Browsing Tag

sexual assault

#metoo, Guest Posts

The Columbian

July 26, 2021
studio

by Linda Summersea

The first thing I saw upon entering my professor’s studio was a discarded tube of cadmium red paint. Its depleted remains lay in a trash bin atop a broken Kolinsky #12. The brush’s ferrule was rusty, its stiff bristles tipped in blood-red, coagulated paint. The room was quiet. The light was dim.

He was Colombian, my Drawing 401 teacher, and thirty-eight-years-old, although his beard and paunch made him appear older. If you had told me he was forty-five or fifty, I would have believed you. He was a respected artist, married, and had a well-known reputation for seducing students with his soft Latino accent.

My sandals flip-flopped across the hardwood floor to the table left bare for my work. The shades were drawn on a bank of windows, blocking the luminous north light. I placed my portfolio on the table, unzipped it, and turned around at the sound of a click.

I saw his hand drop from the deadbolt. Our eyes met, mine questioning, his confident. He strutted slowly and deliberately around the studio like a fighting cock awaiting his opponent. His machismo was on full display, preening as he pointed out his various drawings hanging on the walls. I followed him to where he stood before a charcoal and pencil nude in progress on an easel.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

I nodded. The nude female was almost life-size. His style was tight and sparse. Thin lines, sharp hipbone angles, nipples that were barely there on small, half-round mounds of breasts. A pubic area tight with wiry curls of brown.

“I want to draw you,” he said. “Like this.” He gestured towards the drawing.

“Today.”

Seconds later, he had laid a blanket on the floor, stood on it, and began to strip. Slowly, he unbuttoned the black cotton shirt that matched his curly black hair and beard. Dropped his jeans and peeled off his BVDs.

My eyes never left his. I stood horrified, lips sealed, as he stepped closer and proceeded to undress me, pulling my t-shirt over my head, slipping my blue jeans and panties from my hips.

Could this be happening? I was repulsed. It was as near an out-of-body experience as I have ever come.

Did he not notice my perplexed expression?

I told him I had my period.

He immediately reached down and deftly plucked the bloody tampon from between my legs. Thunk. It popped like a champagne cork, and he swiftly tossed it in the trash.

This man was not going to let a little menstrual blood get in the way of his conquest.

He reached out his hand. “Join me.” He gestured to the blanket on the floor.

I remained standing, motionless, a paper doll with parts unfolded, expressionless, in shock, passively observing his flaccid penis beneath the paunch of his bloated belly as he pawed at me. I was naked and vulnerable.

The ceiling fan circled overhead as I joined him in the slow dance of contenders facing off. I took a step backward. He took a step forward.     It was his lust versus my lack of passion, and it ended as quickly as it had begun.

“You are so cold.” He spat the words at me.

“You make a man impotent!” He was disgusted.

Seduction aborted, he retrieved his shirt, bringing the plackets together, each button sliding smoothly into its empty hole. All the while, blood trickled down my inner thigh.

I was wounded, but safe. I dressed and fled the room with my portfolio, not giving him the benefit of my thoughts. The last thing I saw was the tampon. It lay upon the discarded tube of cadmium red and the #12 Kolinsky brush.

My heart began to beat faster as I walked to my car. Once in the driver’s seat, I took some deep breaths, and thought about what had just happened. I knew I hadn’t done anything to encourage his actions, but still… There’s an unspoken communication between predator and prey. If I had not shut down his seduction with my disgust and passivity, would seduction have turned to rape?

I drove to the apartment, still upset, but shook myself off and went inside. My roommates were in the midst of preparing their dinners and I joined them to do the same. I didn’t have the courage to share what happened in the Colombian’s studio until now.*

***

*On October 16, 2017, Alyssa Milano created #MeToo following the exposure of widespread sexual-abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein. I wrote this chapter that day and read it aloud the next evening in Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Body of the Book manuscript class in Portland OR.

