Control Movements and Decisions

Back at work, my departmental chair defined for all the faculty the cultural environment for the year when she yelled at me: “Your rape is causing havoc in the department.” Her impatience escalated during the winter season when she told a colleague that “Cathy is using her trauma to avoid department responsibilities.” At the department meeting to de­cide the applicants for the new tenured position, the chair made the announcement, be­fore people had made their list of nominees, that “Cathy is not qualified for this position.

In a less explicit manner, “Rose,” like many other people, wanted to control my movements.

I listened more attentively to the things you were saying and the way you expressed yourself. I sort of kept score of how much of our conversations were about the rape and how much about other things. At first everything you said was rape related. Then as time passed, other things crept in. I became anxious for you. I equated it with the death of a loved one, an event that traumatizes, How could you let this be taken away from you? (emphasis added).

For Rose, recuperation and the investigation were to last a few weeks, and then eve­rything would be back to normal. If it wasn’t back to normal, then it was my fault: “How could you let this [normal life] be taken away from you?” While Rose and others were asking this same question, I kept asking myself: How can we let rapists keep attacking, torturing and destroying people and their friends and families? Isn’t it inhumane to allow a rapist to destroy people, and when possible, shouldn’t we try to stop these attackers who bludgeon people’s lives? This culture that negates rape and yet refuses support or rights to victim-survivors confuses me even to this day. As an anthropologist in Olinala, I experienced a phase of confusion but only initially.