When I was a grad student in a program heavily dominated by wealthy white feminists, the prevailing dogma was that rape and sexual assault are very common. Not true. They certainly happen, but not often and they do not characterize the experiences of most women.
The above quote is from a comment in LithiumCola's diary on sexism.
Certainly, this quote does not at all square with my own personal experience or with that of the women with whom I've associated in my life. Perhaps I've been hanging out with the wrong crowd of sluts; perhaps I am a slut, myself. But I think rape is vastly underreported and a far bigger problem than even the worst statistics indicate (I've seen both 1 in 4 and 1 in 6 quoted as statistics. If anyone wants to look at statistics on reported rapes, here's a pretty exhaustive link.). In my circle of female friends, a majority have suffered some sort of sexual assault in their lifetimes. The unassaulted are in the minority.
For my own personal experience, follow the to the flip.
Here's my first story: When I was 19, my boyfriend (Larry - I have to keep names straight in this to have it make any sense) and I went out drinking and driving and getting generally loaded and raising hell in our podunk hometown one Friday night with Randy, my boyfriend's best friend. Both guys had shown up to pick me up at the front door. It was a boring night ... there was nothing happening in town, we drove around for a few hours, then they dropped me off and they (presumably) went home to sleep it off. There'd been no sex, there'd been no sexual innuendo, there'd been ... nothing. But I was medium wasted, that's for sure.
Two hours later, I woke up in my own bed with a hand over my mouth and partial penetration. It wasn't the boyfriend - it was his best friend. Now I could have screamed, I suppose, and raised hell. My father was sleeping only two rooms away, but I realized the odds of my father believing that this guy who had just showed up at my door a few hours earlier was not in my bedroom by invitation were pretty slim. So I shut up, I didn't struggle, I wanted it over with and soon it was. And the guy just disappeared into the night from whence he came (so to speak). I never reported it. Not to the police, not to a parent, not even to the boyfriend (who, ironically, I never DID sleep with).
I consider this clearly a case of rape by any definition.
My second story is murkier, but probably more common. An ex-boyfriend who I had slept with - and broken up with because he was clingy, needy, creepy, scary and ultimately semi-stalkerish - showed up at my house to "talk things over." I made the mistake of letting him in when I was alone. This gruesome emotional pleading scene took place, which escalated to the point where when I asked him to leave, he backed me into a corner and began to forcefully kiss me (he was a BIG guy, maybe 6'4", a former football player). It was clear where it was leading ... he was pissed and hurt and angry and strong and whacked enough to start hitting me if he didn't get his way. So I made a very conscious calculation to just go ahead and fuck the guy to get him out of my house. So I did. And he left.
Was that rape? Maybe, maybe not. I certainly never reported it. But I sure learned to not let anyone in my house when I was alone. (And I'd like to take this public opportunity to say ... Jerry, you were a lousy lay even when it was entirely consensual.)
Now I'm not asking all the women on Daily Kos to bare their personal sexual pasts in public here. I guess I'm just doing it to blow off steam and show that bad things can happen to pretty savvy women, and that I think a lot of the definitions can be fairly murky. And I realize that there is no way to get a scientific survey off of any responses here. But if rape is more common among Kossacks here than previously realized, there may be the beginning of some understanding about why women in the political realm take power issues seriously and take sexual behavior issues seriously. We are not all femi-Nazis, by any means. We may just have a "hypersensitivity" to such issues because of experience.
Go to this supplementary diary to comment because this one is getting too long (for some reason, I can't get it to link ... here's the URL for cut and paste: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/20/22843/969 .
Thanks you all for sharing your stories ... what a magnificent bunch of people you all are.