Part of the Solution

Though some feminists regard “rape equals devastation” as sacred fact, the notion that a man can ruin me with his penis strikes me as the most complete expression of vintage misogyny available. Common sense instructs us that it is far more “dangerous” to insist to young women that they will be broken by an unwanted sex act than it is to propose they might have a happy, healthy, and sexually pleasant future ahead of them in spite of a sexual assault. Weldon ventured this same conclusion when she said that “defining it as some peculiarly awful crime may even be counter-productive.”
… When we refuse to acknowledge the possibility that a rape could be anything less than a tsunami of emotional and mental destruction for a woman, we establish a fantasy of absolute male sexual power and absolute female vulnerability. We are, in essence, honoring the timeless belief that a woman’s worth, self-respect, and ability to function within society are dictated exclusively by the sexual use of her body.
… According to the cultural script, women are simply not strong enough to bear such an experience easily. We are expected to be creatures easily destroyed by sex and by physical violence, who endure in the wake of such assaults only through supreme efforts of will and assistance. And we forever wear the badge of “survivor” (so much more “empowering” than the word victim) because we are forever changed by this assault. Rape has altered the very core of our beings, because the cores of our beings, as women, are bound up in our sexual histories.

—

Charlotte Shane, “Live Through This” (via angels-and-angles)

I agree, even though I also do agree that sexual assault is very traumatic and harmful, as it  would be for anyone. But that should not define that woman (or man) from there on out.

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