Rape, and not the fun kinky kind

Go read this Dan Savage column, and it's attendant comments.

Go on, read it. I'll be here when you get back.

Now see why I'm just a teensy bit homicidal? Sure, maybe the commenters were trolling. Maybe I should ignore it, and them.

But I can't, see, because too many people still honestly believe that.

Honestly believe that being drunk and not screaming, not slugging him, mean consent.

Hell, I know men who still believe that being drunk means consent.

Let's make something clear.

It doesn't.

Sure, I'm probably preaching to the choir here. But I don't care. I need to preach this little sermon, and I don't care who to right now, because it hits too close to home. It tears open my own scars a little too deeply, a little too bloodily.

And now I'm bleeding rage and decade-old pain, and I've got to fling the blood and pain somewhere.

Congratulations, you're reading this and therefore the lucky recipient.

See, I was raped.

Sort of, kind of, quasi-date-couldn't-ever-prove-it-in-court raped.

But you know what? To the scars in my head, it was rape. To the scars on my heart, and on my sexuality, it was rape.

He was my 'boyfriend'. Read as: I had a gigantic crush on him, I was a naive kid, and he found it amusing that he could get me to do damned near anything.

When he broke my hymen fingering me too roughly, he laughed. Thrilled he'd 'popped my cherry'. I still cringe at that phrase. I cried for over an hour. It hurt, and I hadn't wanted it.

When we had sex, I wasn't ready for it. I cooperated, because I thought I was 'supposed to'. I told him I didn't think I was ready for this, that I didn't want to.

He kissed me, told me to trust him.

And because I was 15, and I wanted so badly to please him, wanted so badly for him to want me like I wanted him, I cooperated.

Should I have stopped him? Of course.

But like so many women, I was trained not to fight back. Trained that the men I was in relationships with had a certain right to me, to my body.

It hurt.

There was no fun to it, no feeling good. There was no hymen in the way anymore, but I was young, and scared, and not really aroused at all, and it just hurt. I was so grateful when he finished. I wanted to curl up and cry, but I didn't want my sister to know anything was wrong.

We went horseback riding the next day.

He broke up with me on the next school day.

No, it wasn't a terrible, violent, forced-at-gunpoint rape.

And that may have you shaking your head and saying, "sad story, but so what?"

Well, here's 'what'.

I'm 24 years old. This happened nearly 10 years ago. And I still have nightmares about it. And in those nightmares is mixed in what-I-should-have-dones, and the guilt for not doing it. Because you see, even though he pushed me into it, I am the one with the guilt. I am the one who should have stopped it.

After all, he was just being 17, y'know? Of course he'd try to have sex if he could... of course he wouldn't take a 15 year old virgin's fears into account.

Of course the 15 year old virgin should have had the balls to tell her older boyfriend whom she worshipped, "no," to something he wanted.

Of course it was my fault.

In fact, I'm willing to lay even money that if you ever asked him, if you ever found him and looked him in the eye and asked him, "Did you rape Bella?" that he'd be shocked, appalled, and offended. Of course he didn't.

I didn't scream.

I didn't hit him.

I didn't fight him.

Of course it wasn't rape.

And nearly 10 years later, that haunts me still.

That closes my cunt with fear and expectation of pain, and stops me from having sex with my lover for nearly a year.

That makes me break down in scenes even with people I thought I trusted.

That makes me terrified to drink in public even with people I love and trust around me.

Call it what you want, but in my head- and in my heart and more importantly, in my sexuality- it was rape and it's still left scars.

Being a little drunk and thinking, "she'll some around," is not an excuse, and it's not consent.