When you hear the word "rape," where does your mind go? Does it go to "Law and Order: SVU" marathons with women jogging through Central Park with the fog creeping around the bushes, hiding from their soon-to-be attackers? Do you think of dark alleys and a girl strolling down a city street at night?
While these are fine representations of the way women are constantly in danger of being attacked out in public, the FCC thankfully pulls the curtain on the repulsive scene. The audience gets a screen that fades to black and the opening theme begins to play, giving them an opportunity to check their phones or grab snacks. True victims of rape don't get a chance. They don't get a break. They get brutally assaulted in a way that will alter their lives forever, and then they get blamed.
Every two minutes an American is sexually assaulted. In the time it takes you to brush your teeth or comb your hair, someone will be scarred forever by the betrayal of a loved one or the invasion of a stranger.
Sex is a deeply intimate thing. It's personal and requires vulnerability and trust between two people. When one rapes another they crawl into that space of intimacy like a rat: an uninvited, creepy vermin. They are worthless and they are dirty and no matter how much the victim does to forget they will always have this horrible event in their past.
The only thing more sickening than such an ugly, violent act is the ugly, violent treatment of the survivors of sexual assault. Our culture has formed around treating these people like they are less than because something horrible was done to them.
"What were you wearing?"
"Were you drunk?"
"Were you flirting with him/her?"
All these idiotic questions are an act of hate against survivors. No one is "asking for it." No matter how short my skirt, low cut my blouse or high my heels, nothing I'm wearing is declaring that I want to be physically assaulted and painfully violated in a way that will alter my way of living forever.
My drinks don't come with a little umbrella that says "I want to wake up confused and scared and not feel at home in my own body."
If you think you have a right to pass judgement on a person who has been through such an ordeal, you are as ignorant as the monsters that think they have the right to anyone's body but their own. You perpetuate the suffering. You are a part of the problem.