I Know What Rape Is

HAVING BEEN singled out for crtiticism in Jon Eliot Morgan's March 8 editorial, "An Orwellian Nightmare" about the prevalence of false rape charges, I feel compelled to defend myself. Morgan points to my essay, "Calling it Rape," that ran in the Febraury 7 issue of What is to be Done? as an example of an incident that has been innaccurately termed "acquaintance rape."

First and foremost, Morgan missed the point of my article. It was a personal essay more about the process of recovery after a rape has occured than a legally defensible charge of acquaintance rape. I was not interested in giving an account of the details of the rape, both because they are not so important to the article's point and because what happened is still very painful for me to describe.

It was unfair and inappropriate for Morgan to use that essay as fuel for his argument. Because I left out most of the details of what happened, Morgan was able to draw his own unfounded conclusions. But for Morgan to use a first-person reflection out of its context in support of his offensive editorial only demonstrates the weakness of his logic.

THE FACT THAT Morgan missed the point of my piece, in retrospect, is not surprising. While rape may be a one-night crime to rapists and innocents, to victims it is something that lingers for years. What I wrote about in that article was coming to terms with what happened for myself. But for Morgan's lack of imagination, and because with his allegations Morgan forces my hand, I will more clearly spell out what happened to me that night:

After "K." climbed into my second-story window (which had been closed--not left "wide open"--and unlatched because it did not have a lock), we spoke for a few minutes, and then he asked for a kiss goodbye. I kissed him, expecting that afterward he would leave. Instead, K. pushed me down, on my back, onto my bed. I said, "What are you doing?" He climbed on top of me, pulled my arms down to my sides and held them at the wrists. He kicked my legs open with his own and although I tried to move out from underneath the man, I was immobilized from the weight of his body. I did not say "No": I said, "Get the hell off me you fucking asshole." I tried to kick K. but it did nothing to stop him. He continued to hold my hands down while he forced me to have sex with him.

The man who raped me stands about five feet 10 or 11 inches and is a former football player. He weighs about 190 to 200 pounds, at least sixty pounds more than I. While he was lying on top of me, I could not move my arms or my upper body at all. In fact, through most of it, I could hardly breathe. I did not scream what I said that night. I do not think I would have been able to.

I STATE in my essay that ignorance about acquaintance rape is dangerous. But Morgan's informed and warped view is even more scary. Morgan says that it is a woman's responsibility to make herself "understood" in situations like this; he suggests that if an acquaintance rape occurs the woman merely has not played the "verbal and nonverbal games" of "courtship" well enough. This kind of attitude is chilling. Morgan must realize that at a certain point, "courtship" ceases to be a game.

What Morgan overlooks in his article, and acquaintance rapists overlook in their crimes, is that a woman must have the option of playing the game or not. No matter what she is wearing or how much she flirts or whether or not she kisses him first, a woman always has the right to say "Stop." She has the right to change her mind. She has the right to set her own limits to the game.

Morgan states in his piece that "rape is ugly, violent and dehumanizing." This is the only thing he gets right. He is correct in asserting that rape is not a charge to be taken lightly--but he ignores the gravity of the crime when he dismisses my account for the sake of his self-righteous argument. And Morgan's reasoning gives the green light to a train of thought that leads back to a medieval nightmare.

Morgan is concerned about the tyrrany of "Politically Correct" thought, but he exerts his own tyrrany by imposing a limited and uncomprehending definition of a crime he will never experience on the hundreds of rape victims living on this campus. We don't need Jon Eliot Morgan to tell us what rape is.