Tag Archives: high school

More about sexual assault.

Note: I am friendslocking this because I think my journal can be searched via google and I am not yet confident enough about this subject matter to want to broadcast it on the internet.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about rape and rapists. I am close with more than one woman who was raped and who still has to deal with the person who raped her socially. In at least one case this feels even more personal and difficult and it has prompted me to do a lot of thinking. Not too long ago linked to a discussion about rape that made me think. How many people know rapists and don’t even realize that they do? No really–look around your circle of friends, you probably know a rapist and you may or may not be able to figure out who it is. That got me thinking more about my own history of sexual assault. I’ve written about my early sexual assault experiences here in some detail but I’ve skipped the last few sexual assault experiences entirely. Why? I feel like part of the reason is because they were all less physically traumatizing so I minimize them in light of the rest of my history. I mean, if I can survive being brutally sodomized when I was like nine years old, what is a date rape here and there between friends? I say that sarcastically but that is basically how I have treated this subject. There is a part of me that believes that given how “minor” the sexual assault was–no physical damage–I need to just get over it. There is that fucking phrase again. “Just get over it.” Fuck that fucking phrase with a fucking chainsaw. (Can you tell I like stream of consciousness writing?) There is another part of the issue that plays a much bigger part I have realized recently. All of the recent assaults touch other people in my life in some way or another. Two of them are still friends with people I am friends with. If I talk about the assaults I will name them. Naming them creates a situation where people might say, “Oh I don’t believe that ‘x’ did that to you”. How fucking awful is that. I have counseled dear friends to publicly name their attackers because otherwise the bastards get to continue to have squeaky clean reputations and when someone eventually says they are a rapist it will be harder to believe–if there is a history of it, maybe something will actually be done about it. But that means I have to put myself out there and make me vulnerable to disbelief and maybe even to losing friends. That is scary. Hey wait! I’m a counter-phobic six! It’s scary! Here I go.

Cut for length.
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Interesting trip

I noticed a lot of things this weekend. I used to feel bad that I didn’t follow/couldn’t follow their conversations about computer games/geeky stuff. Now I realize I just don’t give a shit and it isn’t a reflection of my intelligence. YAY!

It was very interesting. I bet I would have had fun talking with more of the SO’s of the geek boys, but I was being shy and I didn’t initiate many conversations. I had a great time talking with the host though–she’s a sometimes dancer and all-around nifty person. Catching up with her was probably worth the hike and being bored a lot of the time. I played a couple of games and did ok most of the time. I broke my boycott of Scrabble. I am more than somewhat amused that the entire situation felt like stepping into a time warp. They are the same people dressing in basically the same clothes doing the same things and having the same conversations. Ok, so they now intersperse comments about work instead of classes… but it was odd.

I no longer feel hated or rejected, but I am a bit more comfortable in knowing that it just isn’t my crowd. That is some lovely closure for me. 🙂