Not That Bad

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Real and heartbreaking and unapologetically honest. This book of essays doesn't pull any punches, and should be required reading for both men and women. The only way we can attempt to break the cycle of sexual violence and rape culture is by facing it head on and acknowledging the way it has shaped who we are. As editor Roxane Gay explains in her introduction, this anthology is "a place for people to give voice to their experience, a place for people to share how bad this all is, a place for people to identify the ways they have been marked by rape culture."

I appreciate the wide variety of experiences chronicled in these essays. Like many of the essayists, when I compared the things I've experienced in my life with those mentioned in this book, I constantly found myself thinking, "wow, at least that didn't happen to me." And I really *haven't* had anything major happen in my life. But isn't that the whole point of these essays? You can't compare your experiences with anyone else's and deny yourself the right to your own feelings and reactions. Just because you haven't gone through the worst life has to offer doesn't mean you don't deserve the right to claim your trauma, to recover as you feel necessary. Your grief does not invalidate or steal from any one else's.

In The Ways We are Taught to Be a Girl by xTx, she walks us through specific lessons she learned growing up, because she was a girl, and what her takeaway was from each horrific lesson, each with a score that builds and grows the older you get and the more those lessons are ingrained in you. "A woman who is, at her core, not good enough, tarnished." "If they want it, they can take it. What you want or don't want is irrelevant." "If I was a good girl, I would've left. I didn't do anything. I let him. I let him. I let him. I. Let. Him. My fault." "If you do nothing, it's your fault. Even if you are a child. Even if you are scared." "You are not a treasure." "You wanted it and he knew it." And xTx still thinks, "I got off easy." Yet her reflections on those times, as she meets other women and learns of their experiences, have led her to the realization that everything she learned as a child was not "what you get for being a girl." Instead, "None of this was supposed to happen. Didn't have to happen. I wasn't supposed to have a score. None of us were."

In Zoë Medeiros' essay Why I Stopped, she discusses how differently people can process their trauma. Talking about what happened to her didn't help her, but there were a lot of other things that did, from watching specific tv shows to reading other people's stories. Eventually, she realized that "not telling my story doesn't mean it didn't happen. I don't have to be open about my experiences, about all of them or even any of them, to be a real survivor. I am a real survivor because I survived, even if some days it feels like I didn't survive at all." It's not anyone else's business, and no one else's place to decide what your experiences mean to you, and YOU are the one who gets to decide what you share. "You don't owe anything to anyone. Your story is not the currency you exchange for love, for understanding, for getting what you need."

In the same vein, Stacey May Fowles writes in To Get Out From Under It: "It seems that, if something makes you feel better, it is a healthy option. Want to sleep all day? That's okay. Drink too much? That can be a valid coping choice. Isolating yourself via a fear of the outside world? Self-preservation is important." My biggest take away is this: be kind to yourself. Allow yourself the space you need to process, to heal, to survive. And that's good advice for dealing with anything life might be throwing at you, whether it be sexual violence, depression, or a death of a loved one. Be as kind and generous to yourself as you would be to your best friend.

Once again, I encourage everyone to pick up this book. Yes, it is difficult to read at times. It might be even more difficult for you to read than it was for me. But it will hopefully be worth it. And I'll leave you with a few more quotes to help convince you.

"I was angry beyond belief, but I had nowhere to put that anger. The shelves of my heart were full." - All the Angry Women, Liz Lenz

"The surfaces of my empathy became calloused." - Introduction, Roxane Gay

"I didn't want to be a part of their mourning. I didn't want to be involved in someone else's grief when I knew so little about how to deal with my own." - Spectator: My Family, My Rapist, and Mourning Online, Brandon Taylor

"I know what it's like to feel invisible as a child and I imagine it feels the same as an adult. But it's a pretty sorry situation when the choice is either objectification by intimidating strangers or invisibility." - The Luckiest MILF in Brooklyn, Lynn Mellick

"H. says, "I'm here to listen if you want to tell me." And then, "If you don't want to speak, I am still here."" - & the Truth is, I Have No Story, Claire Schwartz

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