‘You took away my worth’: A sexual assault victim’s powerful message to her Stanford attacker
Katie Schwartz
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This story is so shocking and painful to read. The unfortunate truth is that men don’t seem to understand or view rape the way women do. I have found that one of the ways I try to communicate the unwanted, humiliating, life-threatening feelings that go along with rape is to try to get a straight man to imagine that a huge, muscular gay man in prison is threatening him with lewd, explicit gestures that convey the fact that the he will take him sexually by force and then, the man closes in on his prey and leaves blood, torn orifices, and deep emotional wounds. And this image, in my opinion, only gives men a small taste of the sheer horror involved in rape. We need to unite in using our voices online, in advocating new legislation, and more to say THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE!