STFU, Rape Culture!
Anon said:
i constantly struggle with accepting my rape, and talking to others about it because it wasn’t what most people picture when they think about rape. I was 15 and black out drunk. I had said no earlier in the night, before he managed to get me so drunk i could barely walk. I didnt even realize that it was rape until over a year later. because i was so bullied and tormented for it, while he just laughed about it with his friends. even my current boyfriend doesnt seem to believe me and that sucks.
I’m so sorry. I don’t know why people are so resistant to the fact that sex with someone who is intoxicated is rape. If your boyfriend, or any of your friends or loved ones for that matter, does not 100% believe and support you as a survivor, he doesn’t deserve to be in your life.
Anon asked:
Hello, I’m having a little trouble with a friend who uses “rape” as a metaphor for completely unrelated things. I finally called him out on it last night and we fought. He’s a really good friend and I’ve known him for 15 years! Deep down he has a good heart but he’s still in the 12-year old boy mentality it seems. I don’t want this to ruin our relationship, but I want to establish to him that he shouldn’t devalue the word by using it inappropriately. What else can I do to get my message across?
And:
Following up about my friend who uses rape as a metaphor - he told me that I was overreacting and that it was MY problem that I was offended by his use of the word. I have no idea what to say to that.
People ask me a lot what to do about their douchey friends to make them less douchey, and I never really have an answer because I just cut people off when they act like this. You already tried to explain it and he somehow managed to act even worse. Other people have suggestions?
Perry inexplicably chooses to leave the audience in suspense–briefly–as to whether or not an actual rape occurred, all while promoting the dangerous idea that a woman’s “no” is not really “no,” but merely part of the game of seduction. This scene puts Perry in such fine company as men’s rights advocates who argue that date/acquaintance rape is simply buyer’s remorse, and men who argue–as one man did on Twitter last week–that a man has to push to make sure a woman’s “No” is really “No.”
Haven’t seen this, but I did get this vibe from the preview. Ugh.
Research shows that programs with trained examiners, such as Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANEs) or Sexual Assault Forensic Examiners (SAFEs), using modern standards like those in the SAFE Protocol significantly increase evidence collection and investigation in sexual assault cases. Better evidence collection results in significantly higher prosecution rates, convictions, and guilty-pleas. The SAFE Protocol also helps SANEs and other medical professionals conduct exams that are sensitive, dignified, and reduce trauma.
“The SAFE Protocol helps ensure that victims will be cared for with compassion and respect when they turn to hospitals for help,” said Bea Hanson, Acting Director of the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW). “This not only improves outcomes for victims, it strengthens criminal cases. We are working to develop a comprehensive response to rape and sexual assault. One element of this is the President’s 2014 budget that includes $20 million to address the backlog of rape kits.”
I didn’t know about the bolded. Very glad to hear that.
Anon said:
I was raped by someone I had known for years and considered a close friend. I think the worst part of it, though, was having one of my best friends tell me that I obviously didn’t try hard enough to fight him. I’m still not quite sure how to take that.
I’m so sorry. :( They’re a terrible friend and they don’t deserve to be in your life. You experienced a complete betrayal of trust and something very traumatizing besides. Your friend should be there to support you, not tell you that this was your fault.
Anon asked:
When I was 5, I was molested by an older male cousin. My grandma caught him holding me down on a bed while he humped me. She told him to go outside while she spanked me and called me a bad girl for not fighting back, as if I liked him on top of me or something like that. My parents were horrified, but my cousin’s mom begged them not to press charges. So no one mentioned it again. I felt like my parents let me down big time; they refused to talk about it. By the time I was 9,another cousin had exposed my younger cousins and I to porn and touched us. By then, I felt I couldn’t tell b/c I’d be a snitch.
Now, two other men in my family are known to hit on/ feel up women and younger cousins sometimes. No one calls them out on it b/c” that’s how they are.” The young women and younger cousins are warned not be around them to avoid “putting themselves in a bad situation,” yet nobody reports them. I’ve never told anyone in my family what happened to me b/c the cousins that hurt me are the ones everyone looks up to. I feel like the black sheep of my family and don’t see them much unless I have to. I’m moving out of my hometown soon. But I’m worried for my cousins that’ll be left behind. If no one’s willing to talk about this issue, how many other family members will suffer in silence? I don’t want this to continue. What should I do?
