Rape culture damages us all

There is never an excuse

WHEN I entered college in America, the issue of sexual assault was the last thing on my mind. I was much more excited about meeting my room-mate for the first time, going to my first college party and being free from my parents. I knew what sexual assault was and I thought I knew what it meant, but I never for one minute thought it would affect me.

Over the last three years, that has changed drastically. During my freshman year, an undergraduate student filed a report accusing a professor of sexual assault. He resigned.

During my sophomore year, students on my campus carried mattresses around in solidarity with Emma Sulkowicz, a Columbia student who committed to carrying around a mattress everywhere with her on campus until her rapist was expelled.

While I was abroad in South Africa during my junior year, students at Rhodes University fired back at administrators for not providing enough support for survivors and contributing to rape culture.

It was also around this time that I watched a judge back home sentence Brock Turner, an ex-Stanford University champion swimmer, to six months in county jail for raping an unconscious young woman next to a dumpster after a party.

I read the powerful victim impact letter she read out loud to him in court last week and cried at the end when she addressed all the survivors out there who didn’t feel like they could speak out. In her letter, she wrote that she had fought every step of the way for them. I cried when reading that part because I am one of the women she fought for.

The reason Turner’s sentence is so damning is because it shows just how pervasive rape culture is in society today.

Turner blamed party culture and alcohol for his actions instead of acknowledging he raped someone. His friends and family wrote to the judge before his sentence was handed down, trying to convince him even a minute of jail time was too severe for the young man who had a promising future until he was charged with rape.

They argued he wasn’t a threat to society. They said he was a kind student who was always respectful of others, a good citizen. The judge seemed to agree – six months in county jail was decried by critics as much too lenient of a sentence, a mere slap on the wrist.

Rape culture is particularly damaging in two ways – it silences survivors and it allows rapists to apply the definition of sexual assault only when it is convenient for them.

I do not doubt Turner knew what rape was before he assaulted his victim. In fact, Stanford’s student orientation process includes a session on campus sexual assault. But in that moment and in the following months, he considered himself exempt from that definition. Even though Turner will serve a few months of time, for the most part society let him get away with it.

The lenient sentencing is particularly discouraging because it shows even when strong evidence of a rape that cannot be disputed is brought before a judge, the survivor will not receive the justice she deserves because the system itself is flawed.

Rape is unlike other crimes and justice systems have yet to recognise and incorporate that into practice. So often it comes down to the rapist’s word against the victim’s – in this case, Turner remembered and his victim did not, so he was allowed to fill in the blanks.

This affects other survivors because it discourages us from reporting. Every sexual assault case is different, but yet we are taught to recognise it only when it is a “stranger in a dark alley” kind of situation.

The definition of sexual assault is applied in the most narrow way possible. We are told our cases are less serious (so we should move on) and we don’t seem to be as negatively affected on the outside (so we should move on). I struggled with labelling my experience as sexual assault after it happened because it didn’t fit my idea of rape.

After all, the biggest question that comes for someone after being sexually assaulted is, “What now?” The world has given us few options with silence being the most reasonable, logical one.

But now it’s been over six months and I’ve come to realise that you can never move on as a survivor. Every time I see another story about a rape going unrecognised and a rapist going unpunished, my heart breaks for the woman whose life has been changed forever.

I understand the anguish of watching justice, which should be on your side, slip away. I know what it feels like to give a part of yourself away every time you tell the story – when I sat across my professor and asked her to please, please tell the study abroad department to strengthen their resources regarding sexual assault, my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

I listen to my mom tell me not to walk down dark alleys at night by myself and wonder if she knows that it’s often people who have already integrated themselves into your circles who do this to you.

I’ve woken up in the middle of the night, terrified from nightmares that had him in them.

Seeing someone who looks like him on the street gives me a flash of anxiety. I tell the story to those closest to me and watch the look in their eyes shift from anger to helplessness, because really, no one knows how to help me.

Most of the time, it’s most effective to tell myself that I don’t need help. That I’m okay and perfectly functional.

It’s most effective to compartmentalise, because I have to minimise the negative impact the assault has on my life. Every part of my life it infects is another victory for him.

The strangest thing about all this is that he is not the one I blame most for my experience.

I blame the world for making me internalise the belief that I need to cater to a guy’s needs over my own, despite knowing very well in my mind that that isn’t true.

I blame rape culture. I blame victim-blaming for creating this block that prevented and still prevents me from fully acknowledging the gravity of what happened to me.

The student protests at Rhodes, Stellenbosch and UCT are important.

It’s time that we begin holding rapists accountable for their actions, not that one drink that tipped them over the edge. It’s time that we start creating safe spaces that survivors will be actually heard in. It’s time for people to realise rape is something that affects everyone.

To the women who have had similar experiences – this is not easy, it will never be easy, and it will always be a part of you. But it wasn’t your fault and it will never be, no matter who tries to tell you otherwise.

You are the strongest people in the world, your courage is unmatched and you will always be my heroes.

PICTURE: DAVID RITCHIE Stop Rape, Educate is a campaign at UCT to end sexual violence by educating the public on rape culture.