On Assertiveness, Date rape and Growing Up

“The rules” for Dating.
When I was date raped 11 years ago, one of my favorite teachers from High School told me that it was my fault – all for being in the room alone with the guy. I wasn’t the assertive young woman that I am now. In my particular situation, if I hadn’t been so scared, it might not have happened. Now, I work in a male-dominated profession and am often the only women around. Last year, when talk around me became too risqué, I talked to my boss about it and it stopped.
Something changed within me, and I transformed from a scared young woman to someone who is willing to lead groups and to work comfortably around men. During a long, often slow and painful process of therapy, learning about myself and God, and learning from positive and negative experiences, I became more and more self-confident and assertive.
Assertiveness sometimes gets a bad rap because people equate it with bossiness or with sexual forwardness. However, true assertiveness is standing up for what you believe is right, and implies a deep understanding of oneself and ones femininity or masculinity. Therefore, true self confidence and assertiveness also includes determining one's beliefs through self-exploration and then living according to those principals instead of simply doing what is expedient.
Looking back at my experience, I am very angry about several stereotypes and common mis-beliefs and myths . One is that rape isn’t recoverable. Many people, and often, tragically, the victim, believe that an individual who has been raped will never be back in “the zone” again. The truth is that bad experiences, including sexual ones, can be transformed into a stepping-stone for personal growth. I am not saying that the experience is desirable, or that it is something to be sought after, but only that it can become a catalyst for personal growth to help an individual change his her life and environment.
Second, no matter what the woman did or did not do, she did not ask for it. In date rape situations, there are a few extreme cases where the victim's conduct is strange or “out there”, but even in these situations, she did not ask for it.
Third, both partners have a responsibility to communicate fairly and clearly to attempt to prevent these situations. If either person doesn’t want to have sex, he or she needs to say so and to say it clearly. Communicating clearly includes following up on small hesitations and unclear attempts to say no. Everyone needs to learn to communicate more clearly; it isn’t the responsibility of only men or women. Perhaps clear communication could have helped prevent the Kobe Bryant case.
However, often men don’t seem to understand no. Sometimes assertiveness and self-confidence building can help woman with this. This can include taking classes in self-defense, a good internship or other experience that helps women and men build self-confidence, or going to therapy. These experiences can also help men.
Men also have intuition and can benefit from self-confidence builders which will help them listen to their intuition, while of course men and women can benefit from learning deeper communication techniques.
But sometimes it seems that there are men who are incapable of understanding that the woman has said no. With some men, a women says no, but it seems as if there is a wall keeping the man from understanding. The only thing a woman can do here is to listen to her intuition, a valuable inner gift often strengthened as self confidence and assertiveness increases. One assertive solution, a common sense one, is to have the guts within oneself to not date or go home with a certain guy. Believe it or not, some women have trouble with this!
Finally, some men take not understanding to the extreme and use a “date rape drug”. For this situation, I can only offer the same advice that I offered above. Be careful who you go out with. Be careful what parties you go to. If your intuition tells you to get out, do it!
But unfortunately, it is impossible to completely eliminate date rape by following these techniques. While the possibility of date rape can be greatly diminished, things still happen. Then comes a deep, dark valley for the woman involved. A woman’s shattered self-confidence is gradually re-built through the help of friends, counselors, and most importantly, the woman herself. Then, there is the potential for the woman to move beyond what happened, although never forgetting it. Now, the woman's life has changed forever as is she is mounting a beautiful mountain summit above the deep valley of pain below.
However, no woman deserves the great pain involved in recovery, a mounting of a different mountain summit than they would have without the experience. We must use our community to prevent these experiences. The community presents many obstacles to developing assertiveness and to using assertiveness as a gift.
As a nation and as a world, we are experiencing a seismic shift in our beliefs about women. We are beginning to put women in roles they have never been in before. As women, new opportunities are opening up around us almost daily. But often the old beliefs and stereotypes persist and can cause these new opportunities to become almost curses. Many times women are afraid to be assertive because these believe old mis-beliefs. Therefore, we have a responsibility, each and every one of us, to work for change. We must not only become assertive ourselves, but we must also use our assertiveness to help others.
So, what does the assertive woman do to help solve this problem? The assertive woman asks for changes in a non-judgmental, often private, way. For instance, I could have gone back to that teacher later and gently told him how I felt he could re-evaluate what he believes. For me, though, it was too late, as he died a year or two ago.
Second, the assertive woman works to change public opinion. For me, a part of this is writing this article. For you, it might be running for congress, working in a rape-counseling center, writing a letter to the editor, or simply bringing up children, male and female, with good values and attitudes toward women.
Privately, the assertive woman also evaluates her own life experiences, including any date-rape experiences, to see what needs to change in her life. She needs to determine if she needs to learn to communicate better in relationships as well as any other behaviors that could be giving men the wrong idea. This is not blaming the woman, but is instead a part of transforming life experiences and using one's past to prevent difficulties in the future.
I remember one of the few men in the class of Rape counselors I was in and his reaction when asked why he was choosing to be a Rape Counselor. He said, “Hey, I am a man, but my wife is a woman, my daughter is a women, and I have many women who are my friends. I believed that I needed to do something for them.” He’s right. We all have a responsibility to work together to make the world a safer place.