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Why silence is not equal to consent

 

This essayist has requested to keep his name confidential.

Nov. 26, 2018

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*Warning: explicit sexual content

 

There’s been a huge push over the past year to listen to survivors’ stories and to believe them. Women are encouraged to speak out against their male abusers and to unite their voices so they can’t be ignored, motivated by an undercurrent of feminist support.

But where do I fit into that? I’m a queer white guy from a nice middle class family, and, yeah, I was raped when I was 17. But I’m a guy, so I’m not welcome in the movement, right? I’m the abuser, the opponent in this fight. I feel like my experience does little to push the #MeToo Movement forward, and actually, it kind of undermines it. Because of that, I’ve struggled to fully accept what happened to me and talk about it without feeling like a whiny white guy.

For about six months, I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t really know what to do. I didn’t know if I had a right to speak up about it because I’d put myself in that situation. On July 17, 2015, I got in a car with the guy, got in the backseat with the guy, kissed the guy, and was raped by the guy. It was hard for me to distinguish when it stopped being my fault.

It was my choice to hang out with him. It was my choice to let him drive and to stay in his car once we parked at Walmart. It was my choice to follow him into the backseat when he asked me. It was my choice to climb even further back into the trunk when he asked me to. And it was my choice to kiss him. That’s when things get fuzzy though. I know I didn’t say yes to him taking off my clothes or helping him when he took off his. I remember the sounds of the shoes hitting the floorboard, I remember the rocking of the car that made me feel sick  and I remember “Disco Heaven” by Lady Gaga playing, but I don’t remember ever outright saying ‘no.’

I’d dated him for three months before this happened, so for the first six months after he raped me, I just convinced myself that it was a misunderstanding. Before that day, I had told him where not to touch me because it made me uncomfortable. For God’s sake, I’d told him I was a virgin and I didn’t want to bottom for my first time having anal sex, but he went against everything I said and ignored all the boundaries I set. It was a bloody and violent ordeal that felt like it lasted forever, though I’m not sure how long it actually went on.

All I know for sure is that there were a lot of people at Walmart that day. I remember watching a mom load up her car with groceries, her two little kids hopping around her all happy and smiley while I was getting raped in the trunk of a car. I remember when I stopped feeling the rocking of the car, stopped feeling the dry stabbing and just stopped feeling altogether.

So, I was confused. Now I know that it wasn’t my fault that he raped me, but then, it was hard to understand how I could consent to getting into the trunk with him yet not consent to what happened there. Add on the fear of my parents finding out I was naked in the backseat of an FJ Cruiser in a Walmart parking lot at about 2 p.m. in my hometown, and I had a perfect recipe for someone who didn’t want to report their sexual assault.

I was a closeted guy in a small town whose sister was kicked out of our house for being gay a few years prior to me being raped, so how was I supposed to tell anyone? How could I justify the risk of being outed and cast out with the reward of being validated? And even then, would it have really been a reward to get questioned by police, therapists, and maybe a judge, and to top it all off, I would’ve had to get my butthole swabbed, too? None of that really sounded appealing to me, so I just sorta existed for the next couple years, hoping the pain of everything would fall away as I got older.

I didn’t spend much time at home the next year because any time I was alone, I was left with this big mess of feelings that I wasn’t willing to deal with. I’d feel hands all over my body, start shaking and crying, and cut my thigh open to try to distract my brain from whatever pain I was feeling. I thought I was losing my mind. I thought if I just didn’t talk about it and tried to spend as much time with people as possible, those thoughts and feelings would stop coming.

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Art by Raleigh Anderson

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But the pain didn’t go away. And it’s taken me a while to accept that it probably won’t. Last fall, I hit the lowest point of my life. I was drinking or smoking myself to sleep every night, trying to keep myself in a deep enough sleep that I wouldn’t wake up shaking and crying. I remember my roommate looking at me one night, drunk on the couch and rambling, and telling me that I needed help.

So, I made an appointment with UA Counseling and Psychological Services, waited about three weeks for an appointment, went in and was told that they did not have enough staff to treat me. The clinician also said I had long-term issues that CAPS didn’t have the resources to treat. She helped me look for a suitable therapist in the area, and I’ve been going to that therapist – a trauma specialist with a PhD – for about a year now. It’s helped, but those lasting scars still hang around – both literally and figuratively. I can’t really be with anyone intimately and enjoy it. I can’t get a good night’s sleep most nights. And I’m not a fan of FJ Cruisers.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I was raped more than three years ago, and no amount of movements, speeches or teary accusations broadcasted on the news have ever helped me anymore than a couple shots of vodka.

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