Thread by @JackieLane2020

Rape is an act of power & control. It's why rape victims give terrible witness testimony. Often they are unreliable witnesses. Their memories are fractured & if their rapist was a man who groomed them, who they know, they most certainly tried to protect that person at some point.

Usually victims of rape act through rage. Any time someone challenges you about that person in your life at first you will seem strange & defensive but then eventually insane & full of rage. As the memories grow into something tangible you realize how no one will believe you.

You realize how Your Story now sounds exactly like all those women's stories you heard before you. Maybe some who you supported or some you didn't. You probably Didn't support them if the man controlling you convinced you to compete with other women for affection. This is common.

If you face that type of violent assault from a stranger instead of someone you know & head straight to the hospital for a "rape kit" expect to be demeaned & further dehumanized by the Drs. who will be detached & treat you as just another case of something they see all the time.

Expect that whether it is someone close to you or a stranger the police can Not Do Much. If it's a stranger they will not likely find him if he got away, you can not testify to what he looked like, no one will believe you, most rape kits go untested. If it is someone you know

they will imply that you somehow put yourself in that situation & should have known rape was coming. Despite maybe running through that park or sleeping with that man regularly, somehow you should have known that day was different. They will ask why you didn't forcefully stop it.

They will not ask the rapist why he did what he did. They will assume he did it because "boys will be boys". They will believe that whatever sexually assaulting acts were done to you, you must have liked it even if you did not want to & they hurt your body & mind because of that.

They will blame you for how you're tired, how you're afraid, how you don't wanna leave the house sometimes. How sometimes your skin crawls to the extent you just have to get out of the house. Nowhere feels safe. You feel more defensive of other women & children suddenly & no one

knows why. But You know why. It seems to make sense to you at the time. Defending what happened to you as something that happened. You will waffle around making excuses for your abuser, I shouldn't have been there, I should have known, & I should have fought back. Your head

will already be primed & full of every "rape apologia" you have ever heard & suddenly it will all come reigning down on you. When you Realize you were raped, maybe that night when you got home, or Often it takes Months or Years for these memories to surface when it is someone we

love or know. I call it "putting it in the 📦" All trauma victims know how to do this. If we are having a great day, the box stays shut. If we hear the right song or sound, or we smell something familiar, or we are talked to or touched a certain way, then we may lose a day or

days to crying & hyperventilating & flashbacks. We lose time with our loved ones. We are very lonely because when the rage comes we try to lock ourselves away to protect others from us, when really our rage is a feral cry for help. No one will ask the rapist to justify himself.

They will quickly decide you're one of those hysterical women who likes to put themselves into dangerous situations. They will never call men dangerous & label the violence as male violence even though that is where it comes from. The violence is spoken about as if it does not

belong to men. Women will begin to confide in you Their stories of rape. You start to realize you are not alone in this. You stop dissociating as much. Details become firmer. Someone is your Outcry witness, someone believes you. Someone finally asks what is wrong. You tell them.

That person fortifies your defenses by believing you. Maybe they learned of rape through the patriarchal lens of psychology or criminal justice but if you're lucky they learned about rape from our foremothers. If you're lucky someone sends you to radfem.org & you

meet Andrea Dworkin for the first time. No one even mentioned her when I was in High School, as a reader, as an academic, as a Lover Of Banned Controversial Books, she never came up until my outcry witness believed me & told me to read about AD & I have since read so much more.

Society will readily blame women for being angry about their own rapes but will never blame the man for the violence that he enacted on the woman or women that causes such a rage. Most women are not inherently filled with rage. We learn we are allowed anger over what we have

been through only through radical feminism. No where else in society is there a space for women to express the justifiable anger & pain they feel at how they are continually treated violently by men. If it were not for the internet; covid-19 would have driven women back inside

& we would have no way to organize or to share stories the way that we do. We are being relegated back to our status as Birthing Bodies & even many women have been convinced that it is okay to dehumanize women in such a way. Rape gives men the power & control they need to silence

women & make us afraid to speak out, to speak up, & to organize resistance. Men Know that when they rape us they take away our power as women, to divide women. They take our voice, they break us, in all the ways society teaches them to condition women into submission as a class.

If you've never said the phrase #maleviolence you're supporting #rapeculture if you have no understanding of the size & strength differences of men & women, that they Can easily overpower us, that we must often submit for survival. You are propping up rape culture. Rape is about

control & dominance. Without that analysis you can not understand that it is very difficult for a woman to control a man who has raped her. She may act out violently in response but she is not actually ever in control of her situation or societies view of her. Her screams are an

act of primal rebellion. She wants to help herself, to be silent, to protect herself from him & society, but she can't. Not unless another women who has subversively been taught radical feminism hears her cries. I hear your cries, I hear All your cries, & I cry out for all women.

Reading will set us free. Friendship will keep us strong.
Women will not be relegated back into the home.
We will not return to the dark age.
We will free women & children from the hold domestic violence has over patriarchal society.
We will end violence.
I #BelieveWomen 💕!

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