Rape Is A 4-Letter Word

Entangled Moon, my debut corporate suspense thriller novel, opens with a graphic rape and murder scene. Why? Why would a woman subject herself to writing such a thing? Why would she choose such a controversial subject for her debut? Worse, I wrote a second rape scene. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, but truth is rarely comfortable.

It is difficult to imagine that we continue to have a conversation about the degrees of sexual harassment and assault. Sometimes, I feel we are living in Groundhog Day where we rehash the topic over and over only to come back right where we started. In 1988, Jodie Foster played in the movie The Accused that portrayed a graphic rape scene loosely based upon a real story. There was a lot of conversation then, too.

Thirty years later, we are still talking around many of the same issues. Did we sweep it under the rug? File it away so we can pretend it never happens? After all, it only happens to questionable women, and sometimes, to questionable men who make questionable choices. Right?

Harvey Weinstein just surrendered himself in New York and I am reminded of the stakes. When we pretend monstrous deeds and perpetrators do not exist, we do not stop them—we embolden them. And how did they begin? It is often a matter of incremental degrees in a system of cause and effect we do not understand.

Rape is a 4-letter word. Power is 5. But these are words and numbers that are inadequate to describe the violence or suffering. We often accept that power is endemic to human society and, as a consequence, believe it need not be coercive or, at minimum, reconcile ourselves to the idea that it reflects a relationship that can simultaneously employ enabling and constraint. While this is an accepted fact of life, it does not reflect the unevenness of its application or even its failure to render even justice. Ultimately, it cannot jive with our professed values.

The last job I had in corporate America was that of Employee Relations Director. By then I had already witnessed a lot of employment discrimination. When I was offered the position, I asked for an appropriate salary. My boss informed me that he didn’t have to pay me what he would pay a man because the market did not require it. Really? Society imbues the market with the force of superhuman power because it pervades every aspect of our lives.

But I knew then as I know now, it is a part of a power structure to which few women belong. Boom! That was his moment to make a choice to circumnavigate the system. He believed men don’t need to disrupt the power paradigm. I know differently. I know plenty of men who do question and act.

Women make up 50.8% of the population* and 60% of those earning college and master’s degrees**, but those percentages are not reflected in their ability to pierce the ceiling of leadership. As long as women remain in positions that do not reflect their demographic prevalence, they remain subject to the power that will continue to erode their ability to find justice in the most extreme cases of violence. Marginalization cannot occur in a vacuum.

I originally wrote Entangled Moon without either rape scene. When I wrote them in a moment of seeking an answer, I was horrified and deleted both. Somehow, the story became less than what it needed to be. Still, I was nervous about whether the scenes were gratuitous, but then I realized I was gratuitously playing it safe. That’s when I knew–the scenes were intrinsic to the story and there was no backing down.

As women, we are constantly weighing whether we are playing it safe enough. Don’t rock the boat. If I just wear at-all-times-appropriate-clothing, will I be allowed to feel safe in my cubicle? In every thought and every question, the implied lack of power shimmies along the surface. Because deep down in places we don’t want to acknowledge, we know that should we by no fault of our own end up in a position of being sexually violated, every decision we have ever made will be reviewed and held up to the cold and damning light of judgment. This fact reduces a widespread issue down to a single isolating and deeply personal trauma.

All humans want to feel that they have some agency in their lives. It is one of the things promised in our systems of governance, but it is not always equally applied. Power determines who has access and who doesn’t. And that is the dissecting point for discussing the degrees of sexual assault.

In 1994, I had wrapped up an investigation into a claim of hostile work environment with case law as my guide. That year, Paula Jones filed suit against President Clinton for sexual harassment. We were seated next to a man and woman outside a fine dining restaurant waiting for our reservation, when the man, a union manager, engaged us by grumbling about Clinton’s situation. I put it into the perspective of case law and the power of leaders to set examples.

When my husband excused himself to check on our reservation, the union gentleman informed me that I was one of those cunts who have taken all of the fun out of the workplace. His wife kept her eyes forward. Boom! That was his moment. When I shared my experience with an acquaintance of mine, she told me she’d have sex with Bill anytime. Boom! Another moment lost. And then Monica Lewinsky happened. That was a low point for women’s rights and justice and one that continues to be reflected right up to the present moment at the highest level—again.

In the years since then, women have made few gains. In fact, Paula Jones served as an example of what would happen to women who dared question the power dynamic. She walked away with a tarnished reputation. But she was not the first. Anita Hill testified in 1991 in the now famous Supreme Court Justice hearings. She was called a liar and a temptress. Testifying with grace and courage, her words fell on deaf ears. The accused, Clarence Thomas, became a Justice of the highest Court in the land.

