Thursday 4 August 2011

It's not rape if they both say yes.

In lieu of the recent “slut walks” and the events that led to them, I’ve decided to write again.(Three cheers for me!)

Rape apologists, that is, people who blame the victim, people who claim that dressing provocatively, having tattoos, drinking, flirting, wearing stiletto heels, having piercings, etc, make it the victims fault, piss me off.

If someone dresses provocatively, she is more likely to be bitched about, she is more likely to be stared at, she is more likely to be talked about, she is maybe even more likely to be hit on, but she is not more likely to be raped.

I’m not going to quote statistics on rape, mainly because I hate statistics, but you can believe me (and if you don’t, google it) that how someone dresses has little to no impact on whether or not they will be raped. The other reason why I’m not going to quote statistics is because they are still so imprecise. Female-female, male-male, and female-male rape is almost entirely excluded, such cases almost never get reported, and when they do they aren’t taken seriously.

We live in a society that teaches us not to get raped, rather than not to rape.

We live in a society that blames the victim, a society that still suffers from the delusion that the victim could have been “asking for it”.

Now, either I have a completely different understanding of the English language than apologists, or apologists are just fucking crazy. See, I was under the impression that, “Please fuck me!” and “No, get the fuck away from me!” mean two entirely different things.

What we tend to forget is that no one asks to be raped. No one.

A girl who enjoys sex, who has had several sexual partners, is not asking for it. If you approach her, and she say’s no, then she probably means no. She might have had many guys before you, but she doesn’t want you. If you force her into having sex with you, then it’s rape.

A girl who you’re dating, who you’ve had consensual sex with hundreds of times, says no and you force her to have sex with you? That’s rape.

A girl walking outside at night alone, is not asking for it. If you hit her on the head, even by accident, and then fuck her, assuming that she would have said yes had she been conscious? That’s rape.

A drunk girl might have consensual sex with you because her decision making is being influenced by the alcohol, in that case, lucky you. But if she says no, it’s rape. If she’s so drunk, that she doesn’t know what is going on, then that’s rape too.

A girl wearing provocative clothing is not asking for it either. She may be signaling that she wants sex; she may just not want it with you. In that case, if you have sex with her, it’s rape.

“It turned her on,” is not an acceptable excuse either. Chances are, her body is betraying her. So…when your fingers manhandled her breasts, her nipples hardened? Thus she is enjoying it? WRONG. If she is telling you to stop, then the excuse that “her body was saying something else” is not a justification. It’s still rape.

If she says no, if she pushes you away, if she TRIES to push you away, if she asks you to stop, if you’ve drugged her, if she is in any way incapable of giving her consent, then it’s rape.

Rape is about dominance, rape is about control. Being raped shames the victim, rape is an invasion. And then, having been raped, if the victim is brave enough to speak out, we proceed to shame them more. We blame them. We try and make them believe, that it was their fault. This makes no sense to me.

Men especially have a hard time admitting that they were raped, and who can blame them? The rare cases that do let on that they were raped get called pussies, they get teased, their masculinity is questioned, they are asked why they didn’t fight, they get asked whether they enjoyed it.

Men are supposed to want sex, constantly, irrelevant of anything else. If a gay man rapes a gay man, then how is that rape? They’re both men, they both want sex. If a woman rapes a man, then how is that rape? He’s getting laid, that’s not rape, right? If a gay man rapes a straight man…then there might be a slight outrage, because, well, homosexuality is bad and leads to sinners, this proves it. But in the end, the straight guy was probably a little bi-curious, otherwise he would have just fought him off. These are men we’re talking about.

Women get raped because they are weak and because they were asking for it.

Men are strong, they don’t get raped.

Everyone knows that.

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