Journalist Connie Chung penned an open letter supporting Christine Blasey Ford, while for the first time publicly sharing her own experience with sexual assault. Rachel Yang, Variety.Shortly after it was published, I read Connie Chung's account of being sexually assaulted by her trusted family physician when she was an innocent young woman seeking birth control. Someone will no doubt have asked, "Why didn't she stop him?" when he brought her to orgasm with his fingers. Such a question would come from someone who has no idea of the strength of social conditioning on females to trust doctors and others in authority positions.
Feeling sick to my stomach, I remembered a similar experience when I went to a gynecologist before my first marriage. Though not as naive as Connie Chung had been, I wasn't sure about the physiology of sexual intercourse, and the doctor was a woman. So, when she explained that she was slowly stretching my hymen tissue so I wouldn't feel any pain on intercourse, I didn't stop her, even though I felt its inappropriateness, especially because I'd told her about being raped at age 16. Nonetheless, I did exactly what Chung did, kept quiet and afterwards dashed out of there as quickly as I could, embarrassed and ashamed.
We tend to think of sexual grooming as specific to child sexual abuse, but the elements are the same in any form of abuse -- the appeal of a relationship with someone who gives you special attention, the underlying assertion of power not evident until trust is established, and the sense of secrecy based on the expectation of not being believed, or chastised if believed. Those negative judgments can be overt or covert.
And then MY PARENTS NEVER MENTIONED THE SITUATION AGAIN! No one asked if I wanted to talk about it, no one assured me that stopping to chat with the man did not make the rape my fault, no one commented on my sudden need to have a light on in my room at night.
The Scottish man who raped me used an abbreviated form of sexual grooming--approaching me when there was still daylight with a casual question about my being American and some conversation about the golf tournament I mentioned my Dad was there to attend, treating me like an adult without ever being openly seductive, then offering to walk me back to the hotel, as it was getting dark. A very nice local man being thoughtful to a tourist. I was flattered and trusting, only half-way back to the hotel realizing--while deep in conversation--he'd walked me to an area away from the lights where sand dunes blocked a clear view from the road. When we saw the headlights of a car--which I knew was my father because one of the lights was out--the rapist clapped a hand over my mouth and said, "If you make a sound, I will kill you."
Why am I posting this in "The Only Gate is Now?" Because this blog is where I've written about surviving another kind of death threat -- breast cancer -- and reminds me that no matter what life brings, "there's nowhere to go, there's nothing else to be." Staying present for me means not numbing out, not dissociating from the emotions that flashbacks arouse. I dealt with my anger at the rapist of the past, but not until forty years after the event, awakening terrified from a nightmare and writing it down so I wouldn't numb out again, emotions that eventually found a home in my poem, "Union."
I had to allow the anger to move through me again when aroused by Brett Kavanaugh's appointment in spite of Christine Blasey Ford's testimony and his obvious lack of integrity, and beyond these specific events to the larger world we live in, characterized by the ascent of greed and dominance of wealthy white males, to the exclusion and--often--terror of anyone not part of that club.
