Do men understand rape? [View all]

[ZX86]

As with the Bill Cosby scandal and many others involving sexual assaults I often see a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking on what the victim should have done during and immediately after the rape. Their criticism seems so casual and flippant it's hard to believe they have considered how traumatic sexual assault can be.

I would ask you to consider the following scenario:

You attend a holiday office party and have one drink too many. When I say one too many I really mean one. You get pulled over on your way home and you barely fail a sobriety test. You are not stumbling, black out, drunk. You are just past the limit. You are arrested and taken to jail. Due to circumstances beyond your control you are held over night and get raped in a holding cell.

What would YOU do? Immediately report the rape to the police, your current jailers? What do you think their reaction is going to be when you tell them you've just been raped and demand to be moved to a more comfortable cell? You get released the next morning. What's your first order of business? Check into a hospital and get a rape kit? Go back to the police station and report your rape? Start telling all your friends, family, and business associates you've been arrested for drunk driving and got raped in jail last night? Hire a lawyer to sue the police?

Think about it. Would you want your name and picture in the paper as the drunk driving guy suing the police because in the middle of criminal activity you got caught, jailed, and raped? You know there would be those who would claim you got what you deserved because you were drunk driving in the first place. Just like the rape victim in a short skirt.

How many times would you like to describe the intimate details of your rape over and over to perfect strangers like hospital staff, police officers, your lawyers, lawyers representing the police, court officials, etc. How would you like everybody on your job and in your neighborhood to know you are a dui driver who has drunken, gay sex, in jail?

And if by a long shot you could get through all that, do you really want to describe your rape in open court? All the orifices penetrated and for how long? All the foreign objects used. All the laughing and cat calling of the other inmates?

Would you really go through all that or just thank your lucky stars you weren't killed and try to forget about it as soon as possible?

Please men think twice about going down your laundry list of what rape victims are supposed do and how they are supposed act if they want other to believe they have been raped because if you told me you were raped in jail I wouldn't ask you what you were wearing or insinuate you were asking for it or lying for attention.