Content note: Rape
Ever since I was a teenager, I have known that being raped is the worst thing that can happen to you. It is the reason why dark streets scare me and why my parents never allowed me to go home alone at night. Although there are tricks like talking on the phone, keys in hand, whistle and pepper spray, I never felt safe with them at night.
I had a pretty accurate image of rape in my head: someone comes up behind you in the park at night, drags you into a bush, rapes you in the most brutal way and then kills you. Rape was always associated with death or at least fear of death. I often thought about whether I would go along with it so that I wouldn't be killed in the end. I asked myself whether I would fight back, whether I would scream, whether I would have the courage to lash out or whether I would keep still. Keep still and then have an abortion. All these questions still accompany me when I am out alone at night.
When I had just turned 16, we celebrated New Year's Eve with a few good friends. Because we found it cosy, after a wonderful evening the four of us slept together in a 1.40m bed. We fell asleep lying on our sides, him behind me. At some point I woke up. His hand was exploring my vulva in my pants, his fingers found their way into my vagina. I was completely perplexed, didn't understand what was happening at all and wanted him to stop. I couldn't say anything and was totally ashamed. For a bit I was lolling around, pretending to half wake up. But because he didn't stop, I went back to sleep and just waited. I never confronted him. We just continued to be friends.
It would never have occurred to me to call it rape. It wasn't brutal enough, I knew the perpetrator, we were friends and it wasn't all that bad after all. I was able to bury the event well and didn't think about it again for 5 years. I continued to see other boys and never felt traumatised.
Only since #metoo have I thought about that night again and understood that what happened then was not okay. I now manage to use the word "assaultive" for the behaviour. And I've been asking myself since then why I react the way I do.
I wonder if I was somehow too young to check out what had happened. I wonder why I didn't say anything. I wonder if I just didn't know at the time that my boundaries and needs are valid. Sometimes I also wonder what I did wrong. Were we so close that you could already think it was legitimate to grab my pants without being asked? Did he just want to see how my vulva felt? Did he even understand that what he was doing was not okay? Questions that try to excuse his behaviour.
According to the legal definition of rape, what I experienced would probably fall under it. But I still wouldn't mouth the word. "Sexual violence", yes, that maybe, it sounds a bit more abstract, not so direct. Finally, I don't want to relativise all the "really bad" experiences that end in death or post-traumatic stress disorder.
And then I wonder if it's not all just a lousy mechanism to keep us silenced and keep finding fault with ourselves. By many of us constantly feeling that it is "not bad enough" what we are experiencing or that it does not correspond to the image we have of rape. Rape doesn't just happen "at night in the park" and sexual violence doesn't just start there. None of it is ever okay. And we always have the right to defend ourselves against it.