A brief history of my experience with sexual violence

About 21 years ago I was in what I would like to dramatically believe was a tempestuous relationship. Unfortunately, it wasn't that glamorous. I was obsessed with a guy who by the age of 19 was an alcoholic coke and then crackhead. The toxicity of my desire trumped my better judgement and I allowed myself to enter in one of the most unsafe relationships I have ever been. It was also the most formative. This was the same relationship that ended with the abortion I have never regretted.

In one of our alcohol fueled outings, I said "NO", he said "Yes" and what happened next, I believe, is a matter of semantics : I would have probably described it as "me abusó" --he abused me. Sexual assault sounds a degree or two more violent than what happened. And I would never name it rape. I can't.

This was Puerto Rico after all and it was the 1980s, a time when we had an influx of South American dissidents fleeing Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and bringing with them stories of los desaparecidos, "the dissapeared". Some of these people had survived their own disappearances and talked about the systematic rape and torture they endured at the hand of the military during their imprisonment. The others who didn't suffer that fate, fled their countries fearing they would be next.

To make matters more complicated, at least for me, I come from an extended family of alcoholics, drug addicts and gamblers. Some of them were wife or child beaters. Some of them were cops. Some of them were all of the above.

I remember one evening at a relative's home a discussion about how a posse of cops got caught after gang banging a transsexual prostitute. They thought there were no witnesses but there were and my relative was bemoaning how "these good guys with families" were going to end in a jail for a moment of foolishness. I remember being horrified by the callousness of the comment. This person who was my relative was dismissing rape and torture as "a moment of foolishness".

Another relative had a horrendous mean streak with all the kids. We were left several times to her care and she would terrorize the shit out of us. Child abuse doesn't even begin to describe the kind of ruthless physical and psychological violence she used to inflict on us.

We told my mom what was going on in her absence. This was at a particularly trying time for us. My parents had separated and we were living with our grandparents. Our cousins moved in as well while relocating from the US to Puerto Rico. My mother was working full-time at that time, and although we were to be under our grandmother's care, the times she was absent from the house, this relative would unleash her fury on us kids. At the time we couldn't move out that easily but my mom, quietly offered to kill my relative if she lay a hand on us again. She backed off from us but unfortunately unleashed her fury on our cousins and sent one of them to the hospital.

She unfortunately didn't do time in jail because it so happened my grandfather was the town's sheriff.

So when I look back at my "date gone bad", I hardly call it rape or abuse. I've seen violence so horrific and knew of people who've endured rape so unspeakable that what happened to me I would never, ever call it so.

In my case I remember having an incredible level of lucidity that didn't match my inebriated physical state. I knew that whatever he was doing was not sex but I knew it wasn't violent either --it was actually quite embarrassing to him because he was too drugged out to perform. So when he finished what he was doing, that was that. To make matters worse, we continued to cat-and-mouse each other for another 6-8 months. So date rape this was not. An abusive or toxic relationship? Absolutely. And it's one that became formative instead of soul-crushing.

That's my experience with sexual violence, and this is how I choose to speak of it. I don't consider myself a victim or even a survivor. I consider it a bump along the long road of what's become my life. Which is why it's hard for me to relate with the sweeping statements I hear when people use the word "rape".

The discourse around rape has changed in the last 25 years. The way I see it, "rape" has become a metaphor for all kinds of sexual violence, not for a specific sexual violence with a specific intent. And what's troubling to me is that "rape" is becoming more and more meaningless as we try to fit more and more in its definition.

When I think of the predicament of Crystal Gail Mangum and the Duke 3, I wonder if, beside the gross political manipulation of this case, what we have here is a failure to communicate what really happened.

And we've arrived at the heart of this post.

Whatever Ms. Mangum has called rape, political correctness dictates we have to take the word at face value. Yet my experience tells me that how we end up speaking and describing our experiences of sexual violence are not based on absolutes, but most of them are informed by our range of experiences with violence.

I would have thought the job of a prosecutor is to take the victim's testimony, gather all the evidence and come to the best prosecutable option. What if this was a sexual assault case? What if this was an assault and battery case? It wouldn't have been as politically incendiary and news making, but it may well have brought justice to this young woman.

As it is, now she remains in the shadow of infamy while the 3 young men she accused are in the limelight of 60 minutes.

I have been compelled to reveal a part of my life that I have never made public ever before. When I decided to write this post I immediately remembered Lawrence Lessig's revelation that he was abused when living at The American Boy Choir School. This particular quote came to mind :

“This thing happened to me,” Lessig says, “and I can see how it changed me. But to be too angry about it would require me to kind of hate myself. Now, there are certain things I did hate about what it did to me: the way I would destroy relationships and the pain I would inflict on people when I did. But there are other parts—the weirdness of me and my relationship to the world. Being deeply reflective about institutions, responsibilities, and my role. Spinning deeply from the age of 14 about issues. And it’s like, well, if this hadn’t happened to me, who would I have been? Maybe I would have gone to work with my dad and run the steel plant and become a Republican congressman from Williamsport. I would have been a totally different person.”

As I said before, I've never really looked at myself as a victim or survivor of sexual assault. Actually, I have been more traumatized by the sexual harassment I had to endure as a pre-teen who had a woman's body by the age of 13 than this particular event in my life.

Which brings me back to the issue that I want to raise here again : the issue of how we speak of sexual violence. I hope my account helps shed some light on how my personal experience with violence informs my speaking of rape.

Last but not least : I have tried to bring a level of measure when speaking of rape, not just as mother of two boys but as a mother who desperately wants to be the mother of girls. I would never, ever want to see any child of mine, boy or girl, standing as either the accuser or the accused.

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