18 Years, Goth Girls, and Progress

Since this is a trauma anniversary month and the Goth Girl is stealing my sleep, I’m gonna post whatever comes to mind. Eighteen years ago in June of 2008, I first disclosed by rape at the hands of a female acquaintance in August 1990.

Disclosing to women 18 years ago that I was raped usually resulted in 1 of 2 assumptions:

1 – “Oh, a man raped you. Huh, now you know what it feels like to be a woman. Congratulations.”

Dripping in condescension and sarcasm. Seriously, different variations of that conversation happened over and over. One woman who said that to me was an Olympic gold medalist. No kidding. Another was a journalist. Others were social workers, activists and even trained advocates.

OR.

2 – “Well, that’s really rare, I mean, like, I feel bad for you and stuff, but you didn’t run the risk of pregnancy and when women are raped it is ALWAYS violent. You didn’t go the hospital, did you?”

What was happening 18 years ago in these conversations? With the first response, I was “allowed” to be seen as a victim or survivor, but only in a de facto female coded role via assumption that I was penetrated by a man. They just assumed and did so immediately, then swiftly put me in a box.

The second response begrudgingly accepted that a female perpetrated rape COULD happen, but access to any sense of empathy had to be strictly ranked based on other factors that have nothing to do with consent, violation or trauma-informed competency.

Coincidentally, when I told my story on college campuses, I was always met with female students and faculty who had female perpetrators. They almost always told me the same thing. Ranked empathy based on the gender identity of their rapist or abuser was attached to any little bit of begrudging acceptance. Activists were often as bad or worse than a random person hearing a disclosure.

Whether the victim was male or female, recognition of female perpetration was always attached to terms, conditions and loopholes that treated it as a minor inconvenience, rather than a violent, traumatic event.

Today, the younger women who come across my story, attend my trainings and reach out via email or social media thankfully don’t have that immediate reaction. The amount of friendly fire and incompetent advocate re-traumatization I dealt with in the early years as an activist is something I still work on today. It left scars. I’m not covering them up. They need open air to heal. As an advocate, I have professional competency and legitimacy that help, obviously. That doesn’t mean that damage wasn’t done then.

On a night like this, when I’m exhausted from loss of sleep because the Goth Girl is in my head, I think about random shit. Don’t read too deep into it. This is basically a journal entry.

Thanks for listening.