A few days ago I was walking my dog along one of our regular routes. Half way through this particular route there is a giant fairly steep hill we have to climb. Ahead of us was a man on a bike who steadied his feet on the ground and told us to pass him. As we walked up the hill I could feel the guy staring at me. When I turned around he smiled and told me to keep going, he was enjoying the view. I was kind of shocked at the comment but suggested he ride ahead, we didn’t want to slow him down, and we crossed the street to go up the other side. But then so did the man on the bike. I picked up my pace a little and made my way to the DPW entrance at the top of the hill. Right behind me the whole way was this jerk who kept making comments about my ass and my legs. I turned around and said “thanks” very plainly, and he sped down the hill screaming a word I chose not to repeat, and disappeared out of sight. My heart was racing and I was pretty angry. But what was I going to do? Call the cops and report it? What would be the point? I didn’t know the guy. I was more focussed on getting away from him than anything so I wouldn’t have been able to give a description, and my honest thought was that I’d be wasting their time and they would tell me to just ignore it. And that’s what probably happens a good majority of the time when these things happen. It gets brushed aside as just something that happens occasionally. So for anyone who thinks rape culture doesn’t exist you’re just lying to yourself. The fact that I can’t even walk my dog in a quiet suburban town without being harassed is ridiculous. It’s actually a real problem in this society that, in my opinion, has only been amplified by pop culture, the government, and everyone’s immense effort to cover up incidents of sexual harassment and sexual assault across the spectrum from college campuses to celebrities.
Take the Stanford Rape case that took the country by storm last year. It just seemed absolutely unfathomable to me that even with all that PROOF. And even after the UNANIMOUS CONVICTION, there could be such a small sentence issued. And in the judge’s ruling he cited his reasoning for such a small sentence as the emotional trauma jail time would cause the young offender. NOTHING about the emotional trauma his victim will face for the rest of her life. NOTHING. And what about recordings of our president degrading women, multiple times! OUR PRESIDENT! What about our society at all encourages victims of sexual assault to come forward? Very little. Today actually is the anniversary of my own sexual assault. And it took me years before I was able to come forward. And sometimes I still struggle with it. I’ll be completely honest with you. The past few weeks I’ve been waking up sweating from nightmares about it. And it’s been years now since it’s happened. But those nightmares make it feel like I’m reliving it. Over. And over. It’s exhausting. It even makes me feel defeated. Because I bet the man who raped me never gave me a second thought. And here I am, 10 years later, fully knowing he can never hurt me again, and still letting him get inside my head from time to time.
But how do we change rape culture when it’s embedded so deep? We can’t just throw our hands up and say, “oh well,” and shrug it off. It can’t be ok to just pay people to be silent about incidents of sexual harassment and assault. It can’t be ok for college campuses to sweep things under the rug to save face and not lose potential or current students or donors. How do we teach people to be decent human beings when the issues go all the way to the top? This country voted in a man who was caught on tape being vulgar towards women. We have pro athletes who literally get away with murder and who can pay a fine to get back in the game after beating their significant other. We have federal judges who make taking a rapist to court seem like a joke. And it’s not like these are a few isolated incidents. This is happening every day whether we choose to see it or not. It’s happening. And until it happens to you or someone you care about, we are blind to it. I always thought, “it could never happen to me,” but it did. And it can happen to anyone. So what are we going to do about it?
Kickass K.Hart 