After earning a BFA and MFA in Art Education, Linda Summersea (pen name) enjoyed a long career as an art teacher and especially appreciated being able to work with Youth-at-Risk given her own background with neglect, abuse, and psychological suffering. She has published in NPR’s Tales from the South, and produced ArtBreak, an award-winning children’s art program on Community Access Television in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Her current work in pre-production is a free-verse narrative regarding her husband’s Vietnam experience for Voice of Vashon Radio, Vashon WA. She’s a member of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association and the EPIC Writers Group and is active on social media. She blogs about life, writing, and travel at www.LindaSummersea.com.

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Although each of Jenny Offill’s books is great, this is the one we come back to, both to reread and to gift. Funny and thoughtful and true, this little gem moves through the feelings of a betrayed woman in a series of observations. The writing is beautiful, and the structure is intelligent and moving, and well worth a read.

Order the book from Amazon or Bookshop.org

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Anti-racist resources, because silence is not an option

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Guest Posts, Sexual Assault/Rape

Didn’t it Feel Good?

April 18, 2019
good

By Rachel Cline

In the autumn of 1970, I was thirteen years old. Like seemingly everyone else in America, male and female—I had long, straight hair, parted down the middle. I sometimes wore a cowboy hat, but had trouble finding  blue jeans small enough to fit my child-sized frame. I lived in Brooklyn Heights with my brother (then nine and beneath my notice) and our divorced mother. My interests included Star Trek, The Monkees, Mad Magazine, and books that were deemed “too old” for me–that summer I read The Dharma Bums, The Godfather, and The Sensuous Woman by J.

We lived in a City-subsidized building and did not own a car or a color TV, but we were not poor—my brother and I both went to private school in Fort Greene. We also went to summer camp every summer for two whole months so that my mother could have some fun. That summer at camp, when not reading, I had been mildly and chastely in love with my brother’s counselor–a college sophomore with quotes from Tolkien markered all over his Jack Purcells. I remember him telling me that Henry and I must have great parents because my we were both so “cool.” At the time, I thought he meant “interesting and creative,” but in retrospect I suspect he was leaning more toward “bizarrely adept at acting like an adult.” Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, #metoo, Sexual Assault/Rape

I Am A Man And I Am A Survivor

March 13, 2019
assault

CW: This essay discusses sexual assault. If you or someone you know has been assaulted, find help and the resources you need by calling the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673, or visit www.RAINN.org.

By Arturo the Cuban

I am a man who is the survivor of sexual assault perpetrated by a man when I was a child.

Someone who was a member of our family so to speak. He was my mother’s common-law husband for ten years. He was the reason I disappeared from home around the age of 11. He was the reason I became a street kid until the age of 16.

I never spoke out. Not as a child anyway. There was the fear of embarrassment that comes from being raised in a tight-knit Hispanic family. I would later find out that I wasn’t his only victim. He also tried to perpetrate the same acts on my cousin who was much older. My cousin beat his ass. He told everyone. My mom’s so-called marriage was done and we moved a couple cities over.

It was then that I came out and spoke to some close friends at the time. We were a tight-knit community of hardcore kids who spent most of our time between the Lower-East Side of Manhattan, The World Trade Center, and Washington Square Park in New York City. We took care of each other in order to survive in a city that was not only harsh, but violent at the time.

I would go home every few days or so. Make an appearance. Let my brothers and my mom know I was alive. It was on one of those trips home that one of my closest friends came with me and beat the living shit out of the perpetrator. Did it stop him from ever doing it again?

I would find out later that it did not.

It turns out that the only thing that could stop a monster like this was death. He is dead. Not because his life was cut short, but because several massive strokes and heart attacks would inevitably take his life. He died after living more than ten years with a bag of shit attached to him, pissing himself. He died after spending decades moving all over the country for what I assumed was to avoid detection. Out of fear of being ratted out. I know this because my youngest brother shunned our biological father and considered this sick fuck his dad.

He called him Pop.

God I hated that shit. But as a kid I didn’t want to destroy the image in my younger brother’s head of what a father is. He treated my brother well. As far as I could tell anyway. I remember asking both of my brothers, in a roundabout way if they shared similar experiences. I didn’t go into detail as they laughed it off. As I suspected, I was alone. At least for awhile.

