A REVISIONIST HISTORY OF LOVING MEN: AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHY AND COMMUNITY RESEARCH OF NAMING SEXUAL ABUSE IN RELATIONSHIPS

Lena Ziegler

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

May 2021

Committee:

Lee Nickoson, Advisor

Hyeyoung Bang Graduate Faculty Representative

Dan Bommarito

Sue Carter Wood © 2021

Lena Ziegler

All Rights Reserve iii

ABSTRACT

Lee Nickoson, Advisor

It is believed that over 90% of sexual violence cases involve situations in which a victim knows their attacker. Yet, cultural depictions of sexual assault and rape focus primarily on furthering the violent ‘stranger-in-the-alley’ narrative, than representing the majority of victim’s lived experiences. This disconnect contributes to many victims of sexual assault, specifically within romantic relationships or friendships, struggling to recognize what happened to them as rape or as something else. Researchers refer to this as rape ambiguity or unacknowledged rape, where a victim cannot define what happened and thus internalizes victim-blaming rape myths.

Yet, the role of relational context is rarely acknowledged in examining this disconnect, and the impact this has on recognizing and naming experiences is broadly overlooked.

Blending an evocative autoethnographic method – detailing the author’s personal experience with sexual abuse within relationships – with the findings from qualitative community-based research, this project asks how sexual abuse has become normalized in intimate heterosexual relationships and what impact this has on a female victim’s ability to name her experiences. Grounded in feminist theory and utilizing The Listening Guide, participant narratives are presented in the form of voice poems, with a critical focus on language. Findings highlight a trend of male-centric relationship dynamics, manipulation, and sexual coercion as normalized within heterosexual relationships. Additionally, the rhetorical discourse of sexual assault and rape as inherently violent is cited as a disruption to naming experiences as either term, due at least in part to concern over labeling male partners rapists. Implications of this suggest a greater need for gender equality in heterosexual relationships – with a specific need iv

for consent communication to involve sex positivity grounded in the normalization of female desire – further education for young women and men on healthy relational dynamics, and an overall expansion of naming incidents of sexual violence. v

For the girl I used to be,

the woman I am today, and the many selves I’ve been

in between. vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I came to BGSU with the intention of writing a creative/critical dissertation about sexual

violence. Before beginning my studies, I feared the faculty of my new program would not

support the strong vision I had for what this project might be and the many ways I hoped to

break convention while completing it. I could not have been more wrong. From my very

firstsemester all the way through the duration of my studies, the Rhetoric and Writing Studies faculty have offered their support and enthusiasm for my work and encouraged me to follow through with my vision. I am eternally grateful for this, along with the nurturing, humbling community you have allowed me to be a part of over these past four years.

Most directly, I must thank Dr. Lee Nickoson, my dissertation chair. Lee, you never questioned my ability to do this work, and when I stumbled you allowed me the room to pull myself back up, and take the time I needed before continuing. This is the most vulnerable work I have ever done and it would not be possible without your open mind and kind spirit. Your confidence in me carried me through many moments of self-doubt. Thank you also to Dr. Sue

Carter Wood, Dr. Daniel Bommarito, and Dr. Hyeyoung Bang for all of your support as members of my committee. I am grateful for all that you have done to get me here today.

This dissertation would not be possible without my incredible community partner. For purposes of my participants’ anonymity, I will not address this organization by name. But I am so grateful that you opened your doors to me, and invited me in. I also want to thank the four remarkable women who participated in this research. You told me your stories and allowed me to translate them into a deeper understanding of the world of sexual violence. Your emotional labor is recognized, appreciated, and insurmountably valued. You are all an inspiration to me. vii

Your advocacy brightens the world.

Thank you to the many members of my cohort and the Rhetoric and Writing Studies program who have been there all along this wild journey. Most especially, thank you to Brandie

Bohney, Bailey Poland, Brian Urias, and Renee Ann Drouin. I could not have asked for a more loving, hilarious, supportive group of people to traverse these past four years with. We started with an eclipse and we end with a pandemic. You are my BGSU family and will forever be my coheart.

I also must thank the three mental health professionals I have worked with, at different times, from December 2018 to the present, all of whom have helped me come to terms with my own survivorship. Most especially, I’d like to thank Dr. Jill Baird. I truly do not know if I could have done this work without your guidance, insight, and validation.

To my parents: each of your support comes through in different, and equally meaningful ways. I’ve shared more of myself with you in the past year or two than I ever thought I would, and you welcomed me with love. I love you both, forever.

To Erin, you ear everything good in this world. You’ve held every one of my dirty secrets in your hands and loved me anyway. You are my best friend. We are soul-bonded for life.

Alex, it is like there has never been anyone else. Everything has led to you. You’ve given me a home outside of myself. You have held me through this healing; you have taught me how to be loved. Let’s spend a lifetime. Why haven’t we yet?

Finally, I want to acknowledge every survivor of sexual violence who has ever come forward, for sharing your story. Your strength is awe inspiring. And for those who have not, and those who are still coming to terms with your own survivorship, you are not alone. viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER I. CONSENT IN CONTEXT ...... 8

Dissecting a Narrative ...... 23

The Role of Context ...... 32

A Revisionist History ...... 36

CHAPTER II. LOVE IS NOT SUPPOSED TO HURT ...... 40

First Love, Then Marriage ...... 46

Dissecting a Narrative ...... 56

Naming as Rhetorical Action ...... 60

The First Retelling ...... 65

CHAPTER III. LEARNING HOW TO TALK ABOUT IT ...... 70

Coming to the Research ...... 108

Research Questions ...... 110

Developing the Study ...... 112

The Art of Objectification ...... 116

October 219 ...... 119

CHAPTER IV. AMPLIFYING WOMEN’S NARRATIVES ...... 125

Study Participants ...... 126

Samantha ...... 132

Zara ...... 137

Christina ...... 143 ix

Rebecca ...... 148

CHAPTER V. A MULTI-FACETED PROBLEM ...... 154

Normalization of Sexual Abuse in Heterosexual Relationships ...... 157

Partner Intentionality ...... 158

Presence of Abuse or Mistreatment ...... 164

Gendered Relational and Sexual Dynamics ...... 170

The Language of Sexual Violence ...... 179

The Yes/No Binary ...... 181

Defining the Terminology...... 184

Naming Their Experiences ...... 194

Overall Implications and Final Takeaways ...... 206

Female Desire and Sex Positivity ...... 206

Normal vs. Healthy ...... 209

The Limitation of Language ...... 213

Conclusion ...... 214

WORKS CITED ...... 217

APPENDIX A. SAMANTHA VOICE POEMS ...... 223

APPENDIX B. ZARA VOICE POEMS ...... 247

APPENDIX C. CHRISTINA VOICE POEMS ...... 285

APPENDIX D. REBECCA VOICE POEMS ...... 315

APPENDIX E. ABOUT THE BLACKOUT POETRY ...... 344

APPENDIX F. INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD LETTER OF APPROVAL ...... 345

APPENDIX G. INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD STAGE 1 CONSENT FORM ...... 346 x

APPENDIX H. INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD STAGE 2 CONSENT FORM ...... 350

APPENDIX I. STAGE 1 SURVEY QUESTIONS ...... 354

APPENDIX J. STAGE 2 INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ...... 356 xi

LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page

1 Blackout Poem 1 ...... 7

2 Blackout Poem 2 ...... 39

3 Blackout Poem 3 ...... 69

4 Survey respondents share whether or not they have experienced sexual violence ...... 128

5 Survey respondents who have experienced sexual violence share whether it

took place inside or outside of a relationship ...... 128

6 Samantha Voice Poem 1 ...... 135

7 Samantha Voice Poem 2 ...... 136

8 Zara Voice Poem 1...... 141

9 Zara Voice Poem 2...... 142

10 Christina Voice Poem 1 ...... 146

11 Christina Voice Poem 2 ...... 147

12 Rebecca Voice Poem 1 ...... 151

13 Rebecca Voice Poem 2 ...... 152

14 Blackout Poem 4 ...... 153 1

INTRODUCTION

October 2019 – It was a Thursday in October. The air cold, sky gray. Fallen leaves, orange-purple twinkle lights in the living room window. One week before Halloween. But there was no autumn glow to filter over the sickness swirling through me as I held myself, arms shaking, chest tight, palms pressed down, turned white against the crumpled gray comforter on

Alex’s bed. Breath shallow, voice shaking, the hollowed-out sound of my insides rattling fearful and empty; this is the place I run from.

“Why do I do this to myself?” I asked, not sure what I expected Alex to say in response.

“Because you’re brave,” he replied, almost immediately, almost too perfectly, almost as if someone gave him a script and he skipped over the thoughtful pause stage direction.

“It’s not brave, it’s stupid,” I said, not wanting to face him. My throat was closing in on itself, my breath growing ragged. I wanted nothing but to hurl myself through a window, lock myself in the bathroom, crawl into the front-loading dryer and hide safely away, like I did as a little girl when no one was around to stop me or notice. It was the 90s is all I can really say about my parents’ parenting style. But of course, these were not real options. I had involved too many people already – my professors, the staff at the Rape Crisis Center, and of course Alex, who in just over nine months of dating me had already provided far more emotional support than any person should reasonably require from their new partner, barring a global pandemic, though that would come later.

Nine months earlier, February. Icy cold, a smattering of snow. Our first date: sushi, holding hands across a table, his breath warm in my ear you’re even more beautiful in person.

Afterward, back at his place, I want to wait followed by don’t make me wait, as I pulled him to 2 his bedroom. Moments later, tear-stained cheeks in the bathroom mirror. I had excused myself, unable to contain my emotions under his touch, his kindness, all the gentle in the world I had never known, and the fear I could not trust it. When months before I had published a poem tender men reserve their love for women who don’t give blow jobs, I was now fearful all my want had ruined the possibility of an “us” before we even had a chance, and even more fearful want wasn’t a part of it to begin with.

When I stepped out of the bathroom and he saw my tears, he held me as I cried into his chest, a beautiful stranger leading with her damage. When I sat on his couch and told him stories, rapid-fire, of every violence I could not name, of the ways love had been twisted out of me by less gentle men, I repeated through sobs I’m not crazy, I’m just broken, and I’m sorry. When he said I’m sorry this happened to you, it’s not your fault, he told me this doesn’t change anything; we all feel broken sometimes. When he handed me a Valentine and told me he wanted to see me again, this is when I knew.

But nine months later, through the glimmering turmoil of new love, I was still leading with my damage and Alex was still picking up the pieces. I had not yet learned to say thank you, instead of I’m sorry, so I repeated those words, as I had every day for nine months, I’m sorry I’m this way, I’m sorry I am not better, I’m sorry I need you so much.

“It’s brave because it’s hard,” he said, bringing me back to reality. “But it’s going to help a lot of women with stories like yours.”

Since as long as I can remember, fall has been my favorite season. Though in reality,

October is grayer and colder than the picturesque fantasies I hold onto all year, awaiting my cradle of fallen leaves and the scent of the earth retreating, at some point it became the one month each year that I compulsively hinge all of my hopes for happiness onto in some misguided 3 belief that a beautiful background is all the foundation necessary to build a beautiful life. Yet each year, as fall approaches, along with the final bloom of harvest, inevitably something terrible comes along with it, disrupting all of my autumn dreams. The truth is, that while almost everything bad that has ever happened to me happened in the months leading up to the fall rather than the season itself, marinating through all my spring hope and summer glow, it is only in the fall that the pain of it seems to come to the surface. Which is all to say that for every person, there is a space that exists between the time something bad happens to them and when they start reacting to it. For some, that space might be very small, as they immediately process and recover from the fallout of suffering. But for others, like me, so often the reality of what happened and the inevitable pain that comes with it, hides away in the shadowy corners inside of us, settles in the creak of our bones, sits like a weight in our lungs, and tightens around our throats, until we can no longer ignore it. Which is why I’ve grown accustomed to declaring that while fall is my favorite season, it is also routinely awful.

“I don’t want to do this,” I repeated. “What if they think I’m stupid, or overreacting?

What if my stories aren’t that bad anyway and I’m just being dramatic? What if I lied to everyone without realizing it?”

“They aren’t going to think any of that,” Alex replied, stroking my forearm with his reliable tenderness. My bones trembled beneath him.

“But what if I did lie?” I asked, panic rising through the nausea in my gut. “What if somehow, through all the years and memories, I started to exaggerate what really happened?”

There are many truths to every story. Like, the times I said no and it didn’t matter – or maybe he didn’t hear me, or maybe I never said it. Like, the times I said yes while I was crying – or maybe I wasn’t crying, or maybe my tears weren’t loud enough. Like, to suffer for love is a 4 noble act. Like, deserving to suffer is a rite of passage for being twenty-something and a woman.

Like, it’s all just a lineage of ripping. These are the thoughts I run from.

There was a time when I glamorized my own suffering in lieu of experiencing it. There was a time I told myself I wanted his violence. There were times I wanted his violence. But there was never a time when it didn’t hurt, just moments in between the hurting. There are flashes like cinema, projections like high-art, clichés like Lifetime got it right after all.

My trauma oscillates between gray scale and the full spectrum of color.

“I don’t think you exaggerated what really happened,” Alex said. “People need to know this stuff is not ok.”

“Why do I have to be the one though?” I was crying again, not sure if I ever stopped. “No one else is writing a personal dissertation; what makes me think this is a good idea?”

“It might be helpful to remember that you don’t actually have to do it,” he said. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

This is what it always comes back to, I think but don’t say. Through years of conditioning, I had learned not to trust myself with choices, even more than I had learned not to take for granted this idea of choice, as if what we want or don’t want is always honored, or that the problems we have in life aren’t sometimes solved by choosing the lesser of two bad options.

But like most things involving want, this too was complicated. Two and a half years earlier I had already decided what needed to be done. During my Master’s thesis defense, my professors asked what I hoped to study during my PhD and I told them, without hesitation, I need to talk about sexual violence. I had spent my final semester in my creative writing program shelving the short story collection I had to write to focus, instead, on the nonfiction I needed to write, in all its wildness, rage, and unsilencing. I knew there would be no way around making 5 this my mission in my doctoral studies: to tell stories on behalf of the girl I used to be, to lead with my damage, and confront the circumstances that had led me there. I absolutely, undoubtedly wanted to do this work.

And yet.

“I do have to,” I said, through hiccupping sobs. “My name is on the agenda. They are expecting me. I have to tell my stories if I have any hope of them telling me theirs. I need to do this if I’m ever going to write this book.”

I knew Alex didn’t know what to say. He held my hand, kissed it gently, and stroked my face. There was nothing he could say. I had directly and enthusiastically chosen this months earlier, when I reached out to local organizations in hopes of securing a community partner for my dissertation research, and met finally with the Director of a local Rape Crisis Center. I told her the reasons I want to do this work, that my past had led me to seek answers to certain questions, and she told me I wasn’t the only one. Lots of women get into advocacy work in response to their own trauma. That’s when we came up with the plan for me to join the staff members and advocates at their October meeting, to present my plans, and recruit any women who wanted to share their stories and contribute to the growing body of research centering women’s experiences of sexual violence. The months in between I spent preparing for my comprehensive exams, applying for institutional approval of my research plans, and pumping myself up, proud of how I was confronting my trauma head on, and fancying myself emotionally equipped to write about, speak about, and publish about the most intimate violations I had ever experienced, all in the name of feminism. This is what I wanted, deep in the place no one else could touch. I wanted it all, in the end, to matter. 6

“You’re going to be amazing,” Alex said. “And you know I am here for you, right? I will be here for you no matter what happens.”

I fixed my makeup, slipped on a jean jacket and stepped out into the comfortable cool of that Thursday afternoon in October. As I backed out of my parking space, Alex waved and I smiled weakly, feelings of guilt flooding my chest for, once again, relying on him to build me back up, when he was not the who had broken me down in the first place. For thirty minutes I drove with my fingers clenched around the steering wheel and my voice shaking as I practiced out loud the words I would say, choking back tears whenever I imagined the small group of faces staring back at me. Though I had spent years analyzing my own story, telling it and retelling it in poems, journal entries, and crying on my best friend’s living room floor, no amount of memorization or practice could prepare me for the possibility of my greatest fear come true, with one unrelenting question rattling over and over in my head on repeat as I drove, parked my car on a city street, walked briskly to the building, took the flight of stairs down to the basement conference room, and shuffled through my notes as they all watched me pull myself together, waiting for me to speak:

What if they don’t believe me? 7

Fig. 1. Blackout Poem 1. 8

CHAPTER I. CONSENT IN CONTEXT

July 2011 - “Are you sure you don’t want anything, hon?” The older white lady asked in her greasy diner uniform, with a missing front tooth that was hard to keep from staring at and tired eyes, likely due, at least in part, to fear that if I didn’t order anything, her only table would result in an even smaller than usual tip for a 4:00 am night shift at Waffle House.

“Just coffee is fine,” I smiled back at her, rolling the plain white mug between my palms, and she stepped away, disbelieving, to submit the order.

Just coffee, for me, and an order of smothered and covered hash browns for the man sitting across the booth. My “date” for lack of a better, more accurate term.

“I thought you said they had ice cream,” I muttered and he shrugged, nonchalant.

“It’s Waffle House, I just assumed.” He tore open a blue packet of sugar replacement and dumped it into his black coffee.

“I don’t know,” I said with a slight grin, taking a sip of my own. Gritty like mud, I’d thought. “I’m really here for the ice cream. I feel you misrepresented yourself and the situation.”

“You want to leave?” he asked.

“No, no, you stay, I’ll leave,” I said straight-faced as ever. He smiled. White teeth, pinkish lips, red hair that stuck up and out like electrocution.

“You’re sassy,” he said. “I like it.”

Sassy. This was not the first time Jerry had called me this since our interaction began an hour-and-a-half earlier on a dating website, and would not be the last. In fact, throughout the whole of our Waffle House experience, he probably told me I was sassy nearly a dozen times.

Had I been originally from Tennessee, like him, rather than a northeast transplant living there for 9 less than a month with an accent that instantly identified me as other, he likely would have considered my constant jabs and deadpan delivery bitchy rather than exotic and interesting. But something I had already discovered in my brief time living in a small city forty minutes south of

Nashville, was that the southern men I talked to found women from the northeast strangely appealing. The “smart” accent and preference for ball-busting over niceties, I’d been told, was

“sexy.” Or in this case, sassy.

But my arrival at Waffle House a few minutes earlier, seated across from Jerry in his crumpled red flannel, thrown haphazardly over a black comic-book tee shirt like the very epitome of a twenty-six-year-old man living in his mother’s basement, had little to do with my attraction to him, and more to do with the fact that it was July 24th 2011, and I had spent the day before turning twenty-three-years-old completely alone.

I had moved to Tennessee from Northeast Pennsylvania on June 28th, one-year exactly from the day I left my husband, Carl, and spent the following year hurting so profoundly most days I found it difficult to keep from suffocating on my own impenetrable sorrow. I knew no one in

Tennessee, had no job, no plans, and no prospects. I picked the state because I loved Americana music – blues, jazz, folk, alt-country, rockabilly – and dreamt I could redo all the mistakes of my still young life by getting an apartment outside of Nashville and writing for a music magazine, because those jobs came easy, I thought, to eager, damaged, twenty-somethings with nothing to lose but sleep. This was my plan. To escape the torment of living a half-hour drive from my ex- husband and the woman he had impregnated ten months into our separation, by melting into the sticky heat of a Tennessee summer where no one could even pretend to know me, or get close enough to hurt me. 10

But three weeks later, with my social interactions limited to a few job interviews, a handful of dates, and the beautiful and perpetually stoned roommate I found on Craigslist, who spent every weekend in Nashville with her tattoo artist boyfriend, I was already emotionally exhausted from being surrounded by strangers, day-in, day-out, with only a rare interaction dipping below the surface of superficial. When my birthday came and I realized it was the first one in my entire life

I’d spend without my family, my friends, or Carl, I was filled with an ache unlike any other. I was truly alone in this strange city, in this strange state, as isolated as ever, the ink still fresh on my divorce papers, and the trauma from the experience of an addiction-riddled, abusive marriage, coloring everything I did.

I spent the day trying to entertain myself. That morning my mom had a cake delivered to my apartment and I cried on the phone as I opened a package of gifts that she had sent a few days earlier. It’s too bad you have no one to eat that cake with, I distinctly recall her telling me, unintentional in the sting her words left. I hung up and washed my face, fixed my makeup, and headed to the car. I ventured to a state park nearly an hour away and laid on a tie-dyed blanket on the shore of a small lake. At nearly 100 degrees outside, I stayed in the shade in my jeans, light blue tee shirt, and sunglasses. I laid back, resting my head on the colorful fabric, and spread my long curly hair wildly around me, taking selfies on my flip phone. I thought I looked glamorous and grown up. I took a picture of my face, turned to the side, with blond wisps falling across my forehead, smiling softly. This is how you build a life, I thought. This is how you become okay.

After an hour the magic of sunshine and selfies wore off and I was surrounded by children in floaties splashing along the shoreline while their parents took pictures, and young couples kissing and holding hands, their bikini bottoms and swimming trunks coated in fine layers of sand.

There was a pressure building up inside of me, radiating through my legs, and 11 pushing behind my eyes. I had to leave. Back in the car I sobbed to Bob Dylan’s Blood on the

Tracks album, not a “big girl” after all, and stopped at a liquor store to buy two bottles of cheap wine. In my empty apartment I drank straight from the bottles, finishing both. I filled the remaining emptiness with Pad Thai and spring rolls, watched Superbad on repeat, while trying desperately to connect with anyone I could on dating websites. A man, who would later become a friend, told me I was unfairly pretty and quipped about writing and music and Seth Rogen, and I asked him, pleaded with him, to come over. Not because I wanted to have sex, that was the furthest thing from my mind, but because I wanted, and desperately needed, for someone, anyone, to look me in the eye on purpose.

He of course declined and I of course took it personally, sobbing on the edge of my bed wishing anyone in Tennessee knew I existed. Finally, around 3:30am I took off my makeup, scrubbed away smudged mascara, and dressed for bed. Just as I shut off the lights in my room, I heard the notification of a new message. I crept over to my desk and sat in the dark of the room, the blue glow of my laptop screen shining back at me. It was Jerry.

After an hour or so of flirty rapport Jerry asked if I’d like to get some ice cream. I told him no one has ice cream at 3:30 in the morning and he said Waffle House did, that he was sure of it.

“You’ll have an ice cream and I’ll have an early breakfast,” he said. “I have work at 8am, so I promise I’m not expecting anything else.”

I looked up the closest Waffle House, 1.3 miles away, and figured the slight remaining buzz in my system was faint enough, and I was lonely enough, to justify going. We agreed to meet at 4am.

Quickly, I reapplied makeup and threw on a fresh pair of jeans, and a cute top. I 12 looked pretty good, I thought, for no sleep, a day of crying, and several pounds of Thai food and two bottles of wine slushing around inside of me.

When I arrived, I texted Jerry who was a few minutes late. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but when he showed up, I was instantly disappointed. It’s not that he was unattractive so much as I knew upon seeing him, hearing his voice with a twang I didn’t find charming, and the lingering scent of cigarette smoke wafting from him, that he was not the man who could cure me of all my problems. As much as I wasn’t looking for romance or even sex that night, some part of me still felt all suffering would someday be made better by the fatalistic love of a man in flannel, and that sadly, this was not him.

About an hour-and-a-half into our Waffle House “date” we stepped outside for Jerry to have a cigarette. I told him cigarettes were disgusting and I would stand by my car instead, all sassy-like. He told me I had a great ass. It was nearly 5:30am and truckers were pulling into the parking lot, filling the previously empty booths and crowding the restaurant beyond recognition.

“What do you want to do now?” he asked, taking a drag. I hesitated. I knew I didn’t like this guy. He was fine to talk to, but he wasn’t my type, whatever that meant. But I knew that he had work at 8am and said he wasn’t expecting anything to happen either. I also knew that I wasn’t yet ready to be alone again.

“I don’t know,” I said, putting him off a little longer, still not sure if spending any more time with him was a good idea.

“You said you live close, right?” he asked. “How about we go back to your place and take a nap.”

He was tired, he explained, from being up most of the night with insomnia. Plus, he lived twenty-five minutes away, which is why he couldn’t meet even sooner. 13

“I work in Murfreesboro,” he added, as a final clincher to his argument. “If I go back home,

I’ll just have to turn around and come right back here in a little bit.”

I finally agreed that he could come over to take a nap. He followed me back to my apartment complex and we parked in front of my building. I gave him a quick tour and without missing a beat he, as all men seemed to, zeroed in on the guitar in my bedroom and started playing for me, trying to explain chords, and talking about all his experience with music. I was already exhausted of him, frustrated by how little a stranger’s presence did to tamper the ache in me for some kind of connection, and reminded him he needed to work in a couple hours and should get some sleep.

“Lay down with me,” he said, crawling onto my bed and kicking off his shoes. I stared at his body, sprawled across my bedspread as if it belonged there, and felt a twinge of annoyance.

Still, I was exhausted by all measures and didn’t have much sass left in me to tell him to take the futon in the living room. I laid down next to him.

“Come here,” he said, pulling me into him, his arm around me. I rested my head and left palm on his chest and stared out my bedroom window, the light of sunrise creeping in through the sheer curtains. He smelled of cheap body spray and cigarettes and I was struck with the surreal reality that months of loneliness had culminated into this moment. Jerry was hardly the first guy I barely knew who would fall asleep in my apartment. During my separation from Carl, casual sex became a sport of catch and release for me. So much of my sadness in the last year had been temporarily doused with the tender touch of lips, fingers, scratchy beards, and swelling want thrusted through me, I had begun to think of men solely as a means to an end – easy, reliable finds when it came to fulfilling a need for human connection on a short time table. Plus, I loved sex and the tickle of uncertainty that came with undressing in front of someone for the first 14 time and being desired, frantically, by them. There was a freedom that came with simply not caring who I had sex with, so long as I genuinely wanted to have sex with them, and they agreed to leave shortly after so that this thing we were doing would not be confused with something deeper than strangers-in-the-night knowingly using each other. Often, however, the sex would end, we’d kiss or hug goodbye, and as the door clicked behind them, I’d fall into my bed, still lingering with the sweat and scent of another person, and cry myself to sleep, lonelier than ever, my body a broken, gaping void.

Moving to Tennessee did not change these impulses in me, but instead shapeshifted them into something more intense. With my divorce officially underway, I not only wanted sex and connection to take my mind off things, but I also wanted the possibility of a romantic connection, or even love. Shortly before my move, I began talking to guys from my new town, not wanting to waste a minute, imagining the romance of moving to a new place and immediately falling in love.

Upon arriving, I quickly met up with one of them, but things fizzled shortly after. It turned out fresh new love wasn’t as easy as tripping on synthetic marijuana and watching Schindler’s List with a weird guy and his weird roommate. Still, I was hopeful.

As I searched for jobs, checked out local coffee shops, and explored Nashville, I kept up talking with one of the guys I was really starting to fall for. His name was Eli and he was a musician who, like me, was obsessed with Bob Dylan, and had a talent for the kind of witty banter

I specialized in. Plus, he was cute, tall, and had a head of curly black hair I found strangely sexy.

The weekend before my birthday, he asked if he could come over after work, and I let him. He showed up with the kind of confidence, charisma, and chaotic energy I knew I could fall desperately into love with if I wasn’t careful. Again, zeroing in on my guitar, Eli picked it up and tuned it carefully, pulling a metal slide out of his pocket, and slipping it down 15 his ring finger. He talked about Robert Johnson, BB King, and Son House, while playing licks of the blues music he learned to play, by ear, growing up in southern Alabama. He was an incredible guitarist, sweeping through aching, tragic sounds I’d never heard come from a guitar before, or at least not in person. We talked about the space-time continuum, and he mused over the mathematical equations in stardust, the galaxy, the probability of all things everywhere, happening.

I listened to him play, inching toward him, longing for him to see how painfully drawn I was to him. But we spent the night talking instead and the longer we talked, the more enamored with him

I grew. Finally, after seven hours, we crawled into my bed, exhausted, and he climbed on top of me, the leather strap of his necklace dangling above my chest. And he kissed me. Long, and hard, tasting so minty and delicious, smelling like sex in the best possible way, and my body nearly collapsed in on itself for all the riotous desire coursing through it. It felt like I was dissolving through him, disappearing into the haze of magic he brought into my life that night, that was now fumbling with the top button of my jeans, trying to pull them down. I pressed my hands against his chest and pushed him back, our lips separating for the first time.

“Not yet,” I whispered to him, hot-breathed and uncertain. Why was I stopping this?

“I want you so bad,” he whispered back in his thick, adorable, ‘bama drawl. We kissed again.

“Not tonight,” I said pushing him back up. We stared at each other. He said my eyes were beautiful. I pulled him back into me, my fingers knotting through his hair as I kissed him again.

“Please don’t make me beg,” he whispered, his lips traveling from my mouth to my neck, kissing down my chest. I felt the blood rush through me – the energy of his magnetism, so intoxicating – except, I liked this guy. And the realization hit me, in all its misogynistic, 16 puritanical glory, that men don’t fall in love with girls they fuck on the first date. And I wanted this guy to fall in love with me, or at the very least, see me again.

“Not tonight,” I repeated, softly. He stopped kissing and came back up to look at me.

“Are you sure?” he asked, breathless, and I nodded. We were both smiling, but I could tell he was a bit frustrated. He nodded, kissed my forehead, and rolled to my side.

“Come here,” he said, pulling me into him. We kissed one more time, before I rolled to my side and he put his arms around me. We fell asleep and in the morning he woke up, kissed me goodbye, and promised to text me later to make plans for the following weekend. We shared the same birthday and talked about how fun it would be to spend it together. I was elated.

But he never did call, never texted, and a week later I was distraught with loneliness, resting my head on the chest of a man I didn’t want, didn’t even like, in the same spot I had been a week before, convincing myself I was inching toward something like love. Jerry didn’t talk like Eli, or smell like him, play guitar like him, or turn me on like him. But he was there just the same and we were falling asleep together anyway.

Moments passed and I turned to roll onto my other side to fall asleep. Jerry stirred awake and grabbed my arm, pulling me in to kiss me. His mouth was dry and tasted like ash. My lips responded but just barely, feeling chapped against his. I pulled back.

“I’m tired,” I said.

“Just a little more?” he asked and without hesitation started kissing me again, putting one hand on the back of my head to hold me in place. I wanted desperately to wet my lips, to do something to make this unwanted, unpleasant kissing feel slightly better. Then he pulled his hand from my head and thrust it, abruptly, between my legs, feverishly unbuttoning my jeans. I pushed him back. 17

“I don’t want to, not right now,” I said, meaning it. This was not the hot-and-heavy connection I had with Eli, when all that stopped me was a desire for him to not lose interest. I really didn’t want Jerry to touch me that way, and with my lack of response, I thought it was obvious.

“Ok, ok,” he said, his hands up, slightly defensive. “Can we just kiss?”

I didn’t want to kiss him. It was unpleasant and did nothing for me. But I told him he could kiss me. I thought, I can get through kissing. Kissing a few more minutes wouldn’t kill me and it might spare him some embarrassment. So, he kissed me again and I tried to muster a physical reaction to his touch, searching deep inside for the want I wanted to feel. But I felt nothing except his dry lips smacking into mine, and his hand now slipping inside of my jeans, his fingers now inside of my underwear, and then, quickly, inside of me.

“Stop,” I said as he kissed my neck. “Seriously, not right now.” He pulled his hand back out, disappointed.

“I just think you’re sexy,” he said, frowning.

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling genuinely guilty for disappointing him. I knew he wanted this and had probably expected it, on some level, when I said he could come back for a nap. But the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. I was embarrassed for him and felt sorry I couldn’t muster desire for him. I just wanted the situation to end and for him to leave me alone to sleep, wake up, and move on with my life.

“Can I just see your ass?” he asked and I almost laughed. “Please?” he added.

I could tell, despite the playfulness in his eyes, that he wasn’t kidding. I felt instantly uncomfortable, but at the same time, a little amused. Maybe if I gave him this, that would be 18 enough and he would stop, I thought. So, I rolled onto my stomach, laughing a little, embarrassed by what I was doing.

“Here it is,” I said, awkwardly inching my butt into the air. He grinned, rubbing his hand down my back and over my jeans, which had now fallen slightly down my hips, loose from being unbuttoned a moment earlier. When his hand inched under them to rub across my underwear, I rolled back onto my side, shifting his palm to my hip instead. He kissed me, again, with a renewed force I might have liked if not for the taste of ash in his mouth and the once seemingly harmless pestering quickly morphing into an energy for sex that made me increasingly nervous. He pulled back to look at me, slipping his hand from my hip to unbutton his own jeans, pulling his penis out for me to see. Grabbing my wrist, he forced my hand down to feel his hardness, wrapping my fingers around him and squeezing my hand shut. I didn’t know what to do.

He clutched my hand, moaning, and moved it up and down to stroke him, almost as if he knew I wouldn’t do it myself. I couldn’t believe what he was doing, but I didn’t try to stop it. I’d had guys do things like this before and even though it was unwanted and uncomfortable for me, I knew from experience that as soon as he came it would all be over, and he would leave me alone. But then he pulled his hand away, prompting me to reluctantly keep going on my own, and yanked my jeans down to grope my butt in a tight grip. I squirmed uncomfortably, trying to inch backward, away from him. But suddenly, with force, he rolled me back onto my stomach and got on his knees, climbing over me to straddle my body.

“What are you doing?” I said, quickly growing frantic from the weight of his body on top of me and his hands and penis rubbing across my underwear.

“I just want to rub my dick against your ass,” he said, placing his hands firmly in the

middle of my upper back, crushing me tight against the mattress, and grinding his penis against 19 my body. He was moaning, complimenting the curves of my body, telling me how badly he wanted me. I was starting to become angry and confused, suddenly realizing I couldn’t push him off of me, but still believing he would stop, maybe to ejaculate on my underwear or in his hand, sure he wouldn’t go any further when I so obviously didn’t want him to. He continued rubbing, moaning, slight pants escaping his lips and I laid there silent, unsure what to do, trying not to think too directly about how little control I seemed to have over what was happening to me. With one hand still pressed firmly against my back, his fingertips folded beneath the elastic band of my underwear and he pulled them down, quickly, so that finally he was in direct, skin-to-skin contact with my body.

“Stop it,” I demanded, trying to push myself up, panicking with the realization that I no longer believed he would. But his weight was crushing and unrelenting.

“Shh…it’s okay,” he whispered, rubbing his penis between the folds of my body.

“Don’t –“

But suddenly he was there, his penis forced inside me, both of his hands now on my back, one inching up to grab my hair and pull it, my mind frantic with fear and confusion as the rhythm of his body pounded into mine, my face just barely raised enough so I could catch a breath as my chin pressed painfully into my pillow from his weight pressed painfully into me, and the realization of what he was doing convulsing through me as I no longer had any control, and I knew there was no stopping it with my hands, or my words, or my tears leaking out through my eyelashes, the immediate, inescapable truth that he was raping me, in my own bed, the spinning swirl of thoughts repeating through my mind he is raping you, you are being raped right now, you are now a rape victim, this is what you never thought would happen, he is raping you, you are being raped right now, you are a victim of this. 20

I was crying now, fully, just barely repeating the words, stop, stop, and I’m not sure if it was the tears or suddenly my voice breaking through the fury of all his rabid thrusting, but he did, suddenly, stop.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, breathless.

“I told you to stop!” I choked out, barely able to speak.

“What?” he seemed genuinely confused.

“I told you not to!”

“I thought you wanted me to,” he said, still straddling me, not yet pulling out.

“No, I didn’t want to!” I said, tearfully. And with that, he pulled out and away from me, collapsing next to me on the bed.

“What do you mean you didn’t want to?” he asked, his voice raising in agitation, and possibly fear.

“I told you earlier, I didn’t want to do anything,” I said, sitting up, immediately relieved to be free of him, wiping away tears with the back of my hand.

“Then why were you making out with me and jacking me off?” he was frustrated, confused, maybe even hurt. I didn’t know what to say. Even now, even after what he had just done, I somehow didn’t want to embarrass him.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, adamantly. “I didn’t do anything, Lena. You acted like you wanted to do it. I thought you wanted to,” he paused, “I didn’t rape you.”

But, hadn’t he? When had I indicated I wanted to have sex? What had I done to make him believe that? Or that I wanted anything from him, at all? My mind raced, trying to replay what just happened in my head, questioning what I had done, immediately doubting my own 21 memory of what happened, thirty seconds after it had happened. I was silent, trying to quiet the noise inside, willing him to stop staring at me with his blue eyes, now so dark to me.

“You can’t tell anyone about this,” he said, suddenly, jarring me from my silent escape.

“You can’t tell anyone you invited me over here. I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything.

You can’t tell someone I did something when I didn’t.”

He was scared, I could hear it in his voice. Scared, and possibly guilty, possibly aware, suddenly, of what he had actually done to me, the words he heard but ignored or shushed quiet, the hands that had pushed his own away, the complete lack of arousal evident throughout the body he had just violated. He was scared, aware, and waiting for me to say anything at all to comfort him in some way and assure him everything would be all right, that I would do as he asked and not tell anyone, that this would all just filter away from him, a bad night with a weird girl that cried during sex once.

I didn’t know what to say, so I said I’m sorry.

We moved to the living room, sat on the futon and talked for a while. He asked if I was ok and I said I was, that I was just a damaged girl, and I cried a lot. We talked about other things, but

I don’t remember what. I was raw, uncomfortable, restless inside of my skin. Something needed to happen to make things go back to before, when I was just a sassy girl, and he was just a boy in frumpy clothes who kept me company after a bad day. It was nearly 7am and I was exhausted, my eyes aching from the hours spent awake and crying. He was tired too, but still worried and restless in his own way. We went back to the bedroom to fall asleep, but then he kissed me again, rubbed his hands all over my body, and when he rolled me onto my stomach, pulled my underwear back down one more time, and climbed on top of my body, I told him to grab a condom first, and he did. He ripped it open, tossing the wrapper onto the floor next to my 22 bed, rolled it on over his penis, and once again pushed himself inside of me. As he finished, I stared at the wrapper on the floor, not knowing why I had let this happen, the whole night, but most especially this last part, letting him fuck me less than an hour after he had raped me.

He rolled off of me, grunting and satisfied, this time not asking if I was ok, or even touching me for mutual pleasure. He fell asleep quickly, and I did too. Twenty minutes later, the alarm on his phone went off and he sat at the edge of the bed, putting his shoes back on. I watched him, neither of us speaking. It was unspoken between us, the contract we had sealed by having sex. I couldn’t recognize it at the time, but now I know, we both needed it to not be rape. He needed to believe he hadn’t raped me, and I needed to believe I hadn’t been raped by him, despite everything within me that knew I had. The sex didn’t change anything. It didn’t undo his body crushing mine into submission, his shhhh over the sound of my dissent, or the swirl of acknowledgment rippling through me as he thrusted selfishly in and out of my body, willfully ignoring what he knew was true. That I didn’t want him. I didn’t want him then and I didn’t want him when he tossed the condom wrapper onto the floor an hour later. Neither incident was truly sex. The first was rape, and the second was a desperate plea on both of our parts, especially mine, to pretend it wasn’t. Because, no one would choose to have sex with their rapist, I thought. No one who had truly been raped, anyway.

We didn’t kiss or hug goodbye. I walked him to the door and he said I’ll text you, as so many guys do. When he left the apartment was quiet and I was alone again with the gaping void of my body, not quite feeling like my own. We didn’t talk again. He never texted, thankfully, and I blocked him on the dating site. In the immediate afterward, I went on pretending it never happened, remembering only the “consensual” ending to our time together. I even told friends about the weird guy I met at Waffle House in the middle of the night and they laughed about 23 how random I was, and I laughed about how damaged I was, and I didn’t tell a single person about what really happened for another three-and-a-half-years. But throughout those three-and-a- half-years, every time I heard the word rape in casual conversation, in episodes of Law & Order

SVU, in the statistics that 1 in 5 women are raped in their lifetime (NSVRC), I thought about Jerry, and cigarette ash, and what he had done to me. And I told myself, it couldn’t have been rape, knowing full well that’s all it could ever have been.

Dissecting a Narrative

Growing up, I learned often about the imminent threat of rape. As a girl I learned that rape exists as a constant looming threat to women, a violence of infinite possibility and likelihood that I would always need to keep myself safe from. When I was about fifteen, my grandfather informed me that if were ever attacked I should scream FIRE! at the top of my lungs, because then someone would listen. As he told me this I tried to envision a situation in which I might have to do it.

Immediately I pictured myself getting pulled into a dark alley by a gun- wielding stranger, my clothes torn off as I was raped against a wall next to a dumpster, shouting with all of my strength

FIRE! FIRE! as residents popped their heads out of multi-story apartment buildings, searching for signs of smoke. From what I understood, rape happened exclusively on shadowy streets in shady neighborhoods with strange men in ski masks, or at college parties with frat brothers slipping drugs into solo cups and assaulting unconscious girls on their roommate’s beds.

While both of these violences certainly happen, and horrifically so, with the college party scenario especially common, this understanding of rape as fitting a particular performative mold has a significant influence on how rape victims interpret their own experiences, and how the greater culture at large responds to sexual violence narratives. When we are consistently shown a 24 particular image of what rape is “supposed” to look like, by default we delegitimize any experience that falls outside of that description. This alone makes it difficult for women to recognize their own experience within the framework of “rape,” with these sorts of popularized portrayals of rape found to have a direct impact on how women name their own experience of sexual violence (Johnstone

275). Meaning, if it doesn’t match the image, it must not be rape. However, it also contributes to a more hostile response to rape victims who report assault that may not be seen as “that bad” compared to the absolute worst imaginable possibilities.

In her aptly titled edited collection, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, Roxane

Gay fights back against this notion. She opens by referencing her own victimization as a young teenager, when she was raped by a boy she liked and his group of friends, and her struggle to acknowledge the validity of her experience. She tells us, “for years, I fostered wildly unrealistic expectations of the kinds of experiences worthy of suffering, until very little was worthy of suffering…everything was terrible, but none of it was that bad,” (Gay x). This hierarchy of female harm as result of rape is a common thread in narratives of sexual violence. institutional research, and even public conversations about rape. During the height of the

#MeToo movement, it wasn’t uncommon to hear even the most enlightened circles questioning why a woman didn’t come forward sooner if her experience was so horrible, trying to establish a hierarchy of what was considered “bad enough” sexual behavior to ruin a man’s career. As Elissa

Bassist reflects in her own contribution to Not That Bad, so often for women, “stifling trauma is just good manners,” (Bassist 334).

So, it is no wonder then that the internalization of what constitutes “real” rape, and therefore legitimate trauma worthy of voicing publicly, impacts both a victim’s ability to recognize her rape as valid (let alone report it), and a public’s ability to acknowledge all forms of 25 sexual violence for what they are. Though the two scenarios I spent my pre-rape life associating with rape (violent stranger rape and college party rape) are perhaps the most popular, widely accepted images of legitimate rape, there is also an unspoken effort to delegitimize even these through the cultural prominence of rape myths. Rape myths, which include such beliefs as “she asked for it,” “he didn’t mean to,” “it wasn’t really rape,” and “she lied” (Rollero and Tartaglia) are directly tied to the perceived validity of a victim’s story. In a 2016 study of college students’ perception of the believability of rape victim’s narratives, the findings overwhelmingly concluded that factors associated with rape myths, including the amount of alcohol a victim consumed, her prior sexual history, and her socioeconomic status, heavily factored into how

“believable” her story was found to be, and how much empathy her story was met with (Nason,

Rinehart, Yeater, Newlands and Crawford 321). The study also found a direct connection between male rape myth acceptance and lack of empathy, with men showing greater compassion for perpetrators than victims (Nason et al. 322). Public empathy, then, for women who have experienced sexual violence is inconsistent at best. Which is to say, if rape is most often portrayed as one of these two images and even those are subject to disbelief, instances of sexual violence that take place under different contexts have even less ground for understanding.

So, when as an adult I found myself in the presumed safety of my own bedroom, with a man I had soberly invited into my home, kissed, and sexually touched, forcing himself inside of me with my face buried in my pillow and the voice inside me screaming for release, I had no framework for understanding the situation as rape, and no wherewithal to shout FIRE! Though by this time I understood that saying no and asking him to stop were clear indicators that I was not consenting, I still found so much fault in my own behavior, it felt unfair to hold him responsible instead of me. I spent the next three-and-a-half years trying to internally unpack what 26 had happened with Jerry and if I had any right, whatsoever, to call it what I instinctively knew it was, bearing in mind that during the incident itself I was able to fully and thoroughly understand it at as such. I found myself thinking about the incident often, in rapid, cinematic flashes of light and shadow, of certainty and uncertainty, never lingering long enough to critically dissect it, but recalling it often enough to never move beyond it either. Sometime during those three-and-a-half years I whiplashed between total certainty that it was not rape, that memory and vulnerability had forced me to exaggerate the details, and the reluctant certainty that it was, but that something outside of me wanted me to believe it was not. While I still wrestle with the former, I now accept the latter as evidence of growing up in a pervasive rape culture which normalizes sexual violence to such a degree that it can be difficult to distinguish it from regular, heterosexual sex.

