About 1 in 4 women experience sexual assault or rape throughout their lifetime. It’s a statistic that is ingrained in me since I first learned about it years ago, back when I barely knew what it even meant.
I never thought that it would happen to me…until it did.
I keep replaying that night in my head, calculating every action I took…What if I didn’t choose to be alone in my room? What if I didn’t trust them so much that I could have prevented it? Now, though, I know that it was not my fault. I did everything that I could, but his desires overtook my resistance and I caved.
I feel guilty, almost. I never really understood how it felt to be violated in this way until I experienced it first-hand. I always sympathized with the others, but I was not truly able to empathize until now.
The past few weeks, I have been involved in more and more conversations about sexual assault and rape among my female friends than I ever have been before. Suddenly, I feel as if a veil has been ripped off my face and I am a part of a new community of women that share shockingly similar stories as to mine.
Growing up as a girl in this society, I was always made aware of the consequences of my actions… How what I wear dictates how someone will treat me, how the place I choose to go to a certain night will determine if I end up in my bed safely by morning. The conversation is always directed at us, as if policing our actions will prevent the assault.
After my experience, I felt the urge to share what I went through. I didn’t want to hide it; I didn’t want to let it bottle up inside me and explode later. Not everyone is as open as me about this topic: that’s perfectly valid. Everyone copes with trauma differently.
It really hurts me, however, when I hear of someone that’s too embarrassed to speak about their experience, that blames themselves for their assault, or that feels as if no one will believe them and support them. Putting aside all differences and listening to each other is the biggest sign of unity among women. In vulnerable situations, we need to be the ear for the one that is scared to place trust in others.
Opening the conversation about sexual assault and rape is only the first step. Ideally, women would grow up internalizing that they are not at fault for anything that happens to them against their own will. Nothing that we do incites this behavior, but our society likes to make us carry the burden that it refuses to accept.
Instead of teaching others not to rape, we are taught not to get raped. This ideology needs to stop. The question, though, is how…and when?