My father wasn’t around much. So I felt that for my brother to have a father figure was a good thing despite the evil only I knew lurked within this man.

The three women he was with after my mother, spoke of him raping them. His daughter too. For the first time in my life I felt a kinship with some of his other victims. I spoke to them and they encouraged me to speak out. But I didn’t. At the time I felt like maybe they were using me to get back at him. Revenge. I was just a teenager at the time. A very confused one at that.

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Kids” you’ll know what I’m talking about. Those kids in the movie didn’t just represent my life. They were a part of it. Some of them were my friends. I wouldn’t get involved in drugs or alcohol until later in life. At the time I was a straight-edge kid. No drinking. No drugs. No cigarettes. None of that. Well, except some weed. I’ll admit I sucked at being a straight-edge. But we all shared so many commonalities when it comes to sexual assault.

It was then that I tried to speak out. Nobody in my family heard me. I was just some street kid who was perceived as some junkie bum who slept on park benches. It was a tactic that was used to ruin my credibility. I was confused they said. Looking for attention they said. Looking for some kind of out for my bad decisions. All of us were treated the same way. It was a time when no matter what a child, male or female, would say, the word of the perpetrator would be taken over that of the victim.

Because of that I lived my life with resentment towards my mother, my brothers, and everyone else who ignored me. At the same time I was to preoccupied with being a part of a community of street kids that took care of each other. We had older brethren, as we called them, that helped look after us. They showed us how to eat, bathe, survive. Occupying empty warehouse space. Squatting. Buildings that were abandoned as the city skirted bankruptcy.

No one ever came to check on these places. We lived in abandoned factories occupying an entire floor. For as bad as it was, we had each other. We made the best of it and had some really great times. Most of those friends are gone now. Dead. Drug overdoses, suicide, murdered. All a result of struggling to cope as they all got older.

I survived.

I survived with a sense of guilt. I wasn’t there. Forced to move away and live with my biological father. A move that would save my life. The guilt overcame me not because I felt that I was to blame. But because the city was in recovery mode and the sanctity and security that came with being a street kid was quickly disappearing. My street family was dying and I was nowhere to be found. A ghost thousands of miles away. No contact. No connection. None of it.

I miss them. I always will.

We were all survivors who no one gave any credibility to. But when I look around I still see some of us in the real world. Some are quite successful. An actress. The front-man of a world renowned Hardcore band. An author. And me. A still struggling, but not starving, artist.

I’ve had my share of successes too. From a semi-popular underground band, to a studio musician for many popular artists, to a government contractor. If you know my story, all that came crashing down four years ago after a mild stroke.

I’m a survivor.

But today I struggle As millions of other people are. Listening to the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and how all these men treated her, talked down to her, and dragged her name through the mud undoubtedly brought out some very hardcore feelings for many women (and men) up to the surface. Everything that has happened surrounding Dr. Ford is emblematic of the suffering all sexual assault victims struggle with. My wife included.

I’ve never written about what happened to me and like Dr. Ford I’ve never really talked about it to anyone but my wife and my former therapist. I didn’t do so because I never felt like I had the support of anyone other than my wife.

When Terry Crews came out about the assault against him, I almost had the courage to do this but I just couldn’t. Instead I reached to him on Twitter and told him that I believed him and that I got him. I did so without ever revealing what happened to me. He responded with gratitude and thanks. I didn’t share my story out of fear. I saw what so many other men were doing and saying to him. I was disgusted. I wished I had that strength.

Today is different. After hearing Dr. Ford’s testimony and seeing how people were treating her online I became angry. Some of my closest friends and even family spent more time victim shaming her than listening to her. I found myself in a deep debate defending a girl I barely know.

She is the daughter of someone I once considered a friend. She joined in the conversation about victim shaming and sharing her story only to be shamed and treated like complete shit for not speaking out sooner. One of the people shaming her was mutual friends with the perpetrators of her assault. Yet he rose to their defense (while claiming he “never heard” of anything happening to her) by saying the same shit over and over again.

“You should have come out sooner!”

