Woman-to-Woman Sexual Violence: Does She Call It Rape?

1: Speaking the Unspeakable

Speaking the Unspeakable I wish I would have been more aware what woman-to-woman sexual violence was—what it looked like so that I might have acknowledged for myself what had happened to me, that I had been violated. I felt violated but didn’t have words to put to the experience or the knowledge to put words to it. (Judy) I always suspected that men could hurt you, but never, ever fathomed that a woman would take that away from another woman. It left me absolutely unable to trust another woman’s sexual advances and to be able to trust my body for betraying me with pleasure response. (Lauren) I buried it initially so I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I had packed it up and moved on. When I unpacked it though, I searched for anything in the literature that included me—but there’s nothing really out there. The only very little there is about woman/woman sexual assault is either mother/daughter or within the context of a battering relationship. There’s literature about heterosexual date rape/assault but nothing for lesbians. I wish there could have been just one book about a lesbian who experiences the date/acquaintance assault I had so I could have known I wasn’t alone. (Marcia) It has scarred me emotionally. I have had to overcome feelings of helplessness and unworthiness. I continue to battle with self-esteem and being a victim— which makes me feel less than I am. (Ariel) Judy, Lauren, Marcia, and Ariel (all names are pseudonyms unless otherwise noted) are four women who responded to my appeal to participate in a study of woman-to-woman sexual violence. They are four lesbians who represent thousands of others suffering—in silence and isolation—from sexual abuse by another woman. They are this book’s raison d’être, my work’s driving force. To these women I say: Suffer in silence no more. To speak of woman-to-woman sexual violence breaks a barrier of silence , to admit what society denies, and to debunk a myth of lesbian utopia. 9 10 W O M A N - T O - W O M A N S E X U A L V I O L E N C E What, sadly, many women say they might expect from a man (everyone knows that rapists are men) is unexpected from another woman. As women we are not prepared, we feel totally without safety, and the depth of our betrayal is greater. While rape and battering are different experiences, they share the societal belief that women are not violent—women do not rape and women do not batter. This denial of female perpetrators means they are free to move on to the next victim. Definition of a Social Problem Many kinds of relationships are open to all of us, from casual coworkers and acquaintances to close friends and intimate partners, and generally we are involved in many kinds of relationships at any given time. Several factors influence the point at which relationship dynamics begin to take on a public quality, or become a social problem. Behaviors are not inherently good or bad; rather social norms establish what is acceptable or unacceptable. If, in a relationship, you are beaten because your partner ‘‘loves’’ you, we know there is a problem. When boundaries are crossed, others—perhaps law enforcement officials, hospital workers, work supervisors, or therapists—are forced into what was before a private relationship. Same-sex interpersonal violence has not always been defined as a social problem; in fact, activists and organizers are struggling to construct this now. Same-sex relationships are not given the same legitimacy as heterosexual relationships, so it has been nearly impossible to recognize same-sex abuse within relationships. Our culture defines the appropriate acting out of love or commitment, and these feelings and their accompanying behaviors and ceremonies are not easily ascribed to same-sex relationships. The mass of studies on relationship issues—love, attraction, intimacy, courtship, dissolution, stability, and so forth—generally exclude the experiences of lesbians and bisexual women. Researchers, journalists, therapists, and other professionals look to fit lesbian and bisexual women into the heterosexual woman’s mold.1 Identifying a social problem and its solution may, therefore , be off the mark. Issues of socialization, societal pressure, sexism, and more, need to be understood within the even broader context of homophobia and biphobia. This is lacking if lesbian and bisexual experiences are...