The first night of my freshman year of college, a group of fraternity guys locked me in an apartment and threatened to gang rape me.
In retrospect, I realize one of the reasons I was chosen is exactly because I was a freshman. Most students had to wait two years to graduate from a dorm to a coveted spot in the two-bedroom apartments we called “the courts.” When jealous students asked me how I maneuvered my way into the courts as a freshman, I’d shrug. Just lucky, I guess.
On move-in day, once all the boxes had been pushed into bedrooms, students lounged in the sun, played hacky sack and smoked butts in the cement courtyard in the middle of the courts. Legend had it that the odd, chunky cement stumps in the center of each yard were built to hold kegs, back in the good old days, when students could legally drink out in the open and my university was a real party school. Alas, by the time I got there, you could be fined for so much as holding a beer outside.
To avoid getting into trouble, students drank inside designated apartments. A door left wide open signaled where a girl could get cheap, clear liquor mixed with a sweet juicy mixer, a boy could get a beer, and anyone could get a shot.
My school was not a huge Greek school, but there were some fraternities and sororities. My new apartment had green sorority letters taped in the window, because my two junior-year roommates were Zeta- or Lambda-somethings. I rolled my eyes and proceeded to tape up my Janis Joplin posters. I was 17 years old and over the moon about living on my own. My life, I felt, was finally beginning.
After getting our room organized, my other roommate — another lucky freshman — headed out to the party to meet new friends.
I remember agreeing to stick together.
I don’t know exactly how I wound up alone in the apartment with red fraternity letters in the window. It was down at the end of the court, on the bottom floor. As the sun went down, the Tom Petty tunes got louder. It was a warm night. Tons of people were wandering in and out of the apartments, stopping for drinks, introducing themselves to one another or catching up about the summer.
Once inside, I saw a wall full of hand-carved wooden paddles etched with Greek letters. I thought the idea of college men spanking each other with paddles was just a 1980s movie gag. I found it bizarre that, in real life, a guy willingly would spend time carefully carving and painting the weapon they knew would be used to ceremonially degrade them. Back then, I thought of fraternities and sororities as a weird system for buying friends. I hadn’t yet realized that it was also about securing business connections and social protection.
I had no social protection. Cut to: Suddenly, I was the only girl left in the apartment. The door closed, and I was told to sit down. The only empty chair was the one furthest from the door; the leader was sitting in the chair closest to the door. My instincts sharpened. I watched them watch me.
The go-to joke of the night had been asking me how old I am and then calling me “jailbait,” since I wouldn’t be, you know, legal until later that fall. The joke is, they’d get in a lot of trouble if they didn’t wait to have sex with me until my birthday. Whether or not I wanted to have sex with the jokester was never part of the equation.
There were four or five of them. Maybe six. I remember the way they deferred to their leader, a twenty-something guy who looked entirely too old to still be in college. He made it clear that I was going to follow his orders. He was smiling and enjoying himself, a campus king upon his crappy college-apartment armchair throne.
I sat down.
I remember thinking, they have to be joking. It wasn’t particularly late; people were still in the courtyard, drinking and laughing. One of the frat guys looked at me and locked the door.
“Do you want to leave?”
I scanned their faces.
“Go ahead, try to leave,” he said. “See what happens.”
The room was silent. He smiled.
I had heard scary stories about fraternities all my young life, of course. This particular one, I later learned, was rumored to play a game called “rodeo.” In rodeo, a guy would have doggy-style sex with a girl while his brothers secretly surrounded the couple in the dark. The lights would flick on, and they’d yell, “Rodeo!” The girl, presumably terrified, would try to escape, and he would pretend to be a cowboy riding a bull, holding on to either her hair or her breasts for as long as he could, while his brothers cheered.
I don’t think I had heard about rodeo yet, but I instinctively understood the rules of the game they were playing in the apartment. I knew that I was being threatened with gang rape, but that I couldn’t act like I knew I was being threatened with gang rape. It was all said in a way that could be interpreted, if recounted later, as just kidding around. The threat coursed just beneath the surface of our words. It was in the air between us.
After the initial rules were set — door locked, sit down, now keep talking — the conversation went back to light banter. It was a movie scene, and I was cast to play the part of Cute Freshman Girl talking to Older College Boys. The script made it look and sound harmless. The subtext was not.
