Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

by Roxane Gay

What is it like to live in a culture where it often seems like it is a question of when, not if, a woman will encounter some kind of sexual violence?

“He broke me,” I say to a friend. “You’re not broken,” she whispers back. I turn my palms up, wishing I could show her the pieces.

“The victim must learn to make language tell her own truth: He raped me.” I am devastated. I don’t want to be made the object in my retelling. “I was raped,” I whisper.

I told my parents when I got home. Not everything. We learn not to tell everything. We know telling everything will make them see the bad in us. How it is our fault. How we contributed.

Until I became a seasoned adult, I thought this was a normal part of growing up as a girl. Weird shit with boys/men happens to you. Look at all the times it happened to me so, obviously, it’s just how it is in life, like flat tires, running out of gas, getting a traffic ticket, spraining an ankle, etc. It’s fucked up, but it happens and you just deal with it. Move on.

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.