I’ll give you a hint, it’s not because of self respect.
If you aren’t on twitter (why aren’t you?) please understand that @iRespectFemales is the username that this young man has chosen for himself. Isn’t he adorable?
Today a woman is being raped, molested or harassed. Right now a woman is being disrespected or hurt. Please talk to your sons and daughters and let them know that it doesn’t have to be a reality, and that self respect has nothing to do with somehow earning abuse.
Why are women being raped? BECAUSE OF MEN WHO DON’T RESPECT THEM.
But at the same time a woman who has self respect is far less likely to be in a situation where those things happen. Environment contributes to stuff. NOT in a “you wore what?” way but in a “you went where with who and didn’t tell anyone?” way.
If we don’t look at that, we’ll just all live in a disney land where no one has to take responsibility and people can think they have bad luck when something happens for the fifth time. That’s fine for someone else, but not me.
TO BE CLEAR: Men who rape = evil. Fine in the last sentence above refers to thinking like a Disney character. Not to being raped or to rapists or anything else that is not “thinking like a Disney character”
I don’t think it is fair to qualify it that way. Bad things can happen any time and anywhere.
that is just about the most ludicrous statement i’ve ever heard regarding rape. jen, why don’t you tell women of all ages that they need to analyze the “situation” that they are in at every moment of every day and ask themselves if where they are makes a positive enough statement about their wealth or lack of self-respect. it doesnn’t matter where a woman goes. the bottom line is the same: nobody deserves to be raped. not a man. not a woman.
is it really your infantile perspective to think that rape is a “you went where with who and didn’t tell anyone?” situation? you are pathetic. absolutely fucking pathetic.
Who are the 100+ people who re-tweeted this? I’m disgusted.
Women are being raped because men are raping them. Let’s put the blame for violence on the perpetrator for a change, yes?
The majority of rapes don’t happen in dark alleys and crack houses. They don’t happen because a girl (or a boy) was stupid enough to take the right to safety granted. The cold statistics are that in *most* cases the perpetrators are known to their victims — rapists are family members, neighbors, friends of the family, dates. The stories that tend to get sensationalized, like the one about the 12 year old that was gang raped, tend to promote the kind of thinking in Jen’s comment as well as irespectfemale’s: That *most* tragedies are preventable, if only victims weren’t so blind/stupid/irresponsible and engaging in risky behavior.
I was raped at 10 by family “friends”, in their house, and then at 14 by another teen while on an river outing. Jen seems to want me to take responsibility for that — since it happened twice and all. I, however, put the blame–ALL of it– where it belongs. On the rapists.
I was date raped by my 16 year old boyfriend when I was 14 years old. I was not dressed improperly, I was not in a bad situation. I was at my boyfriend’s house. He had asked about sex previously and I said no. I was virgin. That did not fly with him and he raped me. So did I cause this myself? Was I “#SomeHoeSomewhere”? No, I wasn’t. I was a 14 year old teenager who was attacked and raped by a person I trusted. He was, and still is, a violent, woman hating person. The situation does not make the rape happen, the sick, violent person bent on getting his way no matter what, does.
There has never been a time in my life that I DIDN’T know the meaning of the word rape. Is this due to my fasion sense? No. It’s because I was raised by a woman who was raped while walking home from her father-in-law’s funeral in the 1940s. The rapist was a stranger. My whole life, I heard the fear of everything, and the monumental distrust that justifiably affects the victims of this crime, and I will tell you this: Any attempt to answer the premordial WHY rape happens is just our attempt to make sense of something that will NEVER make sense to reasonable minds. Rapists are violent sociopaths and bullies that have no regard for others, no empathy and want absolute control over their victims. They are parasitic and pathological. They manipulate and isolate in any way they can to get victims because in their minds, what they want is more important than anyting else. That’s it. Period. What a woman wears or where she was/is at the time is just a convenient alibi, made more convenient by the perceptions of women in society, and even mysogynistic women – some of whom are themselves rape victims. These women will spout the antiquated shoulds for the female gender because they want to make sense of the senseless, and find a way to believe that this will never happen again. The rapist has nothing but contempt for those who seek to understand it, because it will not reason. This horrific agenda is only reinforced by victims who blame themselves trying to make sense of it. Victims of this crime have been/are being brutalized by a filthy thief of dignity; someone whose mind twisted long before they decided to wear a short skirt, or walk home alone from a funeral.
My prayer is for the victims/survivors of rape, their wholeness and restoration.
Big blessings,
Arkayevans on Twitter / Facebook