“This is a rape analogy. This is what women face every single day when they try to bring their rapists to justice.”
“Blame rapists, not boobs.”
(via takealookatyourlife)
“We Are SlutWalk NYC” (by SlutwalkNYC)
***TW This video touches upon discussion of rape culture, victim blaming, slut shaming, assault, and other potentially triggering topics.*
(via slutwalknyc)
“When police make excuses for rapists we’re all screwed.”
I wish I could have joined the other ladies on the Slutwalk but, unfortunately, I had other important things to do last Saturday.
Ever since I was followed by a guy at 1:00 in the morning while walking the dog, I am overly conscious of my surroundings or rather: the men in my surroundings. I was wearing jeans and a black hoodie, it was dark and raining a little. The guy walked past me, then turned around and started to follow me down a street which was lined with a kindergarten and a school on one side and mostly dark apartment buildings on the other side. No one else was out and about. I only realized that he was following me because the dog started to turn his head back while walking, nearly walking straight into a fence. I then heard the footsteps coming closer and closer, the dog getting more and more anxious and angry.
“So, what’s your name?”, he asked.
“Please leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to you.”
“What do you think about going for a beer?”
“As I just said, please leave me alone. I only want to walk the dog.”
The dog started to growl, angrily peering up at the unknown man.
“So what’s the name of the dog?”
I started to pull the dog down the street, hoping that the man would leave me alone. No such luck.
“Do you know a bar around here, beautiful?”
…
“What’s your name?”
…
“Oh, the dog doesn’t like me.”
He came closer and closer while I was tellling him to back off or otherwise the dog would certainly bite him. I think he was scared of the dog who was working on giving an Academy Award worthy impression of “big angry scary dog”. He finally turned and walked across the street. Or at least that’s what I thought.
In reality, he just used the street to pass me, walking behind the line of cars, and then climbed the sidewalk again, popping up just in front me.
“So, what about the beer, bitch?”
“Just leave me the fuck alone! I want to go home. Don’t come closer because I cannot vouch for the dog!”
The dog tried to jump at the man, growling and barking. The man finally left, shouting obscenities as he walked on. In my mind, I had already made a plan about how I would run to the nearest “safe” place, a bar down the road, even though that would have been impossible with my angry dog at the other end of the leash.
I was terribly scared that he would start to follow me again, getting to know where I lived. Thanks Godess he just walked on, leaving us behind. Scared. Nearly terrified.
I told this story to several people. I was asked what I was doing outside at 1 in the morning, implying that it was my fault that the man had harrassed me. I did not ask to be harrassed. It’s ALWAYS the aggressor’s choice to harrass/touch/rape another being, never the victim’s. In 2011, too many people are still too ignorant to realize this.
He did not follow me because it was 1 in the morning. He did not talk to me because of the way I was dressed. He harrassed me because he wanted to, because he felt that he had the right to do so. This seriously and urgently needs to change.
And that’s why I would have loved to walk the Slutwalk.
Photo credit:
Slutwalk Berlin 2011 by pierreee on Flickr.
Thank you, SlutWalk
** Trigger-Warnung **
“July 31 marks the one-year anniversary of the night I was raped. On August 6, I will be participating in Slutwalk when it comes to Philly. They could not have picked a better date. I find it ironic that the very word that kept me from getting any help that night a year ago is now the very same word that is saving me. I know that Slutwalk has many critics, and in a way I think that most of it may stem from simple ignorance. I don’t mean this as an insult, but rather that until someone is in the situation of rape, they simply can never understand.”
“No still means no.”
(via theseaqueeen)
Because yes, it really DOES happen: A thank you to SlutWalks
“I want to tell you something very personal about me. Not because I want to. I really don’t want to. But I’m going to do it anyway. It’s one of those things where even though it’s incredibly uncomfortable for me, I feel like sharing despite my discomfort might be able to make a positive difference. And since this has to do with something where I believe others have been making a positive difference in a way I, myself, have not also been able to, it seems the least I can do. I’ve been largely silent around the Slutwalks. There are a few reasons for that, but the biggest one of all is that what inspired them simply struck me much, much to close to home. So, my silence has not been about nonsupport of the walks. In more ways than one, it’s been about my stepping out of the way of them in part based on my own limitations. If you’re triggered by candid stories about sexual or other forms of assault, this may be triggering for you. I know it still is for me, very much so. Telling this story in this kind of detail remains incredibly difficult for me, despite many years of healing, help with therapy, help and healing found through helping others and a lot of support. It’s not a story I tell often, because even just typing it out or saying it all out loud makes my hands shake and my heart race and turns me into a bit of a mess for a bit of time after I do.”
Just don’t get raped
“It seems that somehow we have become a society that loves blaming victims. You got raped? Well, you shouldn’t have dressed that way, walked that way, been there on your own, and the excuses go on an on. We live in a society that shames victims, defends criminals (because they just couldn’t help themselves) and has a very important (and wrong) teaching for young people: Don’t get raped. Yes, that’s right. Society teaches that you shouldn’t get raped, but it never ever mentions that you shouldn’t rape, effectively shifting the responsibility from the criminal to his victim. So we can’t we teach young people to be responsible about their own actions instead of being fearful of others? Why don’t we teach younglings that no means no and that just because you can take advantage of someone doesn’t mean you should?” (via Wit&Fancy)
Human beings aren’t lions. Human beings don’t rape out of instinct. We live in a culture that enables sexual assault, partly by pinning the blame even just a little bit on what the victim could have done better.
And also? We’ve been telling women to stop drinking / stop wearing that / stop going there / stop doing that for a really long time. We have put a lot of time and effort into policing what women do. “Women shouldn’t drink so much” is not exactly a novel argument — it is, in fact, an argument that has gotten a lot of rapists off the hook, in court and in their communities.
And yet look at that, even with all the finger-wagging at What Women Should Do Differently, sexual assault is still really common! So weird, I wonder why that is?
