Silence is Consent
A friend of mine tonight told me that she thinks killing dogs is worse than killing humans or raping women. She says women aren't defenseless but dogs are.
She's said other things about rape that make me furious, but since she has been a survivor herself, I have tried to deal with it. But, tonight, she went so far as to say a woman who drops a rape case, such as the victim in the Kobe case did after internationally being called a gold digging whore for months while she's dealing with PTSD.
I left the coffee shop as she screamed at me because I told her she was a self loathing and ignorant person who is as bad as a rapist. I did turn and tell her "fuck you" and keep going. This is a major step for me.
She is also has a friend who is friends with the girl who tricked me into getting raped when I was fifteen and cheered. Not just friends, but their children have playdates. This woman lets her children play at a rapist's home. My friend has constantly tried to tell me that it shouldn't make me mad because the woman with kids was dating the stepbrother of the woman who raped me. But that woman knew what that girl had done to me. I told her myself before she started dating the stepbrother.
And she also has told me that its my mom's fault that I was raped more than once because subsconciously I want to justify my mother's fear of rape (my mom was also raped three times). This friend of mine also said that there is no way that she will ever believe that the law of averages would allow me to be raped three times (and that's not counting when I was fourteen and driven out into the middle of nowhere and told to get out or give head). She says that there just aren't that many bad people in the world. In other words, its my fault.
Then she leaves me messages on my voicemail telling me that I'm small minded because I can't deal with her having a different opinion. This is not about whether its better to live in the suburbs or downtown. There is a war on women. I know this happens to men as well, but not nearly as much. And women who blame other women are not any more helpful to our fight as the rapists themselves. And, in my case, a women have literally been involved in rape as well. My point is, there is a war whether we want it or not. It is us against them, and silence is consent. If Thomas Moore can die by that principle, then I will do my best to live by it.
Does anyone have anything to say about this? Do you know anyone like this? That's probably a stupid question, but I'm asking anyway. I don't want to talk to this woman again. What do you guys think about that? Am I being too hard?