The subtext was a negotiated threat of violence. Think of it as a maze. You are suddenly dropped in its center, and you have to find your way out. It requires tremendous focus. You simultaneously follow the rules of the maze and test them, gauging responses and feeding that information back into the equation. Like playing chess, you make moves while imagining three moves ahead. You play it cool but on the inside, you’re turning down shifting corridors, feeling the walls for a door to fling open and run through.
Almost every woman I know has found herself in this kind of maze at some point. They’ve seen that joy on the face of a certain kind of man as he played puppet master, threatening while pretending it’s all just a joke — that it’s a compliment, that you’ll be fine if you just cooperate — as if your safety was ever his to take and then offer back to you like a consolation prize. This may not be as bad as it could be, he’s saying, or at least, you will survive.
In the maze, my heart quickened, and I felt like a tiny rabbit in the wild woods. I slowed down, stood still, listened harder. I was a good student. I focused on reading the subtext and making the right choices. I wasn’t physically strong enough to fight off even one of these men.
To anyone looking through the window, I was a girl casually hanging out with some dudes, having a drink, enjoying the first night of her real life. The maze can be hard to see if you haven’t been in it.
I could’ve screamed, but it wouldn’t have been loud enough to break through the party din, and the door was locked from the inside. There was no one in particular wondering where I was. No one even knew who I was, except for a new roommate I met a few hours earlier. It’s a good question: Who am I, sitting in that chair, calmly talking on command like a wind-up toy?
I was so angry, I felt like I could choke them to death with my rage. But I knew I couldn’t. I sat, and it was getting late, and I wondered how this would end.
They reminded me of the rules a few times. I was told, go ahead, try to leave. You can leave if you want to. I was told that I didn’t want to know what they could do to me.
But I knew. Of course I knew. I was 17 years old. Men and boys had been making me aware of what they could or would like to do to me for a long time already. The teenage boy who leaned into my neck to growl that he “likes to eat little brownies,” at the ceremony where I earned a brass Brownie pin I proudly wore on my uniform sash. The town creeper in the van, who slowed down in front of Danielle’s house, asking us if we like puppies. The high school senior who hit on me when I was a 13-year-old freshman, because he knew my big brother, and it would’ve been so funny to bang that guy’s little sister, bro.
Not all bad men are so easy to spot. There are guys you think are your friends, until your stomach curdles as the walls close in — and then there you are, cranking through everything you know about that person, about men like him, about what worked in other mazes.
Sometimes, they just want you to know what they can do to you, and it’s enough just to make you picture it. He wants you to be grateful he didn’t do it, that he wouldn’t actually do that to you. ’Cause really, he’s a nice guy.
That’s about as good as it gets in the maze.
It’s exhausting in here, sustaining sharpened senses for long stretches of time while simultaneously playing the part, having a friendly chat, flashing a robotic one-second smile while declining a ride because your imaginary boyfriend is on the way, really appreciating a comment about how pretty you are on the street but no, seriously, you’re running late and gotta go!
I debated if I should walk or run toward the door, if they would grab me when I finally got up to try to leave.
Why didn’t you scream?
Why didn’t you fight back?
Why didn’t you why didn’t you why didn’t you?
Sometimes you scream or run or punch. But sometimes, the punishment for breaking the rules is worse than the degradation of compliance. Survival itself takes strength. There should be no shame. There are ways to fight back that don’t look like fighting to the people just looking in through the window, or who hear about it later, or who haven’t had to fight back with just instinct and endurance. The maze is designed so that endurance looks like cooperation.
I got up and walked toward the door. Someone said something about making life miserable for me if I said anything, but no one stopped me. Heart pounding in my ears, I twisted the knob.
I could smell the pine trees that edged the complex, feel the cool air. I made it out, and I heard them laughing.
You could say that nothing really happened in that apartment that night. But I don’t.
Tags: college, sexual assault, tara murtha, the butter
Holy shit, this is an incredible piece of writing. Thank you.
Oh god, I hate that. I hate that “no, you can totally leave anytime” game, where they’ve said it, so you know they can repeat it, you know they can make sure everybody thinks you’re ridiculous, because you could totally leave anytime. Only you’re not sure how they’ll respond if you call their bluff, so you stay, because they might be telling the truth, or they might be lying, and they’re definitely enjoying watching you struggle to figure it out.
In conclusion, university men are assholes.
It’s gaslighting, with very violent consequences.
