When women's reactions to sexual assault are discussed, several common themes usually arise, including shame, a lowering of self esteem and fear of intimacy with men, even a difficulty interacting with men on non-sexual terms. Women also often cite female networks such as friends, mothers, sisters or a formal support group as an important step in their recovery. In short, rape often turns women away from men and towards other women. If this is indeed the most common path, my own life has taken a most unusual and contrary turn.
In September of 1993, I entered Dartmouth a self-confident bundle of energy with a very determined focus: to help my team qualify for and to run in the NCAA Cross Country Championships. Running became the most significant part of my life and my teammates the focus of my social sphere. A trip to the NCAA's did indeed come our way and suddenly my freshman fall was over. I planned to attend the annual team season wind-up party that evening at Hinman Cabin and return home the next day.
During the course of this party I was raped by one of the senior men on the team. I will be the first to admit that the "legality" of the situation was debatable, any discussion on this subject would rapidly deteriorate into the endless debate as to how drunk is too drunk to provide at least tacit consent. In any case, I never felt victimized in a "criminal" way. What has haunted my life ever since were the moral repercussions of being raped in the same room as my 30 teammates, men and women, in certain cases with their direct knowledge. These people were joined to me by a bond of team spirit and, for many, close friendship and yet they did nothing to prevent the rape of their youngest member.
My Christmas break was filled with confusion over how this could have occurred and who was to blame. It was upon returning to Dartmouth that my story took on its unusual spin. I discovered that not only were all my female teammates now aware of what had occurred, they actually found it humorous, although from their typically Catholic moral standpoint they looked down on me for what they perceived as simple promiscuity. Whether their attitudes stemmed from a complete misunderstanding of the facts or a subconscious need to avoid confronting the implications the truth held for their behavior, I will never know, but I do not believe that they were acting out of malevolence. Whatever their motivation, the group of people from whom I expected the most sympathy and support instead left me feeling ridiculed. Since, as friends and teammates I valued their opinions and particularly since, as women, I thought they would understand this situation, it never occurred to me that they could be wrong. I began to feel nothing but an overwhelming sense of shame in their presence. They became for me, models of a code of purity I had somehow violated, members of a circle of "virtuous" women that I could never rejoin. Never verbose at practice, I now verged on taciturn and began to resent the time I spent devoted to a sport that was formerly my life's passion.
Having severed myself from my female peer group, I also eventually lost my link to older female role models. By my junior fall I finally decided to try to escape the bad memories and quit cross-country for good. To explain this to all concerned, I wrote a letter detailing my motivations for quitting which I sent to my female teammates and read to my coach over the phone. My coach asked me to reconsider my decision and she promised to call me back the following day. The next day, and the day after came and went and I never again heard from my coach. Once again I reached out for support and once again I was left with the feeling that I had done something so disgraceful that I was no longer worth talking to.
The damage done to my relations with other women was deep. I became distrustful of women in general and discussed my assault and any other significant issues only with my male friends. My two roommates of that fall and closest friends since my freshman year accused me of being distant, uncaring and unaffectionate. I missed the kind of friendly relationships they so easily maintained and yet had no idea how to reverse my now habitual tendency of constantly pushing women away. Frustrated with my own inability to relate to them in any normal fashion, I eventually quit speaking to either of them and moved out. Soon after this, the only other girl to whom I've related this tale commented that this must have inspired a firmly feminist streak to my personality. Somehow I couldn't bring myself to explain to her why, at that time, this was in fact laughably untrue.
Perhaps the circumstances surrounding my assault were exceptional, but now that I have finally been able to trace through my own thoughts, there does seem to be an undeniable logical thread. Rape leads to shame and the consequent attempt to separate from anyone who projects this feeling towards you. Since the members of one's female peer group are those whose lives are both close and similar to yours, it is their judgments you are most likely to accept. Thus, if any condemnation is perceived as coming from these quarters its effects will be even more exaggerated and far-reaching. If this leads to self-imposed division from this peer group then it also leads to the loss of a sense of gender identity, making it difficult to rejoin this group even when you wish to. Rape is much more than an issue of how men treat women, in a depressing and ironic twist of psychology it can also have detrimental impact on how we view and treat each other.
