It happened to me again tonight. I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised
it happened - or that I'd be blamed for it. Why was I chosen? Why was I
made to feel unsafe in my own body? Scared of my own shadow? We're
taught to cover up, get home before dark...
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It happened to me again tonight. I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised
it happened - or that I'd be blamed for it. Why was I chosen? Why was I
made to feel unsafe in my own body? Scared of my own shadow? We're
taught to cover up, get home before dark, watch our drink, re-think that
mini-skirt, keys between the knuckles - ritualised surrender to the
reality of sexual violence and misogny.I can't walk anywhere now with
someone behind me without my heart thundering, my blood rushing to my
ears, my mind haunted with flashbacks. I can't tell my man why I'm
simultaneously aroused yet ghastly afraid of the very things that make
him so attractive to me, of his larger muscle mass, those meaty,
square-tipped fingers that could just as easily bestow violence as they
did rapture. I can't tell him that I can't associate sex without
violence and violence without men.I can't tell him those things because
he'll just look at me with some mixture of sympathy and confusion, the
one worn by a bystander observing a reality he will never face but
understands on a rational level, exists. And sure, men are raped by
other men too, and in some ways this serves as a larger humiliation for
the male ego, yet the acute vulnerabilities exclusive to women, but
absent in men, makes the threat far more proportional and unimposing for
the latter. Men will never experience other men the same way women
experience men, and in this decoupling, is why discussions of rape
culture and patriarchy will always be mediated through the fear of the
victimised and the indifference of the invulnerable as she negotiates
her worth on his deaf ears. There is no fairness in this. No justice.And
though I'm harrowed by my experiences with sexual assault and male
indifference to it - I know that when he asks me later tonight if I'm
doing okay, it'll send a deluge of shame down my spine for having
thought so ill of him, even in generality. Time for a cry.