Spoiler: TL;still read it You know what, I am so tired of any deviation from the perfect rape victim being some revenge-seeking attention whore. I always enjoy these conversations, when people who have never been in any situation even vaguely resembling rape know exactly what rape looks like and feels like and how they’d act during and afterward and think of their attacker and handle the aftermath, and anyone who’s behaved in any way differently couldn’t have possibly been raped. I’m not even REALLY calling anyone out on that - everyone thinks they’re going to be the Good Guy With A Gun who takes the Bad Guy out in one clean shot, or the hero who rescues everyone from the burning building, or the person who realizes they’re probably about to get raped and “just leaves.” You’re not yourself when this kind of stuff happens, there’s no script for you to follow, there’s not only one way to be legitimately raped. When these stories flare up in the news, it’s always a rough go for me because there are so many things that resemble my own story, and I can’t help but internalize the reactions to them in the news and on the blogs and in various comment sections - including this board plenty of times throughout the years - as if they were about what happened with me. When I was raped, the following exchange happened: “I don’t think so.” “I thought you weren’t allowed to say no, isn’t that how this works?” “Actually, it’s illegal for it to work that way.” and I left with bruises on my wrists, rug burn on my knees and shins, and blood running down my legs. But it took me three weeks for me to come to terms with the fact that I was raped and label it that way in my head (after fighting off another attack and having a guy shove his fingers in my vagina when I had never seen his face within 24 hours of each other, it was a great year). In the 5 years that have happened since - including a year of near debilitating depression and anxiety where I’d have a panic attack every time I came close to kissing a guy let alone fucking him and was almost too scared to leave my apartment - I can STILL sometimes wonder if I was REALLY raped because: I was the one who flirted with him first and pursued him and suggested that we should hang out that day. I was the one who, after we had that little dialogue from earlier, asked him if he “could wear a condom, at least” when he didn’t loosen his grip even a little at me pointing out he was acknowledge that he was about to rape me. I was the one who, in a weird manic rush of adrenaline, went home to my friends to rave about his big dick before shutting myself in the bathroom and washing the blood off of me. I was the one who, in those three weeks, kept trying to hang out with him again because I thought if I got another chance to be around him I could figure out why I was feeling so weird. I was the one who kept “changing my story” from “I don’t know, it was kind of a weird night, I’m not sure why I’m feeling so weird about it” to “I think he may have kind of coerced me a little bit” to “He raped me.” I was the one who made zero attempts at reporting it to the police, knowing there was absolutely no chance in hell I was going to win the case since (like basically all rape cases) it was just my word against his, especially without having gotten a rape kit - you know, assuming the kit would’ve ever been tested that is. And I was the one who, weeks afterward, very openly flirted with him at a party and tried to lure him back to my room because I wanted to either confront him about it or, quite possibly, try and hurt him, but to everyone else in that room -including my good friends who I hadn’t clued in yet - it looked like I really wanted to fuck him and he didn’t want to fuck me. I don’t have a nice neat explanation for any of this. I was in shock and denial for a little bit I guess. I was trying to pretend it didn’t happen or downplay it because I didn’t want to tick off the “and have been raped” box on the list of shit I’d already dealt with, maybe. I also was probably acting a little weird and irrational because I had just been raped and that’s a fucked up thing to have happened to a person and I didn’t quite know what to do or think. I have no idea if Emma’s behaviors or intentions have an explanation that even kind of resemble mine. Even if she wasn’t trying to hang out with the guy again because she was maybe somewhere in her mind thinking of trying to stab the kid, that behavior is not that strange or unforgivable to me. People marry and stay married to their rapists all the time for a whole slew of reasons. PEOPLE MARRY AND STAY MARRIED TO THEIR RAPISTS ALL THE TIME. As for the mattress and the video, she’s an artist. This is what artists do - process their experiences and their feelings through making art. Maybe you don’t think it’s good art - she is, after all, still just a pretentious Ivy league art student - but making a big piece over this is not any kind of proof that she was in it to get famous. I participated in an artsy project about rape right when it started getting really well known and was being featured in tons of blogs and papers and TV shows. It kind of sickens me to think there could be people who heard about it and thought me and the hundreds of other women who did it could’ve just been trying to get our 15 minutes of fame from our rape when really it was fucking empowering and completely helped me to get my power back and carry forward in my life. With the mattress, she was trying to get a message out there about the fucked up reality of how colleges who are more concerned with protecting their reputations than their students handle rape allegations, and I think she succeeded (even if you, personally, weren’t hearing about the conversation, it was happening). She also, indirectly, continued the fucked up evolution of our culture’s perception of rape as being anything other than a stranger attacking a girl at knifepoint in an alleyway or some frat boy slipping roofies into a drink. Maybe that part wasn’t so successful, as evidenced by just the few posts in this thread, but hey, worth a shot. Because of that I can absolutely see the impulse she had to create that video, after being constantly questioned and doubted and asked to go over the graphic details of it over and over and over again, is it that crazy to snap and be like “fine, you want to fucking see what happened? Here’s what happened.” But yeah, I just love the audacity of people rallying for the protection of victims of public shaming over one poorly timed sexist joke or whatever and endlessly making excuses for why they’re really not so bad of a person but are so fucking quick to turn on a woman making the ridiculously fraught and risky move of bringing their attack to light and endlessly digging into why she must somehow, someway be a lying slutty vengeful crazy bitch. And if you have a problem with reading all of this about rape in the drunk thread, maybe you should’ve spoken up when there were 6 posts by men shitting on a rape victim. Fuck. Off.
