UNHEARD AND UNSEEN

WHAT MEN DON’T HEAR about rape in America is women crying as victims, somehow surviving, and moving beyond that.  But the strongest who lose the sense of victim come back to defend the most hurt and battle quietly or loudly those who hurt women by telling women to shut up.  The strongest women lose the skin rape would tattoo them with.  A theme for today is losing skin.  More on that later. This post will morph throughout the day and lose its skin several times so check back.  Often.

TOP LAYER of the story that is an onion in Oregon is how.  How did a case of a seventeen year old girl who had what “the boys” who are men over eighteen not be a simple statutory rape case.  Oregon law is clear:  No seventeen year old girl may give consent.  No way.  No how. Girls seventeen and younger have sex all the time, but here we have three “boys” who had it in a group way with what the law clearly terms a minor.  How?  How do a prosecutor and a judge not see that?  How is this part of the law not seen? 163.315 Incapacity to consent. A person is considered incapable of consenting to a sexual act if the person is: (1) Under 18 years of age. 
THIS LINK WORKS www.leg.state.or.us/ors/163.html

PACIFIC VIEWS has a take The Heretik agrees with: So why did the assistant city attorney decide to prosecute the case? According to the Oregonian, it was because the "false accusations were serious enough to lead to charges. The young men faced prison sentences of at least 7 years and a lifetime labeled as sex offenders. In addition, police spent considerable resources investigating the accusations."
Yup, he was going to teach her a lesson and make sure that other women who thought about reporting rape were advised that they could go to jail if their case didn't have sufficient evidence to prove their case.
It seems obvious to me that this assistant city attorney, the Beaverton police detective and the judge are all part of the backlash against women who bring forward an accusation in acquaintance rape cases. And what would this young woman have gained with making a false charge? Unless the judge had clear evidence that she was lying, then it does not seem reasonable that he would convict her for this charge unless he was prejudiced against women who have stepped out of the bounds of what was acceptable behavior. Note that the "boys" who participated in a gang-bang with an underaged girl were not even admonished as far as we know. Obviously, for women, having a sexual history, or even sex outside of marriage is bad. For men, it is a natural god-given right.

PREVIOUS HERETIK POSTS ON  OREGON RAPE CASE [Give Aways]  [Typical]

LOSE THIS SKIN I’ve got to  lose this skin I’ve been living in.  If there is one thing the world doesn’t hear or see, it may well be what women raped feel.  Legal cases lose women and lose justice when the law focuses on small “facts.” (See comments). Such technicalities perhaps are inevitable in our automatic world of law, where the default mode defers to the powerful, to those who already have a voice, a mouthpiece or a megaphone.  What is lost in this is the feeling.

IT IS A TRUISM women “feel” more than men, that women are “more expressive.”  The problem is that when women are more expressive about how they feel, they are so often told to shut up, often with a kick in the teeth, sometime with a knife in the back, too frequently from those who could or should have helped.  The law.  And mothers.

THE LAW HAS BEEN against women forever.  Maybe longer.  Only in the crime of rape is the word of the victim so discounted.  This discount accounts for much of the rage women hold within, against themselves, a Force five storm tossed sea of the soul. And then a woman, or a girl, finds herself tossed down upon the beach by the last wave home.  The feel of the sand, the salt of that storm tossed sea pulls tight upon her.  A raped girl feels her skin stretching tight upon her until she would burst, she wants to burst, but she cannot.  If she could just lose this skin,  lose this skin I’ve been living in . . .

THE WOMAN, THE GIRL (because rape tells a woman she is just a girl) has the fortune or the misfortune to come home.  Or to find herself home where the rape has occurred.  If I could lose this skin . . .  And there is the shower, the shower whose head connects to pipes, connects to a system the woman who is told she is a girl has no connection to, none at all.  There is the shower head from which no amount of water can fall that will make her feel clean.  What is on her skin, if I could lose this skin, it is seeping in . . . if I could lose this skin.  No shower will ever be enough for what a woman feels.

AND YOUR MOTHER SEES you and does not believe.  Or she does believe, but tells you not to tell.  That would not reflect well.  Not on her, not on you. You reflect on darkness. The darkness in your mother is the darkness in you, growing. You realize growing smaller is not some contradiction. It is you exploding, sinking small in a moment, every moment. And your mother doesn’t care.  Not enough.  No one cares.  Not enough. Not even yourself.  Your skin grows tighter, you have the tattoo no one else can see, you feel tattooed everyday with the needle, with the moment that feels  . . . that is forever.  If I could lose this skin.  You wish you could pull your skin over you like a shroud and hide.

