This post is serious. Seriously.
I’m sick of a few things in life: pink popped-collar shirts on grease balls with spiky over-gelled hair, feeling like I’m broke every time I go to pump gas, and rape. I’m not trying to make light of rape, I’m just saying that I have a personal vendetta out against all of these things. The first two are a little over-the-top, but rape has managed to go down as the #1 thing I would love to see disappear from this world.
I know this is an older topic, but something happened this week and I have to vent. Before this week I could have made a list of10 of my female friends that had been raped or sexually assaulted – now its 11.
It isn’t right that so many young women are having their lives messed up by sexual attacks.
The whole problem isn’t just with the act of rape but with the events and thought patters before and after the action takes place. There are so many misconceived notions that leave the woman feeling even more abused and the men feeling as if it were almost acceptable to do:
“She was asking for it.”
“She must have done something to egg him on.”
“She shouldn’t have been wearing that.”
“She shouldn’t have been there.”
What about him?
Something has taught him that it is alright to force himself on a women. Something has taught him that “no” really means: “I want your scummy, disgusting, vile prick in me against my will.” Yeah, it’s that nasty.
After this week I feel like it’s not only a messed up mind that accounts for this twisted act. That can’t be it. I’m convinced that the young man that took advantage of one of my friends was a porn addict. I knew him. I knew he had a huge pornography collection. I would dare to bet my life savings that a good percentage of the pornography he watched had depictions of rape and other violent sexual acts in them. He watched and learned, and thought it was fine to do.
His sick mind and pornography addiction changed my friend’s life forever. She was a very innocent girl too. I hope he gets serious jail time and some shocking experiences in the slammer.
There’s my heart poured out again. Anger is a good tool for writing.
Does anyone have any similar experiences with friends being raped? How did you deal with it?
April 13, 2006 at 8:55 pm
I’m a group therapist in a residential treatment centre. In fact, my work over the past year has been in the women’s centre. I would say that about 98% of all the women have had some form of sexual assault perpetrated on them – some from as early as two years old (I’ve also heard 8 months old). I’m always astonished at the experiences these women have had.
Rapes are perpetrated by men who are in fact boys – often times (but not always) brutalized boys who are passing on the experience. I say this not to diminish their barbarity of their crime but to alert us men to the need to help these men-children grow up. I find that we men do not have a healthy view on what it means to be a man. Often our view is a pathological one; a view in which we do not know how much masculinity is enough – and with it we smear the world around us. I’m simultaneously outraged and saddened by the number of sexual assaults that occur around us. In times past men were hung for rape.
I wish you well on your blog. And I hope your friend gets the help she needs.
April 20, 2006 at 11:54 pm
I wish your friend the best during her recovery (both physically and emotionally). Thankfully neither I nor any of my close female friends have been raped. I think of it as a vile, disgusting act of power-starved emotional/mentality stunted men. These men are basically grasping for any source of power and they feel the need, not for sexual gratification (that is a bonus – not the source of motivation), but for the ability to extert (or lord) power over anything that they feel they can control. Unfortunantly, that tends to be innocent women. =(. I suggest that your female friends read the book called “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin de Becker…
May 22, 2006 at 4:46 pm
I personally believe that violent/rape porn MUST be banned by authorities. There’s nothing wrong with ‘normal’ porn (if there’s such naming) or adult erotica, but RAPE PORN?!! How the hell is that allowed? It really does corrupt.
June 21, 2006 at 1:48 pm
II am so sorry to hear about your friends, I hope all of them are doing well. There are some studies that do show what you have mentioned in your article. They have found that pornography addicts only get worse and worse until some of them get to the point they have to act sexual things out to get their “fix”. I have a more direct quote on my web page at http://www.personalandlifecoach.com/