Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape (28 page)

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Authors: Friedman,Jaclyn Friedman,Jessica Valenti

BOOK: Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape
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Another friend of mine shocked me one day after a guy (a man, really) walked past us and she broke down into a sobbing heap where we stood. She confided in me that when she was eleven she had had a baby, but her mother had forced her to put the child up for adoption. The baby’s father was the guy who had just nonchalantly passed her by on the street. We were thirteen at the time, a few weeks shy of entering high school.
 
Later, I found out that she was at school when she met her future abuser/baby daddy. He was aware she was about eleven—what other age group is enrolled in middle school? At the time, this guy was about nineteen. He strung her along in this grand relationship fantasy, helping her to cut school as they drove around and had sex in the back of his car. When she got pregnant with his child, he dropped her. However, living in the same area meant she would run into him about once a month; these encounters normally led to an outburst of tears or screaming fits on her end and cool indifference (with the occasional “You were just a slut anyway”) from him.
 
In high school, I had two Asian friends I was fairly close with. We would often end up hanging out after school at the mall with a bunch of other teenagers. Occasionally, we would take the bus to the really nice mall in the upper-class neighborhood so we could be broke in style. It was there—in the affluent neighborhood—that my Asian friends dealt with the worst of their harassment. I can remember that each friend, on different occasions, was approached by older white men in their thirties and forties and quizzed about her ethnic background, age, and dating status. These men always seemed to slip cards into their hands, asking my friends to call them later. My friends smiled demurely, always waiting until the man had gone before throwing his number away.
 
 
The years kept passing and the stories kept coming.
 
My ex-boyfriend had a friend who had been dating the same girl for about seven years. I found out the girl was eighteen at the time of their breakup. Eighteen minus seven equals what? The girl was eleven when they began dating, while the man involved was nineteen. When the relationship ended, he was twenty-seven. I expressed disgust, and my ex told me that while everyone else in their friend circle had felt the same way, the girl’s parents were fine with it, even allowing the guy to spend the night at their home. “Besides,” my ex offered casually, “she had the body of a grown woman at age eleven.”
 
 
Not-rape came in other many other forms as well. No one escaped—all my friends had some kind of experience with it during their teen years.
 
Not-rape was being pressured into losing your virginity in a swimming pool pump room to keep your older boyfriend happy.
 
Not-rape was waking up in the middle of the night to find a trusted family friend in bed with you—and having nightmares about something that you can’t remember during the daylight hours.
 
Not-rape was having your mother’s boyfriends ask you for sexual favors.
 
Not-rape was feeling the same group of boys grope you between classes, day after day after day.
 
Not-rape was being twelve years old, having a “boyfriend” who was twenty-four, and trading sex for free rides, pocket money, Reeboks, and a place to stay when your mother was tripping.
 
 
My friends and I confided in one another, swapping stories, sharing our pain, while keeping it all hidden from the adults in our lives. After all, who could we tell? This wasn’t rape—it didn’t fit the definitions. This was not-rape. We should have known better. We were the ones who would take the blame. We would be punished, and no one wanted that. So these actions went on, aided by a cloak of silence.
 
For me, not-rape came in the form of a guy from around the neighborhood. I remember that they called him Puffy because he looked like the rapper Sean “Puffy” Combs. He was friends with a guy I was friends with, T. I was home alone on a hot summer day when I heard a knock on the patio door. I peeked through the blinds and recognized Puffy, so I opened the door a few inches. He asked if I had seen T around, and I told him no. The conversation continued, its contents so trivial that they are lost to memory.
 
So I have no idea why he chose to pause and look me full in the face before saying, “I can do whatever I want to you.”
 
My youthful braggadocio got the best of me, so I spat out, “Oh, what the fuck ever,” moving to pull the door closed.
 
Quick as a cobra, his hand darted past the screen, catching my wrist as I reached for the latch. A bit of tugging quickly turned sinister as I realized he wasn’t playing around.
 
He pinned me in the doorway, forcing me down to the floor, barely inside my apartment. Holding my arm behind my back with one hand as I struggled against him, he calmly, deliberately allowed his free hand to explore my body. He squeezed my still-budding breasts, then slipped his hand down my pants, taking his time while feeling up my behind. When he was finished, he let me up, saying again, “I can do whatever I want.” After he finished his cold display of power, he walked away.
 
After he left, I closed the balcony door, locked it, and put the security bar in the window, even though it was broad daylight. I felt disgusting and dirty and used. I remember wanting to take a shower, but instead I sat on the couch, trying to process what had happened and what I could do next.
 
Fighting him was out, as he had already proven he was stronger than I was. I considered telling some of my guy friends, but I quickly realized I had nothing to tell them. After all, I wasn’t raped, and it would really come to my word against his. As I was the neighborhood newcomer, I was at a disadvantage on that front. Telling my mom was out as well—I’d only get into trouble for opening the door for boys while she was at work.
 
I gritted my teeth in frustration. There was nothing I could do to him that wouldn’t come back on me worse. So I got up, took my shower, and stayed silent.
 
A few weeks later, I ran into T and some other guys from the neighborhood while I was walking to the store with one of my friends. T informed us that they were going to hang out in one of the empty apartments in the neighborhood. This was a popular activity in my old neighborhood—some guys would find a way to gain entry into one of the vacant apartments or townhouses and then use the place as a clubhouse for a few days.
 
