Look around

I have taken a hiatus of sorts again—wasn’t planned—I stepped away from the usual everyday things and spent some time with myself. I like doing that to see where I am exactly. I used to stick to a rigid schedule—a timetable for everything.

 

I believe in speaking out when I see things. That is who I am. I am making progress in taking control of certain areas of my life. We say that half of the battle is in our minds and it is—sometimes I think it is more than half. I am still an activist for certain causes—I don’t think that will change. I have become more vocal but I try to choose my battles and make them few. One area I see as a problem is what we call rape. When I wrote about my coming forward and reaching out to get help recently, I had no idea of the magnitude that rape plays in today’s society as in how much it is in the public eye and how prevalent it really is. I had not heard what all was going on at universities across our nation. There have been incidents of rape on college campuses for years. This includes date rape if you are wondering. These attacks have gone mostly unreported and are still under-reported in my view—I didn’t report my incident that happened on a college campus—I wasn’t raped that time but I was taken advantage of and was almost assaulted by someone I did not know. It should have been reported. I should have done that and given an account of what happened but I was scared just like girls AND guys today are scared to come forward. It isn’t easy to do the right thing because when something happens to you, you become the center of attention for something that is horrible and people will blame ‘you.’

 

I hope to write a more in-depth post later about a certain woman who appeared on CNN to talk about rape and how she blamed the “victims.” This is why I didn’t report the second incident when I was sexually assaulted. In her eyes, I wasn’t raped. It didn’t matter that I have suffered from it and that it was forced—and I did not give consent. I fought off the person as best I could but I was unsuccessful. In her eyes, I should have just said, “No.” I cannot believe I heard the things that came out of her mouth but this will wait until another time.

 

Another situation that has been discussed in the news is about women having to get permission from the father to have an abortion…I’m not addressing ‘right to life’ or abortion—we all have our views and that’s fine. However, when interviewed about the bill, the sponsor was critical of women who have been subjected to domestic abuse and said they must get permission from their abuser and possible rapist. If that’s not a bunch of horse hooey I don’t know what is. He said an abortion should happen only when the mother’s life is in danger or when it is a “legitimate” rape. People believe crazy things like that a woman’s body will not allow her to get pregnant if she is “really” raped…that’s about the biggest pile of malarkey I have ever heard. There are plenty of cases this happens where the woman gets pregnant. If she gets pregnant, does that mean it wasn’t a ‘real rape?’ I have some beach front property I would like to sell if you believe this. These people must have flunked biology or something because it only takes an egg and one sperm to make a zygote that leads to a baby, yada, yada. I thought that was simple biology.

 

I can weigh in on the topic of rape because whether someone believes I was attacked or not, I was legitimately attacked–taken advantage of. Both were scary incidents and the second one still gives me nightmares. There are other times that have scared me but sexual assault is something that doesn’t go away easily. Can you imagine being a woman who has been raped? That’s enough to try to deal with but what happens when you get pregnant by someone who raped you? The abortion bill that was to be decided would require her to PROVE that a LEGITIMATE rape happened–their words. I don’t know about you but if you attack me and I get pregnant—you have no rights to anything about me, my body, children, babies, nothing! You don’t get that right. You gave that up when you took advantage of me. This is where my mom would begin her talk about her belief of sterilization/castration for men who rape 😀 😀 😀 . I carry a lot of my mom in me–both humor and being very serious at times. 😉 I’m so glad she never knew. 🙂

 

“Candle” by Shawn Carpenter (link) via flickr

[Terms of Use – Creative Commons (link) – no changes]

 

I am a survivor. I’m not a victim. I have been victimized many times but in the end, I survived and I am still surviving. To tell me that people who are sexually assaulted against their will are not victims or have not been victimized…that is wrong…terribly wrong. My heart cries out when those who stand up and call people liars because those people have suffered so greatly. Who are we to allow such?

 

Look around. What do you see? I still see inequality in so many areas and it stems out of lack of respect for each other. To think I was raped 25 years ago and didn’t come forward because I was scared people would say exactly what that woman on CNN said—that’s a quarter of a century later! We have made leaps and bounds of progress in other areas. Please don’t put us back to prehistoric times. Support survivors whether it is with grief, assault, all types of survivors…illness…PTSD…we need to stand together and not apart. And, please stop this thing about legitimate rape. Rape is rape—forced assault—someone taken advantage of. You can spray cans of sanitizer and perfume and whatever—it doesn’t change the fact of what happened. Reliving that horrid experience over and over is bad enough but making women feel insignificant and without control is not acceptable. After all, that is what sexual assault is about—someone taking from another so that they have control–they want to make the other one weaker.

 

Let’s support survivors and stop victimizing them. 🙂