Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

by Roxane Gay

YOU RECOGNIZE THE TENSION BETWEEN “I AM A BODY” AND “I have a body,” but you are unable to resolve it. “Have” implies that this body is just a possession, that it can be lost or thrown away. That you can do without it. It implies, perhaps, that someone else could have your body and that your body would be not your own. That it would belong to another. That doesn’t feel quite right. But “am” doesn’t seem right either. To “be” a body suggests that you are only a body. You are meat and some blood. You are hard bones and flexing cartilage. You are tangled veins and skin. Is that all, though?

SOMETIMES PEOPLE TELL YOU THAT YOU’RE LUCKY THAT YOU have sons so they won’t have to deal with all this crap. It’s true that your kids, by virtue of both being boys, will be in a privileged position, but the idea that they “won’t have to deal” with rape culture makes you shudder. You very much want them to “deal with” rape culture the way one “deals with” a cockroach problem.

You are tired of gluing your eyes to the sidewalk in shame. You are tired of taking it, of treating it like a tax you must pay for the privilege of being a woman in public spaces.

He’s not shouting at you as a method of engagement; he’s just testing something out. He needs to fumble around for his power in the dark, like a totem he carries in his pocket. He wants to make sure it’s still there. Next time, you tell yourself when it’s done, this man won’t shout so readily. Next time he will see the woman coming, open his mouth to speak, and for one second, one perfect second, he will be afraid of her.

It’s easier to play dead. IT’S A CONUNDRUM: IF YOU SURVIVE, THEN IT—THAT, THE trauma—can’t have been that bad. Being dead is the only way to prove it was. It really was bad. It was terrible. It was so awful there was no way I could survive. What did this child die of? Shame, mainly. And narrative necessity. IF YOU SURVIVE, YOU HAVE TO PROVE IT WAS THAT BAD; OR else, they think you are. Surviving is some kind of sin, like floating up off the dunking stool like a witch. You have to be permanently écorchée, heart-on-sleeve, offering up organs and body parts like a medieval female saint. WHAT IF THERE’S NOT ENOUGH TO PUT ON DISPLAY? IF THE stories are incoherent, flashes?