This past weekend I went home to visit my family and while I was there, my youngest cousin and mother begged me to see “Divergent” with them. I didn’t plan on seeing the movie or reading the book because I thought it was just another dystopian storyline too similar to “The Hunger Games” series. Once the opening scenes began, little did I know how personally empowering the main character, Tris Prior, would become to me.
Tris is a teenager who undergoes majority of the same feelings as most budding humans. However, she lives in a post-apocalyptic society that harbors a stick process of fitting in and making sure everyone lives harmoniously. As a part of the process, she has to overcome her greatest fear portrayed in the movie, being raped.
Most critics are saying “Divergent” is the first film showing a heroine standing up against her assaulter. As a child, I remember watching movies like “Kiss the Girls”, starring Ashley Judd, who ironically also stars Tris’s mother. Judd plays an escaped victim helping the police find her rapist and serial killer. Jennifer Lopez is the lead role in “Enough” where she is on the run form her abusive husband and trains herself to fight back.
These early strong, female roles taught me the importance in self-defense and the attractiveness of living independently. They also taught me the powers men have over women. Both movies and other various media made me scared to walk alone at night because what ever you do or how loudly you scream it isn’t enough.
Rape culture has its teeth clenched in today’s society. According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey, sexual assault happens every two minutes. 60 percent of sexual assaults are not reported to police and 97 percent will never spend a day in jail. One out of every six American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. I am one of them.
I sped to Atlanta to celebrate the New Year with friends. We were drinking at the club when I lost my friends for a moment and went looking for them. I soon found out one had gotten kicked out and the other was very sick. While I planned my next move, I went outside to smoke a cigarette. I asked for a lighter from a nearby woman when her friends soon interrupted the conversation. After about 30 minutes, one told me take a sip of his drink. I stupidly did and the next thing I remembered was being sexually assaulted on a dirty mattress outside of an unfamiliar backyard. He ripped off my glasses making it impossible to see anything along with what I assume is the date rape drug. The guy then took me back up to the dance bar to swipe my debit card for his $230 tab.
I barely remember much else, but thankfully another friend I knew in town picked me up at 6 a.m. I woke up on her floor confused and without my glasses. I quickly called the police and began the medical process. It’s nothing like your favorite crime show. I was wheeled in as a number and my DNA stacked against hundreds of others in a metal, locked cabinet.
“Divergent” is a movie that is at least attempting to end rape culture. The movie isn’t the best thing to hit the theaters this year by any means, but I think it gives victims positive representation. It is one of the first visuals in the media that I’ve seen where a survivor fights off his or her attacker and is outwardly applauded for it. No one told Tris her clothes where too revealing, that she shouldn’t have drank so much, or she was by any means “asking for it.”
I’m happy that I watched the movie with my mother and 14-year-old cousin. He is growing up seeing such positive impacts like “Divergent”. Hopefully, there will be plenty more and just because I’m one of the six women, I’m a part of the 40 percent who reported it and attacker will spend a majority of his life in jail.