‘Coveted status’

A Yale grad talks about her rape in response to George Will’s asinine and insidious remarks:

A few years later, I was having dinner with two good friends. Somewhere between our second and third cocktails, we found out that each of us had, at one point during our university years, been raped. We were all strong women, and none of us had pressed charges. We were all smart, and none of us seemed to realize, deep down, that we were entirely blameless for what had happened. We were all writers, and none of us had published a sentence about our assaults.

“I was roofied and raped in college,” I told a different friend about a month ago. She took a swig of wine and laughed wryly. She had been, too, it turned out. A bartender. A glass of water. A ten-hour blackout. A naked wake-up. Vomit on her hands. She did a rape kit, but she wished she hadn’t: invasive, traumatizing. She did not press charges. She did not know where he was, these days.

“It’s like women are the walking wounded,” a friend commented to me once. Dealing with it on our own, quietly — whether because that’s what strong women do, or what good girls do, I’m not sure.

But one thing is for certain: Most of us don’t speak. No matter how strong we are, no matter how “feminist,” we carry around with us a sense that, somehow, we brought the assault on ourselves. We were too flirtatious. Or we didn’t say “no” loudly enough. Or we were wearing the wrong thing. Or we should have known better than to go to his room, get in his car, go for a drink, accept that shot.

I’d say I’m not sure where we pick up those signals, so much and so early. Except, of course, that I do — because they’re everywhere.

By not identifying myself as a rape victim sooner, I think I believed I was winning the battle that I was too drugged to win that cold February night. Not coming forward also may have been necessary to my ability to move on. But it also meant that I played my part in upholding a system that relies on the silence of many to support the crimes of a few.

It has taken years for me to realize that, although speaking up comes with its own emotional, social, and professional perils, silence, too, is a form of victimhood. Neither option, though, is one to covet.