What Your Rape Does to the Rest of Us
What your rape did to her was change her entire life. It took her apart, piece by piece; it took away everything she’d ever known and forced her to make something new, and the only choice it gave her was how broken or strong or terrible or better she wanted that thing to be. And then it let her make that choice over and over again, every day, for the rest of her life. What your rape did was destroy her and force her to rebuild herself as best she can and it’s never going to let her do anything else.
What your rape did to the rest of us was leave us in fucking tears on our bedroom floors, on our living room couches, sitting at our desks in the middle of the places where we work. What your rape did to the rest of us was take us apart and show us what we have on the inside: every fear, every night terror that wakes us, every shadow in a parking lot that makes our heart beat too fast and our palms come over sweaty. What your rape did to the rest of us was ruin our fucking day.
What your rape did to the rest of us was force us to relive the worst moments of our lives, of our sisters’ lives, of our mothers’ and grandmothers’ lives, of our friends’ lives, of their mothers’ and grandmothers’ and aunts’ and cousins’ lives. What your rape did was remind us that we are not safe and that we’ll never really be safe — that luck is “he didn’t rape me” and bad luck is the thing most of us have most of the time. What your rape did was what all the other rapes do: remind us that we get raped.
Your rape wasn’t special. Your rape is a cog in the wheel that keeps turning over us, grinding us down into whatever the next thing we decide “women” will be is. Too slutty, too drunk, too confused, asking for it. Your rape makes us those things. Your rape makes us wrong so you can be right. Your rape makes us too careless so you can be safe. Your rape takes our lives away from us so yours can be more important.
When I said, “What your rape did to the rest of us,” you thought I meant her rape. You thought I was talking to her, didn’t you? You think rapes belong to victims, but they don’t. We didn’t ask for them, and we don’t want them. You can have them back. They’re all yours. Rapes belong to the perpetrators. You create them from nothing. I repeat, nothing: not from alcohol, or a short skirt, or a flirtatious glance, or a moment at a party. You create rapes from nothing, so they’re all yours.
Your rape was just like all the other ones. It wasn’t special and neither are you. Your rape was just like every other one that ruined our day, ruined our lives, took us apart and forced us to be different — and when we can — better. Your rape was just one more that’s forcing us to build the world we need to live in, and let me be clear: you’re going to fucking hate it there.
You know what your rape did? It marked the next point on the map we’re following to that better world like a constellation marks the directions we run towards freedom. Someday when you don’t recognize the world anymore, remember that. You made us better, and someday, we’re going to use it to bury you.