And they fucking think it’s hilarious! Because they’re asshole bastards.
This was seriously terrifying – feels like my heart is lodged in my throat.
This piece was amazing.
Even though, in the most superficial of readings, this story has a “happy” ending, I still burst into tears at the end out of relief and rage.
Thank you for writing and sharing this.
This piece really scared me, and filled me with rage and disgust. The men who do this are so damn confident and proud to be monsters, and our world is a fucked up place.
My stomach is tied up in knots reading this. Definitely bringing back that feeling of being preyed on, feeling the balance of power shift, but not understanding the situation enough to know what to do.
Such a great piece! Thank you for this.
Jesus.
^^^That face, that one right there. That was me reading this. *shudder* ugh, so familiar, but so beautifully written.
My daughter is leaving for college in a year and a half. This scared the crap out of me. Thank you for sharing it, and not just privately filing it away under “close call.”
That was excellent. (as I repress shudders of recognition)
I want this to be required reading for all humans. I want everyone, even if only for the time it takes to read this piece, to *understand* what that feels like.
THISTHISTHISTHISTHIS.
This is the worst because in the moment things are terrifying enough. But afterwards? Afterwards, you may try to tell someone. (Because you start to feel crazy, because it was THERE even if it never went THERE.) And so often, SO OFTEN, the person you choose to confide in will tell you you’re full of shit. Or say it was you overreacting. Or it was all in your head. Or, hey, nothing DID happen so whatevs, right?
“Why would you even think that? God, that’s so arrogant, to assume they were that into you” is always a fun one.
Jesus, this is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever read. What the fuck is wrong with some humans?
Like, I am as cis as it’s possible to be, I happen to love being a woman, but sometimes it is so full of despair and helplessness and men treating our lives and fears like playthings that it’s overwhelming.
Flashbacks suck, I said to myself while reading this and remembering a very similar situation in college that I’d forgotten until then.
I’m so sorry that this happened.
this is incredibly written. it’s skin-crawly awful and it’s so good at depicting that plausible deniability/helplessness terror.
Incredible. Thank you.
These stories are so important, thank you for sharing yours.
It’s even more frustrating, horrifying, and sickening that in our current judicial system, there’s essentially “nothing to report” here. I know we can all imagine calling the police to report an event like this. You’d have to tell them you went to the apartment by yourself, that you did what they were telling you without resisting, that no one ever touched you, that you had been drinking, that no one ever ‘really’ verbally or physically threatened you, etc.
Recognizing scenarios like this should be in training classes for police, campus police, and resident advisors for starters.
I don’t think one can really blame this particular one on judicial system (because, frankly, there’s very little that can be done to prosecute any sufficiently veiled threat, and we can expect people to be both smart enough to figure this out and naturally vicious enough to exploit it)
But it would be very good if there was a way to meticulously collect info on incidents like that. We use shit like people’s google search histories as evidence, god damn it. It could be helpful to know when a suspect has a history of engaging in a pattern of insidious, plausibly deniable harassment.
The maze. What a perfect and concise way of describing it.
I know and hate this feeling. I remember walking down the sidewalk after school at 14 and a group of older boys surrounded me and draped their arms over my shoulders and followed me all the way down the street. Nothing they ever said would have sounded impolite to a listener, but the way the leader’s arm tightened around me when I started to pull away was the just try to leave, see what happens. You stay and you act calm, polite, unafraid, as if it had never occurred to you that this was in any way a threat, because if you show even a moment of fear or disgust you’ll be breaking the pretense of civility. And if you break that pretense, what are they going to do? Eventually I got to a crosswalk they didn’t want to bother with and they left.
I remember being surrounded by a different group of high school boys in a different town when I was a sophomore in college. The age difference went in the other direction, but the result was the same. I walked down the street with grocery bags in both hands and made polite small talk and pretended the back of my neck wasn’t crawling from having two of them walking behind me while the other two flanked me and kept me from strayed to either side on the sidewalk. Eventually I had to turn down a street and managed some comment about my milk going sour if I didn’t get home and they (luckily) didn’t follow.
In both cases, it ended without anything “bad” happening, as in this story. But I could never have made them leave; they had to get bored first. It’s infuriating to be that powerless.
I was also a black belt both times, by the way. People who don’t ever have to face this kind of thing don’t realize how it is very much not about your physical strength or ability to defend yourself. The rules of the maze (as this piece so elegantly puts it) forbid you from acting as if it’s a life-threatening situation until someone breaks that pretense.
