Amy Schumer is currently promoting her new book of personal essays, The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo, in which the comedian discusses the rape and abuse she suffered at the hands of former boyfriends. In particular, Schumer details how she even lost her virginity by being raped by her high-school boyfriend, a subject which was brought up by Howard Stern when she stopped by to chat with the SiriusXM radio host Tuesday morning.
Schumer explains that she and her boyfriend were watching TV and “in and out of sleep,” when all of a sudden she realized that he was inside her. But in opening up about her experience, Schumer brings an important discussion to the table for women who have been sexually assaulted, but feel invalidated when others question whether a crime was actually committed. Not only did she decline to press charges against her boyfriend, but they stayed together. She even had to comfort him for what he did to her.
“People, they want you to have been raped perfectly, and they want you to be a perfect victim. People hear me say that and they go, ‘no, she’s like a slut’ and ‘I bet she knew’ — like, right away, you start doubting,” Schumer told the hosts. “We’re so critical and it makes victims really not wanna speak up, and so I think it’s me saying, ‘look, I didn’t have a perfect rape.”
Schumer also discussed an abusive relationship she was in with a boyfriend in her early 20s: “At first I would get hurt by accident, it would be like he’d grab me too hard and then I’d get a bad bruise, or he’d like push me a little and I’d like fall into something and get a worse injury, and these things I could kind of excuse.” Of course, as these things tend to go, the verbal and physical abuse only escalated as the relationship went on.
It got to the point that Schumer says one day she woke up to the epiphany. If she didn’t get out of the relationship, she was going to die: “It just hit me like a ton of bricks, he’s going to kill me eventually, and I need to get out of here. And honestly a big thought of why I did was for my little sister. I just thought, I cannot — I can’t do this to her. I can’t let her get this phone call.”
You can listen to the full interview clip below:
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