WOMEN AND GIRLS DESERVE BETTER....THIS IS MY BODY VIDEO!
"Do not be afraid of a world in which women know themselves, their voice and their power, that world has arrived."
Everyone needs to read this article below, in response to Todd Akin comments about what he calls "legitimate rape". Personally I am so sick of the male population, thinking rape is no big deal (with the exception I imagine being those men who they themselves are rape survivors). It's not fair that for the most part if you are born as a boy you get the luxury of living in a world that is free from domestic violence, rape, and sexual harassment, while no other woman or girl on this planet has that same luxury, and that you get to violate us over and over again without ever being held responsible for your choices, which are destroying 3.5 billion people. Then you guys get to stand around and laugh at us, and laugh about how funny rape is, because you all think it's hilarious! And more importantly you have that luxury of making fun of it, because almost all of you will spend your entire lives living in a world free from it. Maybe that's the part that makes me the angriest.
I actually wanted to just re-print this entire article written by Eve Ensler for the Huffington Post, but I didn't want to seem like I was stealing it, so instead I'm just quoting a lot of it.
"Here's what I want you to do. I want you to close your eyes and imagine that you are on your bed or up against a wall or locked in a small suffocating space. Imagine being tied up there and imagine some aggressive, indifferent, insane stranger friend or relative ripping off your clothes and entering your body -- the most personal, sacred, private part of your body -- and violently, hatefully forcing themself into you so that you are ripped apart. Then imagine that stranger's sperm shooting into you and filling you and you can't get it out. It is growing something in you. Imagine you have no idea what that life will even consist of, spiritually made in hate, not knowing the mental or health background of the rapist.
Then imagine a person comes along, a person who has never had that experience of rape, and that person tells you, you have no choice but to keep that product of rape growing in you against your will and when it is born it has the face of your rapist, the face of the person who has essentially destroyed your being and you will have to look at the face every day of your life and you will be judged harshly if you cannot love that face."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/todd-akin-rape_b_1812930.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=925570,b=facebook
In the article below, the writer talks about the language used to describe sexual violence in the media. She also talks about her as a writer writing about rape. As someone who also talks about it a lot here, I had some thoughts about that as well. I do think on some level that maybe why as female writers we are so drawn towards talking about this is because it does help make it seem less scary, and help us gain back control over something that we haven't had control over.
I also think maybe this fascination with writing about it, comes from us trying to gain power over it. Rape ruined our lives, even before any of us were actually raped. It forced us to live in constant fear of every member of the male gender we encountered, it's forced us to walk around in a state of extreme stress from not having safety over our own bodies, it's forced us to scrutinize over every outfit we wear, it's forced other's to scrutinize over every outfit they let us wear, it's dictated what jobs we will have, where we will live, where we will and won't travel to, who we hang out with, what we say and don't say, how we act, and I feel like this list could keep going. It's held this extreme power over all of us, and I'm not sure if we've really had the chance to even try to take that power back, or thought that was even a possiblity. Because it's always been presented to us, that the male population will never stopping raping us, so how could we ever possibly not be completely controlled and imprisoned by this? Because I don't know when I started fearing rape, as far as I'm concerned I became terrified of it from the moment I first realized that I was a girl. I never not remember being fully aware of the fact that I was a girl.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/tsering-wrench/the-careless-language-of-sexual-violence-repost-of-a-great-paper-please-read-if-/10150239614607111
This last article is written by another blogger who talks about why rape is NEVER funny.
http://4womenworldwide.com/2012/07/12/rape-jokes-never-funny/
**** Also if you would like to get involved in the This Is My Body Campaign you can check them out on fb, and post a video of yourself reading their monologue :)
Read the monologue and post your own videos @: Facebook.com/ThisIsMyBody
