Nobody likes a smart ALAC

Watching Julie's correspondence with ALAC over the 'Lisa' ad, I've veered between bemusement, anger and deep sadness. In her post, 'The risk of harm', Julie mentions her experience within an organisation she belonged to, during which a male in the organisation was unmasked as a sexual predator. The occasion of the unmasking was a sexual attack on another woman within the organisation, and that woman was me. It could have been you, and maybe on another occasion it was.

The incident occurred a few years ago. I was away from home attending a conference in Wellington, and at the end of the day a bunch of us from the conference went into town. I no longer drink, but in those days I certainly did, and that night I got really drunk. I could tell you why – alcohol seemed in those days to medicate a lifetime of chronic depression, I was a young mum away from her child for the first time, drinking is fun – but it has no bearing at all on what was to happen. I was drunk and I was acting the goat, loud and happy. The predator was at the pub, and during the night I gave him an exuberant, meaningless, drunken kiss.

At the end of the night, a bunch of us returned to the friend's house we were crashing at. The predator followed us back. Like everyone else, I went to bed. I have a memory which won't be erased of the predator, appearing silhouetted in the door of my room, while I looked at him in confusion. I was drunk and disorientated. I still don't understand why anyone would want to have sex with a person who is crying.

I couldn't report the incident to the Police. I never even gave it serious consideration, although I still agonise over the fact that, by failing to report it, I left the predator free to do the same thing to other women.

ACC paid for me to see a counsellor. The counsellor asked me to describe what had happened to me, and I duly did. 'That is very upsetting', she said, then honed in immediately on the drinking. Did I drink regularly? How much? All I'd really wanted from a counsellor – from anyone, really – was to sit with me, without judging, while I cried. That was the moment at which I decided to hide the incident away inside myself, and let it corrode me with guilt and unhappiness.

Five years on, this is the first time I've 'confessed'. I use this word because, in the face of my all my feminist logic, I cannot quell the feeling that I am to blame for my own attack by a guy who was a known danger to women. I'd like to say that it's cathartic to be open about it, but it's really just painful and humiliating. My culpability has been drummed into me by the counsellor, by anyone who equates women's drunkenness with their sexual availability, and now by ALAC. No matter how drunk a woman she is, her chance of rape is zero unless there is a rapist in her vicinity. Rape is not a form of drunken harm (and I do not wish to minimise the impacts of such harm). It is an act carried out by a criminal. The onus of stopping rape lies upon rapists, not victims. And yet the view that women increase their own chances of rape by drinking has damaged me, my integrity and my personhood, in a very profound way which I wouldn't wish on anybody.

And that's why the 'Lisa' ad disturbs me. Lisa will reflect on her attack the next day. She will know full well that she's a silly bitch in the eyes of others. She'd been so drunk she was staggering. She'd been dancing, by herself – provocatively, some might argue. She practically delivered herself into the hands of her rapist. When she considers whether to report the attack, she may wonder whether she has the courage to go to the Police, and from thence perhaps to court, where her drinking behaviour will be scrutinised; and although the words 'silly bitch' won't be uttered, they will be strongly implied. Lisa may choose simply to live, silently and alone, with the pain and the harm done her by her attacker. And if, like me, she lacks the strength to stand up and be judged as a silly drunken bitch, she leaves her attacker free to do it all again to other 'silly bitches'.