Democrat in the South wrote a spectacular diary this morning: Women Remember Sexual Assault, in which she describes something that may be a surprise to a lot of men: a sexual assault that does not end in rape is still a sexual assault, and can be a lifelong memory for the woman involved.
Her final line says it all:
Women do not forget. But I would bet everything I have that Steve doesn’t remember…
Sad, but true.
This is the surest sign that “rape culture” is real, that a woman’s feelings and memories matter less than a man’s, and we live in a world that generally refuses to acknowledge how often women and girls have sexual attention forced on them and what lasting impact it can have on the psyche.
A man can be a serial assaulter, like DJT, to the point where all the women blur together in his mind, and have no problem at all saying “I don’t remember her, I never met her, I am certain this never happened” and HE will be believed by the culture EVERY SINGLE TIME.
But the woman, for whom it may be a singular defining traumatic incident she struggles with for decades, is automatically subjected to harsh challenge, character assassination, and ill-mannered street corner judgments about whether her present-day looks make it more or less believable that she was a likely target all those years ago.
Imagine a young pickpocket named Beau, who goes out to different malls almost every weekend to shoplift from stores and lift wallets, sometimes taking his friend Mac along to be a handy distraction. His family has plenty of money, and if he had the initiative he could work and easily earn enough to purchase anything he wanted; he just does it for the “I’m invincible—I can do whatever I want” thrill, the “how many times can I get away with it" thrill, to bring spice to a life that has no other obvious obstacles to overcome. Along the way he accumulates a lot of merchandise that means nothing to him. He accumulates a lot of billfolds that he empties of their cash and casually discards without another thought.
One day he and Mac work the bump and grab on a young woman named Clara. They bungle it a little bit though, and she notices both of them, because the wallet they steal from her is infinitely precious for two reasons. First, it holds cash she has managed to save from her waitress job, money she kept in her sock drawer all summer, and she is on her way to deposit it in the bank. Second, the wallet itself is special—it is a handcrafted leather billfold her mother’s father made for her as a 16th birthday gift. She was his favorite, and he was her favorite, and her grandfather is now deceased. She carries her folding money in it as a memorial to him.
Clara is not wise in the ways of the world, but when she is bumped she knows something is wrong. Beau and Mac are a little high and their moves are not as smooth as usual. She feels the wallet slip out of her jacket pocket and reaches for it. There is a brief struggle, but it is two against one and the young men knock her off balance. She falls to a nearby bench as she watches them walk quickly away and blend into the crowd. But she saw their faces.
She is heartbroken. It is a painful memory for years.
Decades later she is in a position to give character evidence against Beau as he is being considered for an appointment to a position of public trust. She knows it is him. Grown up, but him. Of course he says it never happened and he doesn’t remember her. Mac acknowledges that he and Beau used to do crazy stuff together as kids, but he certainly doesn’t remember any *stealing*! And he doesn’t remember Clara either.
And maybe they don’t. There were so many victims. And they got so little from her. Just a bunch of crinkled small bills in some crappy handmade wallet they threw down a storm drain a few blocks away from the mall.
But everyone around Clara wants Beau to get the job. They grill her mercilessly. Why are you doing this? Why can’t you let this go? Tell us again why were you carrying so much cash? Why was the wallet in your jacket instead of in a safer place like your knapsack or pocketbook? Why didn’t you go to the police right away? Why are you just telling someone about this now? How can you possibly remember so many details all these years later? Why in the world should we believe you instead of him? And even if we do believe you, why should we destroy this man’s promising future because of something he did when he was in high school?
I’ve seen humans walk on the moon, I’ve seen a black president, I’ve seen rich and famous men lose their jobs for using their power to commit sexual assault, and I’ve seen a man move into the White House in spite of admitting frequent unapologetic sexual assault. I’ve seen lots of other things happen I thought were impossible.
I don’t expect to live to see a change in the culture that gives life-changing female experience equal weight with common, forgettable male experience.
This now-famous Twitter thread by Gabrielle Blair is radical, and I don’t agree with 100% of it, but its central point is true: “we really don’t mind if women suffer, physically or mentally, as long as it makes things easier for men.” There is an expectation that females should suffer, for the rest of their lives if necessary, in exchange for even the slightest increase in male pleasure and male convenience. The whole culture assumes it and accepts it. Except for the women, but they don’t count, do they?
All the men who have no concept of consent, who were taught “push past ‘no’ — that’s what a real man does” think sexual overtures are supposed to involve that kind of struggle. You win some, you lose some, you get some, you miss some. How can you remember all the girls who say no if there is a different party every weekend and different prey at every girls’ school? So many boys have made a physically rough pass that was rejected and went home sulking thinking “nothing happened”, with no idea that the terrified girl, shaken to the core just by the need to fight him off, most definitely thinks “something” happened.
The thing most shocking is that this series of events is not shocking. It is so commonplace that the culture as a whole gives it no psychological weight whatsoever. This is just what girls and women are expected to put up with. Women who challenge that assumption and complain about it are discredited as freaks and fools for refusing to play by the rules. Rules set by male privilege, maintained by male privilege, oblivious to millions of men and women whose lives have never been touched by them, who will deny that these rules are anything but equitable and fair.
It was ever thus.
And we are about to see it play out in the public arena all over again.
A child is born with a heart of gold; the way of the world makes his heart so cold
Previous entries in the True Blue Report commentary series