A fellow blogger (News You Can’t Use, which ironically always has news I can use) made a great post that caught my attention and led me to this hard hitting article on the “Not Rape Epidemic” All women must read it. All men must read it. Everyone must read it. As Deepak states so well, “it has transformed into a social menace,” a global social menace, and the only way to make the world safer for mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, friends…is to wake up and pay attention. Latoya Peterson writes excellently and makes some very clear, startling points, and also provides some very solid advice on what one can do to fight this war we are all fighting.
This is how the Not Rape epidemic spreads – through fear and silence, which become complicit in perpetuating the behaviors described here. Women of all backgrounds are affected by these kinds of acts, regardless of race, ethnicity, or social class. So many of us carry the scars of the past with us into our daily lives. Most of us have pushed these stories to the back of our minds, trying to have some semblance of a normal life that includes romantic and sexual relationships. However, waiting just behind the tongue is story after story of the horrors other women experience and hide deep within the self behind a protective wall of silence.
In this next quote Latoya talks about something that is possibly one of the most frustrating and painful aspects of the process: the second rape of a victim. Women do this to women, men do this to women, the legal system, the social system, we’re all criminals when we become accepting of the rape culture and start blaming the victim. That WILL NEVER BE OKAY. Regardless of what she wore, who she was, where she came from, what she did: NO MAN HAS A RIGHT TO VIOLATE A WOMAN. I would say vice versa, but these factors seem to come in more when the victim is a woman than a man. This culture is enabling sexual violence against women everywhere, and it is sickening. Just as you cannot blame the Jews for the Holocaust, you cannot blame a woman for violence done unto her!!
What happened in the courtroom is a byproduct of rape culture – when what happens to women in marginalized, when beyond a shadow of a doubt still isn’t enough, when your past, manner of dress, grade point average or intoxication level are used to excuse the despicable acts of sexual violence inflicted upon you by another.
Thank you to Deepak for bringing this article to my attention.
[...] me make something clear for all the arguments that not-rape is all about (though I shouldn’t have to). For all those idiots who think that its about the [...]