Classic Denial: TW: Sexual Assault

There is nothing more triggering than having your experience with sexual assault be questioned and watered down. I'm fairly open about my own experience with date rape among certain groups- in Feminist or progressive minded campus clubs, among friends, and in group therapy, but I've always struggled with telling my story to people when it's a one on one situation. When you're being scrutinized by a single person, the tension is heavy because there just isn't anywhere else for it to go.

I was at a bar last night with an old mutual friend of my assailant. He was aware when my relationship was my assailant was taking place, and had expressed many times that he thought his manipulation over me was fucked up, so I assumed it was safe to use the word "rape" around him.

How wrong I was.

"Yeah, but was it really rape? You weren't roofied,"He retorted, adding in that there was nothing monstrous about my assailant, just a large sense of naivete. Naturally, I found this to be insulting. There is no such thing as "real" rape. A back-ally ambush is just as non-consensual as screwing someone who is dead drunk and isn't in any place to respond. I was floored by the logic he gave me- it was typical rape apologist bullshit about how how a yes should be "assumed" in these cases, and that women are fair game if they choose to ingest any kind of inhibitory substances. I didn't fight my assailant.  I must have been perfectly okay with it.

When someone is so caught up in this ridiculous kind of logic, "yes means yes" means nothing. Emotional appeals about the trauma you've had to fight through, the therapy that may or may not have worked, the times your assailant used dangerous rhetoric towards you, the flashbacks and triggers when trying to carry on with your sexual life, the irrational (or, as I'd argue, perfectly rational) fear of strange men that has come from it- none of that matters. The assailant didn't have the so-called personality of a rapist, so he simply couldn't have done something like that.

I think it's safe to say I'll never be going to a bar with this clown again.