When I was about thirty, I told one of my good friends about it. She said, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
I called one of my friends and he came over. If it weren’t for him …
* * *
The Surprising Bravery of Others
ANONYMOUS V
While I was going through the hearings, I had really bad panic attacks—ripping out my hair, sobbing. My friends had to see that, and there was nothing they could do. They couldn’t even call my parents. So a lot of my friendships took really big hits. Some of my friends stood by me, but others said, understandably, “This is too difficult and I can’t take it.” They were powerless watching me self-destruct. And I’m very sorry for that. And there’s not a way for me to make amends there. When you’re in that moment, you think it’s only happening to you, but it’s not. It’s a whole village going through that.
My roommates were phenomenal; scary stuff happened that spring. When I went back, I didn’t want my friends to have to check on me, which they did, though at the time I didn’t even realize it.
I did not like myself in the year and a half following my assault (though I’m beginning to now). I was not a good friend or a good daughter, but by and large the people in my life haven’t let me give the apology I feel I need to, because my actions were “understandable,” “not my fault,” or “it was such a hard time.” Whenever I speak to a reporter and am characterized as brave or write a piece and receive feedback calling me “strong,” I feel like I have fundamentally misled that person in a serious way. I do not see myself as strong or brave. The people in my life who stuck by me are brave and strong and resilient. I don’t really have a choice. I’m twenty-one and not particularly ready to hole up in my room for the rest of forever, so I had to find a way to incorporate my assault into my new reality. The people in my life did have a choice daily. And they chose to stay, and they helped me rebuild. Some had to leave along the way for their own mental health, but all of them at least tried to stay and help. That is bravery. I think I’ve learned gratitude from all of this, but I’m not always able to express it, and people certainly don’t let me because they think that I’ve had a worse lot.
Bravery to me looks like my roommate driving me to a psychiatric hospital my junior year, playing One Direction and talking about who she should ask to a semiformal, as if she were driving me to a mall, trying to make the experience seem normal when it was in no way normal. It was a Sunday night, and when she returned to campus she had deadlines that she wouldn’t be excused from. Bravery looks like my friends who answered calls to walk me to class and had to choose whether to say something they thought might be soothing or to try to distract me. Being strong looks like my brother supporting me when I was self-centered, erratic, and a tornado of emotions. That is okay and it is understandable given what I went through. But I think it is also okay to feel remorse for what I put my loved ones through. No matter how justifiable your behavior is, you don’t want to cause your friends and family pain. I hate that in my first attempt at a relationship after the assault (though it never was defined as a “relationship” in formal terms) my assailant was always in bed with us, and that was really hard on the new, caring guy. My mom and dad walked on eggshells around me when they found out about the assault.
* * *
Bravery to me looks like my roommate driving me to a psychiatric hospital my junior year, playing One Direction and talking about who she should ask to a semiformal, as if she were driving me to a mall.
* * *
Professors wanted to cut me slack, but I let them down time and time again with deadlines. It’s hard, because all of my actions are protective and explainable by trauma, but they still impacted other people in real ways. I wasn’t pleasant to be around. I feel guilt. I think there’s some disconnect between how rape survivors are painted in the media and how we feel. I feel like I was pretty destructive to be around.
Code Switch: 我的家庭
A. ZHOU
When I was two years old, my dad immigrated to the United States on an education visa; I turned four on the plane when my mother and I followed. I am close to my parents. I see them as a gateway to layers of culture, heritage, and ancestry. Even today, trips back to China mean my parents introducing me to relatives I have never met, or explaining various phrases and colloquialisms in Mandarin.
My parents have always made it clear that they love me and hold high expectations for me. I’ve internalized these expectations and turned them into personal standards. I know what they lost in moving to the United States, and I know that the move was primarily for me and my younger sister. I’ve never doubted that my mom would sacrifice anything for me. I’m her daughter and her American dream.
It’s been three years since my rape and I’ve never told my mother about it. I’m not sure I will. Every week I call her and every week she reminds me not to stay out too late or walk alone in the dark. She’s never said the word rape, but we both know that’s what she’s worried about. I don’t want to break her heart by telling her it’s already happened. More important, I don’t want her to live thinking that it was her fault, which she almost certainly would.
I am also scared, scared that she will reject me, or cope by telling one of her friends, and then the entire insular community I grew up with will know what I’ve experienced. I don’t know if I have enough Chinese to accurately express everything that’s happened, and I don’t know if she has enough English to understand. I do know, however, that I don’t want to be responsible for the pain I would create by telling my parents.
* * *
I’m her daughter and her American dream. It’s been three years since my rape and I’ve never told her about it.
