Switch to paranoid from having fun
Will he use his hands, knife, or a gun
Knuckles are white, wrapped around my mace
Comes from living in a terrorist state.—Donita Sparks, “Can I Run” from L7, Hunger for Stink
I was 18 and he seemed like a possible mentor. On my first day shadowing him on his social work rounds, he drove me to a waterfall in a remote area and killed the engine. He told me his wife didn’t have feelings for him anymore and put his hand on my knee. I froze and didn’t say a word. Where was I going to run? I thought he might kill me.
We sat in the cab of his truck for what felt like an eternity, so that almost 40 years later, the gray colors of the rocks out the window are emblazoned in my memory. I remember that I remained mute as he chattered on, moving his hand up my leg. I didn’t move a muscle. Eventually, he must have given up on me, because he turned the key in the ignition and drove back to the office.
I think I actually thanked him for the ride. I never told a soul about what happened at the waterfall. He did not become a mentor.
I’m almost embarrassed to tell this story at a time of national emergency about rape culture. I did not get raped that day. It is one of a thousand near-misses I have experienced as a result of repeatedly taking the risk of trusting men to act like human beings. These occurrences are the ground of being cis-female, queer, trans, or any other gender or sexual non-conforming person in the contemporary United State. They are the price of living in the “terrorist state” Sparks describes in the song quoted above.
The terrorism imposed by rape culture is not incidental. As Sylvia Federici argues in her magisterial history, Caliban and the Witch, eruptions of violence against women have historically been the hallmarks of transitions in global economic and political regimes. Federici explains that widespread allegations of witchcraft against women during the early modern period helped insurgent mercantile…