This kind of body shame came up often in my interviews.
I actually really hate a lot of things on my body that I feel are sexual, like my chest. So, I just wear baggy clothes. I never show cleavage. I’m just like, “Don’t look at them; don’t look at me.” Hiding it. I wanted to bind or get a reduction or something like that because I just don’t want to be viewed as sexual. (Jasmine)
I remember a couple of times very vividly in college standing in front of a mirror and just being, “Why do I look this way? Why did you make me like this?” I mean, I came very close to spending $10,000 on a breast reduction for no apparent reason. (Piper)
At first glance, the modesty doctrine may appear harmless—perhaps even healthy—but the logic of victim-blaming that we too often see in rape cases begins here. When we demand that an individual dress in just the right way so as not to inspire sexual feelings in others, we set a precedent of blaming individuals for the thoughts, feelings, and actions of other people that can play out in dangerous ways in rape and abuse cases.
Why didn’t you do that? Why didn’t you cover up? You shouldn’t have been wearing a skirt that was that short. You caused him to stumble. You lured him. You caused him to lust. It’s your fault. You don’t want to be a stumbling block. Why would you make it harder for the people who you care about and your friends and your brothers in Christ? It completely perpetuates rape culture! (Emily)
In Laura’s story, we see what can happen when one experiences sexual trauma within a community that has wholeheartedly embraced shaming theologies such as the modesty doctrine. The community’s understanding that women and girls are responsible for men’s and boys’ sexual thoughts, feelings, and actions toward them can halt a survivor’s own internal healing and, if she seeks support from within this community, can even lead to further traumatic experiences, such as having the first question your father asks after you tell him you were raped be: “What were you wearing?”
* * *
In recent years, The Boston Globe’s work, highlighted in the Oscar-winning film Spotlight, has forced us to face the systemic concealment of sexual abuse in the Catholic church. The Boston Globe’s journalists challenged the assumption that religious sexual abuse cases are outliers when they exposed the “extensive and almost systemic abuse by clergy.”
Boston Globe journalist Michael Rezendes spoke with The New Yorker about the ten thousand pages of Church documents the journalists reviewed that ultimately revealed the extent of the abuse the Church had been covering up: “What was not in the documents was any indication anywhere of concern for the children who had been harmed. Not anywhere. It was all about protecting the reputation of the Church, and then, in parens, keeping it secret. It was always about the secrecy.”2
Yet the classification of sexual violence is not limited to the Catholic church. Whether we are looking at religious institutions, colleges and universities, our armed services, or any number of other places, we are consistently faced with the painful reality that sexual violence survivors who choose to speak up are likely to be silenced by the institutions and communities to whom they go for support if the violence could be in any way associated with that institution or community. Many survivors are told not to press charges or alert the authorities, as the institutions will deal with the perpetrator themselves—often by quietly moving the perpetrator on to a new community, as we saw happen with my own church youth pastor. And some survivors have it even worse—being actively shamed, blamed, and disbelieved by those to whom they turn for help and healing.
* * *
For more than a year, Laura remained silent. But when she heard a professor say that most survivors do not report the sexual crimes committed against them, she decided she no longer wanted to be part of the silent majority. Coming forward brought its own challenges. The University of Wisconsin determined that “since both parties were drinking, consent was ‘moot’ ”; Laura filed a Title IX complaint against the university; the Department of Education ruled against her; and the police never brought charges.3
“I was so desperate to be believed,” Laura said when we turned the recorder back on. “I had a very twisted thought that if I killed myself, then they would know that it really happened. And the whole time I struggled for justice, I had these overwhelming desires to go into churches and seek solace, but I had a really messed up relationship with religion after the rape. Because the church says nothing to survivors; people say nothing to survivors. It’s one of the worst forms of suffering. And there’s nothing for you. I’ve never seen a sermon crafted for people who suffered from sexual trauma. What? They don’t know this happens? They don’t know this is damaging? The only messages that come close to addressing it are the worst ever. We need healing. We need support.”
Silence—not just the silencing of survivors, but the absence of any mention of this incredibly common form of trauma from the pulpit or (in many churches) from anywhere else—is another way that sexual violence is classified. That is to say, it literally becomes classified information. Although 90 percent of female teenagers who are active in their faith communities say that they would like programs to help them avoid rape, sexual harassment, and sexual abuse, many of their churches will never directly discuss these issues.4
“I guess it’s playing into the idea that there is a certain type of person that gets raped,” Laura said. “There’s a certain type of woman who’s asking for it, or who is looser or whatever the victim-blaming stereotype is. There’s a certain type of person that deserves it, or is vulnerable to it, or finds herself in those settings. Within religious communities that stereotype makes people think that ‘other’ people get raped, not Christian women, not people within the church. It’s prostitutes; it’s drunks; it’s party girls; it’s something else.
