Rape is not simply acting upon sexual urges. Rape is about dominance and power and violence and control. The intent of sex is mutual pleasure, and that’s never the intent of rape. Let’s be totally clear. Those young men chose, instead of having sex with a willing girl, to rape an unconscious girl. Who could not participate, could not experience pleasure, could not say yes or admire them or share an intimate moment. Those boys didn’t choose sex. They chose rape. And the experience of rape, for both the girl and the boy, is entirely different than the experience of sex. THEY ARE NOTHING ALIKE. RAPE AND SEX ARE NOT RELATED.
How can there be so much confusion about two entirely different things? Perhaps because they are both physical acts that involve the same body parts. Though that doesn’t explain it entirely.
For instance, hands and torsos are involved in both hugs and gut punches, but we know they’re not the same.
Heads are used both for kisses that cause blushes as well as for head butts that cause broken noses, yet we know that they’re not the same thing.
Spoken words involve the mouth, tongue, and larynx, yet we know the difference between friendly conversation and a tirade of insults.
Even if they involve the same body parts, how can there be any confusion between rape and sex?
No matter where you are in the world, the result of rape — “date rape,” “gang-rape,” “easy rape,” “emergency rape,” “war rape” — is the same: oppression. Women are not free to live without the constant threat of assault and violence or without being treated like objects and property. When I last checked there were at least four “rape capitals” of the world. You know what that makes the rest of us? “Rape Suburbs.” Girls and women aren’t idiots. On the contrary, we understand perfectly: we’re supposed to “be careful.” Don’t do something we might “regret.” “Stay home.” “So what if it happens, anyway?” We can’t feel any security that our bodily integrity will be respected. Or that our consent matters. We cannot enjoy the confident access and ownership of public space that men do. Our attempts to pursue equality and opportunity are inhibited, not only by actual rape, but by people’s malevolent tolerance for it.
Abusers are really good at finding people who have already been groomed to view abuse as ‘normal’. So please don’t wonder how someone could have been abused more than once and say shit like abuse survivors should know better.
It’s not unheard of for survivors to go from abusive relationship to abusive relationship. Abuse has been so normalized for so many people that there is this deep rooted suspicion that all relationships are abusive. That everyone is faking it just like you’re faking it. That no one actually has non-toxic relationships. And that’s a type of coping mechanism right there, isn’t it?
Then there’s also the fact that survivors have complicated feelings towards their abusers. Sometimes we love our abusers. Sometimes we are dependent on our abusers and feel indebted. Sometimes we know it is abuse but we don’t know if anyone will take our side and help us. People would rather turn away then help us. Sometimes people would rather help cover up the abuse because it’s less messy.
Sometimes these messy feelings keep us from realizing we’re being abused, even if we know the cycle of abuse, even if we’ve tried to help friends in messy relationships. It can’t be abuse, we’re in love. It can’t be abuse, he takes care of us. It can’t be abuse because I can’t see myself as someone being abused. Etc, etc, etc.
(via fuckvictimblaming)
IN A photo essay in the Amherst Voice titled “It Happens Here,” Amherst students stand against fall foliage, holding signs with words said to them by administrators, coaches and peers in the aftermath of being sexually assaulted on campus. The quotations are difficult to read, because for so many of us, they are painfully familiar:
“Are you sure it was rape? He seems to think it was a little more complicated.”
—An Amherst College administrator“Why don’t you take a year off, get a job at Starbucks and come back after he’s graduated?”
—Amherst College Dean“If you didn’t want to have sex with him, why were you sitting on his bed two weeks before?”
—Student on the Amherst College disciplinary committeeSexual violence at Amherst College—and at college campuses around the U.S.—isn’t an exception to the norm of sexual respect and consent. It’s an epidemic.
