Deadly Waters (Rebecca Sorley, #1)

by Dot Hutchison

Sometimes she wonders if there are certain words men are genetically hardwired not to understand—no being the most significant of them.

I hate that we’re not safe. I hate that even when we’re fine, when nothing happens, it never feels safe, because it isn’t. I hate that we have to pay attention to every man around us, that we can’t always trust our drinks, that you couldn’t go outside for a couple of minutes without being attacked. I hate that we spend half our nights trying to protect other girls from how we were all raised.” “And how’s that?” “Polite.” She spits out the word like a curse. “You do it too; we’re all taught to do it. Be polite, even when you want to run as far away as you can. Try to deflect the attention while balancing the need to seem flattered without seeming interested. Try not to hurt their egos so they don’t hurt you. I hate men. I hate what they’re taught and how they’re raised and why they get away with everything.”

never blindly trust a uniform and a badge, that pretty girls will always have to be a little bit careful even around people meant to protect them.

We spend so much time, she thinks, teaching girls how not to get raped, and then we attack them for it. If you drink, it’s your fault, but if you don’t drink, you’re a killjoy. If you show too much of your body, you’re asking for it, but if you cover up, you’re a prude, and you’re asking for it. You’re too loud; you’re not loud enough. You’re too paranoid; you’re not paranoid enough. It’s your fault. It’s your fault. It’s your fault. It’s impossible not to internalize that to some degree or another.

Keeping it secret doesn’t lessen the trauma, but at least it hides it. No wonder so many never report. Provided you can even wade through all the bullshit pressed on you from such a young age—that shirt shows her collarbone/shoulder/midriff; it’s distracting the boys, but she’s five—and understand that it’s not your fault, it was never your fault, there’s row after row of people waiting to tell you why it is.

“All those unspoken agreements about how we’re supposed to interact with each other, what is and isn’t good manners, that kind of thing. Except a lot of those contracts are used to prop up, oh, not the status quo exactly, but . . . actually, yes,” she decides. “Exactly the status quo. It props up sexism and racism and classism and mountains of other isms that are inherently flawed systems. The continued dominance of the status quo is dependent on the social contracts that reinforce some behaviors and discourage others.” “Okay,

“Social contracts are often contradictory,” she continues. “A lot of them are designed to only benefit the people already in power. So, for example, if a man tells a woman she’s pretty, one set of contracts insists she say thank you, while another insists she modestly demur. Neither allows for the possibility that she’s uncomfortable or busy or at work. Neither allows for the attention being unwanted. ‘Thank you’ or ‘Who, me?’ Those are the acceptable answers, and there’s absolutely no way to know which contract the man is invoking, so either one you choose, you could still be punished for it. Or you can refuse the contract as a whole, reject the attention, and also be punished.”

“You see them all the time,” she says quietly. “When a man insists on buying a woman a drink she doesn’t want, but somehow she’s the rude one for declining. It’s used to coerce dances and dates and sex because we’re made to feel like we’re failing societal expectation.”

“We don’t report because no one’s listening,” says Rebecca. “No one cares. We don’t report because the optimistic outcome is that we get ignored. Too often we’re punished for it, in ways they never are.