Sexual Assault, Feminism, and Agency
Total brilliance:
My sexual assaults (yes, it's now happened twice) are not a political peg for other women to hang their hats on, and I should not and will not apologize to anyone for making decisions that were best for me. My body is mine - it doesn't belong to Feminism anymore than it belongs to the men who sexually assaulted me - and what I choose to do with it, or about it, is supposed to be my choice. To be told, subtly or otherwise, that my choices are invalid or anti-feminist is demeaning and condescending and in violation of the whole concept that feminism is about giving women choices and letting them make them.
....See, the thing is, it's great to say that we should do this or we should do that for the sake of women everywhere. But no one - and especially not other women and supposed feminists - has the right to tell me or any other victim of sexual assault that being victimized and being traumatized leaves us responsible for making the world a better place (as though that's what's accomplished by reporting a rape, actually). We all have a responsibility to try to prevent them, to create a world where they are much more of an exception than the rule, where drunk girls or slutty girls or drunken slutty girls don't have to explain their behavior to anyone - regardless of whether they have been assaulted, or after having been assaulted - and where victims don't have to explain to non-victims the choices they made. My pursuing the prosecution of the one made no more difference in the world than not prosecuting the other. But maybe my talking about them both, maybe helping to ease the stigma of it for other people and create a space where I don't have to be ashamed of being a victim (or of how I chose to deal with that) will.
[Though I do have to add that people assuming the commenter "embobly" must never have been raped, despite her(?) saying she has been, because her point of view is creepy is... well... ugh. Just because she's wrong and inconsiderate doesn't mean she's also lying.]
My sexual assaults (yes, it's now happened twice) are not a political peg for other women to hang their hats on, and I should not and will not apologize to anyone for making decisions that were best for me. My body is mine - it doesn't belong to Feminism anymore than it belongs to the men who sexually assaulted me - and what I choose to do with it, or about it, is supposed to be my choice. To be told, subtly or otherwise, that my choices are invalid or anti-feminist is demeaning and condescending and in violation of the whole concept that feminism is about giving women choices and letting them make them.
....See, the thing is, it's great to say that we should do this or we should do that for the sake of women everywhere. But no one - and especially not other women and supposed feminists - has the right to tell me or any other victim of sexual assault that being victimized and being traumatized leaves us responsible for making the world a better place (as though that's what's accomplished by reporting a rape, actually). We all have a responsibility to try to prevent them, to create a world where they are much more of an exception than the rule, where drunk girls or slutty girls or drunken slutty girls don't have to explain their behavior to anyone - regardless of whether they have been assaulted, or after having been assaulted - and where victims don't have to explain to non-victims the choices they made. My pursuing the prosecution of the one made no more difference in the world than not prosecuting the other. But maybe my talking about them both, maybe helping to ease the stigma of it for other people and create a space where I don't have to be ashamed of being a victim (or of how I chose to deal with that) will.
[Though I do have to add that people assuming the commenter "embobly" must never have been raped, despite her(?) saying she has been, because her point of view is creepy is... well... ugh. Just because she's wrong and inconsiderate doesn't mean she's also lying.]