The Scarlet Letter
**Disclaimer: In an effort to preserve her reputation and maintain privacy, the woman who serves as the focal point of this article has decided to remain anonymous. Going forward, I will refer to her only as Selene.
Photo by Juan Pablo Arenas from Pexels
“I wanted to publicize [my story] with #MeToo. I almost did it, but I was scared.”
“I actually urged her not to, for fear of what it might do to her publicly with her career, with how people viewed her, my own family included. [For women who’ve been victims of sexual assault], regardless of what happens, her name has already been ruined. Nobody looks at her the same. People won’t hire her because they don’t want to be associated with her. People don’t want to be her friend, or her family looks at her differently...your family will never look at you the same because of something that was done to you.”
“And either they’re not looking at you the same because they wonder where they went wrong in not protecting you or because they think you were what egged on the event...”
“Or they simply don’t know how to feel.””
In Saudi Arabia, women aren’t allowed to try on clothes in public while shopping. Apparently, the very idea of a disrobed woman behind a fitting room door is scandalous beyond reason. India is just one of 49 countries that still refuses to criminalize marital rape, despite growing public pressure to do so. In the United Arab Emirates, rape victims, rather than the actual rapists, are punished with jail time for being guilty of “illicit sex”. Needless to say, these archaic laws effectively dissuade women from reporting their abuse, regardless of how violent or traumatic it may be.
Rape culture doesn’t begin and end in the Middle East, though. The normalization of rape and sexual violence against women is a global pandemic and an integral aspect of patriarchal norms as old as sexism itself. Rape culture is birthed from the objectification and dehumanization of women, a trend so common in society we hardly even notice we’re doing it. The culture is nurtured when we put more pressure on women to defend themselves than we do on men to not terrorize women. And it’s allowed to grow to limitless heights when we use women’s actions—wearing a low-cut blouse, drinking one too many martinis, daring to walk alone at night—to justify abuse against them. Or when we watch music videos that feature women being paraded around like status symbols, no more human than the giant, expensive cars they flank themselves over.
There’s a conversation that needs to be had about rape culture, the concept of sexual purity and the ways rape or sexual assault victims are treated in society. We need to discuss why, 169 years after Nathaniel Hawthorne’s groundbreaking novel and social commentary, the scarlet letter still brandishes women and girls today. But how do we talk about that? Where do we begin to peel back the layers of this intensely violent, patriarchal society that forces women to walk with their car keys pierced through their fingers, yet simultaneously allows men to move freely without fear of harassment? How do we have an efficient, honest conversation about why parents worry about their daughters ten times as much as they worry about their sons? What must it be like to be able to take a walk in the cool calm of the night air without worrying about getting kidnapped, raped or killed? And why am I not able to imagine something so simple, but my brother is?
With the help of a friend who’s willing to open the door to her past, I hope to do what I can to add to this conversation. “I feel like [this story] is about finally opening up about things that negatively impacted me emotionally, psychologically,” explained Selene. “There’s a bunch of stories in my past that I’ve always felt like if I told them, maybe I could keep someone from making the same mistake or falling into the same trap.” Many of her words were peppered with self-blame, a habit instilled in not just her but every woman by a society that’s more inclined to punish victims for ending up in a bad situation than it is to punish abusers for creating the bad situation.
Most victims of sexual assault or rape have a hard time recounting their experiences, at the very least choking up when relaying the details. Some men and women can be triggered to the point of being inconsolable when faced with memories of the past. So during the execution of this interview, I made sure to tread carefully as I dug for answers, cautiously avoiding anything that may irritate any raw emotions. As Selene spoke, I studied her demeanor and searched her face for a twitch, a cringe, a teary eye or any indication whatsoever that she was trudging up old traumas. I never caught a glimpse of anything. What I saw instead was a young woman who’d already owned and accepted her story and was now ready to air it all out for the betterment of us all.
