part 61

I have been thinking a lot about the whole concept of “believability” in our culture. We use phrases like “the truth is stranger than fiction,” and “it’s too good to be true,” but when it comes down to actually believing something good or strange we insist it must be fiction.

Where did this whole notion come from? Is it a result of the exposure to media over the past hundred years throughout which our society has been inundated with images and ideas and stories that change and shift what our views of “bad” or “evil” are? Have we been desensitized to shocking acts of violence against each other?

Is it because we believe that exposing anything that has garnered attention previously will be seen as merely an attempt to garner attention?

We use phrases like, “I can’t believe this could happen to me,” and “this is something that only happens to other people, or in the movies, or on TV, or whatever.”

Why? Why does knowledge of something that has been expressed via a fictionalized construction make that something from then on fiction?

Why do we say we never thought it could happen to us? That is such a stupid thing to say, as “it” happens to “us” every day. One in six women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. One in SIX. Simply going to college significantly increases the chances of being sexually assaulted for women in the United States.

(for more statistics – and the source of my citing these statistics – go to www.rainn.org)

I understand that it is logical to assume that if there are six sticks and only one of them is short, you will be more likely to not draw the short stick. That doesn’t mean the short stick is not there. It does not mean that the person who drew the short stick cannot somehow be connected with all of the other sticks.

It does not mean that if someone next to you has told you “I drew the short stick” they are only trying to get attention or to feel special because – statistically speaking – they are more likely to not draw the short stick.

If drawing the short stick is analogous to being sexually assaulted, the denial that any individual could possibly have the short stick is the denial that any woman could possibly be sexually assaulted, and that is ridiculous.

We all talk a big game. When there is an overt, proven-beyond-any -doubt act of sexual assault, we are all aghast. How could anyone do anything like that to someone else? Of course most people will adamantly oppose such behavior as acceptable. After all, there is no ambiguity – the act has already been proven to have happened.

If we can’t get around acknowledging that something is real, such as a proven-beyond-any-doubt sexual assault, then we can’t get around remaining neutral or apathetic as to whether or not something is okay or not. We love – LOVE – to judge, and when an opportunity such as a proven-beyond-any-doubt instance of sexual assault is presented, we LOVE to speak strongly against it.

Anyone failing to speak against it can be grouped in with the monster who actually committed it.

What does it take to get to proven-beyond-any-doubt, though? That is a standard that we – as a society – demand be met before acknowledging that a sexual assault ever even happened.

Law enforcement will not even look at pressing charges against someone accused of rape unless there is more than the victim’s own account of what happened. There is no such thing as “circumstantial evidence” when it comes to proving rape or other sexual assault. The voice of this kind of victim carries no weight all by itself.

As a victim, that has made it very difficult for me to even acknowledge to myself that what my abusers and assaulters have done to me is actually wrong. Especially at the beginning of the process of confronting what happened to me, I looked and looked for some sort of physical, tangible evidence that it was true. I held the standard of proving-beyond-any-doubt that these things happened at all to myself.

My OWN SELF. I mean, the shit happened to me, and I am demanding that I prove to myself beyond any doubt that it happened to me before I even start to think about accepting in my own mind that it really happened.

My mind is very slippery. It tries to take me to all kinds of places rather than to the point at which I know how I was hurt and who it was that hurt me. Having been brainwashed by my dad, and having that brainwashing reinforced by so many people who lived around me as I grew up, has made getting to that point all the more difficult.

Experiencing those things has been in itself bad enough for me to deal with. The gigantic mind-fucking that has accompanied those experiences has turned pain into torture. It is madness knowing that something bad happened to me, but believing that I am not credible enough to my own self to accept that it was real.

Having been on this recovery journey for about five years, I am seeing that all of the work I have to do to get beyond the mind-fucking and the torture and the pain has rendered whether or not anyone else believes me as much less significant than before I went through all of this work.

I am extremely and eternally grateful for the people who believe what I have told them and who support me without question. However, being able to believe myself has gotten me to the point where I really feel strong enough to ask all of those supportive people to join me in exposing this kind of abuse.

Well, maybe not that strong, but definitely strong enough to ask myself to work to expose this kind of abuse.

I really feel the time has come for some serious boat-rocking.

This is going to be an interesting summer.