I knew about secondary victimization when I was raped for the first time. Despite all the fear and trembling I was feeling, I was ready——and willing, in fact——to talk back when the police officers came to visit me the day following the incident. And just like I had anticipated, the officers gave me lots of shit about how I could have run away from the car even though the rapist had a gun. As I listened to them and occasionally corrected, refuted and questioned them, I was thinking, "what if I had not received feminist training, or even been exposed to feminist thinking at all?" because I would have been shocked to find out that the police, whom my roommates called and asked for help, were actually very useless, not supportive at all, and definitely not trusting. I felt grateful to feminism, and at the same time, it made me feel sick to think of billions of women and other rape victims with little exposure to feminism who take up the courage to call the police and end up being humiliated, harassed, and given lots of bs by them.
But my relationship to feminism has since become somewhat different over time. Since the incident, I have been paying much more attention to feminist discourses on rape and survivors than I used to. Most of them tell me, "it's not your fault, it's the rapist that wronged you," "no one should harass you, tease you, or blame you for what has happened over which you have/had no control," blah blah blah. And I get it. I appreciate that feminism has alternative explanations to offer me and other victims with which to understand what has happened to our bodies. Such alternative explanations, contrary to what police officers most likely say to us, really help us cope.
But I have recently realized that ultimately, feminist alternative explanations and rapist culture's dominant explanations are both torturous. And whenever I think about what happened to me that day, my thinking fluctuates between them. Feminist alternative explanations of rape are just as torturous as dominant ones because they are extreme in assuming that a victim is 100% innocent, and is nothing but a victim. Every time I see that kind of feminist thinking, I can't help thinking that all victims but me are 100% innocent.
What if I was actually 1% responsible for what happened? I ask myself. As I look back on the incident, my mind is filled with maybe-I-could-have's. Maybe I could have run away. Maybe I could have asked for help at that store. Maybe I could have gotten out of the car earlier. Maybe I could have chosen not to get in the car in the first place. Maybe. Maybe…. I try to brainwash myself with the feminist alternative explanations, trying to convince myself that there was nothing I could have done. But I know maybe I could have done something. I understand that the fact that many victims feel this way is exactly why we need feminist alternative explanations of rape. But I just can't get off my mind the idea that it probably wasn't entirely the rapist's fault. I don't feel that innocent.
Knowing that I shouldn't blame myself for the rape and actually feeling that I am not the one to blame are two different things. But there is not much literature on how to cope——and live——with the feeling of guilt, the feeling of self-blame, although there is so much literature that tells us that self-blame is wrong and that one should not feel responsible for sexual violence they experience.
Now I have double self-blame: I blame myself a bit for the rape, and I blame myself for not thinking like a real feminist. And that is despite my knowing that there is no such thing as a "real" feminist.
