[rape] seven short posts on the matter [2]

The way it should be

I’ve tried to feel, to empathize with women countless times. Surrounded by girls most days, it’s a fertile field for finding out how a woman thinks and feels. I’ve painstakingly asked my partner what it’s like to have a baby inside her, what it’s like to give birth. All the joy, pain, strange emotions, the lot. I want to know.

Desperately keeping a tight hold on my sharp tongue, I listen to what it is to be a woman – hopes, dreams, ideas, what she respects, what she disparages. I want to know. From all this, it’s more than clear that rape is an incredibly destructive violation, not only of the body but of what the person is, of everything she or he has achieved. Gone in a moment.

I have to get some clue as to what this means. So I think of prison. There I am, in a cell and three beefy types come in, hold me down and do it. I can now feel the shame, the anguish, the burning anger, the desire for revenge. Perhaps the revenge is more masculine, I don’t know. Plus the sweaty smell of them. It’s bad.

We were once burgled – the back window had been forced open and the bedroom had been trashed. All our personal items were scattered and the valuables taken. My rarest vinyl records had been taken.

Perhaps that too was a little like rape. A sense of powerlessness as they do as they wish.