survivor

As a breast cancer survivor, the worst day of the year is when I go for my mammogram. True, nobody actually likes mammos, but I’ve been bitten by one. On the way to my annual squishing, I realized that I have a bunch of coping strategies.

In my youth, our church was a place of liberal political pride for me. Jesus was a role model for helping others. The man who sexually abused me also spoke eloquently of Christian generosity. He welcomed draft resisters to the church during the Vietnam War. He was an intellectual who introduced me to Virginia Wolf, even as he seemed to feel entitled to sexual access to all women — and children who looked like women, like me.

In my youth, our church was a place of liberal political pride for me. Jesus was a role model for helping others. The man who sexually abused me also spoke eloquently of Christian generosity. He welcomed draft resisters to the church during the Vietnam War. He was an intellectual who introduced me to Virginia Wolf, even as he seemed to feel entitled to sexual access to all women — and children who looked like women, like me.

It took me a long time to understand consent. I knew that forcing sex on someone was rape. I knew that one in five women would be raped in their lifetime. I knew that the majority of rape victims knew their attacker. But beyond that, my understanding got cloudy.

March is always an awful month for me. In Cape Town — my home town — March marks the beginning of autumn. Summer’s exhilarating heat comes to a sobering end. Sweltering afternoons and nights spent around the fire ominously disappear, soon to be replaced by gusts of winds and air so cold it literally hurts your face.

My story isn’t meant to hold a mirror to society and say, “You, too, can be strong like me.” It’s meant to hold a mirror to society and say, “You, too, are complicit in rape culture. Let’s work on that.”

Supposedly, the happiest people are living in the moment, seizing the day, and generally living like it's their last day on earth. It all sounds inspired, wonderful, and profound. And simple. Who wouldn't be on board? Me, that's who. And somehow I suspect I'm not alone.

For more than 20 years, I believed I was a slut. A shameful, vile, one-time slut, but a slut all the same. It was you, Mr White Canterbury shorts, that led me to believe this. But, since reading the letter from Brock Turner’s victim, I realized, what you did, Mr White Canterbury Shorts, was in fact rape.