Rape Culture in the Alaskan Wilderness

[XemaSab]

One night a few years ago, when Geneva was 13, a man she’d grown up with stumbled into the room she shared with her two sisters in Tanana, Alaska, a tiny village northwest of Fairbanks, and climbed on top of her. He was stumbling drunk and aggressive.

“He tried getting into my clothes,” she recalls. “He tried putting his hands under my shorts and inside my shirt.” She struggled and pushed, but he was years her senior and made of muscle; he pulled her on top of him. She kept pushing and yanking until she suddenly shot backwards and tumbled off the bed. “He was so blacked out, he was like still asleep; his eyes were closed,” she says. “I was watching his face, but his face didn’t move at all. His breathing was normal, but his hands…” She pauses, and the word hangs thickly in the air. “His hands felt like he was awake.”

Afterward, she ran into the living room and burst into tears, stuffing her face into a pillow so her parents wouldn’t hear. She didn’t tell them, then; she was scared and ashamed. “I guess I just felt like I was dirty. I guess that’s what victims feel like. They feel dirty and just want to clean everything off.”

The following summer, Geneva was fast asleep at her family’s fish camp downriver, while a group of adults drank and caroused in the next room. She awoke to someone tugging down her pants, reaching between her legs; she struggled and kicked, and he lumbered out of the room.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/09/rape-culture-in-the-alaskan-wilderness/379976/

[A Little Weird]

1. Good grief

I know that rape and molestation happen all over the country but the article makes it seem ubiquitous in rural Alaska. I can't imagine living like that.

[IdaBriggs]

2. "But stuff like that only happens in places like India..."

Except it happens *everywhere* -- why hasn't Sarah Palin discussed this?

[rhett o rick]

3. This is a terrible situation. A real black mark on our culture. Thanks for posting. nm