* * *
I’ve been heavy with hints about survivorship, telling her that I lead the interpersonal violence prevention group on campus and that I sit on committees for sexual assault organizations. Once, I even linked her to a website of survivor stories, knowing full well my story had enough identifying factors and was sitting on page 4.
My mother does not see what she doesn’t want to see.
She reads my Tumblr and calls me asking what the word queer means, but she does not recognize me as a queer woman. There’s a list of things I would tell her if she asks. She never does.
My mother and, I think, many in my Chinese community still live in a 1980s or 1990s mainstream China. They know they are “other” here, but they are not worried because they have ties to a nation where the food is better and the language is musical. Rape is a horrific act only committed by strangers, and good girls are certainly never raped. LGBTQ is a thing that exists, and should be honored and respected, but it doesn’t happen in China, nor in Chinese America.
I think I would be perfectly happy hiding my survivorhood from my parents if it weren’t for my little sister. Growing up eight and a half years older than her, I started raising her from the time I was ten, making sure she was fed, clean, and not trying to roll down the stairs. I spent summers taking care of her while my parents worked, and I would skip school if she was sick. Many times she’s accidentally called me Mom, and in some ways it’s true.
I live as a role model for her. I explore Asian America and what it means to be Generation 1.5—someone who immigrated as a child—so that when she asks, I can make sure she doesn’t stumble at the same points I did. Much of my activism around feminism and race is to make her world safer.
When I think about my sister going to college as a starry-eyed first-year, my heart seizes. She’s becoming a teenager this year, and I have already had many talks with her about consent and valuing her body. I tell her she’s beautiful because it’s true, but also because white girls can be vicious and sometimes you don’t feel pale enough or your nose feels too flat. I tell her she’s worth the world and shouldn’t have to change for anyone, and I am terrified that my words might not be sinking in.
* * *
When I think about my sister going to college as
a starry-eyed first-year—my heart seizes.
* * *
I don’t know how to talk to my sister about sexual assault, but I have to. I want to be a resource for her if she ever needs it. But I don’t know how to do that without telling her that I’m a survivor. If I wasn’t willing to tell my mother that I’d been raped because I was scared of causing her pain, there’s no way in hell I’ll do it to my sister. So I’ll insist she keeps me updated on her life, and remind her to call, and get worried when she doesn’t check in. Essentially, I’ll turn into my mother.
As a part of code-switching between being the perfect, ambitious daughter and whoever else I am, I have created families to fill in for my parents. My parents will never hear me read my survivor stories, but my friend-family will. I won’t cry to my parents about the betrayal I felt when I was triggered by the director of a rape crisis center, but tripfam, my closest group of friends, was there.
The first time I caught myself creating family, searching for someone who’d understand when my parents didn’t, I found it in my best friend, J. He was the first person I went to about my rape, the person who helped me define my experience. We talked about how isolated we both felt at our universities, and how we couldn’t separate our own standards from the ones our parents had for us. We talked about how terrified we were of failing and what it would mean to start a family in the United States. We talked about video games and food, and he tore his hair out trying to teach me how to play League of Legends. It wouldn’t be a complete day unless J and I Skyped or exchanged a hundred texts.
Sophomore year, J was hit with a bout of serious depression and it became harder to stay in touch. I’d found my niche community at my university, which meant less time to spend at his. He started cutting me out. I didn’t fight as hard as I could have to stay around. Spring of sophomore year, J was diagnosed with cancer. He called me instantly. We talked about treatments. He started chemotherapy the day after. They removed three tumors through surgery. I left the country for the summer, thinking he would enter remission.
Despite all the rounds of chemo or radiation therapy, J died the following April. This was the first serious intersection of my found family and my biological one. I helped J’s mom plan his memorial during spring break. My own mother watched and struggled to comfort me that entire week, but I don’t think she ever understood how essential J was to me.
My two keys to successful code-switching are: I’ve never introduced any of my friends to my parents, and I never display extreme emotion around my mother or father. That week I broke both of those rules. During the day, I constantly talked about the logistics of J’s memorial, emotionally detached but focusing all my energy on planning the perfect event. I stayed up through the night, struggling to write his eulogy. Occasionally my mother would knock on the door and try to send me to bed, but it was easy to send her away. We would prepare breakfast the next morning, she would tactfully ignore my swollen eyes, and we’d get my sister ready for school.
That week, my mother spent more time with my father, discussing how best to approach me, than she did in my space. My parents will never bring up difficult topics unless prompted. Silence is viewed as the best comfort. Having been raised to never ask for help, I didn’t have the words to demand the emotional support that I needed from them.
My dad drove me the two hours to J’s memorial, but he stayed in the car the entire time. My assailant/perpetrator sat in the fifth row as I gave my eulogy. He sat directly in front of me during the reception. I firmly believe that the only reason I didn’t break that day was because J was watching over me. He still is. I hope he’s haunting the fuck out of my rapist.
