What happened in the courtroom is a by-product of rape culture—when what happens to women is marginalized, when beyond a shadow of a doubt still isn’t enough, when your past, manner of dress, grade point average, or intoxication level are used to excuse the despicable acts of sexual violence inflicted upon you by another.
Internalized shame is what I experienced, that heavy feeling that it was my fault for allowing the sexual assault to happen. So many of us are conditioned to believe that these actions are our fault, that if we had done something differently, if we had made a better choice, if we had been smarter, then we wouldn’t be in that situation. Many of the girls I grew up with knew that sexuality was something to be guarded, something not to be discussed, and something not to be displayed. We were curious, but we knew that there was a pervasive idea of “get what you get.” If you were alone with a boy, you were asking for whatever he did to you. If you were raped at a party, you were asked why you chose to go in the first place. If a man followed you down the street, the question became “What were you wearing?” The onus is always on us to keep ourselves safe—even in impossible circumstances. I was afraid that if I spoke up, people would look at me differently, as something damaged or dirty—or, worse, they wouldn’t believe me at all.
Without these words, those experiences feed off one another, perpetuating a culture of silence and allowing these attacks to continue. When young women are afraid to speak out against sexual violence for fear of community backlash, their fear allows many predators to continue to terrorize women time and time again. As we see from the case above, even going to the authorities and trying to achieve justice may still leave young women in the lurch, put them on trial for their past or present actions, instead of dealing with their abusers.
With the proper tools, we equip our girls to speak of their truth and to end the silence that is complicit in rape culture.
Teenage girls need to know that dating an older man will not make them cooler, and that an older man cannot rescue them from their parents. The idea of “coolness” that comes from landing an older boyfriend should also be challenged. While teenage dating is fraught with perils and heartbreak, no girl should be manipulated by someone far older than she is into being sexual before she is ready. Teenage boys should be able to help as well, trying to keep their friends away from predators. (My male friends did this for me a few times if they were around, coming to my aid if some guy started acting up. For some reason, the simple presence of another man is sometimes enough to make these kinds of men leave.) Adult men should be cautioned about the effects of their actions and be advised that our communities will no longer tolerate predatory behavior. And parents should be made aware that their children are being targeted by men (often their age or older) and that they should stay vigilant.
Adults, particularly older women, should take an active interest in the young girls they know. My boyfriend has two younger sisters. One of them recently entered her teenage years. Her body started to develop, and she has attracted more male attention. I notice small changes in her—how she looks at the floor a lot more than she used to, or how she seems uncomfortable going anywhere without a group of girlfriends. She still looks like an average teenager, but she is often hesitant and uncomfortable, unless she is around her peers. However, I knew her before she developed so quickly, and I can see the change that a year of development (as well as taking the metro to and from school) has produced. I’m fairly certain she’s trying to navigate the minefield of male attention she receives. And, unfortunately, I know that there isn’t much she can do. It is frustrating to have to stay within society’s boundaries regarding appropriate actions for women, knowing full well that beyond commonsense actions, there really isn’t much we can do. I can work on raising her confidence, making sure she does not fear saying the word “no,” and being a nonjudgmental adult whom she can confide in.
After all, I’ve walked that same minefield. What I offer her are strategies that worked for me, and a few extra things I wished I had.
Finally, we need to cast a critical eye on how rape culture is perpetuated on an institutional level. From how hospitals distribute rape kits to keeping tags on questionable verdicts, we must take the lead in telling the criminal justice system that rape apologists and enablers will not be tolerated.
But above all, we must give girls the tools they need to defend themselves against all kinds of sexual predators.