“You’re not a victim until you file a police report!”

“Waiting 30 years ruins your credibility!”

As I fought tooth and nail defending her she left the conversation. I imagine it was too much to bear. She kept talking to me via text and I continued to support her in every possible way I can.

I just kept getting angry and went on the attack. I lost my composure. Started hurling insults and fighting back against what I kept referring to as rapist apologists. I called them every derogatory name under the sun. I was in a fit of rage. I probably shouldn’t have gone that far, but I did and I don’t care.

Because I’m a motherfucking survivor.

Then I told her. The girl I was defending. I told her I was sexually assaulted too. By the time all that was over. She was thankful. Grateful. I felt good about what I did. At least for a little while

Then it all started to sink in. The words of Dr. Ford made my anxiety explode. Crippling depression also started to set in. I had the shakes all night as I tried to hang out with the wife and kids binge watching Trailer Park Boys. I needed to laugh. I just couldn’t. I mostly faked it and tried to enjoy our family time. After all that’s what kept me going until now. Living for the moment and trying to repress those horrible memories.

A day later, here I am. Shaking from the nightmares of what happened to me. Shortness of breath as I write this to finally tell my story. I need to. I have to let it out. I cannot bear witness to this any longer by myself. I need support. I need to give support. We all do. We need to be here for each other. Encouraging others to speak up. I have no family support aside from my wife.

The last time I brought this up to my mother, she asked that I not mention it to my brother for fear of causing a rift in my broken ass family. It was never mentioned again. Terry Crews’ story is what gave me the courage to tell my mom. But her response led to me to feel so much shame that I shut up about it. AGAIN She wants to protect my brother and his image of the perpetrator.

But what about me?

The man is dead. Never brought to justice. Fuck him. If my brother doesn’t want to acknowledge what happened to me at the hands of the monster he holds so dear, then fuck him too. After 33 years since the last time I was assaulted, it’s my fucking turn to speak my truth. I will hide it no more. I will not be silent to the appeasement of anyone else.

Mom, if you’re reading this, I love you. But I just can’t anymore. I can’t. I’m doing this for me, for my friends, for my wife, and every other woman and man out there that struggles with these thoughts. These horrifying memories. I’m doing this so I can move forward with MY life and so that I don’t live under a cloud of shame anymore for fear of hurting someone’s feelings. I’m sorry mom, but fuck that shit. It’s nothing against you, but we are at the dawn of new age. I love you with all my heart. But you need to understand that I AM A SURVIVOR OF SEXUAL ASSAULT.

I’m taking my life back from him.

The dead man.

May he rot in hell.

Arturo is a front-line anti-racism activist, essayist, and upcoming author; advocating for equality, justice, and accountability. He is a married father of three young men and a stroke survivor. He is currently working on a series of books focusing on social issues and racism in America. Arturo is also a freelance journalist.

Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Sexual Assault/Rape, Young Voices

Lips of My Childhood

March 19, 2018
man-child

CW: This essay discusses sexual assault. If you or someone you know has been assaulted, find help and the resources you need by calling the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673, or visit www.RAINN.org.

Note from Jen Pastiloff, founder of The Manifest-Station. This is part of our Young Voices Series for Girl Power: You Are Enough. We are always looking for more writing from YOU! Make sure you follow us on instagram at @GirlPowerYouAreEnough and on Facebook here.

By Deja White

DISCLAIMER:

Do not read this piece if you thought Lolita was a love story. Instead seek mental help.

Do not read this piece if you do not understand the dynamics of age differences. Instead imagine a nine year old who you know and love and put them into my position. Sickening right?

Do not read this piece if you think a nine year old can consent to anything. Instead find the nearest police officer and report yourself.

Do not read this piece if a girl’s body is the punchline of any joke you’ve told. You may find yourself being the subject of a joke yourself.

Do not read this piece if you’ve ever said “No means yes and yes mean anal.” Instead imagine what your life would be like in prison.

Do not read this piece if you can not respect my story because it might force me to use my black girl magic on you and put you to shame.

