When are YOU going to do something?

It’s not just about the fact a person can run to be a leader of our nation and still say disgusting things about women.

It’s that there are other men who have let him. Who allowed him to spend his whole life speaking about us like we are destined to be eaten. Who thought of this attitude as honest rather than deplorable.

I’m watching you. I’m sick of boys removing themselves from the conversation because they “would never”. But you would let your friend catcall. But in the locker room or in your living room or in your frat house, you laugh when he makes the rape joke, when he talks about her like she’s inconsequential, when he removes her consent and speaks about her as if she’s a haunted house; good for a night and a story but too trapped with ghosts.

You better look down, because you’re on fire, too. You’re not free of sin because your sin was listening, an ear that excuses behavior over and over and over again until those who laugh about it begin to preform it on a personal level. Until they think they will be tolerated for criminal behavior because you tolerated them too.

The worst part is they’re right.

I want to believe in mankind. Believe he doesn’t become an rapist overnight, that only decades of business meetings or beauty contests teach him that it’s okay to be demeaning. Teach him our bodies only belong in the orbit of a boy, only mattering when we have a son.

I know how many will fold into themselves about this, hide like always in the idea you cannot change what is, that we exaggerate, that it’s not that much of a problem. That it’s not on you. Maybe it’s someone else’s problem, you won’t speak up because something in your circumstance always prevents it. That women talk about men that way sometimes, don’t they? You’ll follow rabbit holes until you come back up to sunshine without realizing you smell of nothing but gravedirt.

I’m watching you. I want to let you know you don’t get to sleep at night anymore, because none of us do. The girls you laughed about, talked about our parts as if you couldn’t tell you were slicing us into pieces. The girls who still have bruises. The women who you only see the shadow of when they stand next to their fathers or boyfriends, the two-dimensional figments of your imagination.

We are real and last night it was hard for us to breathe. All that air got snatched up by his talking. Last night we didn’t sleep. I’m not just cursing him anymore. I’m telling you the curse goes deeper. It’s every rape case you ignored, every time you waived off how offended she got by his words, every time she got uncomfortable and you did your best not to notice. I’m cursing the boy who didn’t get her back safely even though he knew about his buddy. The boy who stood in the same room as someone who spoke about her roughly and just kept drinking. I mean you.

Not all men, maybe. But all men have seen it happen.

Now the question is: when are you going to do something?

Life as a survivor is a battle

The journey of a survivor is long and winding; a perfect example of the emotional roller coaster experience. My assault happened over two years ago. In the time since then I feel as though I have completely rebuilt my life.

When a person experiences such a traumatic life event, it shakes their entire being. I felt as though everything I was had ever been was completely lost and that my whole world around me had crumbled into pieces. At first, I did not know how to make my life whole again. The thing about rape is that it causes the survivor to truly experience what it is like to lose all control over their physical being and their circumstances. And that is not a feeling that a person can easily forget. Traces of that feeling stay with you, at times encompassing your entire being. The memory of that feeling is the single most anxiety-inducing thing I have ever known.

My life as a survivor has been a life completely ruled by anxiety. The nights are now my enemy, to be avoided at all costs. As the sun dips down lower and lower in the sky, my anxiety increases. I look forward to the summers. Not for the warm weather, beach trips, carefree feelings and other things people normally look forward to about summer. But because it stays lighter longer. I get more freedom, less fear. As the weather gets colder and the days become shorter, I feel myself becoming more anxious.

This anxiety is all encompassing. It disrupts my life in ways I would have never been able to imagine before. It causes the 10-foot walk from my car to my house to seem like a walk through an active battle zone. It causes any strange person within sight to become an immediate threat to my life, never to be trusted. It has changed me, broken me. I have felt so defeated by it at times that I don’t bother leaving the comfort of my home unless true necessity drives me out.

