Time comes to step up and do something.

We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?
  - Ray Bradbury

I was talking to my mother today about a horrible trial I read about. ( Possibly triggering text... )

People seem to think that the only kind of rape that's a real rape is the kind of rape you might see in a movie or on TV. Woman walking alone on a dark night, gets grabbed by a stranger and taken by force, raped, and then the stranger runs off into the night.

The thing is, though, is that this doesn't happen most of the time when it comes to real rape cases. Most of the time when a woman is violated by someone they know, they don't immediately realise what has happened and usually if anyone is punished by the horrifying event, it's the woman.

The horrible truth is that after something like that happens to you, you're in shock. Hell, WHILE it's happening to you, you're in shock. The realisation comes out in painful bursts of shame in days and months to come. It's hard enough to even admit that it happened to you, let alone overcome the guilt that consumes you and realise that it's not your fault.

How can hey expect a woman, in the throes of both pain and -yes- betrayal (it was someone they knew, someone they trusted!), to be entirely logical hours or even days after such an event? This serial rapist I mentioned avoided jail because the women had shown some sexual interest in him before the rape had occurred.

How wrong is this? How wrong is all of it? It happens to women all the time. After I had my horrible experience, I didn't stay quiet, mainly because telling every fucking soul I knew was my way of coping, of saying to the world "Hey, this happened and it's NOT my fault". Because of my behaviour, a lot of women I knew and loved quietly came forward to me and admitted that they had been hurt. I would say that 95 percent of the women that spoke to me did NOT report their abuse. They keep silent. They feel ashamed.

Society keeps on going on and people keep blaming the victim. It goes hand-in-hand with the sort of quiet sexism that is rife in today's society. The kind of quiet sexism that nobody talks about, and if they do, they get chided and called a "feminazi" by people of either sex. I said something today to my mother that I wish I could stand on a fucking stage with a PA and say to thousands of people.

I don't think there is some vast organised male conspiracy to keep women down. It's much worse than that, far more frightening. It's nothing but the institutionalised acceptance of sexism, ingrained into every person from birth and the quiet, horrible victimisation of our bright, vibrant, beautiful women is a heinous symptom of a deep and crippling problem.

Women are expected to keep quiet, to be accountable for their own safety, to never get drunk, never be vulnerable, never be confused or tired or trusting. Never make friends, never smile at a man, never explore their sexualities, never be sexy in public. In the eyes of so many people, it is always the woman's fault.

I was able to speak out about what happened to me. I was able to grapple the horrible problem, look at it face-on and say "I am not a victim anymore. I am strong and brave and I am not blaming myself anymore. I'm not suffering anymore because I didn't do anything to deserve suffering." (Though we will suffer to the day we die, no doubt).

I wish, more than anything else, that I could find the women too afraid to speak and tell them that it's okay to talk, it's okay to be angry, it's okay to rage and demand justice. That they don't have to feel ashamed. I want all the women to be able to do what I did. I want them to speak out.

I want to walk together with these strong, remarkable people and I want us to say to the world, "We aren't victims. We're survivors, and it's time to stop making excuses for the ones that hurt us."

It's more than justice that is needed in this problem. It's a need for education. People need to KNOW. People need to understand that it's not the woman's fault. They need to see that a woman can't control how others feel about her just as a man can't control what women feel about him. They need to be ingrained, from birth, NOT that it's foolish for a woman to live comfortably in the world she's been born into but that it's foolish and WRONG for a man to think he can force himself upon a woman and that he has a right to do so.

I have a mind, I have hands, I have skills. I want to put them to use, to help women somehow. I just don't know how to do it. I'll find a way to do it though. Even if it's doing drawings for leaflets and flyers or writing short stories or comics that might make a person feel better after suffering an abuse. I remember waiting in the waiting room of the Sexual Assault Resource Centre, reading leaflets desperately, hoping there was something that could put words to my overwhelming pain. Even finding LJ groups days later on the internet was helpful for me.

If I can help just one woman, just one, then all my pain and heartbreak would BE for something. Some good would have come of it and it would have meant that I'd defeated the demons of self-doubt and loathing. And better than that, much better than anything it could do for me, is that another woman would be free of the guilt. That horrible, terrible guilt that comes far too automatically.

Am I too idealistic? Am I a crazy woman for wanting to do this? Do I care? *laughs* I get laughed at a lot for my idealism and my optimism, but I tell you, I'd rather be idealistic, try to improve the world and fail than apathetic and let the world go on in its horribleness.

(And never has my icon been more appropriate).