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Not quite a year ago, I experienced what felt like a final step in my recovery from childhood rape. The transformation I underwent was profound, almost ecstatic. In brief, I participated in a death and rebirth ritual, after which I felt liberated from a lifetime of grief and sorrow. The weightless feeling persisted for most of 2025, and when I fell back into a familiar depression during late Fall (right on schedule), I never lost memory of the magic I had been feeling and living in. But I can’t always be up, right? It’s normal to have periods of sadness or even despair. I think I’m normal…
You can read about my transformational experience here, and here.
As 2026 begins, my ennui from the Fall has become full-blown angst. But this time, the factors precipitating my dark mood are external. With a sense of urgency I haven’t felt since 9/11, I am unable to go more than a few hours without needing to check my various feeds and news sources. I’m in such a constant state of alert that I’m almost disappointed when I see the same outrageous thing at the top of all the timelines. I’m not saying I want to experience a new outrage. But I expect it.
I have been raped. That statement is not semantically connected to the previous three paragraphs. But it is a true statement.
I’m no stranger to political… strife… oppression… injustice. I have been in the streets many times. My earliest protest memory is a candle light march against the Viet Nam war. I was probably five or six. My family made paper candle holders so that we could hold our candles upright in our palms, and I remember the wax melting and sliding off the paper onto my skin. It burned but only for a second or two, and I was proud that I could handle the heat. I did not understand why those angry men on the sidewalks were screaming at us the words, “Love it or leave it, USA.”
I’ve marched against Selective Service, against Nukes, and for the ERA and for Abortion rights and for Queer rights. I have marched so often I can’t remember the specifics of all of them. In Washington DC, in Detroit, San Francisco, Atlanta, and in the Bay Area both in the 80’s and more recently. I have marched with Quakers, Veterans, Punks, Anarchists, Yippies, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ people.
I don’t mean to brag. My point is that, with so many of these kinds of experiences, what’s happening in the US right now, in Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia, and beyond, is not new to me. Power in the US has always been aligned against its own citizens. But still, it’s a weight to carry. And it’s been bringing me down the last few weeks.
One of the most exciting aspects of my almost a year ago ritual rebirth was that it opened something in me that had been shuttered since childhood: my creativity. I have been writing, and taking photographs, and making art and music and it has been gloriously fulfilling and rewarding. And most importantly, it has been fun! Joyful, even.
I have been raped.
I made a declaration to my fellow ritual participants that, from that weekend on, I would wear my label as a ‘male survivor of sexual trauma’ like a badge. It used to be very difficult for me to say words such as, “I have been raped,” but no longer. I sincerely and honestly can say that I have let go of the shame. Finally and forever. I carry it no more. It was never mine, anyway.
There’s a dynamic in being a survivor that I am still grappling with. Throughout the process of recovery, there are phases or stages, of identity that we go through. This is the origin of one of MenHealing’s taglines: Beyond Survival.
From the moment of our abuse, it is common and natural to feel like we are victims of our abuse, and our abusers. But victimhood isn’t a healthy or desirable identity to want to hold onto. So we throw off that mantle, and we become survivors. But even that is too limiting. The language, and the accompanying shame that accompanies being a survivor, is like being branded. Marked.
So, one of the messages of MenHealing is that it is possible to graduate even further beyond being a survivor. We want people to know that it is possible to thrive after—and during—recovery. So this is a nice little formula: victim becomes survivor becomes thriver. But it also implies a continuing conundrum.
I have been raped. I will never not be someone who was raped.
Obviously and of course, I am not only a survivor. None of us can be defined by only one aspect of a full range of life experiences. I have shed being a victim. I have embraced my survivorship to the point of wanting to call it a badge of honor. I am proud of how I have navigated and healed from my trauma.
I’m musing on this today after having read this article by Anna Krauthamer in The Nation:
As I was reading this, I kept hearing myself say the words, “I have been raped.” And the more I repeated them, the more I began to realize I haven’t ever said those exact words, to myself or anyone else. We don’t generally state it so plainly, so… viscerally.
So that’s it. That’s my point. That’s all I have meant to say here. It doesn’t feel like a badge, but it’s true. I am not ashamed of it. I can speak about it. I can live with it. It doesn’t define me. It’s not who I am. It’s an experience that I share with far too many people.
In reading about Krauthamer’s experiences and thoughts, I recognized myself. People who have been raped make up one of my tribes. And that’s all I have to say about it tonight.
