You Dick

     So that was me being polite. Restrained. Thoughtful. Here’s where it’s all going to get a bit more visceral, and sweary and rantblogging because for fuck’s sake, what is wrong with people like that? Look, here.

Apparently, being dateraped isn’t the same as being raped at knifepoint. Perhaps we should just come up with a sliding scale of severity of rape, shall we? Decide who has it worst. I can’t lay claim to being as wonderfully clever and academic as the sainted Dawkins, but I can make a fair stab at guessing that from his point of view, he’d agree with George Galloway that once you’re in bed with someone, consent is no longer an issue, so that’s the ‘least bad’ form. So Julian Assange can stop gibbering away in the Ecuadorean embassy, because basically, those women in Sweden are a pair of troublemakers, nothing more.

     Then date rape – not a big deal, apparently. It’s the ‘violent’ rape at knifepoint that’s really bad. That’s good to know. I think I get it. It’s not the fear, it’s not the horror of the situation, it’s not the fact that you are being violated, it’s not the memories, it’s not how it will fuck you up for years to come, it’s not that you’ll get triggered, sometimes in the most terrifying and unexpected ways, it’s none of that, no. It’s nothing to do with your feelings, how you will struggle to trust people, how you will blame yourself, how you will think that other people blame you. It’s not the ‘what ifs’ that will keep you awake. It’s not the times people ask you why you didn’t scream, or fight back. It’s not the times you feel ashamed when you enjoy having sex, when you feel sickened that you’re attracted to someone. It’s not when you doubt every single thing about yourself, and believe that you are as worthless as that man made you feel. It’s not the anxiety that eats away inside you. It’s not how you fuck up relationships because you can’t cope. It’s not how you feel. It’s not about you.

     It’s about ranking things. Neatly ticking off little boxes. Were there threats? Violence? How the fuck can anyone think like that? How you dispassionately decide that something you know nothing about, nothing of the after effects, nothing of the emotional trauma, how can you say ‘X is bad. But Y is worse.’ It’s not that simple. Truly. I wish it fucking was. But there’s no way to measure up how someone is left feeling. And then to compound the arrogance, the lack of empathy, the sheer fucking nastiness of telling rape victims that they need to learn how to think. Well, how about you listen first? How about you hear what people are telling you? That it’s not just how/where/when you’re raped. It’s what it does to you. But perhaps that’s a bit too complicated for A Clever Person to understand. I guess for some, you reach a level of intelligence where emotions are just pesky things that the thickos, the hysterics, the great unwashed indulge in. Whereas Dick can instead sit on high and pronounce upon issues like rape. I can almost picture him with his gavel, weighing it all up and then handing down his sentence. And if we dare to question the reasoning, we should be so very ashamed. And learn how to think, apparently.

     Tell you what, Dick. I’ll learn how to think. You learn how to fucking feel. Then get back to me.