Let’s Call It What It Is

“She wanted it.”

“She has a reputation of sleeping around.”

“He’s just a kid who made a mistake; it shouldn’t define his life.”

Those are just a few of the excuses I’ve come across on social media and in the comments section of news articles about rape. It’s time to face the fact that when rapists are humanized, we have crossed the line to becoming a rape culture. When every part of the victim’s life is picked apart and examined: their character, sexual history, attire and state of inebriation, it is time for us to take a hard look at who we are and who we want to be.

We’ve become accustomed to a certain type of response when the survivor is a woman. But when the survivor is a boy or man, the chatter is much different. It’s “congratulations” and figurative high fives, petty insults about not manning up, or simply dismissed because “real men don’t get raped”.

Regardless of the gender identification of the survivor, rape is often treated as though it’s no big deal at all. Too many critics minimize, justify and re-assign blame from the perpetrator to survivor. Judges excuse the actions of rapists while the media paints a glowing portrait. People hide behind their keyboard and attack the survivors of these heinous crimes. Herein lies the larger problem and its profound effect on the perception of rape and public conversation.

News organizations are using “gentler” language, such as “sexual assault”, to describe it. However, no amount of soft-peddling can diminish its lasting effects.

Let’s call it what it is: RAPE.

Indeed, there is something very wrong when rapists have their crime reduced to something more palatable while instantaneously stripping away the survivor’s dignity.

The normalization of sexual violence has infected every corner of our society to the point where more compassion is shown to the rapist than the survivor. If the rapist is a person of influence, a massive coverup ensues. Entitled people have failed to learn one of the basic tenets of respect: being a decent human being.

It! Has! To! Stop!

I wonder how many of these sympathizers are rapists themselves? Are survivors seen as nameless, faceless, bodiless vessels through which rapists display their domination? Because it’s hard to believe that any respectable person can, with a straight face, defend the indefensible.

I wonder what it will take for us to collectively say, “No More” and mean it? Do defenders need rape to personally touch someone they loved? Would the joking, minimizing, justifying, and re-assigning of blame then cease if the survivor was no longer reduced to a few adjectives in a news article? Would a front row seat make it more real?

“20 minutes of action” is only part of the story; the aftermath is omitted.

Survivors are left alone in the care of doctors and nurses who speak in hushed, sympathetic tones as they administer a rape kit. They are poked, prodded and scraped as evidence samples are taken from their body. Their most intimate parts are photographed and seen by many others; further humiliating them.

Survivors bear the external bruises, scratches and bumps for all to see. The physical wounds eventually fade, but the emotional ones remain.

A survivor’s life is forever changed, but they still forge ahead. Each day they bravely put one foot in front of the other, plaster a smile on their face and try to find a sense of normalcy. Years will pass and the survivor will build a life for themselves. It may not be the life they dreamed, but if they’re lucky, it will be filled with friendship, family and love. Their strength is admirable but in those quiet moments, they will relive that moment when all control was stripped from them. They question their own actions as it eats away at them from the inside out: Was it their fault? Did they lead them on? Why were they chosen?

Let’s have a real conversation about it.

As a collective, we have to do better. Be better. It’s not acceptable to temporarily raise our voice when a rapist is slapped on the wrist. For every instance of outrage, there are another 288,000 (one American every two minutes) anonymous men and women whose plight is met with silence. Rape is not a slow-rolling national issue, it is a full blown epidemic. If we continue to ignore statistics and the lives affected by this culture we created, it becomes not a question of if it will touch our lives, but a matter of when.