The experience of being raped is many things, including highly confusing. While rape is most often framed as a frightening, sometimes violent, and frequently traumatizing experience that can forever inform the way an individual views their body, sense of safety, worldview, self- worth, autonomy, relationships with other people, and sexuality, I believe the perplexing nature of bodily violation, how it is experienced and understood, is too often overlooked. The sheer confusion being raped generates, not only about the incident itself – what to call it and how to respond to it – but what factors contribute to those things, is a perspective wrought with opportunity to further dissect how and why sexual assault is so normalized.

In recalling my rape in full, unwavering detail nine years later, after spending the past several years studying sexual violence, a few details stick out to me as noteworthy in understanding how gendered power imbalance around sexual autonomy, responsibility, and consent, informed both mine and Jerry’s behavior all those years ago, and my own confusion around the incident to this day. Here’s what I could glean from my own narrative: 27

• As an early-twenties woman with extensive sexual experience before meeting Eli or Jerry, I

implicitly understood the difference between sex I regretted or had for reasons aside from

pure sexual desire, and sexual assault. In describing my use of sex as a coping mechanism

during my divorce, I recognized that though sex did not always lead to positive emotional

outcomes, the vast majority of sexual partners I had prior to meeting both of these men had

engaged with me in enthusiastic, clearly-defined sex acts. Though anecdotal, this pushes

back against the all too common rape myth that women confuse regrettable sex with sexual

assault.

• Despite this, my sexual autonomy was in question before I ever even met Jerry, when

during my interaction with Eli I described my own struggle to circumvent the gendered

sexual script that sleeping with a man would prevent him from forming a romantic interest

in me. This presupposes a puritanical view of how sex is understood between men and

women, and what my sexual responsibility as a woman entailed, including calculated

chastity. The greater point to unpack here is that my sexual desire was not in this incident

the primary factor lending to my own decision-making about whether or not to have sex.1

1 In their research on college student’s understanding of consent, Jozkowski, Marcantonio, and Hunt interviewed college men and women about their sexual consent behaviors, with the endorsement of sexual double-standards as a major occurring theme. One of these includes the belief that “good girls do not have sex,” evidenced in one male participant comparing finding a girlfriend with buying a new car: “’You don’t want a lot of mileage on it’”…After college, he said, ‘you want a wife and not a woman who’s done all these people.’” Along these lines, both men and women endorsed the notion of women ‘having standards.’ “Men stated that women who ‘respect’ themselves, and do not have sex with ‘just anybody,’ ‘have standards,’ whereas women who have sex with ‘a lot’ of men, or from whom it is easy to obtain sex, do not” (239). The authors found that fourteen of the seventeen women interviewed referenced avoiding or refusing sex to “demonstrate they have standards,” while seven women described regretting sex they had actually wanted to have for fear of looking like they didn’t have standards (239). They go onto share that some male participants believe women resist sex to look good, and that men have to push past their refusal (240). 28

• The experience of Eli respecting my sexual boundaries reaffirmed my belief that even in

sexual scenarios involving virtual strangers who had great chemistry and desire for each

other, it was safe to assume that voicing non-consent would result in the end of the sexual

scenario. This should, of course, be true in all cases.

• As things grew physical with Jerry and I felt increasingly uncomfortable, I silenced myself

to some degree for fear of “embarrassing” him by rejecting his touch more firmly. I

reluctantly “consented” to kissing him, when I did not want to, in hopes that it would

appease him while protecting his ego.2 My reaction was embedded with an embodied

knowledge that men sometimes force women into uncomfortable sexual situations that only

end when the man reaches orgasm, mirroring a male-centric view of even consensual sex.3

• When Jerry grew more forceful, I utilized several refusal techniques including pushing him

away, shifting physical positions, stating my disinterest (i.e. “I’m tired”), directly refusing

(saying no and asking him to stop), and eventually even crying. Research has found that the

use of these direct refusal techniques leads to greater “rape acknowledgment” on the part of

the victim. Which might explain why I immediately

2 Kitzinger and Frith conducted a study with 58 young women from high school and college, learning how they communicate refusal and the reasons behind why they don’t ‘just say no.’ Most of their reasons included not wanting to hurt a boy’s feelings, or feeling like it was ‘too late’ to refuse something, learning to put off sex through indicating no without actually saying it. According to their findings, young women’s sexual communication mirrors how they are socialized to communicate in life with politeness, submissiveness, passivity, and a preoccupation with others’ feelings at the forefront of their concern (296). Additionally, Jozkowski et al. found that college-aged men and women adhere to the belief that sex is a conquest and that women “owe” men sex as reward for his effort (238). 3 Writer Jill Filipovic explains, “female sexuality is portrayed as passive, while male sexuality is aggressive. Sex itself is constructed around both the penis and male pleasure – male/female intercourse begins when a man penetrates a woman with his penis, and ends when he ejaculates…sex is further painted as something that men do to women, instead of a mutual act between two equally powerful actors,” (18). 29

understood the experience as rape, but cannot explain my immediate distrust of my own

memory.4

• As soon as Jerry stopped and we began discussing what had happened, I immediately

began to question my own memory, wondering if I had misremembered the situation. This

is indicative of internalized rape myths regarding the credibility of victim memory, or point

of view, while also speaking to the notion of women as passive sexual actors who must

defer to men for sexual understanding and direction (Filipovic 18).

• Jerry immediately directed me to not tell anyone about the incident, verbalizing his

assertion that he did not rape me, presumably out of fear of legal recourse. He was

adamant about this and I implicitly agreed.

• Afterward, I apologized to Jerry which not only served as an early indication that I would

shoulder the burden of responsibility for what happened for years to come, but that I had

again internalized victim-blaming narratives, and responsibility for male sexual comfort

above my own.

• Finally, we, or at least I, believed that by having “consensual” sex after the incident, we

were erasing the incident itself – a belief built on the presupposition that consensual sex

once, negates non-consensual sex always. This engagement in “consensual” sex may also

have stemmed from a place of wanting to reaffirm my own agency, after it was taken from

me5.

4 Cook and Messman-Moore classify resistance strategies in four categories: forceful physical resistance, non-forceful resistance, forceful verbal resistance, and non-forceful verbal resistance (508). Women who successfully avoided attempted rape utilize 2.53 of these strategies (508). Therefore, voicing non-consent and still getting raped can lead to greater psychological stress because it indicates a lack of agency (511) and leads to higher rates of rape acknowledgment (519). 5 Research suggests that women do not always voice non-consent in situations when they do not want to have sex in order to avoid becoming a rape victim. This avoidance of explicitly saying no is built on the belief that a sexual assault is only rape if it takes places after a woman has verbally dissented (Cook and 30

Though the answer may now be obvious, asking myself today why I didn’t report Jerry for raping me, my answer is the same as it was then.

I just couldn’t.

While years later with the backing of scholarship I am able to critically evaluate this experience for what it was, this does not change the fact that I still struggle with blaming myself for the incident happening in the first place, feeling uncomfortable openly using the word rape, and questioning if I was complicit because I did not hold him accountable in the moment. In their Burkean analysis of blame and guilt in cases of sexual assault, French and Brown found that when victims attempt to maintain agency after being attacked, they have to then grapple with the belief that they contributed to their own victimization. However, if they attempt to blame the man there is also guilt for feeling as if someone else is taking the “fall” for something that is automatically their own fault (10). They explain, “either the survivor is at fault for having the wrong attitude towards her attacker and/or failing to prevent her rape, or she must come to terms with herself as an agent whose will is not the only force that can control her body,” (9).

I believed I made the mistake by allowing Jerry into my home, believed I “failed” at preventing my own rape, and then felt I contributed to my own victimization by having sex with him afterward, thus leaving me conflicted in how I would name the violation I experienced. While these beliefs certainly stem from the internalized misogyny of rape myths, Filipovic writes that in a rape culture in which women are taught to live in constant fear of sexual violence, focusing on the victim’s behavior reminds women that their behavior is ultimately what will either lead to or prevent rape:

Messman-Moore 510), lending to the idea that unwanted sex for women is unavoidable, and it is their responsibility to keep it from turning into “rape.” 31

The focus on the victim’s behavior, rather than the perpetrator’s, sends the message that a

woman must be eternally on guard, lest she bring sexual assault onto herself. The ‘if only

she had…’ response to rape serves the valuable psychological purpose of allowing other

women to temporarily escape that sense of endangerment. If we convince ourselves that

we would never have done what she did, that her choices opened her up to assault and we

would have behaved differently, then we can feel safe. (24)

Both realities are disempowering, complicated, and confusing, making my ability to confidently recognize this experience as rape all the more difficult.

So, I couldn’t report Jerry for raping me. I just couldn’t.

In the years leading up to this incident I believed with marrow-level certainty that if I were ever raped, I would boldly, bruise-faced and bloody-lipped, report my assault to the authorities and not stop screaming for justice until it was handed to me thoroughly and dramatically in a courtroom, with my rapist dragged away in handcuffs, never to be seen again. This certainty underscored my every interaction with the idea of rape prior to experiencing it. Rape was violent, gruesome, unambiguous, and most often committed by strange, monstrous men, and rape victims were frustrating, foolish, and weak not to report it, the nuanced reasons as to why they might not report never made clear to me. In the same vain in which women are blamed for their own assault, they are also blamed for the outcome of both reporting and not reporting their rape as part of the cyclical nature of a rape culture in which a woman choosing not to report is accused of being complicit not only in her own rape, but the inevitable rape of other women at the hands of her rapist, while simultaneously being told to be careful, because reporting a rape can ruin a man’s life.

In both cases, the responsibility remains with the victim to 32 first avoid rape and if she fails at that, to then report the rape, but only under the right circumstances.

While the general fear of ruining a man’s life certainly comes into question (though is debatable given the egregiously low rates of criminal conviction), reporting rape is far more complicated than this, including the all too common (and all too valid) fear of not being believed

(Nason et al. 230). But before reporting a rape, a woman must first accept that what happened to her was not only wrong, but criminal. Not only criminal, but assault. Not only assault, but rape. To understand a sexual assault as rape, the incident itself typically must reflect a certain cultural script of what rape “looks” and “feels” like. In fact, research has found that women are often only comfortable using the word “rape” when their experience is consistent with popularized depictions of rape, and even then may take over a year to do so (Harris 2011). This may be due in part to the fact that naming an experience as rape requires a willingness to recognize the man, the perpetrator in question, as a rapist. These two tasks – naming an experience rape and recognizing a man as a rapist – go hand-in-hand. While ‘rape’ connotates a certain expectation of experience, ‘rapist’ implies a degree of monstrous humanity reserved for only the sickest, worst of our world.6 This is why some of the most fundamental reasons women do not report rape boil down to one word: context.

The Role of Context

What do I mean when I say context? I mean, reliving an incident over and over, not sure how loudly you said no, or if you actually asked him to stop, or if you were even audible in your silent worry of how he would react if you said anything, at all, out loud. I mean violation,

6 In O’Hara’s examination of news media she found that reports about rape overwhelmingly refer to perpetrators as “beast” and “pervert,” distancing them from “normal men,” (248). 33 unwanted penetration, no gun to your head, no knife to your throat, no explicit threat to your life, but just the fear, the crippling fear of your body splayed out before a man who wants nothing more than to pretend it’s just him and your body, and you aren’t even there at all. I mean his friendship meaning more than his fingers in your underwear, or under your shirt when you fell asleep next to him on a stormy night, and you wake up too afraid to move, worried you’ll embarrass him, while fearful he may not stop. I mean not wanting to hurt his feelings. I mean not crying in the shower afterward, not scrubbing your skin until it is raw and bleeding, not feeling any dirtier than you did before, but feeling less your own every time it happens, every day you walk through the world a woman. I mean kissing his forehead, meeting his family, baking him strawberry birthday cake, nursing his dreams in the heart of your hands, encouraging him, seeing him cry for the first time, screaming your favorite song together at the top of your lungs with the windows down and the heaviness of everything flitting away through the strands of your own hair, whipping wildly around you both. I mean every reason you let it go, every reason you pretend it didn’t bother you, every time you tell yourself “guys are just like that,” every time you said “I love you” loud enough for him to hear and he said it back loud enough for you to ache, I mean every way in which he is not a monster.

Context. The degree of violence, the level of your own resistance, the severity of your reaction to it, and the many ways in which you love and trust the men who hurt you.

Despite the prevalence of the stranger-rape image in how women are taught to protect themselves from rape, 51.1% of female rape victims report being raped by an intimate partner, and

40.8% by an acquaintance (NSVRC) with women “more likely to be victimized in their own homes or in the home of someone they know,” than anywhere else (Filipovic 23). The “stranger- in-the-alley” scenario is not only statistically far less likely, but also dangerously functions to 34 keep women from identifying the significance of sexual assault in their own trusting, often loving relationships, that take place in the safety of their own homes. This is evidenced clearly in research about heterosexual consent communication. The context of a loving friendship or romantic relationship makes it additionally difficult for a woman to advocate for herself, as she is less likely to voice resistance for fear of hurting the man’s feelings (Cook and Messman-Moore 509). So, if rape acknowledgment is more prevalent in women who voice non-consent, and women assaulted by friends and romantic partners generally avoid doing this, it is understandable that this is just one factor, of many, that contribute to a woman’s inability to clearly understand what happened to her in these cases.

Victims are not the only ones who struggle to acknowledge relationally-based assault as valid, punishable forms of sexual violence. Nason et al. report:

Rape cases involving a victim and perpetrator who knew each other are less likely to be

reported, and, if reported, are less likely to result in arrest, prosecution, and conviction than

rapes involving a stranger. Women who have been assaulted by an acquaintance or an

intimate partner also are less likely to seek medical care than women who have been

assaulted by a stranger. Furthermore, individuals convicted of raping a stranger receive

longer sentences than those who were convicted of raping an acquaintance when the

degree of force reported during the assault was taken into account. Finally, lab research has

demonstrated that when the relationship between the victim and perpetrator is depicted as

being more intimate, as compared to less intimate, participants rated the rape as less severe

and the victim as being more responsible and recommend a more lenient sentence. (320) 35

If statistically 91.1% of rapes are performed by an acquaintance or intimate partner, this serves as a further reminder that most rape cases are not taken seriously. In her exploration of male sexual identity, bell hooks addresses this lack of critical engagement with sexual violence, writing:

Underlying this assumption [that men have to have sex] is the belief that if men are not

sexually active, they will act out or go crazy…this is why rape – whether date rape, marital

rape, or stranger rape – is still not deemed a serious crime…the assumption that ‘he’s gotta

have it’ underlies much of our culture’s acceptance of male sexual violence. (The Will to

Change, 77)

Bay-Cheng and Eliseo-Arras refer to these gender norms and expectations of both male sexual needs, and romantic relationships between men and women as the ‘cultural scaffolding’ of rape. They include “wishing to maintain a relationship; feeling that a male partner was aroused to a point of no return; partner pressure – ranging from sweet-talking to explicit threats; fear of negative partner response…” and more, as normalized factors contributing to relationally-based rape (387). While victims of this sort of partner-based sexual violence may not know what to call these experiences of assault, scholars have been trying to come up with a proper “name” for it – gray rape, consensual unwanted sex (Hakvåg), unjust sex (Cahill), and unacknowledged rape

(Johnstone), for starters. But for something that is supposed to be so objective, that is legally, criminally, culturally inscribed as obvious, why is it so difficult to name an incident for what it truly is? And what are the factors that limit a victim’s ability to name her rape, both internally, psychologically, linguistically, and rhetorically? Is it a limit on what we are willing to classify or call rape, or is it a limit on the language itself? 36

A Revisionist History

Despite everything working against me, the self-blame, the “imperfect” rape scenario of inviting a man over, kissing him, and having sex with him even after he assaulted me, I was still eventually able to name what Jerry did to me, rape. During conference presentations and in conversations with community partners, I have spoken these words out loud and told perfect strangers that I was raped – sometimes confident calling it what it is, other times through an uncomfortable lump in my throat, past the whisper within telling me I’m still the one to blame. It took years of personal turmoil and self-searching to name this incident rape, and even though that didn’t result in me reporting the incident to anyone, turning myself into another nameless statistic, I believe the result of this was something far more profound.

The action of acknowledging this rape, naming it for what it was, was an important and necessary stepping stone for me to begin identifying other incidents from my life as sexually violent. Incidents that I had always, for some reason, brushed off as, if not acceptable then normal, simply because they happened with men I loved and trusted, rather than strangers like Jerry.

Incidents that would leave deep, permanent marks on my sense of self, my ability to experience intimacy, and my overall sense of safety in the world.

Three-and-a-half years after Jerry raped me the morning after my twenty-third birthday, I was able to call it by its name, openly and out loud, for the first time while sitting in a car, in a dark parking lot with a man I had just met, and would soon fall in love with. He was the first person I would ever talk to about my rape and the last person who would ever sexually violate me so horribly, I would feel the need four years later to explore the uncertainty of what he did to me in a book-length project, seeking answers to the permanent damage he left behind in his wake, wanting desperately to understand why the trauma of forced, unwanted sex in a 37 relationship does not seem to have a name that fits, or a word with the same powerful linguistic energy as ‘rape’ to describe it. He was the first person who made me see that Jerry was not the only person who had raped me, and would not be the last. He was the impetus for my realization that three out of four of my most serious relationships, including my marriage to Carl, included sexual violations and violences I still do not know how to name, while also including strawberry birthday cake, singing at the top of my lungs, and exchanging I love you with heartbreaking tenderness.

In her foreword to the second edition of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, comedian Margaret Cho starts by writing, “for too long we’ve been shamed for being sexual, and we’ve been denied the language to describe our experiences,” (1).

This, in my view, is the great hypocrisy of how our culture responds to sexual violence, and all the indication we need that there is still so much work to be done to understand it. While this project started with my desire to explore the rhetorical underpinnings of consent communication in

American culture, it quickly evolved into a need to uncover the language women actually use to describe their experiences with sexual violence, through an exploration of my own journey to and from naming one incident from my life rape, while continuing to doubt the validity of every other sexually traumatizing thing that has happened to me. But I knew this journey would involve talking to other women, hearing their stories, and coming together in our similar, yet startlingly contextualized experiences of non-consent. I knew it would require stepping outside of myself to research realities of our culture I have mostly avoided sinking into in hopes of avoiding the rage- filled frustration the process would no doubt induce. And I knew, without question, it would involve telling stories I have never told before. Therefore, throughout the second and third chapters of this project, I will continue with this autoethnographic exploration 38 of my own relational history, along with a discussion of the feminist theories and scholarship that help contextualize it. Following this, in chapter four I will share summaries of women’s narratives gathered in my community-based research, as well as excerpts from Appendices A-D which feature poetic explorations of the women’s narratives gathered in my community-based research, utilizing the feminist methodology The Listening Guide. And finally, in chapter five I will conclude with an in-depth analysis of these narratives to offer overall takeaways and implications moving forward.

What I did not know when I began this work was how revisiting my body as a site of memory, where pain still lingers, and truth still exists somewhere deep in the folds of my need to forget, is how both the literal and not-so-literal damage to that body would disrupt the very process of working to understand it. In the months leading up to beginning this book, it became clear to me that the challenge of writing my stories as if they are only about sexual violence is that the contexts are a necessary component to the narrative. The contexts are the violence.

Revisiting the experiences seeded deep within me with a recognition of the contexts that spurred them into being, still present in every sexual interaction I have to this day, and facing the simultaneous truth of both how much and how little I have survived, has reawakened an unrest within me I have long attempted to ignore, or cover up with productivity. I must acknowledge, now, that I am neither detached, nor objective in my understanding of sexual violence. Instead I come to this work equipped with the embodied understanding of how it feels to have my love weaponized, to be shackled by shame, and to crave certainty of experience deep in my bones. I come to it as ready as I can be to pour out from within a profound relief and sorrow in knowing, I am not the only one, you are not the only one, and soon everyone else will know it too.

This is my revisionist history. 39

Fig. 2. Blackout Poem 2. 40

CHAPTER II. LOVE IS NOT SUPPOSED TO HURT

I first heard this Oprah-ism as a teenager, watching her talk show after school, as she spoke with victims of domestic violence. I still remember the cadence of her voice, the assertive, clear tone we all know she speaks in, and her confident declaration of this thing we are told is an undeniable, obvious truth. Love, that beautiful, intangible thing everyone everywhere writes poetry about, is not supposed to hurt us.

The crowd applauded as Oprah stared directly into the eyes of every person in America and spoke this truth into being. But even then, as a high school junior surviving the persistent throes of emotional, romantic distress common to adolescence, I questioned the truth in this statement. Love is a burning thing, June Carter wrote, and Johnny Cash sang. It didn’t seem possible that something as intense and all-consuming as L-O-V-E would not hurt, for just the challenge of harboring it inside of myself seemed an inscrutable fate to bear. Just existing while carrying the weight of such emotional attachment to someone else seemed detrimental to my long-term health, and yet, I couldn’t help but crave it. If love didn’t hurt, then what was I actually feeling in those early relationships, and why was everyone around me who claimed to be in love, actively suffering under the weight of it?

“In my twenties and early thirties I was confident I knew what love was all about,” bell hooks writes in All About Love: New Visions. “Yet every time I ‘fell in love’ I found myself in pain” (147). In this philosophical exploration of love and all its foundations and forms, hooks addresses the very belief I held onto that called into question whether or not Oprah was right about love. Is love ever able to exist without pain? Can it exist without hurt? Though hooks is known for many things beyond this including her intersectionality, pedagogy, and style and form 41 of scholarship, for me personally, hooks is most remarkable for her commitment to dissecting and understanding love in a culture that fundamentally misunderstands and appropriates it for otherworldly gain. As with so many things in life, hooks identifies our early exposure to “love” as the guiding force behind how we experience love throughout the remainder of our lives. She writes:

Learning faulty definitions of love when we are quite young makes it difficult to be loving

as we grow older (5)…We are not born knowing how to love anyone, either ourselves, or

somebody else. However, we are born able to respond to care. As we grow we can give

and receive attention, affection, and joy. Whether we learn how to love ourselves and

others will depend on the presence of a loving environment. (53)

For hooks, childhood abuse and neglect cemented her perspective on how to give and receive love.

She describes an upbringing with parents who gave and withdrew affection as punishment, and physically abused her, and her siblings as the dysfunctional relational dynamic that followed her through her most serious romantic partnerships. Care was always to be earned, affection was never to be assumed, and the action of love was forever one-sided.

Though I am not here to blame my parent’s divorce for my own struggles, I can’t talk about my own relationships without first recognizing that the splintering of my family, and the first-hand witnessing of a love turned toxic can only do so much to prepare a child for healthy relational dynamics. I understand that there are layers to everything and that a million different simultaneous truths that can co-exist and contradict each other, especially when it comes to relationships. This has only become more evident throughout my life as I’ve sought the answers to my own most burning questions about the nature of love. Questions that go beyond “should love hurt” and bleed over into the territory of “how much should love hurt” and “how much is 42 too much hurt.” So I don’t draw this out to blame my parents, but rather to blame an early breakage for the cracks it left in the foundation, the fragmental knowledge of what it means to love and to be loved, remaining unclear to me throughout much of my adult life.

Throughout my childhood, romantic love had only looked like one thing. Through screaming, fighting, cruelty, and betrayal, I watched my parents’ love disintegrate around me, their marriage dissolving much before I was even born, then ripping straight down the middle as soon as

I was old enough to process the meaning of family. Their pain radiated around and through me, frightening me into submission, my siblings and I huddled together crying as their voices rose, and furniture was flipped and thrown. My father storming out, slamming the door, and the plant my mother threw after him shattering against it into a million terra cotta pieces, as she collapsed on the floor in despair, each one of us rushing toward her, arms out, swallowing our fear and pain for the sake of comforting her. This was love in its rawest form: my parents driven to rage, and us children burying our own pain out of concern for others. For years I used both of these lessons as reference points for the madness love can drive people to, proof of how intense love is supposed to be and feel. For how normal it is to hurt through love and how volatile love can sometimes be.

When after fifteen years of marriage my parents divorced and my mother quickly remarried in the space of eight months, this was proof to me that love is destiny-driven, in spite of the struggle to find it. Barry is my soul mate, she used to say, though now her memory denies it. A soul mate, a twin flame, a figment of romantic imagination – for years I used this as a reference point,

Barry coming into our lives with unapologetic hostility and open dislike for all of us – me, ten, my sister thirteen, and my brother fifteen years old. For years we all held onto the hope that as Oprah, or Dr. Phil, or some other daytime talk show host had said, it takes seven 43 years for a blended family to truly blend. Seven years, half of a childhood, to wait for a family to finally start working, all clinging to the one core belief that it will get better. But blending was not a possibility. As hooks describes from her own experience, there are men who are raised with a firm interest and investment in being loved, with little concern for giving love (10). This was Barry.

For my mother’s purposes, a man she could pore endless energy and love into, without ever receiving it back. For mine, a step father who I could pore endless desperation for loving acceptance and acknowledgment into, with only cold disinterest, and hostile contempt in return.

But as I learned to make myself quiet and small in his presence, this became another reference point for love. No matter how unhappy or unloving, no matter how dissatisfied, ignored, or neglected, it will get better.

Though my father moved on and into his own new marriage with my supportive and always well-intended stepmother, his physical absence from my home, and the constant jarring between he and my mother throughout my childhood left me in a constant state of anxiety. After the divorce, my siblings and I became the currency, the power exchanged every other weekend, the bargaining chip for regaining balance after the destabilizing of divorce. I do not mean this in any reductive way, as I can only imagine the deep pain my parents were in as they experienced the ache for their children whenever we were gone. But the weight of guilt that pervaded my every phone call with my father for why I wasn’t visiting more, and every conversation with my mother as I tentatively asked if I could spend more of Christmas vacation with my father, led to the conclusion that I was the primary source of pain in their lives, and any advocating on behalf of my own needs would just complicate the matter further.

These family dynamics are of course only one component of how we learn to love. Still,

attachment theory suggests “kids who are securely attached to their adult caregivers will, as 44 adults, most likely attach securely to their romantic partners, and kids who are insecurely attached to their adult caregivers will, as adults, most likely attach insecurely to their romantic partners,” (Nagoski 139). Attachment styles, Nagoski explains, are the ways in which we connect to those in our lives, including family members, friends, and romantic partners. While half of

American adults are believed to have secure, healthy attachment styles, the other half struggle with either anxious or avoidant attachment, both characterized by unhealthy relational impulses which make healthy bonds difficult to foster and open a person up for discontent and even abuse (140).

But it would be a long time before any understanding of my own attachment style, or even critical evaluation of my childhood, and gendered power dynamics, would become clear to me in dissecting the many reasons why relationships in my life followed unique – yet similar – patterns of abuse, distrust, and toxicity. As I grew into an adult, my child then teen heart explored love in its own child, then teen way. Teen dramas, pop music, and The Notebook, all repackaged the same system of what it means to love. The Dawson and Joey “soul-mates-at- fifteen” saga shoved down all 90s-kids throats (despite her infinitely better, less toxic options), Britney Spears singing “I was born to make you happy,” on her first album at sixteen years old, Allie and Noah slapping each other in passionate angst, and me at twelve years old kissing my Joshua Jackson poster before bed, praying I’d grow up to look just like a teen idol, and practicing my first kiss on the back of my hand, like every girl has done since the beginning of time. These are all ways I internalized and reflected the pop culture I was consuming. The idea that love can drive people to madness, which I originally came to understand from my family dynamic, was reinforced in the media all around me.

The near religious belief I had in the idea of soul mates, understanding that no matter how toxic, or unhealthy something was, whether or not it was 45

‘destined to be’ was all that mattered in the end. These messages were, and still are, both exciting and inescapable.

As popular culture continues to expand to include not only movies, TV, magazines, pop music, and music videos, but social media as well, research about its impact on adolescents is increasing. Given the wide array of factors that impact an individual’s understanding of romantic relationships, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly how heavy an effect popular culture has on early perceptions of relationships. However, studies show that when it comes to romance, pop culture consistently reinforces gender stereotypes, including the hyper sexualization of women, the sexual dominance of men, and strong adherence of gender roles in romantic relationships (Bogt, Engels,

Bogers, and Klosterman 845; Kulkarni, Porter, Mennick, and Gil-Rivas 547). This is even greater among African-American adolescents, as media targeted to Black audiences shows an even stronger prevalence for gender-based power as a normal part of relationships between men and women (Kulkarni et al. 547). This knowledge begs the question – is media the cause of such subscription to gender roles, or simply a reflection of what has always been there?

“Our ideas of what is and is not romantic can shape our behavior in ways that limit our agency,” (Popova 108). If we believe angst is romantic, or if we buy into the notion that love is by nature both hard and earned, we may go into relationships ready and willing to ignore whatever red flags are wildly waving directly in our faces, begging to be noticed. As I grew older, my understanding of love could be whittled down to the few “truths” I held onto when it came to relationships: love can be volatile, frightening, and madness-inducing; it can be cold, hostile, and guilt-inducing; but it will get better and in the meantime all that matters is finding a soul mate, becoming worthy of their love, and fulfilling my purpose in life of pleasing them. Also, Oprah doesn’t know what she’s talking about. 46

What I failed to realize at the time was that what Oprah really meant was that someone you love should never intentionally hurt you and call it love. And while hurt in love may be incidental, it also should not be a necessary component to the system of love in the first place. A love that excuses or worse relies on hurt is not love at all but something much, much darker. This is the truth I would spend the first three decades of my life trying to learn, while consistently confronted with relationships that would tell me otherwise.

First Love, Then Marriage

I first met Carl in 2007, when I was an eighteen-year-old virgin, and not proud of it, first year college student eager to meet a man who would want me as much as I wanted to be wanted by him. Carl was twenty-four, an employee of the university I attended, funny in a hopeful- stand-up- comic kind of way, and significantly more experienced than me in all things sex and dating. We met by chance when I filled in for another student representative at a meeting Carl was also attending. Afterward, he followed me down the long staircase in the student union building, calling after me. I stopped and waited for him to catch up. At 6’4 and 350 pounds, Carl towered over me, the body of a former football player, with the warm, friendly smile of a twenty- something man trying to flirt with a girl. We chatted for a few minutes then parted ways. Later he would tell me, and anyone who would listen, that sitting across from me in that meeting all he could think was that is my future wife, this is the girl I’m going to marry. It was love at first sight, he’d say, with a romantic certainty I have spent the years since trying to keep from perverting into entitlement. Once we were married I would often reflect back on this, wondering what exactly Carl had in mind when he saw me as his ‘future wife,’ and what expectations he held in his heart that I would later fail to live up to. But at the time, this was the ultimate romantic notion. A joy that fit my fantasy of soulmates and happy endings. 47

Still, it took a few months for Carl to convince me to go out with him. It’s not that I wasn’t interested – it’s that I was eighteen and he was twenty-four, which made him seem ancient and me feel hopelessly naïve. He also didn’t fit the fantasy I had about meeting boys at college. I imagined falling into a devastating affair with some gangly, bearded boy with an unironic passion for poetry and a dark side only to be cured by the shimmering brightness of love I would bring to him, the manic-pixie-dream-girl he had waited for all twenty-years of life. Not a grown man, with early glitters of silver in his sideburns, who didn’t have a literary bone in his body. But it occurred to me that the sexual and romantic attention Carl was giving me might not always be available to me, a girl with stretch marks, hereditary chubbiness, and a deeply embedded belief that if I wasn’t married with children by twenty-three like my mother had been, it’d probably never happen. So, we spent time connecting, chatting through AOL instant messenger and poking each other on

Facebook – the ‘swipe right’ of 2007, if you will. Finally, after months of pursuit, I agreed to go on a date with him. Five weeks later, we had sex – my first time – in a hotel room three miles from my parents’ house.

In many ways, Carl was a great boyfriend. Though it’s hard to remember now, almost ten years after our divorce, all of the specific reasons I fell in love with him, what I do know is that he was mostly kind to me, supportive, and made me feel sexy and beautiful all the time, despite my many insecurities. He was fun, happy, a beautiful dreamer coming up with plans for what life would be like when we were older and married, with a home of bright-eyed children. He’d go on and on about how endlessly happy we would be together, the kind of house we would buy, the careers we both might have, the breed of puppy we’d bring home for our kids, a highly- anticipated surprise. Carl had an unparalleled love for dogs and every time he saw one, he smiled.

Not a quiet smile, like he was embarrassed to be boundlessly excited about something, in 48 the way so many men in our culture are taught to be, but a big wide grin, like a little kid bubbling with unrelenting joy. This is one of the things I remember, so clearly to this day, loving about him.

Plus, our sex life was beyond anything I could have hoped for. Carl cared deeply about my enjoyment, always making sure I was satisfied, wanting to try new things, and explore anything I craved. We would spend as much time as possible in bed together, touching, sweating, collapsing into each other, then repeating.

On weekends I would visit him at his parents’ house where he lived in his high school bedroom, a disappointing reality he explained away by the cost of living in the area, and spotty employment history (shortly after we started dating, he was fired from the job at my university, only explaining why with a simple “she was a bitch,” in reference to the boss he struggled to respect). Each morning his mother made us chocolate chip pancakes and while Carl watched football with his father, his mom and I would talk for hours about the missed opportunities of her life – the journalism career she never had, the independence she never found, having gotten married in her early twenties, and immediately starting a family of four boys and no girls. Carl’s father, a gruff Vietnam vet whose pain and rage permeated through every interaction he had with his family, seemed to make life miserable, with the brutality of his insults and verbal abuse directed at Carl’s mother increasing in severity with every beer she handed him. Afterward, we’d go upstairs and I would cry to Carl, who never seemed to know what I was talking about.

“It’s like she is a slave to him; her entire life is about making him happy and he never is.”

“She likes it,” Carl would say. “Taking care of a family of boys – she’s not unhappy.” But

her world scared me. I imagined a life like hers, starting out so hopeful, wanting to make a difference, to write my way into existence, but instead meeting a man I thought was beautiful, falling in love and getting married, with the reality of my sacrifice heavy in every 49 subsequent year of my life, feeling my spirit and humanity squelched out of me as I was actively ignored, or told to shut up and cook, by a family that didn’t seem to know a single thing about me, who crushed beer cans in their fists, spit venom at each other – no one ever quite happy unless they were watching football. So whenever, in my urgency at nineteen to spend time with my boyfriend and not his mother, I grew tired of the hours I spent talking with her, I reminded myself that from what I could tell, my visits were the only time she got to talk to anyone who was interested in her as a human being and not as a servant to be talked down to.

I knew Carl had a problem with drinking when we got married. Amid all the good in our relationship there were moments peppered with pain. Nights working late in my dorm, writing papers and studying, then a phone call interrupting the silence and suddenly Carl slurring through the speaker, his voice lazy, speaking in cursive, his tongue too fat with liquor to stay inside the lines. He called me a whore, a slut, a dirty bitch, a cunt, and I cried not understanding why.

Attending a party in South Philadelphia with all of his work buddies egging him on, watching him get so wasted he couldn’t remember what hotel we were staying in, and I found my way home, alone at 2am, heard him stumble in at dawn with a six-pack in hand, ready to drink some more.

Watching David Letterman at his parent’s house, Carl drunk on vodka straight from the bottle, telling me he would fuck me no matter what I said, only stopping when his parents came home. No matter what happened, the next day he’d beg for forgiveness, and claim not to remember what he said or what he did. He’d send me flowers, bring me gifts, beg me to forget that he was a monster when he drank, but still loved me more than anything, deep inside where the alcohol couldn’t reach. After a year of this, I told him if he didn’t stop drinking, we were done forever. So, he told me it would stop, and one day it did. He was no longer drinking and was back to being the man I loved, with the goofy smile reserved for dogs. 50

When we got married in August 2009, I had just turned twenty-one. It had been a year and a half since the last incident and I really believed he was better. We finally moved in together into a beautiful apartment, bright with tall windows and a yellow kitchen that made me feel like a real adult woman. A wife, but in a good way, I thought. On the outside, we were adorable young newlyweds. Our landlords, an older married couple allowed us to move in without any credit to speak of, and half a security deposit.

“I just have a good feeling about you two,” the wife said. “And I’m a good judge of character.”

But on the honeymoon it was clear that Carl wasn’t done drinking. He snuck liquor onto our cruise ship in a thin plastic bag, like an IV drip buried in his swimming trunks and polo shirts.

One night, after he screamed at me, called me names, and kicked me out of our suite, I sat on the tropical print carpet in the hallway, my eyes red with tears and cheeks pink from the Bermuda sun, and took a picture of myself on the digital camera I received as a wedding present only a few days earlier. In the picture it was clear I had been crying, the skin around my eyes translucent and puffy with sadness, my hair pulled back in a messy pony tail, unbrushed and knotted from chlorine. I’m not sure why I took the picture, what prompted me to think this was a moment worth recording.

But as I stared at the close-up image of my face, with its sad frown formed from quivering lips, glowing back at me, I remember thinking about how incredibly long a human life could be, and how terribly young I still was.

Months passed and the situation only got worse. I worked long hours at a local nonprofit, planning events and raising money for a cause I knew nothing about, but drained me of so much energy it was hard to wake up each day. Carl struggled to hold a job, getting drunk most nights of the week, and quickly blowing through the money we got from our wedding. I never knew a 51 human body could hold so much alcohol and still survive. No one in my family drank, even socially, except for my stepfather, and he was a-couple-beers-a-night kind of guy, not a serious drinker. But Carl in his bigness, in his habit, could drink an entire bottle of vodka in one sitting, and still stand up, still look me in the eye, and tell me he was going to kill me, without a second thought, before chasing me into the bathroom where I would lock myself away to hide from his rage until he passed out on the couch, covered in his own vomit, or shit, waiting for me to clean him up. The pattern was always the same. Either Carl was already incoherent, catatonic in his own drunken stupor when I got home from work, or he was perched on the edge of a brilliant violence waiting to erupt from somewhere inside of him where love didn’t exist, and I was only a woman- body standing before him, waiting for him to hurt me.

I had grown up being told that physical abuse was a thing to be walked away from. Any kind of a “strong woman” doesn’t stay with a man who slaps her, pushes her, or threatens to force her face into a frying pan of hot oil if she doesn’t make his dinner right. “Strong women” walk away, or at least tell someone else it's happening, so that they may help them get the courage to leave. But this is not the reality of abuse, or even of love.

My motivations for staying were complicated. I didn’t want anyone to know Carl was an alcoholic. I didn’t want them to think anything bad about him. I wanted them to see him as I did – a charismatic, warm, funny man always good for a laugh and goofy conversation, always at his happiest when he was making someone smile, who loved me and wanted to be a father. And I didn’t want them to think anything bad about me. I wanted them to see me as I knew they did – a strong, assertive, silly, driven young woman of twenty-one with all of her dreams ahead of her and the talent and ambition to achieve them. 52

So, when Christmas came and we traveled to my mother’s house to spend the night, my first time sleeping with my new husband in my old bedroom, no one in my life knew Carl had a problem drinking. No one knew he was still unemployed, that I was going broke paying his bills and mine, and that I spent most nights the last five months sobbing, locking myself away from him, or crouched on the kitchen floor, cleaning up his mess and praying he’d stop hurting me. Besides, there was still some good between us. On nights he wasn’t drinking, I was too grateful to see him sober to fight about all the times he wasn’t, so we would watch movies together, cuddled on the couch and kissing like we were happy. We’d go to open mics and I’d watch him do standup, proud of how everyone in the audience always seemed to love him. We picked out a Christmas tree together and made up silly songs together, singing back and forth in the car when we drove around in the ice and slush of the city where we lived. Somehow, in my all my faith and hopefulness, I still believed it was going to get better, and there was no reason to tell anyone otherwise.

#

It was nearly midnight on Christmas Eve and my family had all gone to bed, still as excited for Christmas morning as we were when I was a child. Carl and I lay close on an old futon mattress in my old bedroom, watching a VHS tape of A Christmas Story for the second time that year. About halfway through the movie I started to fall asleep and he whispered for me to keep sleeping; he was just moving to my great-grandmother’s chair on the other side of the bedroom to get more comfortable.

“I can’t sleep,” he said. 53

When I woke a couple of hours later, stirred by the snowy sound of the TV still on after the movie had ended, it appeared that he had fallen asleep in the chair. Kicking at him playfully, I told him to join me on the mattress. His eyes lifted slowly, hazy and hard.

“What?” he said, loudly, his tongue slumped over the curve of his bottom lip, the slight glint of drool on his chin reflecting in the TV light.

My stomach shifted and settled into panic with the realization that he was drunk on

Christmas Eve, in my parents’ house, and no one even knew he was an alcoholic. Instantly, the pieces of my life I had tried so hard to compartmentalize were coming together, and the narrative of my marriage I had run myself ragged trying to control was slipping from my grasp, soon to unravel in a humiliating, public display of drunkenness and abuse I could no longer deny. My body flooded with fear.

“What?” He said again, louder.

I tried to quiet him, but he grew belligerent in his volume and aggression, pushing himself up to stand and lumbering over to the mattress. He fell on top of me, vibrating the floorboards of the old wooden house and sending a tremble of sound through the entire upstairs. Terror grew thick in my chest – what would happen if they woke up? If they all found out that this man they loved, who I loved, must have snuck alcohol in his overnight bag and waited for me to fall asleep before guzzling it down? In all of my excitement about Christmas, and spending time in the safety of my mother’s home surrounded by my family, it had never occurred to me that this might happen. Why hadn’t it occurred to me? Why hadn’t I prepared for this, checked his bag before we left, or broken the tradition of spending the night on Christmas Eve in case of this? How could I have let this happen? 54

His body shifted on top of mine, the weight of his form crushing me into place. The sickly- sweet scent of vodka spilled from his mouth as he told me he was going to fuck me. Though I was furious, shaking with worry that any moment my mother would fling open the door and discover the truth about my life, I tried to be gentle with Carl. I giggled something: not right now, babe, or, maybe, not in my parent’s house, and I smiled somehow, as if strategic flirtation could save me from the situation, or expedite it’s ending. But the more I resisted, the more impatient he grew. His fingers fumbled with the elastic waist of my bed shorts, slipped beneath my underwear, and thrust himself inside of me. I can’t remember if it hurt, or if I told him to stop. I was assessing the situation – the danger of pushing his heavy body away from me and how he would no doubt react, screaming, thumping, punching his fists into plaster, or maybe into me. It would terrify my family.

It would ruin Christmas. It would reveal him to everyone as the non-functioning, abusive alcoholic husband he was, and me as the weak-willed woman who stood by him.

I don’t remember how much he really kissed me, just that there was slobber and wet that tasted toxic. Maybe I kissed him back, or maybe I just turned my head to the side and stared at the snow, still crunchy white on the TV. I only know when I cried it was soft like the beautiful suffering that I, as a woman, was learning to embrace. Keeping my shit together while a man hurt me, not letting on how much, or in how many different ways. I only know I was crying and he was inside of me; I couldn’t move and there was nothing I could do to stop him.

The next morning, I greeted my family with all the glee appropriate to Christmas morning.

I went through my day opening presents, laughing, smiling, taking pictures, eating too many pancakes and cookies, and never addressed what happened, not with Carl, not with anyone. This incident remained a secret of my life because the shame surrounding this violation and the 55 want for vocabulary to actually understand it still overwhelms me when I let myself revisit it. Plus, in the immediate afterward, my focus was not on myself, it was on him. Would he stop drinking?

Would our marriage survive his addiction? Would he die young, his body flooded with toxicity, leaving me alone to rebuild my life?

When we separated the following summer, I began writing my way through the pain in long, swirly poems and free-writes. I didn’t expect this incident to surface, but it did, repeatedly – proof of the moments I kept reliving in my body with any thought of another man touching me, whenever I walked past the room where it happened, while visiting my mother who, incidentally, was going through a divorce from my stepfather at the exact same time. Shortly after our separation, I turned twenty-two and agreed to spend the day with Carl. We ate at our favorite restaurant and it was good to see his eyes, clear and warm, his smile genuine but tentative as he touched my fingers and kissed my hand. He asked if I would come back to the apartment we had once shared that I had moved out of only a month prior. I told him I couldn’t and that it would be too painful.

“Please,” he begged me. “You’re my wife.”

We got a room at the Days Inn next to the gas station, across from the building where I worked at one point during our marriage. As we rode the elevator to the second floor, I felt queasy. Inside the room, he climbed on top of me and kissed me, gentle and kind. I cried softly, but told him it was ok for him to continue. He lifted my dress and pushed inside, fucking me hard immediately. My quiet cries quickly turned into deep sobs at the reality of his touch, his body ripping pleasure from mine.

He stopped and held my face, kissed my cheeks, and asked me what was wrong. 56

Dissecting a Narrative

It is a strange experience recalling the intricacies of a relationship nine years after its formal end. Like so many memories seem to, these recollections playback like cinema in flashes of light and sound, with anxiety rising inside as I watch, unable to change the outcome, certain I could not even if I wanted to. It’s taken years to stop blaming myself for things I had no control over, despite the ever-present narrative inside if only I hadn’t… that haunts so many of us when recalling the heartbreaks of our lives. It’s taken even longer for me to recognize Carl’s addiction wasn’t the only problem in our relationship, and hardly the only reason for our divorce.

