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On Rehtaeh Parsons, Jane Doe, and rape.

On Sunday, Rehtaeh Parsons’ family took her off life support.

Rehtaeh Parsons hanged herself in her bathroom four days before that, because Rehtaeah Parsons was gang-raped by four boys a year ago.

They took pictures.

It took weeks for the police to even talk to them.

The atrocity they committed was dismissed — lack of evidence, they couldn’t prove who’d taken the picture.

The people in Rehtaeh’s school called her a slut. They passed her phone number around. They asked her if she’d have sex with them. They bullied, shunned, and browbeat her to death.

Her mother has a memorial page for her on Facebook and I can’t stop looking at the pictures and pictures of her as a child. Rehtaeh with a little dog. Rehtaeh’s school portrait. Rehtaeh and her family. Rehtaeh and her friends. Selfies she took. Pages and pages and pages of them, and I can’t stop looking, and I can’t shake it.

I didn’t know her. I don’t know her. But I know girls like her. I know boys like the ones that did this to her. We all do. 

People were so horrified at Steubenville like it was some isolated incident, like it was on a different level than all the other rapes that happen every day, every hour, every minute. Like Steubenville was the limit of human atrocity, an outlier, something everyone shook their heads at and wondered “How?” and thought “That could never happen to my daughter.” Not me. Not here.

It happens here. It happens wherever you are, right now. It happens every two minutes in the US. One out of five. One out of four. One out of six. One out of three. One billion, worldwide, every year.

Steubenville is not an isolated incident. What happened to Jane Doe and Rehtaeh Parsons is not an isolated incident. It doesn’t happen just to pretty white girls with long hair; it doesn’t just happen to the people we are most comfortable feeling compassion for. 

I’m sorry, Rehtaeh. I’m sorry that so many people failed you. I’m sorry that we are all complicit in a culture that shames and silences and browbeats victims literally to death. We created this. We built it.

I want to tear it apart with my teeth.

a friend of mine questioned why i don't like tosh.0 and when i told her why (rape jokes bluuh), she told me "it's just a joke, don't get so worked up about it". and when i told her that i've been raped before and it's a touchy topic to me, she started playing the opression olympics with me and started saying things like "i've been raped more times than you, so i don't understand why you're getting do worked up about it and i'm not." at the time i was really tongue tied and couldn't defend myself

Asked by
Anonymous

Whoa, I’m really sorry you even had to have that conversation. That’s some fucked-up shit.

You know what? Your friend’s experience is not universal. Everyone handles trauma in different ways. Your friend handles it by accepting jokes that are made about it, but that doesn’t mean she has any right to tell anyone else that their being triggered by those jokes is wrong or makes them too touchy or worked up.

Moreover, rape jokes normalize rape and perpetuate rape culture (or the culture in which we live, where the onus is placed on the survivor to have protected themselves or to prevent their assault, and not the rapist for raping). 

All you need to tell her is that she has no right to dictate the terms of how you deal with your assault. She doesn’t. If she argues with you after that, it might not be worth trying to have this kind of conversation with her. 

tinydragongina:

If you laugh at jokes about raping people I will laugh at my fist punching your throat because sure it’s violent and demeaning but I think it’s funny so why aren’t you laughing get off the floor and stop whining I am trying to assert that my desire to make a joke out of your traumatic experience is more important than your pain it’s called Freedom of Speech read a book

(via rocko-socko)

TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE (photos removed)

un-punk:

thursdaysbaby:

asktriple-sss:

ruefontaine:

ruefontaine:

TRIGGER WARNING.


“RAPE CREW” COACH BLATANTLY DENIES COVER-UP, BLAMES “ANONYMOUS” FOR PERPETUATING FALSE CLAIMS

Two football players kidnapped a sixteen-year-old girl who was possibly drugged and too drunk to resist and took her to several parties where she was then raped. THE EVENT WAS EVEN LIVE-TWEETED BY THE PEOPLE INVOLVED. 

From the NYT website: “Twitter posts, videos and photographs circulated by some who attended the nightlong set of parties suggested that an unconscious girl had been sexually assaulted over several hours while others watched. She even might have been urinated on. In one photograph posted on Instagram by a Steubenville High football player, the girl, who was from across the Ohio River in Weirton, W.Va., is shown looking unresponsive as two boys carry her by her wrists and ankles. Twitter users wrote the words “rape” and “drunk girl” in their posts.”

Local parents and authorities in Steubenville, OH are invested in covering the story up, claiming the girl “made it up” to cover up the fact that she drank too much and was out late, and that it’s ruining their football program - despite the fact that there is evidence of these boys laughing and talking about the rape on video and through social media as it happens. DON’T LET THESE SICK BASTARDS GET AWAY WITH IT JUST BECAUSE THEY’RE PRECIOUS FOOTBALL PLAYERS.

(Sidenote: “Dead” is a euphemism for “drugged”.)

HOW ARE WE AT A POINT WHERE WE WILL DEFEND RAPISTS EVEN WHEN THEY HAVE TWEETED, POSTED A PHOTO, AND RECORDED A VIDEO BLATANTLY ADMITTING - BOASTING ABOUT - THE FACT THAT THEY RAPED SOMEONE? WHAT THE EVER-LOVING FUCK.


VIDEO of the rapists’ gloating. Warning: the video is disgusting. In the twelve-minute original, some fucked up shit is said, but what stuck out the most was when someone got disgusted and went to go check on the rape victim and asked Michael (the guy telling all the jokes), “What if that was your daughter/sister?” And he replied, “I wouldn’t care.”

#oprollredroll

http://rollredroll.com/

STILL NOT UNDERSTANDING WHY THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T HEARD ABOUT THIS.

STOP “LIKING” THIS.

FUCK YOUR HIPSTER SKINNY WHITE GIRLS SLEEPING IN FLOWERS AND HOLDING MUGS BLOG AND SHARE THIS INFORMATION.

THIS IS NOT A “SILENT SUPPORT” SITUATION.

I’M NOT COUNTING “LIKES” FOR THE PRIZE OF JUSTICE FOR FUCK’S SAKE. TELL PEOPLE. GET PEOPLE ANGRY. THEY NEED TO BE FUCKING LIVID.

guys, please reblog. this is just absolutely sick.

disgusting pigs

Disgusting sub human scum. Proof sport is for apes. 

(via lucybarker)