TW: Sexual assault
(Spoilers to I May Destroy You)
Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You, which aired on BBC and HBO, follows Arabella’s whirlwind journey of placing the pieces of a trauma ridden jigsaw puzzle back together. This puzzle, a far from picture perfect sexual assault. By perfect I mean, the assaulter is known, there is evidence and a conviction is made. This jigsaw depicts a complicated and convoluted print. Each puzzle piece, another obstacle in the way of justice. In this age of the #MeToo movement, despite immense efforts, we continue to find ourselves confined within the four corners of this complex picture, and such figures from the Criminal Justice System (2019) reinforces this. Only 1.7% of rape reports end in a conviction and a mere 3.8% of sexual offenders were charged, in England and Wales. This justice ‘crisis’, as lawyers have warned, is, ironically, perfectly portrayed in Coel’s production.
In fact, Arabella’s assault is, unfortunately, an extremely common case of drink spiking which the MET police reported has increased by 74% from 2015-2018 (no new statistics have been reported, which, to me, plainly indicates that lack of attention this issue faces). In the two sexual assaults that are reported in the series, one by the show’s protagonist and another by Kwame, Arabella’s best-friend who is assaulted on a Grindr date, moments after the two men had had consensual sex, neither end in any charge. Coel’s harrowing writing and acting of Arabella’s sexual assault is based on her own experience, where in the midst of a writers block for the second season of Chewing Gum, a 2015 BBC sitcom, she met with a friend for drinks, returned home with, I can only imagine, a splitting headache and perplexed at what the night entailed. The next morning, both Coel and Arabella, respectively, realise they had been drugged and in Arabella’s case, r*ped. For show’s protagonists, the flashbacks consisted of images of different men towering over her, as Arabella does not remember the man’s face until their second encounter, and as the assault was one of rape, you can imagine the following scenes.
The main plot line of this whodunit-like mystery, where Arabella seeks her assaulter, is merely one aspect of this series. Unlike Agatha Christie's thrilling mystery novels, Coel presents to us a fictional character living in a modern reality; a young, black, female writer living in London, navigating through romantic excursions, friendship hardships and her own trauma. However, as I stated, this is merely one element that forges this incredible story. I May Destroy You approaches a plethora of issues that are usually concealed within the cracks and shadows of conversation, that move beyond the archetypal narratives of sexual assault as a brutal rape by a stranger down a dark and deserted alleyway.
Such include:
‘Stealthing’: the act of removing a condom, overtly or covertly, during consensual protected sex. In England and Wales, stealthing is considered sexual assault under the law, whereas End Violence Against Women reported that 40% stated that they believe stealthing is ‘never’ sexual assault.
The sexual assault of men by men.
The victim blaming of sexual assault victims.
Beyond the bounds of sexual assault, the series delves into issues of the fetisisation of black men, white women as ‘wolf crying’ to deliberately sabotage and criminalise black lives. (The infamous Emmett Till case and the Central Park Five case are examples of this unwarranted denouncing). Absent fathers. Some have questioned the portrayal of Terry’s, one of Arabella’s best-friends, spontaneous sexual endeavour as exploitation, as when she consents to a three-some with two strangers while in Italy, she later speculates whether this was a set-up.
I May Destroy You depicts an abundance of relatable contemporary occurrences that I have rarely seen on my screen, despite the fact that these situations are lived by us, and form a part of us, every single day. One in five women above the age of sixteen have been sexually assaulted, according to official results from the crime survey for England and Wales. I am only two years above that age bracket, however I can confidently, yet wistfully, say that sexual assault is something exceptionally familiar for most women, teenagers, girls. Watching these authentic telling of stories laced with feelings of humiliation, disrespect and deep-rooted pain, watching the characters grapple with their experiences, their living nightmares, while living in reality, it struck me that these situations dramatised on our screen were closer to truth than fiction.
