I was raped 6 years ago but I forgot about it. In fact, I didn’t exactly realize it had happened. 

It wasn’t one of those “violent” rapes, where a man comes out of the darkness and forces himself on you. Technically, this one would be considered a “date rape.” 

It was a guy I knew from a small poetry open mic that I went to every Monday. I had recently re-discovered my love of writing after several years of not writing. A girl in a poetry class invited me (we quickly became passionate friends and roommates) and that open mic was a powerful healing medium for me, ever since fleeing an abusive home life. 

Every week I wrote poems that expressed my hurt and anger toward my abusive dad and all the difficulties as an adult that followed. Sortovia was my (supposedly) safe space to share them and have people listen and feel the emotions I put forth from the page. 

Ryan was the leader/host of the group. He was 40 and I was 23. After a night of drinking with the crew after Sortovia, Ryan gave me a ride home and then tried to kiss me goodbye. 

I didn’t want to kiss him. I wasn’t even attracted to him. But for some reason I let him kiss me. We had sex that night. I didn’t have the confidence or the sense of self to simply tell him I wasn’t interested so I passively accepted and we slept together from time to time for the next several months, always with that premise. 

After several therapy sessions, I believe the reason I ever consented to have sex with him was because of a few reasons:

1. Trauma bonding – This often happens when someone experiences an unsafe environment during childhood. Over time, that trauma numbs our feelings so we don’t feel the pain. An intense or unsafe relationship can make us “feel again” (even if/though they are negative feelings), which draws us to that relationship again and again. 

2. He filled a “father figure” need in me. Ever since I can remember, I would latch onto my friends’ dads (nonsexually). We would tease other, joke around, they’d give me life advice, and I would often spend the night at my friends’ houses when things were particularly bad with my own dad growing up, so they provided me with the safety I needed. Subconsciously, I believed that Ryan was providing me with that “safety” I craved.

3. He was willing to listen to me. I distracted myself from my trauma by keeping myself extremely busy with work and university, so those days sitting on Ryan’s porch and having someone to listen to my struggles felt good to me. I may have believed that if I didn’t give him the sex he wanted, I wouldn’t continue to get that support. 

One day I came home from the bar and Ryan was at my apartment – he’d been hanging out with my roommate. As soon as I stepped in the door, I realized I was too drunk to be indoors. The room was spinning and I felt sick to my stomach and needed fresh air so I left. 

Ryan ran after me and offered to walk with me while I shook it off. A few minutes after we started walking, he tried to make out with me.

But he kept kissing me and said, “I want to fuck you right here in the park.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me into the park, but it had been raining and the ground was muddy. 

I said, “The mud is ruining my shoes.” But he continued to lead me through the park, until he found some dry dirt and we fucked. It didn’t hurt, but I remember that I hated the feeling and I was glad when he finished quickly. I asked him to do something that might make me feel good, and he replied, “My hand hurts; I can’t do it.” 

I got up angrily and ran home. He ran after me, saying he’d left his phone at my apartment, so I ran upstairs, grabbed his phone and threw it down the stairs to him, watching it shatter as I went inside and locked the door. 

I Didn’t Admit to Myself That It Was Rape

The next day, I told my roommate about it and narrated the story like, “We fucked in the park last night and it was so adventurous and fun.” A few days later, I still felt upset about the event, but I believed I was upset about the fact that ‘he got off and I didn’t.’ I revised my narrative of the event to my roommate and she was confused about why I had positioned the story to sound like I’d been having fun. 

A few days after that, I remember sitting at the breakfast table with her and I said, “I’m trying to figure out if what Ryan did was rape.” She responded, “If you felt that what happened was inappropriate, it was inappropriate.” 

The drama lasted for a few weeks because our group of friends gossipped about the situation for a while. I believe there was some speculation about whether Ryan had actually raped me or not. I remember similar speculative conversations about another girl who had claimed Ryan had raped her and whether or not it was true. 

He left town some time later and I pushed the event out of my memory. Since that happened, I would hear his name from time to time, would quickly change the subject, and not allow myself to think about it. 

I also left Portland a while later when I decided to travel and eventually moved to Serbia. Since I was no longer part of that community, it was easy to never think about Ryan again.

 

How It All Resurfaced 

I’ve been seeing a therapist for the past 1.5 years, where I realized that I had pushed down past traumas and locked them down tight inside my body. 

Therapy has been a process of learning to feel the emotions I never wanted to have, feeling the pain that came up, and letting it run its course. As a result, all the memories about Ryan came flooding back. 

My therapist helped me admit that, yes, Ryan raped me and it wasn’t my fault, even though I’d consented to sleep with him in the past.

This Is Not An Unusual Story

This weekend, I went to a concert with my friend. She and I were dancing and having fun, when a guy came over and started hitting on her. He touched her hair and her arm without her consent, and continued to do so even when she cringed and tried to back away. 

