Viviana I. Maymi Writes About Her Rape: 115-Pound Harvard Student Describes Drunken Night, Bruised Morning
Viviana I. Maymi has written a compelling article that is currently going viral online, thanks to the real and raw way that Maymi presents what she says was an alcohol-fueled night that ended in rape. Viviana’s article, which is titled “Here’s How I Was Raped,” as reported by the Huffington Post, is gaining plenty of attention on the web as Maymi describes a cold night in 2013 that culminated in what she writes was the sexual assault and rape committed by a Harvard classmate.
The rape was committed by a guy that Viviana writes that she didn’t want to send mixed signals to, so says the article that was originally published in the Harvard Crimson.
Maymi’s first fall formal date event with Harvard athletes was the occasion to celebrate and drink plenty of free liquor, Viviana notes. After Maymi — who was 5-feet, 3-inches tall and only 115 pounds the night of the sexual assault — downed a bottle of wine that she was handed as the Harvard yahoos chanted Harvard songs, reminiscent of the scenes in the movie that portrayed Mark Zuckerberg’s time at Harvard, called The Social Network. Her memory left her shortly after. Maymi intimates that the alcohol overwhelmed her, and as such, Viviana remembered being raped in pieces of memory that inebriation can produce.
“I also have no memory of the walk to his House, or…up the stairs, or…to his room. Next thing I do remember, I’m naked in his bed. I see his face — he’s on top of me, he’s inside of me, he’s sweaty. I vaguely realize what’s happening, and I explicitly realize that I don’t want to be where I currently am.”
Viviana did remember that she didn’t want to be there — and Maymi writes that she obviously didn’t want to be raped. The harrowing events unfolded as Viviana forced her rapist off of her body and walked around in a naked state, trying to find a safe place before she passed out once more.
“Despite my confused state, I have an overwhelming instinct to leave. I get him off of me, and look for a way out. I walk into his roommate’s single, still naked. Wrong place. I walk through the common room, still naked, out the front door and into the hallway. I walk down the hall. I sit down and lean on a wall … I black out again.
The article goes on to describe Maymi’s reports of rape evidence on her body — the bruises and marks on her legs that point to Viviana falling along the journey to the place she didn’t remember traveling to in the first place in her inebriated state. It’s a point of drunkenness that Viviana says proves she was too drunk to give consensual sex, but one that was opportunistically used to rape Maymi.
“I wake up alone in a foreign common room in a t-shirt that isn’t mine. I have bruises staining my sore legs, evidence of a nasty fall or two — evidence to anyone I was with that I was too drunk to consent. Still drunk, head pounding, throat dry, I quickly remember, in blurred bits and pieces, what happened.”
Viviana goes on to powerfully chronicle how years of therapy and reflection have helped her put the rape into perspective and heal from it, and she offers resources to others who’ve experienced the same thing. Maymi’s pieces comes on the heels of Amber Rose’s “SlutWalk,” and offers a perspective of drunken rape by likening it to a person who chooses to drink alcohol and then drive a car. That’s why they are responsible for any deaths that occur due to drunken driving, because of their choices made to drink and drive.
Maymi writes about initially faulting herself for drinking too much as well, but Viviana surmises that she has the right to drink as much as she wants and not expect to be raped. Soberly discussing consensual sex between two willing parties is one thing, Maymi notes, but being penetrated against your will — whether drunk or sober — is rape.
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