Rape is a dirty word.
Rape is a word we don't say....unless we're making a joke about it.
People scream 'rape' in high pitched giggling voices while being playfully tossed around by a friend.
But rape isn't funny.
Neither is the way we treat rape in this country.
Rape in America
April is Sexual Assault Awareness month. I doubt you know that...unless you know a survivor...or an activist. You might never have heard the term 'rape culture' used by someone in a sincere manner. You may not know anything about the rape laws in this country or the process that a victim goes through when reporting rape. You may have seen something on the news about a rape and felt pity for the victim. Then again you may be like the thousands of people who hear about rape and immediately ask what the victim was wearing. Or if she was drinking. Or if she was walking alone, late at night. You might not mean to do so, but in asking these questions...you are promoting 'rape culture'.
You see...in the United States there's this overwhelming idea that there is 'legitimate' rape. And we have this image of a masked villain who creeps up on unsuspecting virtuous women and robs them of their dignity. We think that if a woman is drinking then she was asking for it and if her skirt was too short she should have known better and that we shouldn't punish a young man for taking something he had no right to steal from a young woman because 'boys will be boys'. Don't believe me ? Ever heard of Steubenville? Oh right sorry...there a young woman was raped while she was unconscious by two athletes. They videotaped it and spread it on Twitter and other social media. Captioning the photos with 'drunk girl' and 'rape'. You'd think that this town would be unanimously disgusted and appalled right? Wrong. People stood up for these boys and said they should be given another chance. People humiliated and degraded the victim and her supporters. But would we give the same treatment if her rapists weren't popular athletes?
But that's isolated you say. Wrong again! Ever heard of international denim day? Oh sorry. Let me see...in a court case involving a rape trial, an Italian court ruled the sex must have been consensual because the victim wore tight jeans and her rapist could not have taken them off without her help and consent. I'll just let that sink in.
Rape in Media
So people think that rape is this big scary crime and we shouldn't talk about it. But look at the statistics. 1 in 4 girls will be sexually assaulted. 1 in 6 boys. You know someone who has been violated like this...even if you don't know you know. And they're not scared of some random stranger because unlike popular culture tells us, 7 out of 10 rapists will know their victim.
Recently, rape has become a popular storytelling device. Every fractured young heroine is the victim of a heinous sexual assault and only needs some bright, young, hero to save her. Rape gets the glossy hollywood treatment. Like it's something you can just get over by telling yourself you're okay, rather than the daily struggle to get out of bed and face the world. The same world that tells you it's your fault for being raped.
What about t.v and movies? There's a famous television show that is notorious for it's seedy plotlines. Game of Thrones is a study in depravity but at least they are honest about it. However, the April 20th episode pushed the bounds by changing a consensual sexual encounter from the books into a rape onscreen. The worst part of it is that the director was quoted as saying the encounter 'became consensual' by the end and the actor, when asked if it was rape said 'Yes and No' . Look...sex doesn't morph into rape or consent. It's one or the other. Yes means Yes and No means No. When the female character is saying "NO" three times and her rapist is saying "I don't care". When people commented on stories about it they called it 'aggresive seduction' . That's RAPE! For goodness sake if we can't even agree NO means NO all the time, we're going downhill in a hurry.
How am I supposed to tell my kids about this?
We spend an inordinately large amount of time in this country telling young women how to avoid being raped. Don't wear this. Don't walk here. Don't drink. Don't x, y and z. We tell people that other's sex lives aren't their concern. We don't ever tell our sons not to rape because we think if we raise them right that it will never happen. We think that rape is this black and white concept. But rape is complex. Consent is not.
I have a son. I have a daughter. I'm going to teach them both about rape. I'm going to teach them about consent. It kills me that I have to tell my daughter that people think if she dresses a certain way or isn't constantly on her guard that she will be a target for someone. It kills me that I'll have to tell my son that someone could do that to his sister. That more than likely, if it happened, that person would never see prison. But I have no shame in teaching my son what consent means. I have no shame in teaching him that he has a responsibility to himself and his future spouse and children. He has a responsibility to his friends and family to take a stand when we see situations that mean sexual assault can happen. It takes just one person standing up saying "This is NOT okay". Rape destroys people's lives. It takes one conversation to get consent. One question. "May I _____" . We teach that it's sexier to take first and assume that we have consent. We need to start having frank conversations about this. We need to teach our sons and daughters how to stand up for one another. We need to turn this thing around.
We need to change how we treat rape in this country.
Rape isn't funny.
Rape isn't a joke.
Rape isn't a dirty word. It's an act of power.
It's Rape.