To further dissect my own narrative of how our relationship started and ended, and all that happened in between, I want to identify a few key points:

• When I met Carl at 18 years old, I was already weighted down with the fear of how and

when I would find love, overly concerned with the role my weight and age played in my

validity as a romantic prospect. My value as a woman, and therefore my currency in

seeking what I wanted in a partner and belief that I would find it, was grounded in my

perceived sex appeal, invariably rooted in expectations of gender performance.7

• Carl’s own adherence to gender roles was remarkably present in not only his family

dynamic, where he assumed his mother was happy and satisfied in fulfilling her ‘wifely

7 In “How Do You Fuck a Fat Woman” fat-activist and cultural commentator Kate Harding explores the impact thin- centric beauty standards have on the perceived attractiveness and sexual value of overweight women. In sharing abusive comments posted by readers of hers and other fat-feminist blogs, she positions fatness as an excuse for dehumanization, and justification for rape with the old adage “you fat whores would be lucky to even get raped by someone” (68). This, she explains, stems from the pressure put on all women to perform their femininity appropriately. She writes, “Women’s first – if not only – job is to be attractive to men. Never mind straight women who have other priorities or queer women who don’t want men. If you were born with a vagina, your primary obligation from the onset of adolescence and well into adulthood will be to make yourself pretty for heterosexual men’s pleasure,” (68). This assumption underlies every quasi- sexual, possibly romantic interaction women have. But for fat women, it can disrupt their sense of self-worth to a debilitating degree, altering their perception of the type of relationship they deserve or have access to. “We rejected ourselves as potential dates or partners or fuck buddies before anyone else got the chance,” (72). 57

duties’ despite a verbally abusive home environment, but in his problems with female

authority figures (i.e. his “bitch” boss). While all of this bothered me at the time, the

relative normalcy of both forms of sexism made them feel more like immaturity, than red

flags for a relationship. Still, the reinforcement of traditional gender roles directly correlates

with rates of relationship dissatisfaction, abuse, and sexual violence.8 And since we know

family dynamics can directly impact how we engage in relationships as adults, it is really

no surprise my relationship with Carl was so troubled.

• Early on in the relationship, there were clear instances of abuse, and the cycle of abuse in

both sexual, and non-sexual ways.9 While the verbal abuse was clearly wrong to me, the

pressure to have sex, and threats of forced sex did not register with me, at the time, as

anything beyond what I could expect from a relationship. By the time we were married,

and the scope of the abuse grew, my concern centered on Carl’s addiction and my physical

safety. However, sexually, I felt distinctly aware of the expectations that I would

8 Seabrook’s 2017 study of the relationship between traditional masculine gender roles and acceptance of sexual violence among fraternity members utilizes the precarious manhood thesis, which posits that manhood is a status earned by performing traditional masculinity, and lost when not behaving ‘manly’ enough (8). This theory stems from hegemonic masculinity which requires, “being powerful, dominant, having several sexual partners, objectifying women, and avoiding any action that could be seen as non-heterosexual,” while it “reinforces the gender hierarchy of subordinating women,” (9). Seabrook’s study ultimately confirmed that the acceptance of sexual violence among fraternity members could be attributed, at least in part, to strong endorsement of traditional gender roles and masculine norms, which reinforce the view of women as sexual objects (28). Similarly, Ramsey and Hoyt (2014) found that in a survey of 199 men, the largest demographic factors in men who sexually objectify women, and are likely to assault, rape, or coerce, involved their association with religion and political conservatism, both of which are correlated with endorsement of traditional gender roles (157) . 9 The cycle of abuse can be most easily understood by referencing the Power and Control Wheel, developed by the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project and utilized by the National Domestic Violence Hotline to help identify abuse. The wheel identifies examples of physical, sexual, verbal, and emotional abuse, breaking down the cycle itself into four stages: tension building, incident, reconciliation, and calm (National Domestic Violence Hotline; Dubois- Maahs). Each stage is distinctive, as the relational dynamic cycles from indirect to direct abuse, and apology to temporary bliss, before repeating. While experiences of abuse vary, abuse itself typically grows in frequency and severity over time (Dubois- Maahs). 58

relent to his sexual advances out of obligation, if not out of desire itself, evidenced in my

trip to the hotel with Carl, after his reminder that I was his wife.10

• Abuse rarely exists in a vacuum where only one kind of abuse is present. The question

comes with what kind of abuse do we consider valid and what kind do we pass off as a

normal component of heterosexual relationships.11

• During the Christmas Eve incident, I felt incapable of leaving the situation, protesting, or

“avoiding” rape. This alone was a substantial contributing factor as to why I could not

understand this situation as sexually violent. As discussed in the previous chapter, rape as

we understand it, seems to designate a specific response of fleeing or fighting; i.e. directly

avoiding rape, or attempting to avoid it, as the only acceptable responses to sexual assault

that indicate non-consent. The idea that freezing might be a legitimate response to the threat

of rape is one that is difficult to recognize, as it draws to the surface questions about what

consent truly looks like if it does not always include a direct, or explicit refusal of sex. Sex

therapist Dr. Emily Nagoski explains that to ‘freeze’ is a “life- threat stress response,

activated when your brain decides you can’t escape a stressor, nor can you fight it…

survivors don’t ‘fight’ because the threat is too immediate and inescapable; their bodies

choose freeze because it’s the stress response that maximizes the chances of staying

alive,” (125). In my situation, my fear of Carl’s previous abuse,

10 In her 2014 study, Beres interviewed couples engaged in ongoing sexual and/or romantic relationships regarding their understanding of consent. What she ultimately found was that couples overwhelmingly lack direct consent communication in their relationships, based on the common assumption that being in a relationship is considered consent (383). This does not necessarily indicate that all of the sex in these relationships is non-consensual, but rather that within relationships, consent is often seen not necessarily as a desire to have sex, but a willingness to (385). With the prevailing cultural belief that ‘good girlfriends say yes’ and ‘once yes, always yes’ consent in romantic relationships is less often negotiated and more often assumed (Bay-Cheng and Eliseo-Arras 391). 11 Grubb and Turner write, “sex role socialization theory suggests that rape between dating partners should be viewed less as rape and more as part of normal sexual interactions, as forced intercourse supports the role of the male as the dominant party who initiates sexual overtures. As such, sex role socialization provides some form of explanation for why men are sexually aggressive and why the act of rape is normalized within society,” (446). 59

and my family’s presence, triggered my freeze stress response, which ultimately led to me

blaming myself for the incident.

• The relationship between alcohol and sexual violence is statistically staggering. Some

studies have found that up to 75% of perpetrators and over 50% of victims consumed

alcohol before a rape took place (Grubb and Turner 448). More often than not, the presence

of alcohol reinforces acceptance of rape myths that suggest women who drink voluntarily

in the presence of men are putting themselves in danger. Rarely does conversation about a

perpetrator’s sobriety go beyond excusing his actions.12 This adds another layer to the

context surrounding the Christmas Eve incident with Carl. While I was sober (and therefore

a more ‘believable’ victim), Carl’s inebriation made his violent behavior seem more

excusable, as I could willfully deny that his true (sober) self would do the same thing.

• The entirety of my relationship with Carl, the good and the bad, all form the complicated

context for why the incident on Christmas Eve, as well as the other non-consensual

moments from our relationship, made recognizing the validity of these experiences as

sexual abuse difficult to understand. My desire to protect Carl’s reputation within my

family and to maintain the relationship, along with my focus on other more pressing (i.e.

less normalized) forms of abuse, made my ability to identify these experiences as

problematic almost impossible. Additionally, the assumption that a relationship status

12 Grubb and Turner found a disarming inconsistency with the treatment of victims and perpetrators. They write, “When exploring research relating to perpetrator intoxication, the literature reveals a counterintuitive double standard which renders intoxicated perpetrators of rape as less responsible for their actions than sober perpetrators. This is, of course, in stark contrast to the attributional effect observed with victim intoxication, whereby victims of rape who are intoxicated are held more responsible and more to blame for the rape,” (448). 60

automatically presupposes consent, reinforced that my role as Carl’s wife stripped me of

my autonomy.

• Finally, the context of the relationship, my complicated understanding of consent, and a

lack of language that felt representative of my experience turned this incident into one I

could not name, and therefore have kept almost entirely secret until now.

Naming as Rhetorical Action

In Against Our Will Susan Brownmiller writes, “To a woman the definition of rape is fairly simple,” (376). While I acknowledge the partial truth of this statement and its recognition that the experience of rape is most often a clearly felt violation of autonomy, I push back against the notion and myth that rape is defined simply for women or by extension easy for women to name. In fact, rape, along with many primarily female experiences, with its long history of being denied, excused, diminished, and questioned, is so complicated that the presumed simplicity of it, based on definition alone, is essentially false.

There is a long held, complicated relationship between human experience and the acquisition of

language to describe it. In Man Made Language, Dale Spender explains:

In order to live in the world, we must name it. Names are essential for the construction of

reality, for without a name it is difficult to accept the existence of an object, an event, a

feeling. Naming is the means whereby we attempt to order and structure the chaos and flux

of existence which would otherwise be an undifferentiated mass. By assigning names we

impose a pattern and a meaning which allows us to manipulate the world. (163)

Naming, as Spender describes it, is a necessary, fundamental component of all human experience.

There can be no discourse, until there is language to power it. This is perhaps easiest 61 to understand in considering the vastness of human languages and which experiences are declared fit for naming. An example of this might be the French term L’espirit d’escalier, which roughly translates in English to ‘staircase wit,’ meaning the feeling of coming up with the perfect response for a conversation, long after it has ended (Optlingo). Words such as this are sometimes referred to as “untranslatable” words because, “above all, they appear to indicate the existence of a phenomenon that has been overlooked or undervalued in English-speaking cultures,” (Lomas

2016). In these cases, culture dictates what sensations and experiences are worthy of naming. So, if one culture, for whatever reason, does not value an experience, or recognize it as part of its cultural identity, there may be no name for it, even if it is readily experienced by individuals within that culture every day. This then creates the lived experience, without the language to understand it, and thus the basis of this naming debacle.

So what factors dictate whether or not an experience has a name? Spender would offer that human language has been constructed through a patriarchal framework specific to the human male experience above all else, leaving women’s experiences on the periphery of available language.

Burnett, Mattern, Herakova, Kahl, Tobola, and Bornsen refer to this as a co-cultural group distinction.

In patriarchal societies, women traditionally constitute a co-culture…a co-cultural paradigm

posits that, in contexts where their experiences are marginalized, co-cultures participate in

and negotiate their status within the dominant discourse by using particular communicative

strategies. Co-cultures can be defined as pariah in respect to dominant social groups (468)…

dominant groups have ‘partial and perverse’ views of reality, because to them the reality of

marginalized groups is invisible. (469) 62

This co-cultural theory reinforces the necessity of names in understanding experience. For if there is no representation in language, the experience linguistically does not exist, despite the very real, lived moments that embody it. From here, Burnett et al. springboard into Ardener’s muted group theory, which they explain renders these co-culture groups silent because they simply cannot engage in the dominant discourse without adopting another discourse themselves (469). In her examination of muted group theory, and its application to sexual violence, Wall writes,

Women’s voices trying to express women’s experiences are rarely heard because they

must be expressed in a language system not designed for their interests and concerns.

Unable to symbolize their experiences in the male language, women take one or two routes:

one path requires internalizing male reality – alienation; the other is being unable to speak at

all – silence. (25)

The rhetorical impact of silence is perhaps best explored in Cheryl Glenn’s Unspoken. While the text as a whole is an exploration of silence as a rhetorical action that can come from an empowered place or position of authority, she argues “the question is whether our use of silence is our choice

(whether conscious or unconscious) or that of someone else” (13). She explains that “silence goes unnoticed, (or, if noticed, then appreciated) in those whose words are not valued” (10), suggesting, for the purposes of this work, that women’s silence on the issue of sexual violence – whether that be in not reporting assaults, and/or naming them as such – is reinforced by a culture that fundamentally does not value their words or experiences. Drawing back to muted group theory,

Glenn says that without accurate language, women must “adapt, mediate, and subordinate” their ideas to fit within the dominant discourse (28). I see this lack of language as a fundamental factor contributing to the normalization of sexual violence in heterosexual 63 relationships. If there is no fitting word to name these experiences, then there is no way to distinguish them as anything but normal.

But herein lies the problem: is it so difficult for women to name their experiences as rape because the word itself is simply not appropriate, or inclusive of their nuanced experiences? – or does the cultural dialogue around rape render it impossible for women to recognize their own experiences in the only word available to them? Is it the language itself, or is it the culture?

This may be another example of simultaneous truths. The word rape is loaded with meaning that goes far beyond its definition, complicating how and when it can be comfortably used by women who have experienced sexual violation. I have argued in regard to my own experiences, and those documented in sexual violence research, that context of a relationship and the gendered constructions of power that prescribe expectations of what constitutes ‘normal’ heterosexual sex, both contribute to the challenge of naming some experiences of non- consensual sex, rape. The rhetorical implications of the word rape, notably, that rape is always violent, committed by ‘monsters,’ and unambiguous in nature, can disrupt a victim’s identification with the term to the point that it does not feel fitting. Therefore, rendering rape both an inaccurate term and an experientially unrelatable term.

The question is, who does this limitation of language actually serve? If language reflects the reality it creates, it does not exist separate of the cultures it functions within, but rather it is constructed to reinforce the system it serves, adapting as necessary to understanding the human condition. If we believe, as Spender, Burnett, and Ardener offer, that women are a co-culture group, muted by the lack of available language, this limitation can only serve to reinforce the power structures of a patriarchal rape culture, which is upheld by adherence to traditional gender 64 constructs, and directly benefits from the normalization of sexual violence as a regular part of that dynamic.

Whether or not the word rape is the problem or not may not actually matter in the end. On one hand, we have this word – rape – that carries with it an embedded cultural meaning that can give it great power. On the other, this word is so charged with expectation, that its very simplistic definition actually keeps women from recognizing their own experiences in it, further silencing them. Spender argues that while a feminist impulse to develop new terms might make sense, there is still trouble to be found in this approach. “New names,” she writes,

“systematically subscribe to old beliefs, they are locked into principles that already exist, and there seems no way out of this even if those principles are inadequate or false,” (164). If this is true, where does that leave victims grappling with their own experiences, advocates fighting to dismantle rape culture, and educators hoping to further the public’s understanding of sexual violence and consent?

In the first episode of her podcast Unlocking Us shame and vulnerability researcher Brené

Brown speaks to relationship between power and advocacy:

Sometimes we're afraid to name experiences or feelings because we think naming them

gives them power…Let me dispel this myth now with 400,000 pieces of data in 20 years

of research, when we name and own hard things, it does not give them power. It gives us

power. And what do I mean by power? The best definition of power that I think exists in

the world is from Martin Luther King Jr. Power is the ability to affect, change and achieve

purpose. So, if we put it all together when we name and own hard things, it doesn't give

the hard things power. It gives us the power to affect, change and achieve purpose. 65

Whether embracing the word rape, or fighting for new terminology all together, one thing is clear: not much can be done without naming. Which is why advocates, educators, and researchers from all disciplinary backgrounds, but especially those specializing in language, should take seriously the question: for however many women there are who claim the word assault and the word rape, how many exist that do not, and what might that tell us about the reality we have constructed?

The First Retelling

The first time I ever wrote directly wrote about Carl was in a memoir class while completing my MFA. In an essay I facetiously titled “My Barbies Fucked Like Animals,” I recounted my youthful attempts to learn about sex from peers, pop culture, and yes, Barbie. At only

750 words, the essay spanned from ages five to twenty-three, boldly calling attention to my many awkward attempts to understand sex, without actually having to get too vulnerable in the process. I summed up my relationship with Carl like this:

I first had sex with Carl, who immediately after taking my virginity asked if I had ever tried

Pro-Activ. We were married and divorced four years later.

This re-telling of our love story was intentionally vague, and meant to generate a snicker, if not an actual laugh. My professor circled it and wrote in green ink in the margins this could be a micro-essay by itself. I loved that idea. Because for all it said about our relationship – a nod to my age, the length we were together, Carl’s entitled remark about my appearance in such an intimate, vulnerable moment, and the implication that all of these things had anything at all to do with our divorce – there was so much it didn’t say, and flat out got wrong about it. Incidentally, this essay was also the first time I ever wrote about sexual violence in any capacity, with the end 66 of the essay flipping quickly from the humorous, light-hearted tone throughout to something darker:

I was 23. He had me on my stomach and I couldn’t move. It was combat. He had a

warhead missile. I had words he said he couldn’t hear for the sound of himself exploding.

I wet my pillow with streaks of mascara. He said I made him feel bad. I said I was sorry.

The battle continued. He fell asleep beside me. I couldn’t sleep at all.

A body lying on top of you so you can’t move isn’t sex, it’s something else. But no one ever

told me that. And that’s something no one likes to talk about.

And that’s how I ended it. A blunt confession in exactly one-hundred words, told with judgment about how no one talks about the realities of rape, when we talk about sex.

Afterward, my professor came to me and told me he believed I needed to expand the ending, that it was the center of gravity for the piece and I couldn’t just trail off at the end without resolution. This is the same feedback I received from multiple editors in my attempt to publish the essay without revising it, believing instead that there was power in the unspoken, un- pressed subject of sexual violence in an essay about Barbie and sex education. While I do stand by the “less is more” approach in many cases, I recognize now that my reluctance to expand this scene had a lot more to do with my complete and total desire to not ever talk about this incident again, than to own up to the fact that maybe a first draft of something I wrote wasn’t in fact perfect. After this, I would go on avoiding writing about sexual violence for as long as I possibly could – one year exactly – before returning to another memoir workshop, with the same professor, and having my world blown open by the course reading list, filled with books about rape, trauma, and writing and researching through the healing process. I would ultimately spend my final semester of my MFA working on one long, complicated essay about consent, critically 67 confronting as much as possible within myself and my sexual history, without actually attending therapy, or healing at all from the incidents themselves. In the end, the essay did not make it into the final draft of my thesis, leaving the whole of my sexual trauma explored in it to one-hundred words in that Barbie essay.

That brief, snarky retelling of my relationship with Carl was one of the only mentions of him in my thesis as well, despite spending my first memoir workshop writing a thirty-page essay braiding narrative about our divorce, my parent’s divorce, Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks album, and the murder of a young man I attended college with who I didn’t know personally, but whose death had rocked me to my core for reasons I still don’t quite understand. So, years later, after our divorce and many, many attempts at blocking Carl from my life, he found my thesis published online and read the Barbies essay, and the short excerpt about the rape on my twenty- third birthday. He texted me from a new phone number.

“I’m sorry this happened to you,” he said. “I’ll kick his ass.”

The irony I knew was lost on Carl. I never actually addressed the incident on Christmas Eve, and he likely didn’t remember it even happening. But the reality is that even if he did remember, it is unlikely he would remember it as it happened, or at least in the same way I remember it happening to me. Despite everything I know about sexual violence that tells me I did not give consent to Carl, that I actively did what I could to prevent it, that the physical threat of his body on top of mine, and that feeling that I was trapped with no option to refuse sex can only make it one thing, I don’t feel comfortable calling it rape. It feels disingenuous to our whole relationship, which was riddled with toxicity and its own kind of violence, but which I never believed was an intentional kind of hurt. So, I took to calling it a violation – a word that feels 68 right in many ways, but doesn’t carry the weight or the imbedded cultural knowledge of what that looks like or even means.

If I could talk to Carl about it today, I’m not sure if I would. The last time we spoke, the summer of 2018, shortly after he had reached out about the Barbie essay he had read, he asked me if I could ever see us together again. He promised me he had changed, he was no longer a

“monster,” and that I had been nothing but a wonderful wife to him when we were married. I told him a partial truth, that I had forgiven him, but that I no longer thought about him at all, not sure which part was fiction. There was a crisp finality to our conversation, a revelation of pain we both still felt, amidst an understanding that there was no longer any reason to talk, and that there hadn’t been in years.

Our love had been an uneasy blend of purity and turmoil, of firsts and lasts. But the reality is that in all of my reflection on our marriage and time away from it, one truth stands alone as powerful and telling as anything could be:

In the span of two years and one month, our marriage came to a swift and brutal end, and a rape had nothing to do with why. 69

Fig. 3. Blackout Poem 3. 70

CHAPTER III. LEARNING HOW TO TALK ABOUT IT

“But even before fucking entered the ever-growing swell of my sexual lexicon, I never once referred to it as making love. Perhaps the making of love is simply an antiquated phrase built from an even more antiquated idea, hinged on naivety and hopefulness, as if love itself could be manufactured right along with the heat and friction of genitals colliding. Is there anything else quite as sad, or misleading, I began to wonder, as turning love into something physical, that could be broken, lost, fractured, forgotten? For if we cannot force someone to actually love us, how then can we force someone to make love with us?”

Consent After Birth, Lena Ziegler

“We cannot capture in writing some ‘real and actual’ moment in our lives. We know that every event is shaped and interpreted such that we can only speak about ‘how it seemed to me.’ If we paid careful attention, we’d see that we construct fragments of our experience into stories or mini-narratives, excluding some features and emphasizing others, to organize and make sense of them…we tell ourselves our own personal histories by means of these self-narrated moments.”

Personally Speaking: Experience as Evidence in Academic Discourse, Candace Spigelman

(62)

I met Shane in January 2015.

I don’t have a way of talking about this yet.

# December 2017: 71

In therapy, I worry I’m talking too much. I apologize for talking too fast, for not being a

good storyteller, for rambling on and on. The counselor is gentle and he asks me why I am here.

I tell him I don’t feel anything. I am muted. Even. Almost inhuman. On the phone with my

mother, I call this peace.

He asks me when this started.

#

For whatever reason, a memory sticks. My mother, brother, sister, and I, eating Stromboli at our favorite pizzeria thirty minutes from home, in the city where I had been born eight years earlier, and where my mother now traveled to the YMCA every Wednesday night and weekend to burn off sadness while we visited my father. We did this every so often in the time between my father and Barry, the four of us bonding over the special treat of time together in a place free of melancholy. Most of our trips there do not resonate any kind of unique memory, each one blurring together into happy nostalgia for that short and special time.

But during one of these pizzeria visits, somehow, a conversation about rape arose, my mother asking us all, between bites of gooey mozzarella and greasy dough, who do you think a woman is most likely to be raped by, a stranger or a person they know?

I answered immediately, as the youngest in the family, forever eager to prove to everyone how smart I was. A stranger, I said, confidently. Of course, a stranger.

But my mother shook her head. No, she said. Woman are more often raped by someone they know.

# 72

For whatever reason, a memory sticks. My mother, brother, sister, and I, eating Stromboli at our favorite pizzeria thirty minutes from home, in the city where I had been born eight years earlier, and where my mother now traveled to the YMCA every Wednesday night and weekend to burn off sadness while we visited my father. We did this every so often in the time between my father and

Barry, the four of us bonding over the special treat of time together in a place free of melancholy.

Most of our trips there do not resonate any kind of unique memory, each one blurring together into happy nostalgia for that short and special time.

But during one of these pizzeria visits, somehow, a conversation about rape arose, my

mother asking us all, between bites of gooey mozzarella and greasy dough, who do you think a

woman is most likely to be raped by, a stranger or a person they know?

I answered immediately, as the youngest in the family, forever eager to prove to everyone

how smart I was. A stranger, I said, confidently. Of course, a stranger.

But my mother shook her head. No, she said. Woman are more often raped by someone

they know.

I don’t remember a single thing about the before or after of this moment. It’s as if it exists

in its own mini universe, floating, detached, in the ether of my childhood memories, and the many

ways I came to learn about life. I don’t know how this came up (though I assume it was inspired

by one of my mother’s Women’s Studies courses she was taking at a nearby university), or how

my siblings responded, or what my mother said to explain what she meant. I just know that it

didn’t make sense to me. How could someone do that to someone they know? Why would they do

that?

That being the violence unique to women, I thought at the time. That being the ugly 73 ripping sound the word reminded me of. That question being the one I’d never stop asking. Why.

Why. Why.

So, she said, you have to be careful about who you know.

#

Summertime 2017 I moved to Ohio, my fourth state in four years, ready to start my PhD program

in August. My best friend, Erin, visited me a week before school started and we swam in Lake

Erie, took sunshine-y pictures together, went to a bar and did karaoke. A group of guys invited us back to their house to smoke some weed and we agreed, buzzed by the obvious danger of it all. At their house, two of them played pool while we got high with the others, giggling inappropriately as they argued the ethics of nuclear war. Erin sat quietly, arm twisted overhead, twirling hair between her fingers, a hazy smile across her face. I kneeled in front of the coffee table, excitedly sharing my

opinions about all things graduate school, existential, and sex. As one of the guys attempted to sing the notes tattooed on Erin’s foot, the other, Art, stroked my back, complimented me, asked me

to check out the rest of the house. I eyed Erin and we left shortly thereafter.

The next morning, one of the guys texted to tell me that Art was recently engaged and I shouldn’t get involved with him. This, I told Erin, was not surprising. If there was anything I had learned in the previous two-and-a-half-years, it’s that relationships, marriage, and love meant nothing to men with a sexual agenda, which was from what I could tell pretty much all men.

It had become a joke in our friendship to laugh about the damage we did to ourselves, embracing our own wildness in the name of sexual freedom, and being interesting. It had become a joke for me to name my last several months living in Kentucky “the summer of old men,” a facetious title characterized by my regular involvement with significantly older, usually attached 74 men, in situations that were both emotionally and physically dangerous. During most of that time I felt unhinged, a wild animal unfurling, existing only in the ethereal space above my bed, watching myself perform. I showed up places, touched people, spent nights alone or next to men who didn’t know me. I conceived of myself as something: a fantastical other, already ruined, imaginary, an empty, context-free fuck, hardly human, a figment of unreality.

I knew nothing except my body.

What Shane taught me to do with it.

#

I cry during the intake counseling appointment. It’s the first time I have cried in months. I don’t recall when I first noticed all this not crying I was doing, except that it started when I moved to Ohio.

After Erin left, school began. I struggled, so scared and desperate, earnest to the point of embarrassment. I told myself in Ohio, things would be different in my life. My focus would be on school, on writing, on finding a relationship worth something, on growing into someone deserving. I wanted abstinence – to find value in just existing. I was determined to put my summer, and the years leading up to it, behind me, let all my wildness dissolve into someone else’s memory of me.

Two weeks into the semester, I went to a bar with a new friend. From across the room a man spotted me, came to my side, bought me a drink. We smoked weed in the alley, talked about our PhD programs. He was tall and funny and I sensed something sick about him in a way that intrigued me. Back inside, we sat in a booth with a group of mutual acquaintances. Under the table he stroked my leg, pressed tight against me, whispered things. 75

On our first date the following week he made a reservation and we both dressed up. I felt like a proper lady. We had dinner and I ate slowly and pretended to be dazzling. He drank craft beer and pretended to be a gentleman. On the way home, he asked me to come to his place to watch a movie. Nothing will be happening, I told him and he smiled. Of course not.

Thirty minutes later, a movie about aliens, a bowl freshly burned, the two of us tangled in heat, and sickness swirling through me. Too dizzy, too affected – I feel crazy right now – you seem fine to me. I knew nothing except my body, queasy and desiring, spinning and on fire.

The next morning he dropped me off at my apartment and thanked me for a wonderful time. I smiled brightly, kissed his cheek, waved goodbye, and stepped inside my apartment, fell to the floor, and wept.

I tell the counselor, I haven’t cried since early September.

#

I used to kiss the back of my hand and pretend it was someone who loved me back. This

was well before I knew what it meant to love someone. There was a time when I thought sex

would only exist where love was found. There was a time when I thought love and sex were

intrinsically linked – twin threads spooled together, a perfect union of physicality and emotional depth, symbiotic by nature. In the context of true love, no sex was off limits. It became my fantasy

to fulfill fantasy, my need to fill needs. It was an act of love to burrow deep into the furrows of

another person’s want and emerge bright and happy to provide the answer.

I was unprepared to learn that sometimes sex and love were incompatible, each willing to parasite off the other for survival.

# 76

It’s December in Ohio and cold. The last day with walk-in hours at the counseling center.

I fill out the forms and sit in the waiting room, staring at the jigsaw puzzle of two kittens playing with yarn. I wonder what it means to be a danger to yourself.

The doctor greets me from ten feet away and I smile, following him back to his office. My body is shaking, on the edge of some great explosion. He asks me about my relationship with my parents, my siblings, food, drugs, and if I have ever experienced addiction. He doesn’t ask about sex, if I have ever used it for self-harm, or to act out dangerously, or if I disassociate during it. This is not a question anyone asks during therapy in-take. He asks about sexual violence and I tell him, yes.

I don’t trust anyone. I tell him, the world is dangerous and unsafe. Besides I am ruined, broken. I’m afraid of men. I am afraid everywhere I go I will see one man, in particular. I get flashes of him at the grocery store, walking across campus, stopped next to me in traffic. I see his car everywhere, I think. I see his fingers in other men’s fingers and hear his voice when other men speak all gentle and patronizing. I hear his voice in my head, smell him in my apartment.

But he lives 450 miles away.

I apologize to the doctor.

I can only talk about Shane in fragments. I have tried for more, but I never met a language I trusted enough. How do any words, ever, hold enough?

II.

January 2015:

His body moved like liquid across the coffee shop, slinky in a way, like dancing. He spotted me first, but I pretended not to notice. When we met, his face was old to me. He ordered coffee at

10pm. He sat down across from me and I closed my laptop. 77

I thought what am I doing here.

I said, “I’m working on my novel.”

#

In 2011, after filing for divorce I moved to Tennessee, turned twenty-three, and returned

to Pennsylvania a few months later. I eventually found a place of my own in a nearby town, an

apartment most recently rented by a heroin dealer who my new landlord told me broke his lease

after getting a prison sentence. When I moved in, the entire apartment was littered with garbage, rotten food, and cigarette burns in the crumpled brown carpet. It was also, strangely, attached to a

dentist’s office, and sometimes, in the middle of the night, I heard drilling, and imagined a

scenario in which the neighborhood dentist was actually a serial killer.

I worked at a donut and coffee shop and in the office of a local college. I got a third job as a hotel front desk worker and spent the little free time I had writing at one of those quirky, manic- pixie-they-only-exist-in-movies-kind-of-cool coffee shops a short walk from my apartment. I bought crunchy bread at the bakery next door, spent money I didn’t have at the health food store down the street, and a used vinyl record shop in nearby Scranton. I was piecing a life together, but

I was alone with the tremors of the previous years, and the pained residue they left behind inside of me.

Over time, sex had become the one way to meet people my own age and I had begun to think of it as my only social currency – the only way I could pivot would-be strangers into friends

(with benefits), and sometimes short-lived boyfriends. Though years later, I still believe all the sex

I had during this time was consensual, it often left me feeling empty, and unseen. The divide between intimacy and sex was growing stark, with little crossover. There were those men I fucked and those men I loved. The former was much easier to find. 78

#

I’d gotten used to people asking about my novel, but not so used to people listening to me

talk about it. But from the moment we met, Shane was consumed by everything about me.

It’s about two characters, I explained, nursing my own near empty cup of coffee. A man and a woman, and about how everyone ultimately is using each other, whether for love, or sex, or friendship. It’s supposed to show the nuance of relationships, how we are all capable of being the bad one, or the mean one, or the wrong one. How it’s human to sometimes be cruel.

He smiled at me, his long face lighting up with interest. There were wrinkles around his eyes, deep creases from a weathered life of worry and pain.

He asked, Do you think there’s anything that’s unforgivable?

#

I spent 2012-2013 in love with Jay, a man who for many years after our breakup I referred to as my soul mate. Our relationship had been spectacularly intimate and romantic; it felt

like the kind of love that only comes once in a lifetime. But after months and years of believing

sex was the only way I could connect with another person, it was immediately clear that sex was the one way Jay and I could not. Over the course of a year-and-a-half together, we only attempted sex a handful of times, and rarely to either of our satisfaction. Jay couldn’t exactly explain it to me

– he wasn’t asexual, he wasn’t gay, but he just didn’t want me. He tried his best to reassure me

that this was a problem in all of his relationships, not just ours. But when I would cry about it,

share how much I needed to feel that connection with him, he would mostly remind me how unimportant sex really was when you have something like we had. For as long as I could, I agreed

with him. 79

In the moments leading up to our breakup, he stood in our kitchen, carefully cutting a watermelon we had purchased at a farmer’s market earlier in the week, which we had been excited to taste together. I watched his arms and back clench as he slid the long, clean knife through the thick peel of the fruit. I said it out loud, to his back and collapsed to the ground behind him. We spent hours sobbing, howling, crawling through the apartment to and away from one another, hurling pained words, begging forgiveness, begging for chances no longer available, pleading with one another for this to be easier.

Pulpy pink juice dribbled from the countertop, landing in a small puddle on the kitchen tiles. It felt like hours that I sat and watched it all fall away.

#

When Jay and I broke up, I felt destroyed in a way I didn’t know possible. Though it had only been two years since my divorce was finalized, the wounds of my marriage to Carl still fresh

enough to hurt, it somehow didn’t compare to the pain of losing Jay. It was like a limb had been

severed from my body. I cried checking guests in at the hotel, I cried on the weekly drive to my mother’s house to do laundry. I cried ferociously multiple times, every day. The only time I wasn’t

crying, it seemed, was when I was having sex.

In many ways, Jack was everything a rebound should be. He was sexy in a rogue, dangerous way, while at the same time, someone I knew under no circumstances, I would ever fall in love with. At the hotel, he delivered pizza almost nightly to guests staying in our various suites.

Each time he would linger at the front desk, joking, flirting, making me feel womanly and alive.

When Jay and I broke up he told me that I was a sick woman for valuing sex more than I valued love. When Jack came along, with his attraction so blatant it bordered on objectification, I couldn’t resist the feelings of validation this sprouted within me. After a year and a half with Jay, 80 feeling unwanted and longing for some connection, Jack’s consistent, aggressive pursuit of me was intoxicating.

Jack was unlike anyone else I had ever met. He was the product of a violent, broken upbringing, in and out of foster care, juvenile detention, and eventually jail. His pain was bred from a combination of childhood abuse and neglect, melded with struggles with mental illness, and an association with poverty he wore as a badge of honor. Like so many men who came before, he triggered within me the deep desire to transform him and his life with the power of my warmth, care, and affection. Jack was many things, most especially a bold, outgoing, intelligent, hilarious, goofy person, whose sheer mass in height and weight and propensity toward violence with other men, made him the kind of man destined to go through life as the one phone call someone would make whenever in trouble and needing someone ready to fight.

But, as so many women do, or at least as I have so often done with men who were clearly wrong for me, I searched for the depth in Jack and found a lightness shining through the black hole of pain that swallowed him and informed the decisions he made for how he lived his life. As strong as Jack presented himself to the world, I could see how lost he was and I wanted to help him find his way. I invited him into my life because at the time I believed attention was a valid substitute for love and respect, and that my capacity for love was best spent on the people who had no idea how to return it. #

On our second date, Shane and I met at an upscale Italian Restaurant in Nashville. As we ordered, the waiter’s eyes flicked from me to Shane and back again, the nature of our relationship a questionapparent on his face as he talked politely through the options for vegetarian pasta. As the night progressed and we discussed both of our previous divorces and 81 shared passion for literature, my concern for what other diners around us might be thinking of us there, together, shifted to a total and complete focus on Shane. Talking to Shane was like talking to a real adult man who still somehow saw me as an equal. He had perspective on life, decades of career experience in publishing, an adult son just a couple years younger than me attending law school in Knoxville. He had an MBA, was the editor of a major Christian music magazine, and had the kind of gentle, thoughtful demeanor I had never encountered before in anyone. Every conversation thus far had been wildly stimulating, but there in the candle light, with the restaurant closing down around us, a deep warmth expanded inside of me as we spoke, his gaze unwaveringly fixed on mine.

Outside, we stood next to my car under the parking lot light and talked for another hour before agreeing it was too cold to not at least warm up the car. We sat in the front seats. An hour later I whispered, I’ve never told anyone this.

#

When I recall my relationship with Jack, which in total lasted about nine months, from

fall 2013 to summer 2014, I mostly remember the good parts – hours spent belly-laughing together like children unable to catch their breath, cooking together in an apartment kitchen that was

in no way up to code, playing my ukulele and singing songs together. But there was a darkness

about our relationship that even now I am uncomfortable acknowledging, mostly because I still

struggle holding him accountable for it.

As much as I grew to care for Jack, I didn’t love him in the way I had loved other men.

And love meant too much to me to pretend otherwise. But Jack was consumed with desire for me to tell him I love him. He brought it up in casual conversation any chance he could and I’d 82 always look sadly back at him, not sure what to say. For a lifetime, I prided myself on never breathing those three words to a man without full disclosure of what they truly meant to me.

One evening, in the lamplight of my apartment I slid to the floor and knelt before him. I put my mouth around him and looked in his eyes. He followed my gaze, smiling, his hands in my hair directing my movement. But as he grew closer, he began to ask for something.

I want you to tell me you love me.

This was not the first time Jack had demanded I tell him how I felt about him, but it was the first time he held my head in his hands, my voice muffled by his flesh pressing the back of my throat. A dread filled my chest, but I chuckled, trying to be playful and offset how uncomfortable he was making me.

He persisted.

I pressed my hands on his thighs and pushed myself away from him. You know how I feel about that I said, more serious in my tone. I’ve told you, I can’t say that until I’m ready.

But Jack had spent his life believing brute force was the only reliable way to get what he wanted, and if my I love you was not to be freely given, it was something he felt entitled to take when and how he wanted. Clutching my hair, he forced my head down and his penis back into my mouth.

Say it, he said. Say you love me.

Panic struck through my center as I realized I couldn’t breathe. I slapped his thighs, the sign I had given other times we got rough together, a sign that told him to slow down and let me go. But he didn’t let go and instead urged me further.

Say it now and this will all be over, he told me. He was smirking, enjoying himself with a sadistic

grin. I shook my head, determined not to give into him. But with my nose pressed into 83 his flesh and my eyes filling with tears, my body started to shake. My fingers dug into his skin, and

I tried to pull myself off of him.

But he held my head still.

Say it, he said, slowly. With our eyes locked, I watched his face turn dark. He was not going to let me go. He was going to force me to say it. I blinked back tears and tried to speak, but only a gurgle came out. He asked me again, and I tried, again, to say it. I said it over and over until the urgency of my fear and anger came through the muffled sound and I articulated, as clearly as physically possible, I love you.

He laughed, letting me go, and I pushed myself off of him.

I knew it, he said smirking.

When I pulled back, my lips dripped syrupy defeat. My body convulsed, breaking into sobs. I don’t remember what I said to him, just that I screamed. My voice rang through the tiny apartment. I stood up, trembling as I rushed to the bathroom, pulling the door closed and locking myself inside. The mirror above the sink was speckled with water marks from shower condensation. I stared at my reflection. My eyes were red and blinking. I knew in that moment something had been taken from me, but it took me years to figure out what that was.

# When we first met, Shane said I owed it to both of us for me to give him a chance.

Having only moved back to Tennessee from Pennsylvania six months earlier for a position in

AmeriCorps, I could count on one hand the people I had social contact with each day. For the first several months of living in Clarksville, I was determined not to pursue sex casually with anyone, opting instead to pass the days with work, cooking dinner, watching Chopped, and going back to sleep. I spent my weekends writing at a local chain of evangelical coffee shops and 84 reading on the steps of a nearby park, overlooking the Cumberland River. I joined a bowling league through the university where I was working and filled every Tuesday night with the habit of attending. Once again, my life was filled with an aching, impenetrable loneliness I couldn’t shake. I spent most days asking myself why I moved there at all, what was so bad about

Pennsylvania anyway, and what it was about Tennessee that kept drawing me back.

I was now living an hour-and-a-half from the town where I had been raped four years earlier.

What exactly did I think I was escaping from?

#

Jack rapped his knuckles on the door and asked, are you okay? I stared at my reflection, dewy black conquest wet around my eyes. I stood crying. This was not a man I loved, or ever intended on loving. He was not meant to be more than a body from which I could rebound, but he had told me he loved me a few weeks in and I didn’t run, so perhaps I should have expected this.

Though our sex life had been adventurous, he knew that saying I love you was the one thing I wouldn’t, and couldn’t do, and he found a way to take that still.

This was not the only time Jack would violate me in our relationship. Months later, while I was sleeping he forced himself into a part of my body I had rarely allowed him to touch. I woke screaming, fighting away from him, and fleeing to the bathroom where I once again cried, staring down my reflection in the mirror. This incident, especially, is hard for me to talk about. I have spent years doubting my own memory of what happened. Because I was sleeping, I have worked out a million different ideas about what might have happened instead – maybe he was just touching me, maybe he tried to penetrate me but didn’t succeed, maybe I overreacted – but none 85 of these ideas ever absolve him of guilt, or change this incident to anything other than one of sexual violence.

Time passed and these incidents built up a legacy inside of me, coloring my perception of my relationship with Jack, while at the same time feeling so normal, it was hard to pinpoint why exactly they bothered me. Was it how wrong they clearly were, or the fact that neither one led to me ending the relationship? Jack was claiming to be in love with me, introducing me to his mother on Easter, and crying in my arms, for the first time in front of anybody, about the shame he felt for being a fuck up. I didn’t know how to hold someone who I saw as a victim of their own circumstances accountable. It would be years until I’d begin to understand how two things can be simultaneously true: 1) a person in pain is deserving of love and compassion, and 2) that doesn’t mean I have to date them, forgive them, or tolerate abuse from them. The truth is that we never talked about either incident until 2017 when, during the height of the #MeToo resurgence, Jack reached out to ask me about our relationship. Until then, I buried the violation somewhere deep inside of me, swallowed the violence and made plans for my life that would take me far away from him and everyone else who had hurt me.

In summer 2014 I broke up with Jack by moving 900 miles away.

Six months later, I met Shane.

#

I said, I’ve never told anyone this, and Shane listened as I told him the story of Jerry raping me the morning after my 23rd birthday. When I finished, his eyes were wet and he kissed my

cheeks.

I said, I never feel comfortable using that word, but any time someone says the word rape,

I flash back to that moment. 86

His fingers traced from my cheek, down my shoulder, and into my hand. He held it tightly.

I said, I’m not sure if it was though. I wiped my tears away with my shirt sleeve. I don’t know if I’m allowed to use that word.

You’re allowed to use it, he said, kissing my hands. Of course you are. It happened to you.

And it shouldn’t have.

The world was silent as he kissed me.

I just want to know you, Lena.

#

There are some men who, when they hear you have been raped, when they find out your body once existed as the site of another man’s violence, start imagining the ways they might participate in your history of violation. Such men want to plant the flag of their hard-pricked desire to make you remember them forever, long after you’ve lost your relevance to one another, in the threads of your sexual history. It is important to me that I remember Shane as he was— silent gunfire, a slow leak of poison, a violence threaded through everything. It is important that I remember his shift away from gentleness into something like ownership, when he first proposed that true vulnerability was handing yourself over to someone else and trusting them with the pieces.

“Pleasure can coexist with awful degradation without meaning the degradation was justified or a species of wish fulfillment; how it feels to be both accomplice and victim; and how such ambivalences can live on in an adult sexual life,” (Nelson 66).

# 87

I don’t know how to talk about this yet.

#

At a high school pep rally, cheerleaders and football players dressed up as class members who won the superlatives that year. Class clown, best dressed, most likely to succeed. They thought it was hilarious – the football players dressed up as the girls with stuffed bras and short skirts – the cheerleaders in baggy jeans, popped collars, and baseball hats. Gender play at its school sanctioned best.

I sat in the middle section of the bleachers with my friends and snickered. In the height of my “punk rock/emo” phase – the one all millennials coming of age in the early 2000s explored – I rolled my eyes in my ripped-up jeans and spray-painted t-shirts. High school, for me, was shaped by the ever-present desire to escape it. Not from lack of friends or being bullying, but rather an absolute certainty that I would suffocate to death if I didn’t experience everything life had to offer before having children, which I assumed would put an end to actually living. I was a senior and highly motivated by the likelihood that I’d never see any of these people again.

When it came time to announce class couple, the dynamic shifted. A popular football player stepped out in his jersey and faded jeans, fist pumping toward the crowd, as the gymnasium filled with laughter, shouting, and the stomping of bleachers into thunderous rumble. His fingers were clenched around a dog leash. Behind him, his girlfriend, a popular cheerleader, wore a dog collar, following him with a shy smile and her head slightly turned down. My classmates cheered all around me – this was the first time two winners were playing themselves, and everyone knew what it meant. I scanned the crowd for teachers to see if any were looking as angry and horrified as I was. I didn’t know the cheerleader personally; she was the kind of tall, gorgeous girl who was popular entirely for those reasons, though from what I could tell, she was 88 also extremely nice to everyone. The football player, who had always been friendly toward me, was a regular proponent of freshman hazing and was rumored to be taking steroids. He paraded across the gym floor with his chest out, as she trailed behind. There wasn’t a teacher in sight.

Six months later, the three of us moved to the same town two hours away to attend college.

They were still together – one of those barely legal couples engaged before stepping foot on a college campus. He joined a fraternity, she joined a sorority. Rumors spread about what happened at parties. The things she did with and in front of him, presumably for him. Halfway through freshman year, they broke up. Sometimes I’d pass by her on campus and she always looked happy, her cheeks pink, her UGGs salt-stained and wet, waving hello with a gloved hand, and her breath forming tiny clouds in the atmosphere around her.

Fifteen years later, I’m not sure if I remember any of this correctly. If maybe they did do the gender swap after all, or maybe she was the one pulling him on a leash, or maybe she was laughing the whole time, in on the joke, or maybe they didn’t break up at all, or maybe nothing ever happened at those parties, or maybe rumors are really just rumors, or maybe, or maybe.

