April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month – granted, I’m a little late in figuring this out, but better late than never! I’ve discovered it thanks to abyss2hope who I’ve recently discovered and added to my feminist blogroll. She’s posted about today, April 3rd, being “A Day to End Sexual Violence” and has organized “Blog Against Sexual Violence Day” as a way for the blog world to raise awareness of a much needed movement.
I only know (personally) one person who has been violently, physically, sexually assaulted. I know of several others who have been harrassed in other ways. They are only a few in a world of many. Being a college student and working in/around law enforcement has opened my eyes to more things than I can honestly say that I cared to see. Working and being around mostly men has subjected me to things that I would rather not have memories of.
I’ve been around people, males, that I considered friends when they’ve asked me in that quiet, suggestive tone, “Don’t all women have a rape fantasy?” Luckily I was quick enough to fire back “I’m sure rape victims don’t.” I’ve heard the jokes, the assumptions that women ask for it by wearing the clothes they do, or by being in a frat house drinking. I’ve been around when an assault has taken place and one of my officers has had to go to the hospital to speak with the victim. I was there when that same officer came back distraught over what happened, and over being attacked by the victim’s friends who screamed “Where were you when this was happening to her??” I’ve seen it from several sides, but by no means all of them.
This is the world we live in, and daily we hear about
how women are used as objects for men in the subways to jerk off to or how the courts deny a mother’s pleas to restrict her husband’s access to her kids after multiple threats from the man to kill them all, because she’s still sleeping with him! She was sleeping with him because she felt she had to, that she had no other way to protect her children.
I know this post is a bit rambly, but there are so many things out there that deserve attention. Like this: The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo which is airing on HBO April 8th, 2008 at 10:00 PM. Unfortunately I have to work that night so I won’t be able to really do anything but spread the word about it.
I guess that’s all some of us really can do, is spread the word. Spread the word in any way we can whether its through sponsoring a R.A.D. class through school (as my department does) or blogging about the topic, or going and volunteering at a crisis center. Here’s a commitment to do more, starting with this blog.
