Bear in mind, I would not be blogging this if I didn't have this screwy-ass view of a blog as a history of self. Whether I like an entry later or not is meaningless; the point is, it happened.
Hence why the drunk post never came down.
30 zillion people are linking to this post -
No Pity. No Shame. No Silence. It is, as you might imagine if your flist isn't filled with this one yet, about and for survivors of sexual violence.
Go read it. Then come back.
I don't EVER want to be known as part of a group of survivors. I have historically a great deal of difficulty with joining any group, simply because I like to have near-total ideological agreement. If you represent me, you represent me, and vice versa. I don't find that sort of agreement among a community like that of survivors.
Additionally, I don't think it would have the desired impact to be visible for a day. I think it would be largely dismissed, and I think it would be painting a target on both the survivors and the non-molesting non-survivors, if that construction makes sense.
For me, my closure will come by dealing personally and impolitely with the person who raped me. I have already evaluated why I did not categorise his actions as such for a very long time (until I was dealing with guilt over the revenge that I took) to my satisfaction. The next and final step is to find and deal with him. Then I'm done with it all.
The other part of it is that I hate, hate, hate, hate the use of the term victim (which misia, to her credit, doesn't use.) I am NOT a victim, I never, ever have been, and I never will be. To me, that term has taken on a meaning of enjoyment of the status of victim. To be a victim means that you can pretend that you're not at all responsible for what happened, whether that's regarding sexual violence or stabbing yourself in the eye with the blunt end of your toothbrush. You can, in fact, as a victim, get off on the state you're in, where you're not responsible for what happened, so let's all have a pity party for you.
I am not a victim. Fucking clueless about my personal rights, yes. Trusting, yes. Believing that saying no would make it rape and would make me a victim, possibly. But I don't get off on that status and to me that makes me not a victim.
What I am, is quiet about it. It's my business (so says I, who just blogged it, *headdesk*) and not-very-many-people-else's at all. I am more comfortable taking my own actions, according to my own needs. I draw strength from what happened to me, throughout my life, not just regarding this, and fortunately the good outweighs the bad. But this is a source of strength because it has no one trying to sympathise, trying to tell me that "Poor you, that must have been
awful." (*patpat, sympathetic ghastly-smile*)
I draw strength from the fact that I got through it, and that it'll never happen that way again. That I know now what it looks like. That I know now what I can say, and that there is no such thing as "too much retaliation" in such a circumstance.
I wouldn't be able to draw strength from being one of umpty-hojillion walking around marked.
I don't want your pity, and I will give none to him. I am not ashamed; I will never be truly ashamed of something that I couldn't do differently at the time, whether this or spilling milk at age six.
But I am comfortable in my silence. And I'm telling this story on my lj because none of you are part of my real life. (Or, if you are, you already know.) I'm not going to find out that I've just told the entire elevator of coworkers that I was raped. You're all interesting, and I like you, but you're not going to run into me in the bakery.
I have not, by my own lights, broken my silence. I return to it before I do so.
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