I’ve never been raped.
I am, of COURSE, incredibly grateful
for that.
I’m also consistently surprised that I’ve managed to reach 32 without
such a thing happening. It’s almost happened three times in my life.
Three times too many. There have been the other times, too many to recall where a man has made me feel uncomfortable. Unsafe. Dirty. Those are stored in the folder in my brain I named 'near misses'. But they shouldn't be there in the first place.
One of the times I was assaulted was when I was being walked home from
work with a man I trusted.
I was his friend and colleague and we had worked together
for years. When he walked me home I accepted it as a kind and considerate offer
of a friend who wanted to see another friend get home safely. You see I was
working in a bar and in my infinite wisdom decided I’d stay and help out ‘til
closing. I only lived 10 minutes away so it was a quick run down the road to
safety. I was nonplussed by the idea of walking home alone, I’d done it many
times before, nothing had happened, no murderers had jumped out of the bushes
and attacked me as my Mum always hyperbolic-ally professed they would.
As it turned out I would have been safer walking home alone
that night.
M and I walked happily down the road towards my house; I
started to realise he was a bit worse for wear; he’d been drinking in the pub
where I worked and had apparently rowed with his girlfriend. I know this as he
told me through increasingly mumbled slurs. She was a ‘nightmare’ and
‘difficult’ and I was ‘easy to talk to’. Why hadn’t I considered dating him, he
asked? Well because I have a fiancé and you have a girlfriend and I don’t see
you that way, I giggled. But the suggestion made me anxious.
Then he turned.
I had discounted him in a sentence, so he’d ‘show me what I
was missing’ – turns out I was ‘missing’ a limp dick with half a chicken pakora
stuck in his hair. He stunk of booze. Why hadn’t I noticed it before? Maybe the
cold air had sobered him up briefly as we left the bar, I didn’t know, it
didn’t matter. I started to feel nervous, on edge, I laughed off his chatter as
drunk ramblings but the apprehension in my voice was easy to hear.
We turned into a lane, a shortcut I always took, but being a
shortcut it cut out the main road, the street, PEOPLE. He pushed me into a
wall. The shock of the shove and pain from the hard brick almost made me gag. I
felt like I couldn’t move but I’m pretty sure I pushed him A LOT. I tried to
scream out but nothing came. Literally not a sound. He was slurring more,
mumbling angry things in my ear, hot putrid breath (pickled onion and beer?),
he was angry with me, I’d led him on, I’d liked him just as much as he liked
me. He expected acceptance I think. Accept that this is about to happen. Just
accept you want this. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want him. Or his limp dick or
his chicken pakora hair. I wanted to LEAVE.
My arms were pinned to my sides and he started to push
against me; I knew he was drunk so I figured what’s the worst he can do to me?
He’s stumbling and weak. Only he wasn’t weak, he was strong enough to pin me to
a wall whilst I was flailing to get free. I panicked and started to cry, I told
him I was afraid, he was scaring me, I loved my boyfriend. He seemed baffled to
see my face contorted in pain; he stumbled backwards to look at me more
clearly, to steady himself I’m not sure, but it left me long enough to slap him
across the face then run home.
By now I was sobbing. I was 20 years old. I was terrified and confused. I wasn’t
even sure I was running in the right direction. I got a few yards away and
looked back, he was gone. I was almost angry he had left. Who does that to
someone then just toddles off home? Why wasn’t he calling my name, asking if I
was OK? Apologising?
I woke up and felt sick as I remembered. I thought about
telling someone, my boyfriend, my Mum, my Dad? No, never my Dad, he’d be
furious I’d walked home alone. In the end I didn’t tell anyone. I thought about
it through the day. I thought about what I’d been wearing the night before: a
black top with a deep cleavage, that’s it, it was my top, gave him the wrong
idea. My trousers were probably too tight too. Plus I’d been talking to him all
night; he must’ve thought I was flirting. Why didn’t I notice he was drunk?
Maybe I wanted him to spend more time with me?
No. No. NO.
It didn’t matter if all of the above was true. I said NO. I
cried, I screamed, I pushed. I DIDN’T CONSENT. To ANY OF IT. But still I kept
quiet because I felt partly responsible. I’d been brought up to. To believe my
actions have consequences; and that’s true, to an extent. My ‘action’ here
though, was to be a friendly young woman accepting a walk home. The
consequence: being attacked by someone I’d trusted. What does that teach young
women? Don’t be friendly in case you are assumed easy? Don’t wear clothing to
look attractive in case you are giving off the wrong signals? Just don’t leave
the house in case someone wants to rape you?
The scary men who jump out of bushes are just ‘men’. Men you
know and men you trust. What a scary thought. I don’t want to spend my life on
Rapist Watch. I don’t want to put myself in a position where I don’t trust any
man I meet. I just want to live in a world where people don’t attack one
another in order to get what they want or think they are entitled to. It really
shouldn’t be too much to ask. The only thing we are 'entitled' to on this earth is oxygen. Not someone else's body or mind. Stop blaming victims and start blaming those who think they are entitled to ignore what a woman wants; her safety and freedom. Basic human rights you are stripping every time you tell her 'her skirt was too short'.
