Tag Archives: Rape

WHAT WOMAN WHO HAS BEEN RAPED WANTS TO GO SOFT ON CRIME?

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I saw a headline today about cities going soft on crime. I understand. In today’s world, it is politically correct and indicative of deep empathy for criminals who engage in criminal acts. A “good person full of kindness in their heart” would go soft on crime and have sympathy for the rage and anguish that must propel people of both genders into crime.

Where does that put me as a woman who was raped at 18 with a knife at my throat and whose major concern was whether “I would be allowed to live to see the sunrise.” I guess, this rape would not qualify as a violent rape because the man was pretending that we were lovers, I actually never saw what he looked like because he had a pillow over my face through the entire rape, with a knife always lightly pressing into my neck. What a nice man! I was eighteen years old and I felt sorry for him. A man who could only feel good about himself by raping me. The problem for me is that the rape never went away. No, my parents didn’t want me to report it to the police, because my mother as probation officer understood that I’d be torn apart in the process, because there were no bruises or scars, except for the ones that have never gone away. I’m 83 now, and going public about what happened when I was 18. It’s time.

What were the scars? I lived for years with 3 or 4 different kinds of locks on my doors and windows. I married a man who wanted to marry me more than I wanted to marry him. We were living together as medical students but he threatened to leave me if I wouldn’t marry him. I was terrified to be alone. And so we married. And no, it didn’t last. There are other stories of other relationships based on my fear of living alone. From the age of 18 to about 40, if I slept on my back I knew I would be awakened by terrifying dreams within 30 minutes. So I could take a short nap without an alarm. I also seemed to have an internal clock that would wake me at 5AM every morning for years and years – the actual time of the rape. The sleep problem didn’t go away until I adopted a baby who needed to sleep on my chest. I had nursed my first child, and so I could sleep next to her on my side and nurse her easily. But sleeping on my side didn’t give me the closeness to this new baby I had taken into my heart. She doesn’t know that she is the reason I can now sleep on my back.

SOFT ON CRIME? I’ve read statistics like 1 in 5 women have been raped. Once sitting at a large auditorium at a doctor’s convention, I looked around and thought “wow! 20% of you have been raped, but we can’t talk about it.” I wrote a book, A Woman in Residence (1982), about my training in obstetrics and gynaecology. In this autobiographical book I wrote about the rape. My editor said, “it’s too much for the reader to deal with,” and insisted I remove it. I always wondered how I was supposed to deal with it, but it was too much for my readers.

Why SOFT on rapists or paedophiles or other criminals? Why should we be soft on them? Why would they ever stop raping? WHY? A crime that has close to 100% recidivism. Rapists rape because they can, because we want to be nice and good people toward them. Afterall, we are mothers, daughters, wives, sisters. We should feel empathy not rage. And why are women out there, 20% of whom have been raped, why should we remain silent? Why should we pretend it’s okay? Why should we be soft on criminals? And why aren’t men screaming to protect us? Why aren’t our fathers, husbands, brothers, sons out there screaming to protect us and going HARD on crime instead of SOFT on crime? Someone explain this to me.

I’m waiting.

-MH

The Silence of the Fathers

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“Son, you are becoming a man. You will feel lust you will have to manage. If you choose to drink you may give up control and then you are nothing but a wild beast of the human jungle. A wild beast of the jungle brings shame and dishonor to your family, to our ancestors, and to other men.”

I wish I knew who said those words, or even if they have ever been said. I certainly don’t hear them being said now. I don’t hear them being said by fathers on Social Media, by the coaches on sports’ teams.  In fact the coaches seem to have been indulging in their own lust.  Today’s music, TV, films?   We live in a culture, East and West, where wanton male sexuality is admired.  Any threat to that male sexual behavior is perceived as emasculating.  It’s as though we are afraid to really lessen the power of the wild beast.  To me, this is an insult to all men, because not all men are wild beasts.  But it does seem they are rather quiet.

Like most women around the world I have my share of stories, molestation, rape (for me a knife held at my throat), college professors who lined up the girls he wanted to bed, wandering surgeons’ hands in the operating room, sexually inappropriate and demeaning remarks in the high echelons of the corporate world…

A volcano of smoldering fire has burst forth with molten lava, which by nature consumes all in proximity.  The wild beasts and gentle men become indistinguishable,  part of the problem being we don’t always see the wild beast hidden inside the gentle man.  And the gentle men seem reluctant to speak up, and organize themselves into a movement that redefines a maleness that excludes rape.  Yes there have been small groups but they never seem to grow.  Where are the Corporate Board members and the CEO’s taking leadership in wiping out sexual discrimination and harassment?  Name a University head who has pledged the same.   Is the problem that the “big fish” are the beasts?  Will strong men in leadership give up the perks of freedom to harass?  I am hoping for these leaders to pledge to raise their sons differently, and to wipe out these offenses in their companies, universities, hospitals, law firms, etc.  So far they seem unwilling.

Since the explosions have been placed in the US congress as the place of battle, I propose  a Truth and Reconciliation Commission be set up, with it’s first charge to address the secret fund of taxpayer money that has been used to settle the cases of sexual misconduct against members of congress.   Let that be public, and as in South Africa, a forum for denouncing the past and pledging to a future that is different,  What we have now is sheer hypocrisy in the Congress.

When I wrote and published, The Preteen’s First Book About Love, Sex, and AIDS, (American Psychiatric Press Inc. 1995) I wrote: “The crossing of sexual boundaries between people, whether in word or touch seems to cause deeper wounds and greater shame than any other kinds of abuse.  The person who commits the crime of sexual abuse seems to pass on the shame and humiliation to the victim.” p.76

Women are angry and hurting, triggered by one woman’s story and one man’s position, both being managed in highly politicized ways.  None of this happens on its own.  Bill Cosby has gone to jail at 81 while Harvey Weinstein and Bill Clinton walk free.  Juanita Broaddrick is silenced as are the women claiming abuse by Keith Ellison.  The conflict is bigger than black and white or right or left., socialist or capitalist.  It is at the core of every culture known to our species — what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman.

The shame eats at us.  I am 75 but I still have places of shame which are untouched by my accomplishments in life.  How do you wash away the feeling of being soiled when a man has forced himself into your body?  How much soap?  How many years?

The wild beasts, be they doctors, professors, corporate executives — they had and have no shame.  They are often treated as though the offenses are so old they are outweighed by these men’s accomplishments and good deeds.  We women carry the shame for them and that burden has become too great to carry in silence.  There seems to be no expiration date on shame, so why should there be one for the offence?