“My sister actually got her pastor to come talk to me two months ago. My family used it as an opportunity to preach to me, to call me back. This pastor knew nothing about what to say to me. He admitted it a lot: ‘I’m not a psychologist. I’m not trained.’ That was part of what he was saying. ‘I don’t know what to say to you.’ I was like, ‘Okay. Everything I ever thought about no message existing is still true.’ ”
Then Laura paused.
“There was one sermon from another pastor,” she said thoughtfully. “He was talking about ministering to this young woman who believed that there was something wrong with her because she was raped, like she was at fault or she was evil. He said that was a lie, a lie from the Devil to keep her down. That’s part of the message I would like to hear from the church. Because I don’t think people see rape victims as innocent. I think that most people view them as having some responsibility.
“And then, another time,” she now recalled, “there was a chaplain who cried when she heard my story. I felt bad that she was crying. But I also was kind of touched. Showing emotion, crying . . . she wasn’t afraid to do that. It made an impression. My story is sad; it should be cried over.”
Laura didn’t find justice on campus or in court, so—while in law school—she started an organization to help others find it. For eight years she ran SurvJustice, a nonprofit organization that provides survivors of sexual violence with legal assistance for administrative complaints, campus hearings, civil lawsuits, and criminal cases—first as a student group, and then as a national nonprofit. Having recently stepped down from the executive director role so SurvJustice can continue to grow under a more experienced executive director’s leadership, Laura is proud of the work she was able to accomplish while at the organization, including lobbying for and then advising the White House Task Force to Protect Students Against Sexual Assault established by the Obama administration, and helping to ensure the passage of the 2013 Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act.
“I feel like a big part of what I do is try to give a narrative to survivors that you don’t have to be broken or ashamed,” Laura said. “You can be strong. You can change the world.
“I didn’t ce
lebrate graduating college because it wasn’t a celebratory moment for me. It felt like I had survived. However, graduating law school, I wanted to celebrate. I felt like I had overcome. I asked my parents to come up for the graduation ceremony. My siblings bought me a necklace for graduation since they could not attend. It’s a heart with a cross in it. On the front is ‘April 4th, 2011,’ which is seven years to the day I was raped—the day my story changed civil rights law under Title IX in this country. On the back, it says, ‘Redeemed.’ I’m not quite sure what they meant by that, but I feel like maybe the idea is that I was sinful and this is God redeeming me, taking something that was ugly and evil and maybe sinful, I don’t know, and using it for good? If that is what they meant, it reinforces what I always suspected—the reason why my family left me alone after the rape is they really viewed me as part of a sin that occurred, that I had caused it or had drawn it, or somehow had left myself vulnerable to it, which is apparently just as bad.
“And yet,” Laura added, “when my mother tried to shame me in order to prevent me from using my real name when I talked to the media, it was my sisters who called me up and told me, ‘There is no reason to feel shame about this.’ In fact, they told me I needed to do it to show others there was no shame. They helped give me the strength to reject the stigma.
“And I think things are changing. It always surprises me, in a good way, when I see parents fighting for their child. In a case I was working on recently, a rape case, the victim’s family was all around her. They were all there, every single day. Grandparents sitting next to parents, sitting next to uncles, sitting next to family friends. They were all there. That’s what it should be. You should have whole churches sitting there. Maybe if there were messages in the church . . .” she trailed off.
At the time of our conversation, Laura was working on a case at Catholic University, “a really prominent college here that’s under Title IX investigation,” she explained. Reading through the university’s old president-approved Code of Student Conduct,I she told me she observed something unsettling.
“They had a list of misconducts,” she told me. “The first category of misconduct has to do with doing physical violence to someone, causing bodily injury,” she said, holding her hand high in the air. “You would think that would be where you might find sexual assault,” she said. “It’s not.
“The second category of misconduct is about harassment and the hurt that that causes,” she continued, moving her hand down an inch. “You’d think sexual harassment would be there. But it’s not.
“Then, aaaaall the way near the bottom,” she says, moving her hand down several more inches, “there’s another category called ‘Sexual Offenses.’ Even that section doesn’t start with sexual assault; it doesn’t start with sexual harassment; it actually starts with consensual sex and how God intended it to be for a man and a wife.” And there in the Sexual Offenses section, alongside consensual sex outside of marriage, you find sexual assault.5
Laura shook her head. “I think that’s the whole thing about the church. I read it and the absurdity is so obvious to me, but it’s also like, ‘Yes, it makes sense that you’re more worried about sex outside of marriage than you are about rape.’ People think rape doesn’t happen to people in the church, but we need to protect against pre-marital sex. I just feel like I fell through a crack in the church.”
“Not even a crack,” I said. “A category. You fell into the Sexual Misconduct category. It’s not that the purity movement has nothing to say about sexual assault; it’s that it has something to say about it and that something is—”
“Worse,” Laura completed my sentence. “I’m on national television speaking publicly as a survivor and I’ve never gotten justice in a court, even once. To me, that’s God. That’s not me. Having a national organization, having some stability with that, each thing is a gift from God that helps stabilize me in my path.
