Category Archives: Feminism

Then/Now

Feminism, , ,

This essay, along with this ballerina outfit, was used as part of the ‘What I Wore’ exhibit for Sexual Assault Awareness Month at the LSU Student Union Art Gallery. The exhibit will be available for viewing through the end of the month.

***I’ve used the beginning of this essay in another one, in case it sounds familiar.

Last year, I went to physical therapy twice a week for lingering issues due to a bout of shingles.

For two days out of every seven , I laid on a black table with an oval shape cut out of it for my face to rest in. Tears burned my eyes as the physical therapist dry needled my shoulder blade trying to wake up dead muscles and nerves, signaling my brain to breathe deeply.

As a young ballerina, I was taught early on to  find a spot across the room to focus on intently while learning to pirouette. The idea is to  focus on one spot – usually on the wall – as your body twirls around, not turning your head until the very last second. As you spin, immediately finding and re-focusing on that same spot. 

I could spin indefinitely, so long as I didn’t lose sight of that spot.

On the table at physical therapy, I found one spot on the floor and focused with all my might. But it’s not the only reason I had to count my breath, focus on one spot, and meditate through the inhales and exhales while laying face down and digging my fingernails into the palms of my hands.

The carpet on the floor I stared at twice a week had the same exact pattern and texture as the couch in my grandparent’s Florida room. The same couch I focused on when my grandfather would pin me down and rape me on the ground in between the exercise bike and the couch while the television blared next to us.

————

That little ballerina lives inside my brain, even now, pirouetting towards the beauty of her life, her costume covering her abused, broken body. On nights I lay awake, unable to sleep from the flashbacks, snippets of my early ballet days co-mingle together with the nightmare. There is a studio photograph of me from that time in my ballet recital costume. I’m dressed as a bunny, the dance studio’s innocent version of a centerfold.

My grandparent’s home was near the Indian River, close enough to see the wide, clear sky over the water, and close enough to watch shuttles launch from Cape Canaveral. At the end of their driveway, I would pirouette to Perry Como crooning ‘Catch a Falling Star’ from a car radio, patiently waiting to make shapes out of the vapor clouds. I absorbed these images to use as a spot to focus on later that night when my grandfather wrapped a hand around a long lock of my loose curls.

————

Last year, while my car sat idle in the pre-dawn darkness at the bus stop, my fourteen year old son took over the playlist. We have a playlist labeled ‘Crooners’ that he and I listen to, waiting for him to discover a song so old he’s never heard it before. The amazing thing about technology is that when your chosen list runs out, it keeps playing songs from the same genre, even if you didn’t add the song.

A few minutes before the sun glows on the horizon, ‘Catch a Falling Star’ fills the car. My son has never heard it before and twists the knob to turn the volume up. The sleepy ballerina inside me straightens her posture, ready to spin. 

“Mom,” I look over, my son looking at me with teenage annoyance, “where’d you go? You zoned out for a second there.”

His face sharply comes into focus, the hint of his dimple my spot to focus on. “I was thinking about doing pirouettes to this song when I was a little girl.”

“You’re such a weirdo, Mom, but I love you,” he says as the bus pulls up.

“I love you, too,” I yell after him. I start the song over and drive back home. 

After my oldest leaves for school and my husband leaves for work, I search for the photo. I find it, my stomach churning at the studio portrait of me wearing the pristine ballet costume. 

I’m a child, dressed as the centerfold of every man’s desire. 

I’m a child, dressed as the desire of my personal monster. 

The ballerina in my head loses her spot of focus and tumbles over.

I Know Why Victims Don’t Report

I’m in physical therapy twice a week for lingering issues from having shingles.

Twice a week, I lay down on a black table with an oval shape cut out of it for my face to rest in. I deep breathe as tears burn my eyes while the physical therapist dry needles my shoulder blade trying to wake up dead muscles and nerves.

When I took ballet, I was taught early on about finding a spot across the room to focus intently on while learning to pirouette. You focus on that spot and as your body twirls around, you don’t turn your head until the very last second, and then you refocus immediately on that same spot. I could keep spinning indefinitely, as long as I didn’t lose sight of that spot.