The photo essay came in response to an October 17 article in the Amherst Student by former Amherst student Angie Epifano titled “An Experience of Sexual Assault at Amherst College.” The piece speaks volumes about the way college administrations actively perpetuate a culture of silencing and victim-blaming of sexual assault survivors. Epifano writes:
I was continuously told that I had to forgive him, that I was crazy for being scared on campus…They told me: We can report your rape as a statistic…but I don’t recommend that you go through a disciplinary hearing. It would be you, a faculty adviser of your choice, him, and a faculty adviser of his choice in a room where you would be trying to prove that he raped you. You have no physical evidence—it wouldn’t get you very far to do this.
After telling a counselor how unsafe she felt at Amherst, Epifano was forcibly escorted off campus by campus police and checked into a psychiatric ward for depression and suicidal thoughts, where doctors continued the victim-blaming. “I really don’t think a school like Amherst would allow you to be raped,” she says they told her. “And why didn’t you tell anybody? That just doesn’t make any sense.”
Epifano then learned that Amherst would not allow her back on campus without parental supervision. Because Epifano does not have parents, she would not be permitted to return to school. She and her social worker fought back, but her struggle didn’t end there: Epifano was prevented from studying abroad the following year in South Africa.
According to the racist logic of her dean, African Studies would be bad for her mental health: “Africa is quite traumatizing…You’ll be much better off here at Amherst where we can watch over you.”
Compare Epifano’s treatment as a rape survivor to that of her rapist: Epifano was forcibly institutionalized against her will in a psychiatric ward, had to fight be re-admitted to the campus, and was restricted academically, all because she came forward and sought help in the wake of her rape.
The student who raped Epifano graduated last spring with honors.
‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ This is a question that survivors of sexual abuse ask themselves all the time. But there are very good reasons why you didn’t stop him. You didn’t stop him because you lived under “his” roof; because you depended on him financially; because your abuser wove a web of fear and entrapment around you; because you were confused; because you were young and didn’t have good options or a strong support system in place. This book will help you work through these feelings of entrapment and fear to see that sexual abuse is never your fault, and that you did nothing to cause your own abuse.
‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ You didn’t stop him because we live in a culture where “boys will be boys” - a culture that, through its fairy tales, movies, and advertising persistently pushes the sexist belief that young girls are ready for sex when their bodies first develop; a culture that insinuates that these girls “really want” the older men who abuse them; a culture that still questions the victim’s role in the crime, whether it be a young girl raped by her uncle (“Was she being flirtatious?”), or a guy who rapes his date (“Was she leading him on? What was she wearing?”). We live in a culture in which a male-dominated government decides the laws about rape and incest, pornography, child and spousal abuse, and abortion – laws that directly impact women’s health and happiness.
Simply put, we live in a culture that does not honor women and children; where sexuality, especially female sexuality, is a commodity, something that is used to sell products or satisfy male desires; where women, and especially women of color, are depicted on music videos as little more than prostitutes. In this culture, men still sexually abuse at staggering rates.
Don’t be silent, don’t be just a victim. Read the story, hear the voice A “Victim’s” Story
(Source: theoryrepublic, via uarenotalone)
[trigger warning: rape]
You know, don’t just walk down the street and be like everything’s peaches and roses. It’s one in three women who are going to be raped, killed, beaten or abused in her lifetime, and that’s just real. To not live with that as a reality is really dangerous for women, and it lets a lot of guys off the hook from really paying attention to what’s happening to the women around them. Because it’s not all the men who are doing it, but not every single guy that boasts in the locker-room about the hot sex he had last night, had it with someone who was conscious.
When a student doesn’t perform well in school and is kicked out or drops out or fails a class or three after being sexually assaulted, their access to education has been hindered. If a school knows about this student’s rape and refuses to help them, then they are denying that student their equal access to education guaranteed to them by Title IX.
This, this, this.
Sexual Assault Center of East TN provides compassionate free services for victims & survivors of sexual violence. Advocacy, Therapy, Education, SANE. 865-522-7273
