Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

by Roxane Gay

place to begin, or end, any story—not our own, and not theirs. I know I can never “restore the dignity” of victims I’ve never really known, I don’t seek to “give voice” to (or ventriloquize on behalf of) people rendered silent by politics and projections of our collective social anxieties. When exploring the experience of sexual violation at the border, I do bring my own experiences with gender oppression to my lens, but I don’t dare claim the telling of their stories as an exclusive right, when, in many cases, the stories are all they’re able to carry with them. I’m just trying to explore the territories that are supposed to be fixed, hard, official—and to peer beyond the wall. Maybe then as storytellers we can reveal real people behind those “enemy lines,” reveal our families in the gaze of the “alien,” and witness the wars being waged within, as nations trade bodies for political power and rob people of the right to own themselves.