As someone who has always valued my independence, this has been an adjustment that has been difficult to say the least. When I am alone I am not safe. Or at least this is what my brain thinks. This is what my brain tells me. Therefore, I fear being alone. But I am afraid to reach out for help. Afraid to tell a trusted family member or a friend, “I need you here right now.” Because, for me, the only thing worse than being alone is thinking that when others look at you, all they see is your traumatic experience. Nobody deserves to be defined by their traumas. But choosing not to remind people of my assault, even if it is for my benefit, is a risk I’m willing to take.

And so there are many times that I think, “What has my life become? How did I get here?” It is in these times that I feel indescribably high levels of anger and frustration. Two emotions, in fact, that survivors rarely discuss. Feelings of hopelessness, brokenness, and guilt are discussed ad nauseum – and with good reason. But it is the anger and the frustration that serve as the motivation to transform from victim to survivor. This anger and this frustration are what fuels the realization that this was not your fault. They are what drives you to push through and persevere. Because there is no way in hell I would let them win; I refuse to let them continue to control my life. Of course this sentiment is a hell of a lot easier said than done, but it is a goal I work towards every day.

My life has been a battle since the night I was raped. Every day is a new challenge. Not a day goes by without flashbacks, anxiety and fluctuating emotions. But this is my life. This is what I am left with after a man decided to take the fate of my entire life in his hands. And this is the information people need to hear. Because every statistic you hear about sexual assault is a person’s life. And each one of those lives probably looks like some variation of this. And one life lived like this is one too many.

I was going to avoid saying anything more publicly, but I’ve realized that’s inconsistent with my own internal logic

I’ve been considering the reaction to the closing of the Patrick Kane case, both my own and that of social media. I was, initially, going to avoid saying much of anything more publicly, but I’ve realized that’s inconsistent with my own internal logic, so here goes nothing...

First, a bit of context: I have spent a lot time in the past few months researching the investigation, and certainly seeking out more information not presented in reputable media. I have read Sedita’s statement and watched two different (similar but with a few salient differences) half-hour interviews with the DA. To anyone mired in uncertainty, I highly recommend watching at least one of the interviews. The statement was fairly informative but the interviews provide context of the allegations, details of the components of the investigation, and clarity as to the DA’s choices in the statement.

In light of that material, I don’t believe Kane committed the crime he was accused of. To continue to think so would require me to believe that the DA’s office was not only incompetent but outright fabricating evidence that contradicted her story, which is a level of pessimism and conspiracy theory that I’m not able to engage with. Having spent several months assuming Kane is guilty, the transition to presumptive innocence isn’t exactly easy on the mind, but the DA has provided far more information than I ever expected to receive. I do not believe this is wishful thinking on my part, as I gave up all hope of being able to personally believe in Kane’s innocence, or retrieve anything associated with him, the day the allegations broke. It was a long period of time in which I spent accepting of his guilt and emotionally detached from the situation, too long for me to believe that I’ve suddenly regressed to irrational fannish desires.

I don’t believe I’m betraying fellow rape survivors by believing he’s innocent. I don’t believe I’m a bad feminist for believing he’s innocent. I don’t believe I’m supporting a corrupt system by believing he’s innocent. When I did accept his guilt, it was never because I knew in my heart-of-hearts that he did it (lacking even the specifics of the allegations), but because it was statistically likely and thus safer for me, and for the complainant, and for fellow rape survivors at large to act in a way consistent with that. I found those who publicly proclaimed his innocence right off the bat and championed continued support reprehensible.

However, I was wary of the more aggressive actions and more definitive statements made by the presumptive-guilt camp, especially those who claimed things as extreme as “false rape accusations never happen!” First of all, that’s simply not true. The 2–8% number thrown around is, of course, questionable in its accuracy but at least not zero. A 2–8% belief in the accused’s guilt and the accuser’s honesty is the safer choice, but it’s not wise to rest everything on that being the outcome, especially in a case like this were we lacked almost any real information for the majority of the investigation. By making the validity of our dialogue contingent on his guilt, we are not doing the cause any favors. It is possible to have a conversation about how individuals and organizations should act, how we should protect victims, how we should support women who report sexual assault to the police (including this one) without relying on the outcome of a single case. Progress for marginalized groups should never rest on the integrity of single members of those groups.

