Good Touches and Bad Touches: What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape
In elementary school, once a year, an older woman in plain clothes would come to our school library, and she, the principal, and a guidance counselor or two would join her in discussing ‘good touches’ and ‘bad touches’. We’d spend an hour and some change watching reenactment tapes, and reviewing each one by asking the golden question:
Was that a good touch or a bad touch?
Of course, I understood what they were telling us. There are good touches and there are bad touches, and there is a difference between the two, and the difference is right and wrong. We were kids, however—what did we know about right and wrong, other than one got us time-out, and the other got us a candy bar from the checkout aisle? Children don’t know hot from cold until they feel what it’s like to slap the stove while dinner’s cooking, and have a sore palm for a few hours. Children don’t understand subtlety—subtlety is an acquired trait.
I went on with the presentation. Hell, I even raised my hand to answer a question or two. I thoroughly enjoyed these discussions. I loved these conversations. Every year, I looked forward to these assemblies, and I only understand why now, after this summer, after this year, after this childhood concluded—I was sexually assaulted. At the time, though, I didn’t know the difference between a good touch or a bad touch, except that one got you in trouble, and one got you on a video presentation, and neither made much sense to me, but both intrigued me beyond my young minds comprehension.
I’m a July 4th baby, and my mother says she thinks that means something. I don’t know what I think. The first half 2016 came and went like a common cold, and I spent the vast majority of it in utter disbelief that my life had gone by so fast. For my Birthday, I wanted to be on top of the world. June put an end to much of that idealization, and despite its jarring, and unanticipated arrival, I will be indebted to this for the rest of my life.
Was that a good touch or a bad touch?
Since college lets out about a month before regular schools, I spent a great deal of time alone at home, unless you count the company of my dog (which I do). As the two of us laid sprawled out across the couch, the news playing on the flat screen, in the background of me senselessly scrolling through social media on my phone, Ashleigh Banfield’s voice rang from the television’s speakers: she had something important—something disturbing—to share with the world; with us; with me.
She warned, time and time again, that what I was about to hear was the statement from the Stanford rape survivor, and that we should listen with discretion. As someone who prides herself in being capable of listening to, watching, reading up on or about violence, horrible violations of human rights and nature, and other awful, morbid things, I found the warning considerate, but unnecessary, in my case. I’d heard and seen it all.
I wonder why, then, when she began reading the testimonial of a young woman who found herself a victim of sexual assault. As she went to excruciating detail about what it was that this man had done to her, I felt myself lifting out my body. I was an audience to my own discomfort and deterioration. As she finished reading, I finished believing that I was alright, in my own world of ignorance and misunderstanding.
I found out what happened to me by accident, much like the individual who penned the letter that helped me happen upon my own history. She found out what had happened to her through the news, and I found out what happened to me by finding out what had happened to her. All it took was the news. All it took was the truth.
I’m all for trigger warnings. I welcome them, and advocate for them as well. Still, I wonder about how detrimental censorship and beating around the bush can be for everyone. I did not have a difficult time understanding what happened to me because it wasn’t discussed, I had a hard time understanding because, when it was discussed, they danced around the topic with flower, kind words—words that in no way describe rape and sexual abuse, but describe the fear of it all.
Was that a good touch or a bad touch?
When my mind flooded with images of me as a child— of memories I had previously ignored or hardly remembered in the first place—I realized how many opportunities of self-revelations I had and opportunities for explanation and understanding to be presented to me that were tarnished simply by the lack of description, of word choice, of insight. While I understand our want to construct walls and protective barriers for our children, these same barriers are what cause individuals such as myself to live a life based on the false assumption that things aren’t as bad as they seem.
I suppose my love of writing came from my love of painting stories and experiences out of words themselves. I’ve always had an interest in seeing to it that my writing was provocative, yet informative. I suppose this came from my own unconscious need to tell my own story—to tell the story of people who didn’t know their stories themselves. It was this letter, this document constructed, designed, and destined to shed light on rape in itself, that saved me.
I went on a fishing trip for my 19th birthday. We sat on the lake and had strawberry cake, and I hardly thought about the fact that two days before, I told my mom the terrible things that had happened to me, and she brought up my birthday being on the fourth again, and I didn’t think about the bad touches too much. All I thought about, that day, was striped bass, and censorship.
Was that a good touch or a bad touch?