivors that “they should report it”. Not having any legal or psychological training, they are ill-qualified to give advice on this issue.
- For long-term resulting sexual health issues, the only port of call is often the public genito-urinary medicine clinic. Now, there is often quite a stigma associated with having to visit that particular sort of clinic. Whether that should be the case or not is beside the point – that’s how it is. The bottom line is that survivors are effectively forced undergo a humiliating experience in order to access the necessary medical support.
And my all-time favourite:
- Emergency departments that force people to state what the emergency is in the lobby, in front of other members of the public, with no privacy whatsoever.
This is, as I said, almost an
aside. Things, to my eyes, can get
considerably worse when one tries to access the official reporting and/or support
system available to rape survivors. Once
the physical and medical issues are resolved, the most significant issue rape
can have on a survivor is psychological damage.
It seems to me that the way support is often offered can greatly
increase the risk of long-term problems of this nature.
I have known three groups of
people who I have seen reliably recover from rape, returning to “normal” within
as short a period of time as possible: sex workers[2],
people in the very lowest socio-economic levels and women living in war zones
or under military dictatorships. These
groups have some characteristics in common:
They
accept rape as a real possibility. They
do not condone it or excuse it, but they do accept that it can happen to
them. Rape and other violence are a
reality in both street culture and lower socio-economic levels. They are facts of life. People living in those cultures have a
completely different grasp of the subject from the majority of the public, to
whom it is a vague, mythical issue that is grasped only conceptually, if at all. These people don’t live “under the spectre of
rape”, because rape to them is not a spectre – it is flesh-and-bone
reality. This has three huge impacts on
how they operate around the subject.
Firstly, if it
does occur, it does not blindside them.
It is not an unexplainable horror that comes out of nowhere. It is not something that “just doesn’t happen
to the likes of us.” It is almost an
occupational hazard, a calculated risk.
Secondly, by
accepting it as an eventuality they prepare against it to the best of their
abilities. They have a plan to avoid it
as much as they can. If it does occur,
they can genuinely say that they have done everything they could to prevent it
from taking place.
Thirdly, they
have a plan to survive the actual physical events. They have thought of steps to minimise the
physical damage they incur. More
importantly, as the rape is unfolding they are not necessarily passive victims;
they are actually busy keeping themselves as safe as they can. This can have a huge impact on the way the
view their role in the event[3].
They know
other rape survivors. They have seen
people who have gone through the event and come out of the other end relatively
unscathed and functional. This is called
“modelling” behaviour. They know
functional people whom it has happened to – so they know that recovery is
possible. They also know that rape
survivors are people just like them, not a separate class of human. They are able to share their experiences, if
they want to, with people who understand their position. They are able to get some informed practical
help without having to access the “system”.
Most importantly, when rape is a shared experience it loses a lot of its
stigma[4].
They do
not see rape as “a fate worse than death”.
Rape is a horrible event.
However, we shouldn’t ignore the fact that there are worse things out
there. It can be terribly hard for a lot
of us to appreciate that for some people rape can be the least injurious
option, because we do not deal with death and/or torture as part of our daily
life. Some people do. Some people can walk out of a rape and
genuinely think that “they got away lightly”, because they didn’t die. All of their limbs, although injured at
times, are still present and correct. To
a lot of people who walk with death on a daily basis, that is a definitive
bonus. Furthermore, the hyperbole about
it being worse than death is a big part of modelling permanent victim behaviour.
Rape is, overwhelmingly, not meant to
kill.
Please note that I am NOT minimising
or excusing rape. All I am doing is
listing the characteristics of three groups of people who seem to survive it
remarkably better than the majority of us.
The reason I am doing so is that these strategies seem to work, yet they
run antithetically to the way rape support is currently offered.
We are taught to view rape as an
alien occurrence that just shouldn’t take place. When it happens, it blindsides us. We may or may not have a strategy to avoid
it. In fact, there is an increasing
resistance to teaching women about self-protection but pre-assault risk
reduction. This because it is classed as
“victim blaming”.
