Me too

Sexual assault has been in the news continuously since Donald Trump became a leading candidate for the presidential nomination and has stayed there due to the actions of Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Brett Kavanaugh, and so many other men.  The #metoo movement has given voice and agency to the hundreds of thousands of individuals who are victims of sexual assault.  This week, in particular, has rubbed me raw as I have revisited my own personal experiences of sexual assault. Witnessing the horrific treatment of Dr. Blasey Ford by Kavanaugh, by the Senate, by the media and Americans at large, has reminded me why sometimes it feels safer to stay silent.  The trauma only happens once, then, as opposed to be repeatedly subjected to new trauma as you retell the original experience and are not believed. 

The first time I remember being assaulted is when I was young, probably around 8 or so.  My parents were invited over to someone’s house and, frankly, my parents didn’t have many non-family friends so this felt like a big deal – to be invited over.  I don’t remember anything about the adults at all, only that they had children, including a boy older than me.  We were in the den in the dark, watching tv, sitting on a brown couch, windows to my back.  He inched closer to me, closer to me, and put his hands down the back of my pants and touched my butt.  I remember not knowing what to do in response.  I shifted to be farther away from him, to position my back to the corner of the couch, and he let me go. 

I’ve always been an active volunteer and, in early high school, I learned that I could volunteer at the Owensboro hospital as a candy striper, someone who delivered flowers, balloons, and teddy bears from the gift shop to the patients in their rooms.  I put in my application, was accepted, and was given my first volunteer shift.  I remember that there was a dress code – I had to wear white pants and the hospital would give me a red-and-white striped apron to wear.  Since I didn’t drive, my brother and father dropped me off at the hospital for my first shift and waited in the truck for me to get safely inside.  As I was walking through the parking lot and neared the front entrance, a middle-aged white man came up from behind me, made a comment about what he wanted to do to my fine ass in my tight white jeans, and then patted my left butt cheek.  I turned around in surprise to confront the man and saw my brother charging out of the truck toward us.  I waved Josh back into the truck and walked back to my family.  I remember Josh saying to me “I can’t believe you let him do that to you!” and my dad saying nothing at all.  I asked Josh and dad to wait, told the hospital staff that I wouldn’t be volunteering, and then went home.  My dad, brother, and I never talked about it after that.

I was older, a sophomore or junior in high school, when my next assault occurred.  My brother played ice hockey so I spent much of my winters either in an ice rink, travelling to an ice rink, or waiting at a hotel before returning to the ice rink.  We were out-of-town with the hockey team and staying in a hotel somewhere.  (All those trips blur together.)  I don’t remember where my family was – at the pool, maybe – but my cousin Chris and I were in the hotel hallway playing floor hockey.  I lost the game.  We went into the hotel room to put away the sticks and he told me that, since I lost the game, I had to give something to him as the winner.  He pulled down my pants and underwear, examined my pubic hair up close, asked me why didn’t I shave, telling me that real women did shave, touched my vulva and vagina, and then looked surprised that I was physically shaking and crying and trying to hold myself together.  I don’t remember how we left the room – did he leave first? did we leave together? – or what happened with the rest of the trip.  I do remember sitting in the captain’s chair of my parents’ blue van, seated behind the driver, huddled into myself, gripping my pillow, for the long ride back to Owensboro.  At one point in the drive, Chris came up from behind me, whispered in my ear “I’m sorry,” and I burst into tears.  When we were home, I told my sister to stay away from Chris, to never be in a room alone with him, and she told me that she knew already.  It was only as an adult that I learned he had done far worse to her than he had to me. 

I was the first in my family to go away to college.  My Catholic grandmother, knowing that I was leaving town, gave me two items she thought essential: a rosary and a diocese-written brochure on how to pray through your rape. 

I moved to Saint Louis and started my schooling at WashU.  I enrolled in five classes and started to struggle in one of them.  I didn’t understand the symbolic notation of the Intro to Logic textbook and I had never been in a situation before where the teacher was teaching and I effectively was learning nothing.  I worked up my courage and went to the TA’s office hours to ask for help.  The TA was in his late twenties, probably, and had long blond hair.  He helped me with the problem set, then put his hand on my thigh, and invited me out to Happy Hour to “work together further.”  I politely declined and, the next day, I went to the Registrar and withdrew from the course.  I ran into the TA later that semester and he expressed shock and dismay – literally asking me “Did you withdraw from the class?”  I had, and since it was past the deadline for dropping the course, I have a W on my official college transcript for the course.  I never went to another professor’s or TA’s office hours after that experience; I no longer trusted being with a male teacher without other people around.

I attended college to become a teacher.  As part of that training, my sophomore year, I had to observe teachers and students in action in various schools in the area.  I took the WashU shuttle to the Union Ave stop, and then walked the ½ mile distance to the Soldan International School.  I was waiting at the Union & Delmar intersection for the light to change when an African-American man in a sock-hat and mustache walked up to me, grabbed both of my breasts simultaneously, sort of pushed in, smiled / leered at me, and then walked away.  I remember looking around me, wondering whether anyone had seen that happen, whether anyone would come to my defense.  There were cars with people in them but no one responded.  I took deep breaths, repeatedly told myself that I was okay, tried really hard not to cry, finished my walk to Soldan, and did my observation.  After that point, I tried to consolidate my observations to 2 days instead of 3, and to match my travel schedule with another female student’s.  On days where I had to make the trek alone, I made certain to grip something in front of me so that my breasts weren’t available for random grabbing again.