#

I met Shane when he responded to an ad I posted on a Classifieds website. I was six months into my life in Tennessee, Christmas had come and gone, and aside from a few dates and random hookups, I had no real friends, or support system in place. I wanted to meet someone, anyone, who could fill the void in my life for human connection. The best way to make this happen, I knew, was through sex. It was the only guarantee of someone being there when I wanted them. Over the years, I had begun to form a particular self-identity. An alter ego of sorts. I could be wild, a sexual force, a liberated woman whose freedom with sex and exploration set me apart from other women. Prude women. Women who weren’t interesting, or exciting, or 89 open to newness. Women who didn’t allow hunger to drive their lives, like I did. I had given up the presumed love of my life, for a love of sex, I thought, so if it was not simply in my nature to think this way, what else was the explanation?

The ad I posted was funny and raw, light-hearted, and erotic. Within 24 hours I received hundreds of replies. Both amused and overwhelmed, I replied to a couple, but mostly just read them alone, in my apartment, laughing at the silliness of the whole thing. I had no intentions of really pursuing something, I realized. I honestly just needed to put something out there into the universe, express a want, dream a little of a sex life, an intellectual life, a romance blossoming out of something so crass that I would never again be rejected for all the need bubbling up inside of me.

Five days after I posted the ad, I had stopped reading the replies entirely. I couldn’t keep up with them and what had started out funny began to depress me. So many of the men were married, or partnered. So many were significantly older than me, or younger, or degrading even in their initial contact. They didn’t get my humor, they didn’t get that it was about sex and wasn’t about sex all at once. They didn’t get me at all and I felt foolish for expecting them to.

As I readied myself to delete the ad, I decided to open one last message. Immediately, I was taken aback by the length of it filling my laptop screen. After a witty introduction, the writer had taken it upon himself to go through my original post, line-by-line, and add commentary. He remarked on my sense of humor, how intelligent I seemed, how he too feels overwhelmed by his own ache for connection, how enticing my thoughts were, the ways he could relate to me, how compatible we seemed as people, how special and unique I sounded. At the end of the email he revealed that while he checks off every box of what I was looking for – single, educated, professional, open-minded – there was one tiny hang up. He was 52, twice my age exactly. 90

I understand if it’s a deal breaker, but please don’t let it be.

Let’s just meet one time. Then decide how you feel.

You owe it to both of us to give me a chance.

#

December 2017:

The counselor is warm. His smile is like a teddy bear come to life. He wears a button- down shirt, light blue, maybe green, maybe yellow. He asks me what I hope to accomplish in therapy and I say something about living. There is a ring on his finger that has probably always been there. A silver picture frame on his desk, light reflecting off the glass, probably a happy family. There are diplomas on his wall, a stress ball on the table next to me.

I wonder how long that ring has been there. I wonder when he became a doctor and what makes him trustworthy.

I want to work with a woman, I tell him.

Ok, he says, shifting. Why do you think that is?

#

During our first phone call, before we’d met, Shane asked me what I thought of cuddling and I told him it was something I reserved for the men I loved, which was to say, I would not be cuddling with him. He laughed, taken aback. That’s not what I was searching for, I explained, leaving out that our age difference made our prospects slim to none, anyway. Besides, it felt fraudulent and overstated to pretend that the connection I sought with him would venture anywhere beyond our coital crawl toward one another through the emails and texts we’d exchanged all week. I was loving our witty banter and his sexy, yet gentlemanly pursuit of me. 91

But the idea of him actually touching me freaked me out. I had never been with anyone more than six years older than me.

Later in the call, we talked about sexual safety and birth control. I told Shane I was on the pill and when he asked why I said because I only want to risk pregnancy or have kids with someone I want to be with. I said it flippantly because that’s what it was to me – a casual remark about the significance of my own autonomy in the face of casual sex – a greater calculated risk for women than men, by far. But Shane didn’t take it that way. He laughed, acting shocked. He couldn’t believe how rude I had been. To tell him so explicitly, so directly, that I did not and would not want to “be with” him. You could have been a little nicer about it, he said. I was confused. Nicer about what?

What should have been a passing remark quickly turned into a long conversation about why I had said something so hurtful. Though he was laughing, making light of it, I couldn’t help but feel ambushed. What exactly had I said that was so wrong? He was a complete stranger, not a longtime partner I had been picking out children’s names with. But at the time, in my pacifying state, I apologized, not quite sure what I was apologizing for but knowing instinctively I didn’t owe it to him. We both eventually laughed it off. But in the following weeks, he would reference the phrase someone I want to be with like a punchline for our whole relationship. Still, years later I am working to decipher its meaning, not sure if the joke was on him or me.

#

October 2017:

What’s the wildest thing you’ve ever done? He asked, his eyes hazy, mouth wet with interest. 92

I was on another date with the man from the bar. Each time we met up I told him it would just be dinner, or just be a movie, and every time we ended up back at his apartment or mine, clawing at one another, feral desire coursing between us, unrestrained. The evening would start off awkward, me – high energy, flirtatious, my stomach churning with nervous excitement, him – cool, easygoing, with the kind of relaxed confidence only a stoner earning a doctorate could pull off. Over the course of each night, our conversations would grow increasingly intimate, and the longing to touch him, hold him, and know him would furrow inside of me, a small animal begging for scraps of such longing returned. At some point during our dinner out, or trip to the movies, his fingers would fall to my knee, grazing it in small circles, igniting something within me I could hardly contain. By the time we were saying goodbye, he’d ask to come in, or invite me to his place, and it felt physically impossible to resist. As we kissed and touched, he would tell me in a slow, soft voice everything he thought about me that night, every reaction, internal desire, his own perpetual longing revealed. Our time together would last hours, sometimes days and I felt consumed by him in a way I hadn’t felt with anyone since Shane.

But between dates we talked sparingly, sometimes weeks passing before I’d hear from him, and at times I felt like maybe I didn’t actually exist, that I was just a figment of both his and my own imagination. We’d run into one another on campus and my cheeks would flush as I pretended to be the cool, carefree woman he thought I was, knowing that without fail, every time this happened he’d follow up later with a text asking me on another date. Once we were together again, nothing was off limits as I ached to explore every possibility with him while he was still in my grasp.

I can tell you mine first, he said.

Ok, I smiled. 93

I once fingered a girl while her husband was driving. It was really hot.

How did that happen?

He smiled back. He was into sharing her, I guess.

Oh.

My stomach turned.

They invited me to have a threesome, he said. But I felt weird being that close to another naked guy.

I get that.

He stroked my cheek with his thumb, pulled me close, and kissed me.

Now your turn.

# Two weeks after meeting Shane, we got snowed in together for four days in my tiny one- bedroom apartment. Up until then, we had spent all day, every day texting one another, to the point that it was difficult for me to get work done, or find time to make myself dinner. We were talking on the phone every couple of days too, sometimes from the evening until the following morning.

After our date at the Italian Restaurant, we met a few more times, mostly him driving the hour from Nashville to Clarksville to see me for a quick dinner and an evening at my apartment talking and exploring our mounting physical relationship. As uncertain about him as I still was, my attraction to him was growing. From the intensity of his gaze, the form of his body so impressively fit, and the tempered control and confidence of his touch, I was beginning to surrender my doubt in favor of a powerful want for knowing him better.

On a Sunday evening, during one of our particularly long phone conversations, Shane revealed halfway through that he was actually driving and on his way to my apartment. 94

I won’t stay the night, he promised. I just had to see you again.

An hour later he was draped across my sofa, reading aloud the first 150 pages of my novel, stopping to remark on parts he liked, or reactions to the content. We were spiraling into long, drawn out conversations about the ethics of love and sex, human nature, and my skill as a writer, the latter a backdrop to his every remark about the work. He made me feel like a real writer, who had something real to say and the talent to back it up. My cheeks hurt from laughing, watching him act out the dialogue, as only a one-time stage actor could.

It was 2 a.m. when he asked if he could spend the night. I was reluctant. Not only had I not expected to see him at all that evening, his impromptu visit lacking any kind of invitation. But I had work in the morning and was nervous about how fast things were moving with him, a man I knew I didn’t want to be with long term, but whose intense interest in me, emotional depth, and sexual prowess was drawing me further and further in the more time we spent together.

I’ll leave first thing in the morning.

In Tennessee I had come to expect only frost and the occasional flurry icing over my windshield, at most, so I hadn’t checked the weather. When we woke, snow was blanketing the world around us, effects of an undeniable winter storm. My phone lit up with notifications of the university closing and winter weather advisories from the governor, urging everyone to stay home unless there was an emergency. We were officially snowed in together.

Four days passed in a blur of intense conversation about fantasies, first loves, and his son and my father, our tears shedding empathetically for one another. We danced in my living room to classic country records on vinyl, cooked vegetarian chili and baked black bean brownies, stayed up late, and slept in each morning. We had swirls of intense, all-consuming sex, the kind 95 that made me really feel like someone. These four days together were like living inside of an independent film, or an off-Broadway play, I thought. An older man, so wounded from his life, the loss of his son in divorce, surviving an abusive childhood at the hands of a violent father, connecting in a once-in-a-lifetime kind of way with a twenty-something divorcee, whose own self- identity existed around the belief no one would ever truly love her. And the snow storm! How iconic. How unexpected, I thought. I even took some notes while Shane slept, imagining how I’d recreate these days together in writing so that I could relive them over, and over again, when I was old, and bored, and no longer interesting.

By the time the snow was melting and the state was opening back up, I had convinced myself this was it. The whole of our romance would be relegated to these four spectacular days, neat and tidy, like 100 pages of screenplay perfection. When he finally left, I kissed him hard in my doorway, blinking back the heat behind my eyes, wondering when, or if I’d see him again. It was all just too magical to continue, I thought.

He was just too magical.

#

I haven’t done anything wild, I said, coyly. The man from the bar chuckled.

I don’t believe that. I know what you’re like.

Do you?

His hands roamed my body and he kissed me.

I know exactly what you’re like, he said. Just tell me. What’s the wildest thing –

I don’t know how to talk about this yet.

#

I just want you to consider it. 96

Six weeks together, every night, every weekend, texting all day long, talking until our throats ached, entangled until our bodies vibrated apart, exhausted. I felt swallowed by Shane, like every hurt I had ever felt, or loneliness I’d ever known had fallen away as quickly as our clothing had, in heaps on the floor around us. It was as if he was filling in the cracks of my broken life, cementing pieces of it, and me, back together, making me a whole person again, or possibly for the first time. He was giving me a sense of purpose, a drive to exist each day knowing how deeply I mattered to him, and drawing attention to just how much I didn’t matter to anyone else before. I needed him.

Don’t be so close-minded, Lena.

A month in I told him I loved him. Not in words, but indirectly, he said. He could just tell, he said.

Something was shifting between us. It was obvious something inside of me was cracking open, waiting to be consumed by him.

It was when he told me over coffee and cake that he would never be able to love me or anyone again; he was just too broken. It’s not you, he said. It’s someone else. The woman before me. The woman who was just one in a long, terrible line of women who had slowly chiseled away his well-being, and destroyed him. He couldn’t call her by name, it was too painful, he said. So instead he referred to her as “the entity.” And however much “the entity” had ruined his life, he said firmly that he would always, always love her. Always more than me.

It was when he said this, his voice soft, and his eyes gentle, his face and body radiating kindness, like it pained him to admit this unmovable truth, that I began to cry. When all the foundation we had been building started to fissure. When I began to grow desperate and needy, when I started to fear his absence, when I started to look sad, more often than happy.

That’s when he knew. 97

Wanting this doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.

He wasn’t like any man I had ever known. His careful attention meant every word I spoke had to be perfect the first time, or else we’d spend hours dissecting why I said what, or how I said it, or what I really meant. It turned out I was capable of being hurtful far more often than I realized. Also, I was not a great communicator. I was always misspeaking, always misunderstanding him, always confusing dates, times, memories, promises. I also had a problem with lying. He would help me with all of these things. He would make sure no leaf was ever unturned; I would always explain myself thoroughly and to his satisfaction. I would always respond to texts promptly, pick up the phone when he called, open my door when he showed up unannounced with presents, or just to say hello. He knew I was a good, appreciative woman, unlike the others, but it worried him that I didn’t always act like it.

I just really need this, if we are going to be together. I need you to do this for me.

He said he couldn’t survive another heartbreak. I needed to prove myself first. He said I was a special kind of woman. It was obvious in the ad I wrote, how shamelessly I talked about sex in it. I was exactly the kind of woman he’d always wanted to meet. A woman who embodied sex, who was sex. I was exactly like him; we both had the same kind of sickness. He could see himself falling for me, maybe. He could see introducing me to his family. He could see me. He could see everything.

But only if you want to.

There are stories we tell about ourselves. Most of the time, they are fiction.

# 98

It’s our first session, or maybe our third, or fourth. The counselor has told me working with a male therapist might help me get over my distrust of men. I feel like a shelter dog, coaxed into being a family pet. He might be right. However many sessions in, I have learned this man has a wife and two kids. He is funny and pragmatic. Kind, but firm. He’s been sick all winter and

I feel sorry for talking so much.

What are you worried about? The counselor asks. So I tell him.

I worry you will judge me.

Why would I judge you? He asks. There is snow outside. It’s been snowing for years. I am crying now, but I’m hoping he doesn’t notice.

Sex is really important to me, I say. His faces twitches into an amused grin.

That’s pretty normal.

I stare out the window. There are things I need to say, that I don’t trust a man can really hear. I don’t say this.

Instead I say, I don’t know how to talk about Shane.

Let’s start there.

#

I was with an older man for a while. He was really into dominance.

Oh fuck, tell me about it, the man from the bar sighed, shifting excitedly beneath me.

I was straddling him now, both of us still fully clothed. The conversation had stopped and started throughout the evening, between pipe refills, slices of pizza, and swapping one DVD for another. The Godfather II was now playing in the background.

Well, it’s kind of complicated. It wasn’t always… 99

His mouth trembled as he watched me search for the words. I kissed him, a strategic move to hold off saying it just a moment longer.

It’s kind of like your wild thing, I finally said. His eyes widened.

You mean, he liked to share you with other men?

Something like that, I said, fiddling with his collar button, averting my eyes.

That’s so fucking hot, he said.

Yeah, I sighed. It can be.

Did you do it a lot? He asked, eyes flickering with interest as he began to touch me. I squirmed, uncomfortable.

I don’t know.

I want to know everything, he said, unzipping his jeans. Start from the beginning.

#

It’s been five years and I still don’t know how to talk about this.

There are flashes of apartments, of hotel rooms, of parking lots.

There are flashes of my body and someone else’s, and someone else’s, and someone else’s.

There are names I don’t know, faces I’ve never seen, just friction, and friction, and friction.

There is Shane in the corner watching.

There is Shane telling me to stop crying.

There are men trying to be kind.

There is Shane documenting everything.

There is me loving everything. 100

There is me standing in the shower, begging him not to make me.

There is begging him to forgive me.

There is calling myself an object.

There is believing I am an object.

There is Shane saying I’m starting to love you.

There is Shane telling me I did it wrong.

There is me saying please let me stop.

There is Shane saying you wanted this.

There are men saying I can’t believe you do this.

There is me kneeling in the apartment, in the hotel room, in the parking lot.

There is a camera roll filled with my body, my body, my body.

There is adrenaline.

There is pain in: everything.

There is Shane saying he’d never force me.

There is orgasm, orgasm, nothing.

There is me asking if he loves me.

There is Shane telling me I’m nothing.

There is my reflection watching and my body convulsing, my rib cage closing, a divide forming – at once believing that there is no love in sex, only violence. Somehow I had hoped for belonging.

This is not an apology but there is shame. I’m not sorry, I’m sorry.

My trauma is the wildest thing I’ve ever done. 101

I’m learning how to talk about this.

#

To say everything that happened with Shane was unwanted would be a lie. There were things I wanted to do and in some ways, I felt like Shane gave me the opportunity to try things I otherwise would have relegated only to fantasy. I found some freedom in our exploration and there were moments of legitimate joy for me. But to say any of it was what I actually wanted, would also be a lie. Through the first several months of our relationship, I asked Shane, repeatedly, if we could stop. But six months in he, after I called a particular evening awesome, asked if I could ever be satisfied in a monogamous relationship.

I don’t know, I had said.

But I did know. It wasn’t about monogamy vs. non-monogamy. It wasn’t about vanilla vs. kink. My sexuality and sex positivity were not, and has never been, limited to by-the-books, heteronormative, “love” making we see in Hallmark movies. It was that I felt had no choice in the matter.

It wasn’t that Shane ever directly forced me with physical violence, or restraint, though multiple experiments with bondage blurred the lines of consent far beyond what I would now consider ethical sex. It was that Shane’s kindness toward me, his emotional openness, and the care he offered was contingent upon my giving him everything he, or anyone else, wanted of me sexually. He would state repeatedly that he only was interested in my enthusiastic consent, but when I would hesitate at all, he would scold and belittle me, threaten to leave me, or in some cases grow completely silent right in front of me, unwilling to speak at all until I gave in. It was that when I gave in, he was there for me, supporting me, encouraging me. Paying for my 102 application to graduate school when I couldn’t afford it, buying me an Appalachian Mountain

Dulcimer when I wanted to learn to play. Listening to me like no one else had ever listened to me, telling me how special and smart I was, how there was no one in the world like me.

It was that his love had a price.

It was that no amount of giving was enough.

#

Fall 2020:

My current therapist says I’m emotionless when I talk about Shane, or any number of the things in my life that have harmed me.

It’s like you’re giving me a report. Like you’re not the one this happened to.

I tell her, I’m both ashamed and unashamed by the fact that it hurt me. Much of the time I said yes to Shane, or at least, I didn’t say no. Some of those times I was afraid of him. Some of those times I was crying and he was fixing my makeup for me. Some of those times I actually meant it. Yes, we can do this. Yes, that might be fun. Yes, ok, I will.

Tos say ye was to be worthy, to belong to someone, to be fulfilling my role, to be interesting. No was equivalent to failing, neglecting, being selfish.

But it’s five years later and I can’t have sex without crying.

#

Our relationship lasted from January 2015 until summer 2016.

After five months of dating he moved in with me. After 7 months, we moved together to

Kentucky so that I could start graduate school. During the entire first year of our relationship, we did things I don’t know how to talk about multiple times a week, and sometimes even more. I was growing disembodied, seeing myself through a voyeur’s eyes, unable to recognize who I 103 used to be. I was exhausted all the time. I felt owned by him, prostituted. Somehow the more I gave, the more he asked for.

When I finally told him I was done with that forever, that I couldn’t take it anymore, he told me, for the first time, that he loved me. I couldn’t bring myself to say it back.

We ended, finally, after I went away for the summer to intern at an artist and writer’s residency in Woodstock, NY. I had just completed the first year of my MFA. We left on difficult terms, our relationship an unstable toxicity infecting both of us, in one way or another. While I was gone, Shane stopped calling me. He stopped texting or responding to my emails. In July I hiked the mountain behind the artist’s colony where I was staying. When I reached the top, I cried out in pain and understanding. It was over.

In August when I came home, Shane had moved out. While I was gone, a friend and member of my MFA cohort moved into the apartment directly below mine. We had been looking forward to being neighbors and talked about it over the summer. It took two weeks for me to figure out what was happening. In the two months I was gone, Shane had pursued my friend and started a relationship with her, and ultimately moved in with her. They lived there together for an entire year, directly below me, in an apartment with the same layout as mine.

I spent the year after that raw and wild, the ghost of him literally echoing in the hallway outside of my apartment door. I couldn’t leave without running into one of them, or fear I would see him, and have to see his eyes look right through me, like I didn’t exist. I was trapped in poetry workshops with someone writing poems about him. I was trapped in my home with the man who had exploited and traumatized me beyond my understanding, even now. Every time I left the house, I thought I saw him. At home I’d hear footsteps all around me and convince myself he was there. I started having nightmares every night of the two of them together 104 watching someone kill me, of Shane raping me, of Shane having other men rape me, of the two of them laughing as I died in front of them. I felt dirty all the time. Wounded and ugly, as if every bad thing that had ever happened to me – Carl, Jerry, Jack – every rape, every violation, all the sex I endured against my will, had morphed together into an unstoppable force surging forward inside of me, threatening to unravel everything around me.

I was ravenous to cleanse myself of him.

#

Spring 2017:

I’m reading a memoir about rape, assigned by my professor. It’s the third book we’ve read this semester that talks about sexual violence. The year earlier in my first memoir class, I wrote about my rape, back when I thought there was only one thing to write about.

The book is College Girl and it goes like this:

There is a girl, in college, who is attacked in the night by a man that has been stalking her. He breaks into her apartment, holds a knife to her throat, and rapes her violently, in her own bed. She spends the rest of the book, the rest of her life, seeking justice and understanding.

In class, a woman across the circle from me says:

I feel like she’s just trying to sound like a victim. I can’t relate to this voice at all.

At home, I am reeling.

Two years ago, I said out loud, for the first time, that I had been raped. I told Shane and he believed me. The first person I had ever told.

Now, I am sitting in my apartment. It is Kentucky cold outside, which means it’s

Pennsylvania comfortable. I can’t stop thinking about this college girl.

I invited him back to my apartment, I think. He broke into hers. 105

I can’t stop thinking about this college girl

Most of the time I forget it even happened, I think. It wasn’t a big deal, anyway.

I can’t stop thinking about this

Maybe it wasn’t anything. Maybe I’m trying to sound like a victim. Not like this college girl, who didn’t do anything wrong. Not like me.

I can’t stop thinking about

Carl on top of me on Christmas Eve, my body crushed in submission.

I can’t stop thinking

Of Jack forcing love from my throat. Jack forcing my body open. Jack forcing.

I can’t stop

Shane’s face when he tells me I asked for this in the ad I posted. Shane telling me I’m a slut and a whore. Shane cradling my face and kissing my cheeks. Shane telling me I’m only good for fucking.

I can’t, I can’t, I can’t

#

To say everything that happened with Shane was unwanted would be a lie. There are things Shane did to me that I may never share in writing. Specific incidents, like the others, that if

I could manage to recall in grueling detail, I’m still not sure I would. I still don’t have a way of talking about them.

That semester, reading College Girl, I was blown wide open. There was nothing about rape that made sense to me, nothing about sex or consent, that rang true. I began writing to figure it out. I wrote I don’t know how to talk about my 23rd birthday, so I’ll talk about it like this and wrote the most detailed account I could muster of Jerry raping me. 106

Back then, it was still almost impossible to say out loud that I had been raped. Not only because of how much I blamed myself for that incident, but because the word rape was so linguistically powerful to me, and the emotional trauma from that incident didn’t resonate near as much as the other things I had experienced. The things I truly never talked about with anyone, up until that point. The things that reminded me more of the rape in College Girl than the rape I had experienced all those years ago on my twenty-third birthday.

I continued writing, sharing drafts with my professor, instinctively including outside research as questions arose inside of me: What do we talk about when we talk about rape? What is the connection between love and consent? What actually happened to me? What role does shame play in understanding? Who is to blame for all this hurting?

Over the course of the semester I wrote a thirty-page manuscript I titled “Consent After

Birth,” an excerpt of which I included as an epigraph to this chapter. Rereading it three-and-a- half years later I am both stunned and pained by the ways in which I talked about myself and my trauma. The entire essay could be boiled down to one key idea: that I was complicit in every bad thing that had ever happened to me.

Still, this essay marked a turning point for me. As I was readying to graduate from my

Master’s and head off to begin my doctorate, I was consumed with a need to understand what had happened to me. In all the research I did for that essay, I came upon so little that focused on sexual violence in romantic relationships, I began to wonder if anyone studied it at all, or if my experiences were really that much of an anomaly. Maybe something about me was the problem.

But the more I wrote, the more I realized there was one consistent issue that made it feel impossible to accurately write about these experiences, or find research talking about them: I didn’t feel comfortable calling them sexual violence. Without the appropriate language, it was 107 hard to even know what search terms to use that would ultimately reveal work that resonated with my experiences. Why is it that these words, rape and sexual assault, which are meant to represent an action, have ended up representing the context of the action as well? Why is the context, so often, more relevant to naming the action, than the action itself?

#

May 2017:

I’m finishing my MFA with one final summer class and a thesis defense. There are only two months left until I finally move to Ohio – escape the former friend downstairs, the former lover – start anew, someone smart and capable in Ohio, someone studious and self-contained in

Ohio. Someone else entirely in Ohio.

But most days I am clawing out of my own skin, feral in the summer heat. I still haven’t cleansed myself of him. I still smell him on my skin. I’m trying though. I meet other older men.

One evening at a local hotel the man I meet is over twice my age, but incredibly nervous, incredibly kind. We spend a lot of time talking and being nervous together. He doesn’t understand me. I feel guilty that he’s married, but I pretend that’s not real. I start out playing a character, a young and glamorous mystery. We spend a few hours together and he is kind to me the entire time, and I start to play myself. Afterward I sit in the parking lot and cry under the lamplight. I cry with my fists clenched, beating against the steering wheel and sometimes my chest. I cry for this man, for his wife, for how old he felt against me, for how disembodied I feel every day, for how damaged I must be to end up here, for how foreign it feels to be treated with kindness; I cry for myself.

I sit there for a long time. I don’t know how to come back from this place where I’ve found myself. I know it won’t work to continue temporarily suspending my own morality to fill 108 the need I have to wash someone else away from me. But nothing matters, I think. In the grand scheme of life, none of this matters. It’s all stories to tell someone, someday. It’s all entertainment as I watch myself, disassociate from myself. I can be someone else in Kentucky.

Someone who doesn’t care about anything.

I spend the summer in a full-fledged affair with this man and when he tells me he loves me I feel both sad and angry, knowing he doesn’t, knowing he couldn’t, knowing he only ever met a very small part of me. Before I move away he builds me a desk I take with me to Ohio.

In Ohio I try to be someone different. I don’t meet men that way anymore. I stop using sex as a costume. But I meet a man at a bar and he dresses me back up, plays make believe with me. I want to be something other than desperate. I know I am dirty, broken, and undeserving. I don’t feel anything in color anymore. On the phone with my mother, I call this peace.

I start therapy in December.

Coming to the Research

The first time I ever spoke openly about rape, aside from with close friends and partners, was when I first announced to my PhD cohort and professors that I wanted to write a dissertation about sexual violence that would include outside research as well as memoir. I can’t describe how strange it is to say this out loud to a group of people who you are supposed to have a professional relationship with. No matter how academically you put it – autoethnography, auto- criticism, creative-critical hybrid – when you say this, you are outing yourself as someone who has been raped. You watch their faces – some furrowed in compassion, others nodding knowingly (not necessarily from their own experiences, but from familiarity with the concept), others completely unmoving, afraid to make the wrong expression. You wonder what exactly they think it means when you say this. You wonder what they are picturing and if they knew the 109 circumstances of your experiences, would their faces morph instead into some kind of judgment?

You wonder why no one ever asks you what happened.

I am still in the process of accepting that there is no right or wrong way to talk about individual experiences with sexual trauma. My approach over the years has been to either 1) completely ignore that it happened, glossing over that part of whatever story I am telling, 2) to make light of it and comfort the people I tell to ease their burden of knowing, assuming the pain it caused me will evaporate the more I laugh about it, 3) to eroticize it, or 4) to be so ashamed of it, I take total ownership for it, barely even acknowledging the other person’s part in it. While these are all ineffective when it comes to convincing others of the wrongness of sexual violence, they are not inherently wrong either. Each one is a layer of my own processing come to life.

They are not true representations of what happened, but they are not necessarily false either.

They are part of the narrative in my steps toward understand what it means to be both victim and survivor.

I don’t know that there is any such thing as a fully processed rape narrative, most especially when the context of the violence is inconsistent with what we have come to expect from that word. Something I have learned through all this is that while there are most definitely objective truths about sexual violence, such as this person forced this person to , there are also subjective realities for the people involved that are equally compelling sources for understanding how sexual violence is perpetrated, and why it will likely never, completely, go away.

In all of my subjective realities, I was the one to blame – either for not protesting loudly enough or strongly enough, for “allowing” myself to be coerced and abused, or perhaps most profoundly, for not ending the relationships soon enough – until I wasn’t. It has taken me many 110 years to accept this, and as with my relationship with Shane, and even with Jack, I still don’t fully believe that both situations were not at least partially my fault. Which is why I struggle to analyze my experiences with them in the same semi-detached light that I could with Jerry or

Carl. My subjective reality of those experiences has, over time, begun to align with a more objective reality of what happened. But in so many ways, I am still working through the pieces of what has happened in my life from 2014 until now, and to present a fully processed narrative would be a lie. There is so much left to process. The best I can offer is fragments.

There are so many questions I’m still trying to find answers for.

Research Questions

I knew in developing my research plans that my chief interest would be in understanding other women’s experiences in light of my own, and all that I am still learning about relationships, sexual violence, and language. Over the years, in all of my self-reflection and analysis of the various things that have happened to me, I have had minimal opportunities to speak with women who I could relate to when it came to sexual violence. So often it feels like the women who speak and write about rape most publicly are those women who have an empowered understanding of what happened to them and their own survivorship. This is not something I relate to. More often than not, other women’s abilities to openly and confidently name their experiences as rape make me feel one of two ways: 1) like I’m a weak woman for not being able to do the same, or 2) like I’m a liar when I try to. Furthermore, it is nearly impossible to tell people you struggle with naming your experiences as rape, without them automatically, emphatically validating that it was. This may be a flaw in the contemporary anti-rape rhetoric.

You can feel like a bad feminist if you don’t loudly and vehemently call out any experience of unwanted sex as sexual violence, then end up blaming yourself for being weak-willed or a tool of 111 the patriarchy. But the reality is, if we aren’t active tools of the patriarchy, we are still products of it. The struggle with naming is never the fault of the victim, but the responsibility of doing so always is.

I am not alone with this. As discussed in Chapter 1, naming an experience as rape, or even as assault, takes most victims months, or years, if not longer. As explored in this entire project thus far, the context of romantic love, and emotional abuse, if nothing else complicates this understanding, further distancing the language from the lived experience. In my effort to further understand the connections between romantic relationships and sexual violence, I followed through with my original intent for my dissertation research by building toward this memoir project, as much a personal journey of healing as it is a study of trauma. In this process I developed four key research questions to inform my focus:

1) How is sexual violence normalized within relational discourse of heterosexual

relationships in America?

2) How do women’s narratives of their experiences of non-consensual sex within

heterosexual romantic relationships inform our understanding of rape culture?

3) How does a yes/no binary of consent, and the rhetoric of consent and consent

education in American culture, reinforce harmful victim-blaming rape myths when

positioned against what we can learn from women’s narratives?

4) What terminology do women use to define their experiences and what can we learn

about American rape culture, the rhetoric of consent and sexual violence, and the

limitations of our colloquial and legal language surrounding sexual violence by

analyzing their narratives? 112

While I don’t believe all answers can be found in narrative, mine or anyone else’s, I do believe the knowledge that exists inside of them is profound. The impact of language, the “rules” of communication, the rhetoric around sexual violence are all present in the lived experience, and the retelling of the story. In looking at my own retellings, the processed and the fragmented, it is clear to me now that language both helped me recognize and escape from the realities of what I was experiencing.

With these questions in mind, I began to develop a research plan that would involve interviewing members of the community. In my review of literature, I was struck by how many studies focused on campus sexual violence, and how few looked at the community, or brought regular attention to relational violence, as opposed to campus alcohol or drug-related date rape.

This is not to say that campus-based research isn’t highly necessary, because of course it is, but rather that in the studies I was encountering, I rarely recognized stories similar to my own. As Gesa

Kirsh advocates, community-based research can “make individual voices heard and reach those parts of the outside world that would otherwise be overlooked,” (Lucas 3). I went to spend time with the people overlooked.

Developing the Study

To find some direction for establishing this study, I met with members of the campus counseling center, where I had gone for counseling myself in December 2017. I met with a doctoral student who had nearly ten years of experience working in victim advocacy. Per her recommendation, I sought out local women’s shelters to form a partnership for conducting this research. In April of 2019, I met with the director of a rape crisis center in a nearby city. Together we developed a plan for me to distribute a survey to victim advocates and staff members of the agency that would ask about personal experiences with sexual violence, 113 specifically, within relationships. After reviewing the survey answers, I would contact any women who had experienced something (ill-defined or fully processed) in a relationship. From there I would interview them about their experiences and learn how they understood them, and thus, the language they used to talk about them.

The interview was to be semi-structured with 14 core questions broken down into three categories: 1) Relationship History 2) General Sexual Violence Language and

Culture 3) Relationship History and Sexual Violence (see Appendix F for full list of questions). I structured the questions in this way to allow time to develop rapport and obtain necessary context. The context of relationship dynamics and history are fundamental to this research, as I argue the context of a relationship allows for greater opportunities to not only experience violence, but to have that experience silenced or ignored. As Spigelmen writes, “ignoring or neutralizing the history, the context, and the precise circumstances in which particular women have lived…risks misreading that history and misinterpreting,” (74). Some sample questions include:

1) How closely do you relate your relationship history and your sexual history? Do you

see them as intrinsically linked?

2) What associations do you have with the word rape?

3) What difference, if any, do you see between the terms “sexual assault” and the term

“rape”?

4) What difference, if any, do you see between the terms “victim” and “survivor”?

5) In your survey you indicated that you have felt pressured, forced, coerced, or

manipulated into engaging in a sexual act that was not entirely wanted. Please share,

in as little or as much detail as you are comfortable, what incident(s) immediately 114

comes to mind when you are asked this question.

6) In what ways have you altered the way you speak about, or think about, these

experiences, specifically in terms of how you label them?

Having struggled so much with my own stories before this project or perhaps, most especially, throughout, I knew it would be important when designing this study that, no matter what, my focus would be on letting these stories unfurl on their own and become whatever they were meant to. In my preparation I came across a feminist methodology called The Listening

Guide, an approach most often utilized in the social sciences that focuses on dialogic interviews and purposeful listening. Perhaps most striking about The Listening Guide is that it asks researchers to listen to each interview four separate times, with each listening focusing on something specific. The first listening is characterized by “listening for plot,” developing a “trail of evidence,” identifying silences, and checking researcher response (Woodcock 3). The second, which is probably what The Listening Guide is most known for, is the creation of “I-poems,” which breakdown the participant’s voice and how they offer narrative (3). Woodcock advocates for creative approaches to the composition of these poems, utilizing not only the I-statements but the “you” or “they” statements as well, to further analyze what relational themes could be uncovered (4). Finally, the third and fourth listenings are when the research questions can be revisited in light of the time spent with the transcripts. This is when the research agenda comes back into play.

Woodcock writes, “The Listening Guide is most appropriate for research questions that ask informants to draw upon complex, internal dialogues, which they may have never previously shared,” (8). The Listening Guide makes note of the importance of listening not only for words but for silences (2), harkening back to Glenn’s notion of the rhetorical meaning of silence within 115 discourse. Additionally, as the methodology utilized by Johnstone, as referenced in Chapter 1,

The Listening Guide has proven an effective methodology for research into sexual violence.

Making plans for this work in a program and field in which most of my colleagues are conducting classroom research, or textual analysis of written documents, I often feel I have to advocate for why this work is important. Not in an existential sense – I don’t think anyone doubts that it matters that we understand sexual violence better. But rather, in my disciplinary approach. But coming to this work through the framework of obtaining oral histories of women’s relational lives and experiences offers an approach that Lucas argues should be prioritized as a method within rhetoric and composition as a field, as he considers collecting oral history “the research practice most closely aligned with the ethos and ideology of rhetoric and composition”

(2). Arguing from the historical relevance of oral performance within the field to the increasing focus on recovering voices Lucas contends, “we need to understand oral histories as conversational narratives: interpersonal exchanges developed with multiple perspectives and complex dialectical processes,” (2).

In further placing my methodology in the field, I consider Ratcliffe’s advocacy for rhetorical listening which she explains, “encourages listeners to listen not just to tropes and claims but also to cultural logics within which tropes and claims function.” (42) This requires that feminist scholars “identify moments when trope, body, and culture converge” (44) in order to argue that the rhetorical construction of rape culture, gender, relationships, and sexual violence compound to silence women. Tompkins argues that rhetorical listening is a necessary component of qualitative research, explaining “Rhetorical listening is an attentiveness to communicative connection in an effort to discern the traces of others…hidden by language that 116 creates rhetorical absence rather than presence” (77). If the goal of the research is to amplify voices and experiences, adopting rhetorical listening as method is needed.

The Art of Objectification

Fall 2020:

Like everyone I know, I’ve spent months in relative isolation. Unlike everyone I know, I have also spent them in a near constant state of avoidance, finding whatever means necessary to escape the reality of writing a dissertation I chose to write in the first place. Most of the time that

I try, I’m afraid of what might come out. My therapist wants to know why.

There are two voices inside of me, I tell her. One that tells me I’m lazy, and stupid, and incapable of doing it and the other that tells me no one will care anyway, no one will ever read it, it won’t make a difference, none of it was that bad, nothing matters.

Neither of those voices are very compassionate, she says with a pained smile.

I don’t know how to talk about compassion. More often than not I feel like a victim of it, concerning myself so much with the needs and desires of my partners, at some point I stop existing entirely. My therapist calls this over-identification.

Ramsey and Hoyt explain this through the lens of female objectification, the end result of which is “to mentally divide [the female] body and mind in order to focus on her sexual body parts. Her body parts and their functions are no longer associated with her personality and emotions, but instead are seen as instruments to be used by others (151)”… all of which increases the likelihood for sexual violence because, “it is considered easier to physically violate and object compared to a human (152). An objectified woman may consent to sexual behaviors that she otherwise would not, in part because she has internalized the view of herself as an object that exists to please her partner,” (154). 117

Film theorist Laura Mulvey writes female film spectators inevitably internalize the “male gaze” – a term she coined in the 1970s, to explain this phenomenon in film.

Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic objects for the

characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the

auditorium (62)…She is isolated, glamorous, on display, sexualized. But as the narrative

progresses she falls in love with the main male protagonist and becomes his property…by

means of identification with him, through participation in his power, the spectator can

indirectly possess her too. (64)

For Mulvey, women have two options when they internalize the male gaze: to over identify with the image of a woman as mere object, or to view women (and thus herself) from the man’s point of view. It is no coincidence this explanation mirrors Ramsey and Hoyt’s research.

Regular objectification and self-objectifications increases a woman’s likelihood that she will see herself and her body through a “third-person” lens (153), thus disconnecting from the view of herself as owner of her own body. They also found that sexual objectification of women in media directly impacts male acceptance of non-consensual sex, in general, and within heterosexual relationships (152). The less women are recognized as human, the greater likelihood for sexual trauma both in and outside of relationships.

Is it possibly because it’s painful to write about? My therapist asks me, her face kind.

What you’re asking yourself to do is hard, especially because you’re still processing what actually happened in the first place.

I tell her that sometimes I feel that by talking about these things as if they hurt me, I’m calling myself a victim. I don’t want people to think, that I think, that I’m a victim when at least some of it was my fault. 118

But they did hurt you, she urges.

But I’ve hurt myself more, I think.

In Come as You Are Dr. Emily Nagoski writes:

Sometimes, too, survivors find themselves locked in a pattern of sexual behavior. Their

brains become compulsive about undoing the trauma, redoing it differently, or simply

understanding it. Like biting on a cold sore, or squeezing a pimple, the brain can’t leave

the trauma alone, even though you know you’d heal faster if you could. The result is that

the survivor has multiple partners, often following a habitual pattern, without feeling

perfectly in control of the decision to have those partners. (127)

I used to think I knew which trauma I was trying to undo, redo differently, and understand. It felt obvious to me. My summer spent immersed in affairs I’m now ashamed of, convincing myself Shane was not to blame after all, that it was me the whole time, doing it all to myself. But then I trace back through the history, think it over, write through it all chapter, after chapter, and I ask myself what if it all started much earlier than that.

What if I can trace my whole life back to Jack forcing himself on me in the middle of the night in 2014, or Jerry raping me the morning after my 23rd birthday in Tennessee, or the two male friends who four months apart touched me when they thought I was sleeping and I was too shocked and scared to move, or Carl drunkenly shoving himself inside of me Christmas Eve

2009, or my high school health textbook not including the clitoris in the drawing of the female anatomy, or men on the internet asking for underage pictures of my naked body, or the old man at the coffee shop where I worked in high school talking about wanting to touch my breasts between an order of sugar raised donuts and decaf, or when in the span of two weeks two different boys in two different classrooms whispered my name and flashed their penises at me 119

when I looked their way, stroking while laughing at the look on my face, or seeing pornography

for the first time BIGTITPOOLSIDEGANGBANGXXX, or not knowing I even had a clitoris

until a man on the internet told me how to touch it, or hearing a dozen euphemisms for blow jobs

before turning twelve years old but being embarrassed of the word pussy until my early twenties,

or the male principal who measured the length of every fifth grade girls shorts after swim class to

keep us from revealing too much of our pre-pubescent bodies, or last year when at the Kroger

check out a woman came up to me and told me she just saw a man I didn’t know taking pictures

of me, or the look on his face when I turned around and saw him, or how I cried in the parking

lot afterward, barely able to breathe, feeling so reduced I couldn’t look at myself in the rear view

mirror, or how thirty-two years ago I was born a baby girl with bright blue eyes and a penchant

for laughter.

Maybe this is all any of us need to know.

October 2019

In the fluorescent light of the basement conference room, I watched women filter into

their monthly training session at the Rape Crisis Center. Some kept to themselves, finding seats

at the far end of one of the four rectangular collapsible tables set up to form a square of seating

in the center of the room. Others spoke with one another, laughing, throwing their heads back in

youth and joy, gathering sections of cold cut subs, slices of pizza, and clear plastic cups of soda

from the table of provided food hugging the wall to my left. I had arrived fifteen minutes earlier

and found a seat facing the exit, an anxiety-induced habit I picked up somewhere along the way.

At Starbucks, out to dinner with friends, and in my home office it was imperative that no matter

what, I could always see the door, always get the first glimpse of what might be coming, never

letting myself be surprised. 120

“We’ll get started in just a few minutes, Lena,” the Director told me, with a warm smile. Months earlier when I reached out to nearly ten women’s shelters in a sixty-mile radius, she was the only one to respond. We spent three hours in her office, one afternoon, talking about my research, sexual violence, creative writing, literature, and all the other things we had in common. I liked her a great deal, but we hadn’t spoken much in the passing months, beyond workshopping my survey and interview questions, and talking through my research plan via email.

I smiled a thank you before returning to stare at the phone in my lap, waiting for the time to change. At five minutes to go, I pulled out the folder I brought with me and skimmed through all the IRB documentation I could need, and the detailed overview of my project I brought on the off chance I would forget everything I was studying, and didn’t trust myself to improvise.

Finally, I flipped through to the page tucked at the very back of the stack: a bare bone outline of my own sexual trauma, littered with years, names, locations, and notes in the margins to help me recall the context of each experience. When I had practiced giving this presentation in the mirror at home, or sitting at the desk in my university office, it was far more difficult than I ever could have predicted it would be. For one, I couldn’t stop interrupting myself, explaining my perspective further, or worrying I was being unfair to the men in my stories, fearful of depicting them as one-dimensional deviants. For another, the more I streamlined exactly what to say, and how to say it, the more I realized I couldn’t get it under twenty minutes, and feared the longer I spoke, the more opportunities there might be to question my experiences altogether. But having been allotted thirty minutes of the two-hour meeting, I trusted that the contexts of the situations, which were so important in my own understanding, were necessary components of any conversation about my own experience with sexual trauma, and that it would be a disservice 121 to all other survivors to shorten my own storytelling out of fear, or too great a concern for politeness.

When the last of the women filed in and the chatter began to dissipate, after a quick welcome to the group and explanation of who I was, the Director nodded my way, opening the floor for my presentation. As I glanced around the room, my eyes fell on each of the women’s faces, warmth and thoughtfulness radiating from them. I took a deep breath and began.

I started with the first incident I had ever named as rape – the time a stranger I had only just met forced himself on me the morning after my 23rd birthday. I talked quickly through the timeline, the years it took to recognize that experience as rape, and the impact that realization had on my ability to name other experiences as sexually violent, if not also rape. I told them about Carl, Jack, and Shane, using their real names out of nerves and simply forgetting the pseudonyms I had picked out months earlier. I told them about my doctoral program, my obsession with narrative, and need to understand this phenomenon of non-consensual or unwanted sex that is so hard to label rape, certain that most women have also experienced some variance of what I was talking about. I told them about how before I came to the meeting that night I had cried in my boyfriend’s arm, panic struck through me like electric shame that none of them would believe me, but how that feeling is what got me there in the end. I explained what I was asking for – for them to take the digital survey

I’d be sending out in a few days and consider talking with me openly, and honestly, about any experience that might seem relevant. I passed out half-sheet flyers I made up with brief summaries of my project and my contact information, phone and email, if they wanted to ask more questions before making a decision about participating. 122

When I finished speaking, relief flooded through my body and I took, what felt like my first true exhale, in hours. As the women asked questions about my research, thanked me for sharing, and commended me for my openness, I felt certain that I had accomplished something far greater than taking the first step toward completing the research I had set out to do nearly three years earlier. For the first time, in my entire life, I had unburdened myself, just a little, of all I had been carrying around with me for so many years, still afraid but not deterred by what others might think about me, or say when I left the room. I felt I had accomplished something huge within myself by turning my pain into an opportunity for connection, rather than division. It was a feeling, an early bud of transformation beginning to sprout deep inside.

