As I was reading these articles, I found myself getting angry because it is unbelievable the power that the threat of rape holds over me and the rest of womanhood. One of my best friends in high school was raped and I was the first person she confided to. It happened when she was about 16 - she was on a date with a boy she really liked and after dinner, they went for a walk. He forced her into an alley where no one could see them, raped her, and left her there. He was the quintessential date rapist - someone she knew and trusted, someone she really liked. She never knew the violent monster that lurked underneath the surface until it was too late. As she was telling me this story in a stoic voice, I was shocked. She was perfect to me - she was beautiful, smart, sassy, and confident, everything I was not. How could this have happened to her? I could not fathom that she had had this horrible crime committed against her. And she wouldn't press charges! I tried to convince her to put her rapist behind bars, both for her sake and for other girls who have been or might become his victims, but she kept telling me that she did not want to bring it up back into her life since she finally put it behind her. I couldn't help thinking about her while reading Emilie Morgan's story, which was both heartbreaking and horrifying. I have so much respect for both these women because I think I would have lost myself if I was raped. They are not letting the rape own them, but they are trying to master their rapes; in other words, they are actively trying to heal and fight the insecurity and fear the rape instilled in them. I don't think many of us are capable if being so strong - at least, I don't think I could be since I am a very emotional, pensive person and I feel like being raped would destroy me and my inner life.
I realized when my friend told me her secret that rape is all around us. Rape victims are everywhere, but rapists are too. And the terrifying thing is that you cannot pick either of them out, which is exactly the point Brownmiller made in her book. First, for rape victims, we don't like to think that these women are out there because that brings up a lot of tension, not-so-nice feelings, and facts that we would rather like to deny. By not thinking about them, we don't realize that people we know and love may be rape victims, too. I had NO IDEA that my best friend in high school was a rape victim; only I and her best guy friend knew then and her family still doesn't know. She did not exhibit any characteristics that we think all rape victims have. She was strong and fearless, willing to take risks and have fun - traits we would never associate with a typical rape victim. Also, since many rape victims are not "special women" - they didn't have traumatic childhoods, past rapes, abusive boyfriends or husbands, get stalked, what have you - they could have be us "normal women" too. We could have been or could become rape victims because rape threatens every one of us and we are not willing to accept that. In addition, we like to think that rapists are special cases, that they had a bad childhood or they were raped themselves - the ordinary does not intrigue or excite us unlike the abnormal, hence why all those psychologists and sociologists did studies on the stereotypical, tortured rapist. The fact that ordinary, normal men that did not have any trauma or experiences that would explain their raping exist is frightening. Why do these men rape? To get some sick experience of power? To humiliate? Because they think it's fun? We don't know and not knowing terrifies society as a whole, especially women in this case.
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