After Silence
Rape & My Journey Back by Nancy Venable Raine

"I just can't imagine how you can write about something so ..." She paused, searching for the words. "So very personal."

"Why is it more personal than writing a book about having a life threatening illness or a wretched childhood?" I replied.

"Because rape is a sexual act - such an intimate invasion."

"The most personal part of my rape," I said, "doesn't have to do with my vagina." I was angry, and my voice had a nasty edge.

"Why is talking about being raped any more personal than talking about being mugged on Central Park West?" I continued. "People talk about being mugged all the time. They aren't ashamed - it isn't too personal to bring up. Why should I or other victims of rape be any different?"

"But rape is different," she said.

"I beg to disagree." I replied. Then I thought for a minute. "You're right," I said. "It is different - but it shouldn't be."

I immediately felt sorry about directing my anger at this woman. She was only saying that it was embarrassing for her to imagine how she, as a woman, would feel about such an intimate invasion of her body. I'd reacted without thinking, without checking whether my anger was a reasonable response or an overraction.

I realized that I loathed the notion that sex and rape were conceptually related and argued against it whenever I got the chance. I wanted a precise distinction, a syllogism: Rape is violence. Sex is not violence. Therefore, rape is not sex.

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Sometimes I feel like I'm beating a dead horse with this issue, but it just never seems to get better. Ignorance seems to be rampant among our American culture. People are more inclined to ignore the wolf that snarls and growls, just as long as it comes nowhere near their door.

Rape is the silent fear that dogs your steps in an empty parking lot at dusk. It is the bump in the night and the baseball bat you keep beside your bed. It is the belief that it could never happen to you, you're too smart to be caught unawares, too strong to submit. It is a silent shame that can only belong to someone else, someone much weaker than yourself, someone far away that you will never know and never have to call your friend.

It is the choice to remain ignorant, to believe that the victim somehow wills her attack by walking alone at night, by going back to her date's room, by wearing the wrong clothes. It is the belief that if she is raped, she must have asked for it. She must have laid the trap to catch her man. She must not complain when her actions are misconstrued, and her no's ring as yes's in someone else's ear. She must suffer the indignity as her punishment for being such a lure, one that no man could resist.

And when she tells, when she goes to the police, when it becomes another story stuck back in the middle of page three in the local newspaper, she must be prepared. Prepared to defend all of her actions from the moment she first drew breath, when her mouth closed to form around her first word and her wobbly legs first had the strength to stand. Surely rape is the only crime where the accused is innocent until proven guilty, while the accuser is guilty until being proven innocent.

Sides will be taken. Some will hold their banners high in hopes for a National Championship. Others will come forward with "damning" evidence to earn their own glory and their short fifteen minutes of fame. Still some will come with sensitive hearts, feeling as they do, the public damning of a victim, like a flogging upon their own skins. Fingers will point and wag, as words are battled back and forth in a perpetual he said, she said.

What is the truth the public will wonder? Is this another case of Peter crying wolf or is there really a wolf walking around in sheep's clothing? But it must be money that is the main motivator ... Why would we possibly want to believe that rape should be a matter of justice? Money makes a much better storyline, people just love the intrigue.

Because if it was rape, it'll be so much harder to hide from our own ignorance, and maybe it will be us, who can no longer sleep at night.

(Conversation around the workplace took a nefarious turn when the subject of Kobe Bryant came up. I was extremely disappointed to find, that the beliefs of many of my coworkers, are far from being of an educated point of view. It seems the easy answer is to blame the victim and find all the reasons why she couldn't possibly be telling the truth. I can only imagine that the beliefs I encountered today, right within my own sphere of being, represent the norm of public opinion across the country. It saddens me to know, that even in this day and age, our collective rape beliefs remain archaic at best ...)