Let me tell you a little story. There was a little girl sitting alone in the corner during her classes, scared of boys, scared of people, because of one traumatic moment. She asked herself, “was it my fault?”
That girl is now in high school. She thought she was free, but no. The culture still surrounds her. The day #ItAintRape started trending on Twitter, she asked herself again, “was it my fault?” The post taunted her with words like, “it ain’t rape if she’s cute,” and, “it ain’t rape if she’s wearing shorts above the knee.” That girl on that traumatic day was wearing shorts above the knee. So what? Now it wasn’t rape?
That same girl picks up a razor and slides it across her wrists. Blood is washing down across her fingertips now. Blood that somebody could have stopped if they had stood up for her. If they had told her it was all going to be okay. If justice was spreading instead of mocking.
There’s a boy who looks in the mirror and stares back at himself. “It ain’t rape if she’s flirting,” the words repeat in his mind from something one of his friends from class posted on their Twitter wall. He feels excluded. Yet another time he is not mentioned or thought of. She. All the posts were about a ‘she.’ He lies down and cries himself to sleep, facing his tormentors in his dreams all over again.
Another young woman sees the posts, her hands starting to shake with anxiety. She thought she was at an age where people stood up for the right things. The post, “it ain’t rape if she’s drunk,” disgusts her more than all of them. She was drunk. She looks over at her child with loving eyes. Who knew something so beautiful could be born out of such a traumatic experience? She vowed that she would teach her daughter to carry pepper spray and send her to classes to be a blackbelt, because all these posts just proved to her that the world is not as safe as she had hoped.
Calm down! Chill. It’s just a joke, man. Don’t take it so seriously. These are words these kids here everyday for standing up against rape culture. If that doesn’t disgust you, something is wrong here. If you say, “it doesn’t affect me personally, so I don’t care,” well think, what if one of your best friends was raped? What if your children were? It might not concern you now, but it could someday. Maybe it won’t, but by turning a blind eye to the situation you are basically saying rape is not a big deal. Go ahead! Rape again. I’ll pretend I didn’t see it. I got your back, bro.
Since when did rape become a trend instead of a tragedy? The victim’s first response to rape is not to blame the abuser, but to blame themselves. Society has taught people that it is their fault because of the clothes they wear or the flirts they give. People more often than not mourn for the dead future of the rapist rather than the graveyard growing inside of the victim.
This should sicken you. You should no longer turn a blind eye to jokes and act as if they are harmless when it could be tearing someone up. Don’t tell them to ignore it. A trigger isn’t something that’s easy to ignore, just ask that little girl with blood on her hands and mistrust for everyone she meets.