Sometime ago, I wrote a blog entry that was my own. A man who was a so-called progressive, told me to remove it. He said: "I would never write anything that I wasn't prepared to to see on the frontpage of a newpaper". I said, "I would see this on a frontpage; I am not ashamed". I lied. He had just shamed me. I took it down even though two women had already linked to it; I took it down and betrayed them and myself in the process. A month or so later he wrote about rape on his own blog - a nice little theoretical piece that showed no understanding of rape in my view.
Here is my original post, titled Choking on My Words:
Sometime ago, I committed myself to using this blog to speak out about my personal experiences. However, when opportunities arise, I find myself choking on my words. For one, I fear that my personal disclosure will be used to attack me. In fact, other bloggers have already maliciously used the very little I have already disclosed. As well, I fear that speaking out will discredit me. I still live with this male myth that logic and reason exist is some emotional vacuum. Lastly, I fear the reactions of the few people I know personally who read this blog. I would remind them that personal boundaries remain outside of my writing...I am not necessarily prepared to discuss these issues in person.
Okay.
What are some of the things I have wanted to write about? For one, I just finished my first semester of graduate school. I love the field that I have gone into, and I am finding the material engaging and exciting...Also, several years ago I was told that I would never work again, because my depression had become so severe...so, fuck you to those who told me that.
Obviously, I cannot tell my whole story in one blog entry, but I might as well provide the abridged version. When, I was eighteen, and in my second year of university, I went on a ski trip through the university ski club, and was raped. (I hate typing that word.) Well, it was awful...And, everything got much worse from there. For one, my family just couldn't accept it. This what not because they are mean and awful; in fact, they are wonderful. However, they were in shock…and, you see, they are very much products, as we all are, of a victim-blaming culture. So, no one suggested that I go to the police. I cried...then wrote my final exams...then started my summer job waitressing...and began to drink a lot. I lived on my own, so I didn't have very much contact with my family. Still, my father, a psychologist, believed I was depressed and pleaded with me to see a psychiatrist. I agreed to go, and I was put on some antidepressants. It was now the following fall, and I had switched my major from math to English literature (my heart needed comfort). I kept my A average (I was a scholarship student), and then as the year anniversary approached...I just broke. I became suicidal; my psychiatrist committed me to a psychiatric ward.
Okay, so this is getting too long of a post...
So, providing the rest of the story through fast forward mode, I was belittled horribly by the nurses and doctors. For? Well, having the audacity to be depressed about being raped, of course. But, you see, I wasn't depressed about the act itself; I was depressed from the realization that I lived in a culture that okayed my being raped. And, this realization grew as I started to get to know women who were in this psychiatric ward, and started to learn that so many had a history of sexual abuse and/or assault. (I feel like I need a poem by Blake to complement my story of innocence lost.) Anyway, I began to argue with the doctors and that just led to all sorts of hell - physical seclusion, chemical restraint, blah, blah, blah...I would need a hundred blog entries to cover that part if the story.
In short, the rape was no longer talked about, but only my depression. I would spend hours in the office of a psychiatrist giving my feminist critiques of the system…and, at the end of the hour, he would hand me yet another prescription for yet another drug. And, it just went on and on...I can't understand it now.
Anyway, one day I just quit the psychiatrists. I just said, Fuck you, I'm finding a woman psychiatrist. And, then I contacted a sexual assault counselling centre. Well, the first visit, the woman I spoke with, neither an M.D. nor a Ph.D., said, Of course your rape was awful and what do you think you should do about it? When, I left that day I was 90 percent better. I reported my rape, and I was 95 percent better. And, so on.
When I went back to school, I intended to study social development, and then mid-semester I decided to study mental health and women's issues because I get it, and I am passionate about it. Now, I find myself writing papers that echo my thoughts which I pled for doctors to believe when I was only nineteen. The same thoughts that win me As now are the same that won extra time in the psychiatric ward when I was just a young girl.
When I finished my last day of the semester, I felt like I had finally dragged myself out of the quicksand. And, I was filled with this amazing sense of gratitude. School used to be a game to me…a way to boost my ego by being the best. Now, I realize with such intensity what a privilege it is to attend a university, to have access to online research, to have a library card! It is access to considerable personal and political power. When doctors had me alone in a room, my arguments were undermined. Now, I can cite the World Health Organization to back up my position that depression is not an unreasonable response to rape!
When I have written about violence against women on this site, some have come by and suggested that acknowledging it is somehow playing the victim. What they don’t get is that, for me, my own rape was not a single isolated event. If it was, it would not be so difficult to get over. What I refuse to get over is that I live in a culture that sanctions violence against women, and punishes women who try to resist.
When I was about seventeen, I read a speech given by Andrea Dworkin in her book Letters from a War Zone. The speech is titled I want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There is No Rape. Addressing a group of men, Dworkin says,
I want one day of respite, one day off, one day in which no bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old, and I am asking you to give it to me. And how could I ask you for less – it is so little.And how could you offer me less – it is so little. Even in wars, there is a day of truce. Go and organize your truce. Stop your side for one day. I want a twenty-four-hour truce during which there is no rape.
When I was seventeen, I understood rape through statistics. Now, I understand through lived experience.
So, I have just begun telling my story. And, what I ask of other women is to begin telling yours. Please report your rapes. Whether it be a single assault or recurring sexual abuse, whether it happened yesterday or decades ago: it is never too late. All the statistics in the world will not matter if we don’t speak out and take action. Make the legal system responsible. Make our society responsible.Make the politicians face the economic costs, if they don’t care about the costs to us as individuals.To the men who are prepared to offer support and raise awareness, thank you, thank you, thank you.I am grateful to you, because in our culture men pay a social price for caring about women’s issues.
To anyone who is about to comment against me in hatred, or take this information to slam me around on your site, okay, proceed. You will never catch me off guard; you will never break me. I have made peace with the battle.
Finally, the post of one single man, gave me the fraction of hope I needed to find the courage to post this story. Small measures of support can make huge differences. I acknowledge and thank him.
Okay, so there it is. The blogger I mention in the last paragraph is A Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land. Unfortunately, I no longer have the link to the post he had written which had encouraged me.
Some things have changed since I wrote Choking on my Words. I feared getting marginalized by focusing on violence and mental health in my studies. So, I have decided to focus on feminist economics and, in particular, paid and unpaid care work which is unequally distributed not only between genders, but according to race, class, and nation states. Feminism is not peripheral to progressive politics. We have to begin to understand how patriarchy is central to the exploitation of peoples by the IMF and the World Bank, and to waging wars on countries to expand empire, and so on.
The past few days we have discussed on BreadnRoses the fact that the Progressive Bloggers community only allow blogs that are more political (as defined by them) than personal.
I am here to tell you that my politics are personal.
I am not interested in watching the ping pong match between the left and the right on the blogopshere anymore. I think the ease with which Harper dismantled the core of Status of Women has been a wake up call to us all. The way in which the Progressive Bloggers community dragged some of us women out as puppets to use the SWC as a soundbyte in positioning itself against "the right", should remind us all the the Liberals are not going to get us where we need to be anymore than the Conservatives.
The time has come for a more radical politics. I believe a storm is brewing particularly among the women of Canada. We must begin to talk about the highly political personal on our blogs, in our living rooms, on our campuses, and in our workplaces. (Notice how what it is to be "professional" serves to silence the private.) We now have confirmation of what we knew deep down: formal equality for women still leaves us vulnerable. We need a cultural revolution.
Ask yourselves, why we are told that personal blogs don't fit in with a political community? Ask yourselves why men in our lives are questioning how personal we get on our blogs?
Our potential power is terrifying.
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