Content warning: This article depicts sexual assault and its aftermath.
When I was 19, hitting the clubs was like my own personal Olympic sport. It’s where you’d find me at least two or three nights a week—squealing with my girlfriends as we tossed back shot glasses of shiny liquid before running out onto the dance floor to do a full day’s worth of cardio. I felt simultaneously cocooned in the warmth of other bodies and like I was the only one there. It was exhilarating to be so free.
At the end of one such night, I flagged a taxi down outside one of Singapore’s biggest nightclubs. I told the driver the address to my university dorm and he said he was familiar with where it was. It was a distance away, half an hour at least. I leaned my head back into the seat and shut my eyes. We drove for a while before pulling abruptly into a dark parking lot. There, he reached over and sexually assaulted me.
When I walked into my dorm twenty minutes later, a few schoolmates who hadn’t gone out for the evening saw me come in. “Fun night?” one of them asked with a smirk on his face. I guess he mistook my unsteady legs for the residual effects of a few too many drinks.
Something really insane just happened, I wanted to say, but the words got caught in my throat. I glanced at my phone—4:00 A.M. Tugging at the hemline of my mini skirt, I checked my reflection in the front camera. My lipstick was smudged, flecks of mascara dotting my cheeks like freckles.
My mind was racing, trying to piece together all the ways in which I could have invited this. Did I actually say the word “no”? I had been half asleep when he attacked me, and in such shock when I jolted awake that I didn’t find my voice for at least a minute. Did I make him think it was ok, somehow, or that I wanted it?
No, I was sure that I had said no, again and again. I had pushed his hands away, accidentally gouging him with my fingernails when he resisted. He finally stopped when I screamed, “I don’t want this! I want to go home.” He silently pointed out the window. I hadn’t recognised my surroundings in my terror, but it dawned on me then. For the entire duration of the assault, we had been sitting in the parking lot right next to my dorm.
In the eight years that have passed since the incident, I have talked about it fewer than a handful of times. That might not seem entirely unusual—I mean, it’s not exactly the story you lead with when you meet someone new—but some of even my closest friends don’t know it happened. This, especially in context of my oversharing tendencies, has always bewildered me. Why can’t I seem to articulate that I am a survivor of sexual assault?
One of the most insidious ways that the patriarchy gets into our heads is by telling us that women inherently need to be protected, treating this as natural fact. It’s one of the earliest things we learn: as a girl, you are vulnerable. This is now your responsibility.
Under this logic, the best course of action seems to be surround yourself with strong men who will protect you. (Could these strong men also be the very people you are vulnerable against? Let’s not think about that.)
In the absence of strong men, a woman then has to protect herself—in other words, it’s imperative for us to have the “situational awareness to guard against being assaulted”. Or at least, this is how Chia Boon Teck, vice-president of the Singapore Law Society (he has since resigned), justified a recent LinkedIn post he made commenting on the case of a former actor in Singapore convicted of rape.
“The reason I have held back from telling this story is not because I couldn’t accept I was a victim, but that I wasn’t a perfect one”
“People who indulge in one night stands may wanna [sic] take note to protect themselves from attack, or accusations of attack,” Chia said in his post. Quoting from a media report about the case, he noted that the victim had ‘hoped to get some advice on scriptwriting from the perpetrator.” Chia went on to question the victim’s judgment: “At that late hour on the bed of a Russian man she just met in Tinder?”
It is invigorating to see that the response to Chia’s post on social media was an overwhelming mix of shock, disgust and an unequivocal call for him to be stripped of his post as an authority in Singapore’s legal industry. So imagine my horror when I realised that at the age of 19, the voice in my head that had kept me silent after my sexual assault was uncannily similar to Chia’s.
At that late hour, falling asleep in the backseat of a random taxi driver she just met?
The reason I have held back from sharing this story is not because I’m ashamed, or that I think my community wouldn’t believe me somehow. I make it a point to surround myself with people who share my values—who would never even think to blame a survivor of sexual assault for what happened to them.
Instead, the question that has plagued my mind for the last eight years is: how could I have been so naive? Why did I stumble into a stranger’s car alone at 3:30 A.M., clearly intoxicated? Why did I choose to fall asleep in his back seat? Did I really think that was going to end well? Is it really surprising that it didn’t?
I’ve been a feminist since the age of 12 (before I even really knew what feminism was). I know what consent is, and I know that it needs to be informed, voluntary, enthusiastic and active. I fully believe that I didn’t give consent that night, and that I was indeed sexually assaulted. The reason I have held back from telling this story is not because I couldn’t accept that I was a victim, but because I knew that I wasn’t a perfect one.
Unlike Chia, many of us have done the work to unlearn the flawed logic of the patriarchy. We understand, at least intellectually, that nothing a victim had worn, drunk or done could ever be the cause of the harm that was done to them. No matter what, a predator’s behaviour is never their victim’s responsibility.
“Her consent didn’t matter, because in his view, the choices she had made up till that point meant that she didn’t really deserve to consent”
Emotionally, it is sometimes difficult to push away the ugly impulse that enters our minds when we hear about cases of sexual violence. What could she have done to prevent this from happening? As human beings, we are socialised to think of sexual violence as almost ubiquitous. It has existed for as long as society itself has. Try as we might to address the root cause, wouldn’t it just be easier to police women and victims till they learn how to safeguard themselves?
We can talk about how sexual harassment and assault happens to victims of all profiles, genders and age groups. We can argue that no matter how modestly a woman is dressed, or how much she avoids “dangerous” situations and keeps her wits about her, her statistical likelihood of getting assaulted is no less than that of the most cavalier woman—the one who dares to act as if her autonomy is worth something real. We can remind ourselves that marital rape takes place every single day around the world.
These arguments will not influence people who think like Chia—who seem to view sexual assault as sport and consent as a loophole; and who don’t seem to understand that sexual violence is always about power and abuse, and never actually about desire.
We have been trying to move feminist discourse beyond the idea of consent for a few years now. Perhaps, it’s worth revisiting the fundamentals and re-examining the parameters of how we think about consent. Consent is never going to be as simple as no means no. Equally important is who we allow to say no—whose right to consent do we take more seriously, and whose do we forfeit?
The reality is that the perfect victim doesn’t exist. Don’t travel. Don’t stay out late. Don’t drink. Don’t be too loud. Don’t be sleepy. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t go home alone. Don’t take a taxi. Don’t walk when it’s dark out. Don’t wear lipstick. Don’t be too friendly. Don’t be rude. The rules will never stop changing. Trying to troubleshoot sexual violence on a case by case basis only allows us to shirk our collective responsibility to treat it as the social cancer it really is—one that has to be ripped from its very root.
I didn’t deserve to be hurt at 19. My naïveté about my own vulnerability wasn’t the reason I was harmed. Instead, I was assaulted because a predator decided to target and take his violent urges out on an innocent woman. That woman happened to be me—but it could have been any of the thousands of women who are assaulted every day around the world, each one in vastly different circumstances.
One of those women was the survivor of the rape that Chia wrote about so animatedly in his post. To him, she is an unsympathetic victim and a temptress—almost a perpetrator herself. Her consent didn’t matter, because in his view, the choices she had made up till that point meant that she didn’t really deserve to consent. That sort of thinking is what builds rape culture. Unless we challenge it as a society, true justice will remain out of reach.
You are not alone. If you have experienced sexual assault and need support, you can reach out to AWARE’s Sexual Assault Care Centre at 6779 0282 or online.