I’m sorry for rambling, but this is so real and such a good piece. Thank you for writing it.
This piece is horrifying and so well written. Sarita, “the rules of the maze forbid you from acting as if it’s a life-threatening situation until someone breaks that pretense,” is exactly it.
It’s so hard to explain the maze to people who have never been and will never be trapped in it. Why didn’t you just leave? He wasn’t threatening you, said a straight male friend I once tried to tell a story to.
Well, he didn’t have to threaten me. I knew. And he knew that I knew.
“The maze is designed so that endurance looks like cooperation.”
Wow wow wow. I have never seen this truth explained so perfectly and precisely. You hit on so many other important points, too. Thank you for writing this. Thank you for sharing.
I want to make this required reading for anyone who things harassment of any sort should be taken as a joke or compliment. In fact, I want to make this required reading for all men.
I agree entirely, but I’d add required reading for everyone. I’ve been in that maze, but until I read this, I didn’t know what I knew. Thank you for helping all of this see our own experiences and value everyone’s experiences.
I was recently thinking about a boy who, when we were in 8th grade, was walking home in the same direction I was. I was alone. He was with another boy from our class. We must have been talking back and forth across the street and I must have said something “smart-assy” because all I remember was him saying “Shut up or I’ll rape you.” Ladies and gentleman – 13 years old. Lovely. The memory of it has made me furious – at him, at the classmate and even at myself for not saying something at the time to an adult. 30 years later and I’m beside myself with anger. This post has helped me think about how many women have endured these experiences and worse. Thank you for your beautiful expression of a very ugly reality.
This is incredible. Thank you
This piece helped me out of a different kind of maze, the one of second-guessing yourself and your own experience. Thank you.
The maze. Jesus.
I don’t know what to say but I felt like I had to say something. Thank you.
My father used to do this to me. The last time he did it was when I was 17, and he had followed me into the bathroom one night. I was wearing my night gown, he was leering and making small talk, and the game was to pretend that this was just friendly father-daughter banter.I gave him squirmy smiles and sweet replies, until I finally said “I’m going to pee my pants if you don’t leave”. He sneered and asked “Do you have any pants on under there?” My smile vanished, the pretense disappeared, the rage rose, and I said through clenched teeth “Get. Out.” He backed off and muttered “Get a job if you’re gonna act so grown up.” My mother was awake in her room across the hall. My little brothers were downstairs watching tv. I sank to the floor and cried. My father was a popular football player in high school. All the guys loved him.Thank You for writing this article and helping me to feel less alone. Thank You.
I’m so sorry you were betrayed, Pennywhite. What he did was wrong. And he doesn’t sound safe or even redeemable. I have this pain, too.
The prescience you had in that moment! As observant and considered as I like to think I am, I know with almost perfect certainty that my mind would have gone dead-blank in that moment. I am so glad that you wrote this. Every girl going out on her own in the world should read this. (Every girl should read this, full stop.)
Oh, this “plausibly deniable” threatening behavior is incredibly common (especially in context of rape, but definitely not limited to sex crimes).
Had this happen a lot of times, and usually I just call people on their damn bluff and/or make a bigger bluff that is all my own.
My reasoning is that if they really are 1) rapists and 2) specifically the kind of rapists that like to play sadistic “mind games”, and 3) believe they actually have an opportunity to rape, they’ll probably rape anyway (I should note that, IIRC, such behavior is not compliant with most recent EU LEA recommendations for dealing with threatening situations, but I’d rather take a poorly quantified and possibly nonexistent extra risk than play along with mean bullshit games strewn forth by a bunch of chickenshit assholes.).
I’m not very easy to scare.
However, had a few cases which really had me worried, once to the point of abandoning a perfectly nice appartment.
It happened when my interactions with a selfdef/martial arts instructor at a course I was attending (knife stuff) started getting progressively worse.
At some point he started singling me out for weird (and often inappropriate) comments, and, after class, tried to strike up uncanny “friendly and helpful” conversations along the lines of how “dangerous” life is and how nice it would be for a small woman like me to have someone “big” around to make life “safer” (which, coming from a huge ex-military dude, came off precisely as a “nice house you have there, wouldn’t it be a shame if it got burned to ash?” kind of convo).