So when I lay down on the table at physical therapy, I find one spot on the floor and focus with all my might. But that’s not the only reason I have to deep breathe, focus on one spot, and meditate while I lay face down and dig my fingernails into the palms of my hands.

The carpet on the floor that I stare at twice a week has the same exact pattern and texture as the couch in my grandparent’s Florida room.

The same couch I focused on while my grandfather would pin me down and rape me on the ground in between the exercise bike and the couch while the television blared next to us.

*******************************

I just read a thread on Twitter where a female creative was talking about a bad experience she had with men in a creative space. I am being intentionally vague here, for her safety. In this space, she stood up to these men who argued what consent is. These men argued that according to rules of consent, they raped women.

As I started reading the replies, people called her out for not naming names. And for not naming who had assaulted her. 

Okay, so where to start with this?

One, I talk about my abuse and my assault. I’m not everyone, nor am I every victim. I, and I alone, made that choice. Talking about my abuse and assault gives me control of a situation I had no control in. When I don’t talk about it, shame takes over and I refuse to feel shame for the monstrous actions of someone else.

Here’s the thing — I named who hurt me and guess what? Nothing happened. Not a damn thing. There’s no such thing as a perfect victim. I was a blonde hair, innocent little girl and still people didn’t believe me.

My bladder does not work the way a normal human’s bladder should work, I have to buy industrial KY jelly for the catheters I use daily and I have to pay for a prescription for bladder medicine monthly because of what that man did to me.

And yet, people still do not believe me.

There were witnesses. My grandmother got mad at my grandfather one time because he ejaculated in my hair and didn’t realize it. She was mad because she didn’t want to clean it out of my hair because she didn’t have time to do that and finish making Baked Alaskan for dessert.

And yet, people still do not believe me.

I write about my experiences, even though I know that every single time I do, I will receive hate mail. I get rape threats and hate mail blaming me for every victim that came after me. I get hate mail for not handling my abuse and assault ‘correctly’. As if there is a place on this planet where a trauma like that can be handled ‘correctly’ by a victim. Did I survive? Yes. Then I handled it correctly. Did you survive? Yes? Then you handled it correctly. Hard stop.

Stop putting the responsibility on the victim. If a victim chooses to name their assailant, then that needs to be their choice, not yours.

Let me repeat that for you: If a victim chooses to name their assailant, then that needs to be their choice, not yours.

If you take that away from a victim, you are taking one more thing about what happened out of their control.

Stop asking why they didn’t say anything. There are five million examples and counting of why victims don’t disclose. Even now, as a woman in my forties, members of my extended family have tried to taunt me about the abuse. The abuse they could have, but chose not to stop. 

Don’t bully a survivor into telling the world who their abuser/rapist was. It’s not on the survivor to defend herself and make sure she is safe. Maybe start with believing them. I know why people don’t report — it’s because they don’t think they will be believed.

After the #metoo movement started, I had written an essay for a website that has around 7 million followers. I normally don’t read the comments on pieces I’ve written, as history has taught me that I can’t continue to write what I need to write if I read the nastiness. My husband and I had gone to dinner in New Orleans with another couple on the day it was published. I made the mistake on the hour drive home to open up my email. I was grateful for the darkness outside, so no one else could see the tears stream down my face for the rest of the trip home.

I decided shortly after to focus on writing my book and not on freelancing for the year. I need the break from writing about the worst experiences of my life and the emotional labor that would follow. I had been talking about my experiences for almost twenty years through writing, working, and giving speeches. It felt like since people were willing and starting to share their experiences, it was time for their voices to be heard.

Then, people that I know started chastising me for not speaking up more about it. So many of them were disappointed, they said, and were outraged and wanted for the masses to be vocal about the problem.

I was tired. Bone tired. Some of these people are the same ones who would be uncomfortable and change the subject when they asked what I was working on, or wouldn’t show up to an advocacy event I invited them to, or would tell me I needed to ‘get over it’. 

Where were these people for the last twenty years? Now it’s a five alarm fire for them and I’ve been telling them about the smoke for years. 

