Sexual assault

Surviving rape and date rape

By Terry Shelvy

Many attitudes, beliefs, and mistaken ideas about rape have been with us for centuries. By looking at myths such as "women ask for it" and "women secretly enjoy rape" from a historical perspective leads us to a better understanding how they evolved. Women are still seen as men's property and are protected as such. Men and women are still taught to occupy very different gender roles in today's world. Men are usually in power positions and women are seen as passive. This socialization process is changing albeit slowly.

Rape is a forced sexual intercourse. Rape is a violent act, not a sexual act. The myth that men who rape women are sexually pathological has begun to be dispelled and to be replaced with an understanding that rape is an act of anger, power, and control rather than of lust.

Rape can happen to anyone. Women from different cultures, races, ages, and economic levels are all vulnerable. It does not matter who you are or where you live. Most rape crimes, and specifically most acquaintance rape, affects women between the ages of 15 and 25. This is the time when young women are most likely to date and therefore most vulnerable to date rape. Acquaintance rape is not limited to dating situations. It may be committed by friends of the family, employers, friends, past boyfriends, and even husbands. The potential causes of rape are varied and controversial. Among the factors that contribute to rape are the decreased status of women within a society, pervasive media exposure of sex, and the availability of pornographic materials, especially those involving acts of violence.

Date rape causes many serious problems. One of these problems centers around the ways the victim feels about what has happened to her. Often women are not even sure they have been raped. They think maybe that they asked for it, even though they said "no". Some men become desensitized to the word because many of women in their lives do not mean it. If a man persists in sexual advance after a woman had clearly said "no", she might feel angry, frustrated, ignored, unimportant, and unheard. She may try to make him hear her and believe her by being more forceful physically by pushing him away. She may even scream, threaten him, try to escape, or she may resort to physical violence by hitting him to make her wishes understood.

Sometimes men commit date rape without fully understanding what constitutes rape. They think that women really do mean "yes" when they say "no". They assume that a woman must want sex if she goes somewhere alone with a man. They think that if a girl flirts, she must want sex. They think that because they spent a lot of money on a date, their date must therefore owe them sex. When men such as these force their dates to have sex, they are, albeit perhaps unknowingly, committing rape.

Recovery after rape can be a very long process. Picking up the pieces of her life after a sexual assault can be the most difficult challenge a victim can ever face. In a relatively short period of time, her most fundamental beliefs have been shattered and her sense of bodily integrity, security, and basic justice have been destroyed. Victims may question their most important, intimate relationships.

In spite of all this, however, victims' lives will continue and it is up to them to put the pieces back together. Many victims of a rape face rape-trauma syndrome, an acute reaction to a completed or attempted sexual assault. It describes possible responses to an assault, which vary with each individual. Rape victims are shocked and disbelieved; they face the fear that the others will think differently of them if they know they have been attacked. They blame themselves, and they fear that no one will believe them. Being alone and nightmares are another symptoms of rape-trauma syndrome (Parrot, 1988).

Most women who have been raped report that they believed their lives were in danger during the assault. The act of rape confirms a woman's worst fear: she is in fear for her life and, at the same time, she feels totally powerless to alter the course of events. The body and mind respond in a series of complicated ways based feelings of intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and threat.

Sexual intimacy can be difficult challenge during this phase. An assault can very easily destroy the desire to be emotionally or physically close with another person, and the relationship does not have to be sexual for the victim to feel uncomfortable. It is important for rape victims to give themselves time to become more comfortable with sexual intimacy. They may feel comfortable a week after the assault, or they may be uncomfortable a year or several years later.

It is very important to understand that we are invulnerable to rape. Rape can happen to anyone at any time. Rape prevention strategies help decrease the risk, but the risk never drops to zero. Awareness prevention is also very important for potential assailants to help them understand what constitutes rape.