Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

by Roxane Gay

Buying into the notion of not that bad made me incredibly hard on myself for not “getting over it” fast enough as the years passed and I was still carrying so much hurt, so many memories. Buying into this notion made me numb to bad experiences that weren’t as bad as the worst stories I heard. For years, I fostered wildly unrealistic expectations of the kinds of experiences worthy of suffering until very little was worthy of suffering. The surfaces of my empathy became calloused.

JORDANA HAS INVENTED A NEW KIND OF RAPE-PREVENTION underwear. If she orders a batch of five thousand pairs, she can manufacture them for $2.25 per pair and wholesale them for $4.00 per pair. If she orders ten thousand pairs, she can manufacture them for $1.90 per pair and wholesale them for $3.50. Given these figures, and assuming no import taxes, how will she get the rapists to wear them?

I can’t name it then, but I feel the words at least eroding my voice. I sense that “at least” marks an end to the story I’m supposed to tell, that I am supposed to say something gracious in response—“thank goodness”—or else nothing more at all. “At least” curbs my telling too much truth. It’s a blunt instrument wielded to club a reckless retelling into submission. The story ends here.

Every second feels split—normality and catastrophe equally plausible.

I love my quiet. I hate how, in the after, my quiet has become silence. The room in my chest that was sky-lit has become a sealed and padded cell.

I was angry at the time but, in retrospect, I see that my friend believed in the woman who was untouchable, the woman who could do the right things, the woman who could just “be careful” and thereby escape the horrors that await so many of us.

The only solution for female anger is for her to stop being angry. And yet, when Jesus flipped tables in the temple, his rage was lauded. King David railing to the heavens to rain fire on his enemies is lauded as a man after God’s own heart. An angry man in cinema is Batman. An angry male musician is a member of Metallica. An angry male writer is Chekhov. An angry male politician is passionate, a revolutionary. He is a Donald Trump or a Bernie Sanders. The anger of men is a powerful enough tide to swing an election. But the anger of women? That has no place in government, so it has to flood the streets.

There is no path lonelier than the one a good girl forges for herself.

I chose a therapist who laughed at my jokes and had an office by the sea, so that it was really easy for me, after a session, to go stare at something bigger than me, bigger than what happened, bigger than anything and completely uninterested in any of it, just busy being the sea.

The worst ghosts for me are not usually the flashbacks, although those can be pretty bad, but the ones who show me what I might have been if it never happened. It’s like suddenly feeling what it would be like to run on a leg that had never been broken, just for a second, and then it’s gone and the old bone-deep pain is with me again.

Date rape was a risk you took because you were a girl and you’d agreed to go on a date. The line between just being a girl on a date and being a “tease” never even existed. The prevailing message from the unchecked harassment we experienced at school was that if you did anything even remotely sexual—a kiss, or holding a hand—you were leading that boy on and you were responsible for anything, and everything, that happened.

WHEN YOU DON’T WALK ALONE AT NIGHT, YOU WISH THAT you did. You remember the times when you used to—before you made that decision (sudden or gradual, conscious or not) to stop. You used to walk the short distance home from the bus stop—never comfortably, but regularly—holding your keys as spikes between your fingers. You used to stride down the center of the street, your cell phone at the ready, then speed-walk diagonally across your back lawn. You pine for these memories. They’re a bleak thing to pine for, but you can’t help but miss those moments, fearful as they were. They seem—compared to the current situation—like a kind of unappreciated freedom.

Why do some encounters change a person, when others do not? Why do some encounters change one person but not another?

He needs to have sex! I’d tell myself, merging obsessions, and assuming, as many do, that hot, hard-core, superlative sex was his God-given right. Because I was indoctrinated to the point that I demonized my own resistance for getting in between what he needed and how he wanted it. Because anyone who gets in between is, by default, wrong, withholding, and un-fun.

Because media have colonized everything from social dynamics to intimate moments.

Because speaking up for myself was not how I learned English. Because I’m fluent in Apology, in Question Mark, in Giggle, in Bowing Down, in Self-Sacrifice.

Because stifling trauma is just good manners.

Because when I would plead, he would plead