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Running While Female: A Survivor’s Story

Running While Female: A Survivor’s Story

Last updated on: June 9, 2016 at 12:08 pm by Erin Wathen

Running While Female: A Survivor’s Story 2016-06-09T12:08:52-07:00 Erin Wathen

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The story of Brock Turner has rape culture on everyone’s minds this week–but that story is just one of many, reminding us that sexual assault is a chronic, destructive reality for women in this country. We can’t stop talking about it once this latest instance cycles out of the trending newsfeed. I’m so grateful to my friend and colleague Robyn Bles for bravely sharing her story.

“What were you thinking running in that bad neighborhood?” The police officer asked me.

I blinked. What was I thinking?

As I stood in the lobby of the Catholic retreat center being interviewed by the officer, I wondered the same thing.

I was presenting at a church conference. Knowing there would be a full day of meetings, I thought a morning run would do my body and spirit some good.

I was thinking of all the rules I knew to keep myself safe when running while female in an unfamiliar city. I kept to the busy roads. I stayed within the illumination of the street lights. I wore bright colors so cars would see me. I had information attached to my shoe so I could be identified if something happened to me. I even left my headphones in my room so I would be more alert to my surroundings. I kept my route simple so as not to get lost.

But my simple out-and-back route needed some livening up. So I crossed to the other side of the street as I headed back to the retreat center, thinking I’d get a slightly different view for my return trip. As I stepped onto the sidewalk something hit me. Falling backwards and cracking my head on the sidewalk, I blacked out momentarily only to come to as I was being dragged behind a building.

I thought, “Did someone just punch me in the face? Wait, where did he come from – I didn’t see anyone on the sidewalk?”

And then something else hit me – the faces of the many women I had sheltered in my work with Crisis and Domestic Violence Shelters. As I struggled to catch up to what was happening, and where this strange man was dragging me, I thought “Oh, this is what they felt like. This is the fear and utter helplessness all those women felt as they were assaulted and raped.”

As my mind tried to protect myself from what was inevitably going to happen to my body, I started to see the situation as if I was floating above it all. I was about to be violently inducted into a club of every woman’s worst nightmare–what I had heard throughout my whole life was very likely to happen to me and countless other women.

Thankfully, that’s when the Holy Spirit decided to smack me in the face and scream, “Don’t just sit there and wait for it. Don’t accept this lie of inescapable female victimhood. Get back down there and FIGHT LIKE HELL!”

When the Holy Spirit swears, you listen.

via Pixabay

And she swore on that cold, dark morning in San Antonio. I joined her in swearing again the other day as I read the brave, honest words of the woman who survived the sexual assault of the Stanford attacker.

As I read her words “I don’t want my body anymore. I was terrified of it,” I again painfully felt my own attacker’s grabs and punches. I heard the accusations in the police officer’s questioning of why I would choose to run down such an unsafe neighborhood, as if somehow running while female qualified me as a target for assault? That somehow being born female rendered me less safe, an easy target for violence and catcalls. (I even heard one police officer in a long-ago self defense class instruct all the women to not wear their hair in ponytails – that attackers look for this so they have an easy “handle” to use against you).

When self-defense classes are normative practice for women in our culture, and even the way we style our hair can be used to harm us, we instinctively learn that rape, violence, sexual assault is not a matter of “if,” but “when.” We learn that our bodies are something to be feared, that it’s only a matter of time before someone abuses it.

This is rape culture.

This is the world we live in.

The Stanford survivor continues in her letter, describing how she learned the details of her attack from a newspaper article – a newspaper article – she says. “And then, at the bottom of the article, after I learned about the graphic details of my own sexual assault, the article listed his swimming times…. By the way, he’s really good at swimming. Throw in my mile time if that’s what we’re doing. I’m good at cooking, put that in there, I think the end is where you list your extracurriculars to cancel out all the sickening things that’ve happened.”

I sadly know this part of the story, too. After listening to the holy instructions I started fighting and thinking. Knowing San Antonio is a deeply Catholic city I started pleading with my attacker to stop, “please, I’m a minister,” hoping that somewhere inside this person, an aspect of social religion might resonate and help him to see my humanity. That if he knew more about me, the whole person, his own hate-filled desire to control and harm my body might stop.

The Stanford attacker’s lawyers tried to humanize him, hoping the jury would see him as more than his heinous actions. To understand that this person is somehow more than his blatant disregard for the woman he so violently used for his own purpose. And I realized that’s the heart of the problem.

Being born female means you don’t get the luxury of immediate humanity. It’s not just assumed that you’re a whole person. First, you’re a body; a body that must be controlled through fear and violence.

Therefore, being a feminist means constantly fighting to be seen as a whole person – body, mind, and spirit. A whole body, constantly referencing hobbies and talents as proof that you are in fact a full human. As this recently publicized story of something that happens far too often reveals, men are humanized –and women are victims.

When my ordination didn’t serve as a shield invoking the fear of God in him, I recognized that my faith doesn’t make me more worthy of protection. We’re all worthy of security and wholeness.

As I fought my own attacker I screamed, “I’m a child of God; you’re a child of God. Don’t. Do. This.”

This isn’t the Christian version of an after-school-special. I don’t think my desperate Godly plea saved me from further physical harm. I think it was a matter of dumb luck that he dropped one of my arms to reach in his pocket– for God knows what–and I was finally able to free my second arm from his death grip. As I scrambled for the “safety” of the morning traffic, he didn’t follow. I stumbled and sobbed down the road, turning around to see him picking up the hat and gloves that had flown off my body from his initial punch and drag.

Like the articulate survivor of the Stanford attacker, I didn’t get the opportunity to be a full human. Yes, she and I are sadly part of a large club of women who have been sexually assaulted. And sadder still, more and more women are violently inducted into this club every minute of every day.

As she bravely shared her story, I thought how long it has taken me to be able to share my own. And that’s the other part of this violence that makes me and the Holy Spirit just swear like saucy effing sailors! If what happened to us wasn’t enough of a violation, the shroud of shame that then engulfs us as we try to live our lives and possibly share our stories is only further sealed by the perpetuation of rape culture. It comes in the accusatory questions of the police officer. It shows up in the gentle warnings of “don’t go out after dark.” It echoes in the minds of our youth when girls have to spend more time worrying about the width of their tank top straps than their school work. That silence is subtly sealed, over and over again, by a thousand daily statements saying girls are not good enough. And boys…well, they’ll just be boys.

And so, like my brave survivor sister, I’m standing with her and swearing–promising–along with the Holy Spirit. To all the women out there, you are a child of God. You are worthy, loved, and valuable beyond measure. Speak your truth. Share your story. Wear your tank top and sport your ponytail. And most of all, support one another as we fight to be seen and understood as the equally wonderful creations we are. Because as we run through life as female, we need one another.

Rev. Robyn Bles serves with the good people of West Des Moines Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in West Des Moines, IA. She thinks the Midwest is the greatest place people don’t yet know about; and discussing faith, food, and footwear are the foundation for any good conversation.

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