Wednesday, December 9, 2015 // The Statement
7B
ILLUSTRATION BY CHERYLL VICTUELLES
Personal Statement: To the boy who didn’t rape me
I
remember being scared for my sister when we first had
to send her off to college. It, of course, was a combination
of all the terrifying things that accompany sending the
first child off to college, like being thousands of miles away
from family and all alone for the first time, but what struck
me the most was something she told me one of the first times
I called her at school.
“Classes just started,” she said. “But I think the most
important things I’ve learned so far is which frat is the date
rape frat.”
Which frat is the date rape frat? The idea that a frat could
exist with that identity horrified me. If everyone knew about
this, why didn’t anyone stop it? How could it be OK for a
fraternity to casually be known for raping girls?
Growing up, I was always vaguely aware of the constant
risk of sexual assault. Don’t leave your drink unattended,
don’t let someone else make your drink, always have
someone to walk home with at night: the basic how-not-to-
get-raped rules that every girl is taught at a certain age. But
when I actually started needing to apply these rules, the
world I lived in was very different to the one I’m in now that
I’m in college.
When I first started drinking and partying, I lived in
China, so the whole culture surrounding drinking and sexual
assault was vastly different. The Chinese government does
not mess around when it comes to crime. Guns are illegal,
drugs are very illegal — foreigners risk deportation if caught
— and rape has the death penalty attached to it. On top of
that, the government was always watching you through the
cameras on every corner and the rumored hidden informants
scattered throughout the city. With this, I never felt unsafe
walking around at night or hanging out in a dingy bar; I felt
safer there than in any other city because I knew everyone
there was too afraid to break the law.
With this worldview, my sister’s words really shocked
me. I had heard about the prevalence of sexual assault on
college campuses, but I was always so disconnected from it
that it never really affected me, until suddenly it did. It was
my sister, right there in a place where one in every five girls
would be assaulted. She was there where it was OK to joke
about a particular fraternity having a reputation for taking
advantage of drunk girls and putting things in their drinks.
She was directly in harm’s way and there was nothing I could
do about it.
Fast forward a year and I find myself in the same place.
I remember how uncomfortable my mom looked when she
saw how close my dorm was to the frat houses on move-in
day, because without having to say anything, they implied
risks. But I followed the rules: I always had a buddy, I
watched my drink, I kept myself safe and I continued not
focusing too much on the risks. I always felt in control and
capable of keeping myself from becoming a statistic. Until
the night where I almost didn’t.
After going out to a party, and admittedly drinking too
much, I ended up back in the room of this boy — we will call
him Tom — who I had hooked up with the weekend before.
The time before, I had made it pretty clear to him that I
wasn’t going to go so far as to have sex with him, but after
stumbling back to his room things escalated very quickly. It
started with simple kissing, but the next thing I knew I was
naked in the bed of a boy I had known for a little over a week.
I didn’t realize how drunk I was, and I was uncomfortably
close to having sex that I did not want to have.
Thankfully, Tom is a very nice boy. Realizing how
intoxicated and out-of-sorts I was, he stopped and told me
he didn’t want to take advantage of me. At the time, it didn’t
seem like much to me — I just sort of shrugged, rolled over,
and fell asleep shortly after without thinking too much of it.
I like to think that I would have been capable of saying no
if he had actually gone so far as to, say, whip out a condom,
but I was very thankful that it didn’t get to that point. One
thing I do know for sure is that I certainly would have been
incapable of fighting back if he had decided that he was
going to have sex with me that night — regardless of my
consent.
The next morning, after I showered and pulled myself
together a little bit, I started thinking about what happened
and realized the gravity of it. What really drove home this
awareness was Relationship Remix, a thing that I had up
until that point been annoyed that I had to attend. Sitting in
the YK Lounge in South Quad, talking about sexual assault
(among other things) I realized that with some other boy,
I could be one of those scary stories they tell freshmen. I
thought about what I would have done. Would I have told
anyone? If I did who would I have told? Would there really
have been anything worth reporting?
After this realization, I sent Tom a nice little text to
thank him for not taking advantage of me. In that moment,
I genuinely felt appreciative of his actions. My thinking
changed a little when I received his response.
“I’m glad you recognized it,” he said.
You’re glad I recognized it? As if you deserve some sort
of medal for not raping me? In my mind, the appropriate
response would follow the idea that he did what any decent
human being would do, but those words served as a stark
reminder that maybe that is not the case. Since when do we
praise the boys who don’t take advantage of girls as morally
superior? Should you really feel so great about yourself for
not assaulting someone?
Now, I don’t really blame him too much for this (we are
now actually pretty good friends), but I do blame this culture
that has evolved around sexual assault. We live in a world
where fraternities with a specific reputation for raping girls
exist, a world where young girls are given lessons on how to
avoid the potential attackers hidden around every corner,
a world where the boy who didn’t rape me feels like a hero
just for that basic human decency.
So to the boy who didn’t rape me: thank you for not taking
advantage of me, but fuck the societal norms that surround
the whole thing.
by Lydia Murray, Daily Staff Reporter