When there were no more questions to be answered, I thanked them all for their time, gathered my book bag and jacket, and headed out the door. I climbed the steps to the first-floor exit, my footsteps echoing off the concrete walls, and stepped outside into the cold evening air. I drove to a small coffee shop a few minutes away from the Center and parked my car out front. I hoped I could spend a few minutes to myself, having a latte, and reveling in the over-ness of the thing I had feared so much, and survived. I ordered the fall harvest drink special, made with oat milk, cinnamon, and cardamom, and sat at a small round table in the center of the otherwise empty coffeehouse. I was settling in and sipping foam from the lip of the mug, when my phone started vibrating with a call from a number I didn’t recognize. Fearing I left something behind at the

Center, I answered right away.

“ Is this Lena?” a high-pitched female voice asked.

“It is…who is this?” I asked. She laughed.

“Oh my God, sorry,” she said, before telling me her name. “I was just at the meeting. I have some questions about your research.” 123

“Oh!” I exclaimed, both shocked and excited to hear from someone so soon. The two baristas were working diligently behind the counter, but I had a feeling the hip, industrial aesthetic of the high ceilings would make my voice carry to anyone in remote listening range, whether I could see them or not. I scrambled to my feet and headed to the door. “Wonderful!

What can I help you with?” I asked, stepping outside to the sidewalk.

“Well, I’m not really sure why I’m calling you,” she said, nearly giggling in what must have been nervous excitement. “I mean, I’m not, like, a victim or anything.”

“That’s ok,” I said. “I’m happy to answer any questions you have.”

“Umm,” she hesitated. “This is so weird to even talk about, but when you were talking about the things that have happened to you, I felt like I could understand it. Like, I could relate to you somehow.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Well I guess I’ve experienced, um, like, I’ve had a boyfriend who forced me to do things.”

“Ok.”

“I mean, he didn’t rape me or whatever, but you know, I was pressured a lot, and it was kind of terrible all the time,” she said, breaking into a laugh I recognized as my own instinctual desire to make light of any pain that might make others uncomfortable to hear about.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I said. She laughed.

“Oh, nothing happened to me. That’s why I’m calling you. I mean, I’d like to talk to you, but I don’t really know if I’m allowed. I feel like it’s kind of ridiculous of me to even call you, but I felt so much when you were talking, and I was scared that if I didn’t step right out and call you immediately, that I never would.” 124

“You are absolutely allowed to call me,” I said. “You’re who I want to talk to.”

“But I’m not, like, a victim or anything,” she repeated. “I don’t want you to think I’m saying that, because nothing that bad ever really happened to me. I work with real victims all the time, so I know I’m not one.”

“I understand,” I said, truly recognizing myself in her words. “Why do you think you wanted to call me then?” She paused.

“Because I’ve never told anyone about it. I’m not even sure if there is anything to tell, but you made me think there might be.”

The cold night air was cutting through me, whipping through my hair, and stinging my eyes as they followed a man across the street who was walking a small dog in front of the empty storefronts of the concrete buildings that towered above. I hugged my arms across my chest, trying to keep warm. I had not expected this call. It hadn’t occurred to me that, in the end, anyone would actually want to talk to me, or that my own stories might inspire such contemplation. But as I listened to her voice, earnest and young, talk through all the reasons she probably wasn’t right for this, all the reasons her experiences weren’t valid, and probably wouldn’t be useful to me anyway, I felt a lightness blooming in me. I was exactly where I needed to be.

“You’re exactly who I want to talk to,” I said, finally. “Trust me.” 125

CHAPTER IV. AMPLIFYING WOMEN'S NARRATIVES

In March 2019, I visited the local offices of a national women’s non-profit organization in Northwest Ohio, hoping to form a partnership with their Rape Crisis Center. Late morning on a sunny, icy Tuesday, I parked on a side street adjacent to the building. Before stepping inside, I realized this was my first time ever actually entering a domestic violence shelter. As I waited to be buzzed in, eventually stepping through metal detectors, and up to the thick glass barrier barricading front desk office workers from visitors, I wondered how often boyfriends and husbands demanded to enter, eyes filled with venom and rage. I wondered if that’s even what domestic violence looked like in the real world and I recalled Carl’s eyes, seething drunken fury, and my desperation to escape, yet never visiting a shelter to do so. Standing in the lobby, I felt afraid.

After signing in at the front desk, I waited for the director of the Rape Crisis Center to greet me for our appointment. I walked across the lobby to a wide-open room, filled with circles of chairs, bright windows, walls painted with murals of happy women and safe children, with quotes by Gloria Steinem and Audre Lorde stenciled above them. After greeting the director, she gave me a quick tour of the building, sharing that visitors are not allowed in the shelter itself, just the office area. Like most non-profit organizations, the space was sparse. No frills of décor, or wall art. Just white painted cinder blocks and dry wall forming small offices and conference rooms. Though on that first visit, the director stopped at a table filling half of one hallway to show me some handmade decorations the staff had been making for an upcoming event.

Over the months, each time I came to the center, I grew more comfortable with the surroundings, thinking less about the sad reasons the organization existed, and more about the necessary work being done there. In October 2019, I visited to present my research to a group of 126 female staff members and volunteer advocates during a quarterly meeting for the Rape Crisis

Center. Within a few days of presenting my project, I emailed an institutionally approved letter outlining my research goals, along with a link to an eight question Qualtrics survey, to the volunteer coordinator, who was taking over some responsibilities while the director was out on maternity leave. I asked her to please forward the information to all of the women in attendance at that meeting.

Study Participants

The survey asked participants about their personal relationship to sexual violence. Because it was my expectation that women who have experienced some form of sexual violation in a romantic relationship may not be as inclined to use the typical words associated with sexual violence (assault, rape, etc.) I made sure to include questions that allowed room for ambiguity.

These were the questions:

1. Have you ever felt pressured, forced, coerced, or manipulated into engaging in a sexual act, such as kissing, touching, oral sex, vaginal or anal intercourse, that was not entirely wanted?

Yes No Not Sure

2. Have you ever consented to a sexual act that made you feel uncomfortable, left you feeling violated, or uncertain as to what had happened to you?

Yes No Not Sure

3. Have you ever experienced some form of assault or sexual violation that you do not necessarily consider rape or sexual violence?

Yes No Not Sure

4. Have you ever experienced sexual harassment or sexual violence within the context of a heterosexual romantic relationship? For the purposes of this question, sexual harassment is defined as unwanted sexual or romantic attention.

Yes No Not Sure 127

5. Have you ever experienced sexual harassment or sexual violence outside of the context of a heterosexual romantic partnership?

Yes No Not Sure

6. Do you identify as a victim or survivor of sexual violence?

Victim Survivor Both Neither Not sure

Other

7. Has your personal understanding of, or experience with sexual violence influenced your decision to become an advocate? Please explain.

Yes No Not Sure

8. Would you be willing to participate in a follow-up interview to further discuss your relationship history, thoughts and feelings about sexual violence, and experiences with sexual violence within relationships?

Yes No Not Sure – need more information

As a relatively short, non-narrative digital survey, I expected completing it to only take a few minutes of time, but considered that it could take longer for anyone still wrestling with how to answer these questions. Simply answering yes or no to questions about sexual violence can be extremely difficult. At the end of the survey, participants had the option of including their name and indicating whether or not they might be interested in participating in a follow up interview.

Out of the 11 women surveyed, 7 responded that they had experienced sexual violence in some way, and 6 responded that they had experienced sexual violence, or something that felt sexually wrong, within a relationship. 128

Fig. 4. Survey respondents share whether or not they have experienced sexual violence.

Fig. 5. Survey respondents who have experienced sexual violence share if it took place inside or outside of a relationship

Of those 6, 4 responded ‘yes’ to question #8, asking if they would be interested in participating in a follow up interview. They were then prompted to share their names, email address, and phone number for follow up. All of the women but one included only their work email addresses, and phone numbers.

From December 2019 to February 2020, I interviewed all four volunteer participants.

With a semi-structured format, interviews ranged from 1 hour to 3 1/2 hours, to answer 14 pre- 129 set questions (shared in the appendices of this manuscript), as well as follow-up and clarifying questions. Questions covered relationship history, sexual violence language, and how they relate such language to their own experiences. 3 of the women identified as white; 1 identified as middle-eastern. 3 of the women were in their mid-twenties; 1 was in her early forties. Their experiences and perceptions of those experiences varied greatly, offering tremendous insight into the wide array of roles sex and sexual violence, harassment, and coercion can play within not only romantic relationships, but ultimately the self-identity of women.

In the following sections, I will be sharing brief summaries of each woman’s stories, as well as examples of how I utilized the feminist methodology The Listening Guide to work with the gathered data. As outlined in Chapter 3, The Listening Guide is a feminist methodology predominantly utilized in psychology and social science research focused on relationship dynamics. As a method most easily characterized by its intense commitment to honoring participant voice and perspective, the second step within a four-step listening process includes the creation of “I-poems” or “voice poems.” These poems are constructed by analyzing individual sections of an interview transcript and pulling all “I” statements, as well as any statements speaking directly to “you” as a general audience, or to, or about, other people.

Woodcock advocates for a creative use of the format to help amplify the participant’s voice when it comes to how they view themselves and others.

In my effort to share these stories most effectively, while honoring both the participant’s voices, as well as their anonymity, I am utilizing these voice poems as a method of sharing survivor narratives. The construction of these poems will vary slightly for each participant, but most will include “I” statements (relating to statements said about herself, from the perspective of ‘I’), “it” statements (relating to sex in the relationship and/or sexual violence, and/or a conceptual “it” relating to the relationship, or to particular circumstances), “they” statements 130

(most often in reference to the general public or victims/survivors on a whole), and “he/male name” statements (relating to romantic or sexual partners, with the use of the name versus the pronoun determined by how the participants shared their stories). All names, and identifying markers, have been changed to protect the anonymity of not only the participants, but the individuals referenced throughout their narratives. Additionally, none of the statements included have been edited or altered in any way. They reflect verbatim statements participants made during their interviews, with minimal interference. However, the nature of constructing these

“voice-poems” means that I did select and structure the narrative following a specific format.

Though when first developing this structure I was uncertain of how a reader might experience being so immersed in fragmented narrative, ultimately I see this format as incredibly rhetorically powerful. This methodology’s meticulous emphasis on language allowed me to condense over 80,000 collective, transcribed words, into just over 14,130 carefully examined and formatted voice poems, while still retaining the narrative structure of each participant’s story, and honoring the voice they used to share it. It pushed me to confront the context and nuance of every chosen word, self-interruption, contradiction, silence, uncertainty, curiosity, and regret evident throughout each narrative. The excess of white space on each page, surrounding participants’ words and phrases, only further respects the language itself, and the woman behind each utterance. I believe utilizing this methodology has helped me to honor the very real individuals featured in this project

Within each of the following sections, I include a summary of each woman’s narrative as well as some detail about my experience meeting with her, to help ground the reader. I will then include two examples of each voice poem in the text itself, with the remaining voice poems available for review in the corresponding Appendices. For each participant, I created 131

approximately twenty to thirty poems, each one powerfully illustrating the nuance of sexual violence and language. First, you will meet Samantha, whose eight-year relationship with her first boyfriend, as well as long term friendship with a family friend, left her feeling used and violated.

Then you will meet Zara, who spent years in a secret relationship, hidden from her family, in which her boyfriend frequently pressured and violated her in ways that directly challenged her

Muslim faith. Next , you will meet Christine, who first experienced sexual abuse as a child, and then in many friendships and relationships throughout her life, including at the very start of her marriage to her husband. And finally you will meet Rebecca, whose abusive childhood and self- described promiscuous behavior in college, both resulted from and led to her challenge in voicing, and enacting her consent in multiple relationships. I encourage readers to spend time with each

Appendix (A-D, respectively) to get a full picture of the narratives devised in the form of voice poems.

Lastly, in Chapter 5, I will spend time analyzing these narratives, identifying common themes across each one to identify ways relationship context impacts both the perception of the experiences and the language used to describe them.

The purpose of these narratives is to further understand the uniquely context-bound

dynamic of relationally-based sexual violence, while recognizing the universal nature of this

phenomenon. In some ways, these narratives present a contradiction to how we culturally view

and think about sexual violence, highlighting nuance, coercion, and manipulation over direct,

explicit forms of violence. In other ways, they may challenge our own individual assumptions

about what contexts constitute a sexually violent situation, and what contexts negate our

understanding of such. We might ask ourselves, how much does believing someone loves you, or

has your best interest (or at least not your worst) at heart, impact our own perceptions of their

behavior toward us? What matters more, an action, or its impact? 132

While four narratives from a predominantly white, heterosexual, twenty-something participant base cannot offer insight into the many experiences of sexual violence individuals of all ages, races, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, abilities, and gender identities experience, and the ways in which identity shapes the context for such violence, these narratives can and do offer insight into the trauma of victimization, the long-road to processing experience, and the roles gender norms, and language play in all elements of rape culture.

Samantha

“It makes me feel bad, making him feel like a bad person.”

I first met Samantha in December 2019. Samantha is a white woman in her mid-twenties, and as an employee of the Rape Crisis Center, invited me to her office for our interview. Early on in our conversation, Samantha told me she first became interested in advocacy work after writing a research paper in college about campus sexual assault. Eventually she began to volunteer and intern at various women’s organizations in the region, and by the time we spoke, she had been working with the Rape Crisis Center for a couple of years.

Arriving at Samantha’s office, I was immediately struck by her level of preparation, and her friendly, professional demeanor. Not only had she reviewed all of the questions I sent in advance, but she had actually typed out all of the answers in advance. She shared that she was worried she’d forget things and wanted a way of talking about them, since most of what she was going to share, she had never shared before. She asked if it would be okay if she read them off to me and I told her that whatever would make her comfortable was fine. However, as the interview progressed, she eventually stopped reading from her papers, putting them face down on the desk in front of her, and focused solely on telling her story.

In our interview, which lasted just over an hour, Samantha shared several stories from her 133 relationship history. Her primary focus was in discussing her relationship with Matt, a boyfriend she had for eight years throughout high school and college. According to Samantha, their relationship was extremely challenging due to Matt’s struggles with communication and emotional openness, as a result of a difficult childhood. Samantha’s own childhood, which was most defined by her parent’s divorce, had its own impact. Growing up feeling that her parents had given up too easily on their marriage, she often found it difficult to give up on Matt when things were going tough. Plus, the nature of their social circle, and all of the people that expected them to be together, created external pressure to keep the relationship going, even as it felt like it was falling apart.

But for as many years as Samantha and Matt dated, they broke up and got back together just as often. Though never a direct cause of any of their breakups, their sexual relationship was a challenging one for Samantha. Throughout all eight years they were together, she rarely felt she had any choice about how often they had sex, or the kind of sex they had, with almost all of the sex in their relationship feeling “unwanted.” It wasn’t until Samantha started working in an advocacy role, attending trainings about abusive relationships and sexual violence, that she began to see patterns in her own relationship with Matt. But even before this exposure, one incident from their relationship always plagued Samantha in conversations about sexual violence and consent. Specifically, an incident involving a mixture of alcohol and drugs, a sober Matt, and anal sex she had not consented to.

In addition to Matt, Samantha also shared a story about a close family friend, Andrew, who she had also known for over eight years. Though she says “nothing happened” between them, after spending some time together one evening, Andrew grew increasingly volatile and frightening when Samantha refused to have sex with him. She was shocked by his behavior and said several times she was afraid of what he might do to her. She classified this as more traumatizing than her experiences with Matt because they felt closer to becoming violent. 134

Throughout the interview, Samantha referenced her current relationship with Jared, whom , at the time of the interview, she had been dating for just over a year. Though she stated several times that she was unaffected by these experiences, she also described the impact her prior experiences have had on her new relationship including trust issues, fear of sex and intimacy, and hyper vigilance, always searching for signs of danger. Still, Samantha strongly does not identify as a victim or survivor of anything related to sexual violence, and does not have a language appropriate for naming the sexual violations she did experience. 135

Fig. 6. Samantha Voice Poem 1. Excerpted from Appendix A. 136

Fig. 7. Samantha Voice Poem 2. Excerpted from Appendix A. 137

Zara

“A lot of people don’t look at it as ‘that’s not consent’…they look at it as a disagreement in a relationship.”

I first spoke to Zara when she called me minutes after my visit to the Rape Crisis Center.

Based on her phone call, and the ambiguity she expressed in our brief conversation, I was

looking forward to meeting with her. Before we hung up she said she was worried she would

back out, but that she knew it was important that she talk to me.

After reading her survey answers, I reached out to her. It took several attempts to

schedule a meeting before Zara confirmed. While I had planned to meet participants at the Rape

Crisis Center, Zara was firm in her request to meet somewhere else. She was concerned about her

co-workers seeing us together and figuring out that she might be participating in my research. She

asked that we meet at a branch of the local library system and reserve one of the study rooms

typically occupied by students. The particular location was twenty minutes away from the

Center.

Upon meeting Zara, I was instantly taken by her incredible sense of humor and foul

language, while actively cracking jokes about the hijab she wore. Zara is a woman in her early

twenties and a junior in college. She works as a Title 9 educator and advocate, balancing

classroom visits with college students to talk about consent, with victim services. While she

spoke professionally about the subject matter of sexual violence, Zara was so bubbly and

conversational, at times it felt more like chatting with a friend over coffee, than data gathering.

As we began our interview, Zara joked that she read all the questions and considered

preparing answers, but thought it would be too depressing. As with most painful things she

shared, she let out a big laugh as she said this. I quickly learned that, along with her sense of 138 humor, Zara tended to make light of everything she shared, laughing especially hard any time she spoke about experiences that were particularly painful.

In our interview, which lasted over three hours, Zara shared the story of her relationship with John, aspects of her Muslim faith, and her Palestinian immigrant upbringing. According to

Zara, her relationship with John, which lasted over four years, was heavily impacted by their cultural differences. Zara met John when she was a senior in high school and he was a junior at the college where she was taking classes part time. From the very start of their relationship, there were issues with trust. Zara quickly learned that John had a reputation on campus for cheating on his girlfriends and sleeping around. When they started hanging out, Zara told John that she wasn’t allowed to date, only formally court with her parent’s involvement. They agreed to keep the relationship secret and for four years, Zara juggled the life she showed her parents whom she lived with, and the forbidden relationship with John that she kept completely to herself.

Throughout their entire relationship, Zara often felt mistreated and manipulated by John.

Having put enormous pressure on Zara to have sex, he often compared her to other women, or intentionally made her jealous with threats of sleeping with other women. He broke up with her repeatedly, anytime his ex-girlfriend started to show interest in dating him again. Several times, when Zara felt they were on solid ground, she discovered John had cheated on her with this same ex-girlfriend. Because of John’s tendency to get angry when she cried, Zara tried to limit how often she addressed these issues with him. This left her feeling frantic all the time, desperate to keep John from leaving her, clinging to any kind of security she could get with him. She was overwhelmed with a constant pressure to keep him happy so that he would not leave her for someone else. 139

When they first started dating, she told John that she would not do more than kiss him, as she was committed to remaining a virgin until marriage. But soon after they started dating, the pressure mounted. John began begging for sex and frequently got angry at Zara for not giving in.

But Zara was inexperienced and modest, never even taking off her hijab in front of any man until a year into her relationship with John, when she began dreaming about marrying him. Still, the pressure grew and for months, Zara fought off John’s persistent advances. Between the constant threat of cheating, other women, and John’s frustration over the lack of sex in their relationship,

Zara started to feel as if she had no choice but to give in if she had any chance of holding on to him. The first time their physical relationship ventured into oral sex, Zara had just spent an entire day crying after discovering John had cheated on her. By the time she confronted him that evening, after he had ignored her throughout the day, she was distraught and exhausted, and he pushed himself on her. Shortly after, he began asking for oral sex in return, telling her she was selfish if she didn’t give in. She eventually did.

Zara shared the details of this incident and a number of others in our interview, including one sexual violation that took place in front of one of John’s friends, which left her feeling trapped, with nowhere to turn. However, she mostly focused on other elements of their relationship: manipulation, gaslighting, and cheating. The pain of his many betrayals and the impact they had were profound, with Zara speaking quickly, almost as if she couldn’t get the words out fast enough, when describing the pain of this relationship.

Throughout the interview, Zara expressed strong opinions about what constitutes consent, sexual assault, and rape. Though she believed that what happened to her was wrong, and that she was coerced and manipulated into doing things she otherwise would not have done, she also 140 expressed several times that what she experienced was not that bad compared to real victims, and real survivors. 141

Fig. 8. Zara Voice Poem 1. Excerpted from Appendix B. 142

Fig. 9. Zara Voice Poem 2. Excerpted from Appendix B. 143

Christina

“I know how to define it all now. It doesn’t change the way I feel about it. You just get used to it happening.”

In December 2019, I first contacted Christina for an interview after reading her survey

responses. On her survey, Christina was the only respondent that indicated she had experienced

sexual assault or violence both in and outside of romantic relationships, and identified as both a

survivor and a victim. Our email exchanges were brief and we quickly, and easily, scheduled a date

to meet in early January 2020.

We met at the Rape Crisis Center and upon coming out to greet me in the waiting area,

Christina immediately said “I have a lot to say – this is going to take a while.” Instead of meeting

in her office, Christina brought me to a large meeting room that had couches and armchairs. She

thought because it was carpeted and filled with furniture that the room would be a bit more

sound proof, as well as a bit more comfortable.

Before starting the interview, it was immediately clear that this conversation would be

different from the others. Not only was Christina a woman in her early 40s, as opposed to the other

participants in their 20s, she also possessed a very different demeanor. Christina was quiet, soft-

spoken, and before even beginning, expressed exhaustion over the topic. For most of the

interview, she cradled her head in one palm, leaning against the arm chair where she sat, looking

up at me. While she stated repeatedly she had no problem talking about any of this and was just

overwhelmed with all she had to share, her defeated expression took me by surprise.

After reviewing the protocol, we dove right into the interview. At first, Christina’s answers

were short and focused, explaining she had a very minimal relationship history consisting of only

three partners. We quickly moved on to discussing her work and sexual 144

violence language from the perspective of an advocate. By the time we got to the third section of questions, melding sexual violence language with personal experience, I considered that it might be my quickest interview. However, I was soon mistaken.

Over the course of nearly three hours, Christina shared a long, convoluted, non-linear narrative that was often difficult to follow. She even joked “you might need a whiteboard to keep up.” Her stories followed timelines that were difficult to keep straight, even for her. It seemed as though a floodgate had been opened and stories from her life, and all the unacknowledged pain and abuse she had experienced, just started tumbling out. As she shared her experiences,

Christina focused most on providing context for each situation, the relationship, the set up to the experience, all the social details surrounding the circumstances – at one point speaking for nearly twenty minutes about her ex-husband’s current relationship – while providing minimal details about the actual assaults themselves, or how they made her feel. The resounding theme was “you just get used to it after a while.” While Christina was passionate and heated at times discussing her advocacy work and sexual violence in a more general way, when it came to her own experiences, she was so soft-spoken, and at times almost emotionless, that it wasn’t always easy to hear her. More than once she expressed embarrassment about her life.

Christina shared that when she was 7 years old, she was molested by her uncle while visiting her father in Arizona. This interview marked the first time she ever shared this with anyone. When she was sixteen, she lost her virginity in a painful way, and shortly after entered an abusive relationship with another boy who assaulted her more than once, and who she had initially left out of her relationship overview. Multiple times in high school and shortly after high school, Christina was assaulted in her sleep by male friends she had known and trusted. During her senior year she got pregnant and shortly after graduating married Stew, her now ex-husband. 145

While Christina never indicated that Stew assaulted or violated her, she shared that he cheated on her several times, twice with women she considered best friends. While separated from her ex- husband, she dated a few men, one of whom violated her in such a way, that she surprisingly ended up pregnant, while on birth control. Eventually, Christina left her ex- husband who struggled with alcoholism and PTSD from his time overseas in the Iraq War. She met her current husband in a way that still disturbs her to this day, involving alcohol and betrayal by another female friend.

Through all of these stories were many others, staying consistent with the theme of

Christina’s life that she cannot trust men or women not to betray her. Though she never directly named her experiences, Christina referred several times to the legal definitions, which she was especially comfortable with as a first-year law student, and a professional working in legal advocacy. She leaned heavily on these definitions, using the legality around sexual violence as a reference point for her own experiences. Christina’s experience both as an individual, and as an advocate working in the field for six years at the time of the interview, resulted in her providing the most detailed definitions of consent, sexual violence, and survivorship of all four interviews I conducted. 146

Fig. 10. Christina Voice Poem 1. Excerpted from Appendix C. 147

Fig. 11. Christina Voice Poem 2. Excerpted from Appendix C. 148

Rebecca

“I can’t honor it as what it’s defined as. I roll my eyes on myself.”

In early December 2019, I first reached out to Rebecca after she filled out my survey and

indicated that she would be interested in being interviewed. After a couple of attempts to connect

with her, Rebecca had not responded. I considered that perhaps I should let it go, as I was on high

alert in my fear of making anyone feel pressured to participate. I decided to reach out to her one

more time in January 2020 and let her know I would not follow up again if she was no longer

interested. Almost immediately, she returned my email.

After a few cancellations, we finally met up in early February 2020. As an employee of the

Rape Crisis Center, with a private office, Rebecca invited me there. Upon formally meeting, I was

instantly endeared to her warm, cheerful personality. Before officially beginning the interview,

Rebecca offered me water and snacks. We chatted easily, laughing and getting comfortable. She

shared that she felt very unsure about participating, but a friend of hers at the Center told her about

having a positive experience meeting with me, and urged her to follow through.

Rebecca is a white woman in her early twenties. When we started the interview, it was

immediately clear to me that Rebecca is someone who is very careful with her words, taking long

pauses to consider her response before answering in eloquent, professional terms. Many times, she

referenced her extensive experience in therapy, starting when she was sixteen years old and

continuing throughout adulthood. As she described her relationship history, she contextualized her

experiences by explaining that her childhood with an abusive father, left a void in her that she

compulsively needed to fill. This was a constant background to everything else she told me. 149

Rebecca started dating a sixteen-year-old boy when she was just thirteen. They dated for four years and had, what Rebecca described, a very emotionally abusive relationship. After they broke up, she spent the remainder of high school engaging in self-described promiscuous behavior, leading to decreasing self-worth. She explained that she was almost never single, or uninvolved with someone, and often dated older boys or men. In college, she had a series of relationships, back-to-back that ranged from three months to over a year. Each one of those relationships was emotionally abusive and volatile and she often feared for her safety. She described her most recent break up, a year earlier at the time of the interview, as the only normal or somewhat healthy relationship she had ever had.

Though she explained she had felt coerced in most of her relationships, Rebecca decided to participate in the interview based on one incident in particular. When she was in college, she dated a boy, Brandon, for approximately three months. On the first night they hung out alone they were both intoxicated and they had sex Rebecca did not consent to, and was deeply troubled by.

Throughout the interview, she referenced similar, if not nearly identical situations with more serious partners, but repeatedly said she did not think of them in the same light. She even referenced the pattern of similar behavior in her most recent “normal” relationship.

As part of my interview protocol, I tell participants they can describe what happened in as little or as much detail as they are comfortable. Rebecca provided very little detail about the incident itself, frequently interrupting herself to explain how much it didn’t count. Though her narrative does not include as detailed of an account as others might, her reflections and insight into her experiences, not only with Brandon, but with every partner she had unwanted sex with make a couple of things clear: Rebecca blames herself entirely, with the context not only of the relationships, but who she was as a woman at those times, as disruptions to naming her 150 experiences. At many time she spoke in length about the social conditioning she feels she has experienced as a woman to please others, as well as the limited view society has of what constitutes rape or sexual assault. She does not see herself as a victim or a survivor. 151

Fig. 12. Rebecca Voice Poem 1. Excerpted from Appendix D. 152

Fig. 13. Rebecca Voice Poem 2. Excerpted from Appendix D. 153

Fig. 14. Blackout Poem 4. 154

CHAPTER V. A MULTI-FACETED PROBLEM

There is comfort in ritual. After my interviews I’d leave the Center and drive to the closest coffee shop I could find. I’d park behind graffitied walls built of brick, their texture caked in the wintry spray of salt. I’d hop pot holes filled with melted snow and ice and step inside the warm welcome of hipster music, fresh espresso, and oak tables filled with diligently working professionals and student study groups. I’d order a seasonal oat milk latte, a vegetarian sandwich or bagel, and create space at whatever empty table next to a working outlet that I could find. I’d set up my computer, take out my notebook, remove my coat and scarf, and then, mug-in-hand, gear up for some profound reflection on the whole experience.

An hour would pass.

Then two.

Sometimes, an entire afternoon of coffee refills, bathroom breaks, and scrolling social media would pass and I’d still be sitting there: blank word document, confused emotions, hope for a breakthrough dwindling. Early on in this project, I told myself I would reflect on the process as often and as deeply as I could so that I could pull notes that might later hold profound insight into the research process for work so deeply personal. But beyond the emotional exhaustion of each interview, I found that just the idea of spending more time in that world, even through low-stakes, never-to-be-read-by-anyone reflective writing was almost overwhelming.

Only after Zara’s interview at the local library did I break this ritual, intending to return to my own town to write in a favorite coffee house, but instead eating a made-to-go pack of vegetarian sushi in a Kroger parking lot, and trying to settle all the confusion in my head, before going home and watching Netflix. 155

Still, there is comfort in ritual, whether high-priced coffee drinks or Kroger sushi. On those coffee shop afternoons, I found myself comforted by the predictable quiet of the space, the groups of young boys on the sidewalk outside, dribbling basketballs straight off their school buses, and the fellow patrons who’d regularly start conversations about mid-life career changes, and their long-time interest in writing a book. I found comfort in the escape from my project into the present, where I would no longer have to live inside of someone else’s memories, or be forced into reckoning with my own. For as passionately as I had chosen to do this project, I just as forcefully avoided it.

A year later, after months actively avoiding the ample time I would eventually spend with these interviews, first transcribing them, and then listening to each one multiple times, forming the voice poems featured in the previous section, the reason for my avoidance became much clearer to me: my struggle to understand, name, and contextualize my own experiences left me feeling anxious, ashamed, and ultimately afraid of confronting those of others, especially in an academic, data-mining context. It was only after recounting my own journey to this point that I was able to see the knowledge found in my experience, as well as the limitations of my own perspective.

When I did eventually return to these interviews, all of the feelings I had after meeting with each participant rushed back to me. The truth is that inside each one of their stories, I saw a layer of my own experience. In Samantha, I found my own impulse to always be a “good” girlfriend, to position myself as necessary for the growth of someone else, rather than engaging in a mutually beneficial relationship. In Zara, I found my own tendency toward secret relationships, and the belief that I could laugh off everything that hurt me, until the hurt would radiate away in the good stories I could tell about it. In Christina, I saw my own embittered 156 perspective of men, rape culture, and the inescapable presence of sexual violation in my life, never quite feeling safe from the possibility of it happening again. And in Rebecca, I recognized the struggle between being a sex-positive feminist while slut-shaming myself for things I had no real control over, always finding ways in which I was at fault, no matter the circumstances. In each one of these narratives, I was forced to confront a layer of my own trauma, and my struggle to accept, and even forgive myself for whatever role I believed I played in creating it.

And yet, each narrative also challenged me to confront my own biases about what constitutes sexual assault, rape, or violence, much like working with my own. Each narrative provided unique insight into the complexity of love, trust, sexuality, romance, and the patriarchal back drop that naturally informs each one of those things. In looking at Zara’s narrative, in particular, I was given a view into how cultural differences within a relationships and marginalization within a broader culture can create additional layers of violation. Sitting in a

Kroger parking lot after her interview, I couldn’t get the image out of my head of a young woman committed, deep in her heart, to never revealing her hair to any man other than the one she would marry, and the man she loved taking advantage of that, sexually violating her in a situation where she could not speak up, could not show herself, or assert her agency in any way, without breaking the promise she made to God and herself to keep her hair covered. The shame Zara expressed in even telling me this story and the effort she made to justify why she had not been covering in the first place still pains me. Yet, even without the religious and cultural differences among all of the participants, and myself, there are commonalities in all of these relationally-based incidents that can offer insight into not only what “counts” as sexually abusive behavior, but what questions we must keep asking, what implications exist for education, and ultimately, what measures we might take toward prevention. 157

In this final section, I am going to break down the narratives as part of a collective whole, drawing back to the questions I posed at the start of this research, and the common themes found across both lived experience and narrative of that experience. While each of these questions have been addressed throughout this project in both direct, and indirect ways, it is my hope that this final section can provide additional understanding grounded in the complex, lived experiences, of real women, whose emotional labor both in this research project, and their own professional lives, cannot be overstated.

I have organized my analysis in three sections: I) Normalization of Sexual Abuse in

Heterosexual Relationships, II) The Language of Sexual Violence, and III) Final Takeaways and

Implications. Within the first two sections, I address several common themes found in all four interviews as they relate to the research questions that speak to the section headers. In the third section, I’m going to address three overall implications that can be gleaned by this exploration as a whole.

Normalization of Sexual Abuse in Heterosexual Relationships How is sexual abuse normalized within relational discourse of heterosexual relationships in America? How do women’s narratives of their experiences of non-consensual sex within heterosexual romantic relationships inform our understanding of rape culture?

Before addressing these two questions, I want to quickly break down what exactly they are asking in the first place. The first question asks how sexual abuse, including anything from pressure, coercion, manipulation, and harassment to assault or rape, has become a typical, or expected part of a heterosexual relationship dynamic, to the point that it is broadly accepted as

“normal.” The second question asks how engaging with narratives women share of their experiences can provide further insight into rape culture as a whole. Specifically, I am interested in learning more about how these “normal” experiences contribute to the scaffolding of the 158 overall acceptability of violence against women. Though these questions are aiming at two different ideas, they are both layers of the same issue. Therefore, I have identified three primary themes found across all four interviews that speak to the issue at the heart of both questions: sexual violence as a normal part of heterosexual relationships, and thus, life. These themes are 1) the question of partner intentionality 2) presence of abuse or mistreatment throughout the relationship and 3) gendered relational dynamics.

Partner Intentionality

Throughout my interview with Samantha, the first I conducted for this research, I was struck by how often the question of her boyfriend, Matt’s, intentions behind his actions came up in conversation about their impact on her. In some ways, this might be unsurprising, since intentionality, and attempts to conceptualize that intentionality, plays a role in everything from how angry we get at someone cutting in front of us in line, to how we classify crimes such as murder or manslaughter. Motive, or intention, behind an action is obviously important when discussing how we measure our response to it. However, in the case of Samantha and her boyfriend, intentionality took on a whole new meaning, which could easily be boiled down to one phrase she repeated more than once over the course of an hour: “he’s not a bad person.”

This sentiment, as well as others that speak directly to the importance of intentionality, was present in all four interviews to varying degrees, but most notable in conversation with Samantha and Zara. In both cases, Samantha and Zara experienced repeated violations at the hands of long- term partners whom they both deeply trusted, as well as relied and depended on for social and emotional support. Throughout each interview, they both referred to their boyfriends’ innocence multiple times, and in multiple ways, regarding the intentionality behind their behavior. 159

Early on Samantha shared that upon beginning advocacy work she realized she may have been in “an innocently, slightly abusive relationship,” before adding that this “might not have been his intention,” referring primarily to the repeated incidents of unwanted sex in their relationship.

Later, when discussing the primary incident of non-consensual anal sex, she described Matt’s response to her screaming and crying: “What happened? You were fine with it?” Him, innocently not knowing…”

This was not the only time Samantha appeared to be concerned with painting Matt in a positive light by projecting innocence on his behalf, or softening her language. When she described that he “went to take advantage” of her being drunk, she added “not maliciously,” and at another point corrected herself to say, “not take advantage – it makes me feel bad making him feel like a bad person. I don’t think those were his intentions.” Later, she referred to Matt as

“almost grooming” her before correcting to “unintentional grooming” and adding “someone else could have done a lot more grooming.” All of these asides and corrections reinforced how important it appeared it was to Samantha that Matt wasn’t misunderstood as someone who had gone out of his way to hurt her. However, this effort to curate my view of Matt also led to

Samantha revising her own narrative of what happened, and in some ways, further silencing her own experience. At two different points, Samantha explicitly stated “if they weren’t his intentions, it wasn’t sexual assault” and “if those weren’t his intentions, it doesn’t count,” while actively questioning why it is so hard for her to name the incident(s) as such. Later when explaining why she didn’t discuss these issues with him she stated, “It was almost me trusting Matt that he was innocent about what he was trying to do,” describing him as “almost oblivious.” Toward the end of the interview she stated, “I almost knew those weren’t his intentions…other than him getting what he wanted like it was before.” 160

This theme of intentionality was present throughout Zara’s interview as well. Mirroring

Samantha’s revelation about an “innocently, slightly abusive relationship,” Zara similarly described her relationship with John: “I feel like there are levels of manipulation; I feel like sometimes people know they’re doing it. I think other times people don’t. I don’t think he was…it wasn’t ill-intended.

He didn’t think he was lying.” When describing the constant pressure John put on her to have sex,

Zara explained, “I don’t think he realized pestering me to do something I said I didn’t want to do is like the same thing – not the same thing – but also wrong,” in comparing the experience to rape. In both of these examples, Zara softened her language much like Samantha did, building a pattern of innocence into the narrative.

But while Samantha focused primarily on Matt’s intentions as an individual, Zara referenced

John’s behavior as a man several times, often indicating that he and other men are just “dumb” about things. Though in general Zara did not shy away from naming specific behaviors of John’s as hurtful or even abusive, she frequently softened her most painful stories with rolling her eyes about John, or men all together. When sharing the story of John initiating oral sex after Zara discovered he cheated on her, Zara stated, “You know, men are so dumb. He acts like such an airhead.” Later, when sharing the story of John violating her in front of his friend while she was under the blanket in his room, she said “he would just do dumb things” and “he just doesn’t think,” claiming “in his head he’s like ‘I covered you, he didn’t see you, it’s fine.’”

Though none of these statements necessarily paint John in a positive light, they do suggest his innocence, due either to a lack of social grace, or emotional intelligence, thus bringing his intentionality into question. Additionally, Zara classifying John and other men as

“dumb” reflects the idea that men simply don’t know any better, but that their behavior is not 161 always malicious. At one point she stated, “I don’t hate him or think he’s a terrible person, I just think he just didn’t know how to act.” Later in the interview, Zara shared a conversation she had with a female friend when she first tried to open up about her sexual issues with John: “Oh yeah, guys do that. Guys try to get you to do things.” Along with normalizing John’s behavior, this comment also asserted John’s innocence, while making Zara question her own perception of the situation. “It just kind of corners you, makes you feel like ‘why am I being so dramatic if this is normal?’”

Despite drawing attention to this direct normalization of coercion, Zara also shared that she never framed any of her experiences with John as sexually violating, explaining, “I think a big part was just protecting him; I didn’t want to make him look like a terrible person.” She explained,

“there’s a difference between somebody who sets out to do something evil and like fuck with your head versus someone who accidentally ends up doing that.” This reinforces, once again, that the intention behind John’s actions were, in some cases, more important than the impact of the actions themselves, when it comes to how she understands, or names them.

While both Christina and Rebecca spent significantly less time discussing the intentionality, or innocence of their partner’s actions, they both shared similar concerns about presenting their partners as bad people. Though Christina did not linger on her story about the night she met her current husband, she shared “he’s not a horrible guy; it was just a stupid decision” before explaining how difficult it is to share with friends and coworkers how they met.

“Those are just things you don’t tell anyone because then you got to deal with that. That’s how everybody else will see him – especially here. You don’t want to introduce your husband and then tell everybody how you met.” While Christina’s explanation does not necessarily assert innocence in the same way that Samantha and Zara’s narratives did, it does contribute to the 162 nuance of what qualifies someone as a “bad person” when it comes to sexual assault, coercion, manipulation, or rape. Similarly to Zara, Christina stated more than once throughout her interview that “it was one of those clichés, but I expect it from men,” reflecting the narrative that this is typical, or normal, male behavior, even if not excusable.

More than in any other interview, Rebecca’s primary focus as she spoke was on her own actions, and the role she played in what she experienced. While she spent the least amount of time defending, or explaining male behavior, she also declared the most personal responsibility for everything that happened in her relationships, whether consensual or nonconsensual. In her effort to name the primary incident we discussed involving her boyfriend of three months, Rebecca stated “I can’t label it that, there’s a total mental block. I feel like it’s too accusatory to the person that I had – it happened with – I don’t think that was ever his intention; I don’t want to demonize this person.” Despite having negative feelings about the partner she was referencing, at one point in the interview referring to him as an asshole, it was clear that for Rebecca, the ability to name an incident as rape, was directly tied to her ability to think of her partner as a person capable of raping someone. Once again, because she did not see that as his intention, Rebecca struggled to find the words to describe her experience.

Through all of these references to partner intentionality, innocence, and moral goodness, there are a few implications to consider. 1) According to these narratives, rape and assault are actions performed with intention. The intention to rape, or assault someone, is vital for that action to be considered rape or assault. Based on these conversations, the implication then would be that the motive behind rape is something other than sex; a sexual motive is not enough to constitute rape. Rape, therefore, must include something more than having sex with someone without their explicit, freely-given consent. 2) There is a direct correlation between perceived 163 intentions and the ability or desire to name an incident as assault or rape. Whether described as something men unknowingly do, or as something men can’t help but do, the implication is that an incident cannot be named as assault or rape if it was unintentionally performed as such. 3) Only bad men rape people. While this is an implication that could be considered obvious, it deserves some attention. It suggests that a person’s identity impacts perception of their behavior, rather than their behavior impacting the perception of their identity. It isn’t rape or assault, because he is not a bad person. He is not a bad person, so therefore it is not rape. Traditionally, we might argue a person’s actions classify them as a good or bad person. But in this case, the opposite seems to be true. In this case, the impact of the action is irrelevant if the person performing that action is “not a bad person.”

All of these points draw my focus back to the difference between sexual assault within the context of a relationship, and outside of one. Within a relationship, there is great emotional investment in seeing our partners as good people, who would not intentionally hurt us. It can be emotionally damaging to believe that someone we love would go out of their way to hurt or violate us. Within a relationship, there is also further relational context to support the belief that someone can be a good person, while still doing hurtful things. As discussed in Chapter 1, the context of a relationship can change how we react to the things that happen within it. Additionally, it draws out another important point about committing assault and personal identity. If only “bad people” can sexually assault someone (or that assault can only be committed by people we believe to be bad) there is confusion over what happened when the person committing the violation is someone we trust, or otherwise consider to be “good.” 164

Presence of Abuse or Mistreatment

Another common theme seen across all four interviews was a trend of abuse, mistreatment, and disrespect throughout the relationship as a whole, and often as part of a larger pattern of relationship history in general. Despite proclamations of innocence in the previous section, and the emphasis on the moral goodness of the partners in question (or, at the very least, lack of obvious

‘badness’), there was not a single relationship-based incident shared that did not take place inside of an abusive, or disrespectful relationship dynamic as a whole. Specifically, across all four interviews there were routine references to male partners being emotionally closed and unable to communicate in a healthy way about the relationship, male partners being quick to anger, and engaging in emotionally manipulative behavior, with two interviews also including several references to infidelity. Additionally, all participants, excluding Zara, shared patterns of abuse or mistreatment throughout entire romantic relationship histories, a lived reality cited as a contribution to how this behavior became normalized over time. Though I will be referencing how emotional manipulation contributed to sexual coercion, in this section I am primarily discussing other forms of relational disconnect and abuse that help to normalize sexual abuse.

From the start of my conversation with Samantha, it was made clear that communication was a struggle in her relationship with Matt. She explained, “Matt grew up in foster care so he had a hard time trusting people, to connect with me, or to talk about his feelings.” She described at times almost feeling like his mother, “providing everything, not getting anything in return,” emotionally. When asked if she ever spoke to Matt about the sexual and emotional issues between them, she expressed that she didn’t see Matt as capable of engaging on that level.

Zara described her boyfriend John in similar terms, expanding further to describe struggles with their communication as a whole. First, citing his upbringing to be “hyper- masculine” as a Black man as a reason for how quickly he would shut down in emotional 165 conversations, Zara explained, “I don’t know if it’s cultural, or because he’s a fucking man, but he had this thing with crying…” She went on to explain, “if he didn’t think it was something worthy of crying about, he wouldn’t feel bad, he would get annoyed…it really sucks when your boyfriend is like, ‘I don’t want to deal with you crying.’” Zara also shared times when John would completely ignore her when she tried to address problems in their relationship. Usually through text or social media, Zara would spend hours or days trying to communicate with John, to no response at all. This in turn made her question her own perception of what happened between them, posing the rhetorical question several times, “Am I crazy?” and occasionally following up with, “I’m not crazy.”

Christina shared a similar sentiment when explaining that one of the reasons she didn’t have closure from how she and her husband first met is that discussing the incident with him didn’t seem particularly useful. “He’s not an emotional guy; anything emotional is uncomfortable for him. I don’t get into too many details and ask him what he was thinking. I don’t know if it would make a difference.” Though she did share that after they met, she brought the incident up to him several times, the repeated uncomfortable conversations made her effort to further understand what happened fruitless.

