Here is the it of it:
I believe almost every woman in America has either been sexually misused or is close to a woman who has.
I, myself, know more women who have been raped, molested, or sexually abused, than women who have not.
We are full of rage.
This isn’t even about abortion anymore. This is about the basic disregard for a life changing trauma that happens to far too many women. It is not something to be waived off or made small.
Years later I still think about that girl many times a week. No one can hold a sobbing, bleeding, 15 year old girl and not understand how heinous rape is.
Yes, women heal and move on. They choose to live and try to thrive. Every woman who has been raped or sexually abused I know carries deep emotional scars. Some have buried them so deep, they are like lava waiting to consume anyone who taps too deep. Some have done a better job building around those scars, but all of them have scars. Just because a woman wasn’t outwardly destroyed, it doesn’t mean they weren’t changed forever.
“Forcible rape” is bullshit. What? Now we have levels of rape? Is it some how less of a rape if a woman was a little drunk, or if she knew the man, or even if she was married to him? Did their ‘no’ mean less?
These women aren’t asking for a goddamn medal, they are asking for sympathy and justice. They don’t want special privileges. They want to be treated with the respect they deserve. If you can’t understand these very simple concepts, then maybe you should keep your mouths shut, and you certainly shouldn’t be trying to write legislation on something you clearly don’t understand.
We are full of rage.
If you can’t respect our abilities to love and nurture through the bullshit and the abuse, maybe you should at least fear our rage.
3 comments
If men and boys were raped and assaulted as frequently as women, there would be no war on women. There would be a war on all rapists and abusers (and priests.) I don’t recall having ever heard a man being blamed as victim or bringing it on himself or the rape of a man being described as “legitimate”. That said, if men could become pregnant from rape or any other activity, the political landscape would be completely different. Somehow their orifices are sacred but ours aren’t????
I was just writing about this very topic this morning. I was musing about why women, as the majority of citizens in this country, are allowing any of this (the juggernaut against women by our politicians). I think even more than rage we are filled with shame. Because yes, almost every woman I know has been raped or sexually misused. The lucky few who have thus far escaped this experience have either experienced slut-shaming or self-shaming for not living up to the nearly impossible physical goals the media convinces us we need to achieve.
We are all so full of shame, misplaced shame and it is that very shame that is keeping us down and holding us back and keeping us quiet while our legislators take away our rights to self-determination of our own bodies. We need to overcome the shame if we are to take back control of our dignity, our lives, our very bodies.
And so today, I am giving up the shame I’ve carried since I was raped as a 13 year old virgin. I am putting that shame where it belongs, on to my male rapist. I hope every woman out there will do the same with their shame.
Refuse to carry that misplaced shame any longer, and then let’s see what we can accomplish.
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You are absolutely right about shame, and I’m proud of you. I was one of the lucky few who hasn’t been sexually abused in any form, but I was in an emotionally abusive relationship, and the shame was overwhelming. One day I broke and wrote about it here, and it changed me completely. It empowered me. Shame is useless and destructive. The sad thing is we are shaming each other. We need to figure out how to stop. All human need to stop shaming and hating.