The Power of No

Approximately 85,000 (adult) women are raped in England and Wales each year. In 2016 UK rape-survivor assistance service Rape Crisis reported that in cases where age was known, 2,651 girls aged 15 or under had been raped.

I will not refer to any of the women in this article as victims; because they are not. They are strong, they are powerful and they are survivors. This article is focussing on female rape survivors. To read my article on the subject of male rape survivors click here.

When a woman is raped the focus is always on her. Did she dress too provocatively? Did she walk home alone? Did she drink too much? Had she led her rapist to believe he had a chance and then taken it away, teasing him? Had she taken drugs? Did she go to a bad part of town?

This is "victim" blaming: the idea that the person a crime was committed against is somehow to blame for it, that the perpetrator of the crime couldn't help themselves because the "victim" had made themselves an easy target. But the crimes most people apply this twisted logic to are sex crimes. Do we blame the victim of a theft for owning an expensive phone, for carrying cash in their pocket or for having a nice car? Do we blame the victim of an arson for having particularly flammable clothes, or for not making their home fire-retardant? Do we blame the victim of an assault for not going out in a stab-proof vest and helmet? Do we blame the victim of a murder for having a pulse?

No. We never do. We are allowed to own nice things, to wear the clothes we like, and to not wrap ourselves in bubble-wrap before we leave the house. But a woman who has been raped is reprimanded by police for going home alone, chided by her peers for wearing a short dress and scolded by family for drinking alcohol. Why should a woman need to tailor her behaviour in order to not be raped when we don't demand the same preventative measures be taken by someone with a phone worth stealing?

The issue is that we don't want to believe men are so disgusting that they would force themselves on a woman for sexual release despite her lack of consent. Why would we? We have male friends, relatives, co-workers. If we can reason that men are not capable of this without at least some external factors contributing, we can feel safe around our male peers. We can tell ourselves that as long as we don't dress sexily and use a childlike buddy system to get home that we will be safe.

The fact is, we won't.

Clothes are irrelevant. Blood alcohol level is irrelevant. Nothing is relevant to a rapist except for their perverted desire for power. Muslim women who are covered from head to toe except for their eyes are raped. Sober women who have never drank a drop of alcohol in their life are raped. Women who go home in a shared taxi with friends arrive home to partners who rape them.

Rape is not about sex. It's not some twisted compliment, as rapists so often claim, that the woman just looked so good they couldn't resist. It's about power, pure and simple. While a man has a woman completely at his mercy, unable to stop him because he's stronger, or he's preyed on her because she's weak from alcohol, or he's drugged her and rendered her unconscious, there is a power exchange. The woman who previously may have said no to the rapist (if propositioned traditionally), has lost the "power" to say no because the rapist is doing it regardless of her consent, and the power is now in the rapist's hand...or so he thinks.

Here's the real deal on this one, ladies: He has not taken your power away.

Some rapists - in fact, most of them, thanks to the majesty of the internet - know that when he's finished with you, you'll feel like an ant. Small. Ruined. Damaged.

The power that resides in you, the power of the word "no", is still yours. You can show him that he took no power from you, no strength from you, by not letting him force these feelings on you.

"That's easy enough for you to say, writing from your safe home," you say. And yes, I am safe now. But between the ages of 15-16, I was in a relationship with someone who made me a statistic. Someone who exerted their power over me, not listening to my cries of "no!", someone who thought they had taken my power from me. But he hadn't.

The power to say no to him is still mine, even though I haven't seen him for almost 6 years because I say "no" to the way he wanted to make me feel. I say "no" to changing the way I dress or walk in case it invites another monster like him into my life. I say "no" to fearing that same monster resides in every man I meet. I say "no" to feeling damaged because of the experience I had with him.

I will dress how I want, drink what I want and go where I want, and that all comes from the power of "no". It doesn't matter that he doesn't know I'm doing it, I know I am, and I am who counts. He is irrelevant. Whoever has done this to you is irrelevant because you are the one with all the power to live however you damn well want regardless of what your rapist did to you.

If you have recently or are currently being raped, contact Rape Crisis for confidential support without the necessity of reporting your attack to the police.