The metoo movement was a joke. Idk if it has died out or what. Either way, good riddance. That movement was nothing more than an attempt to normalize something that never should be normal.
That movement silenced those who should be screaming and demanding change from the rooftops. Millions of people are raped every year in the US. Rather than giving those survivors a platform to work from, it ushered them into 1 single room and said. "Here, talk among yourselves."
Good thing covid wasn't around when this movement was happening.... 1) there'd be no way to social distance with that many people in a room and 2) a bunch of sexual assault and rape victims with their mouths covered by a mask would be quite a visual statement.
*Even with 39 THOUSAND reports of rape, the conviction rate was under 100 for that year.
A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to our legislators talk about how gun violence has become a "public health crisis" here in Delaware. Democratic legislators held up pictures or told stories of people they knew who had been killed "by a gun". Not by a crazed person holding a gun... but by a gun. Can you imagine if we went around saying we had been attacked by an assault penis???
The Republicans argued that gun violence needed to be approached in ways that actually address the root cause of the issues Delaware faces. Fatherless homes, overworked mothers, poverty, the general lack of family gang members try to replicate by starting gangs. However, they didn't fight too hard to stop this resolution. Conservatives never do because ... well... they are conservative in every way, it seems.
While our Senators were talking about an issue that really only impacts ONE city in our state, I am over here jumping up and down, pointing to rape statistics.
Forced rape, forced sodomy, sexual assault, child molestation...it is so widespread and frequent it's truly the definition of an epidemic.
The national monetary cost of this epidemic is triple digit millions. Medical costs due to injuries, disease, pregnancies. Therapeutic costs due to trauma and the life long damage done. And how many of those abused will turn into drug addicts, alcoholics... or abusers themselves? It will become unsustainable if we don't create some actual change.
When I confronted my grandfather for the things he had done to me he began to cry. He confessed what the Catholic priests had done to him as an alter boy. I'm not sure he had ever told anyone before. As the conversation went on he became defensive and acted like what he had done to me wasn't a big deal. Complete flip in behavior. Maybe he was feeling like what he had went through, in a time where you absolutely didn't talk about this type of thing, was way more tragic than anything I could have ever experienced OR maybe he thought his sob story excused his disgusting behavior. Either way he didn't like that I wasn't showing him pity or let him off the hook.
"Not a big deal? You could go to prison."
"For just touching? Nahh."
There is a certain arrogance that comes with getting away with crimes for so long, apparently. I mean, he'd been doing it At LEAST since he was a father and he was in his 80's when I confronted him. He had also been ratted out before and the family just... POOF.... covered it up. What did he really have to worry about from me? Nothing.
As a leader for an all women's shooting chapter, we do something every year to take a stand against the victim mentality society has created for us. Instead we create our own mentality.... #notme and #neveragain.
On this day we open up to the public and allow women to shoot with us to symbolize a united front against the silencing of victims and the continuation of being victimized long after the attack ever happened.
As a unit of survivors, we don't need a safe space. We need to rock some boats. We need to change the mindsets of ourselves so we can instill in future generations the willingness to fight back, not accepting what is given to us as "just another sex crime".
As little girls how many times were we told to "Give so-and-so a hug".... or were reprimanded because we wouldn't and "hurt their feelings"?
How many times were we told we were showing too much skin... our clothes were too tight.... skirts too short or too long.... shirts too low or too modest... too much make-up or too little?
In school, it is driven into our daughters that they are the problem... a distraction... the cause of why other people focus on their bodies. We are conditioned to believe it's somehow our fault even before anything ever happens.
If you are a mother of a survivor and ever had to say, "Why din't you tell me?"..... this is exactly why. Even children who have great and open relationships with their parents still don't come to them for help. We need to change that. The cycle of accepting abuse has to end.