YOU CRAWL you feel the ground, you feel something besides the pain, you grow. And one day the skin so tight breaks, you break open slightly, and find you haven’t exploded. You haven’t forgotten.  If I could lose this skin. . . .  The past catches on some point in the present.  You can feel your skin pulling away from you, some reptilian memory fall is falling away. Your skin stretches and falls away. You walk.  There is sunlight.  Has anything ever felt so good as the sunlight on your face?  You care enough about a future you couldn’t even see you might even put on sun screen?  You look back at that skin, the one drying, curling on the ground, curling up upon itself like you used to do.  And you think not for the last time: if I could lose this skin, lose this skin I’ve been living in. Because even now in the full sun, somewhere inside is a shadow, a tattoo no one can see or understand, the tattoo’s ink a sea in a bottle, your skin what you feel forever.

FROM STACY rape survivor: I was raped when I was 16 by someone I knew
and I am angry because even now at 36 and although I am an attorney and a feminist there is a little part of my brain that whispers "you deserved it."   I never went to the authorities because I knew there wasnt a snowball's chance in hell that I would prevail and the lawyer in me knows that I was right about that
Even today I would be hardpressed to tell a rape victim that she should go to the authorities- I know that is cynical and the lawyer and even the feminist in me says I should tell them that they deserveto be vindicated but I know what really happens to rape victims in court- I've seen it.  And its terrible.  And until that changes there
is little incentive to be raped again by the legal system.

FROM FAT LADY SINGS rape survivor: I am a rape survivor – as is Shakespeare’s Sister, Klondike Kate, Amanda at Pandagon, Lauren at Feministe and about 100 million other women in this country. I was raped more than once – and, like the victim, I wasn’t believed. I was a child, and the religion my family practiced always considered the female to be the whore in any sexual circumstances – no matter the age.   
So my rapists went free – and they did rape again; and again, and again – as will the men who brutalized that young girl. The judge in this case blamed the victim.  No surprise there.  He was following a precedent all too common in our courts; thirty years ago you had to be a ninety year old nun with witnesses to get a conviction - the same obviously holds true today.  But this asshole went beyond even that – he prosecuted a traumatized child for false witness and sent her to jail where she will undoubtedly be raped again by her guards.  The man needs to be taken out and horse-whipped till the ice water in his veins runs hot, and bleeds out as empty as his heart.

MORE FROM KATE S rape survivor: I tried to write it about it once -- on my blog – and you know what happened? I got some nasty comments, one in particular that sticks with me, that called me a liar, that it might have happened once, but not four times and that was just the histrionic soap opera imaginings of a drama queen falsely looking for pity; not only that, but they added that if I was indeed raped ... I probably asked for it. And therefore deserved it.  For being a tease, for not giving it up willingly, when asked, like most women, and that almost all women were just pure evil. The act shatters your spirit. Forever. I'm still waiting for my subconcious to catch up with my ego, sothat I can put away these demons, but I've been waiting such a long time now, that I'm starting to have doubts about the reality of this ever happening.

FROM ANONYMOUS, rape survivor: I was only ten when it happened, and my mother made it very clear to me at the time that it was my fault, that I had done something terrible and shameful, and not only should I never tell anyone, I would have to live in fear that someone might find out what a horrible thing I'd done. My mother wasn't a bad person, but she was in an abusive marriage, one she blamed herself for. Her fear was never that she'd be killed or seriously injured, but that someone would find out. She was just projecting that fear of exposure on to me. Whenever I read about people who want to take us back to the good old days, this is what I think they mean --the time when no one even had to know about ten-year-old rape victims because their battered mothers would silence them. Not having to know must be very comforting. It's a nice world for everyone but the victims. But I know too well the cost of maintaining that nice world.

FROM ALLY uncategorized: What happened to me is a part of me, but it is does not by any means define who I am and I don't want to dwell on it or become defined by it. As various other people also say, I am no longer a victim.

FROM TRISH WILSON aka The Countess, rape survivor: When I was raped, I didn't shower immediately afterwards even though I desperately wanted to. On the other hand, all I wanted to do was crawl away and forget the whole thing. I was too numb to shower. That would have taken too much energy.
I had enough composure to know that I shouldn't shower because I knew the police and the hospital needed to collect evidence. If my case was heard in that court, I'm sure the judge would have thought I concocted the rape because I kept my composure and didn't shower, which would have been ridiculous. I went on auto-pilot and did what I remembered about rape from what I read in books. I was numb about the whole incident, but I tried to stay calm. I'm glad that the police and the hospital personnel believed me. It's scary to me that someone with power who might not have believed me could have influenced a case like mine.
Sadly, I was so numb from the whole thing that I dropped the case after his side talked me into dropping it. I realize now that I should not have done that.


ABOUT TYPICAL RESPONSE Jessica at feministing: I cannot even begin to relay how disgusted I am. I used to volunteer as an emergency room advocate for sexual assault victims, and there is no typical or “appropriate” response to rape. Some women are visibly upset. Some are not. I even met a woman who cracked jokes during her ER stay--because that was how she dealt she with the trauma. Who the fuck has the right to tell someone how they should act after a violent attack?
MORE TO FOLLOW

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