We are also taught that all rapes
are the same. They are all monstrous,
traumatic, unforgivable event and they are all about power and control. The truth is that rapes happen for a whole
variety of reasons, in a whole variety of settings, and some of them are just
about the sex. It doesn’t justify them
in any way, shape or form, but it makes them different. We should be allowed to have feelings and
thoughts specific to our personal experience.
My biggest bugbear, however, is
the throwaway sentences you routinely get as soon as someone comes forth as a
rape survivor. “It is not your fault”, I
have no problems with. We operate within
the belief that there is still a stigma associated with being the survivor of a
sexual crime. How much of that is based
in reality is a different story.
Personally, the only people I have ever seen genuinely “victim blaming”
are people who are likely to rape, rapists, and people who have a vested interest in defending rapists, for instance lawyers and close family members. We are unlikely to ever be able to fully eradicate those groups, I guess, so it is
worthwhile to continue to reinforce this concept. It hurts nobody and it can do some good.
However, the second sentence is
usually “there is nothing you could have done to stop it.” THAT I have huge problems with. Saying that “there was nothing I could have
done” makes me blameless, to be sure, but also powerless. I was powerless to stop that attack. Hence, I will also be powerless to stop it
happening again, and again, and again.
If you want to build neurosis into a person, I can’t think of a better
way.
How much control do we have on
whether we get raped or not? Well, how
much control do we have on our lives?
The only answer that makes any sense to me is “some”, but I have hit a
lot of sharp corners in my life. As
humans, we tend to operate within accepted
narratives that grant us illusion of control and an acceptable story about
things we can't control. These often work together (e.g. I'm in control of my
world, but the reason I can't get ahead is because I'm the wrong gender/ wrong race/wrong
size/my family is keeping me down/the boss hates me, etc.). By hanging onto these narratives we make
ourselves gods and in control of our world, yet we can farm out the blame for many
of our problems.
Going
from “I am in control of my life and that kind of thing doesn't happen to me”
to it having happened is a hardcore reality crash. The person feels exposed and vulnerable. The easy options to choose at this point are
the extremes – either it’s completely someone else’s fault and I had no
control, or I will take full responsibility so I can still be in control. Usually neither of them are factually
correct. Often there was something that
could have been done, but there is no knowing how much it would have helped, if at all. The more balanced, healthier conclusion we
can reach is “I can control some things, but not others”. The way we often reach it is by going through
the two extreme phases first – only, if you are a rape survivor, you are not
allowed to. You are never allowed to “blame
yourself”, because you’re a “victim”. It
does make me wonder whether one of the reasons survivors are often not willing
to seek help or to continue getting it is purely the fact that it can hinder
their recovery, that it only makes them feel worse.
The system may be engineering trauma
into survivors, and this isn’t a theory I developed out of thin air. If we look at the criteria for Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder, they include both exposure to a trauma and a response of fear,
helplessness, or horror[5]. The current system teaches rape survivors
that they were helpless and they should feel horror. How can this possibly help them recover?
On the surface the focus of the
system is not on so much on helping the existing “victims”, but on a moral
drive to abolish rape altogether. The
emphasis is on “I will right this wrong!” rather than on “how can I help
this?”. As a consequence, unpalatable or
“morally unacceptable” solutions are often disregarded, even though they can be
seen to work for those groups who have to survive rape because they just can’t
avoid it.[6]
If you do not believe that
support systems are being hijacked by a moral crusade, just think of the
contrast between the response to rape and other forms of interpersonal
violence, which is frankly no picnic either.
You can be beaten to within an inch of your life, be severely physically
damaged as a result, yet the moment you come round you will be automatically
treated as a survivor. This makes
logical sense, because you did survive; you didn’t die. The emphasis from that point forward will be
on your recovery, not on your trauma.
You will be given a menu of services to aid your recovery that may
include psychological help, but you will not be told that you will need
it. You will be told that you need to
manage (not repress) your emotional reactions, and supported as required. You will also be told, with due care and
respect but quite clearly, that you might need to make some changes if your
emotional reactions are hindering your recovery.