I dropped the course and pulled a few strings to find out who the hell exactly he was (because I’m generally a nosy busybody, because something about the whole affair seemed “off”… well, more “off” than usual case of running into a shitty dude, and because at that point in my life I already had the ability to pull a few strings like that).
Turned out that he wasn’t just “ex military” but also “convicted rapist with a large prior history of unproven accusations” (who served only a relatively small portion of his term due to my “motherland” having a legal system… much worse than less-than-stellar legal systems of more “firstworldly” places. Also “dear” “motherland” didn’t have – and AFAIK still doesn’t have – a law that would prohibit this kind of person from teaching self defense / MA courses. Because I was born in a hopeless backwater shithole, yep)
At which point I freaked out, because, well, a convicted rapist with that kind of training is not your run-of-the-mill shithead. And it was not unreasonable to believe that he knew my exact name and address (because that was part of paperwork for signing up).
After about a week of worrying that something, well, might happen (and catching a glimpse of someone who may-or-may-not have been him near my place) I just packed up things and moved to a “friend with benefits”.
Didn’t go over all too well with his then-live in partner (usually, she wouldn’t have minded “other special friends” dropping by, but I had the poor judgement to tell her why I decided to come, at which point she was like “A knife-pro who is also a rapist? He totally followed you here! You’ll get us all killed! GET THE HELL OUT !”)
The friend had insisted that I stay for a while (and so I did, despite his live-in yelling bloody hell for hours upon hours), but the whole thing… somewhat strained the relationship, to put it mildly.
Never went back to that apartment (sold it through a POA and bought a new one elsewhere).
Eh, the last one came out pretty grim.
A less disturbing story (amusing even, in retrospect at least)
During my visit to US of A, at some point I had taken a bus ride (I wasn’t in the mood for driving myself), and a bunch of young men (seemingly college aged, but who knows) entered the bus, surrounded me by occupying nearby seats, and proceeded to try “small talk”.
Given that it was daytime and not a particularly horrible part of the city, threat was pretty low-key, but it was definitely there.
They were like a bunch of wicked bottlenose dolphins.
I quickly got fed up and, as soon as opportunity presented itself, busted their bluff with one of my own.
When one of the dudebros asked where I lived, I answered something like “in Parkville, with my boyfriend”. The guy sitting behind me asked “and so where is your boyfriend noooow?”, malignantly joyful and elongating the “now” like some pathetic operetta villain.
To which I happily replied ” at the police station. He works there”.
Immediately, there was sudden silence. There were weird, disturbed looks between the guys, and the “small talk” shtick ran out of steam right away.
The most emphatically menacing one (the “noooow” dude behind me) just stood up and went to the bus door, mumbling something along the lines of “nice chatting with you” and “gotta get going”.
They all disembarked on the next stop.
Eh, the last one came out pretty grim.
A less disturbing story (amusing even, in retrospect at least)
During my visit to US of A, at some point I had taken a bus ride (I wasn't in the mood for driving myself), and a bunch of young men (seemingly college aged, but who knows) entered the bus, surrounded me by occupying nearby seats, and proceeded to try "small talk".
Given that it was daytime and not a particularly horrible part of the city, threat was pretty low-key, but it was definitely there.
They were like a bunch of wicked bottlenose dolphins.
I quickly got fed up and, as soon as opportunity presented itself, busted their bluff with one of my own.
When one of the dudebros asked where I lived, I answered something like "in Parkville, with my boyfriend". The guy sitting behind me asked "and so where is your boyfriend noooow?", malignantly joyful and elongating the "now" like some pathetic operetta villain.
To which I happily replied " at the police station. He works there".
Immediately, there was sudden silence. There were weird, disturbed looks between the guys, and the "small talk" shtick ran out of steam right away.
The most emphatically menacing one (the "noooow" dude behind me) just stood up and went to the bus door, mumbling something along the lines of "nice chatting with you" and "gotta get going".
They all disembarked on the next stop.
What a hair raising read, although I was relieved at the ending, the narrative was riveting. That a group of men could take part in such a thing speaks to some kind of group psychopathy which may or may not be inherent in some fraternities. We may all feel the need to belong in a group but surely we can see when a group is utterly devoid of any merit. The maze analogy is excellent but this is a very uncomfortable read as it should well be. Sharing this must have been difficult, but I’m glad you did, it was an eye opener.
The human default state is sadly not a blank slate – people seem to default to vicious, violent, all-around terrible communities if left to their own devices.
