As a journalist, this is not a great lead but it’s the only appropriate one for an opinion piece of this nature: I am a man and I have been a rape victim. Additionally, my stepbrother, Sandro Caban, is an accused rapist. His case was extensively covered in the Chicago Tribune but he got off because my father could afford one of the best attorneys. My stepbrother shares attorney Loren Blumenfeld with super hacker Jeremy Hammond, something I find ironic since Anonymous, the hacker group Hammond once headed, has been responsible for taking up the crusade against Daisy Coleman’s attackers in Maryville, Miss. You can read a bit about my stepbrother’s case in these articles from 2006.
I do not know for certain whether or not my stepbrother is guilty. I do know that these cases — which I had to find out about upon pulling up the Tribune online from New York City rather than directly from my family — opened up wounds for me. I also have to say, I sympathize with the 24-year-old victim and still wish I could reach out to her. I cannot legally say what I think about his guilt, all I know is he was found under her window after the attack happened. I also know reading about this brought back small trickles of my own trauma.
Whether or not rape culture exists, the dismissal of sexually-directed violence by our culture is very real. I say sexually- directed violence because one of the reasons rape is often not taken seriously is because it is associated with sex when, in fact, it merely uses sex as violence because human sexual reproductive organs are venerable parts of the body. Rape is, at its core, about power. The rapist is someone who feels a profound sense of powerlessness and thus wants to commit an act of violence that will dominate the victim’s life.
In concordance with this, rape is not taken seriously because we have little research on the uniform ways rape or other forms of sexual assault affects the victim. That is what I am here to discuss and I’ll tell you a bit about what it took for me to recover so you can gain an understanding of why it is such a horrific crime and should be taken seriously.
I was raped by a male babysitter, a friend of the family who took care of me. Because this happened when I was 8 it would typically be categorized as molestation but he did not just do this me, he did the same thing to two teenage girls and his own sister. He also raped an adult woman who was mentally disabled. In all instances there was forced penetration. In my case, he beat me until I agreed to let him penetrate my anus and perform oral sex.
For me (and consistently, other victims), the rape causes a profound case of post-traumatic stress syndrome. For years, I relieved the violence in the form of nightmares where I would actively kick and scream, fighting back in ways I could not when I was mentally immobilized by the mixture of physical aggression and unwanted penetration of my most private areas. I would wake up, unrested and jumpy because I was in constant mode to protect myself.
I finally got serious help when, during a nightmare where I was fighting my attacker, I punched my girlfriend who was in bed with me. I was completely asleep when I did this but, fortunately, she was able to tell from my yelling I was fighting back at something. She was understanding and comforting because, while she was at college, her roommate had been raped and months later, exhibited the same behavior.
Getting help was not going to counseling a few times. It took 10 years of counseling and only when I was a web producer at Roll Call/CQ did I have the insurance to gain the sort of help which put the trauma behind me forever. The total cost of counseling over the course of 10 years came to $304,000. It’s the price of a house but in many ways, that recovery is my home. Before, all I could do was get through a day of work, fighting the anxiety.
A friend from the Herald was my biggest supporter and confidant over the years. Later, this woman was raped — drugged and raped — and I was able to support her through the trial.
We often get hung up on the terminology that defines a rubric of concepts and then, dismiss the reality of those concepts. The reality in America is rape is not deemed to be serious and that victims are often put on the defense, asked to question what put them in the situation. When they experience post-traumatic stress, they are positioned as weak, especially if they are women.
As a victim and a former staffer, I applaud The Badger Herald for publishing a letter which brings the discussion of rape culture to the forefront.
As current students, you will never understand how vulnerable you are between the ages of 18 and 22 until you are more than a decade away from that time in your life.
Immediately after I left Madison, I was a music writer and later was part of the UK group Blacksmoke Organisation. The other day, I got a message from an old friend in a punk rock band who said, ‘how you doin’ old man?’ I embraced being called that so I’m going to embrace dispensing some advice about college campuses, rape culture and its relationship to every student:
One of the great myths about college is that it’s a marvelous time of sexual exploration and promiscuity, usually inebriated promiscuity. Because of this Animal House myth, when feminists talk about rape culture, it’s seen as something that is designed to take the fun out of college.
You will never miss the sexual relationships you didn’t have in college. It’s a horribly awkward time and while UW students usually brim with confidence, there are a lot of people who are struggling quietly and so the definition of what is victimizing is ever shifting. There is nothing wrong with being cautious and respecting the behavior the critics of rape culture are prescribing because, years later, you will wonder what you could have done if you didn’t go to the Plaza on a Friday night to find that one girl from New Jersey who looks like Zooey Deschanel and decided to study instead. In fact, the guys or gals who are marrying the woman who is a doppelgänger of Zooey Deschanel, 10 years out of Madison, probably did study on a Friday night.
Adult fun, the kind that involves Christmases in London and dinners at Alinea, outpaces the fun of chugging whatever horrible, dog-piss swill passes for beer at keg parties these days and engaging in a series of events you may regret.
Giving some credence to the feminism on the UW campus most certainly paid off for me professionally. When I worked marketing Wall Street conferences at Strategic Research Institute, my mentor was a fierce woman who built my current professional personality. Advertising, the industry I’ve worked in for the greater part of my career with forays back into journalism and media, is largely dominated by women account executives. Feminism at Madison taught me to see women as people and that there were appropriate and inappropriate times for sexual feelings toward a woman.
Feminism and the things I learned about rape around the campus and in women’s studies class also contributed to my recovery. Like many male victims of sexually directed violence, I developed a slight case of gender dysphoria (which is a real disorder). However, because feminism had helped me problemitize gender roles, I have been able turn the lingering effects to my advantage.
Lastly, if it wasn’t for feminism and the discussions of rape, I would never have fully understood what happened to me when I was 8 and find the capacity to contextualize the experience and understand that the lack of justice after I came forward to police was part of a larger systematic problem and not something that was my fault, revictimizing myself as many victims of rape, sexual assault or other interlinked sexually-directed types of violence tend to do.
Humans need context to understand complex concepts and the effects of rape are just that. Maybe rape culture isn’t the best choice of words to describe the rubric but what it leads us to discuss is important. By bringing this discussion forward, The Badger Herald and the Madison campus can be certain that many more victims that walk invisible now will come forward to be visible to the system of justice and themselves. Maybe, one day, that will end up in rapists doing mandatory sentences instead of people caught with pot. A justice system which does not take victims seriously ends up prosecuting victimless crimes to justify itself and in a larger context, outside of recovery, that is why this discussion is important.
Kristopher Hoeksema (juntotv
