EDITOR'S NOTE:“The Issue” began as a way for me to find my voice. I felt frustrated and I felt confused, because time and again I found myself running into instances of sexism - a form of oppression that I felt I could only share with my close female friends. On the off chance that I shared one of these instances with someone else, I felt that it sounded like I was complaining, that instances of sexual harassment and public sexism were just silly little things that I shouldn’t dwell upon. It is so easy to fold into that narrative. It is easy as a woman to accept that it is part of life, that it is okay for men on the street to call you “babe” and for auto repair workers to laugh when you suggest that you might actually know what is wrong with your car. It is easy to scold yourself for not reacting better when you are sexually harassed on the street or when you are groped at a bar. It is always easier to remind yourself that it could be worse. I realized that I was constantly doing this: belittling the value of my experiences and only feeding into the pattern of our larger society, one where women too often play the roles of both victim and protector. Instead of telling people about my experiences of oppression, I was hiding them. I decided that I needed to write, and the more I considered this, the more I knew that this project could no longer be about me individually. My story is one of many, and it could never begin to represent the millions of other people who deal with their own instances of oppression - be they on the basis of gender, sexuality, race, age, disability, or socioeconomic status. Once Ben agreed to come on board as my co-editor, we began to reach out to friends and colleagues and found that many of them also had stories they were eager to share. I know that I am very lucky in many, many ways. I know that there are people around me who experience other forms of oppression and trauma on a far greater scale each and every day. But I also know that we won’t move forward if we don’t start to talk - about the big things and the little things, the occasional and the everyday. I want this newsletter to be a platform for those conversations. With these stories, I hope that we can begin to shrink the gap between any marginalized group’s experiences of oppression as well as the rest of our society’s understanding of that oppression. I want us to talk, to listen, and to learn. For me, this introspection is part of a process in which I am allowing myself to celebrate my identity as a woman, to embrace the fact that the words and actions of my oppressors do not have to define me. I have a right to be angry about catcalling, because the perpetrators do not deserve to strip me of my love for my body or my comfort in my safety. I have a right to protest the demeaning language and unjust sexist stereotypes tossed at me, because it is not okay for someone else to belittle my value as an intelligent human being. The story below was instrumental in my process, and one of the reasons I needed this project. It is an effort to validate my trauma, to explore it and share it - while still, I hope, leaving room for countless other stories and experiences. It took me a long time to understand what “consent” really means, and to recognize that trauma comes in many forms. I hope that this story, like those to come in “The Issue,” helps you to recognize those truths, too. (NOT) MY FAULT - Allyson S. BarkleyCW: alcohol consumption, physical intimacy, sexual trauma It took me four years to understand it. It took me four years to comprehend why I can still remember exactly what each of my friends and I wore that night, to realize why the same few words replay in my head over and over and over and over. The details shouldn’t matter, but they matter to me because they are what I see when I walk through each layer of blame, laying that guilt upon myself like a straightjacket until I no longer remember the mantra women tell each other to remember but can’t seem to abide by ourselves: It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. I thought that by recognizing it for what it was, I had somehow “gotten past it.” I thought that it was enough to finally realize that sexual advances following the words “No, I don’t want to” are not consensual. I thought that this epiphany would be enough for it all to be okay. Thinking about that night, talking about it, and trying to write about it now, has made it crystal clear: I am not past it. And it is not okay. It is easy to bury sexual trauma when you have so many easier explanations: alcohol, poor personal decisions, distracted friends. It is much simpler to bury it under those explanations and let the guilt carry you along, to smile when people crack jokes about “the bad night,” assuming you wanted something to happen. It is not their fault, you tell yourself, they don’t know better. But you forget to mention that it isn’t your fault either. That night, I drank a lot more than usual - or whatever I drank hit me harder than expected. It was back before a drugged drink at a house party ruined vodka for me, and I could still drink the mixed drinks at fraternity parties. Most of my friends had wandered off, and I hung around to wait on another friend for a little while. I was very unsteady on my feet, a feeling I was not accustomed to, and I suddenly found an arm wrapped around me. It was a male student that I knew, and I thought he was trying to help keep me upright, so I let him stay there for a minute. He held me tighter, pressed up against him, and he began to sway a bit to the music. Feeling a bit confused and desperately wanting to be at home asleep in bed, but unable to do anything about that, again I let him stay. When he began to kiss me, my brain seemed to spin out, like it had short-circuited and taken me to another place, a place where I watched the rest of the night play out from a distant perspective. For a while, I thought it was the alcohol that left me feeling this way. I’ve had other nights with strong drinks and loud music. This was the only one that made me feel I’d entered another mental dimension because I no longer had control, because after I told him “No, I don’t want to” nothing changed. Because after I said “I don’t think I want this,” he continued to kiss me, to hold me against him, and to touch me. My mind took off as it realized that I had no control over the situation. I wasn’t physically capable of pulling myself away, and my verbal objections had been ignored. So I gave in and let it run its course. I let the moment drag on, all the while uncomfortable, unhappy, resentful. Locked into my helplessness, I watched the two of us from afar, and I was miserable. “It’s okay,” he shushed me when I first protested, and again the second and third times. But it wasn’t okay. It isn’t okay. I am not okay. It has taken me a few weeks to write this. Each time I go back to revisit the memory, I find myself digging into little details, asking myself if it really is my fault, if perhaps I said something to encourage him, or didn’t try hard enough to stop him before I succumbed to my fate. I wonder if it was a bad idea to let my suitemate do my makeup, or if wearing jeans instead of a skirt would have been a safer play. I tell myself that it is silly to think so much of this one moment when it could have been much worse, when I know countless other young women who have experienced sexual assault and trauma much more severe than this. I tell myself to get over it and move on. It took me four years to understand it. It took me four years of distrusting men -- especially men in bars or clubs -- and treating them with the utmost contempt, to the point that a friend or two pointed out my open hostility with a sort of unknowing bemusement. It took me four years of harboring deep insecurities of physical intimacy, unexplained fears of physical touch, even when I thought it might be what I wanted. It took me many months in a healthy relationship before I realized why, even with someone who made me feel very safe, I might have had sudden moments of doubt and discomfort. Why it took so much time to recognize my own role and value in determining the course of any physically intimate moment. Why I had been both so afraid of losing control and so afraid of claiming it as my own. It was nearly impossible to write this without adding caveats: It could have been worse. It didn’t go that far. It wasn’t a big deal. But I tried to remind myself that those excuses are part of the problem, and I deleted them. It still hurts, often unexpectedly and always profoundly. I cry, and I revisit every ounce of self-doubt I can uncover in my angry, grieving soul. I relive the little details and question each decision. Then I breathe. And repeat: It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. MORE TO THE STORY |
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September 2020
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