“By this point it’s dark. He pulls off into a parking lot that doesn’t have a street light in it—the only one that doesn’t have a street light in it. And so I start kind of questioning him. He said that he wanted a blow job, and at this point, I’d never done anything sexual...I said I wasn’t comfortable with that and I didn’t want to do it. And he said ‘Well we’re not leaving here until you give me a blow job and I get what I want.’ Eventually I just ended up giving in because what was the point? My phone was gone. I’m stuck. I’m miles and miles away from home and he’d locked the doors. And he was 6’5” and a blacksmith’s apprentice. I was 5 feet tall and 95 pounds. What do you do against those odds?”
She was a fresh-faced 14 year old, half grown and tired of living with her parents’ seemingly unnecessary rules. So, perhaps predictably, Selene was thrilled when her mom and dad let her ride with her boyfriend to church one night. “I was never allowed to ride in a vehicle with anybody other than an adult as the driver at that point,” she remembered. “I was so excited—so excited—to have just a little freedom.” So off she went with her 16-year-old boyfriend, innocent, unsuspecting and giddy with excitement over her newfound autonomy. When he didn’t slow down as they approached the church, and eventually drove past it altogether, suspicion hardly registered in her young mind. Selene looked down as she recalled how she missed any red flags, blinded by her naivete. “He said ‘Oh I just figured instead of going to church, we’d just go for a drive.’” Unbeknownst to her, he had other plans in mind. And as the sun dipped below the horizon and the couple got further and further away from civilization, things went from bad to worse.
She told the story of her first boyfriend in a calm, even-tempered manner without a hint of emotion. “We continued to date after that. I don’t know why.” This wouldn’t be the last time he forced her to do sexual acts, and he wouldn’t be the last man to violate her, either. One bad night at 14 years old would turn out to be the first story in a complicated history. One characterized by sexual assault ranging from countless tales of blurred lines—consent violations by men who were often overly aggressive and dangerously entitled—to black-and-white rape.
In one of many recollections, Selene was at a birthday party with friends when she became too drunk to drive. Too scared to either drive under the influence or arrive at her parents’ house drunk, her options were limited. So when a friend offered up his couch for her to crash on for the night, she appreciatively accepted. But as soon as they pulled into his driveway, he pushed himself onto her and his real intentions began to show. Despite Selene’s many obligations, he never let up. “The entire time I’m telling him no and telling him that I don’t want to,” she recalled. “I distinctly remember saying ‘I’m not that kind of girl. I don’t want to be that kind of girl.’ And he looked at me and said ‘Y’all all say that. Y’all are all easy, though.’”
For a while, it seemed like he might actually let up. After Selene began to get more and more upset, he backed down and apologized for being so pushy, promising to respect her wishes. But his actions quickly proved to overpower his words as Selene, drunk and half-passed out, felt her shirt come off first, then her pants. “Eventually I got tired of pushing, of saying no, of not getting anywhere, of not being listened to, of not being heard,” she explained. “And then I hear a condom wrapper. And I remember thinking to myself ‘Are you fucking kidding me, Selene? Are you seriously going to let him do that?’ I remember just laying there and letting it happen, and then curling up and facing the wall and leaving the moment I woke up.”
I’ll stop here to address a thought that I suspect may be running through some readers’ heads. Why didn’t she fight harder? Scream? Run away? Put her foot down and refuse to be moved? “I had this hope that maybe if I just do a little bit more,” she admitted, “if I give just a little bit more, he’ll like me.” Ahhh, and there it is. There’s your answer. Her mindset at the time was the result of an age-old, insidious, wickedly pervasive concept we pump into little girls’ heads as soon as they’re old enough to hear it. The concept is three fold: 1) your inherent worth as a woman/girl begins and ends with men, including your relationship to them and their acceptance of you; 2) as an extension of the former, your job as a woman is to make the men in your life comfortable at all cost, and therefore you are to be seen and not heard; and 3) just be cool.