My friend was game, but I felt myself hesitate. The memory of my not-rape was still fresh in my mind, and T was still friends with Puffy. There was also the possibility that Puffy would be there in the apartment, and that was a confrontation I did not want. I refused, and my friend was angry at me for passing up the chance to hang out with the cutest boys in the neighborhood. Since I had never told this particular friend what had happened, I shrugged off her anger and made an excuse to head home.
 
A few days after that meeting, I was on the school bus headed to morning classes. The local news report was on, and the announcement that came across the airwaves stunned the normally rowdy bus into silence. The voice on the radio informed us of a brutal rape that had been perpetrated in our neighborhood. Due to the savage nature of the crime, all six of the teenage defendants would be tried as adults. The names were read, and a collective gasp rose from the bus—T’s name was on the list. Jay, a guy who knew about the friendly flirtation I had going with T, leaned over and joked “Uhuh—T’s gonna get you!”
 
I remained silent. My mind was racing. The strongest, most persistent thought rose to the top—
Oh my god, that could have been me.
 
 
A few years later, I was a high school junior on top of the world. For the most part, memories of my not-rape had been buried in the back of my mind somewhere. My third year in high school was consumed by two major responsibilities: student government and mock trial. As part of our responsibilities, our mock trial team was supposed to watch a criminal proceeding in action.
 
On the day we arrived at the local courthouse, there were three trials on the docket: a traffic case, a murder case, and a rape case. Nixing the traffic case, we trooped into the first courtroom, which held the murder trial, only to find that the trial was on hold. We turned back and went into the courtroom where the rape trial was being held.
 
Never did it cross my mind that I would walk through the doors and see a picture of my not-rapist, captured in a Polaroid and displayed on a whiteboard with photos of the other five rapists being tried. The prosecutor pulled out a picture of the girl the six boys had brutalized. In the first photo she was bright-eyed and neat-looking, her dark hair pulled into a high ponytail that complemented her fair skin. She was dressed in athletic casual wear, as if she was on her way to a track meet.
 
The prosecutor then pulled out a second picture, taken post-assault. Her face was a mass of purple and red bruises. One of her eyes was blood red—the attorney informed us that she had received extensive damage to the blood vessels in her eyes. The other eye was swollen shut. Her lips were also bloodied and bruised. He placed the two photographs side by side. Between the two photos, the girl had been rendered unrecognizable.
 
She had met T and another boy (my not-rapist—I still didn’t know his government name) on a bus. The boys had convinced her to come with them, and they led her to a vacant apartment. Unknown to the girl, there were four other men also hanging out that day. She was forced to give oral sex to some of the men, and then she was beaten, raped, and sodomized. She was found in the apartment unconscious, surrounded by used condoms, semen, and fecal matter.
 
My blood ran cold as I tried to process what I was hearing.
 
T was capable of this? The prosecutor was still speaking, and he mentioned that there appeared to be one ringleader, with the other five guys going along for the ride. My teammates sat at rapt attention while I tried to figure out how soon we could leave. On one hand, I realized that my not-rapist and T were behind bars already, instead of roaming the streets to do this to someone else.
 
But part of me wondered . . . if I had told someone, anyone, could I have prevented this from happening? I looked at the girl’s picture again. It is pretty rare to see the expression “beaten to a bloody pulp” illustrated in real life.
I should have said something
, I thought to myself.
I should have tried.
 
My internal monologue was interrupted by the defense attorney taking the floor. He built his case, explaining that his client was generally a good kid but outnumbered, and that his client had opted to leave the area instead of participating in any wrongdoing. He then turned to the jury and said:
 
“You will also hear that _____ wasn’t such a good girl after all. You will hear that she skipped school. You will hear that she smoked marijuana. You will hear that she willingly skipped school to go smoke marijuana with two boys she had just met.”
 
My mouth fell open. There wasn’t even a question of consent in this case—the damage to the girl’s face attested to that. Why was what she was doing that day even relevant?
 
That day in court was the day I fully understood the concept of being raped twice—first during the act, and then later during the court proceedings. That was also the day I realized that telling someone about my not-rape would have netted a similar, if not more dismissive response. I had no evidence of the act, no used condom wrapper, no rape kit, no forced penetration.
 
If the defense attorney was attempting to sow the seeds of doubt in the face of indisputable evidence, what would have happened if I had chosen to speak up?
 
This is how the not-rape epidemic spreads—through fear and silence. Women of all backgrounds are affected by these kinds of acts, regardless of race, ethnicity, or social class. So many of us carry the scars of the past with us in our daily lives. Most of us have pushed these stories to the back of our minds, trying to have some semblance of a normal life that includes romantic and sexual relationships. However, waiting just behind the tongue are story after story of the horrors other women experience and hide deep within the self, behind a protective wall of silence.
 
When I first began discussing my not-rape and all of the baggage that comes with it, I expected to be blamed or to not be believed.
 
I never expected that each woman I told would respond with her own story in kind.
 
At age fourteen, I lacked the words to speak my experience into reality. Without those words, I was rendered silent and impotent, burdened with the knowledge of what did not happen, and unable to free myself by talking about what did happen.
 
I cannot change the experiences of the past. But, I can teach these words, so that they may one day be used by a young girl to save herself:
 
Not-rape comes in many forms—it is often known by other names. What happened to me is called sexual assault. It is not the same as rape, but it is damaging and painful. My friends experienced statutory rape, molestation, and coercion.

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