The final line in Eve Ensler’s “A Teenage Girl's Guide To Surviving Sex Slavery” –
"No one can take anything from you if you do not give it to them."
I am listening to my daughter Tammy’s essay which has to quantify why her crew wants to produce a film about rape and sexual assault as their term project.
They have to prove why it is necessary and how their film can make a difference.
As I hear the stats I am horrified at how many women, girls and boys are sexually abused every year. What grieves me even more is that so many of us never share what has happened to us and that these figures only represent what has been disclosed.
The sad and overwhelming truth is however, that although what we have experienced, seemingly remains hidden and out of sight, the reality is that it has a very loud voice and it affects our relationships, our behaviour and our ability to respond.
In my own life, by the time that I was 20, I had survived 2 rape attempts as well as a number of unprovoked sexual assaults. I had men exposing themselves to me, lying in wait for me as I walked home from work, chasing me until the police chased them off.
When I finally married, I can tell you honestly that I was scared of having to deal with intimacy. Like any other young woman, I had my dreams of what it would be like but when it became a reality, fear overcame me as I was assaulted by the memories of all these terrible things that I had experienced. It was hard to distinguish between a spirit of love and a spirit of lust.
Fortunately for me, I had a wonderful husband who helped me to live a semi-normal life (the fear never fully left me).
Quite frankly, I think it’s high time that we made work of exposing the truth. Perhaps children should be taught in Life Orientation what the difference is between love and lust and what acceptable behaviour is and what abusive behaviour is.
Today, our children are challenged sexually at a very young age and many young girls accept sexual abuse as a norm because the abuser is their boyfriend.
The above monologue by Eve Ensler is a graphic depiction of one 15 year girl’s solution for survival as she endures being abducted by soldiers and then kept as a sex slave for years.
It is not the solution for all things but I like the concept hidden in the piece.
A defiance…you may have assaulted the body I live in but you certainly haven’t touched me. I choose life!
