Culture of fear

Every year, IU sponsors an event called “Take Back the Night” during which students are encouraged to rally together against rape culture.

This year, though I couldn’t march, I was able to hear a few speakers remind us why this is a fight worth fighting.

These heartbreaking stories reminded me that rape in all its various forms is real and can happen to anyone.

Even if we can escape the physical trauma, it is almost impossible to escape the fear.
Rape culture does not always manifest itself in violence, but it is always lurking in the form of fear.

It was jarring when I realized I was afraid.

Talking about rape, looking at the statistics and knowing that rape is severely under-reported, listening to the stories of my friends and role models, it seems I was doing more than just educating myself.

I was preparing.

I was waiting to be raped. I assumed it would happen.

Should people expect to become victims because that’s what the data points to?
According to Robin Warsaw’s seminal book “I Never Called it Rape,” college women have a 25 percent chance of being raped. 

When I was younger, I was convinced that rape was worse than murder. I though that I would like to die if I were raped. I didn’t know if I would be able to live with the idea that someone could overpower my physical agency, conquering and perverting my body.

Now, in our culture of fear, the worst thing I could imagine as a kid seems a thing most assuredly going to happen. If not to me, then definitely to one of my friends. I can’t make my friend get a rape kit when it happens, but I’ll ardently recommend it.

I want to see the tables turned and see a rapist become just a number, a thing, rendered helpless in the face of our justice system.

I’m definitely going to report it, I tell myself, if it happens to me. And, more times than not, I’m afraid that “if” looks suspiciously like “when.”

How did I get like this? Why am I so afraid?

It’s probably because rape victims are treated like liars, especially those who don’t fit conventional beauty standards, or because gender norms have become so ingrained in our society that many have found “science” to back up these notions.

Perhaps because women’s issues are considered a special interest.

Perhaps because, even today, some consider women to be things, not people deserving of the respect and sense of security that decent living conditions should afford.

And you can screw a thing whenever and however you want.

­— casefarr@indiana.edu