I am over rape.
I am over rape culture, rape mentality, rape pages on Facebook.
I am over the thousands of people who signed those pages with their real names without shame.
I am over people demanding their right to rape pages, and calling it freedom of speech or justifying it as a joke.
I am over people not understanding that rape is not a joke and I am over being told I don't have a sense of humor, and women don't have a sense of humor, when most women I know (and I know a lot) are really fucking funny. We just don't think that uninvited penises up our anus, or our vagina is a laugh riot.
I am over how long it seems to take anyone to ever respond to rape.
I am over Facebook taking weeks to take down rape pages.
I am over the hundreds of thousands of women in Congo still waiting for the rapes to end and the rapists to be held accountable.
I am over the thousands of women in Bosnia, Burma, Pakistan, South Africa, Guatemala, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Afghanistan, Libya, you name a place, still waiting for justice.
I am over rape happening in broad daylight.
I am over the 207 clinics in Ecuador supported by the government that are capturing, raping, and torturing lesbians to make them straight.
I am over one in three women in the U.S military (Happy Veterans Day!) getting raped by their so-called "comrades."
I am over the forces that deny women who have been raped the right to have an abortion.
I am over the fact that after four women came forward with allegations that Herman Cain groped them and grabbed them and humiliated them, he is still running for the President of the United States.
And I'm over CNBC debate host Maria Bartiromo getting booed when she asked him about it. She was booed, not Herman Cain.
Which reminds me, I am so over the students at Penn State who protested the justice system instead of the alleged rapist pedophile of at least 8 boys, or his boss Joe Paterno, who did nothing to protect those children after knowing what was happening to them.
I am over rape victims becoming re-raped when they go public.
I am over starving Somalian women being raped at the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, and I am over women getting raped at Occupy Wall Street and being quiet about it because they were protecting a movement which is fighting to end the pillaging and raping of the economy and the earth, as if the rape of their bodies was something separate.
I am over women still being silent about rape, because they are made to believe it's their fault or they did something to make it happen.
I am over violence against women not being a #1 international priority when one out of three women will be raped or beaten in her lifetime -- the destruction and muting and undermining of women is the destruction of life itself.
No women, no future, duh.
I am over this rape culture where the privileged with political and physical and economic might, take what and who they want, when they want it, as much as they want, any time they want it.
I am over the endless resurrection of the careers of rapists and sexual exploiters -- film directors, world leaders, corporate executives, movie stars, athletes -- while the lives of the women they violated are permanently destroyed, often forcing them to live in social and emotional exile.
I am over the passivity of good men. Where the hell are you?
You live with us, make love with us, father us, befriend us, brother us, get nurtured and mothered and eternally supported by us, so why aren't you standing with us? Why aren't you driven to the point of madness and action by the rape and humiliation of us?
I am over years and years of being over rape.
And thinking about rape every day of my life since I was 5-years-old.
And getting sick from rape, and depressed from rape, and enraged by rape.
And reading my insanely crowded inbox of rape horror stories every hour of every single day.
I am over being polite about rape. It's been too long now, we have been too understanding.
We need to OCCUPYRAPE in every school, park, radio, TV station, household, office, factory, refugee camp, military base, back room, night club, alleyway, courtroom, UN office. We need people to truly try and imagine -- once and for all -- what it feels like to have your body invaded, your mind splintered, your soul shattered. We need to let our rage and our compassion connect us so we can change the paradigm of global rape.
There are approximately one billion women on the planet who have been violated.
ONE BILLION WOMEN.
The time is now. Prepare for the escalation.
Today it begins, moving toward February 14, 2013, when one billion women will rise to end rape.
Because we are over it.
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I am also over the idea that people are often considered guilty until proven innocent if they are accused of rape.
In a perfect world, nobody would lie about being raped. However, in a perfect world nobody would be raped either.
I was falsely accused of sexual assault when I was younger. It is something that caused me real emotional harm and has impacted me to this day. (And I was lucky, it never went to trial because her story was bogus).
So please remember that when someone is accused of rape that in this country they are considered to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Allow the justice system to do its job. And when someone is found guilty of a crime of sexual violence, throw the damned book at them because they deserve nothing less.
Thank you.
As everyone else on here has said, education is indeed the key, but it's going to require more than just the teachers. It's going to require all of us. It's going to require the lobbying of government to provide better educational packs for all teachers, parents, and guardians and better training in how to tackle this important subject. Above all it's going to require the initiative of some brave souls to hit home the message to everyone.
This still seems ridiculous to me, but the matter is not. I wish the greatest wish that my teacher back then had the means and the information to be able to sit us all down, look us in the eye and just tell us that there is no sensible definition of rape in law, but that that doesn't matter; that sex rather should be a matter of consent, free of distress, unwelcome violence, and negative feeling. I wish my teacher had said that we could all engage in sex if we so pleased, as long as we knew for sure the partner was as willing as us; that we practised safe-sex; and that we were able to stop sex at any time, free of guilt or shame...
Now I see rape everywhere, but it's still never discussed directly what it is or who is capable of it. I see it has become a 'joke' because of the very reason so many other things become jokes - because of the shock of its intrinsic 'taboo-value'. This never leads to more discussion on the subject, just young people like myself perpetuating vague views of rape - which in itself we would never want to commit, but we aren't truly aware of what we are supposed to be avoiding. It was only upon coming to university that I truly understood what rape was, thanks to the understanding explanation of my girlfriend. But that in itself came from her knowing exactly the sorts of boundaries that should be drawn with the importance of consent, and even then I will never know truly how a victim of rape feels.
Both her and I were the product of our times.
and can you also be over women "crying wolf" about rape? Probably the thing that hurts women the most in this respect is destruction of their credibility caused by the discovery of those who perpetrate falsehoods (Duke Lacross scandal)
Further, it should be remembered that often rape claims that are not investigated further by police can often be lumped in with truly false claims (depending on methodology), distorting actual numbers.
You are correct that rape claims not investigated should not be deemed to be false accusations. But false accusations do happen. I was a victim of one. I was very fortunate that it didn't go to court. However, it left me scarred for the rest of my life.
Now, any specific proposals ???