May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor

I have always been accident-prone. I was that little kid who defied physics and lost their first tooth by faceplanting off of a tricycle and onto a driveway. I am that girl who has been in four car accidents and I am also that girl who has been electrocuted by a water fountain. In second grade I skied into a tree headfirst, sans helmet, only to go into a coma and need six brain surgeries. I have slipped on more leaves and fell down more stairs than anyone you have ever known.

You catch my drift: long story short, I have always defied the odds. Each of these aforementioned incidents, with their varying degrees of severity, were freak accidents that happened 100% out of both my control and anyone else’s control. No one goes to trial under Murphy’s Law. The likelihood of being electrocuted by a water fountain, for example, is so infinitesimal that in hindsight it is nothing short of laughable.

But one day, I had an experience where I did not defy the odds. I had an experience that conformed to statistics, for once in my life. And two years afterwards, I would have a similar experience in a dissimilar place where it was even more common. As I have discussed in previous posts, I first experienced sexual violence almost 5 years ago while I was a freshman in college. (In the US, one out of every 6 women will experience sexual violence.) As I have not discussed in previous posts, I had a second experience of sexual violence almost 3 years ago while studying abroad in Cape Town, South Africa where 37% of men admit to raping a woman. A stranger used the threat of a weapon to force me to perform oral sex on him, literally on a side street, on Easter Sunday. I shit you not. But for once (twice) in my life, I wasn’t an outrageous human being with silly bad luck – I was just a statistic.

And every day, there are men who are incidentally cashing in on these statistics with some statistics of their own. According to a recent RAINN analysis, 97 out of every 100 rapists will never spend even a single day in prison. Let this sink in for a moment. I’ll wait.

So who’s odds would you bet on? Let’s pretend for a moment that we are in a casino. Every day, men and women sit down at the poker table that is the world each with pre-determined hands; men have a full house, women have a pair. “The house” (government, institutionalized social/gender issues, legal system, rape culture) continues their refusal to properly shuffle and distribute the good cards. If the house always wins, and the house is rigging the cards to work in men’s favor, when will women get a hand? We will continue to have nothing but a pair of fives until we either become the house, or are given what we need from the house in order to equal the men’s hand. (For the record this metaphor is intended to represent solely sexual violence, not gender issues in general.)

It is both incredibly disheartening and infuriating to continue witnessing legal and political agencies/institutions do so little to address sexual violence when they have so much more potential for control. It is important to be able to differentiate between things you can control, and things you cannot control. For example: I cannot control the fact that I was raped, that I am a lesbian, or that I have a seizure disorder. But I CAN control whether or not I am self-destructive and self-blaming, closeted, or taking my medication. Can a judge stop a rapist from raping? No. Can a judge control whether or not a rapist is punished for raping? 100%.

I want to feel confident in my ability to bet on the odds of women’s safe and respected futures. A world where I do not need to wear a longer dress because I will be walking home from the bar alone later. A world where I can walk down the street without some guy pinching my ass (this happens shockingly often). A world where a guy won’t call me a bitch (or worse) when I turn down his offer to buy me a drink. A world where I can choose to not have sex, whenever I don’t want to, no matter what the circumstances. Does this idealistic vision of the future better my odds of being crazy? You tell me.

I am angry for each and every woman who has experienced what I have experienced. But I am also angry for each and every woman who has not exprerienced what I have experienced, and who has to live in a world where her body is seen as some form of trespassable property. And for too long, I was angry at myself. For “letting it happen,” for not reporting it to the police, for not physically fighting my rapists off, for not getting some sort of help. I have had enough. I will not apologize, I will not blame myself, and I will not punish myself for another second. I have punished myself for long enough, as have millions of women who share my experiences. Every survivor has their own individual reactions and connections to their experiences, but to me there seems to be an overarching trend at hand. Through varying forms of self-punishment, survivors of sexual violence serve figurative and emotional time in prison – sometimes maybe just to make up for the fact that no one is serving literal time in prison. Better to hold SOME one accountable than NO one accountable, right?

What are the odds that this is fair? A lot worse than your odds of raping someone and getting away with it.

Disclaimer: This post was written by a Feministing Community user and does not necessarily reflect the views of any Feministing columnist, editor, or executive director.

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