As a survivor of non-sexual
interpersonal violence at no point are you likely to be exposed to
professionals having any sort of emotional meltdown regarding your ordeal.[7] This is really very important, because humans
are designed to emotionally infect each other and usually trained from a young
age to respect the authority of professionals.
This is particularly true during emergencies. If a specialist is openly horrified and tells
you that you must be very traumatised indeed and probably broken forever, you
are likely to buy that unquestioningly.
By contrast, generally speaking,
the system expects rape survivors to fall apart. In fact, not only do they expect it, but with
the modelled behaviour and information they provide, they pretty well guarantee
it. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Now, you should not be ashamed if this
happens, because it can be a natural reaction.
It isn’t the only acceptable reaction, though, and you shouldn’t be made
to feel ashamed if that’s not what happens to you. You should be allowed to think that “it
wasn’t so bad”, if it helps you – even if that may be perceived by some as
deflecting some of the blame from the perpetrators, because it should not be
about them. You should not be encouraged
to feel more traumatised than you actually are.
The other thing you won’t be told
as a survivor of non-sexual interpersonal violence is what coping mechanisms
you should select. That is often not the
case with rape survivors. Now, I have
known rape survivors to use all manners of coping mechanisms, ranging from
hunting down the perpetrators, to having sex with them again to exorcise the
fear, to discounting the whole event as “just another f*ck”. Some of these mechanisms would work with me;
most wouldn’t. This doesn’t matter to because
the thing is, this is not about me – it’s about them. And as far as I’m concerned, anything that
helps them get better and move on, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else
(including themselves), is just grand.
This applies even when their choices do not fit in with my ideals and my
strategies – because, let me repeat it, this
is not about me. Ultimately, telling
people that there is a “right way” to feel and to cope is a bit too close to
teaching them how to live, which nobody can convince me I have a right to.
It seems apparent to me that
there are inherent flaws in the support system, and they all seem to stem from
the fact that it is focused on fighting rape.
Now, you tell me that rape is an abomination, and my thinking is “Gee,
well spotted there. Congratulations on
this amazing realisation. Now, can we
focus on the fact that a person is hurting?
Can we save the crusading for later?”
I hugely admire people with
ideals. I am all for the abolition of
rape, as well as all other forms of violence.
It would be lovely to be living in a completely safe world. But we don’t, and I can’t see it happening in
my lifetime, if ever. Right here, right
now, we have to deal with the reality we live in. I find it morally repugnant to put ideals
ahead of people, principles ahead of practicalities, theories ahead of what can
be seen to work in practice. I think we
are letting rape survivors down, and I believe that they should come first in
our considerations. I think we should
select whatever strategies can stop them from becoming victims, before we
engage in any moral crusades.
[1]
I dislike the word “survivor” when it is misapplied. I appreciate that it is used as a “term of
empowerment”, but to apply it to certain situations is inaccurate and often
hyperbolic. However, I HATE the word
victim. To me, a victim is someone who
not only had no control over what happens but also does not recover; that is
the one thing I have always tried to avoid.
For this reason, I will use the word “survivor” throughout the article
as the lesser of two evils.
[2]
If you think you can’t rape a sex worker, congratulations: you have
successfully managed to lead a more sheltered life than many of us. Please watch “Leaving Las Vegas” before
reading the rest of this article. If
that doesn’t help you see things from a slightly different perspective, go fuck
yourself.
[3]
To take things to extreme, consider the difference between thinking “I got
raped and couldn’t do anything to stop it” and “I got raped but I stopped the
bastard from slitting my throat”.
[4]
And no, I am not advocating that it SHOULD be a shared experience.
[5]
Based on criteria from the Fourth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric
Association, 2000). The current edition
of the manual will remove these criteria.
However, a significant reason behind the change is that they were
preventing military personnel from receiving adequate psychological
support. As we are dealing with
civilians, I feel justified in sticking with the old criteria.
[7]
Unless you are dealing with domestic violence and/or domestic abuse, which is often
handled in a very similar way to rape.
