Can't Go Out

reviewing the cost of legacy during National Sexual Assault Awareness Month

CW: This piece contains discussions of sexual violence and assault, read at your discretion.

More often than I care to admit, I think about how my abusers will be remembered. It’s not a conscious act but rather a passive observance, like bioluminescent algae, one day on the low tide, it just lights up. And when I entertain those thoughts, I find myself trapped in an emotionally circular space. The one where I truly believe transformation is possible (I’m an abolitionist) but feel hollow at the thought of people who’ve done vile things being remembered for everything BUT such acts.

To scroll Instagram and see mutuals of mine congratulate my rapist on life milestones, marriage and children who will one day be 13 like I was that night or be reminded how many people love the men who taught me how to take a punch will never not be jarring. I’ve long since progressed past the place where these things feel like a betrayal. As evidenced by historical and contemporary incidents, the plight of the abused is one marked in blood. One has to find healing elsewhere, between the margins of victim and survivor, abusive and the abused- but that healing is challenged every time I entertain what it means for my rapists, my abusers (plural, unfortunately) to have unmarred legacies, ones that dismiss where their personhood has taken them.

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Above was the beginning of an essay that I’d been writing for SAAM, though as life would have it, I have a more pressing piece to share. Last night, April 12th during what was supposed to be a normal hangout amongst friends, I was sexually assaulted by a woman I thought would be like a sister to me for life. And so the question I was asking and attempting to answer in the original essay became much more pressing.

Usually after such an event, I’d sit on it. Cry, journal, rage, “Spotify play Cranes In The Sky by Solange” it out but I realized I had a rare opportunity, that this time I could just write my feelings, in real time as a means of releasing them, not allowing them to take power over me that they’re not, that she’s not entitled to. I can’t speak to how coherent it’ll all be, or how lengthy, but I’m doing my best so be gentle, I beg.

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“The eclipse is doing some fuck shit.” said my mother this afternoon as I debriefed her about all that happened last night. I can understand why she’d said it, because even to me this all felt like one big cosmic joke.

The details aren’t blurry for that I’m grateful, mostly because my history of assault is marred with blurred lines. A childhood of molestation, a series of adolescent and early adulthood rapes that always danced with enough ambiguity that the offending party could make an argument at some point or another that they just didn’t know, but this time was different. For the first time during a sexual aggression, I was 100% right. Which may be an odd way of framing an assault but that’s just because my vocabulary is inaccessible to me right now. All the things I’d done in part in previous scenarios but never all together happened, and though it didn’t prevent anything, it brings me peace to know I tried my hardest, that until the end I asserted stewardship over my body.

Stewardship and ownership are always at the crux of these conversations. It’s one of the first things survivors will discuss. The body feeling so foreign, like some building you’re subletting from a person who just moved in despite you having lived here your whole life. It can’t be yours, because if it were yours, people would respect it were yours and back the fuck up, take the hand away, let the body go, move the lips, right. right? The answers don’t come quickly, and when we account for race, class, gender and ability on top of other factors, it becomes an even more complex dialogue. It’s not lost on me when SAAM comes around that the majority of my sexual violence has been at the hands of women.

I’m queer, it’s something I take no effort to hide but equally expend no effort to advertise, it’s just something that is. One of those little facts about life: I knit… poorly, horror is my favorite genre, I was a superwholockian, I’m queer. I don’t fret over it much these days, mostly because I think we’re in a time hyper obsessed with self-identification in a way that is so forgiving it ends up proliferating the lives of the people who actually do and live the things the labels were previously attached to. It’s an easier time to say “I’m queer!” until it’s time to do some real queer shit, to genuinely pervert heteronormative social structures [I’m looking at kink discourse & he/him lesbian, can trans men be lesbians? discourse specifically] I’ve spoken on all my platforms in depth about how there’s a veneer of progressivism at this time that’s actually rather regressive and conservative, something I plan to write about in depth soon, but I digress. Being queer is a part of me, but it’s not all of me and it makes conversations of assault really difficult in large spaces that find the need to enforce really stringent binaries and sex separatism/bio-essentialism for the sake of “safe spaces”.

