Why We Need To Talk About Rape
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Why We Need To Talk About Rape

We cannot continue to live in a world that accepts sexual violence.

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Why We Need To Talk About Rape
Daily Dot

Before I delve into this subject, let me briefly offer a trigger warning: this article is going to talk about rape. I am not going to sugarcoat anything and this will not be a fun read, but it will be provocative and it will be educational. That being said, I hope you will keep reading, because your comfort is not my concern right now. My concern is the comfort of those who have had the right to their bodies taken away by another human being, and I think this should be your concern, too.

Let’s start by defining what a rapist is. A rapist is someone who rapes other people. That is it: the sole definition of a rapist, written in eight words. It seems simple, doesn’t it? A rapist is someone who rapes people. Not five times, not “several,” just once. It only takes one rape to make someone a rapist, just like it only takes one murder to make someone a murderer. There are no other specifications for being a rapist, all you have to do is rape someone at any point in your life and that makes you a rapist.

Carrying on with these rather remedial definitions, I will offer you another simple definition of what the word "rape" means. Rape is an act committed by rapists, in which one person has sex without the other’s consent. There are no asterisks’ or footnotes specifying the circumstances: what she was wearing, what he was drinking, what time of night it was, etc. Rape is sex without consent—period. There is no such thing as consensual sex; it is a concept that simply does not exist. Sex and consent go hand in hand, just as holding your breath and swimming do. If you have sex without consent, that is called rape, and if you swim without holding your breath, that is called drowning.

We live in a society that is still somehow confused as to what makes a rapist and what constitutes rape, but as a female with experience being a female, I’m here to solve the confusion. The attitude towards rape in our society is absolutely abhorrent, and it shocks and appalls me every day that for people who claim to be so progressive and intelligent that we still cannot find solutions to these problems.

Why can we, as people, not see the error in our humanity that allows people to think that they can misuse another person’s body for their own sexual pleasure? How can we even begin to explain to those who do not understand the absolute death of soul that occurs after one is raped? Someone who has been raped has had a piece of them taken away that they can never get back. Another human being has stripped them of their right to decide what happens to their own body. For the rest of their lives, they will have to live knowing that people can do that to them. That they are not safe, that their voices do not matter to some. What they want to happen to them does not matter, because someone was bigger and stronger than them.

This is a topic that NEEDS to be discussed. Dialogue is constructive; communication is necessary to move forward. We need to address why as a society we feel comfortable living among rapists and living in a world where rape is even an entity to be known. This is a fundamental error in humanity: humans are inherently moral beings. We need guidelines explaining to us what is right and wrong, and we have endlessly created systems that aim to provide a framework for what we consider to be right. We want to do what is right, and yet here we are, continuing to do something that is innately wrong.

We live in a society where it is deemed ok that some humans strip other humans of their rights simply for sexual pleasure. That is wrong. There is neither a singular argument that can be made, nor will there ever be an argument discussing the pros of being raped. There is not a single benefit. It is a horrible thing that we do to one another, and we have allowed this to continue with no actual punishment or remorse for these actions. Our society is like a parent that refuses to discipline its children, so the child just learns to be even worse and perpetuates this same negative behavior.

No one wants to have this conversation, but none of us wanted to have to have this conversation either. You don’t want to talk about rape because it makes you uncomfortable to think about, but it is something that happens, and you know what, rape makes people uncomfortable. The survivors of rape have been systemically silenced every day of their lives to protect the comfort of those people who have stripped these same survivors of their own comfort. There is no tangible way to fix the damage that has been done; there is no way to make me feel safe when I am walking down the street without the company of someone bigger than me.

Every time I meet someone that is physically stronger than me, I am forced to hope that they will not hurt me or take advantage of me, because they absolutely could if they wanted to. I always have to be 100% conscious of my surroundings, because at any moment, another human being could decide that they want to use my body for themselves, and I cannot stop them. Every day, I have to trust that other humans will not hurt me, knowing full well that they can and that they have. We need to talk about this; we need to talk about the ways in which we silence survivors of rape and the constant battle that they fight every day to trust other human beings in spite of being irreparably betrayed by them. Rape happens. It happens between couples that claim to love one another; it happens between strangers, it happens between all kinds of people. And these same people refuse to talk about it because it’s an uncomfortable topic, because it makes people feel guilty and frustrated, but so does rape.

Would you like to know what’s more uncomfortable than talking about rape? Having another person on top of you who is entering your body without your permission. That’s a little bit more uncomfortable, in my opinion. So stop complaining about your feelings of guilt or you discomfort. You are allowed to feel those things; it is part of the human experience. Part of our consciousness is realizing that the world is not a perfect place and we are not perfect creatures. But we can be better; we can do better as humans. We can talk about it; we can collectively find ways to stop these atrocities from happening. We can, as a whole, join together and address all of the issues that make human beings uncomfortable. We are the only ones who can stop the cycle, and we owe it to those people who have been raped to fight for the rights that have been taken from them, the same way we owe it to ourselves to help anyone in need, from rape survivors to anyother group that has been ostracized or hurt.

It is our duty to protect one another, to make sure that all of us are surviving. Humans are not individuals; we are not independent and self-sufficient islands. We are a part of something greater, we are each tiny cells that make up a whole body, and we are letting that body die by ignoring the problems that plague us. Why do we place more important things over other human beings comfort and happiness? Isn’t the goal of our existence to be happy, to not cause suffering to ourselves or to others? Isn’t it time we stop harming each other, not just in terms of rape, but also in terms of everything that we do?

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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