Denim Day

A little while ago I was outside, after dark, and a man I did not know started to walk behind me. Instantly all the little hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I started fingering my keys and thinking of how I could cause the most damage if he tried anything. I started paying attention to where the lights were. I wondered if anyone would here my scream. My eyes kept drifting to the forested area next to me, calculating how quickly I could be dragged behind a bush. Wondering that if anything happened and someone walked by, would they even help?

You know what he was probably thinking? How it was so cold outside, and he couldn't wait to get home. How his professor assigned way to much reading. Something normal, something safe.

This isn't the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last. I don't think this is even an example of me being neurotic. This is normal. Worse than that, this is what responsible women are supposed to do. Because rape is just a women's issue, a women's problem.

I hate that I feel like I'm supposed to obey all these rules to be safe. If I just don't wear anything sexy, or go out alone at night, or a thousand other things, then I'll be safe. If I break one of them, just one, then I deserve anything that happens to me, I'm somehow complicit in the acts of another. I hate that most of the rules don't matter. They're comforting lies we tell, because so want to believe that we can somehow control the actions of others, and thereby stay safe. We want that so much we are willing to blame people when someone chooses to do something horrible to them. Even the way we say it, "she got raped" (like she caught a cold or something) instead of "a man raped her" takes the focus away from the person that actually caused rape. Mistakes were made, but not by him.


Part of the reason we focus on the woman who is raped and not the man who rapes, is that we don't want to acknowledge that rapists are not just scary men in the bushes. The fact is, I probably know someone who is a rapist, and so do you. It's a terrifying thing to acknowledge that rapists are ordinary people. Its easier to blame someone for not playing by the rules than to face up to that reality.

Unfortunately, none of that actually fixes anything. It may make us feel safe, but if anything believing those lies makes us less safe because it takes our focus away from the actual problem. If we actually want to stop rape, we need to start focusing on the people who rape, and the culture that allows them to.

Walking alone does not cause rape. Clothing does not cause rape. Rapists cause rape.

What if instead of teaching women how not to be raped, we taught men not to rape? What if men had even a portion of the fear of raping someone as most women do of being raped? People talk about how so many women cry rape. (It does happen, and it's wrong when it does. It's also very rare.) I wonder what would happen if men were afraid of doing something because it would make them seem rapey?  What if we stopped assuming that women were sexually available so long as they didn't make it crystal clear that they weren't? What if we didn't teach that no means no, but that yes means yes?

I hate that being scared is the normal and responsible norm for so many women. I hate knowing that someone could do something to me, and I would get blamed for it. I hate that as a society we support rape with our silence and our willingness to willfully ignore it just because perversely it makes us feel safer. I hate that we look at the victim and not the perpetrator because it makes us more comfortable. I hate that all of this just supports rape. Most of all I hate that because I have a vagina, stepping outside can be like entering a war zone. There is no reason I shouldn't be able to go outside at night.

Today is Denim Day, when denim is worn to raise awareness about sexual assault, inspired by a woman who was raped while wearing tight jeans, whose rapist was acquitted because a judge felt that because she was wearing tight jeans she must have helped to take them off, so it couldn't have been rape. It's a good way of expressing solidarity and raising awareness. Good goals, but honestly I think that so long as rape is seen as a women's issue, focused on what we can do to not be raped rather than changing what actually causes and supports rape, not much will change.