Do men understand rape?

[roguevalley]

87. too many people who never face the thing they decry can

never know the terror and horror of it. Racism, rape, child birth. They talk about it but they will never know it until it happens to them and for most of the horrors of this world, they will never experience it. But they talk about it with authority which makes me want to pick up a fucking chair.

When I was about eleven or twelve the grandfather of a friend of mine decided that he wanted to molest me. I had no clue and neither did my family. he chased me around whenever he saw me because he had had strokes and his personality warped. I know if he had been lucid he would have hanged himself.

He actually came to my house when he thought I was alone. My old grandpa was there, why I don't know because he wasn't earlier when I came home. He knew this man from other times. Grandpa came into the kitchen and told me to go out the back door and go to where mama worked. i was washing dishes and didn't know what he was talking about. I did and was spared. My grandpa sat on the front porch talking to him about the old days and finally the old man left. He never chased anyone again because my family told his. My grandpa was my guardian angel and I will love him forever.

No man will ever understand the horror of that childhood memory that I have never told anyone including my family until I am sitting here telling you. My grandpa got it. He was my hero. Charles Augustus Paxton saved my life and kept it on the good path. It could have been so different had he not known and acted.

I am used to good men in my life. Bad men mystify me. I don't know why anyone would speak with 'authority' over something that they will probably never know. I know men get raped but its not like the epidemic that afflicts women.

I wish it was different but this is what it is.