Though Rebecca did not directly cite her partners’ discomfort with emotions as a challenge in her relationships, she frequently cited her partners’ emotional problems, and quickness to anger as a barrier to communication. As Rebecca explained, her upbringing in an abusive household helped normalize abuse as part of relationships. Throughout her relationship history, she experienced abuse ranging from physical violence and verbal degradation to emotional manipulation, explaining that her first boyfriend often threatened to commit suicide if she suggested breaking up: “You know, things you think are wrong at age 14, 15, 16, but when 166 you actually grow up and realize, that’s abuse. It was like being responsible for myself and someone else’s life.” She continued to describe other relationships in her life as “very combative” and “very emotionally abusive,” ultimately stating “I’ve never felt I had any romantic partner that was stable.” Though she did go on to cite her most recent partner as her first “semi-normal, non- abusive” relationship, she later shared, “he couldn’t have a real conversation without turning it into a big ordeal. It was always a fight. No matter what you said, no matter how you said it…I couldn’t say anything. If I said anything, I know it would turn into a big fight. It would end badly and I know it would be me crying, me being really upset.” Rebecca went on to say that in all of her relationships, the men in her life made her feel “small” through “lots of yelling…gaslighting, invalidating, and never being able to have conversations without blowing up.”

Anger as a barrier to communication was a trend common in Zara’s interview. As indicated above, when Zara would attempt to communicate with John, he would often shut down, or ignore her feelings entirely, either by not responding when she expressed them, or by questioning their validity entirely. “He would judge how valid my upsettness was and comfort me based on that,” she explained, quoting his general response to her expressing anger, or pain as, “’I’m not good with tears…I don’t like that…you should understand that.” John’s invalidation of Zara’s pain was referenced many times throughout the interview. Calling back to the previous section, what Zara at times described as John, “being dumb” or just not knowing how to act, could also be interpreted, based on behavior outlined in this section, as gaslighting Zara, implying her concerns were not important, or based in reality.

When asked about patterns in their relationship, Zara cited John’s tendency to “flip a lot” as a constant issue, describing him as someone who oscillated between acting extremely 167 apologetic and totally uncaring. “I feel like that fucks with your head,” she explained. “Are you going to be nice, or yell at me?” Zara went on to describe situations in which she tried to discuss the pressure she felt John put on her to have sex: “It came up in conversation…I basically said I felt like he coerced me into stuff. He flipped the fuck out and was like ‘I would never do that, I didn’t do that, don’t say I did that. If you think that, then I’m not going to touch you.’” After this conversation, John was extremely angry and withheld any touch from her, resulting in her never attempting to address the problem again. Additionally, she highlighted times when she tried to assert agency and say no to John’s sexual advances, and he would get angry at her. “I told him I felt like I was pressured and I was talking about how I wasn’t comfortable or whatever. And he was like, ‘fine, don’t do it,’ but then got really mad. I feel like that was very manipulative, because I was just like, well, I don’t want him to be upset.” John’s quickness to anger became a barrier for

Zara, impacting if and how she would address her own feelings within the relationship. His anger also lent to further emotional manipulation and coercion, which I will discuss in more detail in the next section.

Though during Samantha’s interview she focused primarily on her boyfriend, Matt, she also spoke about an incident with a close friend of hers who initiated sex with her. She went along with it at first, but when she tried to refuse, he became almost violent. “He got mad, and like, frustrated to where I was scared,” she explained. “I was at his house, I was vulnerable…he ended up getting angry, very upset. I was scared not knowing…what’s he gonna do?” As Samantha described that experience, she explained how it felt almost more like assault than what happened with Matt because of how scared she felt, before quickly adding that the subtlety of Matt’s pressure, “would have been almost considered abusive.” Though this was the only incident in a long-standing friendship, the ongoing unwanted sex in her relationship with Matt 168 and the emotional manipulation she experienced came up, more than once, as an indicator that the relationship, while not volatile, was abusive.

More than any other, Christina’s interview was filled with references to how normalized abuse of all kinds became in her life. Coming from an abusive household like Rebecca, Christina explained how from the time she was a child, being around angry men felt normal. Repeatedly, throughout the interview, Christina explained how “you just get used to it happening,” “that’s just been a constant,” “you stop putting any kind of weight on it after a while," ”none of it surprises me,” and “it’s just a fact of life.” While the patterns of abuse Christina described did not always involve sexual abuse, they often did. In her earliest sexual relationships, Christina described verbal and emotional abuse and manipulation. By the time she was assaulted by friends while sleeping, and eventually by her current husband, Christina expressed that it didn’t affect her very much, because she had grown to expect it. Perhaps more than any other interview, Christina’s trajectory toward an almost acceptance of the inevitability of abuse, and then assault, clearly demonstrates how the normalization of some behavior builds a greater tolerance for other, potentially more extreme behavior, until almost no mistreatment feels worthy of acknowledgment. Several times throughout our conversation, Christina would randomly remember an incident of violence, or mistreatment, that might have taken the entire focus in another interview, but became a side note in hers. Specifically, Christina forgot to mention an abusive relationship from high school in which she explained “there was sex in the relationship because he wanted there to be sex in the relationship” until nearly the end of the interview, going on to describe the situation as rape, according to the legal definition. She also casually referenced how a short-term boyfriend admitted to manipulating her birth control in order to get her pregnant without her consent. Such an action could be equated to “stealthing,” a phenomenon 169 in sexual violence discourse which includes men removing condoms without the consent of their partner, and thus changing the circumstances under which the individual they are having sex with offered consent (Jeglic). Both instances are troubling examples of sexual violence being so normalized in Christina’s life that they became the backdrop to other, more consistent, or volatile abuse.

In addition to communication problems, anger, and emotional manipulation, both Zara and

Christina repeatedly referenced infidelity as a theme in their relationships. For Zara, the pain of

John’s repeated infidelity was only heightened by his threats to pursue other women, or by comparing Zara to other women who were more willing to have sex with him. For Christina, the pattern of infidelity in both her first marriage, and current marriage, blended in with the overall mistreatment that had become so normal in her life. Though she did not indicate that infidelity made her feel additionally pressured to provide sex, she did indicate that it was “all convoluted,” impacting her ability to trust anyone, but especially men.

Through all of these interviews it is clear that abusive behaviors, disrespect, and mistreatment were present in other areas of the relationships where sexual abuse also took place.

One explanation for this could be that abuse begets abuse; where there is mistreatment in one area of a relationship, there is bound to be mistreatment in another. With this explanation, it would stand to reason that red flags for sexual abuse in a relationship, are the same for red flags for any other kind of abuse. Another explanation could be that incidents of sexual abuse in otherwise healthy, non-abusive relationships are less likely to be recognized as abusive, harkening back to the previous section: if someone is a ‘good’ person, then their behavior is not as likely to be considered abusive. 170

While it is possible that the presence of other kinds of abuse in a relationship makes it

easier to identify sexual abuse, I would suggest that part of the reason for this is the language

available for describing abuse. Terms like gaslighting, for example, have in recent years become commonplace for describing a particular type of psychological abuse through which one person invalidates and outright denies someone else’s reality (Sarkis). Terms like this create a language for identifying unhealthy relational patterns that might otherwise be dismissed as non-abusive because they do not contain outright violence or verbal degradation, thus allowing a relationship to be classified as abusive that might otherwise not be seen as such.

It also stands to reason that relationships that are otherwise healthy and non-abusive that do

contain some kind of sexual abuse, pressure, manipulation, assault, etc., would be even more

difficult to identify as abusive. Not only is there no other pattern of abuse to help contextualize the

sexual abuse, as described above, but in an otherwise healthy relationship it may be even more

difficult to see a partner as the type of person who could commit acts of sexual assault. Considering

the role identity plays in naming instances of sexual abuse, the more “normal” or healthy a

relationship seems, the more difficult it may be to identify mistreatment in a sexual realm. Which is

all to say that while abuse may in fact beget abuse, there is no way of knowing if sexual abuse is

also common in other "healthier" relationship dynamics, and simply being overlooked.

Gendered Relational and Sexual Dynamics

While non-sexual abuse and mistreatment were present in all of the relationships

mentioned, abusive sexual dynamics were present in many cases as well. In this section, I’m going

to focus on how gender impacted both the relational and sexual dynamics of the relationships,

focusing on three commonalities found across all four interviews: 1) a male-centric 171 relationship dynamic 2) the role of manipulation and coercion and 3) concerns over relationship maintenance. Though there is crossover within these three categories, I’ll do my best to focus on specific examples of each one.

During my interview with Samantha, it was clear that her relationship with Matt was focused more on fulfilling his needs, than getting her own needs met. Though she described herself as being the one in control of the relationship from a social standpoint, her repeated references to the relationship being “one-sided” suggested that her needs were ignored. More directly, Samantha frequently described her sexual relationship with Matt as a “chore,” often painful, or completely lacking in any enjoyment or pleasure for her. She described painful sex, asking Matt to stop, and him saying “let me finish first.” This was consistent with how she described sex throughout their entire relationship. “Sexual encounters had been a chore for his pleasure rather than both of our pleasure…making sure he came was his only concern. It wasn’t considered sex unless he finished.” While the incident with her male friend was more volatile, she described the sexual dynamic as very similar to the one she had with Matt, with her friend arguing that he should be allowed to finish before they stopped. In both cases, it was evident that

Samantha felt there was little concern for her enjoyment, or desire for sex.

A similar dynamic was echoed especially in conversation with both Zara and Rebecca. In

Zara’s case, John’s sexual expectations were the backdrop of every conversation about sex.

Though at one point she claimed that he respected her choice not to have penetrative sex before marriage, frequently throughout the interview, she cited incidents where John complained about all of the sexual sacrifices he was making to be with her, as part of what she felt was a manipulative tactic to coerce her into the sexual acts they did engage in. However, because their sexual relationship began with John performing oral sex on her, Zara was also told by both John 172 and her friends, that she was selfish. “I don’t think sex should be looked at as a fucking commodity,” she explained, describing the constant pressure on her to return oral sex when she didn’t want to. As Zara descroned it, John was aware of her discomfort with kissing, nudity, touching, and sex, but continued to pressure her throughout the relationship. Sex happening on

John’s terms was consistent with the relationship dynamic as a whole in which Zara’s status with

John was contingent upon his status with his ex-girlfriend. Because Zara was in a consistent disempowered status in her relationship with John, the relational and sexual dynamics were also consistently centered on his needs.

In Rebecca’s case, her long history of abusive relationships meant that she had built an expectation of being the lesser party in all of her relationships with men. “I never saw myself as half of a whole,” she explained. “I’ve always felt like 25% and the other person was 75%.

Maybe even 80 and 20. I’ve always felt I was giving so much more than I was getting back. I didn’t value myself. I didn’t see myself as being as important as the other person.” Going into every new relationship, Rebecca described feeling that her wants and needs were not as important as keeping her partner’s attention and “filling a void” inside of herself. This led to repeated experiences with unwanted, non-consensual sex, both in and outside of relationships.

The male-centric dynamic of each one of these relationships directly aligned with the manipulative and coercive behaviors each participant experienced within those same relationships. Early in our conversation, Christina shared that manipulation and coercion were common experiences in her life, citing losing her virginity and other early sexual relationships as wrought with emotional manipulation, where her partners would promise emotional intimacy in return for sex, without ever following through. Rebecca described both short- and long-term relationships in a similar fashion. Regarding the three-month relationship she described in most 173 detail in her interview, she explained “the relationship wasn’t mutual…he was very much using me for sex. Not that I was genuinely interested, but I thought that I was.” She additionally described much of the sex in her more serious relationships as either consensual, but unwanted, non- consensual, or coercive. “I’ve been in relationships where I’ve been coerced. I didn’t necessarily want to have sex, but I just thought I had to – that it was supposed to happen. I felt like I needed to say yes. If you say yes, he’ll shut up.”

Of all of the interviews, Zara provided the most detail when it came to manipulative and coercive tactics. Specifically, she described how John would compare Zara to other women, and frequently remind her of his options for sex, if she continued to deny him. “He was going back and forth about whether or not I was worth the sacrifices he made for me. I would feel bad about it. I would feel like I was making him miss out,” she explained, rationalizing to herself “let him do this so he doesn’t feel like it’s not worth it.” She also shared how the promise of marriage, or a long-term future together, was often used as a bargaining tool for having sex before Zara was ready. Though Zara was committed to remaining a virgin until marriage, John frequently suggested that they have sex sooner, since he would marry her someday and it wouldn’t matter in the end whether or not she waited. It was during this same timeframe that John offered Zara a timeline for how long he would wait, which ultimately led to her consenting to sexual activities she was otherwise not interested in.

In addition to emotional manipulation and coercion, all four women also mentioned that they felt their partners were opportunistic, seeking vulnerabilities that would allow them to have sex. Samantha expressed this directly when she suggested that perhaps Matt was grooming her, by waiting until she was drunk and he was sober, to have anal sex with her for the first time – something she had repeatedly shared she was not interested in doing. Zara felt that John waited 174 until she was emotionally vulnerable, distraught from discovering he cheated on her and desperate to keep the relationship together, when he finally pushed beyond her limits. Rebecca explained how she felt taken advantage of because she was drunk and unable to consent, both legally and cognitively. And finally, Christina shared how manipulation was most present in her experiences because she felt the men in question manipulated situations, and took the opportunity to violate her when they otherwise would not have had the chance to. She specifically described the instances of male friends and acquaintances assaulting her when she was asleep, or drunk, as opportunistic actions.

There is a direct correlation between withstanding abusive, coercive, or opportunistic behaviors and concern over relationship maintenance. Because of the pressure to have sex, most of the women expressed feeling obligated to have sex to save the relationship, or felt like sex was inherently owed to their partners. This also meant that most of the women avoided addressing the sexual issues in the relationship for fear of the emotional fall out, starting an argument, or the possibility of a breakup.

For Samantha, a breakup represented a kind of personal failure. The external pressure from mutual friends and family to keep the relationship going, as well as her own belief that giving up on Matt would be equivalent to her parents divorcing when they could have kept working on their relationship instead, resulted in Samantha feeling burdened with maintaining the relationship. “I lost my virginity to him; I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with him.” She described sex in their relationship as “a clear line” explaining, “It was just expected. I wouldn’t say it was freely given…I was willing for him,” before correcting to “I wasn’t really willing.” Even after the primary incident Samantha shared, she continued to date Matt for another two years, trusting that the relationship was worth maintaining. When asked about their 175 eventual breakup, Samantha explained that their sexual issues were not a major contributing factor.

“I was breaking up with him because I was unhappy in general. But in the back of my mind…”

Whether talking about her relationship with Matt or the incident with her friend, whenever she thought about what happened she would “just brush it off.” With Matt, she explained that in retrospect she sees the abuse in that relationship, but that it just felt normal after so many years.

With her friend, having known him for eight or nine years as part of her family’s social circle, and still seeing him regularly, she shared how she thinks about the incident whenever they have contact, but brushes it off to not let it become awkward. In both cases, external pressure to maintain either the romantic relationship or friendship impacted how she responded to each situation.

For Zara, the overt pressure to have sex, along with the constant back and forth between herself and another woman, meant that the power struggle over sex became a huge component of her relationship with John. She explains, “I became very obsessed with not wanting to lose him and not wanting this other girl to like, be better than I am. So when he wanted to do things I didn’t want to do I thought I’m gonna do it because I don’t want to lose him.” For Zara, the constant threat of an impending breakup created both internal and external pressure to have sex. John’s coercive tactics fed into her fear. “When he was mad and would say things about other women, I think that was so messed up. It hurt me so much. I was like, I can imagine that happening, so we’re going to prevent that.” This fear consumed Zara so much, that eventually she even began initiating things she did not want to do, just to maintain their relationship. “I just, like, got myself to do it,” she said. “I thought, if it’s going to happen I’d rather it feel like I 176 initiated it than that it was forced…you’re not supposed to just teach yourself to be ok with something. But I thought he’s going to leave me if it doesn’t happen, so I may as well.”

Though Samantha and Zara’s experiences are probably the most overt examples, all four women shared this concern. Because Christina and Rebecca discussed their experiences in more general, less specific ways, their description of relationship maintenance veered away from pressure to maintain one specific relationship, or friendship, and a general concern over keeping peace with men in their lives. For Rebecca, many of her relationships had been built around a desire to “fill a void” within herself, and she often saw male attention, including sex, as part of the exchange for that, even if it wasn’t something she physically desired. “I didn’t get approval from my father. I also went through a lot of bullying. I just felt really ugly my whole life…I think that was a way to make me feel empowered, beautiful, and validated. It was very surface-level.” This motivation is a theme throughout Rebecca’s entire narrative and partially to blame for why Rebecca holds herself more accountable than other people for sex she had not consented to. For Rebecca, maintaining access to male validation was at times more important than maintaining sexual autonomy. “I think it stems from not being able to say no,” she explained. “Feeling like I owe people things. I think that’s something a lot of women have been conditioned to think; you have to do so many things for other people. We can never honor ourselves first.”

For Rebecca, it was a matter of “not having the right tools” to say no, or express non- consent more clearly. She attributes her never feeling allowed, or able, to say no to the feeling that she was just a “people pleaser, saying yes, all the time.” She went on to explain, “it’s something I see as my issue. Non-consensual sex would happen. I didn’t want it to, but I never said anything. I felt like because I was in a relationship I never saw it as non-consensual,” before adding, “it was very clear that’s not what I wanted to happen.” Though less explicitly 177 stated, Rebecca’s narrative mirrors that of both Samantha and Zara, in that her desire to maintain her relationships, or access to men, led to her brushing off non-consensual sex, or consenting to sex she did not desire, but left her feeling unhappy.

For Christina, relationship maintenance looked a little different. Because she experienced several forms of sexual assault from people she knew, but who she wasn’t necessarily in a relationship with, the focus then became not causing trouble among friend groups, within other relationships, or professional circumstances. In one of the first incidents she describes in which one of her close friends, who was also her first husband’s best friend, assaulted her in her sleep, she chose not to tell anyone about it in part because she did not want to cause problems between her husband and his best friend. “I was young and didn’t know how to respond,” she explained.

“I was concerned about destroying the relationship between he and my ex. I mean, that was my concern.” Later, when her current husband’s business partner sent her inappropriate text messages, she feared telling her husband and the fallout that might potentially harm his business. “I almost didn’t tell my husband about Colin asking me for the pictures. I guess that’s the fixing thing. My instinct not to cause problems. You kind of survive and enjoy until the next one.”

During the interview, Christina revealed that not only was our conversation the first time she told anyone about being molested by her uncles when she was a child, but that she avoided talking about these experiences in general because, according to her, “one thing leads to another” and it’s too much to share with anyone. In fact, sharing with her husband that his partner had been texting her was the first time Christina ever told anyone about an incident of sexual harassment, let alone assault, or rape. For Christina, these incidents had become such a normal part of her life, that she grew to believe that addressing them would only further cause trouble, both for the people around her and for herself. 178

In all of these examples, the burden of maintaining relationships fell onto the women, either in the form of “brushing off” unwanted sex, “consenting” in response to coercion,

“consenting” out of the desire to keep someone around, or not speaking up, or holding someone accountable in order to keep the peace. As previously discussed, several relationships examined here involved men who were quick to anger and start fights. This dynamic creates additional pressure for women to not hold true to their own desires, or speak up when their consent is being violated.

There are a couple of implications to be considered when looking at the gendered relational dynamics within these relationships: 1) Emotional manipulation and coercion are not taken as seriously as physical manipulation. As Zara explained, “he would not have actually forced me, like physically…but I wasmanipulated into it, I can acknowledge that.” In this example, physical force is regarded as more inherently wrong, and more clearly indicative of sexual assault.

Meanwhile, emotional manipulation is seen as more “normal” and therefore more acceptable, and less problematic. While this is a well-known assumption in any conversation about abuse, it strikes a particular chord in the context of sexual abuse within relationships. If we equate physical force to a physical manipulation of the body, i.e. holding a body in place, making it so that an individual is unable to move, or keep herself safe from unwanted sexual touch, then we might also attribute emotional manipulation to emotional force. Though the common argument against this point would be that someone can literally, physically leave a situation if they choose to, this also disregards the incredible power imbalance in situations of abuse, coercion, or manipulation. If being physically overpowered is grounds for naming something assault, it is at least worth considering that being emotionally or psychologically overpowered is grounds for naming it assault as well. 179

2) Coercion and manipulation resulting in unwanted sex were not seen as grounds for a breakup. Though Samantha is the only participant that directly addresses this point when she explained ending her relationship with Matt because she was unhappy in general, it is implied in

Zara and Rebecca’s narratives as well. For Zara, her relationship with John ultimately came to an end when he initiated their breakup. For Rebecca, the primary relationship she spoke about ended after three months, and in her interview she shared that he was the one who ended things. In reference to her other relationships, other forms of abuse or mistreatment typically took the focus away from the regular non-consensual sex she was experiencing, with those incidents often regarded as a normal component of her relationships with men.

Overall, the question of partner intentionality, the presence of abuse or mistreatment in the relationships mentioned, and the gendered relational dynamics through which they operated all contribute to the normalization of sexual violence in heterosexual relationships. Each one of these themes represent ways in which sexual abuse, or mistreatment, was so deeply normalized within the relationships in question that they were either unrecognizable as problematic during the relationship itself, relegated as something to “brush off,” or part of the dynamic of maintaining a relationship. The consistency of these themes across all four interviews supports the idea that sexual abuse is accepted as some degree of “normal” within heterosexual relationships.

The Language of Sexual Violence

How does a yes/no binary of consent, and the rhetoric of consent and consent education in

American culture, reinforce harmful victim-blaming rape myths when positioned against what we can learn from women’s narratives? What terminology do women use to define their experiences and what can we learn about American rape culture, the rhetoric of consent and 180 sexual violence, and the limitations of our colloquial and legal language surrounding sexual violence by analyzing their narratives?

As with the previous section, before addressing these two questions, I want to break down exactly what they are asking for. The first question focuses on what I am calling the yes/no binary of consent, referencing the black and white way in which consent is understood through such mantras as “yes means yes” and “no means no.” Given that establishing whether or not consent was given directly leads to whether or not an incident is considered assault or rape, especially from a legal or cultural standpoint, it is important to understand what goes into consent communication itself. This question then asks if a narrow view of what constitutes giving or withholding consent, (i.e. a yes/no binary) might result in blaming victims for not communicating clearly, or correctly enough. The second question focuses on what specific terms women use to name their experiences of sexual assault, abuse, or violence, and if those terms represent the legal and cultural rhetoric attached to them.

If sexual assault or rape is contingent upon a violation of consent, it’s important to first discuss what consent means in both the scholarship and the context of these interviews.

To speak to each of these questions, I will 1) briefly review scholarship that may help contextualize the role of “yes” and “no” in our understanding of consent, and thus, sexual assault; 2) share findings from all four interviews about defining the terminology of sexual violence; and 3) explore how participants ultimately named their own experiences. Finally, I will share overall implications from both the scholarships and the interviews. 181

The Yes/No Binary

Throughout history, the regular occurrence of sexual violence against women has largely been blamed on the victim for a number of reasons. One of the most common is the

“miscommunication theory,” which posits that women who have been raped have simply not communicated consent or refusal effectively or clearly enough for their male partners to understand (Jozkowski et al. 237). Such a theory also presupposes that if men recognized a lack of consent, they would not follow through with rape. In an effort to correct this, feminists and sex education activists have promoted the yes/no binary of consent with easy-to-remember mantras including, “yes means yes” and “no means no.” However qualitative studies and examinations of how consent functions in actual sexual encounters continue to debunk the perceived helpfulness of these mantras, suggesting consent is much more complex than a simple “yes” or “no” could possibly represent.

In their study, Kitzinger and Frith interviewed high school and college women about their experiences with “unwanted” sex, who noted that they did not “know how” to refuse sex, with

77% believing they needed further education on how to articulate the word ‘no’ (295). The researchers push back against this notion that ‘no’ is a healthy, or realistic tool of refusal, explaining that girls and women are conditioned to communicate with politeness, submissiveness, and passivity in all other areas of life, and to expect a different style of communication for something as sensitive as sex is extremely unfair and unrealistic (297). When analyzing non-sexual situations of refusal, studies have found that an explicit ‘no’ is hardly ever needed to accurately communicate refusal. Yet when we teach about consent, a verbal no is expected, placing enormous pressure on women and girls to communicate in such a way that in any other situation might feel unnatural (303). Therefore, when it comes to refusing sex, 182 participants in their study explained that the only acceptable excuses were those that implied they were unable to have sex (menstruation, no protection, etc.) rather than that they were unwilling, or lacked desire (304).

In response to Kitzinger and Frith’s study, O’Byrne, Rapley, and Hansen interviewed

college-aged men demonstrating how a 'no' is not necessary for men to understand disinterest in or

refusal of sex, if it is not necessary in other non-sexual scenarios. In their study, they found that

overwhelmingly, men name body language and nonverbal cues as clear indicators that a woman is

not interested or is refusing sex (145). When asked how women should ideally refuse sex, they

entirely list nonverbal ways with no reference to verbal cues, such as saying “no”

(147). Their final conclusion supported Kitzinger and Frith’s argument that a yes/no binary creates

impossible criteria and “to focus on women’s ‘deficient’ communication styles in the perpetuation

of rape is, at best, empirically unfounded and, at worst, provides an exculpatory warrant for the

self- interested declarations made by rapists who claim to ‘not know,’” (150).

Additionally, another commonly considered issue of miscommunication is found in the

premise of “token resistance,” a belief shared by both men and women about women resisting due

to obligation rather than lack of desire (Beres 3). As Jozkowski, Marcantonio, and Hunt found in

their study of college students’ sexual communication tactics, young men and women 1) adhere to

sexual double-standards that suggest “good girls do not have sex,” “men put in

‘work,’” and “women ‘owe’ sex,” and 2) the notion that men must convince women to have sex as

part of a conquest (238). These findings emphasize a “no win” reality for women who are expected

not to have sex, while also expected to give into male sexual desire, forcing them to say “no”

when they mean “yes” and to say “yes” when they mean “no” (241). As the authors explain,

“affirmative consent policies also promote the sex-positive ideal of ‘enthusiastic consent’…

unfortunately, our findings suggest that it may not be realistic to expect women to be direct when

communicating their sexual desires, especially their enthusiastic yes, because of 183 concern about developing a negative reputation” (243). Essentially, girls are taught that they should only say yes after first resisting, or else bare the possibility of being looked down upon for desiring sex. But if they say no for any reason other than token resistance, they are not fulfilling their end of the heterosexual deal.

In her analysis of the phrases “yes means yes” and “no means no,” Harris positions both as problematic due to their over simplification of how consent works. She sees the two phrases in question creating a binary between danger and pleasure – “no” implying avoiding danger,

“yes” implying seeking pleasure (159), neither of which consider the nuanced nature of communication. Her argument reinforces that these terms also don’t consider that sexual communication is veiled in social rules and obligations, where women are not allowed to say yes without being perceived negatively, and not allowed to say no without being perceived negatively

(160). While Harris acknowledges the concern over admitting that consent is murky, for fear of contributing to the myth of miscommunication as a reason for rape, she argues that acknowledging the complexity of consent actually explains how violations of consent happen so frequently (161).

If we acknowledge that consent is complex, but act as if giving or understanding it is simple, then we are inadvertently saying that to be good at consensual sex requires eliminating its complexity, which is impossible (162).

What all of this scholarship suggests is that despite rape prevention education designed to make consent easier to grapple with, the oversimplification may actually be detrimental to girls and women in sexual scenarios. With so much focus put on the specific words “yes” and “no,” focus shifts away from the factors that contribute to why both refusing and asking for sex are difficult for many girls and women. Ultimately, the yes/no binary reinforces the miscommunication myth, suggesting there is only one way to “do” consent correctly, and thus 184 resulting in victim-blaming narratives that question how hard a victim fought to avoid sexual

assault, before ultimately absolving the person who assaulted them.

Defining the Terminology

When I was initially developing this research, it was important to me that when

interviewing each participant I acknowledged their professional expertise in victim advocacy and

their real world understanding of sexual violence. One of the ways I did this was by including a

section of questions mid-way through each interview that asked participants to reflect on their

professional experience, as well as their experience as women, to define the words consent, sexual

assault, rape, and the terms victim and survivor. Specifically, they were asked to directly define

consent, share the immediate associations they have with the word rape, explain the differences

they saw (if any) between the terms sexual assault and rape, and then between the terms victim and

survivor. Because this section of the interview was completely separate from questions about

relationship history, their own experiences of sexual assault or violence, and naming their

experiences, answers to these questions often had a different tone than the rest of the interview.

However, some participants did reference their own experience in relation to their answers, or later,

referenced their answers to these questions in relation to how they might name an experience.

Notably, both Christina and Rebecca, who went into the least amount of detail about their

individual experiences, spoke the most directly about the impact of language in conversations about

sexual violence.

At the heart of understanding sexual violence is the question of consent. Each participant

shared definitions for consent that shared some commonalities, while having noticeable

differences. For Samantha, consent could be defined very easily: “it’s freely given, sober, and

willing.” This short definition is one Samantha continued to reference throughout our 185 conversation, often bringing up components of it to contextualize her own experience. For Zara, consent focuses most on being freely given and enthusiastic. “Consent is just making sure both individuals involved in any scenario are partaking so willingly, and willingly means you weren’t pressured into saying yes.” Referring to her experience as a Title IX educator, Zara shared that one of her co-workers ways of describing consent resonates with her most: “consent is enthusiastic – if it’s not a hell yell, it’s a hell no. There’s no such thing as maybe.” She went on to explain that in her own Title IX work, she tries to focus less on situations where she says it’s obvious that there is not consent, such as if someone is unconscious or screaming no, and more on the gray area, concluding, “it has to be completely willing and not in any way coerced or pressured.”

Notably, neither Samantha or Zara explicitly mentioned saying yes as fundamental to

consent. But for both Christina and Rebecca, definitions of consent were a bit more inclusive. For

Christina, consent “boils down to permission.” She explained that whether a yes was given

verbally or nonverbally, agreement to have sex must be present. Additionally, consent should be

sober, willing, and specific. “There are cases where someone consents to one thing, then the game

changes, and they don’t consent,” she explained. “Everybody seems to think once it starts, there is

no going back. I always say that’s what specific means. Every specific act.”

Rebecca’s definition covered similar territory, but with more direct focus on the words yes

and no. “Saying yes and really meaning it,” she explained. “No one forcing you to say it, no one

having to convince you. It should be very clear…I mean, even if your body language says yes, it

doesn’t mean you say yes.” She went on to explain that consent should be 50/50, or come equally

from both parties, in addition to being specific. “You can always withdraw consent. You can

always stop. If you try to physically push someone, I think even if you don’t say no, then you’re

done.” 186

Reviewing all definitions together, there are obvious consistencies: that consent must be willing and freely given being the chief common points. What strikes me most, however, is the differences. Not all definitions included sobriety, the need for specificity, that consent can be withdrawn any time, or that it should include a clear “yes.” Additionally, while all of these definitions imply that there should be a lack of coercion or manipulation, Rebecca’s definition is the only one that explicitly states that a “yes” can be given under duress, and should therefore does not necessarily constitute as consent. I see this as an important distinction, due to belief that “yes means yes.” This review is not meant to suggest that any one participant’s definition is more right or wrong than another’s, but rather to highlight the nuance of how consent can be understood, and the many factors that go into how it might be defined.

Because I knew I’d be asking each woman to name their own experience later in the interview, I wanted to first get an understanding of what associations they have with the word rape, and how they compare the terms rape and sexual assault. This was important to me because these are the two words most readily available for anyone who has been victimized and may be searching for a way to define their experience. It was during these conversations that some thematic differences in how the language of sexual violence is understood became most apparent.

During this question, all four participants referenced situations from work, three regarded rape as inherently violent, three mentioned victim response, and at least two expressed some belief in a hierarchy of sexual violence.

For Samantha, rape could be defined by both the act itself and the victim’s response to the act. In her professional life, she witnessed situations in which someone was sleeping, drunk, or unconscious when someone had sex with them, which she described as rape. She also explained that rape is “forceful penetration” of fingers, or objects, and includes “unwanted 187 touching.” Additionally, she described rape as traumatizing, resulting in PTSD, and “often not remembered, except for in flashes.” In comparing the terms rape and sexual assault, she explained that while they are both unwanted, sexual assault is an umbrella term for all experiences, and might just mean groping, or harassment.

For Zara, the term rape implies a particular type of violence. “People don’t rape people because they’re horny, people rape people because it’s an act of violence. I think people forget that,” she explained. “Rape isn’t about attraction. It’s an act of violence, just like punching somebody in the face. It’s just using your dick instead of a gun.” This misunderstanding, she says, is responsible for victim blaming. The belief that rape is about attraction, rather than violence, would imply that if someone is attractive to someone else, they are "asking for it.” For Zara, this is an important distinction, as she sees physical power imbalance as the primary component of what constitutes rape. She explains, “if somebody is physically pulling somebody down, raping them, that person is able to rape them because they have power over them. If somebody can’t have power over you, they can’t rape you, like, if you’re able to fight them off.”

This particular understanding of rape as inherently violent leads directly into Zara’s other beliefs that imply a hierarchy of sexual violence experiences. When asked about the difference between sexual assault and rape, Zara expressed a passionate disagreement with equating physically violent experiences of rape with coercive behavior. “Somebody violent raping a kid with a gun to their head is not the same as my boyfriend crying about me not sucking his dick,” she explained. “Both are wrong, but they’re not the same thing. I feel like it’s not fair to people who have had their lives really fucked up…it’s not fair to people who have really violent things happen, to walk around and be like, me too.” 188

Rebecca also ascribed to a hierarchy of sexual violence, rooted in her association with rape as violent. In fact, when asked about her immediate association with the word rape, Rebecca stated simply: “Violent. I still always think that. I’m conditioned – I know that’s bad, but I’m conditioned to think that. I know when I sit down and I think about it, it’s not always like that. But when you first bring up the word – violence.” She went on to say “hard to prosecute, not taken seriously, hurtful, and traumatic,” before going into greater detail about her vision of rape. “I can’t think of anything worse if it were to happen to me. I think that’s just the worst thing you can do to a person.

Physically assaulting someone, hurting them, raping them…you know, holding a person at gunpoint or knife point, physically hurting someone while raping them,” she explained.

For Rebecca, the hierarchy starts there. Although rape is a kind of sexual assault, she expressed that the violence in rape should allow it to stand on its own, citing the language itself as a problem. “I think we say sexual assault because rape sounds too violent, too harsh. People water it down.” As she explained this, she contemplated her own experience as a professional and admitted that she uses the term “sexual assault” instead of rape when talking to victims in order to help soften it and not further add to their pain, assuming they wouldn’t want to hear that word.

Throughout the conversation, she began to question that choice. “I think it’s important that we use specific language,” she explained. “Why tone it down to something that is less than what it actually is?”

For Christina, her understanding of rape went far beyond the overtly violent experiences most directly referenced in the previous interviews. In fact, she was the only participant who made it a point to differentiate between the common associations with the word rape, and the lived reality of most experiences. “Instead of the whole stranger in a dark alley thing everybody 189 thinks, I understand it to be…usually more personal, usually somebody you know…I might have thought of it as a brutal attack by a stranger in a dark alley before, but when you do it every day it starts to feel like a common thing in life.” She went on to explain that as she educates people about sexual violence, she finds that most people assume it “can’t be someone you know” because

“people you know wouldn’t do that.” When asked about the difference between sexual assault and rape, Christina was the only participant to focus on the legal differences, rather than the seriousness of the crime itself. “The only difference is penetration,” she explained. “Legally that is the difference. I don’t treat my clients any different whether they were assaulted or raped. It’s up to them to define what happened…outside of the legal difference, I don’t feel any need to differentiate. It’s still a betrayal. It’s still an assault, regardless of penetration or not.”

Christina was consistently the only participant who did not speak in terms of a hierarchy when it comes to the seriousness of sexual assault and rape. However, belief in a hierarchy of seriousness for each experience is a common pattern of thinking. Legally, assault and rape are classified differently, with rape deemed a more serious crime than assault, and therefore charged differently. Culturally, the same rings true. It is clear to me that this hierarchy is problematic, as it contributes to the silencing of victims, and erases stories that add complexity to the overall narrative of sexual violence. If sexual assault exists as an umbrella term for all forms of sexual violence, including rape, but is mostly regarded as harassment, unwanted touching, or groping, and rape is mostly regarded as physically violent and aggressive, there is no middle ground whatsoever for experiences that are not overtly violent. By not allowing for a variety of experiences to fall under one word, or by not having other terms available, there is no way to name the vast majority of experiences of sexual abuse in a way that feels accurate both to the 190 victim and to the culture responding to the victim. Without a name, it is difficult to understand these experiences, talk about them, or seek help after them. Lack of language leads to silence.

Finally, I asked each participant to talk through the difference they see between the terms victim and survivor. This was an important component for me to include for a couple of reasons.

For one, the immediate aftermath of an assault is to be labeled a victim, and the eventual identity is assumed to be a survivor of sexual violence. Yet, if a person does not have a way for understanding their experience, they may also struggle to see themselves as either a victim or a survivor. It was my hope that by getting a sense of how each participant felt about those terms as professionals, I would have a better sense of why they may or may not identify with the terms in relation to their own experiences.

Samantha’s understanding of both terms stems from her work as an advocate. In her experience, many of her clients haven’t felt comfortable with either term. “They prefer not to be called a victim,” she explained. “But they don’t prefer to be called a survivor because they didn’t fear for their life, or they didn’t feel like they were surviving anything. [I] explain to them that it could have been worse, or it could have led to something more.” She went on to offer that she’s seen some clients identity with the term survivor most often after experiencing multiple instances of sexual violence.

For Rebecca, the words victim and survivor have very different meanings, and rhetorical purposes. “It’s the context that’s important,” she explained. “When you’re in court, when you’re talking to police, it’s important to emphasize that there was a victim. That’s a very powerful word.

But when I talk to my clients, I want to use survivor. I think survivor is empowering.” From

Rebecca’s perspective, the word victim is a dangerous one to use with her clients, because of how it might impact their self-perception. “I think the word victim keeps people in a box…You 191 begin to see it as your identity. That’s such a powerful thing. But you're not a victim of your circumstances. And it's not going to affect you for the rest of your life.” After a pause, she then added, “It might, but I want you to know that survivor, that word survivor, indicates for me, you're going to overcome it.”

Like Rebecca, for Zara and Christina, the terms victim and survivor reveal where someone may be in the process of healing. All three suggested that a person is a victim after something criminal happens to them, but can become a survivor over time, as they heal through their experience. As Zara explained, “I feel like victim is a very defeated word, but I don’t think it’s wrong to use it because having that happen, it’s ok to feel that way. I think survivor is more about moving past it, learning from the experience, and feeling empowered.” When asked if it is possible for some who experiences sexual assault to not see themselves as a victim or a survivor, she shared her doubt. “They can tell themselves that to make themselves feel better…I think someone can walk away and not feel defeated or empowered. And if that's your way of coping, that's okay. But do I realistically, like as a professional think that's a real thing? No. I think it's a coping mechanism.

And if that's where someone's at, then that's where someone's at.”

For Christina, the terms victim and survivor are not all inclusive. While everyone starts out as a victim because a crime was committed against them, they are viewed as survivors as they navigate the aftermath of their experience. “Most people see them as trying to survive because it happened. I don’t think survival is what they are doing,” she explained. “They’re living, they’re breathing, they’re eating in between, but it’s not always surviving.” In Christina’s experience, her clients transition from victim to survivor only once they found their voice either through standing up to their attacker in court, or the personal victory of overcoming the experience. “It’s always victim, survivor, then thriver – a turning point.” Christina prefers the 192 term thriver, over the term survivor, because it indicates that someone has went on with their life, successfully, in spite of trauma. Much like Christina’s stance on victims of assault naming their own experience, she shared the importance of not making anyone feel that they have to identify as a survivor, or thriver, at any certain point in the healing process.

For all four women there is a rhetorical power in the words victim and survivor, both in harmful and empowering ways. My conversation with each one of them emphasizes just how important language is and the many connotations of each word. While both Christina and Rebecca saw the word “victim” through a legal sense, Rebecca, along with Samantha and Zara also saw the term victim as especially off-putting, or disempowering, despite being an accurate descriptor. But

Samantha’s point about her clients’ discomfort with the word survivor rings true. To see yourself as a survivor, you have to see yourself as having survived through something especially harrowing.

So it stands to reason that if there are expectations that a victim of sexual assault or rape will be traumatized, develop PTSD, or have their lives destroyed in some way, if someone else does not have those reactions, they may not see themselves as a true victim, or survivor, further distancing them from recognizing the validity of their own experience.

Finally, it is notable that all four of the women I interviewed referenced their professional experiences, and specific cases they were a part of, for examples to support their perspective.

Because we know assaults taking place within relationships are widely underreported, it stands to reason that the particular cases that inform each woman’s perspective on each term may not be reflective of their own experiences. Notably, it would appear that while increased awareness of relational abuse and sexual violence might make it easier for women to recognize a personal experience from their own life as assault, belief in a hierarchy of sexual violence, and comparing one’s own experiences and reactions to sexual assault with other women, could also serve to 193 further silence women by making them believe their own experiences were simply “not that bad.”

Naming Their Experiences

The normalization of sexual abuse and violence in relationships, combined with a cultural understanding of consent communication, and the rhetorical underpinning of sexual violence terminology lays the groundwork for further contextualizing how all four participants named their own experiences. Before diving into each participant’s perspective, it is worth noting that at some point within each interview, each participant indicated that talking to me was the first time they had ever spoken to someone about the experiences discussed in our interview, in the context of sexual abuse or violence. For Samantha, the context of all of her friends and family knowing both her boyfriend Matt and her long-time friend, meant she was not able to openly discuss relational problems without fear of judgement. For Zara, her entire relationship with John was kept secret from her family due to pressure within her community. She also shared that the back- and-forth nature of her relationship with John led to not wanting to share additional relationship problems with her friends, to avoid him being judged. For Christina, starting at a young age and continuing throughout her life, the normalization of sexual abuse made it difficult for her to recognize the value in talking about her experiences. Finally, for Rebecca, the combination of shame over what happened and strong belief that it would not be taken seriously led to her keeping the experience to herself. Therefore, for all four women, speaking with me about this was the first time they had the opportunity to verbally articulate what happened to them.

Throughout the interviews, it was apparent that each woman was still working through her experience, at times sharing that they were actively processing it for the first-time mid- conversation. In developing my study, I had opted to work with victim advocacy professionals 194 because I considered that their professional knowledge of sexual violence would allow for a more in-depth understanding of their own experiences. In my own life, reading survivor narratives in the form of memoirs in my Master’s program led to a breakthrough in recognizing, for the first time, that I had been a victim of sexual violence and abuse, not once, but many times in my life. This breakthrough led to my continued research into sexual violence, diving deeply into the scholarship and feminist theory that ultimately informed this project. But as I explained in Chapter 3, one of my challenges with coming forward and owning my experiences was that every woman I saw doing that appeared to have a fully actualized understanding of what happened to her. I have never been that woman, but I realize now that, in some ways, I was anticipating these women would be. I expected that my study participants, as professionals working in the field, would come to our conversation with such an intimate understanding of sexual violence, that it would be much easier for them to recognize their own personal experiences for what they were. But from my very first interview, it was clear to me that this kind of thinking was misguided.

Though each participant demonstrated deep knowledge of sexual violence and a passion for the advocacy role they filled, I was surprised to see that when it came to themselves, each woman struggled immensely to validate her own experience in light of what she knew from working in the field. Notably, all four women cited their professional experience as the impetus for recognizing incidents and relationships from their own lives as sexually abusive. For Samantha and

Zara, sitting in trainings about relational abuse and date rape, their own experiences with coercive, manipulative partners who had taken advantage of them in different ways, came into focus. Never before had either considered that what they experienced could be considered abuse, assault, or even rape. For Christina and Rebecca, their realizations came a little 195 differently. For Christina, sexual and relational abuse became so commonplace that recognizing it for what it was wasn’t as much the problem as recognizing that it mattered that it happened to her in the first place. For Rebecca, spending years in therapy to work through her abusive childhood and relationship history meant she had developed a strong vocabulary for understanding her own behaviors and impulses in reaction to mistreatment. But for both of them, when it came to identifying the names behind their experiences, working in the field had a strong impact.

Because no two women answered the question of how they’d name their experiences quite the same way, I’d like to first draw out how they went about answering this question, and then whether they identify with the terms victim or survivor. After this overview, I will identify a few themes that resonate across at least two interviews, in order to share some implications for what we might take away from this exploration about language.

When asked to name her experiences with Matt over the course of her relationship, as well as the incident of unwanted anal sex she described in detail during our interview, Samantha hesitated before explaining that she didn’t have a name for it. “I would call it, I mean, obviously unwanted,” she said. “I don’t have a specific term I can pinpoint…I didn't really think about it until after we broke up and after I started getting into the field more and realizing like, oh, that was in the definition. Like picking apart certain terms that it could have been... but I still don't know if I ever will determine it as sexual assault.” Though Samantha did include sobriety in her own definition of consent, she doubts her own memory of what happened not only because she was intoxicated, but because she has a “bad memory,” and only recalls the incident in flashes.