Well that about wraps it up I think. Im closing the thread unless any of the other mods have any objections. Also, Im of the mind we NEVER DISCUSS this topic again. Like we have done with racism topics. Im not wanting to alienate any of our dwindling number of females.
I'm of a mind with Aetius. However, I know the horrors of being hit with an oaken cane, so I'll try to not offend further.
I've always been mostly a lurker on these threads, but it's truly impressive how all ya'll dudes rallied around each other while calling the mattress carrying rape victim a liar (while having mostly zero insight into her life or situation-not like it should even be necessary) and yet managed to ignore a very poignant, personal, and well articulated response from Audrey. It's a wonder why no new members, mostly chicks, want to have absolutely anything to do with you. Hey, Audrey, I've been there, girl. Thanks for your story…every little bit helps.
Quite a drunk thread you've got going on here. As my old boss used to say, "you went and fucked up a piss up in a brewery there". I have a moral dilemma. My hair is very dark brown. My husband's hair is dark blond. How, then, in certain lighting, does our child look like a dirty ginger? And no, she doesn't favour the milk man.
I don't disagree with you - but hold on a second here. Audrey posted that at 8:00pm on a Monday night, and it was about a page of deeply personal text hidden behind a spoiler tag. Oh, and the "ya'll dudes [...] calling the rape victim a liar" was like three people talking among themselves. A page of text is often either slower or less inclined to get a response just because it's higher effort. The spoiler tag will cause some people to scroll right by it. It's the WDT, which causes some people to skip engaging in serious discussion anyway. And it's been 12 hours overnight since it was posted. And, of course, there's the fact that it was very thoughtful and well articulated and personal which is always going to cause some of the people who disagree with something to just shut up. Frankly, I basically agree with all of what Audrey wrote. There's a recurring problem where it seems like people don't think that women who are raped have all the same fucked up personalities that the rest of us do, and all kinds of extreme reactions to traumatic events. When hard things happen, we don't all process it the same way. When my dad had heart surgery, I was on a plane in an hour. When my friend's dad just had a heart attack, he spent 3 days trying to decide if he should visit. Does that mean he doesn't love his dad? Or does that mean that everyone copes differently and he was in some denial thinking, "nah, he's alive so it's not a big deal... I'll see him some other time... I can't help him anyway..." Rape doesn't happen just to virginal, articulate valedictorians with perfect coping skills, great childhoods and an awesome support system. It happens to depressed women who resign themselves to it. It happens to flirtatious women who think they asked for it. It happens to women who have been abused and think everything is their fault. It happens to women like Audrey who had trouble with the immediate processing, which made it harder to go back and say, "no, this is what really happened." Seriously, who can't empathize with that reaction? Who among us hasn't shrugged off something as no big deal and had it eat at them for weeks or months afterwards, yet you can't say anything because you already announced that it was fine? It happens to weird, artsy women who try, in their own odd way, to call attention to it. It's a fucked up situation, of course. Given the amount of absolute shit that both parties have to deal with, though, I've always had a lot of trouble assuming the victim in the story is just looking for attention. Not that it never happens, just that I don't think it's reasonable to start with that assumption. Lastly, if we can't have an articulate discussion on a serious topic without it degenerating into name calling and anger - even in the WDT - maybe we should all just go our separate ways. Life isn't all poop jokes and tits. Intelligent discourse is right in the tag line.
I hear everything you're saying, and I don't disagree. But does anybody have any good poop jokes or tits they'd like to share?
I shit myself going through customs today.... Well I thought it would distract them from searching the contraband in my suitcases. Tip your mods and enjoy the show.
A guy goes to meet his girlfriend's family for the first time. He's sitting on the sofa next to the dog, and really has to fart. He tries to hold it, but the inevitable moment is upon him and there's nothing he can do. He tries to let it out quietly but it's audible and everyone turns around. The father looks at the dog sternly and says, "Buddy!" "This is great," the guy thinks, "they thought the dog did it." After a little while, he feels the pressure building up. He's still nervous, but decides to give it another try and lets one go. The father glares at the dog and admonishes him, "Buddy!" Another 10 minutes goes by and the guy is feeling pretty confident now. He rips off another one without a second thought. The father again looks at the dog. "Dammit, Buddy, get away from him before he shits on you."
I think the reason cases like that strike a nerve with a lot of guys is that they are terrified of the notion that what they thought was consensual sex might retroactively become a rape. They hear about rape being determined by a woman feeling like she was raped, and then the men freak out. We don't want to be rapists. We wish there were black and white rules to follow and so we try to rationalize cases like these to fit into those rules. The idea that you could unintentionally rape someone is fucking terrifying. I'm not saying the reactions are right or excusable, but I don't think most of them come from a place of malice.
http://globalnews.ca/video/2056439/suspicious-death-in-Kelowna Shit guys I think we got it all wrong. It wasn't Nett that was going to kill Queen-Bee, it was the other way around.
It seems that the FBI are investigating the STL Cardinals for hacking into another team's computers. That's a new one.