Rad Women

Today on Twitter somebody who knew I was a rape victim told me I should get over it, and that all people who have suffered sexual abuse need to get over it. They were making jokes about when it’s okay to rape a woman, and they were being funny, and it’s only Twitter, and I need to get over it. Let me tell you what I’m over. I’m over hearing insecure sacks of sociopathic garbage using misogyny and rape jokes to assuage their rejection complexes and fear of female sexuality.

For a long time, I thought I WAS over it. I didn’t talk about it. I didn’t think about my abuse. If I ever heard about other victims suffering, or if I ever saw something on the news, maybe even 75% of the time, my own experience wouldn’t come up in my mind. I thought that’s because I was over it, but the truth is that I was suppressing it because of fear of reactions like the kind that I got on Twitter today from a gang of complete strangers.

I thought I was over it for ten years. But now I know that I have to name what happened to me as part of the process of truly “moving past it.” I have to talk about it. I have to make sure other people know that it happened to me. I need to put that out in the world. I need to put that on public record, so if you dig far enough and you want to know the Megan Hunt story, you can find the truth about the experience that I haven’t “gotten over.” That I was raped. That it can happen to anybody. And that I’m not over it. And that doesn’t make me disempowered, or weak, or obsessive, or a bitch. It makes me human. And I’m dealing with this reality like over a billion other sexual assault and rape victims. I’m naming what happened to me. I’m allowing self-reflection. And I wish we lived in a culture that was accepting and compassionate and equal and moral and just enough to allow all assault victims to name what happened to them without the implicit approval of this kind of backlash that I got today from people I don’t even know. Who went out of their way to treat me cruelly. I know it was only a small group of people far-removed from me on the internet, but let’s not fool ourselves—the misogyny that leads to control of female sexuality and rape is ingrained in our dominant culture, and the few visible people who directly shamed me tonight stand with millions and millions of others who would have agreed with their hate.

Parents, teach your children to stand up for victims. That joking about sexual assault isn’t funny. And that if it ever happens to them, they have the power and permission to name it. To name it to you, to name it to another trusted adult, and to receive justice for what happened so we can break down these social stigmas against a type of abuse that’s been happening since the beginning of recorded history and never gone addressed in a cultural movement. Students and friends and coworkers and cousins and neighbors and brothers and sisters, watch out for each other. Support each other in being better people. Make it okay for victims to name what has happened to them, and make it shameful for others to ridicule it.

The first time I EVER alluded to my experience was in this blog post in 2010.
The second time was a few months ago in a post about feminism, here.
This is the first time, publicly, that I have ever named it for what it was.

Maybe a lot of you want to give me sympathy right now, but I don’t need sympathy because I’m okay. What I want instead is for you to hear my message and go back to your life a little bit more mindful and aware of the violence and hate against women that is perpetuated in our culture. From rape jokes, to the way our social norms excuse sexual violence, to the shaming of female sexuality, if there’s anything you can do to help me, it’s to take my pain seriously because it’s pain that over a quarter of women share. You all know somebody who’s gone through something like me. So don’t give me your pity. Give me action. Speak up when someone says something wrong. Teach your children and friends and mothers and fathers that forced oral, anal, and vaginal sex is rape. That 1 in 5 women in the US have been raped at some time in their lives, and nearly 1 in 2 women experience sexual violence other than rape. No. No. No.

The first lesson I learned when I finally allowed myself—ten years later—to begin processing the rape. Ugh I don’t even like saying that word. I bet you don’t like reading it either. It makes me physically recoil to type. Abuse? That’s easier to say. But it was rape, what happened. The reason it took me so long to talk about being raped is because naming something can really make it true. When I was studying comm theory in college—that was my major—we talked a lot about the power of naming and how names have the power to include or exclude or put something on a pedestal or bring implicit disapproval. Naming is very powerful, and if I had said ten years ago that I was raped, I would have identified for the last ten years as a rape victim. And I think that at the time, I didn’t have the emotional strength or the tools in my mental toolbox to deal with that label to put on myself. I had the privilege of avoiding the reality of what had happened, because I could go back to school and go back to my activities and brush my teeth and lay down in my own bed. I don’t know if anybody knew I was raped. I don’t know if my rapist knew what he did was wrong. I was confused about whether it was wrong. So I never named it. And effectively that kind of made it Not A Thing. It wasn’t something that happened to me. I felt compassionate and sad and outraged and motivated to action by other rape and assault victims that I met and learned about and heard about but I never heard a story and thought, “That happened to me too.” Or, “I understand that fear and loss of control.” And that’s the second lesson—that you really just don’t know what it’s like. Even from woman to woman, victim to victim, we all heal differently, have to make terms with it differently, and it took me a long time to do that. To take the first step. To name it.

I bet that a lot of women reading this today have named and acknowledged their abuse. I wish we could all name our abusers. If you’ve done that, you’re braver than me—I’m still afraid. But I bet there are just as many if not more people reading this who haven’t named the anguish or the torture, the undeserved consequences, the undeserved torment and abuse and harassment that happened to them. And I want to tell you that that is okay. And you’re not betraying a movement, you’re not betraying awareness or solidarity by not naming what’s happened to you. You’re not betraying other victims. You’re processing it in the best way for you.

But, in hearing my story and the long struggle I am having with healing, I want you to ask yourself again if maybe it is time to name what happened. I finally became motivated because I wanted to tell the world that I’m a normal person, I’m an intelligent woman, I’m strong and empowered and brave. I’ve started three businesses, I asked my husband to marry me, I worked through sixty hours of labor. But I never thought THAT would happen to me. And even as I went through the ten years that I was in denial, that I was repressing, I never would have admitted that that was the truth of my experience. And it was buried, and I denied it to myself. But I think it’s taken more strength to name that experience—it’s been much harder to get to this point—that almost anything else I’ve done. It’s embarrassing. It’s shameful. It’s SCARY—because, what if the person who did this to me knows that I said something? What will happen to me and my family, and my reputation and my ego and all of these things I shouldn’t really care about? These ego-driven things that I DO care about—it’s EMBARRASSING to say stuff like that, that I’ve been victimized. But I don’t want to live in a world where victims can’t speak up. I don’t want my daughter to live in a world where she is afraid to express the truth about her experiences. Where she can’t simply say what happened.

That’s the worst thing I can imagine.

So after ten years, I’m speaking up. The people I care about know that this isn’t all there is to me. For ten years I’ve shown everything but this side of me. But now I’m motivated and all I know how to do is tell a story. So I told mine. When the time is right, I hope other victims will tell theirs. If you have never felt the pain and violation of sexual assault, I hope that you can be an ally to people who are struggling to heal from it and fight against a culture that implicitly excuses it.

Visualize the support of billions of women, victims, and allies—spirits throughout history and loud voices of today. I feel myself wrapped in positivity and warmth.

From Radwoman # 2 Megan Hunt’s personal blog http://meganhunt.me