I purposefully never drank in college and never attended a frat party because I was afraid of both.  The combination seemed too risky.  However, I really like to dance so, once I became of legal age, I joined my college friends at clubs downtown: Morgan Street Brewery, The BAR, and other places. My friends would drink, we would dance, and without fail, one of the other folks at the club would grab my ass and/or grind into my ass without invitation.  I started calling clubbing “playing the game of grab ass” because it occurred so commonly.  I learned that the places with a cover charge resulted in less assault, and I always voted for spending the $5 for the safer space.  Later that summer, I realized that I could go to Attitudes (a lesbian nightclub) with a female friend; I would not be touched without my consent AND I could dance the whole night long in safety.  I hardly ever went back to a “straight” club after that.

I got hired by MICDS at a young 22 years of age.  Two years later, a close colleague asked my permission to kiss me (even though we were both married) and told me that he had dreams of our having sex.  At 24 I finally developed some words and the bravery to say them in the moment because I told him that we were never having sex and he couldn’t talk to me that way.  Ever.  (I remember coming home and telling Eric “this is what happened to me today!” and he just looked disbelievingly at me.)  My friend/colleague apologized, but it didn’t stop him from saying the exact same thing to me about 10 years later with more forceful language – wanting to shove me up against the wall and make love to me.  He wanted to know “Was that okay with me?”  I remember being very matter of fact; we were both sitting in chairs at student desks in his classroom.  Again, I told him to stop saying that to me, that we couldn’t be friends if he kept saying that, how did he expect me to interact with him or his wife if he was thinking these thoughts and sharing them with me.  He nodded his head and I left the room.  About 3 years ago, HR did a presentation on sexual harassment and my colleague finally figured out that his actions were inappropriate to a level that there could be employment repercussions.  That he was sexually harassing me.  He occasionally asks me “Are you going to report me to HR?”  I haven’t yet.

I go running by myself early in the morning, when it’s still dark and the moon and stars are out.  It’s my favorite time to myself and, when I’m race training, I’m out there a lot.  Twice I’ve been followed by a vehicle in a way that made me uncomfortable, panic for my safety, and evaluate alternate pathways to get home that a SUV could not follow.  I told this story to a male friend once and he responded “What are you thinking, being out there alone!?  Women get raped or worse when they run by themselves!”  I remembered telling him that, yes, I’m well-aware what it’s like to be a woman in today’s world, that I don’t need to run by myself to be raped because there are plenty of other opportunities, that I worked hard to control that fear of being raped, and I cannot let it take me back or limit my life.  This is what it means to live in rape culture. 

Blasey-Ford was asked questions that have stuck with me:  Why didn’t you say anything then?  Why can you remember some details and not others and doesn’t that call into question the whole memory?  What do you hope to gain by telling your story now?  Those questions are intended to cast doubt on the victim, to dismiss the experiences, to shift accountability, and they make me furious.

I have my own answers to those questions. 

Why have I never talked about all of this before?  Because it’s damn hard to do.  I felt like I was complicit in my assaults because I wasn’t loud and forceful in saying no.  I wasn’t certain I would be believed or that it would matter.  I, additionally, was terrified in the moment: if this is what he was willing to do, how else was he prepared to hurt me?  I was made to believe that experiencing sexual assault – having people manhandle or objectify my body without my consent – was one of the prices of being female.  I didn’t see telling anyone doing any good, especially in the instances of boys/men touching me and I didn’t know them.  I wish that I had said something about my cousin Chris.  I know him better, know that he was a manipulative asshole, and that, in retrospect, I wasn’t the only person he hurt.  [To be fair, I probably wasn’t the only person those other guys hurt, but I don’t know that for certain.]  But he was family and I knew that it would hurt many more people that I cared about (my mom, brother, cousins, aunt) if I revealed what had happened.  So I stayed silent.  Twenty-five years later and it is still exceptionally hard to type it out here. 

I am appalled at how Dr. Blasey Ford was treated by the Senate Judiciary Committee, how they interrogated her and denigrated her for remembering only some details and not others.  For fuck’s sake, I don’t want to remember all the details of my sexual assaults either!  In fact, I am relieved that I have managed to forget parts.  I remember select pieces of each experience and the emotions I felt at the time but I don’t remember each individual detail.  I’m working really hard at forgetting and moving on and, on the whole, I have.  But this week has been especially challenging and I cannot sleep at night because I keep reliving moments of my past assaults in a loop and it won’t let go. 

What do I hope to get by telling my stories now?  I hope I get some rest.  I hope that Blasey Ford gets some rest.  I hope that all survivors get some rest.  I made a personal goal this year to be more honest, to share how I am feeling and what I’m thinking, and I am trying to live up to that commitment to myself.  And I hope to put some perspective on the circumstances.  More people than you realize are hiding their own assault stories so we don’t hear them, we don’t know them, we don’t recognize that they apply to people we care about.  Do you know every aspect of a person?  Who do you choose to believe? 

I believe her.  I believe me.