What Makes You Safe

First published on December 6, 2022 on my Substack newsletter, Princess and the Pea, Survivor Edition.

Men, women, and the impact of patriarchy:

I’ve dated a few men since my sexual assault a few years ago and I’ve learned I still have healing to do.

So does society, and men who date women.

I say a “few” to stress this is not a large sample. Let’s say I’ve been extremely hesitant when dating since I seemingly threw cautious to the wind when I dated “casually” and somehow ended up with a violent man. But this post is not about taking all the responsibility for what happened to me as it seems people so often want to blame the woman:

Why did she date him?

Why did she act like that?

Why was she dressed like that?

These are still questions posed of women about their assaults, as if the woman’s negligence or “provocative” actions made it happen to her. She must’ve caused it somehow.

Because men are fine.

Society insists on it. Men highlight it so as not to associate themselves with any hint of violence. There’s a tacit agreement that it’s only a few “bad apples” who hide in bushes and attack unsuspecting women who have the audacity to walk alone at night. Those are the bad guys. But the rest? They are a-okay upstanding guys.

Men are not fine. Okay, I won’t generalize: a lot of men are not fine (I feel pressured to say #notallmen so I don’t lose my male readers - stick with me, guys). I say all this with love in my heart. I love being in the presence of men. I enjoy men, their energy, their strength, their playfulness, their desire to help women and the children entrusted to them. Men have many wonderful qualities so to be clear this is not a post blaming men either.

Instead, I am blaming the patriarchal structures that have hurt both women and men.

The men I dated, the men who still need work? Here are some of the comments I received when I told them what happened to me :

Did you say no?

Did you see him after?

Did you see any red flags?

And my personal favorite: Wherever did you meet this guy? - Um, the same place I met you!

Do you see a theme here?

All these questions point to my own flaws and limitations – at perceiving, assessing, choosing, not speaking. Not at the man who was violent. It’s almost as if I drove out to a sketchy part of town, walked into a dark alley, saw a man living there holding a sign over his head that said “rapist” and went right to him. Yeah, okay, I’ll take this violent man.

Ridiculous, right? How is it my fault that I ended up with a violent man? And why is no one saying, “I’m so sorry, what an asshole! Why are there such terrible men?” (Actually, one man did, my oldest friend who also happens to be my ex-husband, who I finally told on the second anniversary of the rape. He remains the only non-therapist to have responded with appropriate anger on my behalf.)

But my favorite poor response came from the man I was dating who ironically had the most positive impact on my healing post-rape: Whenever will you get over it?

Then he ghosted me.

When will I get over it?

Um, when I meet a man who I can talk to, who does not try to fix me, but will sit with my emotions when they come up, when I am with a man who offers safety in relationship, and that means physical, sexual, mental, and emotional.

Men, women, and emotions:

I’ve learned that men aren’t good with emotion, generally. Until they get angry.

Neither are women for that matter. Many of us struggle with accessing our emotions as we have been shamed by a society that tells us expressing ourselves makes us “crazy” - when in fact we only become “crazy” after we’ve been shut down repeatedly from expressing emotions that are often reasonable responses to unreasonable circumstances. And then it all degrades rapidly, since once a woman finally accesses her emotion - and frankly, most women need to access more anger - men can become overwhelmed. And then they erupt.

“Powerful emotions like anger, fear, and grief are reasonable responses to unreasonable circumstances.”

But when men erupt, it is scarier, especially for a woman who has experienced violence at the hands of a man. In that moment of his anger, she might not be able to speak, or breathe. She might shake. She might cry. She might express a range of traumatic responses as the man stands there dumbfounded, wondering why she is so emotional, why she can’t just get it together. Because for him, being angry works, it’s how he expresses his manhood, his strength. He doesn’t want to seem weak, or soft. Even with a woman he likes or even loves. And then he blames the woman for making a “big deal out of nothing.”

“When men erupt, it is scary.”

It’s not nothing. That’s the point. A woman needs to know she is safe with a man, especially when she’s been the victim of intimate partner violence. When a man becomes angry and loud, she doesn’t feel safe.

By then, the scene has escalated and it’s too late. They go to their corners, the woman unsure and scared and the man frustrated and feeling blamed for something he didn’t cause in the first place, but ended up making worse due to his lack of knowledge, or insensitivity, and perhaps his own emerging shame.

The facts:

1 in 6 women have had the experience of attempted or completed rape.

Over 98% of perpetrators are men.

These are statistics. These are not made up. These are the inconvenient truths that society has a hard time grasping, is in denial of, and wants survivors to sweep under the rug.

I did. Sure I did. Who wants to talk about rape? I don’t. Rape only happens to other women, not me. It happens to weak women, women who don’t know what they’re doing. Wait a second, who actually knows what they’re doing? If people knew what they were doing, there would not be so many books on relationships and sex and attachment styles; there wouldn’t be millions of followers for Insta-therapists. There would not be magazines selling sex and love on their front covers for decades. There wouldn’t be so many women saying #metoo.

Enough people are struggling to figure out the battle of the sexes, which shouldn’t be a battle against each other, but should be against the harmful cultural myths keeping us apart and breeding ongoing violence within our relationships.

For sure, some couples know what they are doing. Perhaps they are the blessed ones who grew up with emotionally available parents and found each other so...

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