People say they hate false rape claims because they give misogynists ground to stand on and more reasons to hate women and the feminists who defend them. One way we can give them less ammunition is by making it clear that women deserve support in these situations a priority because of the inherent and historical biases in our society and our legal systems, not because women are always truthful. False rape claims are worthy of despair, but they are neither as damaging as men believe nor as rare as women believe. They are only fatal to the cause if we make their non-existence a prerequisite to giving victims — alleged and proven in a court of law — kind and fair support.

I’ve seen it said — and thought myself — that despite the clarity of the resolution of the Kane investigation it is ‘safer’ to publicly act as if and publicly state that you still believe he is guilty, regardless of your actual beliefs. After some reflection, I don’t believe this is true. First, by continuing to say in public something you do not believe, you are causing others to doubt the reliability of their own minds and morals on the topic. To sit there alone while everyone is saying “this in no way proves the complainant was untruthful!” when the DA is explicitly stating that the complainant was untruthful is both disingenuous and damaging to other people’s emotional states and other women’s ability to trust their own intellect and instinct.

It suggests that if you are a good enough feminist, you will believe Kane is guilty, and if you believe he is innocent, you are broken, anti-feminist garbage. I can’t conclude that that is a more helpful approach to the situation than honesty in your conclusions. Silence, of course, is an option available to all of us, but when one side is silent out of fear of retaliation (as many parts of me would like to be), the end result is the same as joining in the vitriol at the other extreme. If you lie somewhere in the middle, unsure and unable to know what to believe, then that too is a valid conclusion and not one worth feeling shame over. If you truly believe he is guilty, as well, then my intent is not at all to silence you, but to welcome you to engage constructively and with recognition that the other side is not an evil demon to be slayed.

The major argument in favor of continuing to believe the complainant’s allegations are true is that it protects rape victims.

This, more than anything, seems utterly and completely false.

Why? If we, as feminists, as decent human beings, as people with hope that we can improve society, want rape victims to feel safe and comfortable and hopeful when they approach the police to report a sexual assault, we want them to believe the DA’s conclusions are correct. We want them to have confidence that their case will not be dismissed for lack of corroborating evidence, and that their allegations will be listened to and respected. We want them to feel that the DA did a thorough, fair job in this investigation, and to understand that it was dismissed because little to no evidence supported the claim and much evidence contradicted it, and that this is not indicative of what they will experience. Rape victims already know it is very difficult to prove sexual assault in a court of law, but we should not be shouting from the rooftops that this case is an example of that, because it is not. If a person is a victim of rape, they should not have to fear that the forensic evidence and the physical evidence will contradict their story, that no witnesses will corroborate salient details, and that no material evidence supporting their claim will appear.

If we keep shouting that the dismissal of this case is an egregious failure of the legal system, we are doing nothing but telling rape victims "We have no hope." I do not believe this is a better option. Changing your mind is a difficult process, but given the evidence presented by the DA, I believe we have a responsibility to undertake it. It might be more comfortable to refuse to consider the information presented, but I do not believe it’s a better option.

I want rape victims to report their crimes. I do not believe yelling at people that they are trash for believing this woman was not raped is going to achieve that.

Do I think we should call the complainant garbage? No. As Sedita says, we do not know what happened, only that the complainant’s version of events did not happen. I have no need to attack a woman whom I do not know, whom I have nothing to do with. Do I think we should have entertained Kane-sympathizing gossip and unfounded rumors? Absolutely not. Does this require me to continue to believe she was truthful in light of the final report on the closure of the investigation? I don’t in any way believe it does, nor do I believe it is helpful to rape victims going forward.

The bottom line for me is this: there are deep problems in society with how we treat rape allegations involving other parties, particularly when the accused is a male celebrity. We must be able to place the needs of victims over our own emotional attachments and our own discomforts. Nobody should be so attached to a celebrity that his fall from grace is tantamount to the destruction of their happiness, but similarly, no single case should be the totality of our argument for progress. Clinging to proven untruths will neither create the progress we are so desperately seeking nor support rape victims going forward.

