I watched the actual interview with Anderson Cooper.

She did say she thinks most people think of rape as being a sexy fantasy--not that she herself thinks that, which is sort of what that juxtaposition suggests without watching her talking. The clause starting with "Think," is her continuing to say what she thinks most people think. Even saying that most people think rape is sexy is shocking to me. Especially because she is apparently some sort of advice columnist. How can she not know what people think of rape? Sure there are some men who think that, but they are not "most people."

Then it jumps to an MSNBC interview that I didn't see. But I saw another one. In both the Cooper interview and the other one, she struggles to distinguish herself from other rape victims because she has heard so many horror stories and her own experience was fleetingly brief. She is inartfully saying that people suffer way worse things than she has suffered, so she doesn't feel she can claim rape. It's an emotional distinguishing, not a legal one. It makes no sense to us--rape is rape--but it sounds to me like she is working out issues in public that she should have grappled with with a therapist.

Cooper says at one point, Are you not wanting to identify as a victim? Because she keeps clarifying that in her mind it was a FIGHT. And further, although she finds it laughable now, that at the time she thought she won the fight because she got away.

Anyway, you can see a light bulb come over her, as she says, I never thought of that. I think that might be it.

Carroll's version of what happened to her was formed in trauma, without theraputic insight, and it has been solidly set. To herself, she didn't think of herself as a rape victim but as someone who won a fight. To herself, even though it was totally non-consensual, she was able to move on from it without having her life turned upside down, so she continues to downplay it.

More weird things in the Cooper interview. She says she laughs when he bangs her head against the wall. Cooper says, You laughed?!? and she explains that laughing at a man is a good way to kill what is an erotic moment for a man. She's right about that, but if she had not clarified, that would have been inexplicable to me.

She also reported that when she talked to one of the two friends afterwards, one of them had to say, Stop laughing. Again, that astonished me. She explained to Cooper that she was a writer for SNL and her gallows humor was a way of coping with it.

She says things that sound initially like "statements against interest" to use the legal term. But I think it points out her faithful recounting of what happened. For example, she says that one of the way she fought when he had her pinned to the wall with his shoulder was to keep stamping her feet. I can't picture how that helps. But precisely because that is such an unusual thing to say in describing a fight against a rapist, I believe her that that was what she did--and that he did what he did.

She doesn't have a polished story, for sure. But I get it.

 

The thing is, though, that she had decided that day that it wasn't traumatic to have been so briefly raped. In her mind, not compared to the horrors of what other women experience.

Cooper says, You must have known this was news, because she keeps emphasizing that to her it was just one more obnoxious moment with obnoxious men. (my paraphrase)

She says, No, she didn't expect it to be a focus. It isn't (or at least wasn't when it was released) mentioned in the Amazon blurb.

She saw lots of women come forward with their stories, and they weren't believed. Why would she be. Anderson asks why she didn't come forward when other women did. She says, because they already were doing it. (?!?) (Where is this woman's sense of sisterhood for others?!?) But she wasn't looking for an opportunity to relieve herself of a burden, she simply didn't feel burdened over it, and she didn't want the stress hoopla of public attention.

She says she saw it as just one incident in the long string of events that made up the times. She says, "I went outside in New York." It's that normalized to her. If you went outside, you were at least accosted. Yep, I lived in those times, too. I went outside. I know what she means. You just did your best to shrug the daily uglinesses off. She put it into that category, she stomped it down, and that was it for her.

 

That's what I thought, too. She says it was almost closing and she hadn't seen anyone else on the floor, which is another thing that she acknowledges sounds odd since it was Bergdorf Goodman.

I would have screamed bloody murder on general principles. Women are always asked if they screamed. And you go for the scratch to get DNA as well as inflicting pain. She said she realized later she had never let go of her purse, so that was one hand frozen in place.

 

I agree. I shouldn't have said it that way. I hope I never know how I would react.

Once I was raked and bitten by a feral cat in my living room. I barely made it steps away to the front door, which I opened so I could collapse out on my porch so someone could find me because I was bleeding and fainting.

I told people that and universally they said A house cat!!! I would fight back no matter what attacked me!!! My body went directly to Lights out.