On Shame and Silence

I was reading this week's PostSecret and one of the postcards really struck me. As I read it, I realized that it was my secret, something that has been at the back of my mind, always lurking and nagging, for a very long time now.

I was molested once, when I was 12. I didn't tell anyone until I was a bit older -- just before turning 17 actually. By that point, it was too late. The person who should have believed me didn't. I've learned to live with what happened, and draw strength and wisdom from it. Maybe one day I'll feel strong enough to write about it in a public forum. For now, I want to discuss something else.

What the postcard got me thinking about was how I felt after he denied ever touching me. I felt humiliated. Just as I had felt after it happened. I felt ashamed, like I shouldn't have opened my mouth and talked about it. Because it made people uncomfortable.

I've talked about it with a handful of people. Only once did I truly feel empathy -- it was just after it had happened and I was talking with a school-friend who was being physically abused at home. I don't remember our conversation well and we were children, but I truly felt like she got it. She knew the hopelessness and the feeling that you just had to keep quiet. Every other time, I would stumble over my words and wish I'd never started talking, because of how visibly-uncomfortable the other person would become.

It has affected the way I deal with it. Sometimes, like after reading the postcard, all I want to do is talk about it. I want someone else to understand. To understand me. But I can't, because I feel like I should be ashamed and anything else would make people uncomfortable.

The thing is, inside of me, I don't feel ashamed. I feel strong and confident. I don't blame myself, I don't hate myself. I'm constantly on guard, but I'm slowly learning to relax. I'm not afraid anymore.

And yet, I just can't get it out. Can't get past the barrier.

People want survivors of sexual abuse and assault to be ashamed. It's expected. I've been thinking a lot about it lately. Sexual assault exposes the worst of patriarchal power relations. It is the dehumanization of one person by another. It's taking agency away from another person and turning them into an object of one's control and power. And talking about it makes people uncomfortable, because if they hear too many personal accounts of sexual assault, maybe they'll have to revise their beliefs that sexual violence can be blamed on the victim, that there is no patriarchy at work.

Now, it's pretty easy to shut up perpetrators of sexual assault. They have the law to worry about. They wouldn't get anything out of talking about it.

But survivors have a reason to talk. Whether it's to get justice, get the pain off their chests, or just gain some kind of closure or higher understanding, survivors can benefit from talking about it. But that would make people uncomfortable. It would make people think, and question, and reconceptualize. They might know the perpetrator. It's easier to pretend not to listen, or to put it out of mind, or deny it, but it's more effective to just shut up the survivors before they start talking at all.

So, there is a general, un-spoken dictum that tells us that survivors should be ashamed, and therefore shouldn't want to talk about it.

But why should we feel ashamed? Why should we feel as if something's wrong with us? We don't conceptualize perpetrators as ashamed, or at least not in the same way as we do survivors. Perpetrators have actually done something to be ashamed of.

And part of me feels like the stigma of being a survivor of sexual assault would begin to be lifted if survivors started rejecting the shame and speaking up about their experiences. It's easy to make sexual assault invisible when it's just a bunch of stats. Now, imagine rape apologists or deniers saying the things they say if they knew their neighbour had been raped. Or their mother. Or a friend.

And I know that in the current atmosphere, they would go on denying the reality of sexual assault and feel safe doing it, but imagine a world where survivors felt safe talking about their experiences. Where the stigma of sexual assault no longer fell on their shoulders.

That is why part of me just wants to tell the world exactly what happened to me. Every detail, exactly how it made me feel afterwards. I want to make people uncomfortable and force them out of their safety zones. Because that comfort is exactly what allows people to do nothing, or to deny the importance of sexual assault. And yet, another part of me is still too ashamed to do it.