Exactly this. That was the exact feeling I got from the book. You are always so coherent with what I want to say. (And you’re welcome to continue your residence in my brain. )

The book overall made me feel betrayed. A man chose to write about rape and did it badly, coming from a place of privilege, and it was obvious that he’d never actually experienced what the character had. It was a slap in the face to survivors.

More generally – I can completely get “not sure” as a possibility, because I’ve got any number of “compromised consent” incidents in my background that I’m not always sure if “rape” is the right word for. (I should write a blog post – and in fact, that’s how I got here; “consent” somehow became my blogreading theme of the week, and I’ve been collecting links, with future writing of my own as one of the expected results. Usually I just read I&I – so much Internet to read, so little time.) But from your review, I have a strong feeling that the uncertainty in this book would not ring true to my experiences of uncertainty – I suspect it’d be some dude’s uninformed (or informed only by what rape culture itself says about the matter) imagining of what it might be like.

Sunflower

Second, I’m really glad I reviewed this book, then. Because I had no idea that there would be so much rape and assault in it, and I’m just glad it was so badly written that it didn’t trigger me. However, it may trigger others, and I think there need to be warnings out there.

My ‘grey-area’ rapes happened over ten years apart (and yeah, I’m 25, so…) and both times I wasn’t sure myself what had happened. Because, I too, was raised in a culture that tells me coercion isn’t rape. I’ve never come out and directly named the people who did it — not publicly. I’ve told some friends. The first rape took me 10 years to realize the truth of — and my boyfriend at the time was also the one who had to inform me what I’d been through.

This is what pisses me off about this book. People like you and me had to ask someone else if what we went through was rape, because we’ve been taught for so long that it wasn’t. Hannah goes through the same thing and neither Clay nor Mr. Porter help her realize what it was, nor does the author make it clear it was rape. He lets it stay in ‘grey-area’. The whole thing is irresponsible.

I have not read Go Ask Alice, but I’ll put it on my list of things to read.

As someone who has not read this book, let me wade into the ‘not knowing’ if it was rape topic: I didn’t know. I had to ask MY BOYFRIEND OF THE TIME. And why is that? That would be because I grew up in a culture where that wasn’t talked about. I grew up in a culture where rape was rare, never perpetrated by someone you knew, and happened in a black fucking alley on your way to the fucking library.

What’s worse about MY “grey area rape” (good phrase!) was that it was SO grey area that twelve fucking jurors didn’t find the shit guilty. Not only did I have to deal with the fall out from being sixteen, having been raped, not knowing it was rape, accusing an ex-football player, accusing a black man, and being universally considered a lying, attention-seeking whore… I also got to deal with a jury calling me a fucking liar.

So off-topic but it came spewing out. XD

Anyway, as I said, this is why I stick to what I read almost exclusively. Whenever I think about something new, I get smacked in the phase with some asshole who doesn’t know what the hell they’re going on about.

Quick aside: have you ever read Go Ask Alice? I think that’s what it’s called… it was written by ‘anonymous’ and was critically acclaimed some years back. Apparently, just as shitty and in need of a ttear-down of Katje proportions.