Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl by Jeannie Vanasco

Author:Jeannie Vanasco
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: Tin House Books

UP TO MARK?

When Mark used the word rape, I felt uncomfortable instead of vindicated. I think that’s because sexual assault (and sometimes I even drop the sexual) allows me to ignore the particulars. The particulars: someone suggested (likely Mark) that I should be carried from the living room into Mark’s basement room; Mark and Jake carried me into Mark’s basement room; Mark told Jake that Jake could leave; after Jake left, Mark undressed me; Mark put his fingers inside my vagina as far as they would go; I cried and Mark told me not to cry; Mark told me I was dreaming; Mark took his fingers out of me and masturbated over me.

Why would Jake have suggested Mark’s basement room? I can almost hear Mark suggesting it. But I can’t offer proof, and I feel so much pressure to provide proof, which is why I’m interviewing Mark. Yet why should the proof be up to Mark? Why should he get to decide what happened? I think of the detectives saying, Is it possible that his hand slipped? My newspaper advisor never admitted to rubbing his hand up my thigh and between my legs.

But Mark admitted to assaulting me, to sexually assaulting me.

Mark admitted to raping me.

. . .

ME: I also had trouble deciding whether it was a big deal.

HIM: I can understand—well, I should let you finish, but I can understand why you would process it in that way, and it just makes me sad. The whole thing just—

ME: I think I’m okay now. But I was thinking about this new definition and I realized that the reason I had trouble even thinking of it as rape, or even serious, was, Well, he used his fingers, and it wasn’t violent. We’re so used to movie portrayals of violent rape, usually followed by murder, and we barely learn who the woman was. Then I realized I was so focused on thinking about your body, your hands, whatever was being used, that I wasn’t thinking about my body. I was only thinking about what it meant for the perpetrator, and what the perpetrator used, instead of thinking about it from the other point of view.

HIM: Well, hopefully you’re not thinking that way anymore.

ME: No, but you know, after encountering the new definition, in some way—it’s sort of silly, but now I can say it was serious.

HIM: I don’t think it’s silly at all. I think that’s why it’s important that our laws reflect society and reality as best as they can. I don’t know exactly what I’m trying to articulate here, but that is one of the functions of useful laws, to give us a framework by which to form a collective society, to understand these are the boundaries and this is what is not okay.

ME: I do think structural change happens through laws. Because a lot of people won’t take some actions seriously if the law doesn’t categorize them as such. I was recently thinking about popular movie portrayals of rape. Movies that came out when we were kids.

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