It only counts if...

Alright, World. I know we had a talk last week, but you keep throwing things out there that are pissing me off, so we need to sit down and have another chat again.

What are you doing? This is the twenty-first century. In another three hundred-some years, we're supposed to be in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Why the hell are we still clinging to so many archaic concepts?

I'm speaking, today, about these patronizing, insulting terms that you are using to define rape as your own narrow view of it. Terms like "Forcible rape" that's been brought up by -the people who work for my government- that implies that it's only rape if she screams and winds up with bruises or broken bones or bloodshed. And, most recently, the disgusting term "Fully raped" came up.

Seriously? What is "Fully Raped?" Is there such a thing as "Mostly raped," "kind of raped," or "raped a little?" That's like someone saying that they're "a little bit pregnant." It just doesn't work that way.

Now, dear readers, this was not something that someone said to me. It was something someone said to a friend of mine--Someone near and dear to that friend, who had also been attacked. Her attack was a little more Hollywood, but you'd think that even so she'd understand. For her to say something so terrible, so insulting, so patronizing, breaks my heart. That's the kind of phrase that is designed to make the victim feel that kind of self-blame. There is -nothing- there that can help someone feel understood, loved, supported, and victimized. It belittles the whole experience, and has the potential to set someone back several steps in the healing process--back to feeling guilty, feeling like it's their fault, feeling like they can't talk to someone because no one would believe them. After all, they weren't -fully- raped, only a little. What's the big deal, really?

You know what, World? That's bullshit. Every victim, or every survivor, or everyone who has just experienced sexual violence, deserves to feel justified in their feelings, to feel like they deserve to feel that way, that they were attacked or abused and that it was WRONG. No one should ever be faced with a "What's the big deal?" attitude, and this is exactly what terms like "Forcible rape" or "fully raped" are. You're overreacting. It's not that big a deal. What's the problem? Just get over it. I dismiss your feelings, your hurt, and you. Instead, I give you shame, guilt, and disgust. Because you weren't assaulted at knifepoint, at gunpoint, by a large stranger in a dark ally, because your clothes weren't torn from your body while you screamed and cried out, helpless and battered. Because no one would make a movie scene out of your assault, it doesn't count.

World, I am -livid- at you. How can you allow these things to continue? How is it that in the modern world, we're still fighting over these very basic concepts? We disavowed slavery, indentured servitude, human trafficking, and all other laws or traditions that allowed a human person to be treated as property. We now have laws that prevent a human person being treated as property. So why is it that so many people still feel like a person's body is, if you'll forgive the pun, up for grabs whenever someone wants it? Why is it that a person's body is something treated like a right? Like someone can -ever- have a -right- to another person's body? Whether they were in a relationship, whether they were already sleeping together, whether they've consented to their assailant or a hundred other people in the past, no one has a right to another person's body. If a person does not want sexual contact, and another person forces it on them, that is a gross violation. There is no such thing as being "fully raped," or "forcibly raped." It's all awful, it's all terrible, it's all disgusting and hurtful and leaves scars that linger for years, or for the rest of a person's life.

If you think of rape as something that exists in degrees--Kind of, a little bit, fully, forcibly--then please. Think about the people you're hurting by dismissing their experience as something that doesn't count. And then, promptly go perform anatomically improbable acts with yourself.