So, while I understand the facts of the case and begrudgingly agree with the DA's decision, I still do not like the guy and find him to be a reprehensible human being. Nothing will disappoint me more than one of my greatest struggles interfering with one of my greatest loves.

The NHL doesn't care. Especially about women.

The off season started with me thinking that, with the conception of the National Women's Hockey League, that hockey was becoming more women friendly. The hockey culture in this world was progressing towards a place where women can feel safe. The NWHL was finally a turning point in hockey as a whole. 

Don’t fool yourselves. the Hawks DO NOT care about you. They DO NOT care about women. If you were the one in the same situation as Kane’s victim, they would trash YOU just the same. The Hawks aren’t going to hold anyone accountable. They want this to go away. They don’t care about the damage they’ve caused. 

The Hawks had ample time and opportunity to address this. They had the chance to say that, while they would not comment on the current situation, they were against violence against women and wanted to educate their team. The NHL had plenty of opportunities to address the ongoing issue of violence against women in the league and to educate their players, their teams, and their fans. They have chosen to remain silent. The banner raising ceremony only solidified the fact that the NHL and the Blackhawks only care about touting Kane as the face of the franchise.

Now though, I truly believe certain people in the NHL, if not the whole of the NHL, really do not give a shit about women. They do not care about their safety. They do not care about them at all. The NWHL went from being an amazing opportunity to feeling like one of the last safe spaces women have in hockey.

The NHL has let me down.

The Hawks have let me down.

And some of my favorite players let me down.

They.

Don’t.

Care.

Neutrality does not exist in a rape case

Societal standards, most cultural commentators, and both official and unofficial precedent set by the justice system all will take the side of a rapist over the accuser. This is especially true when the accused is rich, white, famous and popular. By  saying "we don't know what happened" what we are saying is "she is lying."

Admitting to being raped is traumatic. Being raped is terrible. People who are raped often do not ever come forward because it makes them feel exposed and vulnerable. Coming forward about a rape means reliving this specific horror over and over for cops, doctors, nurses, and lawyers. Should this go to trial, the victim has to acknowledge that they're entire life is going to be examined. Especially when the victim speaks out against any person in power, their entire life will be torn apart. The public will defend the accused and harass the victim. 

Were they drinking? What were they wearing? Does the victim have a history of being promiscuous? By immediately assuming a rape allegation is a lie, you are making it increasingly difficult for other victims to be able to seek help when they are assaulted. When these questions are being asked, we are saying that there are instances that a person has the right to another person.

“Neutrality” is support for the accused. What facts are you waiting for? So what that only 32% of rape cases are ever reported, less so against the wealthy and the powerful. Maybe only 3% of cases in the United States are ever given to a prosecutor, just because there is enough evidence for this to beat the underwhelming odds of being given to a prosecutor judgment still needs to be reserved. You need to be in court to let go of the nasty ass you’re supporting? The fact that 98% of rapists never spend a day in jail is obviously irrelevant. Are you really waiting for charges to be dropped so the league can sweep this under the rug? 

By claiming that the only way we can truly know what happened is through a trial, you are dismissing the 68% of rapes that go unreported. Are you saying that since there was no trial, it never happened? When you claim that the humiliation of a rape is equal to that which comes from even being accused, you are dismissing the trauma of the initial assault and every other horrific experience of recounting what happened. When you tell me that the only way someone can be classified as a rapist is with a final judgment in a court of law, you are ignoring every case that is dismissed for lack of evidence. 

Rape is not defined by the ruling of our courts. The FBI has deemed rape to be “the penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” It does not include "after being deemed to be so in a court of law." Thousands of rapists are walking around freely because they have bullied their victim into dropping the claim or, even worse, it never makes it to the cops. 

You say no one deserves to have their rape claim dismissed, yet you are in fact dismissing it with this logic. This is all part of rape culture. This is the problem.