Please read this piece if there is a shred of kindness in any part of your body and share it so this doesn’t happen to any other nine year old girl. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, #metoo, Sexual Assault/Rape

Why We Don’t Tell

December 6, 2017
telling

CW: This essay discusses sexual assault. If you or someone you know has been assaulted, find help and the resources you need by calling the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673, or visit www.RAINN.org.

By Teri Carter

Monday afternoon, I got blackout drunk.

I did not intend to get blackout drunk. I did not intend to drink at all, but I emerged from my home office to see Beverly Young Nelson telling her Roy Moore story and holding up her high school yearbook.

I poured a glass of wine. It was 4:00 in the afternoon.

By 5:30, I’d re-watched Ms. Nelson’s presser several times, tossed the first bottle in the recycling bin and opened another. I don’t remember much after that. I vaguely remember breaking my wine glass and being pissed that my husband was trying to clean up the glass before my dogs, including our 4 month-old, black lab puppy, got into it and got hurt.

I remember my husband leaving for his school board meeting, angrily saying, “I’m afraid to leave you here by yourself, maybe I should stay home,” and me being defiant, belligerent. “Oh my god, I’m fine, go!” I remember being relieved to see his car pull out of the driveway so I could keep re-watching that press conference, and keep drinking.

Looking back, it was the way Ms. Nelson talked about her neck — the way she described Mr. Moore putting his hands on her head and her neck, the force and the fear she felt from him — trying to push her face into his crotch. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, #metoo, Sexual Assault/Rape, Surviving

A Vacation from Your Brain

November 29, 2017
brain

CW: This essay discusses sexual assault. If you or someone you know has been assaulted, find help and the resources you need by calling the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673, or visit www.RAINN.org.

By Whitney Bell

I wish I could forget his scent.

When I moved there the air smelled of salt and thick heat. Citrus sometimes, beer others, the dichotomies of fresh and clean, smoke and sweat, coconut lime. Perfect for an adventure seeker.

Live music poured out of bars, boats floated out for sunset sails, restaurants served the catch of the day, crab legs, lobster tails.

I got a job by the beach waiting tables, and rented a cute little bungalow with a front yard jungle. I read by day, drank wine by night, sang karaoke, and danced. Met new people.

I can’t tell you why I trusted him, other than I trusted people. He reminded me of my friends back home. Friends I’d slept next to and always been safe.

I can’t tell you why I hung out after the bar closed, other than I worked second shift, drank until 2am, and that was my lifestyle, the after-party.

I can tell you I didn’t know about boundaries. I was new in town and lonely. But where I was from, inviting someone over wasn’t a sexual invitation. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Child Birth

A Choice C-Section: Delivery after Sexual Assault

October 1, 2017
c-section

CW: This essay discusses sexual assault. If you or someone you know has been assaulted, find help and the resources you need by calling the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673, or visit www.RAINN.org.

By Shannon Frost Greenstein

I wanted a C-section.

You might be looking at me incredulously right now. I mean, major surgery while you’re conscious? Months of recovery? Not being able to clutch your child to you immediately? No matter how much you adore your partner, it still stings to see them get to hold the baby first, am I right, C-section Mamas??

But from the moment I peed on the stick and saw a faint pink line, a pervasive thought was, “Oh, Jesus, I don’t want to push my offspring out through my vagina.”

I know that’s the evolutionary procedure. I know so many women have survived it, and endured it, and that it is very nearly a rite of passage and an empowering experience for the female sex. But it just seems like a bad design to me. I’m guessing, and you can back me up here, Natural-birth Mamas, that it hurts a hell of a lot.

But there’s more to it than that. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, memories, Sexual Assault/Rape

Freshman Orientation

July 26, 2017
memory

CW: This essay discusses sexual assault. If you or someone you know has been assaulted, find help and the resources you need by calling the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673, or visit www.RAINN.org.