All of these conversations would end with people telling me how I should tell my story. How I should do this or that. I am so sick and tired of people telling survivors how to tell their stories. Telling my story thousands of times over the years is thousands of hours of emotional labor and it is exhausting because I have to tell the story on the defense. People want to hear the story in a way they can control through victim blaming questions and statements, as if to further separate the possibility of them being in same the situation by placing blame on something I did or didn’t do. People want to control my story in order to make themselves comfortable.

I am not here to be controlled.

My story, my terms.

I’ve been telling my story for over twenty years. When I want, how I want. I do it because there are little girls out there, like I was, who will tell someone and they will not be believed. I want those little girls to know that there are people like me, paving the way for them to tell their story if they so choose.

And if those little girls grow up and choose to tell their story, it won’t be because I pushed them to. It will be their choice. And I will believe them.

‘Only one victim’ is a Lie

Feminism, Serious Stuff

Only one victim.

Only.One.Victim.

The words ‘only one victim’ rolled around in my brain while I tossed and turned in my bed last night.

Twenty-five year old bus driver Shane Piche pled guilty to raping a fourteen year old girl in June 2018. Last Thursday, he was sentenced to probation by New York Supreme Court Judge, Judge James P. McClusky. He also has to register as a Level 1 sex offender, someone who is described as someone with a low risk to reoffend.

Piche’s attorney is quoted in a CNN article saying, “He’s on the sex offender registry for a long time. Maybe not the rest of his life because of the level, but this isn’t something that didn’t cause him pain, and this isn’t something that didn’t have consequences.”

Oh really? Why does his pain even matter? Why does his pain matter more than the victim’s?

And now for the most infuriating part, according to the Daily Times, “Judge McClusky said because Piche had no prior arrests and there was only one victim in this plea, Level 1 was more appropriate.”

Only one victim.

Those words were still rolling around in my head this morning while I was unpacking my delivery of catheters that show up on my doorstep every month — you know, the ones that show up because I have scar tissue from when someone touched me where they weren’t supposed to. It occurred to me, while looking down at this box on my bathroom floor and thinking about this fourteen year old survivor, that while I’ve talked and written about the emotional toll that rape and abuse takes on a person, I’ve never discussed the financial portion of what it takes for this one victim (me) to live the life I want.

So today I’m going to throw numbers at you. Not the typical statistics, and not my normal writing, but money.

Here are the line items in our monthly household budget that only exist because I survived childhood sexual abuse and rape:

Self catheters:   $74.50

Industrial size KY Jelly:   $10.00

Two sessions with my therapist: $300.00

Two lab appointments to run my urine to see if I have an infection: $160.00

One primary care physician appointment if I do have an infection: $180.00

One Urologist appointment where my bladder output is measured: $210.00

Prescriptions to manage the damage caused from the abuse (out of pocket): $700.00

Monthly cost for me as a survivor, only one victim:          $1,634.50

This isn’t always the cost, of course. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less. So far in 2019, it’s been less because I haven’t had to see the urologist for three months (Thank the Lord for that!) and I’ve only had to go to the lab four times. When the anniversary of the rape is near, I up my therapist visits to once a week. Two years ago, I was visiting the lab weekly, seeing my primary care physician weekly, the urologist monthly, and having nuclear tests performed on my kidneys quarterly due to an infection that would just not go away. Like I said, sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less, but there are always expenses.

This also doesn’t take in to account the tens of thousands of dollars my parents spent on specialists when I was younger, trying to get me well, both emotionally and physically. 

The financial aspect of the aftermath of abuse is something that often gets overlooked. There’s a ton of other economic implications that abuse and violence have, but those studies are for another day. In my life, not only do I, the survivor, deal with the trauma of what happened emotionally, I deal with it physically and financially. I’m not the only victim here, because my fantastic husband, children, parents, brother and other loved ones are also victims because they are part of the collateral damage. We all agree the money is well spent — my life is of my choosing and it is fantastic in every sense. But it’s amazing because I chose to put the work into it with the support of my parents and husband and some of that work takes money.

So, no, there is not just one victim here. Saying that there is minimizes the effects sexual trauma has on survivors and the people in their lives.