“We teach girls to be likeable, to be nice, to be false. And we do not teach boys the same. This is dangerous. Many sexual predators have capitalized on this. Many girls remain silent when abused because they want to be nice. Many girls spend too much time trying to be ‘nice’ to people who do them harm. Many girls think of the ‘feelings’ of those who are hurting them. This is the catastrophic consequence of likeability. We have a world full of women who are unable to exhale fully because they have for so long been conditioned to fold themselves into shapes to make themselves likeable.”
Eighty-five percent of all domestic violence victims are female. More than 1 in 3 women in America report having experienced rape, but that number may not be truly representative of rape cases in the United States considering out of every 1,000 rapes, only 230 are reported to police. Therefore, 3 out of 4 rapes go unreported. The reasons victims give for not reporting their abuse range from fear of retaliation to not wanting to get their abuser in trouble. But there’s another reason I believe so many perpetrators go unpunished: the failure on the part of the victim to acknowledge their rape as rape.
Unwanted sex in any form, be it the result of relentless coercion or forceful violence, is rape. In Selene’s case, that knowledge came only after years of learning the hard way. “People think that unless you’ve been beaten to a pulp, you’ve been pulled into an alley or a car, or experienced that extreme rape situation, that it’s not rape. That it didn’t happen.” And therein lie the dangers of both normalizing sexual violence and breeding every woman to be the “cool girl” who’s too cool to stand up for herself and therefore complicit in her own dehumanization. Not only does it make it acceptable and even expected for men to be sexual predators, but it also primes women to be the perfect prey.
In what was hopefully her last experience with sexual abuse, Selene finally found the courage to report it. A man she’d been casually dating violently raped and beat her after flying into a jealous rage over news of her past. Only later did he begin sending her incessant text messages for weeks after the initial attack, revealing the photos he’d taken without her consent. He was a fireman, a respected member of her community and therefore, infallible. After being told by the police that she didn’t have sufficient evidence to file a sexual assault or rape charge, Selene attempted to file for the lesser crime of harassment. When that did nothing to stop the perpetrator’s erratic behavior, she decided to pay his fire chief a visit to file a complaint.
“I walked in the door and the captain said ‘Oh, you’re not what I was expecting at all.’ And I was shocked.” Rumors of her past relationships with men preceded her and had already spread like wildfire at the station. “[The fire chief] told me that he’ll put [my attacker] on probation for a couple of weeks until the matter has cooled off and that he and his wife both would witness him delete the pictures off his phone.” However, he warned Selene that should she decide to take the issue to court, her exploits with men would be used against her, her name could and would be dragged through the mud and her rapist “withheld every right to say that I wanted it because ‘I like rough sex’.” Branded by her “tarnished” reputation, she’d been immediately deemed as someone too soiled and sinful to ever be believed or protected. The crime went unpunished.
“Having tried to report it that one time, I don’t know if I would ever have the strength to try and do it again,” she explained. “It was swept under the rug. Nothing happened except I got blamed…It’s embarrassing, it’s heartbreaking. You leave feeling like you’re the reason it happened. Like it’s your fault, all over again.”
For Selene, and for so many other women and girls, justice will never be served. So there’s a conversation that needs to be had about rape culture, the concept of sexual purity and the ways rape or sexual assault victims are treated in society. But what can be done? These constructs are so old, so deeply woven into the fabric of our communities that I can’t say for sure whether or not they will ever fully change. But at the very least, I can do my part to speak truth to the epidemics of violence against women around the world. And I can encourage my readers to spark this conversation and others like it with their own families and friends. We owe it to the women and girls of the past, present and future to do at least that.
As as for Selene? Owning her past and moving toward a better future is the only real option she has. “As far as coping with what happened in the past…it happened. It happened, I can’t change it. I can’t be a different person, I can’t have a different history. But I can love my present.”
At the end of the day, that’s all any of us can do.
“Even when it’s not pretty or perfect. Even when it’s more real than you want it to be. Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.”