If you want to read more about ELECTRIC YOUTH, try:
• The Process-Oriented Virgin BY HANNE BLANK
• An Immodest Proposal BY HEATHER CORINNA
If you want to read more about FIGHT THE POWER, try:
• Invasion of Space by a Female BY COCO FUSCO
• Trial by Media: Black Female Lasciviousness and the Question of Consent BY SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY
If you want to read more about SURVIVING TO YES, try:
• Killing Misogyny: A Personal Story of Love, Violence, and Strategies for Survival BY CRISTINA MEZTLI TZINTZÚN
• Who’re You Calling a Whore?: A Conversation with Three Sex Workers on Sexuality, Empowerment, and the Industry BY SUSAN LOPEZ, MARIKO PASSION, SAUNDRA
18
Shame Is the First Betrayer
BY TONI AMATO
SIMMIE WILLIAMS JR., SEVENTEEN, was attacked on the 1000 block of Sistrunk Boulevard by two young men who wore dark clothing and might live in the neighborhood, police said. Williams, who was known in the area by hir first name or as Chris or Beyonce, was wearing a dress and was shot at about 12:45 AM Friday. He died soon afterward at Broward General Medical Center, police said. It’s unclear what Williams was doing in the area, about four miles from hir house. Williams’s mother said her son was openly gay, but she didn’t know what he did when he went out at night, and she didn’t know he wore women’s clothes.
As LGBTIQQA (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Intersex Queer Questioning and Allies) folks, we all witness and grieve tremendous and terrible violence perpetrated against us at the hands of people indoctrinated in, encouraged, and approved by an over-arching misogynist, homophobic, and transphobic culture. We gather each year in marches to reclaim and dedicate those places where our sisters and brothers have been raped, we gather each year to commemorate our fallen comrades, calling out the names of transgender and genderqueer victims of murderous rage, we fight each year for legislation that will finally and at last make it illegal to deny us housing, jobs, medical care, and that will call it a hate crime when we are raped, beaten, or killed. We can recite our list of martyrs as well as any Catholic schoolchild, and we each carry carefully inscribed names on the fleshy walls of our warm and beating hearts.
But grieving and fighting are not all we do, we LGBTIQQA folks, we queers and homos, dykes and pansies, fags and fairies, gay men and lesbians, trannies and transfolks, genderqueer and transsexuals, drag queens and drag kings, and all the other fabulously fierce incarnations we proudly choose and passionately live. Every year we gather to dance and flirt down city streets in celebration of our lives and loves, our lusts and lovers. We gather to strut and preen and cheer and shout, we gather to combat that fear and oppression, that shame and repression, because we know that shame is the first betrayer.
Sexual intimacy, embodied affection, physical contact: These are as intrinsic to our human well-being as are fresh air, clean water, wholesome and nutritious foods. And these are just as likely to be commercialized, commodified, and contaminated by this dominant pharmo-bio-medical-industrial-military culture. Sex is the great seller, as any advertising guru will tell you. Sex sells, and sex is our primal longing and fear. Whatever cannot be engineered, trademarked, packaged, and sold is declared dirty, degenerate, unhealthy, unsafe, and quite possibly in league with the teeming terrorists out to destroy our efficient, hygienic, and oh-so-very-secure nation. And that fiction, that false paradigm, that (you should pardon my language) crock of stinks-to-high-heaven bullshit is the lie that sells queer sexuality as the feared and despised
other,
the greasy backroom filthfest of orgiastic, disordered, and diseased depravity that will warp the milk-fed, beef-fed, well-vaccinated, and appropriately indoctrinated all-American children into little homosexual sickos. Toss in this decaying empire’s ever-growing fondness for using the idea of personal responsibility to blame its victims for the consequences of its own angry death throes, and you learn that all who choose to engage in these uncontained, uncondoned, unashamed acts of intimacy and affection only bring upon themselves the dire, dreaded results of their own degeneracy.
After Simmie’s murder, the police and the media were more focused on whether or not ze was a sex worker than on finding hir killer. If how we choose to clothe our bodies is more important than who murders us, how can we learn to savor all the pleasures of nakedness? Sweet young Lawrence King was murdered February 14, 2008, for asking another boy to be hir Valentine. Ze had recently started wearing makeup to school. Ze was kept alive until the 15th, so that hir organs could be donated. If a paper heart with childish scrawls can get us killed, how will we ever dare to express our beating heart’s desires? For Lawrence and Simmie, for all of these victims, shame is the first betrayer.