Of course, misogynistic socialization of college males makes women to be more likely to end up targeted by such crap, but let’s make no mistake – “frat” communities are vicious to outgroup males and, in many cases, to ingroup ones too.
And don’t forget that it’s transgressive acts that form strongest in-group bonds, that’s basically how majority of gangs operate (as well as pretty much every cult, and, as we can see, college “fraternity”).
Oh, and going against the opinion of a group majority requires critical thinking, intellectual rigor, willpower and, well, yeah, courage.
Of this list, at least two are not congenital traits, and not even something we’re predisposed to (the way we’re predisposed to learning languages).
Thus, semi-self-regulating fraternities/sororities are a damn stupid idea.
A stupid idea that is always on the verge of bringing about some terrible incident (and it’s won’t even necessarily be a male-related incident – reported female “frat” behavior includes, but is not limited to, forcing other women to snort cocaine at threat of being raped. Yep. Because that’s a very sisterly thing to do.)
Frankly, I find it perplexing that this particular system hasn’t been scrapped in favor of pretty much anything that would provide better oversight and regulation.
This was me. But with my stepdad instead of college boys. It was so hard to read. It was like being paralyzed all over again.
The human default state is sadly not a blank slate – people seem to default to vicious, violent, all-around terrible communities if left to their own devices.
Of course, misogynistic socialization of college males makes women to be more likely to end up targeted by such crap, but let's make no mistake – "frat" communities are vicious to outgroup males and, in many cases, to ingroup ones too.
And don't forget that it's transgressive acts that form strongest in-group bonds, that's basically how majority of gangs operate (as well as pretty much every cult, and, as we can see, college "fraternity").
Oh, and going against the opinion of a group majority requires critical thinking, intellectual rigor, willpower and, well, yeah, courage.
Of this list, at least two are not congenital traits, and not even something we're predisposed to (the way we're predisposed to learning languages).
Thus, semi-self-regulating fraternities/sororities are a damn stupid idea.
A stupid idea that is always on the verge of bringing about some terrible incident (and it's won't even necessarily be a male-related incident – reported female "frat" behavior includes, but is not limited to, forcing other women to snort cocaine at threat of being raped. Yep. Because that's a very sisterly thing to do.)
Frankly, I find it perplexing that this particular system hasn't been scrapped in favor of pretty much anything that would provide better oversight and regulation.
What do you think would happen if you called the guy out and said, “Are you threatening to rape me?” Or “your comments are inappropriate, watch me call the police right now.” I’m not trying to be a smart aleck or anything like that. I’m a woman, and I genuinely want to know what is the best course of action in situations like this. I vacillate between thinking that if I call them out on their behavior they might be so shocked that they’ll at least stop or leave me alone (even if there is no actual evidence to show to the police later. Maybe the fact that I’m calling them out on their behavior is enough). Or am I misguided on this? Is it safer for me to play the maze game instead?
Standard and responsible recommendation would be to refrain from any action that might provoke the assailants and try to maneuver (that is, pretty much, bluff) your way out of the vulnerable position.
That’s like, the most responsible recommendation one can offer.
But… Personally, I tend to have reservations about the belief that “playing along” would convince an actual rapist to refrain from, well, going forward with the act, and thus I tend to be more aggressive when dealing with this kind of shit, but what do I know.
Oh wait, I actually know of studies which suggest that sex offenders tend to avoid “confident” women (see “Sexy Dressing Revisited: Does Target Dress Play a Part in Sexual Harassment Cases?” Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy, 14:125, 125-152. and Lynne Richards, A Theoretical Analysis of Nonverbal Communication and Victim Selection for Sexual Assaults, 9 CLOTHING & TEXTILES RES. J. 55, 59–60 ), so yeah, go figure, it turns out that being all too compliant might even provoke a sex offender, while projecting a certain degree of confidence/dominance appears to “spook” them.
So the reasons for “playing the maze game” are somewhat tenuous, and being perceived as “submissive” appears to increase risk.
Bluffing your way out of the ordeal seems like a reasonable option (it doesn’t explicitly “provoke”, maintains the pretense of a socially acceptable interaction, and perhaps also less stressful), but if you go for bluffing, remember, the point isn’t just providing a plausible excuse for leaving (that would only work if the guys aren’t actually planning to, well, you know, rape or commit some other crime), the point is establishing a plausible complication (edited to add: one that isn’t related to your own self so that you don’t provide a motive to, well, kill you) to the potential assailant (and this might be hard, if you’re not very good at lying).
