During the spring of 2016, one of my fellow Odyssey writers at our university branch wrote an incredibly revealing article. Hannah Wise's article, "She Didn't Say No Enough" outlined an attempted rape of her friend that occurred on on my campus and the outlandish ways in which the university dealt with the proceedings after.
When this article began trending around my campus, it was clear that most students were greatly affected by the writing. Hannah spoke of the terrible truth that lays within university administrations when rape and sexual assault are brought forward. Her article sparked a lot of discussion and even gave way to the start of sexual assault awareness groups and peaceful marches against the university's policies.
My friends and I were not safe from these discussions. Being young women on a college campus can be scary, and we would sometimes discuss the article and the university's way of dealing with such serious matters.
Not long after Hannah's article surfaced, a friend and I held a discussion of rape culture while on our way to grab a bite to eat. What we learned about each other that evening was scary.
I told her about my own "rape plan," a mental plan of what I would do if I were to be raped; the plan consists of who I would call to take me to a hospital, who I would notify thereafter, and how I would tell my family. My friend revealed that she had a very similar "rape plan" as well. We had created these plans in our mind long before the article had ever surfaced, but had only now just opened up and revealed such a dark area of our minds to each other.
When we learned that the other had a plan of action come assault, we were baffled and exclaimed something along the lines of how-shitty-it-is-to-have-to-think-this-way.
But that's the truth of the matter: we do have to think this way.
As young women in a culture that only taps the hands of rapists, in a culture that shames the victims of sexual assault, in a culture where victims rarely voice their assault because it doesn't even seem worth it to fight in the courts -- what other choice do we have but to create plans of how to help ourselves?
And what was worse was that our plans didn't even involves ways of fighting off the attacker; it was only an after-the-fact kind of plan, as if there was no way to even fathom getting away from or stopping the assault.
What my friend and I realized that night is if we both have "rape plans," many other women likely have plans as well. How many other women are moving onto campus soon, packing their belongings, saying goodbye to Mom & Dad, and oh yeah, creating a plan of how to help themselves after they've been raped?
We shouldn't have to create a rape plan. We shouldn't have to be afraid to walk across campus at night. We shouldn't have to feel afraid to walk on the left side of the salad bar because the entire football team sits on that side and we know what they say as we walk by.
We shouldn't live in a society where a rapist can go without punishment for his crime and be free to sit in the same classroom as his victim.
But we do.
And I honestly don't know if we will ever see a society that changes. I mean, humanity has been around for thousands of years, and it has yet to change. I wish I had hope for the future, but hope can be so exhausting when progress is rarely made. It feels like as a sex we women have been wishing, wanting, and waiting for change that will never come.
But that doesn't mean we'll stop. We'll still picket and protest, even if we do have to make mental plans during the process.
