I remember what she said because it connects with another memory, or rather, two memories that are at odds with each other. One is of an experience of sexual violence as a very young child, one which I didn’t share for years, and which is at some level related to my life-long feeling of being alone. No one, besides the perpetrator and me, knew. The other is the memory I made up of that event, one that made it “ok,” even if it was awful. That memory was that my father had seen what happened, and had not interfered to stop it, and thus that the experience I had was stamped with his approval.

I’ve had these two memories since then, and while I was conscious that the part about my father seeing originated somewhere in my imagination, I have been surprised at its tenacity. I’ve also wondered at its function. To an extent, I believe that sexual violence against children informs broader cultural norms and ideas of sexuality, even if it is ostensibly not tolerated or is marginalized. It’s simply too widespread to not have an impact on our larger cultural imagination of what it means to be sexual beings.

Perhaps my process of creating (explanatory) memories of what happened to me as a child involved encoding a cultural message that I had already internalized at that point into my idea of Self: keep quiet about bad things that happen to your body. Perhaps it was an unstated family value, not rocking the boat. Perhaps it has to do with me and who I am and my personality, or perhaps who I am is uncomfortably influenced by what happened to me one night when I was three years old.

But the part about my father has troubled me. Why did I imagine that? How could I know what Professor K would say years later, “The father knows everything. Nothing happens without his knowledge, and nothing happens without his permission,” without having ever heard that formulation? This suggests the power of culture, pervasiveness of the values of patriarchy, the somewhat predictable psychological complexity which makes us human together–it suggests that life is complex and at the same time rather simple.

“The father knows everything. Nothing happens without his knowledge, and nothing happens without his permission.” I have been thinking about that. I don’t believe it, rationally. In fact, a lot of my adult life has been spent consciously objecting to a world ordered in such a way.

Fer asked me the other day if I respected the opinions of men more than women. I said no, and backed it up with examples of my preference for learning from women and my repeated decisions to not take courses from male professors unless there was no other option. I do feel safer in the world of women, whatever the hell that is. This seems unfair, though. There are particular, individual men who do horrible things. It is sad to me that part of my subconscious processing of the world involves an idea that they are all willing participants in violence against women. It’s not something I believe, or rather it’s not something that I am aware of believing. But it is there. And there’s part of me that divides men into two groups based on those memories: the ones who hurt little girls, and the ones who stand by and watch it happen.

The latter, I think, is mainly an attempt to order the world. There should be a reason, a why. Why did this happen to me? Why wasn’t it stopped? What does it say about me that I was “chosen”? But these are questions without substance or answers. My father no more allowed that to happen to me then I would allow it to happen to my own daughter or son. But the imaginary world in which someone else’s negligence explains my own existence is a prison with ephemeral bars.

Anyway, this has been on my mind for a couple of weeks now. Part of my semiotic role in my culture is perhaps to signify “woman who has experienced sexual violence.” It’s a very strange signification, though. In the end, it doesn’t mean much, as it is so extensively interwoven with who we are as a society that it also signifies everyone affected by that abuse. That is to say, all of us.

I’m thinking about this tonight because I have a younger brother who recently enlisted in the military. We had a family emergency this weekend which brought a lot of us together, and I was surprised at the level of violent, erotic play in which he engaged with his friends who came to visit him. At various times, and in front of a number of people, he pretended to be sexually assaulting other guys. The first time it happened, we made it clear that it was not something we wanted to watch or found funny, but he persisted. He finally told us that what he is doing is something all the guys on his ship go through when they arrive.

That’s disturbing to me on a couple levels. For one, official policies or not, sexual humiliation should not be part of the US military’s training or repertoire. The fact that it is so widespread as to be ubiquitous on a Coast Guard ship is cause for grave concern. However, on a more personal level, I am concerned about what is happening to my brother and how he is acting as a result. His actions seem to ask for help as much as they underscore that something is wrong. It’s sickening to think of him being sexually assaulted in the military, and it’s equally sickening to think of him turning around and engaging in the same violent, dehumanizing behavior. I hope that neither has happened, but I fear that both have.

He is processing these hazing activities as “funny.” I don’t think it’s funny. I think it’s horrible to abuse sexuality as a way to obtain power over others. Something tells me the reason this sort of behavior is allowed to continue is connected to the institutionalized homophobia that permeates the military; “play assault” in such a setting could actually play an important role in perpetuating the values of intolerance, although “value” seems a misnomer in this case.