Calling out the assholes on their bluff is something that depends solely on your willingness to bet your well-being on the applicability of “actual rapists are gonna rape anyway” argument to your particular situation and whether you believe “plain” forms of physical violence are likely to occur (even if they don’t actually intend to rape, under “pressure” they might still become physically violent in an entirely non-sexualized manner, which probably isn’t a desirable outcome even if you’re a brick-busting MA afficionado).
A lot probably depends on how isolated you are.
A lot also depends on whether you anticipate being in the company of potentially dangerous people. If you do, preparing some kind of solution in advance would be nice (something that you could use to “provide a complication” and perhaps also to actually be of help things actually end up going to hell in a handbasket)
I happen to make use of rather complicated “failsafes” when going out to have some fun with people I’m not quite confident in, but unless you happen to be into the kind of kink I’m into, you probably need neither a “fellow wingman” nearby nor a tiny button you could press even in bondage.
Okay, scratch that, maybe a wingman who calls in at specified intervals and knows your location when you attend a place with potentially dangerous people isn’t a bad idea even for vanilla people. It’s not hard to do and requires no skills beyond picking up a cellphone call.
I’m torn on how to advise you here. I was in a somewhat similar situation as the author and I did call him out. I said “I know you’re going to rape me, so you should just do it now and get it over with so I can leave sooner.” I thought about mentioning the police but a) I didn’t have cell phone service and b) I was afraid he would kill me if he thought I might actually call them. Calling his bluff didn’t work at all–he basically ignored me and continued to pretend that we were having a normal interaction while I was locked in his room against my will. I had to play the maze game for a few more hours got raped anyway. I even tried another callout, like “I know you’re a decent guy and you don’t want to have something like rape on your conscience” but that failed too. However! Playing the maze game and feigning cooperation did at least convince him to wear a condom. That’s a really serious consideration that doesn’t get mentioned very often…
I tend to think that rape-y types have already done such a thorough job of convincing themselves that what they’re doing isn’t wrong (women want it, they’re just being teases, they’re slutty and deserve it, etc) that naming the behavior won’t change anything. But maybe there are dudes who aren’t fully committed to rape but slip into threatening behavior because of societal conditioning? They might respond to being confronted.
So my conclusion is you might as well trying them call out, and that the maze game can potentially save you from STIs. But I would be really wary about talking about calling the police, because the guy could see that as a threat (of jail time/exposure as a creep) and get more aggressive. As LaTercera said below, it really depends on how physically trapped you are. Anyway, I really hope you never have to make this decision!
I’m sorry you have gone through this, katzenklavierr. Thank you for your courage in sharing your story, and for pointing out things that are often overlooked
I failed to stress it (and it indeed needs to be stressed, so I made a tiny edit above) but one should bear in mind that threatening the assailant with police report (or other personal action) is dangerous. It is true for sex crimes as well as any other crimes (except maybe the most petty ones), since it provides the criminal with an obvious motivation to kill the victim.
Bluffing to provide an “external” complication (one that doesn’t “go away” if you vanish) seems reasonable if you can pull it off. Also, a commonly advised route is a somewhat counter-intuitive approach of “assertive cooperation” strategy which involves promising cooperation to reduce violence (no need to be violent, I’ll do what you want) while remaining calm, assertive and without resorting to begging and “victim” behavior (which is both counter-intuitive and hard to do, but there was some research suggesting that it does work to both stall for time and to reduce the degree of violence in cases of rape, can’t find the citation right now since I read it almost a decade ago). Any kind of excuse to stall for time or that can theoretically provide escape opportunity is probably not bad as well
Thanks, LaTercera 🙂
That’s really good advice!
This is just like what happened to me at a work function, and my boss sat there and watched it. We were on a minibus, I was the only woman, and I was afraid for my life. I now go to pieces anywhere there is a group of men drinking and laughing.
Standard and responsible recommendation would be to refrain from any action that might provoke the assailants and try to maneuver (that is, pretty much, bluff) your way out of the vulnerable position.
That's like, the most responsible recommendation one can offer.
But… Personally, I tend to have reservations about the belief that "playing along" would convince an actual rapist to refrain from, well, going forward with the act, and thus I tend to be more aggressive when dealing with this kind of shit, but what do I know.