I’m so sorry to hear about this. Unfortunately, it’s really common for there to be a pattern of abuse like this in families (mine included). Predators use the silence in families to prey on more and more victims. It sounds like many of the adults in your life, not just your parents, let you down rather than protecting you as they should have. I don’t think there is much legally you could do at this point, but that doesn’t mean you’re powerless to help stop this cycle and protect your cousins. There is a lot you can do, depending on how vocal you feel ready to be.
If you are already somewhat estranged from them and you don’t mind causing some (much needed) waves in the family—talk about what happened to you! This could be in the form of telling your parents everything and talking about what happened. It could be in the form of talking to the cousins around your age who you know were also molested and asking for their help in breaking the silence within your family.
This could also be in the form of talking with the younger girls in your family. Warn them—not in the ‘keep yourself out of a bad position’ victim blaming way that’s been done so far—but tell them what you know and let them know that if the men you’re talking about try this with them, it’s not their fault, it is a big deal, and you’re there for them. Be the person they know they can turn to—and the one who advocates for them when it’s necessary. It can be really hard to stand up for yourself, but sometimes easier to do it for someone else. If you hear about an incident of abuse, raise hell about it!
You are absolutely right that if no one breaks the silence, this will most likely continue. This all being said though, I would never push you to do more than you feel you can. Standing up to people who abused you can be really painful—especially since they are most likely going to minimize what happened and try to blow you off. Do what you can to help, but remember to take care of yourself. And if you decide to discuss this with other women in your family you know were abused, be sensitive to them. Even if you’ve faced what happened and you’re prepared to take a stand within the family, they may not be.
Anon said:
Yesterday, my mom told me about a woman that was repeatedly raped by her uncle when she was a child. My mom said the girl’s aunt had warned her not to go near the woods outside their house or bad things would happen. Coincidentally, the girl’s uncle would sexually abuse the girl and her little sister there. My mom told me if the little girl had just listened to her aunt, she would’ve never gotten abused. I can’t believe she blamed the child for her uncle violating her. That’s really messed up :/
It never ceases to amaze me when people find a way to make child abuse the child’s fault. It obviously baffles me when people try to make sexual assault the fault of the victim at any age, but I find it particularly disgusting when we’re talking about kids. I don’t know what’s wrong with your mother, but that’s total bullshit.
Anon said:
This sounds strange and in no way does this compare to stuff I seen other people go through, but earlier this year there was a boy in my class who would touch my lower back directly above my butt, and he would scratch me there in the hallway and it drew blood at one point and I don’t know if that counts as sexual assault or what but I still feel dirty and guilty for letting him do that.
Well, to me this is not necessarily sexual assault because I am not seeing the sexual component to it…? but perhaps I am misunderstanding something. Definitely it is assault though. If another person violates your bodily autonomy and in this case injures you, that is assault.
A Massachusetts appellate court on Tuesday rejected the appeal of a former Albany Roman Catholic Diocese priest who was convicted of raping altar boys during trips to Berkshire County in the 1980s.
Good for you, Kansas.
A woman raped by two University of Northern Iowa football players eight years ago says she has been devastated by the school’s failure to make accommodations for her to stay in school, according to a transcript of court testimony obtained by The Associated Press.
The Davenport woman testified in a Feb. 22 deposition in a civil lawsuit that she continues to suffer panic attacks and nightmares stemming from the 2004 assault in a university dorm room, according to the transcript obtained by the AP under the public records law. She said the university could have limited the damage to her future if administrators would have done more to help her recover emotionally and academically in the aftermath of the attack, the fall semester of her freshman year.
It’s like colleges have a problem handling sexual assaults or something.
[TW: RAPE]
Two fifth grade boys, aged 10 and 11, have been ruled competent to stand trial in juvenile court for conspiring to rape and kill their female classmate, and possibly murder other students as well. They were arrested after a classmate saw them playing with a knife on the school bus and reported it to a teacher.
