Break Her by B. G. Harlen

Author:B. G. Harlen [Harlen, B. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Suspense & Thrillers
Published: 2012-08-07T23:00:00+00:00

When she was younger, she believed, like all of her friends, that there was something especially awful about the possibility of being raped. One thought about it, feared it more than other violent acts. Sure, she didn’t like walking down dark alleys, but it wasn’t that she was terrified of being mugged. It was always assumed that a girl would be raped, and that would be the awful part. It was so self-evident, you didn’t even ask yourself why exactly. Though it was never actually explained what made it the most awful thing that could happen.

It was always rape, always, the threat everywhere, everywhere that men were, in every look that men gave, in every moment that you didn’t pay attention. It was always there: they could do that to you. And you didn’t have any say in the matter. Like there was this unique vulnerability that only women had. And maybe there was.

But what if you looked at it a different way, purely physically? Say a couple was attacked. The attackers would rape the woman and beat the shit out of the man. Who was worse off? She wondered if men who were shot or stabbed or beaten or women who were shot or stabbed or beaten had their lives changed the way it seemed women who were raped did? Were there any studies on that? Was it really worse?

What gives rape that special frisson? What is the thing that makes it so different from anything else that can be done to a person? Was it the violence mixed with the threat or the intrusion into the most private part of a woman, the part that’s supposed to be for pleasure? Is it the shock? It can’t be the surprise when it’s what every woman is warned about all her life. Or is it because she’s warned about it all her life? Is it the failure? The inability to protect what every woman is charged all her life with protecting, the thing that is simultaneously hers and her family’s, her tribe’s, her country’s – not hers?

It’s all trauma, after all, being raped, or shot, or stabbed, or beaten. Why is rape considered the most traumatic, the most affecting (except perhaps by those who were stabbed or shot or beaten up)? It’s every bit as horrible, but is it more horrible? She wondered who would feel worse, someone who had been raped with the threat of force but minimal physical harm, or someone who was beaten to the point of hospitalization – both by a stranger and with no warning. Would the rape victim be considered worse off? Would she consider herself worse off? Would the beating victim think, well, at least I wasn’t raped? Didn’t that mean that rape was worse because everyone decided it was worse? And if you decided that it wasn’t?

Well, obviously, it was different. But why so much worse? Someone could break your arms and legs, and you wouldn’t feel guilty, but if you were raped, somehow that changed you in a different way.

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