Hey friends, welcome back to the bitter corner. On this week's episode we're going to talk about rape and sexual assault. So without further ado...
Trigger warnings for sexual assault, rape, child sexual assault and incest.
I am Caitlin, as we have learned, and I am a survivor of incest and child sexual assault. That's probably hard for some people who might read this to learn about me -- but surprise. Because of this, I have a lot of personal opinions about how this should be treated and the ways that people should learn about sexual assault in general.
As the above image shows, there are a lot of children who are sexually assaulted, which later sets us up to be assaulted in greater numbers as adults. After being assaulted as a child, it wasn't too much longer until I was assaulted again by someone I'd considered a friend.
So with that information here is why "Don't Get Raped" doesn't work.
Because my rape didn't look like it does on TV.
I was born to a man without much idea of what is correct, which is why I was raped. He either didn't think it was inappropriate or much more likely, he knew exactly what was happening, but knew that I'd never say anything to anyone, and for a really long time I didn't. I'm not alone in this either I exist as one in a group of thousands of people who think because they didn't penetrate us it's not rape, which just isn't how it works.
Because I knew my rapist.
These statistics are made up of people who either went to the police, or their parents/guardians/siblings went to the police, but someone went and told someone so that these numbers could be calculated. I already told you that I never spoke to anyone with any authority until well after the attacks happened, so I'm not in that number and neither are thousands maybe even millions of other people.
Because of what I was wearing / drinking or because I owed him.
So I'm pretty sure I'm not meeting much resistance saying that my biological father shouldn't have assaulted me -- but what about the guy that I had already had sex with? Did I owe him? Or was the fact that I wasn't wearing a bra while we were watching a movie an invitation for him to push himself on me? I'm sure that there are some people who are saying yes, I'd obviously shown previous interest even if by this point I didn't want to keep going with that part of our relationship. It didn't matter, he still pushed, and I was still too scared to push too hard back.
I've never asked for it.
Not once for the past 22 years, yet here we are, and my survivors before me still feel this pain as sharply as the first day. We're just tired.
So please stop telling me not to get raped; I've been trying. Maybe try to tell people they ought not to touch people who haven't consented to it. I don't care how many times you've had sex, or if they've been all over you, or if they're drunk and you might get away with it, or if you're married/dating. No means f*cking No.