By Shannon Brazil

All those parenting cliches you hear, it goes by in the blink of an eye and its over before you know it. I hate to tell you, but they’re all true. Five minutes ago our firstborn stood between my husband and me holding our hands and we swung her into the air. One, two, three, wee. Now, the oldest of four, fourteen years old, she walked in front of us wearing my old Doc Martins. From the actual 90s. Her hair, long bleached blonde. Day-glo blue at the tips. The three of us pushed through the double doors of her high school and the sign that read, Freshman Orientation Night.

Inside the building there were glossy linoleum floors. Florescent lights overhead. And the bright, boundless energy of teen volunteers. We handed maps. Maps that were highlighted in pink to mark popular sites like the caf and the gym. My stomach pulled into tight twisted knots. Knots that made sense. The grief of babyhood to childhood to adulthood. All wrapped up in my daughter. Except not.

Except a hard something clogged the back of my throat somewhere near the cafeteria. I fished a cough drop out of the bottom of my bag. Told myself to get a grip. On the down-low I joked with my husband about how much I hated high school. My husband was an A student. Me, I barely made it through. Head in the clouds, my grade school teachers said. Doesnt apply herself, they said in high school. Late-bloomer, the guidance counselor had hoped. But she wasn’t making any promises. Lucky for my kids, I was a mom who defended the dreamy late bloomers of the world. I would help teach each one of them how to apply themselves in their own good time. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Sexual Assault/Rape

When “Yes” Means “No”: On Trauma

May 15, 2017
trauma

CW: This essay discusses sexual abuse and trauma . For survivor support, contact RAINN for confidential online and phone support, https://www.rainn.org/get-help.

By Kit Rempala

One of the most beautiful and terrifying things about trauma is its relativity.  It changes from person to person.  My therapist says trauma is a defense mechanism – it shields us from the exiled emotions which well up to the surface every time our minds touch upon the permanent bruise which houses memory of the initiator.  She says defense mechanisms are not our weakness; they are powerful tools that indicate just how strong we are in the face of adversity.  She says although the initiators and their actions are not a part of us, the defense mechanisms – the traumas – are a part of us.  And no part of us is bad, or defines us.

But what do we do when cases of trauma are not so clear-cut?

I should have known.  I should have listened to my friends.  I should have listened to my instincts.  I believe in the core, primal, animalistic intelligence preserved in the human condition – the one that, when it prompts us to “Run!” is usually correct.  I’m a smart woman.  I am college-educated, I come from a well-adjusted upbringing in an upper-middle-class home, and I very rarely question my own judgments.  And then there are other times…

I met “D” when I was nineteen.  I had scarcely dated, and so I jumped at the opportunity for another’s attention, to feel desirable and wanted.  He seemed like a nice enough guy: polite and witty.  But even on our first date my neighbor’s dog growled at him as we walked to his car.  I shrank away from his hulking form in the passenger’s seat, and again during the movie, and again on the way home.  When I kissed him goodnight my apprehension was eclipsed by his powerfulness, the way he pulled me so tightly to him and pressed his lips so hard against mine.  It made me feel small in a way I never had being 5’11” tall.  My body shook, but not with the butterflies from a new connection. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Sexual Assault/Rape

A Funny Thing About Rape: A Video Essay

April 9, 2017

CW: Discussion of rape and sexual assault. Sexual assault is not your fault. If you need to talk: 800.656.HOPE, , .

By Mary Jo Smith

There’s been a lot of talk about rape lately.
As someone who was raped, I thought I’d join the conversation.

So, there’s been a lot of talk about rape lately. Because, you know, we just had a presidential election. In which we elected a president who likes to grab women by the pussy. Ok, wait. To be fair, I don’t want to paraphrase what our President said, because the media does that kind of stuff all the time and then you form an opinion about somebody based on what you think they said, but it’s not really what they said. So, let me be clear. What our president really said was, quote:

“You can do anything, grab them by the pussy.”

Oh, that’s what I said. OK.

Now, a lot of people got really angry, on Facebook, about what our President said. And I’ve been thinking about it, you know, cause I’m a woman, so I’m supposed to have opinions. So, here’s my opinion: Everybody needs to calm down. I mean even our shiny, new Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, when asked, if what our president said constituted sexual assault said:

’I don’t know.’ Continue Reading…