We are all of us taught the subtle, and not so subtle, sex and gender norms required to make us upstanding citizens and eager, compliant consumers. Breaking or even bending the norms means suffering consequences. We learn these lessons early on. The newly born intersex infant whose genitals are surgically “reassigned” without consent, supposedly so ze they can better assimilate into society; the little girl who is told that her developing body must be covered and constrained in order to be acceptable and safe; the small boy who, in the name of helping him to become a big, strong man, is told that boys don’t cry. Ask any rape victim who has been interrogated about her past sex life (as if being the target of a rapist has anything to do with our past desires) or what she was wearing, ask any victim of a gay bashing who was asked why he chose to kiss his lover in public, and ask any trans or genderqueer victim of a hate crime who was told that the perpetrator was understandably upset and angry since they couldn’t tell what binary gender ze was. For all of them, for all of us, shame is the first betrayer. And if a little girl is made to understand that it is unsafe and inappropriate for her body to be uncovered, unbound, and uncontained, how can that soon-to-be young woman discover and relish her own sweet sexuality, the inherent pleasures and sensual joys that her body is capable of giving her? And what if that young woman is queer? What if that little girl grows up to be a man? If a small boy is permitted to express his desires and longings, his feelings and dreams, only in rough touch and angry words, how will that young man grow to be able to express the tenderness and compassion at the core of his intimacy? And what if that young man is queer? What if that little boy grows up to be a woman? If a non-gender-normative child is therapized and socialized away from expressing hir own true spirit in the name of other people’s comfort, how will ze grow to be an authentic and self-empowered adult? And what if that child is queer?
Now imagine that any of these people, these beautifully embodied, lusty, and loving souls, are victims of each other. If that pretty boy has learned that all the sticky, steamy things he would like his lover to do to him are degenerate, disgusting, and worthy of punishment, that he should expect to be assaulted by the boys in the locker room, on the street, in his platoon, then how will he know when the things his lover does to him are abusive? If that little girl has learned that her queer longings and desires are sinful and sluttish, perverted and dirty, and that she should expect to be beaten and raped by the upstanding citizens who are protecting their wives and their children, then how will she know when the things her lover does to her are abusive? If that non-gender-conforming child has never even been allowed to name hir own body, and has learned everyone but hirself has the right to name, manipulate, and modify hir body, then how will ze know when a touch is invasive?
According to the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault’s 2008 statistical report, in a study of 162 gay men and 111 lesbians,
52 percent reported at least one incident of sexual coercion by same-sex partners. Gay men experienced 1.6 incidents per person, while lesbians experienced 1.2 incidents per person. CALCASA found that lesbian and bisexual women are particularly at risk, because woman-to-woman sexual assault is often discounted due to the widely believed definition of sexual assault as penile penetration, and because “homophobia and heterosexism set the stage for many forms of violence, including sexual violence” perpetrated by men. Men living with male intimate partners experience more intimate-partner violence than do men living with female intimate partners; 15 percent of men who lived with a man as a couple reported being raped/assaulted or stalked by a male cohabitant. If we are taught that it is acceptable and right for the rest of society to beat and kill us, to rape and assault us, to shun and shame us, then how will we ever be able to believe it is wrong when our intimate partners do the same? We are struggling, still, to name ourselves, to claim ourselves, and to create a culture in which we can be safe to love. Rape is rape is rape is rape, and a rose by any other name will still cut and tear us with its thorns. The willing assault and violation of another person’s most intimate self is an act devoid of love, and devoid of compassion. To survive such a terrible thing is to know in our skin the effects of cultural shame and hatred, and for LGBTIQQA folks especially, that violence has yet to be fully named and fully confronted. Without naming, there is no healing; without healing, the shame will continue to burn. The denial of LGBTIQQA sexual violence and assault, especially within our own community, only exacerbates the isolation of survivors and maintains an environment in which intimate-partner violence is able to flourish. As long as we are unwilling and unable to name the violence, there will be little to no help in healing or prevention.