Thread by @IdollyDancing

I cannot describe the rage I feel that washing and cleaning have been referenced with regards to rape shelters. They make you sit there without being allowed to brush your teeth, even though the inside of your mouth is bruised from his penis.

#ThisWontWash
#MridulMustGo

You can smell your body, his body, seeping through your worn clothes. The FME examines every inch of you, your underarms which have sweated as you were transported from station to station, your bruised groin that they swab for his fluids, your blood.

#ThisWontWash
#MridulMustGo

They won't let you wash. They won't let you get clean. You sit there for hours wallowing in the stench of him, and the acrid smell of your own fear. For months later, the smell of sweat or the feeling of unwashed fuzzy teeth will make you retch.

#ThisWontWash
#MridulMustGo

You sit in bath after bath of TCP, salt, dettol until your skin peels off; scrub your gums until they bleed constantly. And still, you don't feel clean. Still, you cannot wash it all away.

You worry you will never feel clean, that you are tarnished.

#ThisWontWash
#MridulMustGo

So, @Emma_Roddick: do you still believe that Mridul and @EdinRapeCrisis are "there for those experiencing unimaginable trauma", despite the comments about washing clean women's charities?

When you said "I’m with you ✊" is this what you envisioned?

#ThisWontWash
#MridulMustGo