Michaela Coel, in a MacTaggart Lecture for Edinburgh TV Festival (2018), spoke about her love for telling stories, grasping the ordeals of everyday life, of everyday people,
and moulding them into puppets to perform. It is true, for me at least, that each character is a puppet, a paradigm representing every one of us. The character Kwame (acted by Paapa Essiedu), for instance perhaps represents the aspect of sexual assault that many shy away from. Male sexual assault. A black gay man also living in London who, after his traumatic r*pe, Kwame encounters profound feelings of shame and fear. This portrayal of Kwame’s vulnerability may provoke overdue discussions about male sexual assault. It is estimated that 4% of men in England and Wales had experienced sexual assault since the age of sixteen, equivalent to 631,000 men. Of course, this is merely an understatement. These cases reported may make up 4%, but due to the overshadowing stigma that men face when it comes to sexual violence, and the ingrained stereotype, specifically in the black and Latinx communities, that these men of ‘machismo’ and ‘strength’ do not face humiliation and exploitation, permits us, (yes us women), to disregard any assault, in any shape or form.
The show, coined as a ‘consent drama’, unravels the perpetual string that is wrapped tightly around the often intimidating phrase ‘r*pe culture’. Like a gigantic, imposing tower that looms over our generation, Coel dismantles the misconceptions brick by brick. This r*pe culture, which is discouraging enough, being defined using this noun ‘culture’, often synonymous with habitual ideas or lifestyles, is so deeply ingrained in us generation ‘z’s’ and millennial's that we have become blind to the breadth and depth of this so-called ‘culture’. I have seen the triangular graph illustrating this spectrum of r*pe culture floating around the internet for a while now. It follows a pattern beginning with ‘Explicit Violence’ (r*pe, battery and murder etc.), Removal of autonomy (sexual coercion, dosing, and safe word violations etc.) and Degradation (cat calls, up-skirt photos and revenge p*rn etc.) The following row, Victimisation, consists of mundane ‘trends’ that perpetually damage women, and men, like sexist attitudes, victim blaming and the ‘boys will be boys’ mentality. The entirety of this hierarchical chart is a plain depiction of the systematic violation against men and women, before, as and after they are sexual assault victims. As the diagram states, the condoning of the bottom tier only reinforces and excuses the upper tiers. Through the generations into our own, this conditioning to accept violations for misunderstandings, to permit abuse for boisterousness prevails and continues to damage victims to the point where expression against this culture is fatal. We find ourselves taking favour in addressing the most violent and overtly brutal violations, like r*pe, but lack the capability to transfer the same outrage for ‘minor’ assaults. Twitter will take storm and call out a r*pist at first chance, but this alliance is absent when men and women independently confide their experiences, off screen, in real life.
This double-standard has seeped into our lifestyles, so much so that we are left to educate ourselves as this topic is strategically missed in all curriculum. Yes, we know of such cases (the rare lesson on revenge p*rn that is taught in our health or PSHE classes, where the teacher urges us not abstain from sexting but skims over the details, perhaps due to embarrassment or lack of authentic interest, I don’t know) but either way, the education system has denied us exposure to such topics. That is, until we, individually and silently, are exposed to it.
The ambiguity in the title itself, I May Destroy You, I feel voices the nuances that are adjacent to sexual assault. The speaker of the phrase is unknown. Is Arabella addressing herself? Perhaps her border-line obsession with the ‘crime scene’ of her first assault is the drive behind her deteriorating mental state, slowly destroying her? Or, perhaps it is a duet, where both her assaulters speak in unison. The choice of the word “may” (a modal auxiliary verb, to tune into my inner linguist) perhaps hints at the uncertainty of disaster. This may even be a glimmer of hope and optimism for sexual assault victims, where their turmoil, as large or ‘minor’ as it is, is not inevitably fatal.
Keeping such interpretation in mind, remember that any experience of violation and degradation does not define your life, as cliche as it sounds. However, discourses surrounding sexual assault for both men and women, this extensive spectrum of r*pe culture and the double standards when addressing sexual violence (even those that occur without explicit violence attach to it) are necessary and valuable. Continue to open discussions, with others or with yourself. As terrible as it sounds, unfortunately sexual assault may never disappear but by re-building the puzzle, piece by piece and painting a new picture on top, retelling stories as Coel does and educating ourselves, we may stop sexual assault from destroying us.
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