Newspaper Article

HERS; Speaking of the Unspeakable

Alice Sebold is a writer who is working on a first novel, "Jericho.", Sebold, Alice

1989

Overview

Ignorance hurts. In the beginning, even my own father, who has spent his life working with young people, confessed to me that he did not understand how I could have been raped if I didn't ''want to'' be. In Pennsylvania recently, Stephen Freind, the Delaware County Representative to the State Legislature, repeatedly stated that rape victims rarely got pregnant because women under stress have difficulty conceiving. This misinformation supported anti-abortionists in their position that rape should not be part of the abortion controversy. In the college classrooms where I teach English, I hear naive assertions about rape. What it's like; who rapes; who gets raped. This willingness to type the victim or the attacker is dangerous. It separates us from the reality of rape's threat in our own lives. Stereotypes are attractive because if we don't fit the stereotype we create, we conclude it is impossible for us to be victims. The ''it-can't-happen-to-me'' mentality affects women of every class. Women disassociate themselves from rape because the vast majority of people still believe that a woman who has been raped is filthy, better off dead, irrational, or got what she was looking for. We must hear, not assume, the experience of rape victims because our best and only defense is knowledge. A current issue of my university's campus guide, under the description of the park where I was raped, a park heavily frequented by students, says more or less what it said in 1981. After a lengthy description of park ball fields and basketball courts, the last line reads ''watch out after dark; scary things have been known to happen.'' Rape is a nasty word. It is easier to avoid it. This degree of denial and prettification is dangerous.

• Publisher: New York Times Company
• Subject: SEBOLD, ALICE / SEX CRIMES