Trigger Warning: Rape

[alexandraerin]

I talk about rape because rape is still misunderstood, even by those who have experienced it. Because when we don't hear real details of actual sexual assaults, we are forced to believe the presiding cultural narrative, which is that rape is something only perpetrated by strangers with guns and knives. We want rape to be scary and foreign, a stranger jumping out of the bushes, because if it looked familiar, like our own boyfriends and sons, how would we keep going?

We want it to happen to drunk girls or slutty girls or girls who were somewhere they shouldn't be because the alternative is that it can happen to any girl. That it could happen to us. But the other side of that is that when it does happen to us, we don't recognize it. We poke holes in our own experiences, make up reasons why it was our own damn fault.

I talk about rape so that I can say, "I was drunk" or "I wanted to kiss him, but not to have sex with him," or "I was on a date with him" or "I wanted the sexual attention but not the sex" or "I had an orgasm" or "I didn't scream or kick." I can say all those things, and still call it what it is.

-"Why I Talk About Rape"