“Does This Count?”
By: Ferdinand S Flower
Tags: Trigger Warning, Sexual Assault, Rape Victims, Rape, Rape Culture

“Does This Count?”

Is a rape still a rape if I don’t have any scars to prove it? Can there be such a thing as a non-violent rape?

There is this illusion that the experience of rape is not as traumatizing if it is not considered violent. If it does not result in cuts or bruises, fractured bones or internal bleeding, that it is somehow less of a crime. Personally, I am not in the business of comparing traumas and I believe that making that comparison is what causes so many people to assume that what they went through, was not rape at all.

Sexual assault is not often shown in media or written about in books. I’d say that it’s talked about more these days thanks to the #MeToo movement, but overall it is not as common in media as it is in reality. When we do see it in movies and TV shows the victim is often shown with bruises around her neck, a black eye, and sometimes cuts on her body. Her clothes are ripped, her hair is disheveled and her eyes are red and puffy. Don’t even get me started on how there are so few male victims portrayed in the media.

Image found via Google search.

If the assault is portrayed, I have almost always seen quick, dimly lit scenes of men attacking women from bushes and in dark alleys. The victim puts up a fight but eventually ends up against a wall or on the ground and the last thing you see is him on top of her until the scene cuts to her walking, or maybe limping, out of a hotel room.

When I was raped, I was a freshman in college. I had been at a party with friends and a few of them came back to my dorm room to crash for the night. We were all falling asleep, splitting two twin extra long beds between the four of us when he started touching me. It didn’t last long, I had an episode of family guy playing in the background and I don’t think it even lasted the length of an entire episode. The best way I can describe it is uncomfortable and painful. I said a lot of things to try and get him to stop what he was doing, but none of them worked. When he was done I was so tired and my head was pounding from the alcohol, so I fell asleep. The next morning I did not wake up in shock or outrage at what had happened the night before. I skipped my morning classes because I was hungover and tired and I went about my life. Nothing changed overnight, but my life had been completely and forever altered because of what he had done.

Over the next few months, I went from being a social butterfly to a professional hermit. I moved out of my dorm room and away from campus where I lived alone with my dog. I got out of bed to go to the bathroom, and occasionally I would feed myself. I rarely went to class but was fortunate enough to have professors that did not really care about attendance. I even managed to ace two of them. Friends would call and text me, but after a while of turning them down and not replying they gave up and my hermitism was solidified. After my second semester, I withdrew from school and moved back home where I have lived ever since. For a couple of years I continued this lifestyle, I would see a handful of my friends from high school (four), I abstained from drinking and I eventually got a job in retail at a big department store. I met a lot of nice people at my new job, they wanted to get to know me and invited me out to places, but meeting new people scared me so I turned them all down. I actively kept people from getting to know me. All this time, I had no idea why I was so terrified of this.

It’s not that I forgot what happened at school but I hadn’t thought about it and it hadn’t come up. When people asked why I left, I just said I didn’t like the place or the people. I assume this was my subconscious burying the trauma so that I didn’t have to feel the emotions associated with it until I absolutely needed to, and that time came about two and a half years later. I met someone I couldn’t lock out of my life, someone I didn’t want to lock out, and that’s when I started to begin processing and healing what had happened.

My PTSD symptoms hit me all at once. I couldn’t sleep at night, at least not more than 1–3 hours at a time. When I did sleep, I had nightmares about being raped and I would wake up in a cold sweat. I had more and more panic attacks, assuming I was in danger at all times but especially as I tried to fall asleep at night. I hadn’t been sexually active since that night, but I wanted to be intimate with someone again despite how difficult it was. Thankfully, I had met someone with a lot of patience.

In the beginning, I would try to convince myself that I wasn’t raped. I’d go over dozens of reasons why it wasn’t rape in my head at least a thousand times a day. I would tell myself I wanted it because I flirted with him at the party, or I wanted it because I invited him into my room. I told myself it wasn’t rape because we were all drunk or maybe I just regretted it. As I dug myself further and further down the guilt rabbit hole, I told myself it wasn’t rape because I didn’t have any scars. It wasn’t rape because I looked nothing like the victims portrayed on TV. I had no bruises and he didn’t hit me or grab me. He didn’t hold me down or choke me and he didn’t knock me out or cover my mouth. He wasn’t a bad guy, raping me wasn’t his intention and so that wasn’t what it was. It wasn’t violent, so it wasn’t rape, at least that is what I believed at the time.

However, telling myself these things did not help me sleep at night.

Eventually, I went where all people go these days when they have questions they want answered: the internet. Through the power of the internet, I have been able to tell my story both in whole and in parts on different ocassions. I have received a lot of great advice from many people about things like sleeping better at night, going on dates and telling loved ones about what happened. The internet has been a great source of healing for me, but it has also sparked the writing of this piece.

Day after day as I scroll through stories written by survivors about their experience, I see so many similarities to my own. Sadly, these stories are almost always followed by a phrase of denial that it counts as rape. It’s the same questions over and over again, across the board:

"Not sure what to call this, please help.” “Is it considered rape if…?” “Does this count as rape?” “I think I was raped.” “I’m confused.” “Was I raped or am I just playing the victim?”

I took a break from writing this story. I went online to read more survivor forums for courage and almost immediately I found a post with the title “was I nonviolently raped?” She tells her story, and again I am reminded of my own. I wish I could hug her right now, but all I can do is compose a response.

I told her no. No, she was not “non-violently” raped because there is no such thing.

Violence is not just defined by cuts and bruises, its presence is felt during every second we are being taken advantage of, violated and raped. You do not have to be fighting for your life to feel the terror that one does when you are being overpowered and they will not take no for an answer. Sometimes you can’t put up a fight, and that’s okay. What they did to you in that moment when they realized you wouldn’t, that is not okay.

Do not downplay what happened to you because it does not match the society’s definition of rape. Do not blame yourself for not doing more, because you did all that you could. Do not make excuses for your rapist or abuser because they did not learn how to treat people better than this. Do not hurt yourself more to validate the pain you are feeling, because it is already valid.

Writing this piece has been beyond difficult. Even as I write this article my brain keeps telling me I’m wrong, that I am just making something out of nothing. But then I go back online and I read more and more stories of people that are struggling in the same way I am but still wonder if what they experienced “counts.” I wish I could respond to every single one of them to tell them yes, but there isn’t enough time in the world. Instead, I kept coming back to this piece, working my way through the voices in my head.

There is not one single, strict way to define an act of rape, but the act itself is violent and does damage that no one could possibly see without having experienced it themselves. This is why we need to believe victims, this is why we need to stop blaming them and just believe them, because you can’t always see scars.

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

Resources:

Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) hotline:

1–800–656–4673

Sexual Abuse Crisis Text Line:

Text HOME to 741741 in the US and CA, or visit crisistextline.org