Normally, state law specifies that children between the ages of 8 and 12 do not have the mental capacity to commit crimes; however, the pair exhibited an absolutely horrifying and soul-crushing awareness of both the nature and consequences of what they had planned to do. In addition to the knife, they had brought a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol (taken from an older brother) and ammunition to school and had hand-written a seven step plan outlining the events leading up to the horrific crime. Both explained to a local police officer that they’d been plotting for two weeks. When asked if he knew that murder was wrong, one boy responded, “Yes. I wanted her dead.”
In the mental capacity hearing, a psychologist testified that one suspect planned to rape the female classmate while the other stood guard. The boy knew that rape meant “having sex with someone when they don’t want to,” and, according to the case’s prosecutor, Tim Rasmussen, he understood it as “a display of strength and power — not sex.” When asked why they wanted to brutally assault and take the life of their classmate, one of the boys explained, “She’s rude and always makes fun of me and my friends.”
There are no words to describe how abjectly depressing, terrifying, and infuriating it is that we live in a world in which a pair of fifth graders is capable of planning — and arming themselves for — a potential mass murder, in which two boys aged 10 and 11 have already learned to value girls’ lives, bodily integrity, and dignity so little that they have no qualms about violating and murdering a girl for being “rude.” While I understand that they’re too young to fully appreciate the gravity of what they had planned, that doesn’t diminish the atrocity of the fact that a 10 year old was able not only understand the gendered power dynamic inherent in rape, but also to plan to use it as a punitive measure against another child.
It should be unimaginable that someone so young could internalize such an extreme, hyper-aggressive, and violent understanding of rape culture. Tragically, it is not. Children and adolescents are constantly exposed to the insidious ubiquity of patriarchy and rape culture, in which violence is eroticized, male sexual aggression is affirmed, and assumed male access to women’s bodies is normalized. Lacking the discursive tools to understand that these things are not “just the way the world works,” they can easily absorb misogynistic values, which they re-circulate and reinforce through seemingly “mild” actions such as slut-shaming, victim-blaming, homophobic remarks meant to denigrate boys who exhibit feminine qualities, body shaming, etc., as well as through committing sexual harassment and assault. All of this behavior reflects and reinforces sexual attitudes that are toxic and degrading to women and men alike. Thus, although this case may be the most sickening, severe case of an adolescent absorbing and acting upon misogynistic values in recent memory, it’s far from an isolated incident.
(via robot-heart-politics)
Anon said:
I told my exboyfriend no the “first time,” (and nearly all subsequent times)and tried to push him away. Sometimes I’d cry and beg, but he would do whatever he could to get me to “consent,” whether it was to just keep going until I gave up and shut off my mind,to try to turn me on despite my protests that I didn’t want to be touched, or to guilt me.I didn’t know until later that this is rape. I was told that rape is screaming at a stranger in an alley- not quietly pleading to your boyfriend.
I am so sorry. You are not alone—we all learned about stranger rape and not the much more common rape that occurs at the hands of people we know. I am glad you’re away from this abusive rapist, and I hope your future partners will be people who love and respect you—and your right to say no.
Anon said:
So I got really drunk at this party and according to this guy (and I don’t remember saying this, although I don’t remember a lot of what happened) that I wanted to lose my virginity that night. All I remember is that something went in for a bit, and it hurting a lot, but I didn’t bleed the next day/my pelvis wasn’t hurting. Somehow he had my number, and after pestering him about it, he told me that we didn’t have sex. Is this still sexual assault? Also (this is part of the is this sex assault story) I never wanted to do anything that night, especially not as far as things went, but I didn’t stop him. I had this feeling that I should, but I honestly didn’t feel like I could do anything at that point. Also, sorry for the third message, but he was sober at the time.
Yes, this is sexual assault. You didn’t want to have this type of sexual activity, you were legally unable to consent, and certainly by your description you were incapacitated. I’m sorry.
Submitted by yasdnillindsay.
This has to be one of the more despicable stories of late. What possible justification is there for giving a rapist and trafficker—who preyed on a 14 year old girl—PROBATION? JFC.
