2139 The Incident - Part 3 of 3

Sunday, November 30, 2008

(Read 2134, Part 1 and 2136, Part 2 first.)

In 1966 it was next to impossible to make a rape charge stick without witnesses ((unless the guy was black, the only human less believable than a woman, nice period in our history)). In most states, if the guy was white, a woman needed a minimum of two witnesses. Even if she had witnesses, her demeanor, clothing, makeup, and sexual history were pertinent to the case, even though the man's were not. The second wave of feminists got us a lot more than almost equal pay, folks. The only way we were more free then than many of the world's currently "oppressed" women is that we didn't have the burka.

In those days, "date rape" didn't exist. There was no such thing. If she knew the guy, and was with him willingly, then it wasn't rape. She obviously led him on, she wanted it or she wouldn't have been with him, and if she yelled rape after, it's just because she's mad at him. All rapes were violent by definition, and by strangers, and if the woman wasn't badly injured, then it was all her fault because she didn't fight hard enough. After all, we all know "a man can't run with his pants around his ankles." She would get no sympathy from anyone. This is absolutely true. Women didn't report rape because they'd be torn to shreds if they did.

As the deputy had pointed out, the desk clerks would testify that I went to the room with him willingly. I didn't need to think about that. It was just the way it was. I had bruises. No broken bones, no cuts, no bullets. A few chunks of hair missing. End of story. Stand up and move on.

I had completely forgotten about Jean. Didn't think of her until Saturday morning, when I realized I needed to talk with someone. I needed support and sympathy. I also needed to apologize for leaving her in the lurch.

As it turned out, she had arrived at the hotel only a few minutes after I'd left the bar. Believe it or not, before she even sat down, her brother showed up, and she left with him. She thought I was late, so she'd left a note with the bartender (who denied I'd been there), to tell me she'd found a ride. She asked me why I was late.

I said, "Well, Deputy So-and-so ....", and I got only that far when she laughed, "Oh, Deputy Dawg! Yeah, I can see why he'd slow you down. Every woman in town gets hassled by him if she's alone in a car at night. The SOB tries to get sex services in exchange for dropping bogus charges. Everybody knows about him. He stopped So-and-so just the other night, and when he made her get out of the car and grabbed her breasts, she kicked him in the crotch. I don't know why he thinks he can get away with it. Well, it's ok. I got home. Sorry it was a problem for you."

I was stunned. I didn't tell her what happened. How stupid I had been.

So it really was all my fault?

I crashed and burned. "They" were right. This was the proof. I was stupid. I couldn't do anything right, and others could tell that just by looking at me. That's how he knew he could get away with it. That's why whoever had called him to the hotel knew that, too. It was all my fault. There's something very wrong with me, and everyone can see it.

I lost me for the next fifteen years.

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The first ten years were very bad. I was raped (technically) more times than I care to count, and it didn't take physical violence to do it. I thought it was pretty much my lot in life. Like that was my role, to be the victim. Somebody has to do it. What's weird is that there are men who make it a habit to victimize women, and those men can unerringly identify women who can be used - the naive or needy women who need only a few kind words to turn their heads, and then are easily coerced. Like wolves can sniff out rabbits. They know exactly the right words to say, precisely how to defuse her feeble defenses.

What you need to understand is that I, my mother, and my siblings were all regularly brutally beaten by my father, told how stupid and useless we were, how everything that happened to us was our own fault, and we deserved it. I'd been beaten to unconsciousness many times. My next younger brother and I tried to get help - police, teachers, doctors - and we were always told "just don't make him mad". Which was a way of telling us that it was our own fault. Note that "domestic violence" wasn't known then - the term didn't even exist as a concept. The prevailing social attitude was that a man had a right to beat his wife and children to "keep them in line", and in fact even had a responsibility to do so. If a man didn't beat his family, it was because they were well behaved.

In high school, outside of the home, I had a pretty good life. I had good friends, and dated some nice boys, and none of them ever acted even remotely like my father. In 1966, in that small town, where I was liked, and appreciated, and successful, I thought maybe I was not stupid, not useless, that maybe I did deserve a good life. Maybe I could really do it. Maybe my father was wrong.

And then the deputy, the symbol of town authority, took that silly dream away from me. Over the next decade I met many men like him. Most were more subtle. They'd tell me they liked me. I'd think they liked me. They didn't. They just wanted to get me alone, just once. And then they'd say, I heard it over and over so it must have been true, right?, "You wanted it. You know you wanted it. You can't walk around looking like that and not want it."

I looked and smelled like rabbit.

I spent much of my adult life afraid of men. I was deathly afraid of angering men. I acted, behaved, became whatever seemed to elicit approval from men. I lost myself.

I was 37 years old before I figured out that it wasn't me, that I was neither bad nor stupid and never have been, that the problem was all in them, they were the bad people, and yes I was wrong to believe them, but that's the only way I was wrong.

The real me, the me I am inside, is pretty darn ok.

Since that realization, no man has coerced me, physically or mentally, into doing anything I myself didn't choose to do. I have been lied to by men, and misled, and taken advantage of, but that's different, because there was a grudging acknowledgment of equality in there. That's human, not rabbit, so that's ok.
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