Still, she described those flashes as “vivid” and at multiple points in the interview asked 196 rhetorical questions such as, “why do I remember this so vividly if I was so drunk and so high?

How do I remember all this and I don’t remember any other things?”

Throughout the interview, Samantha cited her trust in Matt as one of the reasons she struggles to see it as assault. “It was almost me trusting Matt that he was innocent about what he was trying to do…if he says I said ‘yes,’ then I said ‘yes,’…or, I didn’t say ‘no.’” In comparison,

Samantha viewed the incident with her friend as “closer to sexual assault” despite the fact that there was no penetration, because he was “completely aggressive, almost yelling, getting upset,” and making her feel afraid. Matt on the other hand was never really aggressive and therefore,

Samantha struggled to see the “assault” component of her experiences with him. “I don’t consider it rape, what I’ve dealt with, because it wasn’t forcefully taken,” she explained.

Although she identifies more with the term victim, Samantha doesn’t consider herself a victim or a survivor. One reason for this is because she does not feel comfortable labeling her experiences as assault or rape, and has no other terminology to describe it. Another is that she does not see the impact on her as comparable to what other women go through.

Despite Samantha stating more than once that, “It wasn’t really traumatic…it doesn’t really affect me much,” she also went on to describe various struggles she’s had that stem directly from her relationship with Matt. In her sexual relationship with her current boyfriend, Samantha described feeling triggered by him kissing her, fearful that he will expect sex anytime he touches her, and struggling to find her voice when communicating with him about sex. She also described herself as

“constantly worried about the worst possible thing,” imagining her boyfriend will flip one day and become abusive. “What if this happens? What if he does this? All these thoughts. I’m almost preparing for something to happen.” She also shared how she believes putting too much trust in anyone is the problem, citing an example from her work life 197 when a victim trusted a friend too much, and he ended up assaulting her in her sleep. While she was clear in stating that this wasn’t the victim’s fault, she also stated quite firmly that it is important to take precautions and not put her trust in people too easily.

But for Samantha, these reactions are not indicative of a true experience of sexual violence, which she described in in the previous section as “traumatic” and “causing PTSD.” Because her experience and her reaction did not look like the reactions of the women she has worked with, she does not equate her experiences to sexual violence. Additionally, she does not feel comfortable accusing Matt of sexual assault because she knows “what it does to people when it’s put on their name.” As she explained, “I wouldn’t want that to be what I think of him as. And that’s the horrible part because that’s when people stay in abusive relationships, because they love the person. They don’t want that person to have that name.”

Although she did not identify with the terms victim or survivor, Samantha did offer another identity for consideration. “Something toward the line of learner or educator,” she said. “I’m trying to educate people about things that could happen, how to help or how to prevent them, how you see your relationships. Some people don’t see the red flags.”

For Zara, when asked what she would name her experiences with John, it became very clear she did not know what to call them. “I would say coercion…I don’t know. I kind of get where there is not a lot of language for it.” Digging deeper, Zara offered perspective on what makes sexual abuse in a relationship so confusing. “This is shitty but people don’t see this as coercion. People just see it as relationship problems…A lot of people don’t look at it as ‘that’s not consent,’ they look at it as a disagreement in a relationship.” But for Zara, not knowing how to deal with sex within a relationship is at the heart of the problem. “People say relationships are about compromise…does this count when we’re talking about sex? I don’t think it should. I think 198 it does sometimes, but I don’t know. How do you communicate that you want something that you think the other person might not want without forcing them?...Where’s the line between communication and coercing someone to do it? I feel like it’s all perspective.”

For Zara, the nuance of what constitutes coercion versus normal communication within a relationship presents a real challenge for understanding what part she played in her own experiences. She explained that when she did talk to friends about her relationship, she never framed problems with John as coercion. “I just felt like that made him look really bad and made me look dumb.” Zara’s tendency to take on responsibility for what happened in the relationship often resulted in her calling herself dumb, or stupid. At one point, she explained how her situation might not even be considered coercion because she wasn’t in physical danger if she said no, or financially dependent on John. “I just should have sucked it up and left,” she explained. “I did that. It wasn’t done to me. I did that. I chose that. I was doing my part. It’s just shitty that people have power over other people.”

Interestingly, as mentioned in the previous section, for Zara rape cannot happen if one person isn’t being actively overpowered by another, which makes her reference to John’s power over her particularly interesting. Still, she feels strongly that she is not a victim of anything and she could have stopped it from happening. “I feel like when we use the word victim, it’s something that you couldn’t control,” she explained. “Even though I had an emotional connection, I could have said no too.” For Zara, because nothing “that bad” happened to her, she does not feel comfortable identifying as a survivor. “I feel like leaving that for people who have been through things that are, like, traumatic. I don’t think everyone needs to walk around claiming that.” 199

Much like Samantha, part of Zara’s perspective on her own experience relies on the belief that she was not directly harmed by what happened with John. However, it is clear that the situation as a whole caused her great emotional distress which has led to her having a more hardened outlook on the world, a greater distrust of men, and a strong commitment to courting for marriage in the future, rather than dating. This is not to suggest that dating is a better, or preferred method of finding a partner, but rather to recognize that the experience of this relationship led to a complete change in what she wants for her life. When describing the value of courting, she mentioned several times the extra layer of emotional and physical protection it offers women when getting involved with men.

For Rebecca, when asked to name the incident of her short-term boyfriend having sex with her when she was too drunk to consent, she replied, “I see it as non-consensual sex,” before adding, “I know that means rape.” This was the beginning of what would be a long and confusing debate Rebecca had with herself during our interview. One of the primary factors contributing to her confusion was the fact that she never explicitly said the word no. “I never really considered it rape. I don’t know why. It’s like a mental block. I’m working it out by myself, in my own head right now,” she explained. “I couldn’t say no; I don’t know why. I don’t know what blocked me from saying no even though I wanted to.” Despite not verbalizing no, Rebecca recalls thinking to herself in the moment that she didn’t want to have sex, that she was too drunk and couldn’t consent, but not feeling physically able to verbalize that. “It’s a really difficult situation for me. I work in the field. I couldn’t come to the police and say I was raped because I didn’t say no. They wouldn’t take it seriously. It wouldn’t be considered serious.”

When I asked Rebecca what she meant by serious, she clarified that she meant serious in

a legal sense. Emotionally, the experience was serious, and very painful for her. Still, she 200 believes that if she told the average person who holds “society’s view” of rape about what happened to her, they would not consider it assault, because “it wasn’t violent.” “I still let the society’s view define what I think is sexual assault in my own personal life, but not for everyone else,” she explained. “Everyone that I’ve seen that’s been through this, or these kinds of situations,

I think it’s valid. I would consider it rape. But in my own life, I just can’t. I don’t want to take away from people who have been through worse.”

Rebecca’s view of her situation as not as serious, or as traumatizing as what other women experience, is consistent with both Samantha and Zara, and reflected in the fact that she does not see herself as a victim or survivor of anything. More than any other interview, Rebecca repeatedly referred to the fact that she didn’t say “no” as evidence that the situation was her fault. She also expressed the most outward shame, and embarrassment about the situation. “I don’t feel like it was worth telling anyone,” she explained. “I don’t see it as sexual assault because I never said no…I think that’s why I invalidate myself. I blame myself…It was on me to stop it from happening.” For

Rebecca, this self-blame has resulted in a deep shame and sense of guilt for not “honoring herself” and a belief that she will never get past the incident, and always think of it as her own responsibility. Toward the end of the interview, Rebecca even asked me directly if I thought her voice mattered, because she felt guilty taking part in my research.

Interestingly, when asked about the impact of the other more serious relationships in which she had “a lot of non-consensual sex,” Rebecca sees those situations as different. As explained earlier in this chapter, Rebecca saw non-consensual sex inside of a serious relationship as less serious of a violation, because it became such a normal component of her life. Whereas the incident she focused most prominently on took place after a first date with a partner who would go on to become a short-term boyfriend of roughly three months. It is also notable that 201 despite many years in therapy, focusing on her childhood and relational abuse, at the end of our interview Rebecca revealed that she had never told a therapist about this incident either, for fear that it wasn’t worth talking about.

Of all four participants, Christina was the only one who came close to naming her experiences as sexual assault or rape. Though she did not directly name any experience, she inferred several times that she “knows what it is” because of the legal definitions. As a legal advocate and a law student, Christina’s focus on the legal terminology made it easier to recognize her own experiences as falling into those different categories. Having covered such a wide variety of experiences, it was difficult to ask Christina to name any one in particular. However, the question of naming resulted in a long, passionate conversation in which Christina frequently wove her own struggles with naming in with those of other victims, providing insight and reasoning for why it is such a difficult question.

When initially asked how she would name her own experiences, Christina instead focused on the women she worked with. “I have to explain to them just because it wasn’t penetration doesn’t mean you weren’t assaulted,” she explained.” It doesn’t mean it wasn’t wrong…what happened doesn’t have to fit into a nice neat definition. It’s all based on how they felt. If they felt violated…It’s the only time a crime is committed and the victim feels like she did it. All the time.”

When asked again about her own experiences, she explained that her perspective has changed over the years, as she has grown older and more educated about sexual violence. “I didn’t really put into context or think about if it was rape or assault. It was just something that happened to me. There were a lot of bad things that happened.”

Now, however, Christina explains that naming isn’t really the issue. “I can name them. I

can give you definitions of what everybody did. Wrong, assault, rape. I can do that.” For 202

Christina, learning to live in a world in which sexual violence is a constant focus has taken its toll.

More than once she referred to being surrounded by other people’s monsters, and bearing the burden of such responsibility. “I still don’t spend time going ‘this is what happened to me.’ I don’t think I could do my job if I constantly referenced back to my own life,” she said, before further expanding on the many reasons naming an incident is so difficult. “Saying it out loud, naming it, makes it too real. If it happened once, it could happen again. It’s a scary world to live in. You have to face that constantly. So you have to do what you gotta do it make it livable.” For Christina, owning an experience of sexual violence goes far beyond the struggle to recognize it as assault or rape. It speaks to personal identity. “It’s hard to stand up and say that happened to you, because it makes you feel dirty. That’s why victims don’t want to say it. To say it makes them feel dirty, or embarrassed. There’s always the inherent guilt. I’m no different.”

As she explained, guilt is a frequent response to sexual assault because it’s easy to find

“1,000 reasons” why it’s the victims fault. But to Christina, self-blame is just another coping mechanism. If a victim can blame themselves, then they can assume a certain amount of control over whether or not they are victimized again. But if they blame someone else, they have to face the possibility that it can happen any time. “How would you ever leave the house?” When asked if she sees herself as a victim, she replied pointedly, “I guess everybody’s a victim when something happens to them. For me, it is what it is.”

Though she resisted calling herself a survivor, or thriver, as she described earlier, she did align her own growth through life with the process she sees other women go through as they recover from sexual abuse. “I’ve lived my life doing things I wanted. I’ve kind of waded through it all. I have my degrees, I have a good job, I’m in law school despite it all. I guess that’s the kicker

– despite everything.” Still, like the other participants, there is no doubt Christina is still 203 impacted by what has happened to her. Several times throughout the interview she referenced her inability to trust people, her desire to keep to herself, her intentional lack of friends, her lack of a social life, and the many vigilant ways she keeps herself safe including learning to shoot a gun, carrying pepper spray, and making sure to constantly be in control of her surroundings by never sleeping over at anyone’s house, especially if there are men present.

When reviewing all of these narratives as a whole, there are some consistencies evident throughout. Most notably, the adherence to the belief that rape is only rape if it is violent, and results in a specific kind of trauma, as well as a specific presentation of pain, was present in the majority of interviews. Despite all four women being heavily impacted, and even changed, by the experiences they outlined in their interviews, all but Christina stated explicitly that their experiences could have been worse, and that they weren’t that affected by them. Not only does this reinforce the hierarchy as discussed earlier in this chapter, which ultimately silences women, but it also erases the possibility for subtler, or quiet reactions to trauma, as valid emotional responses. Even Christina, who seemed to have the strongest understanding of what she experienced, frequently stated how nothing bothers, or affects her anymore, despite many apparent struggles with trust and intimacy as a direct result of her trauma. This focus on both the nature of assault and response to assault needing to look a certain way reflects many of the participant’s definitions of what constitutes assault in the first place. However, it is also notable that most of the participants held a different standard for their own experiences than they did for the experiences of their clients. While they supported a more inclusive understanding of rape, or sexual assault for the women they worked with, they frequently discounted their own experiences as valid representations of either term based on the contextual details of their relationships, or the situations they were in. 204

Most notably, Samantha, Zara, and Rebecca each shared a definition for consent that directly indicated that their own experiences outlined in our interview were not actually consensual.

Yet, when it came to naming their experiences, none of them were comfortable using the terminology available to them. This would indicate that whether or not an incident was consensual is not the only factor that influences whether or not victims consider it assault or rape. Though this is the framework through which we talk about sexual violence, the lived reality of the experience would suggest otherwise. Additionally, Samantha, Zara, and Rebecca all mentioned, at some point in their interviews, that not saying “no” was at the crux of their struggle to see their experience as assault, or rape. This suggests that despite a complex, multi- faceted understanding of consent, as evidenced in their own definitions of the word, not verbalizing “no” trumps all other outward expressions of non-consent, when determining how to name an incident. Once again, this is indicative of both the interruption and power of language. Where a violation of consent should clearly indicate that an incident was assault or rape, other contextual factors impact whether or not those words feel appropriate for victims. This is evidence of a flaw in the rhetorical discourse of sexual violence, suggesting that the language we currently support does not cover all experiences, and that there are some experiences that are left without a language to represent them. If anything, it proves just how important context is in defining an experience, and stands to reason that context should be considered when expanding the rhetorical discourse of sexual violence.

Additionally, it must be noted that both Samantha and Rebecca had an easier time acknowledging experiences that took place outside of a serious romantic context, than within one.

For Samantha, despite the ongoing coercive nature of her relationship with Matt, and the incident of penetrative unwanted anal sex, she considered the incident with her friend as closer to 205 sexual assault than anything that took place with Matt. For Rebecca, despite using the same terminology – non-consensual sex – to refer to sex in her serious, long term relationships as in the shorter-term relationship that led to her involvement in this research, she only regarded the incident in the shorter-term relationship as worthy of more direct focus. This is not to suggest that using the same terminology means the incidents were the same. Ultimately, that is only for

Rebecca to determine. I draw this out simply to bring light to the fact that in both cases, both women placed greater blame on partners they had less emotional attachment to, than partners they had a more serious romantic investment in. This would suggest that the romantic context of more serious relationships may in fact make it more challenging to name, or even acknowledge experiences as problematic, than situations in which there is less emotional investment in finding a partner innocent of any wrongdoing. It also highlights how coercion or sexual assault are seen as more acceptable, or normal, in a serious relationship, than in a casual one.

In review, three out of four participants could not identify a name for the incident(s) that inspired them to participate in this research. Specifically, Samantha, Zara, and Rebecca each identified adjectives – unwanted, coercive, and non-consensual – to describe what they would otherwise refer to as sex, rather than nouns such as sexual assault or rape. This would indicate that without separate terminology to describe situations that do not align with a victim’s rhetorical understanding of the words sexual assault, or rape, their only option is to modify the word

“sex” (which by nature of not being “rape” implies consent), with descriptors that ultimately place their experience somewhere between sex and rape. Thus, creating a phrase lacking in the rhetorical and legal power of the word rape, while contributing to a more nuanced understanding of what sex can entail. 206

Overall Implications and Final Takeaways

While this analysis is in no way inclusive of everything that can be learned from analyzing each of these women’s stories, it is my hope that it has offered additional understanding into the complex nature of sexual abuse inside the confines of a heterosexual, romantic relationship.

Having already offered takeaways and implications relevant to the previous sections of this chapter, I’d like to close by offering just a few more all-inclusive points for consideration as this project reaches its final conclusion.

Female Desire and Sex Positivity

While there are several major points I’d like to address, one that has become most profoundly evident to me in working with these women and exploring my own history, is that our societal definition of consent consistently emphasizes a willingness to have sex, rather than desire to have sex, as indication of consent. This is a point I had not considered prior to this research and one that I’d like to draw out, as I believe it is fundamental to the confusion so many women experience after being coerced into sexual activity they otherwise would not have consented to.

Desire is at the very heart of sex. It goes without saying that without some kind of sexual, biological, emotional, or psychological desire from at least one party involved, sex would most likely never happen. Yet, desire is often left out of the conversation when it comes to consent. It is simply accepted that desire, specifically a woman’s desire, is not necessary for sex to be consensual. While recent movements have emphasized a need for affirmative, and ideally, enthusiastic consent (presumably indicative of desire) this is simply not the reality for how women and men are socially conditioned to engage with sex. As outlined in my discussion of the yes/no binary, men are socially conditioned to be the active sexual partner, while women are 207 socially conditioned to be passive. The assumption, then, is that men are the chief desirers of sex with the responsibility of convincing women to have sex, (i.e. make them willing to have sex), rather than engaging with women’s own desire to have sex. This gendered relational dynamic automatically puts women in a disempowered position, as they are seen as the gatekeepers of male access to sex, rather than as equal participants in the fulfillment of mutual desire. By this very expectation, women are then responsible for simultaneously holding space for both their own wants and needs, as well as their partners’, when it comes to engaging in a sexual situation. This creates an enormous amount of pressure for women, who are also socialized to be polite, considerate, caring, and submissive in all areas of their lives, to give into what will make their partner happy, or more comfortable, rather than honoring their own desires. In this dynamic, the male focus can remain entirely on fulfilling individual desire, while the female focus is divided between herself and her partner, making it especially difficult for women to even grow familiar with their own bodies as sexual beings independent of their partners.

Why is this acceptable? Beyond the obvious answer that it has always been this way, and without deep diving into the patriarchal, puritanical foundation of American culture, we must ask ourselves this question again and again until the depth of it truly resonates. Why is female desire left out of conversations around consent? Yes, it is mentioned in passing. But why is it not a primary focal point? Why is a simple “willingness” to have sex the primary grounds necessary for consent?

I am not even speaking from a legal perspective at this point, but rather from a social one. Why is the focus on women allowing someone to have sex with them, rather than wanting to have sex?

The answer is implicit. Within the very formation and upkeep of gender roles is the built-

in understanding that sex is not now, and has never been, about women’s pleasure, but rather 208 about their willingness to give pleasure to others, or even to allow others to take pleasure from them. It is the same reason why women girls are encouraged from the moment they hit puberty to master desirability, but are shamed for experiencing desire itself. Women’s desire and sexual pleasure are viewed as peripheral to men’s – a welcome, but ultimately unnecessary component of sex. If this weren’t the case, there wouldn’t be countless studies on and references to the

“orgasm gap” among heterosexual couples, with heterosexual women found to be the least likely to experience orgasm during partnered sex out of all demographics studied. In fact, research shows that 91% of men consistently reach orgasm during heterosexual sex, while only 39% of women do

(Mahar, Mintz, and Akers 24). As a widely researched phenomenon, I do not bring this up to simplify the many multi-faceted explanations for this, including but not limited to the fact that not all people require orgasm to consider sex pleasurable, but simply to bring light to fact that female sexual pleasure, in general, is widely absent from heterosexual encounters, in any measurable way.

Now I want to be clear; I know it is easy to dismiss this focus on desire as confusing the issue at hand. Sexual assault and bad sex are not equivalent experiences, nor do I mean to imply that they are. However, it is absolutely detrimental that we recognize the cultural disconnect that supports the pattern of thinking that even asks us to question whether or not a woman’s desire, or enjoyment is relevant in conversations about consent. It is. If young women are not recognized, and accepted, as autonomous sexual beings with their own desires and interests in the same way that young men have long been seen as such, then they will struggle to grow into adult women who can communicate confidently about what they desire and do not desire. They will have learned from a young age to devalue their own experience in favor of their partners, valuing their own desirability, above their own desire. Similarly, if young men are not raised to see young 209 women as equal sexual partners, they will continue to operate with understanding that sex is about male conquest and female submission, rather than a mutually gratifying experience. Additionally, without a shift in our culture toward recognizing young women’s sexuality as healthy, natural, and normal, young women will rightfully continue to fear “gaining a reputation” and slut shaming that so pervades rape culture. This is why I believe cultural sex positivity grounded in feminist ideology is fundamental to the prevention of sexual violence. It is also why I believe it is fundamental that the rhetoric of consent education must include an emphasis on desire for sex, in addition to willingness.

Normal vs. Healthy

Another point that became abundantly clear to me during this research was the realization that normal behavior does not equate healthy behavior. While on the surface this statement may ring as obvious, it is worth exploring a little deeper. The normalization of sexual abuse, coercion, manipulation, and even violence in heterosexual relationships means that both the women and men within those relationships, as well as the culture they represent, has on some level learned to accept this behavior as standard, or to be expected. This is a problem. But why is it the case?

Again, aside from it always being this way and the patriarchal, puritanical foundation of

American culture, the one obvious reason that I will be focusing on is that we simply do not talk about the difference between normal and healthy relational dynamics, especially when it comes to sex. Outside of domestic violence awareness month, gender studies courses, and possibly a middle school health class, discussing the foundational components of building healthy sexual and romantic relationships is overwhelmingly not addressed in American culture. Young women and men learn about relationships from what they observe at home and what is modeled for them 210 in popular culture and media. But when what is modeled is a strong gender divide, the adherence to gender roles, and a patriarchal understanding of sexuality, it is no wonder why abusive sexual behaviors continue to be normalized. The bottom line is that when something is not talked about, or not addressed, it is more widely accepted as normal, or okay. But all normal really means, is that something is typical, or common. It does not mean it is okay and it certainly does not mean that it is healthy.

While many activist efforts focus, rightfully, on the epidemic of underreporting, the lack of justice in the criminal justice system’s response to sexual assault, and the overall prevention of gender-based sexual violence, I believe the focus of this work is to propel this issue out of the shadows and into the forefront, so that we may finally recognize and acknowledge, as a culture, that these behaviors are wrong and that what we have long accepted as normal within a relationship is not healthy. This is not a small ask. Every single person who has been involved in a heterosexual relationship has lived inside the same discourse that normalizes these behaviors, whether or not their individual relationship reflected it. We cannot begin to change the discourse until we fully recognize the problem. In order for a full recognition of this problem to take place, we as individuals must be willing to look honestly at our own relationships, examine the role gender plays within them, and take on the burden of asking difficult questions of ourselves and our partners. This goes for all genders. What do we accept as normal that we shouldn’t? What do we do that we shouldn’t? How does adherence to gender roles, as well as a gender binary, contribute to the gendered sexual dynamics of individuals within a heterosexual relationship? Who among us is harmed by this?

This is not a small ask. This is difficult work. This is vulnerable work. It requires a willingness to

be wrong and a desire to learn and grow. It requires a willingness to recognize in 211 what ways we personally have contributed to normalizing relational sexual abuse, and to dig deep into understanding why. It requires recognizing when our consent has been violated, even within otherwise loving relationships. It requires recognizing when we have violated someone else’s consent, coerced, or pressured someone into sex. It requires a willingness to see people as more than victims and more than monsters and to hold space for growth. It requires talking about it openly, and honestly, so that experiences such as mine and those shared in the previous chapters are not trivialized, but recognized as unjust, and indicative of a larger, cultural issue.

This requires that we reject a hierarchy of sexual violence that tells us which experiences are bad enough to be worthy of suffering, and instead recognize that all experiences of relational or sexual abuse are part of the same landscape of gender inequality that upholds the acceptability of rape culture. We must recognize that one need not be diagnosed with PTSD for their experiences to matter, or for their hurt to be real. The ability of women to grin and bear discomfort, pain, or abuse should not be regarded as strength, or bravery, as much as indicative of a culture that silences us into submission by means of labeling painful experiences as normal.

This is not easy. But when we begin to ask these questions, we create the groundwork for a cultural shift. We can create new models for not just what is normal, but what is healthy in relationships. We can make healthiness normal. Sexual prevention education can focus not just on consent communication, date rape, and how to report assault, but on the importance of gender equality, sex positivity, and the foundations of healthy relationships. It can focus on healthy communication, emotional openness, and learning how to deal with confrontation by working to dismantle the expectation that boys and men do not share or recognize their own feelings. The dynamics of relational abuse can be brought to the surface through a greater awareness of red flags and by highlighting more subtle forms of abuse. Awareness about sexual violence can 212 include a broader, more nuanced understanding of what sexual assault actually looks like for the vast majority of victims.

Finally, we must expand our understanding of why men sexually assault, abuse, and rape women to include not only a violent desire for power, but a desire for sex which is rooted in the dismissal of female autonomy. This is an important and uncomfortable distinction, but in light of this research and the foundational scholarship that supports it, it is clear that sexual assault is widely regarded as exclusively derived from a desire for power, taking place at the hands of monstrous and deviant men. While I believe the social conditioning of gender inequality does support the argument that gendered power is at play in all instances of sexual assault, I do not believe removing the simple motivation of male sexual desire from the conversation is helpful, or based in reality. If we continue to believe that the intention behind an assault or rape must be something other than sexual desire, then we further distance men and women from recognizing these incidents in their own lives. The more we adhere to the belief that only

“monsters” and “perverts” sexually violate women, the more we erase incidents that take place at the hands of otherwise normal, non-monstrous men, and continue to normalize these behaviors.

I want to be clear that by recognizing the sexual motivation behind assault, I am in no way offering an excuse for male sexual violence within romantic relationships. I am simply offering an additional layer of understanding. If we do not acknowledge that both men and women are socially conditioned to accept unhealthy, abusive sexual behavior as normal, then we will never be able to effectively educate young women and men about what constitutes healthy sexual behavior. 213

The Limitation of Language

Finally, it is imperative to acknowledge the role of language in understanding, recognizing,

and preventing sexual violence. Language is how we learn to make meaning of the world.

Language both responds to and reflects our cultural values. By the very nature of not talking about

this issue, we reflect what stories and experiences are most valued within our culture and which

ones are not. Though we cannot accurately discuss these issues without language, we also cannot

find or form language to encompass these experiences, without talking about them.

Despite the multi-faceted nature of sexual abuse, I continue to regard language as a

fundamental, and overlooked, barrier to recognizing the pervasive sexual abuse in our culture.

Simply put, the limitations of language, both in how we communicate and recognize consent, to

how and why women name experiences of sexual violence the way they do, to the ability to

recognize violations of consent as problematic, to how we label victims of sexual violence and the

perpetrators of it, the current language of sexual violence discourse over simplifies the lived

experiences of women, and further silences them.

But as the findings of this research suggest, simply allowing space for women who have

experienced relationally-based sexual abuse to name their experience is not enough. While it has

never been more evident to me that the terms sexual assault and rape are not at all inclusive of the

wide range of sexual abuses women experience than it is now, it has also never been clearer that

this issue goes well beyond a lack of language for naming the incidents themselves. The problem

lies in the discourse itself. The point is not whether or not women are wrong, or in denial if they do

not name their experiences as sexual assault or rape, or see themselves as victims or survivors. The

point is that the language, as it currently exists, does not work for the women most in need of it.

The point is that the words themselves create a barrier to 214 understanding experience and sharing truths. The rhetorical implications of the words assault and rape are so overpowering, and so rooted in a particular kind of sexual violence discourse, that they are not useful to women whose experiences fall outside of the cultural understanding of each one.

If we respect the lived experiences of women, and the unique perspectives they can offer us on this issue, moving forward we will concern ourselves less with proving why they don’t identify with the language available, and ask why the language available does not reflect their lived experience.

Language should not be a barrier to truth, it should be a pathway to it.

Coming to the conclusion of this research, more than anything else, I believe what we can take away from this is the need to have open, transparent dialogue about sexual abuse, coercion, manipulation, assault, violence, and the gender divide that disempowers women in heterosexual relationships. We must continue to study the limitations and power of language through an interdisciplinary approach that holds space for the psychological, sociological, cultural, and rhetorical factors that impact the discourse. While we must continue amplifying women’s stories of sexual abuse and violence and continue asking them to name their own experiences, we must also work to dismantle the power structures the support this lack of language. Above all else, we must continue to fight for gender equality in all areas of life, and for the benefit of all genders, in ways large and small.

Conclusion

There is a power in honoring many simultaneous truths. For an issue as multi-faceted as sexual violence, it is easy to fall into the trap of oversimplification, believing that a streamlined understanding of how it happens and how to prevent it will lead to greater empowerment. But throughout the process of completing this project I have learned more each day about the importance of making room for a multitude of experiences, explanations, motives, reactions, and 215 contributing factors that inform the lived experiences of women in heterosexual relationships, than I could have ever anticipated.

By no means is this study all inclusive. The limitations of this project are broad and far-

reaching, not only in the size and scope of my participant pool, but in the lack of representation

across race, ethnicity, age, ability, gender identity, sexuality, and any other number of demographic

markers. For research that so heavily relies on the intricacies of context, I cannot ignore this

limitation, or deny that identity informs context just as much, if not more, than a relationship status

might. However, the aim of this research was never to project an all-knowing understanding of the

complexity of sexual violence, but rather to present an in-depth exploration of relationally-based

sexual violence, the language of sexual violence discourse, and a sampling of the wide range of

women’s lived experiences of sexual abuse through the close analysis of survivor narratives. I

have done this and I am changed by it.

To say writing this project has been a harrowing process would be an understatement. The

personal journey I have taken from start to finish of this work has been unlike any other in my life.

There were many moments in which I wanted to quit, or simply believed I was not capable of

completing it. There were countless times I questioned the value of this work, unraveled all of my

own stories, and cited my own complicity as a sex crime, never prosecuted. I have suffocated

through the shame of it. I have cowered under its weight.

There is more work left to be done. Not only in the realm of academic research, activism,

and propelling a cultural change, but within myself. I am not fully recovered and I have not yet

healed. I live with the trauma of my past every day, inside of every touch, in the flashbacks I can’t

control, and in the muscle memory of violation I can’t erase.

But I am trying. 216

I am here.

I am a survivor. 217

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APPENDIX A. SAMANTHA VOICE POEMS

I.

I we Matt

Typical high school sweetheart

I thought “things are gonna be perfect”

Ended up lasting eight years thought we were what each other needed

I would try other people I ended up going back

I would break up if things didn’t – I hoped they would I thought I always had to be happy 224

II.

I we Matt

Grew up in foster care hard to trust people to connect to talk about

I was providing everything, not getting anything I was realizing what a one-way connection I didn’t realize how it impacted I was treated I didn’t realize I didn’t realize until I started sitting in trainings and thinking I’ve dealt with that

I would get too comfortable

I said in the beginning, it’s almost all that I knew I lost my virginity I was supposed to spend the rest – I was supposed to be, like –

We were so cute together –

And everyone, everyone loves him –

I would just keep going back I don’t know I was like I’ll just keep trying I ended up dragging him through the relationship I felt like a mom I don’t know if that answered your question 225

III.

I it Matt

Like a clear line it was just expected more of a chore than for pleasure

I wouldn’t say it was freely given I was kind of, like, not considering it sexual assault I guess I was willing for him

I wasn’t really willing

I hadn’t really I didn’t think I had really encountered anything I never considered I might have been in an innocently, slightly abusive relationship

Might not have been his intentions

But it is still what ended up happening

I’m learning now I don’t know what I thought it was before I don’t really know what I thought it was before I don’t consider it rape I was just laying there I wasn’t really I wasn’t getting

It was almost painful

I was like “are we gonna stop?”

“cool, let me finish first.”

“Are we done yet?” 226

IV.

I it they

I haven’t been able to relate I think it is Sleeping Forceful Unconscious Not remembering except Causing PTSD Traumatic just thinking about it

I’ll get into a thing later I keep looking back to

Both are unwanted Sexual assault can be: Just groping Grabbing your boob or butt Just harassment like slurs or names Then rape being: Forceful penetration Fingers objects Unwanted touching

I don’t see myself as

Prefer not to be called a victim don’t prefer to be called survivor because they didn’t fear their life they didn’t feel like they were surviving

Could have been worse could have led to something more something’s being taken there’s someone in power someone’s doing the taking

Calling themselves a survivor because

It’s happened so many times 227

V.

I we Matt

I still I was I was completely drunk and high

Attempted anal always talked joked thought it was funny seeing it in porn would always bring it up

I kind of just – I didn’t say –

we were always up for trying new things but that wasn’t one of them for me.

I froze I freaked out I started crying I didn’t know I just Started freaking out like, “What happened?” “you were fine with it.” him, innocently not knowing

I wasn’t ok with it. I wasn’t sober I wasn’t freely giving 228

VI.

I it Matt

He wasn’t in the same state

I was

He was closer to sober than

I was

He knew how bad

I was

He knew I had He knew how

Sexual encounters had been a chore for his pleasure rather than both a selfish, immature act

Making sure he came was his only concern

It wasn’t considered sex unless he finished

Might have been because of the trust

I had in him

In that situation it was kind of lost just the trust, in general was consistently lost

I don’t think it was linked I was breaking up with him because I was unhappy in general, but

In the back of my mind

I think so 229

VII.

I it Matt

I think because I don’t know

All the trust I had in him after so many years

I wouldn’t have

And the conversation the joke in our relationship the situation arose and

He went to take advantage – not take advantage –

It makes me feel bad making him feel like a bad person

I don’t think those were his intentions

The person he is, but, then

It could have been his thought

“What if this is my opportunity? She won’t say,” like, “She won’t say no,” like, “She’s gonna go along with that.”

Runs through my head, like

I wonder if he thinks about it, like

probably not

I have a horrible memory

Certain things happen there is almost a triggering

“Why am I remembering that one little thing that didn’t bother me at the time, but it bothers me now?”

It’s weird. 230

Why do I remember this so vividly when I was so drunk and high? How do I remember all this and I don’t remember any other things? 231

VIII.

I it they

I was just brushing it off I was letting it happen

Still comes to mind more and more this field makes me think about it wasn’t really traumatic doesn’t really affect me much other than – Saying you’re able to consent when past a certain point is hard because

I probably I was essentially I wasn’t I might have said I just kept going back to it

I was like, well, this might have been sexual assault 232

IX.

I we Matt

I did verbalize I feel like

After we broke up actually communicated

He went out of his way He’s more able and willing He wasn’t before He was trying to prove He’s changed He’s like a better person – Not that he was a bad person – More well rounded

I guess 233

X.

I it Andrew

Our one and only encounter

I wasn’t really connected I wasn’t interested

It wasn’t really anything

I went to stop

He got mad and, like, frustrated to where

I was scared I was just I was at his house I was vulnerable I was in his space

We were family friends

I don’t know if I said

A lot of family connections would see each other out in public weird because

I kinda just shut down I was uncomfortable I didn’t want to continue Ended up getting angry very upset

I wasn’t used to I was scared not knowing

What’s he gonna do? frustrated or mad

Almost the same as

“So we’re not going to finish?” like, “we’re done?” 234

like, “we aren’t going to finish now?”

The end product was they were getting something out of it

I wasn’t I stopped I left out of, like

What’s he gonna do? waiting for the worst

Eight or nine years friends started talking

One interaction

Still friends 235

XI.

I it Matt Andrew

I think the trust I had

He was never really aggressive was never to where

I considered

if they weren’t his intentions then it wasn’t sexual assault

Almost oblivious towards wasn’t comprehending what was going on only worried about his end close-minded almost to where once

I encountered Andrew

It was very aggressive It wasn’t what

I am used to

It affected me more Closer to a sexual assault than the anal was

Because of how he made me feel

It was almost me trusting Matt that

he was innocent about what he was trying to do if he says I said “yes”

I said “yes,” or I didn’t say “no.”

To where Andrew was Completely aggressive Almost yelling Getting upset 236

Not like Matt at all

I’m realizing, like

It would have been almost considered abusive with Matt 237

XII.

I it we Andrew

I don’t I think I don’t I keep him at a distance

Realizes those aren’t my intentions

I’m with someone else I’m really happy

Things are a little awkward

We keep our distance

Things are a little weird

We still talk we’re still like – we don’t hang out alone – obviously

He’ll come

We’ll hang out

It doesn’t come to mind in the moment

I’ll think about it later I just brush it off I don’t let it bother me I think about a lot later 238

XIII.

I Jared we

Just started kissing me

I was like I really don’t feel like –

“Just because I’m kissing you doesn’t mean you have to have sex”

I was like, that was the trigger during those eight years I really don’t want to but –

“I don’t like that you feel that way. You’re supposed to get stuff out of this. It’s for both of us.”

Made me realize

I never would have thought that was anything close to sexual assault.

Like, being comfortable saying no, or “not now, sorry,” being comfortable communicating

not getting upset about it. 239

XIV.

I it Jared you

Going into law enforcement

It’s always in the back of my head

I don’t ant him to

He’s never been like

I don’t ant it to be

Always hear about people in law enforcement flipping the other way, and using it as abuse

Always in the back of my mind, but

I have anxiety I’m constantly thinking the worst thing possible

What if this happens?

What if he does this?

What if this ends up happening? All these thoughts

I’m almost preparing for something to happen I don’t want it to ruin the good 240

XV.

I it Matt

I’m good I don’t know I don’t want to say it affects me other than, like almost flashbacks I randomly think about it Kinda brush it off Like, well that wouldn’t happen again, but if

I’m comfortable with –

It might be the same thing

I don’t know how I would react

It makes me curious if

I’m thinking about it being sexual assault now, why didn’t I think it was before?

It was just the trust the trust factor made me push it under the rug

like if those weren’t his intentions

It doesn’t count it wasn’t something

I would have done sober

He probably knew that

it wasn’t something

I would have done sober

He was almost taking advantage not maliciously

That’s why

I didn’t consider it a – 241

I almost knew those weren’t his –

Other than him getting what he wanted Like it was before

That’s what makes me think of it being more toward sexual assault.

I mean I vividly remember

It started with fingers

He went to get the lube Put it in

I stopped him I snapped into I snapped out of blackout

I guess I wouldn’t do anything different 242

XVI.

I it she you

I’m sure if I was vulnerable I would I wouldn’t react

In a dominant situation The trust factor would –

I’m still more knowledgeable about red flags –

Back on the trust factor

The stories

I hear about girls

putting way too much trust into one person

I had a girl

A friend was in the room she rolled over to sleep completely unconscious woke up to him inside her she put so much trust in this guy being in her room

Hope the guy wouldn’t easier to like, kick him out before you go to sleep

but she didn’t think of that she had so much trust in her friend

I’m a firm believer I don’t drink in public I won’t drink much in public I can control –

But then, once –

I was at home. 243

XVII.

I it they Matt

I want to say I think the statistic

90% are with someone they know Someone they trust

It’s almost grooming

They’re grooming to get them to that point

I was groomed until I could be taken I was completely drunk and high

He was able to take advantage of my vulnerability

I had so much trust

I talk about it, think about it

It was almost grooming but –

He’s not –

I think it was unintentional grooming –

It was just the moment It was taken advantage of

I wouldn’t say it was grooming

Others could be doing that someone else could have done a lot more grooming

I’m just processing I don’t know I have no idea what 244

I would call it.

I mean

obviously, unwanted

I can think

not something I would do sober

I don’t have a specific term that I can pinpoint I don’t I never really talked about

It’s been in the back of my mind talking about it is a little easier

I still feel like I wouldn’t consider it like I still can’t do that I don’t think I ever will because

The trust

I have

Dated for years after that too

Nothing happened to make me think those were the intentions

He acted like nothing happened 245

XVIII.

I it they Matt

I didn’t think about it I started getting in the field I started realizing

Oh, that was in the definition

I still don’t know if I ever will determine it as sexual assault

I know what it does to people when – I wouldn’t go out of my way to say

he sexually assaulted someone, or get him in trouble because of how it affected me

I also know

When it’s put on people’s names –

I don’t think those were his intentions I wouldn’t want that to be what I think of him as

That’s the horrible part

why people stay in abusive relationships they love the person don’t want that person to have that name, so

I kind of just, like, let it go I’m not I have more insight now

I feel like I know why people stay I feel like they should leave

But, in my situation 246

I kind of get what was going on

It’s very hard It’s very hard Very complicated

I’m trying to educate people I didn’t see that the relationship I would have I probably could have –

I wasn’t doing right either 247

APPENDIX B. ZARA VOICE POEMS I.

I John you

I’ve been in only one serious relationship

The only person I’ve ever been sexual with

I was a senior in high school

He was a junior in college

You know when you look back on things and you’re like why’d I even involve myself? 248

II.

I girls John

I was taking college classes

They started seeing me with him on campus

I was studying in the library

“Don’t talk to him…” “He has a girlfriend…” “He’s a terrible person…” “He’s gonna play you…”

I was like, do I really trust this? I don’t

More heresy on campus “this guy has a girlfriend…”

I was like I do like this person I’m not gonna just walk away I asked I gave him the option to explain

“those girls are crazy” “What, you thought you were the first person I’ve ever spoken to?” “I’ve spoken to other girls.”

I was like, okay

“you talk to me every day, I haven’t given you a reason to not trust me.” “Why does it matter what people think?”

I feel like I feel like there are levels to manipulation I feel like sometimes people know they’re doing it I think other times people don’t, like I don’t think he was –

It wasn’t ill-intended He didn’t think he was lying. 249

III.

I family you

I have immigrant parents I also do come from a very religious background

We don’t really believe in dating just court to get married

I feel like sometimes that has a negative I think if done properly I think it’s honestly the healthiest I think people just don’t understand

You make your intentions clear You can’t fuck around with other people because her dad and her whole family know and they’ll jump you if you do something dumb

I feel like I honestly at this point I want I do believe in it I honestly, like –

You know how you have your principles and values and things you believe in and then you have the dumb things you do anyway?

I was 17 I wanted I just wanted I wanted somebody in my life I wanted attention just like normal When you live in a society in which people don’t court You’re just like

I want to do that kind of thing too

So the whole scenario is that my parents didn’t know 250

IV.

I it John you

I would say I would say things that happened in general I feel like I wasn’t open to doing, like, anything I was like “I’m gonna kiss you and that’s it” I hadn’t done anything like that before I didn’t – I probably would have eventually wanted

It was just too much pressure It was frustrating

In the beginning he thought

I wasn’t even going to kiss him

you were ok with not kissing me Now you’re trying to push me to have sex with you – I didn’t have penetrative sex with him I had oral sex with him, both ways

It wasn’t something

I really wanted to do

“you should just let me do it.”

I think oral sex is sex I don’t know why people look at it like I think – I don’t “just let me do it”

I was just I wasn’t even comfortable being naked I was just like I didn’t want to

He just kept talking about it Pestering me 251

I would just brush it off

He tried to do it

I was like, “no, just please get off of me, no.” I don’t want to.

He was one of those guys who when we talked about things like this “that’s fucking terrible?” “Why would a man ever do that?”

I don’t think he realized pestering me to do something I said I didn’t want to do is like the same thing –

-not the same thing –

But also wrong 252

V

I you men John

I hate that I have to say men but –

people who just want to mess with other people –

If you think about it, dating is so dumb You just fuck around, get attached to somebody and then they leave you

I knew all these things but I did it anyway I would say in the beginning I wasn’t like “I’m gonna fall in love with him and he’s going to leave me” I was like “we just gonna hang out”

I feel like I usually think

probably gonna leave before I get attached

I’m not putting myself down I understand no reason they’d want to stay

I’m not putting myself down

I didn’t think he’d want to stick around I really thought he would leave but, then

“I like you”

I fucked around and fell in love 253

VI.

I we John you

A lot of back and forth between me and another girl

He would go home and be with her

I would, like, freak out

He would apologize

All four years

But – it wasn’t like that –

We had months of being fine and then We would get a lot closer Learn to rely on one another

I was very used to him I got to a point where I feel like I could have I mean

It’s not fair to blame yourself when you get into certain situations I know the world’s not a perfect place

You have to look out for yourself

I became very obsessed with not wanting to lose him and not wanting this other girl to like, be better than I am

I got very caught up

So when he wanted to do things I didn’t want to do I’m gonna do it because I don’t want to lose him 254

VII.

I John

He was going back and forth about whether

I was worth the sacrifices me made for me I would feel bad about it I would feel like I was making him miss out

“I just wasted two years of my life I could have been out partying, I could have gotten all these things”

He’s an attractive man He’s in a fraternity, doing good in school He had a lot of opportunities in terms of females

I saw that and it fucked with my head I feel like when he would get mad –

“I could have did all these things if I didn’t meet you”

I think when he was mad

“I didn’t have sex with her for you.” Him hanging out with other women Him being unfaithful before

I was like, it gave me hope

somebody tried to fuck him and he said no.

I mean, it was just so dumb I’m not a person who feels like I’m in competition with other women I think that’s so lame

Made me feel really shitty

Let him do this, so he doesn’t feel like it’s not worth it 255

VIII.

I community John you

I live with my parents

We’re a very tight knit community our religion and our culture people were talking like saying things about me

And, oh, he’s black and like

We’re Arab and that’s like –

So people were gossiping and

I was like I don’t want my parents to find out

In the beginning, he was very understanding “I don’t want to get you in trouble.” “I don’t want your family to hate me.”

When you come from two different cultures, people don’t understand that

Him being older, about to graduate “where is this gonna go?” “I feel like I’m sneaking around with a little girl…you live with your family, need to be home at a certain time…” “I’m a grown man.” I get that –

“you’re wasting my time.” “I would rather be with you, but –“ 256

IX.