Safe spaces are not as simple as separating people by sex or gender. I’ve often been the bad guy in the room, labelled the “pick me” or “male-identified female” for stating the presence of women does not make me feel inherently safer (nor has it proven to be true) and that’s something that needs to be addressed. According to the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey¹, about 44% of Lesbian Women and 61% of Bisexual Women report having experienced IPV or sexual violence in their relationships. To be clear, there are flaws in the methodology of the studies:sample sizes aren’t always consistent and there’s little specificity about whether all relationships included were same-sex, despite that, the figures are still damning and I’ve long held the belief that they’re underreported.

Anecdotally speaking, I know plenty of queer women who’ve had a difficult time articulating the very specific betrayal that comes with same sex assault in a world hell bent on leading conversations around domestic violence and abuse with the understanding that: Men are forever predators and women are forever victims with movement between the too treated as perversions of some natural order. Rape, incest, domestic violence, etc. are abuses of power, and power loves itself, it doesn’t do chromosomal checks at the door. And the culture at hand, that culture being Cisheteropatriarchy, White Supremacy and Capitalism to name a few, beg us to bend the will of those around us to force outcomes favorable to appeasing our desires. We’re taught to seek power however we can get it and women aren’t exempt from games of power, often times I just think women are taught to play the game in a different way, making these abuses harder to discuss. Ultimately, building safe spaces implies there’s a mutual understanding of the concept of safety itself and personally, all of 18 hours after the fallout, that’s where I’m coming up short. What does safety look like for me, or anybody for that matter invested in communities where harms happen, publicly?

Being assaulted at a kickback in front of half a dozen people is never anyone’s idea of a fun night and aside from the large “How the fuck do I deal with this new sexual trauma on top of the 26+ year old sexual trauma I already have?”, it begs the question, “What happens to the community? Is there a path to repair?” The intellectual in me knows it requires a sincere bid on the part of the person who made the offense, that at some point, she needs to sincerely apologize. Show true penance for her actions and listen to everyone’s piece about what happened and why, I’d like an explanation (however lacking I’ll find it), our other friends are dying for some clarity (as was discussed this morning on a 2 hour long group FaceTime) because they witnessed part of a 30 minute ordeal that was entirely preventable if she’d have taken no for a fucking answer. Regardless if those things happen though, we have to coexist, we work together. I’m in the process of writing her a recommendation letter for med school and all these conflicting feelings about what chances people should and shouldn’t get have left the hypothetical and become reality overnight.

I don’t get to mull over what it means to forgive and maintain a relationship with someone who assaulted me because I’m doing it. I don’t get to be excited about the social calendar all of us spent the winter pouring over because it’s being restructured to account for her absence while I process. I don’t get to hope for a summer without night terrors for the second time in my adult life because I find it pretty safe to assume I’ll be haunted by my ghosts after an event so recent. Once again I’m fresh out of a shower white-knuckling a mirror repeating “you’re in your body, your body” until my throat is hoarse at 3 AM.

The answers haven’t come to me yet. I don’t think they will for quite some time if we’re being honest, but considering the questions help. Sharing what happened right away helps, because it reminds me that it’s my story first, my body first, my recovery and healing first. I truly in my heart of hearts believe rehabilitation is possible, that she’s not guaranteed to offend again and I’d like to think with work and time and a shit ton of accountability we can exist in a space again, one that’s fragile and critical of action until it doesn’t have to be. One where everyone doesn’t have to “are you okay? no seriously, are you?” me every time the two of us end up at the same function or are sat near each other at work. That eventually I can scroll past congratulation messages and Happy Birthday posts on her socials and not feel bile rise in my throat. That I can write this damn recommendation letter without deleting “MAY BE A FUCKING PREDATOR!!!” in between every glowing sentence about her character.

That day isn’t here, instead it’s today. Where I couldn’t do much else but cry and write this essay, and scroll through adoption centers because I seriously think I need an emotional support animal. Times have been better, as I’m sure you can tell.

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If you’re also reflecting on similar themes this month or in general, I ask that you keep me in your thoughts. It would be a great help to hear from others so if you’re comfortable, I’d love to see comments on this post. I’ll do my best to respond to them all. If you pray ( I do ), I’d ask for sincere prayers of healing sent my way or positive energy sent in the universe, and if you have the means, a few dollars would help me out, if for nothing else but pet adoption fees. Be well and thank you for letting me share.

Best,

Nia Ola 💛

1. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_sofindings.pdf