One of the primary difficulties in sexual violence is how NOT black and white it is. Growing up, I was taught that sexual violence looked like a stranger attacking you out of nowhere, forcing you down on your back, maybe holding a knife to your throat, and definitely penetrating your vagina with his penis. Sexual violence did not come to you in the form of a beloved or a family member or a friend. Those people were not capable of hurting you. If you felt hurt by "those" people, you must've misunderstood something, you must've done something wrong, you must not be trying to understand the other person's perspectives or feelings hard enough. Sexual violence did not come to you in the form of forced oral penetration or forced viewing and reading of pornographic materials or the expectation of your wifely duties. Those sorts of things were just "weird" or "gross" or "embarrassing" and certainly, they were still, most likely your fault.
Also --and this is probably the most problematic one -- I was taught that sexual violence was carried out by full grown men who knew exactly what they were doing. This, turns out, to not be true. With one exception, the boys and girl and young men who hurt me had no idea that what they were doing was a violation of my body. I believe they knew that what they were doing was "wrong" but only insofar as it had something to do with sex which, they had been told, was "wrong" in every circumstance. And this feeling of "wrong-ness" probably only made what they were doing MORE titillating to them. The "one exception" I mention above was the case of being date-raped by my boyfriend in high school. He knew that what he did was wrong. The day after he did it, he even said, “I date-raped you.” “Date-rape” was the first phrase that gave voice to the fact that it is possible to be raped by someone you know. It is now, I believe, an antiquated term but that is what we called it then. Still, even in this circumstance, he didn’t exactly “know” what he was doing because he was very high on LSD and I was very drunk. Yes, I did say no no no no no no no – again and again and again. Yes, he did do it anyway. But both of us were too out of our minds to really understand what was going on. What he did was wrong. He should have stopped. He should not have raped me. But it still didn’t look like the thing that I was told “rape” was. So, when he said “I date-raped you” the next day and then apologized, I had sex with him again anyway a couple of nights later. He was my boyfriend. I really didn’t realize what had happened a couple of nights before was a red flag. I forgave him. I moved on. We moved on – and stayed together for another 12 years. So… even though he knew what he did was wrong, the signals I sent him AFTER the fact gave him every indication that what he did was right – or, at least, fine/ no big deal. I should not have stayed in a relationship with him. I should not have told him I forgave him. I should’ve broken up with him. And, perhaps… probably, I should’ve pressed charges. I have written about the truth of the sexual abuse, sexual assault and rape in Marina Abramovic Is My Mother. There is one story in the work called “His Back” that is about an incident involving my father – my real, biological father – even though, in the story I refer to him as “the man they called my father.” I tell the truth in that story that I have never known the full truth of that story. I have what therapists call “body memories” but that is the only night of my life (other than drunken nights of having blacked out later in my twenties) where I have repressed memory and cannot recall at least several hours. Whatever my father did to me that night was wrong. He knew that it was. But… he was also clinically insane and he sometimes lived inside a rage that grew so much larger than him, he could simply not control it. That is not to excuse whatever it is that my father did to me. That is not to excuse the many things I have full memory of him doing – the emotional abuse and physical mistreatment. That is just to say, sexual violence almost NEVER looks like the ONE story we are told about what sexual violence is. Sexual violence is complex and convoluted and overwhelmingly difficult to explain to other people. Each one of my offenders was someone I knew, someone to some degree (however small) that I trusted. Each one of my offenders acted out in sexual violence without maliciously pre-meditating their actions. They acted out in a moment of embodying the rape culture that they were raised in. Because of that same rape culture, I never had any idea that what was happening to me was not my fault or was not something I had somehow asked for. Each one of my offenders was someone with whom, in addition to their sexual violence, I shared happy occasions, laughter, and fun. They were people that I loved. Marina Abramovic Is My Mother IS a #metoo story. However, it is also a story that reaches beyond the simplicity of declaring that I was raped. I was raped. I was violated. AND, I was confused and, sometimes, complicit. My offenders were wrong to do what they did. They took something from me that it has taken me most of my life to get back. But this declaration is not accusatory, nor do I make it in order to free myself from silence. I have not really been silent. I make the declarations I make in Marina Abramovic Is My Mother so that you can understand that sexual violence is so pervasive, so threaded into the rape culture in which we live that you might not even recognize it if it happens to you; you might not even recognize it when she tells you it happened to her. I also make these declarations in order to help you understand that sexual violence is just one part of a much larger story; both in our culture AND in our private lives. Our stories – thankfully – are far bigger and far more complex and far more tragic and far more interesting than the moments in which we were victimized. Regardless of whether our offenders are called out or brought to justice, we are stronger, more solid, more capable, and more fearless than we might have lead ourselves, at one time, to believe. This is one of the truths that Marina Abramovic has taught me. This is one of the Truths of Marina Abramovic Is My Mother.
2 Comments
Donna
12/22/2018 03:38:53 am
Brave and beautiful
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JodiAnn Stevenson
12/22/2018 07:48:34 pm
Thank you, Donna.
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AuthorJodiAnn Stevenson is a poet and writer living on the Northwest Coast of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Her poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in various print and online journals since 1996. She is the author of three published chapbooks of poetry: The Procedure (March Street Press, 2006); Houses Don't Float (Habernicht Press, 2010); and Diving Headlong Into a Cliff of Our Own Delusion (Saucebox Books, 2011). She has also produced the chapbooks In the Temple of the 7 Buddhas, I Wrote This Poem For You, Hung With A New Rope, Midnight in the Blackbox Theater Saloon, To Make the Words that Made the Language and The (Human) Body for The Broken Nose Chapbook Collective which she co-founded in 2013 with Jeremy Benson. She co-founded Binge Press and its sister online journal, 27 rue de fleures, in 2004 with Rebecca Hardin Thrift and served as the managing editor of both until 2014. She is the author of www.bowlofmilk.com which has been a one-woman show of visual poetry since 2004. You can connect with and support JodiAnn on her Patreon page or by emailing her. ArchivesCategories |