* * *
I miss J. The weeks after his passing, I was all over the place. I hadn’t realized how integral he was to my healing. Losing him sent me back to square one. No one in this world knows my full story anymore. I’m not sure anyone ever will. I won’t ever have someone like J to talk me down from panic attacks or understand me at a level where I don’t have to say what I’m feeling. It’s been half a year and I still don’t know how to recover.
* * *
No one in this world knows my full story anymore. I’m not sure anyone ever will.
* * *
However, I’m lucky to be surrounded by friends who fill in, my chosen family. I draw power and strength from my community, from giving and lending support, and from weathering hard times together. I’ve found people I can explore survivorship with, to navigate racial identity, queer identity, and immigrant identity together. I feel strong. I am learning that my chosen family does not diminish the importance of my birth family. They augment it, and I no longer have to feel guilt about depending so heavily on them. I know I’m lucky in this regard. One day I’ll speak up in my Chinese community, but I feel so much better knowing that I have a second family to fall back on.
Interpersonal violence in Asian communities is underreported. Right now, I am contributing to that underreporting. We need to have serious conversations about why we are so committed to denying realities. We need to learn how to address the silence, stigma, and shame that keep us from supporting each other. One day, I’ll begin dismantling the immigrant guilt I’ve let fuel my ambition and drive, and get rid of the notion that I have failed in some way by being a survivor. Maybe I’ll even be able to stop code-switching and come out to my parents.
One of the most valuable things I’ve learned over the last three years is that this is a process. I don’t have to fix all of this now. To my other Asian survivors: I’m here and healing with you. We might not be able to talk about it yet, but that doesn’t mean we’re alone.
To JS, with all my love
* * *
Parents
A Chorus
She said, “I have to call your parents.” I said, “I can’t call them,” and started crying.
My friend was the first person I called. He told my parents, because I didn’t want to tell them. I don’t know how you tell your parents something like that.
I wanted my parents to trust me. They’re so conservative. I didn’t want them to blame me.
That was the first time I’d ever seen my dad cry. It was always a joke in my family that he’d never cry. That’s probably what hurt most, was seeing him cry.
They try to be supportive but they really don’t know what to do, which I can’t blame them for. They ask me what I need and I say I have no idea.
I drove to my parents’ house, and was crying on my hands and knees in front of my parents, “Please don’t make me go back.”
It got heated between my parents and [the president of the university]. My dad was baffled why he wasn’t getting this.
It’s been three years since my rape, and I’ve never told my mother about it.
* * *
To question my intentions in coming forward is to violate me once again. Do not ask me why I’m talking about what happened to me.
—Abbi Gatewood
* * *
Rape Culture
A Chorus
Campus advocacy is great but … a lot of it is victim-centric. How about telling men not to rape?
If I had only known then that this country is not a perfect system. It does not have my best interests at heart. These representatives don’t care about me. The police use guilt and intimidation to bully rape victims away from filing reports.
Rape is the only crime where the victim is guilty until proven raped.
“Oh, he’s horny, and we don’t wanna ruin his future; maybe he just made a mistake.”
It is not just one university that tolerates rape; it is our society, our world. It is a gross injustice to all women and all men. We turn our backs, and tune out calls for change. We don’t care to realize the problem until we experience it firsthand. We accept that one in four women will be sexually assaulted while in college, and we watch women’s lives be shattered, as if it’s okay.
Why is our society creating men who feel like the only way they can
have value is by dominating others?
Somebody posted on a girl’s door, “It’s not rape if it’s a freshman.” That very much characterizes my experience: “You were young and naïve and you drank too much; how could this poor boy not take advantage of that?”
It’s happening all the time, but we’re so afraid: “No way this upper-middle-class white boy would do something like this!” But he did do something like this.
* * *
From “The Elegy of I”
SARI RACHEL FORSHNER
My sophomore year at USC, I was drugged and raped in the middle of the road.
I thought it was cut-and-dried. I thought I could decide how to handle it, that I could decide not to be a victim. I had always made my own decisions; this would not be different. I would get stitches in my head wound and buy the morning-after pill. I would be grateful that the drugs had taken my memory and I would move on. Something horrible had happened to me, but the people I loved would acknowledge that, and I would not change. The people in charge would acknowledge that; the doctors would be well trained; the law would stand on my side. Something horrible had happened. It was simple. I would remain myself.
But our society doesn’t work that way, and if you spend enough time being told that you lost nothing, and that nothing happened to you, even though you know that something did happen, you often lose the agency to simply “decide.” You change. I began to doubt myself, to drown in my own shame, even though I had done nothing shameful. My reality shattered and I became someone else. My life experienced a volta.
We Believe You: Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out Page 9