Rape.
There's that word again. Did you feel something when you read it? Perhaps anger? Maybe resentment at the owner of the fingers that tapped the keys that formed it? I'm finding lately that this is often the case. I can intone this simple collection of sounds in a vacuum, with no other context at all, and it takes mere seconds for someone to respond with, "How DARE you!"
"Rape" is becoming a swear word.
Rape has been an issue for a very long time. It isn't a trending new atrocity that we'll see in the current events section of your local society magazine along with the brand of energy drink teenagers are cooking down and injecting into their eyeballs to get the most recent version of a drug trip. Societies have been concerned with the act of rape in different countries for hundreds of years. Rape is not new.
What *is* new is the aforementioned over-sensitivity to the concept, along with a disturbing new nonchalance in slapping people with "rapist" and "rape supporter" accusations like they were handing out protest flyers. One must merely *question* the nature of rape to be suspect. McCarthy has been resurrected and now stands in continual judgement of sexual integrity. But be careful not to say this too loudly or you too may be labeled a communis.... pardon me, a "rapist".
So, what changed? Why are people now stomping up, red-faced, spraying anime tears to any male who has a functioning penis to yell "rapist" at them? They didn't used to do that. Has the definition of "rapist" changed?
No sane person supports rape. No one ever has! And no one blames the victims of rape for what happened to them. In fact, it's impossible to consider a victim to be at fault! That's what "victim" means. A person can only direct fault at someone *another* person considers to be a victim, whereas they themselves do not. A "victim" is greatly open to interpretation. "Rape" is a sexual act that is forced on another person. The meaning of rape isn't open much to interpretation. It hasn't changed. What *has* changed is the meaning of *"victim"*.
This disappointing new social finger-pointing shit-parade isn't about rapists or victims or "apologists". It's about entitlement.
Not too long ago, a victim was something people didn't want to be. People who suffered tragedies like disease, physical violence or disasters most often didn't discuss them and they certainly didn't announce them. They were hard times that a person viewed as hurdles in life to overcome and conquer in the fight to regain a normal existence. Often, a person's ability to climb past being a victim helped define him.
Unfortunately, the children of these people noticed how victims were treated differently. Victims get extra attention. They get patted on the back and coddled. Victims are forgiven for social blunders, rudeness and inappropriate behavior that others aren't. Victims are special, non-victims are not.
Now, instead of being defined by how you move past being a victim, people are defining themselves by what they're a victim of. Being a victim isn't only desirable, it's sought after! People are lining up to be considered victims of anything that has a wide and ambiguous enough definition that they can squeeze between its margins in whatever way possible. Look at autism. A "disease" of which almost anything can be a symptom, of which almost anything can be the cause and of which there is no cure. It is a disease which practically anyone on Earth can have to some degree. Is it any wonder that every neglected, attention starved teenager is wearing it on their sleeve as though it were a fucking medal?
The problem with rape accusation isn't that there are more rapists or people who support rape, it's that a rape *victim* could be anything from someone who was raped, to someone who might have just *thought* they were going to be raped. Young people are being indoctrinated into the horse shit idea that rape is what happens when someone decides at any time that a sexual encounter they had wasn't exactly what they wanted, whether or not it was consensual at the time. People are so desperate to derive the awards of being a victim, they will invent the culprit. A victim could be anyone or anything at any time. And under these conditions anyone who questions the validity of any crime is "blaming the victim".
So, why does it matter? Because simply, being accused of a sexually driven crime or supporting sex criminals is one of the most destructive and devastating things that can happen to a person. When the accused is actually a sex criminal, then this effect is well-earned. However, the new fad in fashionable self-martyrdom has people slinging this accusation at people who've really done nothing wrong. And this is one of the most grossly abhorrent things that someone can do to another person. It's not just "guilty until proven innocent", it's "guilty until and even if proven innocent".
In short, I'm not speaking out against rape victims. I'm speaking out in support of the falsely accused. I don't support rape and I don't blame the victims. I simply reject your abominably self-serving, shit-brained definition of what a victim is in the first place. Rape isn't something that happens when a woman gets drunk and has irresponsible sex with someone, then decides a month later it was a bad idea. Rape isn't what happens when someone decides their ex is a bad person and was raping them the whole time. Rape isn't what happens when a person is so ashamed of someone they had sex with, that saying it was rape absolves their personal fucking integrity. Rape is being physically forced or coerced into a sexual act, period. Rape is not a negative emotional evaluation of a sexual experience. And as long as I am accused of supporting rape for saying what I just said, I will continue to invite my accusers to go fuck themselves.
