Rape Made Me a Feminist by guest @SbethCaplin

Please welcome author and blogger Sarahbeth to the blog today as she shares her story of rape culture and feminists. 

I was raised by a strong woman: a mother of two who was also a full-time nurse, and later a full-time college professor. She drove my father to dozens of chemotherapy appointments while working on a PhD and still found time to work out, clean house, and walk the dogs. She’s superwoman, as far as I’m concerned.

Yet I never considered her or myself a feminist. Perhaps due to my early fascination with mainstream Christianity, I viewed feminism as a movement of angry man-hating women who burned their bras and loved abortion. In college, this view did not change much, since my university was known for being extremely liberal – with emphasis on extreme.

At the same time, I supported women’s roles within churches. I enjoyed being able to vote. Minus the so-called bra burning myth, I agreed with basic feminist tenets that women are people too, and deserving of equal rights in both the home and the work place. I just couldn’t bring myself to identify with “the F-word” label, because I wasn’t angry and didn’t want to give up shaving my legs.

 

Shift Happens

It wasn’t until a five-year long abusive relationship ended, leaving me devastated, scarred, and broken that I had something to be angry about. It wasn’t until I sobbed to a therapist while describing what my ex had done to me, and she shook her head and told me “Honey, that’s rape,” that I realized my life was permanently altered: my entire worldview had shifted.

As the lyric from Defying Gravity goes, “Something has changed within me/something is not the same/I’m through with playing by the rules/of someone else’s game.” I was done playing by the rules of rape culture, which for years taught me rape was something that only happened to a particular kind of girl; rape only “counted” if committed by a stranger hiding in the bushes with a weapon, not a man who claimed to love me and kept repeating “You’ll change your mind” until I realized there was no other way out. I was done playing by the “rule” that healing meant keeping my head down and my mouth shut, because speaking out would open me up to blame and shame while my rapist is free to abuse other women.

Rape turned me into a feminist. Rape opened my eyes to a not-so-hidden underworld where it is more convenient for a woman to mention she has a boyfriend to a street harasser because “Leave me alone” isn’t sufficient enough. Rape opened my ears to stories from friends I’ve known for years who believed they were “dirty” and damaged from sexual abuse, and no decent man would want them.

 

Embracing “the F-word”

Yes, I’m an angry feminist all right. But one need not be labeled an extremist for being angered by injustice. If I can embrace the title of “Christian” despite the stains from followers who get the message wrong, I can embrace the title “feminist” despite the new wave of misguided people who think it’s all about making men slaves and not allowing any woman back into her own kitchen, even by her own choice.

I wish it didn’t take years of soul-crushing shame for me to understand this, but at its core, feminism is about restoring basic human dignity to women. Whatever your religious or political stripes, we can all meet there and discuss how to move forward.

 

About the Author:
Beth Caplin is a Denver-based author and blogger. Her first novel, Someone You Already Know, follows two teenage girls on their journey to heal from rape culture. Find her on her website, sbethcaplin.com, or engage on Twitter @SbethCaplin.

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