What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

nstitutional consent: you know you can get away with it because the whole system is set up to help you get away with it.

Of course, this doesn’t justify other people blaming the victim. They have no excuse whatsoever and should all be smacked firmly on the head.

Leave your pain here, and go out and do your magnificent things.

— Judge Rosemarie Aquilina

They know that deploying rape brigades is cheap and expeditious: no heavy weaponry, training, or maneuvers. They know that targeting women breaks the backbones, the will, and the cohesion of communities, leaving them vulnerable. Most crucial, they know that the world is blind to women …

A boundary is similar to a border, a place where you stop and the other person starts. When boundaries are invaded, a person has entered territory belonging to the other person. This may be an emotional boundary, a physical boundary, or a sexual boundary. Boundaries also exist in other areas, however. Telling someone how to think violates their mental boundaries. Telling them how to spend their money violates their financial boundaries.

High-quality sex education can and should equip young people with the language and tools to understand and critique the roles of gender and power in their friendships and romantic relationships.

If a child has been molested, she or he is much less likely to report it if she doesn’t know what words to use.

Feminist writer, theorist and professor Cynthia Enloe writes:

Patriarchy’s workings are not automatically rejected by women and girls. There are many rewards bestowed on a woman who finds ways to fit into a patriarchal system: marital economic security, societal respectability; even, occasionally, state honors. The woman who does not rebel against patriarchy will be complimented on her beauty, on her femininity, on her loyalty (as a daughter, a wife, a secretary); she will be praised for her endurance, her good sense, her domestic skills, her maternal devotion, her sexual appeal, her caring sacrifice.

The whole system creates the dichotomy between pure women and women to fuck.

— Kalki Koechlin