There are a lot of things I wish I could go back in time and tell my 15 year-old-self. “Short hair does not look good on you” and “it is really a better idea to pull that tooth and get a fake than deal with braces.” More importantly, however, I wish I could tell her “Don’t steal your mom’s car and drive to that party being thrown by the cute, high school dropout, drug addict who lives with his teenage brother”.
Of course, what 15 year-old girl listens to that advice? It’s not like I didn’t already know all those things at the time. After all, I was raised by intelligent, involved parents who I knew would never approve of these things. At the very least I would have told her, “Don’t let your friends leave you alone at said party to drop someone off since they are no longer having fun.” But hey, I was having fun! So why would I listen to that? Maybe I could have convinced myself by saying, “Seriously – you will spend the next ten years of your life blaming yourself for these circumstances and the event that is to follow.” But what of that? Has society not taught our daughters to blame themselves when they are raped, especially by someone they know? That’s right – I spent the next ten years falling into that all-too-familiar rape victim mindset of, “If I hadn’t gone to that party, this never would have happened.” How did we get there? I know I was raised by a mother who told me that a girl half naked, drunk on the bed still isn’t permission.
Society brought us to this point. So we have tried to learn and adapt and find a sense of self in this victim-blaming culture where 15 percent of college-aged women say they have experienced something defined as “rape” in their life. Now we take it one step further. We begin to make these women question if their experience of rape is “legitimate” or not. I struggled to find documentation of the definition of “legitimate rape.” In his 1972 article, Dr. Fred Mecklenburg wrote that when a woman experiences the trauma of rape her body would not ovulate even if scheduled. Let’s start there. According to this legitimate rape must be traumatic? Well I can certainly say I know many women will attest to her first sexual encounter as being traumatic even if it wasn’t rape. Let’s dig deeper, shall we?
In early 19th century America it was damned near impossible for a woman to successfully challenge her rapist. First of all, women were the property of their husbands, consensual or not, sex was never defined as rape. If the victim showed no signs of violent injury or could not produce a witness to state they heard her cry out, she would never be taken seriously. And if you were a black woman, don’t even bother. So most cases of rape were strictly chaste young white women being violently assaulted by black men. So is that the only “legitimate rape?” Luckily – no. The women’s movement got off to a slow but noted start in the 1840’s. By 1900, many states (at least in the North and Midwest) began revising their laws on rape. They started raising the age of statutory rape and passing laws about non-consensual non-violent sex with people familiar to oneself. Now – these carried lesser punishments than “rape” but it was a step in the right direction. It was not until the late 1960’s that laws protecting black women from rape even entered the conversation and all the way until the 1980s for marital and date rape to become defined and prosecuted. But these laws still vary from state to state. The only national definition we have is from the FBI. From 1927 until 2011 the law read “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will.” So seemingly, anything other than that (and what exactly is defined as “carnal knowledge” is another topic entirely) was not “legitimate rape.” Ah ha! But then we had this wonderful, if long overdue, change in the wording of the law. The law now states that “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” But no, not even this definition seems to encompass the meaning of “legitimate rape.” It seems to me for that – we have returned to 13th century England. In one of England’s earliest legal textbooks, Fleta, it states "If, however, the woman should have conceived at the time alleged in the appeal, it abates, for without a woman's consent she could not conceive." There we go! Finally, I understand. If a woman has been “legitimately raped” then she does not conceive.
Now certainly there is a lot of evidence out there that continues to support this theory, right? Countless studies have been done showing that yes, of course, the likelihood of rape leading to pregnancy is rare simply due to the biology. Most importantly, a woman would have to be in that 1 to 2 day window of ovulation when the rape occurs. People have a hard enough time accomplishing this when they are trying to conceive, it must be nearly impossible at random, right? Yet statistics show that 5 percent of rapes result in pregnancy. Of course that statistic is marred by the fact that rape is highly underreported and may women chose emergency contraception after rape, but let’s stick with that for a minute. 5 percent. That’s approximately 32,000 pregnancies a year. So are we assuming these women were lying? Or just not involved in “legitimate rape.” Maybe they just made a drunken mistake they are too embarrassed to admit. That is the main reason women claim they were raped, right?
Unfortunately for me, no one told my 15-year-old body that it should shut down its newly acquired baby-making skills. Oh, but that wasn’t legitimate rape right? I knew my perpetrator. No – luckily we resolved that issue back in the 80’s when “date rape” became a term. Well then, I didn’t scream or fight, so it couldn’t have been rape. The problem is it is a little hard to scream and fight when you have been duct-taped down. So, does that mean it was forcible and against my will, as the law defines rape? I’d say the duct tape covers that part. Yet somehow my little body climbed that hill chanting, “I think I can, I think I can” and became impregnated all the same. I was having a hard enough time blaming myself for setting myself up to be raped. If only I knew the rape wasn’t legitimate, since I did manage to conceive, I could have saved myself a world of blame. Thank you, Todd Akin for wiping away 10 years of guilt, doubt, and self-hatred for setting myself up for the most traumatic experience of my life. I have now learned I wasn’t raped after all.
Luckily for my 15-year-old self, and my now 25-year-old self, Virginia did not have its current draconian laws surrounding abortion. There were no regulations giving permission to probe me or prod me, or force the doctor to tell me my baby already had fingernails by the time I got the courage to terminate the still-new pregnancy. There was certainly judgment I would continue to face for the rest of my life – even from a nurse who gave me a pap smear when I was 19 and didn’t bother to know the circumstances behind my once-terminated pregnancy. It didn’t matter. She knew enough to know I was obviously a slut if I had an abortion by 19. A dumb slut who needed a refresher in all the available methods of birth control and why I should be using at least two of them. Why thank you, nurse. I will go tell my 15 year-old virgin self to worry about that.
What do I really wish I could go back in time and tell my 15-year-old self? I wish I could tell her to stop blaming herself. Stop feeling ashamed. Tell your parents, tell your friends --- pick yourself up off the floor and run to a mountaintop and shout it to the world. “I was raped. And impregnated. And the guy will get away with it because society has taught me to blame myself, and be ashamed of what happened to me.” We need to teach our daughters— the future mothers, teachers, leaders of our country to stand up when wrong is done to them and say “No more!” Rape is not okay – regardless of your definition. And unless you have faced the day your 17-year-old daughter finally fesses up and tells you this awful thing happened, but she was too scared to tell you, or anyone, for fear of judgment and shame, I dare you to define it as anything other than “wrong.”
Of course they won’t hear. The only way they will hear is to keep them out of office. Register. Vote. Spread the word.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
http://articles.cnn.com/...
http://www.startribune.com/...