I it John you

I feel like we’re kind of talking about the negative I shouldn’t have

It was an outlet for me

I love our community and the way we do things but sometimes

It was nice like a completely different world

I’m this little Palestinian girl, immigrant parents

He grew up in the hood in Chicago was in a fraternity Completely different, polar opposite

Being around him, his friends was nice for me

I feel like I really like

It was my outlet away from everything

Doing something you’re not supposed to do is liberating 257

X.

I John you

I don’t know if this is a pattern but

He flipped a lot he had this very apologetic – “I don’t want you to be upset” “I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have –“ / “Ok, stop crying.” “Get over it.”

I feel like that fucks with your head I get upset

are you going to be nice, or yell at me?

I mean

The way he grew up hyper-masculine, like don’t cry, we don’t have feelings

I don’t know if it is cultural or because

he’s a fucking man he had this thing with crying

I’m a very emotional person I think that was a pattern I fucking cried a lot in this relationship

If he didn’t think it was something worthy of crying about he wouldn’t feel bad he would get annoyed

I think it’s ok to set boundaries

But it really sucks when your boyfriend is like

“I don’t want to deal with you crying.”

You know, 258

I’m not crazy. I was crying and upset

He would judge how valid my upsetness was and comfort me based on that

He didn’t want to –

“I’m not good with tears.” “I don’t like that.” “You should understand that.”

I’m not I’m not crying for fucking fun 259

XI.

I it John you

So the first time it ended up happening – So dumb –

He went home for the weekend

I was kind of worried that he was hanging out with I wasn’t sure but

When he came back he posted a picture of her

I was like I don’t fucking understand

Why do you think that’s ok?

I was like, we’re breaking up I’m not talking to you

“You just posted a picture of another girl!”

Then he was busy all day I saw the picture I was obviously really angry I sent him a screenshot and was like what the fuck

He ignored me the rest of the day

I freaked the fuck out I was so upset I was crying all day I was a mess

Then he called me and told me to come see him

You know, men are so dumb

Hes act like such an airhead I was mad, obviously

He was acting normal 260

that’s how stuff fucks with your head

“Oh you want me to take it down? Fine I’ll take it down. Now you got what you wanted.”

He ignored me all day

“Well, now we’re hanging out.”

I was like, He just posted a picture of another girl Ignored me all day

I thought like, am I crazy?

Why do you think that’s ok? What did you do this for?

I was like, this isn’t ok I’m not going to speak to him I’m going to say no and then I was trying to get his attention, trying to make everything better

So that was the day

He tried to do that And did it

I just didn’t I didn’t say no I just was like I want to fix things

He went down on me

It was just so –

I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t say no. 261

It wasn’t like

He forced me

I was like I’m going to lose this person, maybe if I do this, I won’t

Then

“I do this for you and you won’t do this for me. That’s selfish.”

I just feel like that’s shitty I didn’t fucking ask you to

You pestered me for a month

I let you because I didn’t want

Now you’re telling me it’s not fair and I’m selfish

That’s the really shitty part 262

XII.

I John you

I’m not saying that he’s not wrong for the things he did

He is, but

If someone is wronging you to that level you shouldn’t be with them

I know that I tell my friends that I don’t act on that sometimes I’m not this person who lets people walk all over them I really don’t play games I think

When you’re emotionally connected to somebody –

I think cheating brings out insecurity Makes you feel like you have to prove yourself

I feel like I told him I just became obsessed with not losing him to another girl I just didn’t want I didn’t want that to happen so badly that I was ok with sacrificing things I wasn’t ok with, just so that didn’t happen I just I became obsessed with it

Going back and forth a lot

When someone is apologetic, you’re like, “ok, let’s love each other again.” And then when they’re like angry at you, it’s like –

If he was just angry at me all the time

I would have been like I’m just gonna leave

Going back and forth when he was angry made me feel like 263

I was doing something wrong. I am being dramatic I’m trying to hold onto the; it’s not fair to him

When he was mad and would say things about other women

I think that was so messed up; it hurt me so much I was like I can imagine that happening; we’re going to prevent that

I think when a relationship is happening

you focus on what’s good and what’s great about that person. Then afterward –

I feel like in hindsight I don’t know 264

XIII.

I John her you

I haven’t I think it’s something that’s difficult to talk about I think a big part was just protecting him I didn’t want to make him look like a terrible person

or make it look like me forced me into doing something

I think especially with the one friend I did kind of tell I’m not mad I’m not mad at her, but I think she normalized it

“Oh, yeah. Guys do that.” “Guys try to get you to do things.”

I know that’s not right but

It just kind of corners you makes you feel like “why am I being so dramatic if this is normal?”

I know it’s not ok, but I didn’t feel like, oh I should go talk about this I also didn’t want I feel like talking about it makes it a thing 265

XIV.

I it John you

He would just do dumb things

I cover my hair I am not comfortable, like I always explain

Covering your hair is the last step, so that means the rest of your body, the only things that show are hands, feet, and face

Once his friend came over and knocks on the door

I was like, “no” I wasn’t naked, but I was in a bra, underwear, and a t-shirt I don’t know I wasn’t that dressed

his friend knocks on the door

I’m laying down

He doesn’t tell his friend he can’t come in he puts a blanket on top of me and goes “you can come in real quick.”

I’m thinking he’s gonna come grab something and leave

“She’s under the blanket bro”

He comes in and sits down

I’m like, if I move under this blanket – I just laid there for thirty minutes. I was like, what the fuck?

He was he was touching me while his friend was in the room 266

I was just like

why do you think this is ok?

I feel like if I try to argue with you from under this blanket I’m gonna look really dumb

Like, he was fingering me

I wasn’t I wasn’t ok with I was like, if I move, I’m gonna I’m just gonna sit here I don’t like this

Why did he think that was ok?

I couldn’t just pop my head out because my hair wasn’t covered

He knows that’s very important to me it was important to him too he knew that was a big deal to me

I’m like, sometimes men are just such –

In his head he’s like “I covered you, he didn’t see you, it’s fine.”

I don’t – I couldn’t –

It was beyond me

I was so sure when he came in – I was so sure –

Stranger things happen But, they were having a very normal conversation

I was like, fuck this is happening I was like I can’t move I probably could have moved, but I was like I can’t move I’m going to show 267

I couldn’t put my head out

I wonder if he thought his friend would just come say hi –

But then he didn’t want to tell him to leave

I’m like, who mattered more? I feel like that’s more fair than making me

I think he’s just dumb

He does things He just doesn’t think

I don’t know

You just lay there You feel trapped

I waited a year before he had ever seen my hair

he knew it was a big deal 268

XV.

I friends John you

“this guy has disrespected you so much” “I don’t understand why you still speak to him.” “He’s cancelled.” “We hate him.”

I think for me I was like I don’t think he’s a terrible person I still think it’s wrong, but

He only did that because of how I was acting He didn’t think I was serious about him because I don’t know

If you’re the type of person who would cheat on someone You would do it regardless I feel like I don’t hate him or think he’s a terrible person I just think he just didn’t know how to act I think he was very caught up in really wanting to be with me

I just did so many dumb things 269

XVI.

I it they

I think there’s a difference I think they are both very wrong I think they both don’t constitute consent, but I don’t think they are the same

I don’t like when I don’t like to tell victims what they should and shouldn’t I feel like it kind of annoys me when

People box them into the same category

Somebody violently raping a kid, kike with a gun to their head is not the same as my boyfriend crying about me not sucking his dick

Both are wrong, both are really shitty but they’re not the same thing

I feel like it’s not fair to people who have their lives really fucked up I don’t have this crazy story to tell I’m not, like,

nothing that bad happened

I’m not trying to downplay it I also feel like it’s not fair to people who have really violent things happen to walk around and be like, me too 270

XVII.

I it John you

I don’t know He didn’t literally cry about it “I really miss it and I’m not going to do it with anyone else.”

It was kind of like a similar scenario to when I told him I had felt pressured

I was like, what are you trying to say? I told him I felt like I was pressured I was talking about how I wasn’t comfortable or whatever

“Fine, don’t do it.” But then, got really mad

I feel like that was very manipulative because I was just like, well I don’t want him to be upset

I’m sure he feels like he didn’t pressure me I don’t know He had been trying to pressure me to do it

The day it happened it was me initiating it

I felt like I don’t know, it sounds strange to say

but if it’s going to happen

I would much rather me initiate it than feel like

it was forced

I just, like, got myself to do it. I feel like I felt like I feel like I was pressured into that I feel like I kind of I don’t know 271

You’re not supposed to like just teach yourself to be ok with something. I feel like that was kind of what it was I kind of I feel like it’s eventually gonna

He’s gonna leave me if it doesn’t

I may as well I chose to

He brought that up when

I said I was pressured into it

“No, you wanted to do that.” “You wanted to do it.”

I think he was really just like

“I want this and you’re here.” 272

XVIII.

I John they you

I think that’s part of why I’m less, like, mad at him I don’t know

He didn’t set out

there’s a difference between somebody who sets out to do something evil and like fuck with your head versus someone who accidentally ends up doing that

I don’t know if I regret doing certain things I do I don’t I don’t know

I mean I would say coercion I don’t know I kind of get where there is not a lot of language for it. I don’t know, this is shitty but

people don’t see this as coercion people just see it as relationship problems

I would talk to friends about it

Just kind of like, “oh that sucks”

I didn’t really tell I don’t know I didn’t really frame it in a way I felt like he pressured me into it I just felt like that made him look really bad and made me look dumb I don’t think I framed it I feel like there isn’t a lot of language around that

a lot of people don’t look at as “that’s not consent” they look at it as a disagreement in a relationship

I feel disagreements in a relationship and sex are two very different things 273

I know if I framed it I felt pressure I’m not ok They would be like “oh, are you ok with that?” I’m still not over it

My friends saying I’m selfish

I’m like how are you going to tell me that? He did it If anything, he made me

If you frame it like giving and taking, you make it sounds like a chore. Sex shouldn’t be a chore. 274

XIX.

I it John

He did other things

I don’t think he thought he did anything I think he just thought

“she’s scared.”

I don’t think he thought – I forgot –

Once, he was holding me

it came up in conversation

I don’t remember I really don’t remember I basically said I felt like he coerced me into

He flipped the fuck out “I would never do that” “I didn’t do that” “Don’t say that I did that.” “If you think that, I’m not going to touch you.

He was just holding me, but

“I’m not gonna touch you.” “I’m not gonna do something you supposedly don’t want.”

He pushes me off of him and moves over

“I’m not touching you.” “If you’re gonna say that –“ Very angrily, using other words –

It was just me explaining how it –

I felt that it was coercive I can see somebody not thinking they did something – I can see why that would make someone mad but – 275

I feel like that’s what happened

It would have like –

I don’t know

It would have been nice for him –

I don’t want – I understand from his perspective –

“I’m just not touching you again.” “Get away from me.”

I just wanted – I would have liked to have a conversation

I never brought it up again 276

XX.

I it John

I feel like when we use the word victim I feel like

it’s something that you couldn’t control even though

I had an emotional connection I could have said no too I’m not gonna say it wouldn’t have had repercussions, it would have caused problems I know for a fact

He would not have actually forced me, like physically, or threatened me

I was manipulated into it I can acknowledge that but I feel like with me working with victims and knowing people who could not have stopped it I feel like it’s very different I know I’m laughing I feel like leaving that for people who have been through things that are like traumatic I think that’s a level I don’t think everyone needs to just walk around claiming that 277

XXI.

I it you they

I would say

Consent is just making sure both individuals Involved in any scenario are partaking so Willingly. And willingly means

You weren’t pressured into saying yes

I would say that

Consent is enthusiastic If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no There’s no such thing as maybe

I teach to college students I’m not gonna sit here and tell you

You shouldn’t fuck someone that’s unconscious Or that you shouldn’t have sex with someone screaming no.

People know that.

Where we get into messiness and confusion

People end up doing things they shouldn’t

You fall into this grey area

People know you’re not supposed to have sex with someone screaming no. People know that’s, like, the bare minimum

It has to be completely willing And not in any way coerced or pressured 278

XXII.

I John we you

I said I didn’t want At the time we thought “we’re gonna get married” “we’re gonna be together forever”

“well, you’re eventually gonna do it, so –“

You feel like you have the right to say that?

“Well, you’re eventually gonna do it.”

I was talking about how I didn’t want to

“if you want me to wait a month or two, I can, but” He gave me some kind of time table

I was like, if you just shut up I wouldn’t have been upset about it months later

If you just fucking waited

it makes you feel dumb, like you don’t have a decision in it.

I was like

Had you waited – Had you framed it differently I probably would have enjoyed it more I probably would not be thinking about it months later I probably wouldn’t be here

I feel like it just comes down to communicating better

I did try to stop him

I really wish he would have just been like

“I’m really sorry – do you want me to stop?” 279

XXIII.

I John we you

I think for people who haven’t had sex before I think it’s easier to be in a relationship and not have sex

Out of respect for me He didn’t make it an issue

I think it was one of those things

You know when you have bottled up anger and then when it comes out, it really comes out?

When he would be mad, he would be like

“I gave up all these things” “I could be doing all these things with these girls” “I’m with you and you don’t want to do that with me.”

He brought it up more than once.

“You’re gonna marry me eventually, why wait until marriage?”

Look at us now. We aren’t married, are we?

I don’t think it was I think it was something that was an issue for him I think he didn’t

But should you give people badges for like basic human decency? Like good job, you didn’t rape me. 280

XXIV.

I it they

I would say I don’t know I think there’s a power imbalance I teach that

People don’t rape people because they’re horny People rape people because it’s an act of violence

I think

people forget that

I think that’s why

People fall into victim blaming They’re like, if we think rape is about attraction Then essentially they’re saying someone asked for it Or that somebody deserved it

Rape isn’t about attraction It’s an act of violence, just like punching somebody in the face It’s just using your dick instead of a gun

I feel like

If somebody is physically pulling somebody down, raping them, that person is able to rape them because they have power over them. If somebody can’t have power over you, they can’t rape you Like if you’re able to fight them off Even if someone is afraid and they don’t fight back That’s a power imbalance 281

XXV.

I John you

I feel like I haven’t figured out yet I haven’t thought about

I think I have a guard up now I think I was very naïve

I told you, I haven’t been with anybody before

He’s the only man who has ever seen my hair

I think it was the first time we had broken up I was hanging out

He kissed me

I, being my little high school self, “oh, he kissed me, he loves me again.” I was very naïve. I feel like now I’m less naïve

It’d be nice to be happy go lucky all the time, but you know that’s not how the world works I think sometimes I’m too much I did a lot of dumb things I have an attitude problem I think the relationship made it

You have to look out for yourself 282

XXVI.

I it they you

I don’t think sex should be looked at as a fucking commodity. I think sex is –

My friend was like “I don’t know, I think it’s kind of selfish. Seems like he just does all the work.”

I just look at that, as a woman I would never say I would never tell somebody that they should I would double check and make sure that they want to

They thought “oh, you’re just a virgin. You’re scared. It’s not because you don’t want it. “

I’m I’m not mad at anybody I don’t think they’re bad people, or ill intended

The gist of it is

I just wanted to fix things by I don’t know, like

“this is how I’m going to fix things” It makes me feel like

I did that

It wasn’t done to me

I did that I chose that I was doing my part, but

It’s just shitty that people have power over other people

it’s an indirect way of pressuring me to do something

I don’t want to do 283

I think the whole dynamic with relationships is like I asked one of my Title 9 coworkers I was like, so there are two partners, and somebody wants something

They want to communicate that – It’s not wrong to communicate –

Where’s the line between communication and coercing someone to do it?

I feel like it’s all in perspective

If you ask If you come onto somebody Make it known you want something, obviously you’re doing that in a way of saying how attractive they are, how much you love them

That is, in a sense, coercing somebody

I just think it’s a fine line

It gets messy

People say relationships are about Compromise

Does this count when we’re talking about sex?

I don’t think it should I think it does some times I don’t know

How do you communicate that you want something that you think the other person might not want without forcing them?

Shouldn’t we have figured this out by now?

But, people don’t talk about it 284

XXVII.

I you

I feel like it’s dumb, that’s such a dumb thing to do

If you really don’t want to do something with somebody you shouldn’t When we talk about coercion and stuff you get to like like being afraid to say no because you feel like you’re gonna be in danger or financially dependent

I wasn’t any of those things

I just feel like I just should have sucked it up and left but I didn’t I don’t know

I don’t think he’s a terrible person. I just think it’s a fucked situation. 285

APPENDIX C. CHRISTINA VOICE POEMS I.

I Stew

I mean, it’s fairly simple I haven’t dated that many – I use that term loosely – I spent a lot of high school studying and playing soccer I had a very strict father I didn’t go out I didn’t party I mean I don’t know if you want to call it dating I met my first husband in high school I would say I had two serious – I got pregnant I got pregnant in high school

got married after he went to the marine corps

I was with him for 12 years I spent a good while by myself I had a couple romantic – I guess sexual – I met my current husband in 2008

I had two soccer scholarships I intended to go off to college 286

II.

I it they

Legally Sober Advocate definition boils down to – permission It’s the yes verbal or nonverbal it’s the ok to have sex with somebody or any kind of sexual activity sober and willing

I teach

specific

cases where someone consents to then the game changes they don’t consent

Everybody seems to think once it starts there is no going back

I always tell

that’s what specific means every specific act willing

I said

it’s the advocate definition

I guess for me, personally

Manipulation has been a big thing coercion goes along with the consent we teach

Which do I mean for me? It wouldn’t be an added definition. It would just be my focus 287

I guess as a woman I would probably experience most of it as

Manipulation 288

III.

I it him you

Welcome to my life

I don’t tell a lot of people about this I guess there were a lot of those –

More toward the sexual assault end of things

I mean

There was the person I lost my virginity to

That wasn’t a romantic story Clearly impactful – it kind of follows my history sex isn’t quite an emotional thing for me hasn’t been for a long – It’s what most people use to connect It doesn’t have an emotional component for me

I was just very young

Someone I had a real interest in Older Manipulative

I didn’t realize

He just wanted sex

Eventually behind the shed at his Grandma’s house it was really – it wouldn’t have been back then, but - kind of par for the course at this point

No, none of this bothers me. 289

IV.

I it him

I had the one boyfriend who was abusive

He ended up dating my friend

There was sex in that relationship

because he wanted there to be sex

I was still fairly young I mean I was still young

My first experience wasn’t exactly magical – it wasn’t something I wanted to recreate Terrified if my dad found out –

There were a couple incidents where we had sex anyway

It was a lot more of manipulation control Just being really young 290

V.

I it you they

My clients

thousands of situations run through your head

they’re real

I guess

Instead of the whole stranger in a dark alley thing

Everybody thinks of

I just understand it to be –

usually more personal usually somebody you know – which relates to my experiences as well It’s not that stranger

I ask people –

every time they think it’s that

“it can’t be someone you know” People you know wouldn’t do that

How much of a violation it is How much it affects people

I might have thought of it as a brutal attack by a stranger in a dark alley before

When you do it every day

it starts to feel like a common thing in life

I tell people I live in this world

So you don’t have to 291

VI.

I it they him

There’s a lot

I was I don’t know – I know it was probably before I was 7 I remember going there, all I really remember about it is the pool

My uncles were there telling me to jump in dive under and touch them then they would do the same

That’s all

I remember I don’t remember feeling

Forced Coerced Manipulated

I was also 7 I went –

a lot of incidences –

I guess I don’t drink because I would drink with my brother and his friends, or even my ex husband I would wake up to friends

touching me

It didn’t always happen when

I was drunk There was just times that it happened

Current husband’s ex- business partner 292

Sending messages, asking for nude pictures

I don’t know I have no rhyme or reason

It’s just – That’s been a constant

They’d worked together for a long time before

I ever met him I mean

They had a longstanding friendship

He was married

I would socialize with them

He would text me started asking for pictures

It was just, kind of – Here we go again

I would make sure I was in a situation nothing could happen

Because that’s what always happens

I got I don’t even know if I got drunk

My ex and his best friend

I was in the middle of them

This is a guy that had been his best friend – virtually my best friend – for years was there for me when Stew went to boot camp 293

I didn’t think anything of sleeping in bed with him I woke up to him –

I never said anything

He went on to do it to my ex’s sister when she was 13 He had a history of it

I would go visit my brother I was just staying with him

One of his buddies woke up one night and –

It just kinda happened a lot 294

VII.

I it him you

I’m not sure 100% what happened I mean I remember waking up and, you now

He was touching me

I don’t know I just I was young and didn’t know how to respond

Concerned about destroying the relationship between he and my ex

I mean

that was my concern

I just I just pretended I don’t think he knew I woke up

I mean I know it happened more than once I don’t remember I mean

You stop putting any kind of weight on it after awhile 295

VIII.

I it him you we

We were all in a hotel room

I don’t remember who was there I didn’t know the guy

His name might have been –

I couldn’t tell you for sure I was dating another guy

He was on one side of me

I always get stuck in the middle I don’t really remember a lot I just know I woke up and

his hands were down my pants

I didn’t I just I knew at that point if I move

He’d stop, he’d get scared

I had learned to adapt I moved in a way I was nudging my boyfriend

That usually put an end to it It’s just how I dealt

There’s so much It’s not all sexually related There’s just so much It’s all convoluted and it’s all together 296

IX.

I it they

Only difference is penetration legally the difference between sexual assault and rape

I don’t treat my clients different whether assaulted or raped

It’s up to them to define what happened

I explain why

charged for this, or that

outside of the legal difference

I don’t feel any need to differentiate

It’s still a betrayal It’s still an assault Regardless of penetration or not 297

X.

I it you him

I wouldn’t say I always had to be in a relationship I was in my mid to late-20s

One night stand

I realized I could enjoy sex more without the emotional component

You always think you know, for me if there’s no emotion, you don’t have sex. You don’t have sex if there’s no emotion.

I realized I could have sex and enjoy I tend to do that if there is no emotion I wasn’t looking for a complication

It wasn’t like a stage-five clinger stalker

Tried to tell me he loved me after a week 298

XI.

I it him we

We were legally separated

I had met somebody out dancing

It was no big deal

I think at this point

It was a long time – it was one of the issues one of Stew’s issues was sex it really held no meaning for me for a long time, no desire even –

I don’t think I had learned how to separate the emotion yet I didn’t want to have sex with emotion

so it was a fun casual thing

I had ended up going on birth control

He decided to screw up my birth control

I ended up pregnant with my son

I don’t know what he did

He just told me that he did it he had the balls to tell me after that that’s what he wanted All he would have had to have done was popped out a pill or something

I wouldn’t have thought twice

He was a stage-five Clinger Stalker 299

It took me a minute for that trigger to come

There’s kind of been so much that when these things happen they don’t shock me like they do most people

I’m used to it

None of it surprises me

It’s not a product of my job

it’s been that way for a long time

I’ve learned to adapt I guess, just

for me, it’s a fact of life

I just I see any kind of sign I make sure I’m not in a position where it can happen

So when Colin sent me that text asking for nude pictures

I just made sure I was never alone with him, never in the position I could wake up to that happening

That was the first time

I told anybody I told my husband he asked for pictures I don’t think he ever said anything I just made sure –

Then, my husband slept with his wife 300

XII.

I it she him

I don’t drink I don’t trust anybody I mean, the people I have trusted were good friends

Janice, my friend for 20 plus years

It was her husband –

She set me up, too

I told you

there’s a lot

I remember

her husband worked weird shifts

I came back during the split I would go over to her house all the time I was staying the night I slept in her bed with her I had known her husband forever, too

We all made crude jokes when you’ve been friends for so long but, nothing that indicated –

He got home He crawled into bed

I woke up to him touching and feeling I got up I left I went somewhere else I don’t know

She came over She had a habit of stopping by at 2am She was making random jokes 301

about threesomes with her husband and with Stew

Her husband stopped by

She was trying to make herself feel Better because she had been having conversations with Stew about having threesomes and the tradeoff was for me to have a threesome with her husband. She had been having sexual conversations on the phone with him.

That was my best friend

I don’t socialize much anymore

I don’t think anything really sticks out anymore I just accepted that was my life I avoid situations I don’t drink I don’t socialize 302

XIII.

I it him her we

I I met I met my husband at a bar

It gets funny – my life sucks sometimes

I got home in 2008 I soon started hanging out with old friends I had a friend who was dating a guy I had dated

He was abusive

it turned into me trying to save her

I guess I was always the fixer I fixed everything I would always go over trying to be the buffer

He cheated on her

She cheated on him She asked me to meet her and another guy up the road

I get out I go I get in the truck

He basically started – thought it was a 2 for 1 deal –

Kind of a triggering event for me

I called my other friend – I don’t drink, my dad was an alcoholic, my ex-husband –

but it had been a shitty week

I get drunk 303

I just I’m drunk I’m just there I had had a lot to drink

I don’t drink because I can’t control what’s going to happen to me I have to control everything that happens to me

I have known this woman for 20 plus years I ended up back at her house

I ended up waking up the next morning naked next to him I mean I didn’t think anything of it

We’re married now

I understand confusion

It’s not It’s not something

I ever would have deemed any kind of assault I mean I didn’t – I should have been more mad at him I was more mad at her I don’t know

It was one of those clichés

I expect it from men I don’t know I mean I –

the fact that he was sober

is what made me uncomfortable

I mean I was clearly drunk I was I was so focused on being mad at her 304

She thinks its ok Because

We ended up together

she brags that she’s the reason

she and I don’t talk very much anymore I mean

legally, that’s what it is

He’s not an emotional guy anything emotional is uncomfortable for him

I don’t get into too many details and ask him what he was thinking I don’t know that it would make a difference

It’s hard to get mad at

it was her that I trusted I didn’t even know him I mean

He’s He’s not a horrible guy

It was a stupid decision

Those are just things you don’t tell anyone because then you got to deal with that That’s how everybody else will see him especially here – you don’t want to introduce your husband then tell everybody how you met

I just tell them we met at a bar 305

XIV.

I it

I stay away from a lot of details

That’s my life

I don’t say a lot of things I can tell you that my husband cheated on me with his ex-partner’s wife; his ex-partner slept with my ex-best friend that destroyed my first marriage to my ex –

This is how screwed up my life is

I don’t get into it with anybody I know

Talking about it isn’t what bothers me It’s that one thing leads to another and

I’m going “oh my God, this is my life.”

It’s all convoluted It all goes together 306

XV.

I it

It was just more opportunistic

I mean

manipulating the situation It all just seems to be opportunity

I was like – I struggle I’m a diabetic I struggle keeping my sugar under control, because I lose weight, when I lose weight

These things happen it’s my experience

Talk to, who? No, not at all

I don’t know if anybody knows about my uncle

It’s not something you tend to get into because one thing leads to another and this whole thing is all over the place

Slightly embarrassing

It’s just a lot of drama and that’s just on the surface 307

XVI.

I it you

I mean I know what they are I know the definition I know they are I don’t think it feels like anything at this point

Other than something that happened Something that tends to be pretty common

I just think there’s so much to keep track of I mean I’m sure if I kept talking and talking –

There’s penetration so it was legally defined as rape

I know how to define it all now

It doesn’t change the way I feel about it

You just get used to it happening

It’s not like

I didn’t know right or wrong

what was happening was wrong just a different mindset back then

I guess I guess not even back then – I almost didn’t tell my husband about Colin asking me for the pictures I guess that’s the fixing thing –

My instinct not to cause problems

You kind of survive and enjoy until the next one 308

XVII.

I it they you

I want to say

it’s a turning point

Most people see them as trying to survive because it happened

I don’t think survival is what they’re doing

You’re surviving living

It’s a process

I have a client who was gang-raped

It wasn’t until she was able to stand up in court and find her voice

You can tell

when they take control back they’ve survived

It’s always victim survivor then thriver A turning point

They’re living They’re breathing They’re eating in between

It’s not always surviving

I’ve had some try to commit suicide I wouldn’t consider that surviving

You hate categorizing

I’d never do that to them 309

You don’t want them to feel like

they have to be at a certain point when they hit that turning point

I always make note “I’m proud of you –

you found your voice”

They’ve survived 310

XVIII.

I it

I learned to try to avoid and control I couldn’t control I just learned to avoid the situations I don’t drink I’m older now I don’t spend the night at anybody’s house I stay in hotels I mean, unless it’s just them and kids I didn’t really put it into context or thought about if

it was rape or assault it was just something that happened to me there were a lot of bad things that happened

I guess everybody’s a victim when something happens I mean, for me

It is what it is It’s still living life like it is for anyone else

I’ve lived life doing things I wanted I kind of waded through all of it I have my degrees and good job and in law school

despite all of it

I guess that’s the kicker –

despite everything 311

XIX.

I it you they

It’s hard to name it To say it

I do it every day

You have to explain to them just because there wasn’t penetration doesn’t mean you weren’t assaulted Doesn’t mean it wasn’t wrong

“Well, I was drinking”

It’s the only time that a crime is committed and the victim feels like she did it all the time

Shouldn’t have been drinking Shouldn’t have walked down that road

It’s just it’s always constantly explaining it doesn’t matter

If you were drunk doesn’t matter if you said yes, the second you said no –

“well I lead him on” –

It doesn’t matter 312

XX.

I it you they

I don’t know if I’d say for me

It’s easy to explain to people, definitions It’s easy for me to explain to them what happened doesn’t have to fit into a nice, neat definition It’s all based on how

they felt if they felt violated

I’m not sure I relate any of it back to me I can name them I can give you definitions of what everybody did

Wrong Assault Rape

I can do that I know the legal end I still don’t spend time going

this is what happened to me

I don’t think I could do my job if I constantly referenced back

you’re sitting here – you would expect that from a guy

I know all the definitions I know

It’s just that it’s just saying it out loud, naming it makes it too real it happened, it could happen again 313

It’s a scary world to live in

You have to face that constantly so, you do what you gotta do to make it livable

It’s hard to stand up and say that happened to you because it still makes you feel dirty

That’s why the victims don’t want to say it

It’s taboo It should be as common as anything else that happens – the word – to be able to say it for other people to be able to say it and identify it

I wish people would just take a minute to educate themselves

To say it makes them feel dirty or again, embarrassed

There’s always the inherent guilt

I’m no different

Being younger, it was like,

I went to a hotel I got drunk

1,000 reasons why it’s our fault

I don’t know I think trying to think we did something to cause them –

that could just randomly happen at anytime

How would you ever leave your house?

I’ve taken massive steps to constantly protect myself I’m thrown into the arena with everyone else’s monsters 314

I’m very vigilant I have pepper spray in my car I ‘ve learned to shoot very well I’m like, the epitome of bad things happen

It’s just scary to admit that they can just happen at any time

What people don’t like is

when you see people that aren’t, you know, in the ghetto, because you understand why it happens to them, right? But when you see people that are educated, you know, and it happens to them, then you got to admit it could happen to you

It’s the whole world 315

APPENDIX D. REBECCA VOICE POEMS I.

I him it you

I started dating really young, age 13 I was dating someone much older

16 at the time

I guess that kind of normalized – I lost my virginity to him I was really young, like, super young

Dated throughout high school very emotionally abusive

I went through a lot of abuse in my childhood I never really had I never saw a healthy relationship I mean this boyfriend

Would try to kill himself if we broke up

You know things you think are wrong at age 14, 15, 16, but when you actually grow up and realize that’s abuse

it was like being responsible for myself and someone else’s life.

I felt like I had grown up with this person 316

II.

I him it

I was very I don’t want to use the word promiscuous I really don’t I think women are allowed, but

I had a lot of sex in high school I guess at the time made me think I was a slut I was a whore I would label myself I was very ashamed of my sexuality

I had always I have always been involved with I’ve never like I don’t know I’ve never gone for long without wanting a boyfriend, or talking, or being involved with men

I didn’t have any I met men that were older, much older guys

I was a freshman in college I had a casual relationship

Using each other for sex never evolved past – even if

I wanted it to

This person was very damaged

I always felt I attracted people who were damaged I was damaged I was attracting what I needed I needed to fix I was like that chronic crutch for men

really depressed, had a lot of mental issues – 317

I don’t want to say issues –

I started dating someone

Very emotionally abusive, again emotionally abusive person again, very – lots of trauma

I was that crutch to fix this person

Make them change that was always the narrative 8 or 9 months

I don’t know how to accurately –

Just very combative

I think if I wouldn’t have

Just a ticking time bomb he threw something at my head

I ended that I think I had a good head on my shoulders I knew there was something wrong

There’s a lot of things that

I had to process I wasn’t processing

I was using men to fill that void, sex to fill that void 318

III.

I it him you

It comes full circle

I had gone through as a child I’d been I’ve been going to counseling I went back and did some intense work

I dated a guy

Just recently broke up

I think

About a year my first semi-normal –

I don’t like to say normal I don’t think there’s really a definition of I think that was my first

Non-abusive

I had always I had chosen to fill a void I had in myself

I’m really bad at telling stories

Let me know if

I’m talking too much 319

IV.

I it men

I’ve never thought about I think I thought I used relationships and sex as – there were so many broken pieces in me

I don’t really like to use that language, but there were voids for me

I needed approval from men I didn’t get approval from my father I think I filled those voids with – I also went through a lot of bullying I just felt really ugly my whole life

I don’t know I’m really like

I think that was a way to make me feel empowered, beautiful, and validated

It was very surface-level

I was interested, but

just here to fill a void and that sounds bad

I can see that now I don’t want to tell the man I liked

Who probably really liked me in those moments

I don’t want to make them feel – I was a very broken person

It was being needed, or like, wanted

I came to a realization I never wanted myself I always needed that from 320

Someone else

It was in pursuit of love But only temporary 321

V.

I men it you

I’ve never felt I had any romantic partner that was stable I never I never witnessed that growing up I always thought that was normal

For men to be angry all the time Broken Hot-headed

It was normalized

I dated a lot

People who had trauma

Like a pattern Trying to fill the void, that was the biggest pattern

Men who were abusive

Sex that meant nothing

I think it’s a hard subject

Hard to define

I don’t remember

Not validating who I was making me feel small a lot of yelling

I don’t blame the other – I think I had a lot of my own –

Gaslighting Invalidating Never able to have a conversation Without blowing up 322

If you even express you’re upset

It’s a huge fight

I even experienced that with my last boyfriend I recently broke up with him

He couldn’t have a real conversation without turning it into a big ordeal

It was always a fight

No matter what you said, no matter how you said it

You couldn’t Like, you couldn’t –

I couldn’t say anything, if I said anything I know it would turn into a fight

It would end badly

I know it would be

Me crying, me being really upset,

telling people to get out not wanting to engage making me feel very closed 323

VI.

I it you

I think I’m going to I personally feel

saying yes and really meaning it no one forcing you to say it no one having to convince you It should be very clear It has nothing to do –

I mean

even if your body language says yes It doesn’t mean you say yes

I hope –

Is that enough?

I think it’s clear It’s always clear

It has to be 50/50

I think

You can always withdraw consent You can always say stop

I mean

That’s hard too

if you try to physically push someone

I think

even if you don’t say no you’re done

I think that should be 324

VII.

I it you they

Violence?

I still I’m conditioned to think I know that’s bad I’m conditioned to think that I know when I sit down I think

It’s not always like that

I mean

When you first bring up the word –

Violent Hard to prosecute

I’m thinking legally

not taken seriously under – under – not taken seriously

I don’t think people see

incredibly invasive hurtful traumatic

I mean I mean I can’t think I can’t think of anything worse if it were to happen to me I think, well

You know

I think that is just the worst thing you can do to a person 325

physically assaulting someone hurting someone raping them

You know

holding a person at gunpoint knife point physically hurting someone while raping them

It’s bad, but

I think rape falls under the umbrella of I think it should be on its own I don’t like how

“Oh, she was sexually assaulted”

could mean so many – whereas rape –

I think

a step more more volatile Rape is here

sexual assault is here if there was a hierarchy

I think we say sexual assault because rape sounds

too violent too harsh

People water it down by saying she was sexually assaulted 326

VIII.

I it you they

It’s funny

I am even saying that –

I use the word assault when I talk to clients I feel like even when you say rape

“you were raped”

paints such a bad picture in someone’s head

I don’t want to –

I think it’s important that we use specific language

that’s what it is Why tone it down to something that is less than what it actually is?

I don’t know if that I feel I feel like it’s not as harsh

I’m also

do they want me to say they were raped? I almost say that to soften the blow I don’t want to make it worse

Some of them use the term: “I was raped” “He raped me” “He, she, or they” raped me

I think Assuming they don’t want me to use the term

I don’t want to water it down I don’t know 327

It’s hard It’s hard

I would almost want someone to use that word with me 328

IX.

I it you him

There’s one particular – that’s why we’re here that’s why

I agreed I’ll start with kind of the non –

smaller instances there’s a lot of –

I’ve been in relationships I’ve been coerced I didn’t necessarily want to I just thought I had to

that it was supposed to happen

I felt like saying yes out of necessity

If you say yes, he’ll shut up

really prevalent in my last

Although it was someone again

I say “normal”

That’s part of my own thinking

I need to do that I have to say yes 329

X.

I it you we

I’ve always been that person I think it stems from not being able to say no, feeling like I owe people things I think that’s something a lot of women have been conditioned to think

you have to do so many things for other people

we can never honor ourselves first

I never saw myself as half of a whole I never saw myself

it was never 50/50

I think the best way to put it I’ve always felt like 25%, the other person 25%, maybe even 80 and 20 I’d always really downplay my importance I always felt like I was giving so much more than I was getting back I think I didn’t value myself I didn’t see myself as important as the other person

I think I’ve always excused that behavior because I thought, “ok, it’s normal” I saw that I was like, “ok, it’s normal”

I don’t know if that answer the question correctly 330

XI.

I it we him

I’ll talk about the main instance I said I never really considered it a I still can’t say it was rape I don’t know why I’m like I don’t even consider it I’m not sure why

It’s like a mental block

I don’t know I don’t know I’m working it out by myself, in my own head right now

I think this is the first time

we hung out alone together not sober intoxicated

just an assumption just an assumption

we were going to have sex

I remember feeling I don’t want this I can’t consent I’m too drunk I don’t want to, but never verbalizing

“I’m going to get a condom”

I was like I never said I wanted –

It’s very easy to blame myself

I don’t see it as sexual assault I never said no 331

XII.

I it you they

I think that’s really important

You need to ask You should ask You always need to ask You should never assume

I couldn’t say no I just I don’t know why I don’t know what blocked me from saying no even though I wanted to

It’s a really difficult situation for me

I work in the field I couldn’t come to the police and say I was raped I didn’t I didn’t say I didn’t say no

They wouldn’t take it seriously

It wouldn’t be considered serious

I think that’s why I invalidate myself I even, even with coming into this situation I’m like I just really don’t feel like it’s serious I really don’t feel like it’s worth telling I don’t I don’t even consider it

It’s not It’s not that bad

I blame myself I should have said no

It was on me to stop it from happening 332

XIII.

I they

I don’t know why I use that as a marker I don’t know I think from any standpoint I think if I told my friend I think if I told friends

“yeah, Rebecca, that’s was something that, like, that wasn’t consensual”

I think if I told someone who has that societal view of sexual assault

“that wasn’t rape, or that wasn’t sexual assault”

I let the societal view still define what I think is sexual assault in my own, personal life, not for everyone else I’ve seen I see a lot I don’t I think it’s valid

Everyone that

I see that’s been through this, or these kinds of situations I think it’s valid I would consider that rape, but in my own I just can’t I don’t want to take away from people that have been through worse 333

XIV.

I it you him

I never I never I like I started this job I realized that was what it was I think it’s still something I have to come to terms with I still think I haven’t processed it I can’t process it in that way I think it’s also I blame myself I just think of it as a mistake I made

I almost want to see it as “non-consensual sex”

I know that means that’s rape

I can’t label it that, there’s a total mental block I feel like it’s too accusatory to the person that I had –

It happened with –

I don’t think that was ever his intention I think I don’t want to demonize this person

The relationship wasn’t mutual

he was very much using me for sex

not like I was genuinely interested –

I thought I was –

the rest of our interactions were consensual – or so

I thought I would say probably no 334

They weren’t

It felt like something

I had to do

it was never

He didn’t give me a choice from the beginning

I never felt like I had a choice

You feel like, “oh, it’s already happened, so I can’t say no”

I can’t go back on what has already happened I think otherwise I wouldn’t have been valuable to him I think that was the only thing he saw me for I mean, honestly, if I would have said

It goes back to that

I don’t want to make it sound like I was this girl that – I didn’t – I just wanted someone to be there I think because I was getting that attention

“the terms”

I made up

He’s gonna give me attention if – 335

XV.

I it you

I was very young I had no idea

it felt really bad it doesn’t feel right

I didn’t honor myself I wasn’t speaking my truth

me feeling guilty about it, if

I had expressed myself

that wouldn’t have happened it was also hurtful because

I wasn’t given a choice

I can’t honor it as what it is defined as I roll my eyes on myself

There’s, you know, like what you want versus what you actually say you want

I mean I think it’s shameful I like wasn’t I just blamed myself I wasn’t able to express myself I don’t think it’s ever gonna change I think it’s always gonna feel like it’s my responsibility I could have done something to stop that I didn’t I know that sounds bad I don’t know I’m really harsh on myself I’m very different.

It’s very different

I have more empathy for other people than I do for myself 336

XVI.

I it

I can’t remember I’m sure they did I know

it’s been such a normalized normalized normalized, thinking

I felt like I owed people things I felt like I never could say no I always have to be that people pleaser, saying yes, all the time 337

XVII.

I it you

I don’t see the other situations as I even, you know, even as I see this situation I don’t consider the other situations I didn’t say anything I didn’t say no

It wasn’t something I wanted to do

I think I’ve had a lot of nonconsensual sex

It’s something I see as my issue

I never stopped it

non-consensual sex would happen

I didn’t want it to I never said anything

I mean I felt like because I was in a relationship I never saw it as non-consensual I felt I hadn’t I could have been better I didn’t have the right tools

It was just it was very clear that’s not what

I wanted to happen

I even hear myself talk about it I just like

that’s stupid

You didn’t say no So it doesn’t matter 338

XVIII.

I it

I think going back to social conditioning

It wasn’t violent

there’s a lot of instances that aren’t violent

I don’t downplay their situations

it’s weird it’s so weird

I have grown up to believe I don’t know where I learned that I can’t tell you exactly I think if the same instance were to happen to me again I would probably see it the same way

it wouldn’t it wouldn’t be something I’d pursue

I wouldn’t go to the hospital I wouldn’t take legal recourse I feel like I had a hand in it I didn’t do everything I could have to stop it I don’t think I’ll ever I don’t think I’ll ever see it differently 339

XIX.

I it you they

I’m going to be honest

The first time you you had come to the meeting

I had never I might have thought about it

When you came

I was recently placed in my position I just never thought of it that way before

Working with prosecutors and police and police personnel. People don’t take things as seriously as you’d think they would. Especially being a young female in my position and being an advocate. This is my perception of how they feel about me. That they don’t take it seriously, or our job seriously.

When you’re working with lawyers and police officers and detectives there’s a lot of big egos

I mean

It doesn’t bother me really It just is what it is

I have a role to play I know I’m important I value myself

It’s very obvious we’re not valued 340

XX.

I it you

I think

The word victim keeps people in a box survivor means

You’ve overcome you’ve you’re working toward healing

I hate the word victim I really don’t like I know we use it I think it’s important

it’s the context it’s important

When you’re in court, um when you’re talking to police

I think it’s important

There was a victim That’s a very powerful word

I talk to my clients I want to use survivor I think survivor is empowering

It’s more positive

You’ve survived something that was really hard

I really don’t like victim

You begin to see it as your identity

That’s such a powerful thing

You’re not a victim of your circumstances 341

You’re not

It’s not going to it’s not going to affect you for the rest of your life –

It might

I want you to know

You’re a survivor you’re going to heal through this 342

XXI.

I it you we

I think I’m a survivor of a lot of things, but not that I don’t think about it

It’s relatively new

I recognized

When you had come and spoken

I’ve never really thought about it like that I don’t think about it

There’s a lot of underlying emotion

I’m not expressing

It feels ok

I feel fine I’m doing it to help others I think it’s really important I think there is a vast array I think it’s a huge spectrum I think it’s important that we talk about it

It is what it is

I want to do it for the collective

Borderline stories That’s what’s really sad, is that we all have those stories

It really does matter

The way we see it, the way we talk about it, the way we frame it has to change

I have to do this 343

It’s important that we make that impact and we change and no matter if I’m just a drop in the ocean, at least many drops will make a ripple

It’s like, do I even have a say? Do I even have a voice? I don’t think I do

You’re giving people a voice. 344

APPENDIX E. ABOUT THE BLACK OUT POETRY

Note: All blackout poems featured in this dissertation came from a project the author completed called breathe full/burn empty: a separate history of violation. In this project, the author first answered all of the survey questions and interview questions she would be asking her participants. Then, she created blackout poems from different answers as a mode of poetic inquiry – to get at the major themes of each response. The poems were selected for use in this project to introduce themes or takeaways for the chapters that followed.

Blackout poem 1 – page 7

Blackout poem 2 – page 39

Blackout poem 3 – page 69

Blackout poem 4 – page 265 345

APPENDIX F. INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD LETTER OF APPROVAL 346

APPENDIX G: INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD STAGE 1 CONSENT FORM 347 348 349 350

APPENDIX H. INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD STAGE 2 CONSENT FORM 351 352 353 354

APPENDIX I. STAGE 1 SURVEY QUESTIONS 355 356

APPENDIX J. STAGE 2 SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW QUESTIONS 357 358 359