Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay

** Trigger Warning: SA **

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay
My Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Finished Reading: August 9, 2018
Format: Book
Favorite Quote(s):

"Their work gave me survival and writing. From them, I learned the blazing insight that rape was not an act between an individual, hidden in a dark room - that was what my rapist wanted me to think. Rape was and is a cultural and political act: it attempts to remove a person with agency, autonomy, and belonging from their community, to secrete them and separate them, to depoliticize their body by rendering it detachable, violable, nothing." - So Mayer

"There is an impossible paradox when you are victimized by sexual assault. You want to - you have t- convince yourself that it wasn't 'that bad' in order to have any hope of healing. If it really is as bad as you feel like it is, how will you ever get out from under it? How will you ever get 'better'? On the other hand, you need to convince others it was 'bad enough' to get the help and support you need to do that healing. To get out from under it. To get an appointment at the clinic. To get friends to come over with Styrofoam food containers when you can't feed yourself." - Stacey May Fowles

"When I raised this in counseling, she told me: 'The survivor who was raped at knifepoint feels guilty she has taken up space of a survivor who was raped at gunpoint. Everyone believes there is suffering worse than her own, that they should be strong enough to cope without me.'" - Stacey May Fowles

Review:
This book's message is revelatory, not in that sexual violence happens to so many of us; all women and many men know this. It's revelatory in the way that "He's Just Not That Into You" blew your mind by being so obvious and so hard to believe at the same time. Not That Bad, compiled by Roxane Gay, is a book of essays about sexual violence and most importantly the feeling that what was experienced was "not that bad." We all know someone who has gone through much worse than we have. I will repeat that: we ALL know someone who has had it worse (even that person you are thinking of thinks this). That's not even possible unless pain is relative and though it's probably self-preservation (trying desperately to gain any bit of our stolen power back) it's complete nonsense. It was that bad. IT IS THAT BAD. From the "little" stuff that makes us uncomfortable to the life-altering (-ruining?) stuff that kills off who we once were. It is bad. Period.

Someone asked recently in a travel group that I am in if the #metoo movement has impacted women's travel behaviors. "No!" was the response over and over again, not at all, because the #metoo movement didn't reveal anything that women didn't already know about how unsafe we are. It has empowered us to reveal our experiences, but the only people who have learned anything new are men. That's why they need to read this book. Women, you need to read this too, but not because you will learn about anything you didn't already know but because reading the common theme of it not being so bad laid down at your feet in the most obvious way that you might even feel a bit silly for never realizing it before... while you read each story you will compare them to your own and be horrified to realize that you find yourself thinking that what you went through, as little or big as it is, was that bad and you deserve to cope with it in whatever way helps you to survive it.