What I would like to do is to scream: and in that scream I would have the screams of the raped, and the sobs of the battered; and even worse, in the center of that scream I would have the deafening sound of women's silence, that silence into which we are born because we are women and in which most of us die.
And if there would be a plea or a question or a human address in that scream, it would be this: why are you so slow? Why are you so slow to understand the simplest things; not the complicated ideological things. You understand those. The simple things. The cliches. Simply that women are human to precisely the degree and quality that you are.
And also: that we do not have time. We women. We don't have forever. Some of us don't have another week or another day to take time for you to discuss whatever it is that will enable you to go out into those streets and do something. We are very close to death. All women are. And we are very close to rape and we are very close to beating. And we are inside a system of humiliation from which there is no escape for us. We use statistics not to try to quantify the injuries, but to convince the world that those injuries even exist. Those statistics are not abstractions. It is easy to say, "Ah, the statistics, somebody writes them up one way and somebody writes them up another way." That's true. But I hear about the rapes one by one by one by one by one, which is also how they happen. Those statistics are not abstract to me. Every three minutes a woman is being raped. Every eighteen seconds a woman is being beaten. There is nothing abstract about it. It is happening right now as I am speaking.
- Andrea Dworkin, quoted again at the end of this post
I recently feared rape myself. Not in the every day underlying fear but in a specific situation. And at that moment, I had another
boxing match between the
Southern Belle in me and the
Feminist. Generally, both of those points of view blend beautifully but this past weekend, they each took a corner in the boxing ring, ready to battle it out.
I was planning to study with a male classmate for an upcoming test. We had established in class as well as via text message days before that we were going to meet in the library.
Less than an hour before we were to meet, he sent me a text asking if I'd rather meet him in a different building because "it was quiet and there was no one around."
Guys, I'm sure you would not even hesitate, oblivious to any reason for concern. Girls, the wheels of "What if" are probably already turning in your mind. Here's what mine sounded like:
Feminist: that seems odd... why the last minute change? The library is just across the street.
Southern Belle: oh, no need to make a mountain out of a molehill.
So, the
Southern Belle in me texted back saying, "Sure, where should I meet you?"
He responded with "On the second floor, down a long hall."
The
Feminist in me was like: "last minute location change + no one around + long, isolated hall = rape waiting to happen"
The
Southern Belle's rebuttal was "Oh, don't be silly. I mean he seems nice right? I'm sure he wouldn't do that."
"Ha," the
Feminist responds, "famous last words. I'm sure that is what every girl thinks right before she is raped."
The
Southern Belle in me begins to agree, recalling my previous post on
rape where I found that 83% of rapists are known to their victims and their attackers often include classmates.
Ultimately, however, the
NERD in me won.
I needed to study so after allowing the
Feminist to text a few friends a heads up on the situation and allowing the
Southern Belle to send up a quick prayer, I met my study buddy down the long, dark hall and saw not a single other soul while I was in there.
Was this a dumb move? I like to think of myself as a pretty smart girl usually but this scenario left me perplexed and unsure if I was making a smart decision.
Was the
Feminist in me over-reacting? I thought no since this is literally the kind of thing I have read about for the last 4 years of college!
I am happy to report that not a thing happened. As the
Southern Belle assumed, this guy was totally nice and not a threat at all.
But, what if I had been wrong? Back to that previous blog post of mine, EVERY 7 MINUTES a woman is raped in America.
Guys, if you're still reading, do you understand why girls have this internal mental boxing match over something as simple as a study buddy session?
We. Are. Not. Over-Reacting.
Rape is a real threat.
Though I have not been raped, I have several friends who have been. I've heard their stories and their tears.
But it could be you or your sister or your mother or your girlfriend or your daughter or your grandmother.
Any. Woman.
1 in 4 women will be raped.
But it can be stopped.
Andrea Dworkin gave
a speech in which she simply asked for a
Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape.
That was back in 1983.
She gave this gutsy speech to an audience full of men. I relate to so much of it and suggest you read the whole thing but here are some excerpts I really appreciate:
As a feminist, I carry the rape of all the women I've talked to over the past ten years personally with me. As a woman, I carry my own rape with me. Do you remember pictures that you've seen of European cities during the plague, when there were wheelbarrows that would go along and people would just pick up corpses and throw them in? Well, that is what it is like knowing about rape. Piles and piles and piles of bodies that have whole lives and human names and human faces.
I speak for many feminists, not only myself, when I tell you that I am tired of what I know and sad beyond any words I have about what has already been done to women up to this point, now, up to 2:24 p.m. on this day, here in this place.
And I want one day of respite, one day off, one day in which no new bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old, and I am asking you to give it to me. And how could I ask you for less--it is so little. And how could you offer me less: it is so little. Even in wars, there are days of truce. Go and organize a truce. Stop your side for one day. I want a twenty-four-hour truce during which there is no rape.
And,
men come to me or to other feminists and say: "What you're saying about men isn't true. It isn't true of me. I don't feel that way. I'm opposed to all of this."
And I say: don't tell me. Tell the pornographers. Tell the pimps. Tell the warmakers. Tell the rape apologists and the rape celebrationists and the pro-rape ideologues. Tell the novelists who think that rape is wonderful. Tell Larry Flynt. Tell Hugh Hefner. There's no point in telling me. I'm only a woman. There's nothing I can do about it. These men presume to speak for you. They are in the public arena saying that they represent you. If they don't, then you had better let them know...
It's not enough to find some traveling feminist on the road and go up to her and say: "Gee, I hate it."
Say it to your friends who are doing it. And there are streets out there on which you can say these things loud and dear, so as to affect the actual institutions that maintain these abuses. You don't like pornography? I wish I could believe it's true. I will believe it when I see you on the streets. I will believe it when I see an organized political opposition. I will believe it when pimps go out of business because there are no more male consumers.
And, I leave you with this:
I dare you to try it. I demand that you try it. I don't mind begging you to try it. What else could you possibly be here to do? What else could this movement possibly mean? What else could matter so much?
And on that day, that day of truce, that day when not one woman is raped, we will begin the real practice of equality, because we can't begin it before that day. Before that day it means nothing because it is nothing: it is not real; it is not true. But on that day it becomes real. And then, instead of rape we will for the first time in our lives--both men and women--begin to experience freedom... For myself, I want to experience just one day of real freedom before I die. I leave you here to do that for me and for the women whom you say you love.