My response was to grab his arm forcefully and take it off her. Long story short, he finally left my friend alone but her experience at the gig was not the same after that. I was extremely angry. I was angry that men think they can touch women without their consent. That they don’t stop when the woman clearly doesn’t enjoy it. 

I was even angry that my friend didn’t get angry – that she smiled at him, told him everything was ok, but would he please just go away. 

Her lack of self defense is not her fault. My lack of self defense was not my fault. Our culture (and I mean ALL cultures, whether they are Serbian, American, or anything else) conditions us women to accept what men decide to do to us. 

In the days of early America (post Native American slaughter and land stealing), it was legal for a husband to beat his wife to death. The neighbors would stand by and say, “Well, if he believed it was necessary, it must have been.” 

A coworker of mine once told me that she was raped at a party, but she wasn’t sure if it ‘counted’ as rape since she was the one who got so drunk in the first place. We continue to live in a world where men get away with violence toward women, and women are told that they deserve whatever they are dealt. 

Why So Many Women Don’t Even Realize They’ve Been Raped 

When that coworker told me the rape might be her fault, I was quick to assure her that the entire thing was the guy’s fault and she was not to blame. 

When I told my roommate about my rape, she was quick to assure me that if I didn’t want it, then it shouldn’t have happened. 

I was quick to yank the concert perv’s arm off my friend. And yet, I didn’t feel able to yell for help or run away when Ryan raped me. 

Why? 

Because rape is more than the physical repercussions that happen during a violent rape. It’s about the emotional aspect too. That’s why the term “date rape” was invented. 

Rape is about disrespect. 

It’s about being used. 

It’s about stripping away the victim’s right to decide what happens to their own body. 

It’s about smashing down women’s will and power and reinforcing horrific patriarchal, misogynistic ideals. 

It’s about taking something designed to give and share pleasure and intimacy and making it coercive. 

And when you’re the recipient of this level of abuse, coercion, and loss of the most basic human right, you internalize it. 

We women internalize sexism. 

As much as we fight to educate ourselves and others, as much as we dismantle the patriarchy piece by piece, we have years, generations, and lifetimes of patriarchal internalization coded into our DNA. 

It’s called rape culture. Read about it here. 

How We Can Help Women Stop Internalizing the Patriarchy and Fight Back

For starters, we stick up for those who can’t stick up for themselves. 

If your friend is being bothered at a concert: don’t smile at the guy. Don’t give him a mean stare and think that’ll teach him. Tell him to fuck off. If he looks stronger than you, find someone who can help. And reassure your friend that this was not their fault. 

But there’s more to it than that. 

We’ve got to combat the internalization by reprogramming that patriarchal DNA inside of us. That happens when we build up our self love so strong that we become our own mama bear. 

When we learn to see ourselves as so strong that we can fight for ourselves. We don’t have to follow the rom-com induced standard of “hoping a man will save you from the other dangerous men,” thereby reinforcing the idea that the women are the passive, helpless element in the equation. 

Here are some of the best resources to combat rape culture:

• Therapy (I use BetterHelp – it’s affordable and my therapist is amazing.) 

• Counter the mainstream patriarchal narrative by filling up your social feed with feminist education. 
  • Bitch Media: A Feminist Response to Pop Culture
  • Kelly Diels: Feminist Business Consultant
  • Stacie Glass: Survivor Coach for Sexual Trauma
  • The Meteor: Journalists and Creatives for Gender Equality

• Educate yourself with books
  • Radical Belonging: How to survive and thrive in an unjust world, Lindo Bacon
  • Outrageous Acts and Everday Rebellions, Gloria Steinem
  • Not That Bad: Dispatches from rape culture, Roxane Gay
  • Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde

Entrepreneurs: You Have the Ability to Leverage Your Audience for the Cause

I’m a copywriter. Between my various social media accounts, I have a couple thousand people who have access to my writing. Thanks to algorithms, about 10% of them actually see what I write. 

Never underestimate the impact you can have, even with a small audience…but it’s still a pretty small range of people I can impact by writing under my own name. 

HOWEVER, after helping dozens of entrepreneurs promote their work to their own audiences, I’ve impacted thousands of people with my writing. 

• I work with entrepreneurs who empower women to gain the confidence to start their own businesses that revolutionize their industries. 

• Business coaches who help their clients cross million-dollar income thresholds so they can donate to causes like sexual assualt survivors, giving a leg up to minorities, helping refugees, etc. 

• Therapists, mindset coaches, and culture-shaping influencers are able to market their business so they can help more people. 

So whether you’re on the front lines (therapists, business coaches, influencers, etc.) or behind the scenes (copywriters, web designers, assistants, ad managers, etc.) empowering them to grow their business…

 

If you’re an entrepreneur and you’re ready to sell more programs, get more clients, grow your audience so you can impact more lives, you’re welcome to join my Facebook group, where I offer a bunch of education on how to do that. 

And if you’re reading this, realizing that you’ve also been sexually assaulted (or you’re already working on healing from that), please refer to the books, websites, or a therapist I’ve mentioned above to help you get through it.