While the description, laws, and people’s views are evolving to recognize that sexual harassment and assault are widespread problems and, even though they do not always agree on what it is specifically, the differences are narrowing. And perhaps that alone will open the door for the women who now suffer in silence rather than expose themselves to the trials of being doubly violated by society and the courts.

In pragmatic terms, it is hard to unravel the prevailing cognitive dissonance. In the workplace, sexual harassment, quid pro quo and hostile environment, accounts for a staggering loss in productivity. In 2008, total victimization costs of each rape were about $151,423. *** It is hard to square the market need for increased productivity with the actual losses to it through sexual harassment that includes unwanted and persistent provocative comments up to non-consensual intercourse. Sexual assault outside the workplace also has a huge impact upon overall production. It is a matter of degrees but the net effect is the same. If the drive for profit is so powerful, why are the costs associated with sexual assault accepted?

In my lifetime, I have known far too many loved ones, women and men, who have been victims of violent sexual assault. Some have not survived. In the words of a friend who was kidnapped and raped, “People may not want to hear it, but I have to speak it or it will devour me.” Telling her story on the witness stand allowed her to put the horror out in the open. It allowed her to breathe again–to live again, but it is not an easy living. People still question how she allowed herself to get into that situation.

If one of the attributes of telling stories is to teach and give warning, then institutionalized abuse of power is fair game. It goes to the heart of how we define power and how we defend it. In a historical perspective, what we view as a choice hasn’t been one at all. As women, we are born marginalized. Rape is just its most aggressive symbol. But, in exposing this truth, it is important to remember that violence does not just happen to women.

In the last scene of the movie M.F.A., the protagonist says, “Maybe it’s through art that we come face to face with our own darkness and that’s the only way we can change…Aim not to preserve the beauty, but to expose the truth. Dare to make the world uncomfortable with your honesty no matter what the consequence is, because the world will be better for it. You will be better for it.” **** I wrote Entangled Moon, every hard-won word, sentence, and scene as much for my son as for my daughter and their generation.

The truth is we are living in a clear equation. Evolution is a stress-based force. The better an organism can adapt to stress, the better its chance of survival. Currently, we are creating an artificial intelligence that is brilliant at predicting probability. As a species, we have programmed it that way, but we still don’t fully grasp cause and effect.

Now is the time to understand the causes of institutionalized power and violence and come to terms with their effects. Survival as a species requires it. The greatest tool in man’s arsenal is his brain.

It is time to understand that sexual and racial violence results in far more harm and collateral suffering than we should be willing to allow as a fully evolving species. If a system allows most of its population to be subjected to institutionalized racism, sexism, and their escalating violence, then should we not ask what is the nature of our society? If we know the effect, then shouldn’t we question the cause? When individual power trumps all, violence becomes the norm and that threatens everyone’s survival.—

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* Bureau of the Census, “QuickFacts: United States,” available at https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST0452217 (accessed May 2018.)

**National Center for Education Statistics, “Table 318.30. Bachelor’s, master’s, and doctor’s degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions, by sex of student and discipline,” available at https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_318.30.asp (accessed May 2018.)

*** National Sexual Violence Resource Center, “Sexual Violence & the Workplace,” available at https://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/publications_nsvrc_overview_sexual-violence-workplace.pdf (accessed May 2018.)

**** M.F.A., “M.F.A. Movie Script,” available at https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=m-f-a (accessed May 2018.)

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About the Author:

E.C. Frey has worked in Fortune 500 companies in positions dealing with systems analysis/project management, human resources, employee relations, and affirmative action. After surviving cancer, she switched gears and, during her studies for a master’s in history and non-Western cultures, she focused on water rights and resources and completed a thesis on the Doctrine of Discovery and land issues in Indian country.

Born in the Philippines to chronic expat parents, she has lived in too many places to name and now lives in Texas Hill Country with her husband, two gypsy-hearted kids, dogs, cows, chickens, a horse, and a swarm of transient, kamikaze hummingbirds. Learn more at www.elizabethcampbellfrey.com

Follow her on Twitter @elizabethcfrey

About ENTANGLED MOON

It only takes one moment to change everything.

Long ago, Heather left her old life behind. Now, she has everything: a marriage to a handsome executive, a managerial human resources position in a powerful multinational, and a beautiful daughter. And she will do anything to keep it that way. But everything has a price. When a bullet ends the life of another woman―an ex-employee whom Heather helped fire―it sets off a chain of events that jeopardizes everything for which Heather has worked.

Events of Heather’s past soon collide with her company’s wrongdoings, and she must risk everything to expose them. But all she’s ever known is the peril of being visible. Frightened and desperate, Heather calls upon her constant childhood friends―friends who long ago saved her from a life of pain―and, together, they will once again face the events of a traumatic night that each has sought to forget.

Because sometimes the only ones who can save you are those with whom you share your deepest and darkest secrets―those who know that fear is the price of silence.

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Category: On Writing