“I founded my organization before I graduated law school. I did it for all of 2014 without charging any fees for advocacy services. I just went all in. In 2015, I became a lawyer and I was struggling. At some point, I was just like, ‘Why did you do this? What is wrong with you that you didn’t think this was going to be really hard and that you might fall flat on your face and be absolutely broke? How did that thought never come up?’ It was this really intense moment of panic right before I got a big grant through Echoing Green. I viewed that grant as God saying, ‘You’re on the right path; let me help you out. You’re starting to have doubts.’
“Yes, it’s an odd degree of certainty. I look back and I think, ‘How? Why? What were you—?’ I guess I just try to follow because I think the path is being laid out. Every day that I wake up and go to work, I believe it’s God’s will that I’m alive.”
* * *
As I walked toward the door to leave Laura’s apartment that day, I watched Laura’s boyfriend stand and come toward her, awkward yet attentive. As he did, it occurred to me that Laura’s boyfriend had done for her that day what she had wished her parents would have so many years ago. He listened. Silently, as she had asked him to, for hours. He didn’t tell Laura what she should think or feel or what she should have done then or should do now. He just listened to what she did think, feel, and do.
As I saw Laura turn to her boyfriend, I closed the door quietly behind me and moved quickly down the hallway. It was their time now.
* * *
I. The Code of Student Conduct referred to here, which was last updated in October of 2014, is not the school’s current policy.
* * *
MOVEMENT II
* * *
Stumbling Through Church
5
* * *
Man-Made Girls
“Come in,” I heard Blue say.
I opened the door slowly. Blue Jones, the musician I was studying with my sophomore year of college, almost never called me into her office when I knocked. She preferred to open the door wide and present herself to me. She’d look me up and down. Then finally, she’d invite me in.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, peeking into Blue’s office.
Blue sat silently at her desk, her jaw set as though to say, I don’t take any shit. She wore a slick black suit jacket, an emerald silk shirt, and hoop earrings the size of a fist. Blue gestured for me to sit on the small stool in the corner of her office, and I set my acoustic guitar down against her office wall. I fumbled with the zipper of my JanSport backpack, removed a pen and a pad of notebook paper, and sat down on the high stool. Blue waited. I poised my pen over the pad in my lap and looked up at her.
“Are you settled?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Are you sure?” she pushed.
I nodded.
Then, she leaned dramatically across the desk toward her answering machine, and pressed play.
“Hi Blue,” squeaked a small, thin, high-pitched voice. “Um, I’m calling because, I’m sorry but, um, I’m just feeling really sick this morning and, uh (cough, cough), I was just wondering if maybe we could, um, reschedule our independent study?”
It was a message I had left Blue the week before.
“I’m just feeling, like, really, really terrible, and um, well, just, well I guess just call me and we’ll find another time to meet this week if that’s okay with you? Or if you can’t do later this week just let me know and I’ll come in today anyway. But I don’t want to get you sick and . . . anyway, thank you. I’m really sorry. Okay. Sorry. Bye.”
The tape stopped.
“What was that?” Blue looked up and asked me.
“Um . . .” I stammered.
“More to the point,” she corrected herself, “who was that?”
As usual, I had no idea what she was up to.
“Me?” I looked at her to see if I had gotten the right answer. Blue looked away with exasperation.
Clearly, I had not.
“You,” she repeated. “That was you?”
“I
mean—” I began.
“That squeaky little I’m-so-sorry-somebody, that was you?” she continued.
I opened my mouth to respond and then shut it again. I wasn’t sure where Blue was going with this. Was she mad at me for calling in sick last week?
“I’m sorry I—” I finally tried.
“I’m disappointed to hear that,” Blue cut me off again. “I’m disappointed to hear that that was you.” She let her words linger in the air for a moment before going on. “Because if that’s all there is in there . . .” She shook her head.
I looked down at my notebook, ashamed of myself without really knowing why. My pen still stood readied on the page. What was this? Some kind of lesson? What did she want me to say? Finally, I set my pen down on the paper and looked up at her, pleading with my eyes for her to explain.
“You’re not fooling me!” Blue finally hollered. She walked around the desk and threw herself down on the chair opposite my stool. “You may be fooling you, but you’re not fooling me.” She slammed the rewind button on the answering machine. The tape spun backward, screaming its high-pitched zip of words in reverse. Finally, the rewind button snapped back. I jumped.
“Nobody’s voice is that high,” Blue said, leaning toward me. “And I’ve heard you sing, Linda. So I know. That little girl on the answering machine? She isn’t you. Stop. Trying. To. Pretend. She. Is.”
With that, she pressed play again.
And again.
And again.
We listened to that recording until I had every pause, every lift, and every dip of my own voice memorized. And then, Blue told me to go home and think about what I had heard.
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