Rape: You can’t always say no

More than nine million women have suffered rape with the use of force in the European Union. These figures are still far from reflecting the reality of many women like myself, but perhaps now we are closer to changing it. For years I survived the sexual violence to which my partner subjected me. At night he would drug me without my consent to rape me.

At first I felt a lot of guilt. “Why wasn’t I able to wake up to stop it?”, “How can the person who supposedly loves me do this to me?”, “Who is going to believe me when I tell them?” I asked myself every day.

My case breaks the stereotype of “the good victim.” He wasn’t a stranger in a dark alley who used force to rape me and I had no bruises or visible signs of violence. But that doesn’t make what happened to me less serious or the consequences less profound.

Sex without free consent is rape and should be considered that way in all countries. This seems obvious to those of us who have survived this unbearable violence based on domination and power, but it is not obvious to many leaders of European countries.

France, Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Malta and Romania refuse for the first law against sexist violence in the European Union to include a definition of rape based on consent, despite being the same definition that was included in the Istanbul Convention that all of these countries have ratified.

This legislation aims to guarantee that “only yes means yes” regardless of which country in the Union you are in. By blocking it, they endanger not only the unification of the definition but the entire law as a whole, which includes measures against nudity using artificial intelligence, online sexist violence and the unification of precautionary measures across all countries. And we have little time to change their minds.

My story demonstrates how these countries are failing women by blocking this historic feminist advance. When my attacker raped me I couldn’t say no. My body was completely inert, as if I were dead. I couldn’t defend myself or ask for help. But my case is not isolated. Many women remain motionless out of fear, which is a totally normal and human reaction to this brutal form of violence.

Eleven European Union countries have definitions of rape based on force as the main element of the crime where the burden of proving that she resisted is still placed on the victim. All these countries leave out cases like mine, which is that of millions of women. In Spain alone, available data indicates that one in every three rapes involves chemical submission. How is a person unconscious or paralyzed by fear going to resist?

Too many stereotypes have been placed on us and the level of questioning that victims are subjected to has to stop if we want to end sexual violence. It is normal to stay in shock and not identify what has happened to you until years go by. It doesn’t matter what you were wearing or what time it was when you got home: nothing justifies sexual violence.

In my case, it happened while I was at home, dressed in pajamas and with a person I completely trusted. The best way to protect ourselves is to improve laws at all levels so that they meet our needs. In this case, classifying sex without free consent as a crime in all countries of the European Union, offering specialized help centers to victims and complementing it, hopefully, with mandatory sexual education in classrooms.

Rape is one of the most brutal forms of violence against women and we are still far from ending it. None of the more than 229 million women who live in the European Union are safe from sexual violence and our politicians have not yet agreed to fight against it together. We cannot miss this opportunity.

One in three women has suffered some type of physical or sexual violence in the European Union and one in two, harassment. There are still member states in which rape within a marriage or intimate relationship is not provided for. What are we waiting for to act? I don’t want any woman to go through the same nightmare as I did. We all deserve a life free of violence and nearly 400,000 people from all over Europe are asking for it through online petitions.

Let’s make history, let’s not repeat it. Let us not allow them to stop the essential progress we need to eradicate sexual violence in all EU countries. Let’s do it for ourselves and for those who will come after us, because no woman will be free until we all are.

Marta Asensio is an activist, a survivor of sexual violence and one of the spokespersons for the campaign wemove.eu/JusticiaParaTodas

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