Oh wait, I actually know of studies which suggest that sex offenders tend to avoid "confident" women (see “Sexy Dressing Revisited: Does Target Dress Play a Part in Sexual Harassment Cases?” Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy, 14:125, 125-152. and Lynne Richards, A Theoretical Analysis of Nonverbal Communication and Victim Selection for Sexual Assaults, 9 CLOTHING & TEXTILES RES. J. 55, 59–60 ), so yeah, go figure, it turns out that being all too compliant might even provoke a sex offender, while projecting a certain degree of confidence/dominance appears to "spook" them.
So the reasons for "playing the maze game" are somewhat tenuous, and being perceived as "submissive" appears to increase risk.
Bluffing your way out of the ordeal seems like a reasonable option (it doesn't explicitly "provoke", maintains the pretense of a socially acceptable interaction, and perhaps also less stressful), but if you go for bluffing, remember, the point isn't just providing a plausible excuse for leaving (that would only work if the guys aren't actually planning to, well, you know, rape or commit some other crime), the point is establishing a plausible complication (edited to add: one that isn't related to your own self so that you don't provide a motive to, well, kill you) to the potential assailant (and this might be hard, if you're not very good at lying).
Calling out the assholes on their bluff is something that depends solely on your willingness to bet your well-being on the applicability of "actual rapists are gonna rape anyway" argument to your particular situation and whether you believe "plain" forms of physical violence are likely to occur (even if they don't actually intend to rape, under "pressure" they might still become physically violent in an entirely non-sexualized manner, which probably isn't a desirable outcome even if you're a brick-busting MA afficionado).
A lot probably depends on how isolated you are.
A lot also depends on whether you anticipate being in the company of potentially dangerous people. If you do, preparing some kind of solution in advance would be nice (something that you could use to "provide a complication" and perhaps also to actually be of help things actually end up going to hell in a handbasket)
I happen to make use of rather complicated "failsafes" when going out to have some fun with people I'm not quite confident in, but unless you happen to be into the kind of kink I'm into, you probably need neither a "fellow wingman" nearby nor a tiny button you could press even in bondage.
Okay, scratch that, maybe a wingman who calls in at specified intervals and knows your location when you attend a place with potentially dangerous people isn't a bad idea even for vanilla people. It's not hard to do and requires no skills beyond picking up a cellphone call.
I'm sorry you have gone through this, katzenklavierr. Thank you for your courage in sharing your story, and for pointing out things that are often overlooked
I failed to stress it (and it indeed needs to be stressed, so I made a tiny edit above) but one should bear in mind that threatening the assailant with police report (or other personal action) is dangerous. It is true for sex crimes as well as any other crimes (except maybe the most petty ones), since it provides the criminal with an obvious motivation to kill the victim.
Bluffing to provide an "external" complication (one that doesn't "go away" if you vanish) seems reasonable if you can pull it off. Also, a commonly advised route is a somewhat counter-intuitive approach of "assertive cooperation" strategy which involves promising cooperation to reduce violence (no need to be violent, I'll do what you want) while remaining calm, assertive and without resorting to begging and "victim" behavior (which is both counter-intuitive and hard to do, but there was some research suggesting that it does work to both stall for time and to reduce the degree of violence in cases of rape, can't find the citation right now since I read it almost a decade ago). Any kind of excuse to stall for time or that can theoretically provide escape opportunity is probably not bad as well
Thank you for sharing this.
I dealt with something similar as a child, with my developmentally challenged uncle who followed me, cornered me, and attempted to sexually abuse me on too many occasions to count. I told my parents many times about my fear and discomfort, about what he did to me, and struggled as a little kid to find words for this kind of fear and abuse, not even knowing the word “rape” but still fearing it. It is a feeling that never leaves you. I was told repeatedly that it was not a big deal, and even though I was a child and he a grown man, I should just “avoid him.” I didn’t confront the issue, because I had grown up believing my fear and his abuse wasn’t valid, until I left for college and realized that if he acted that way with my little sister I would, without hesitation, murder him. So I talked about it, and my feelings, until I was exhausted by insisting my experiences were legitimate and not an overreaction. It was worth it though, because I extracted a promise that my little sister would never be left alone with him.
This story describes feelings and ideas I did not have words for as a child and I still have trouble confronting as an adult. Thank you for making me feel validated and understood.