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Prepare yourselves! I am about to utter a radical statement!

Gasp!

I would like to not get raped. As such, I am a radical.

I say radical in the sense of requiring the restructuring or demolishment of social norms and institutions in order for something to be comprehensively addressed. For example, this year we were reminded that a radical statement for Black North Americans is: I would like to not be murdered by my government.

That is a reasonable thing to ask. It is also a radical statement. These are not mutually exclusive categories.

My radical statement is:

I would like to not be raped.

I would like to not grow up with both implicit and explicit messages from the media, from authority figures and educators, and from the way people treat me, that result in the acute awareness that I may be raped, that rape is a constant possibility in my life.

"Hmm...we need some kind of motivating plot for our heroine. What do you think: pregnancy, or rape?"

"Why not both?"

I would like to not have had to learn the many things I need to do to prevent my own rape, and then to find that all those things will not be enough.

"You walked home alone?? / You let him walk you home??"

I would like to not have to live with the constant knowledge that my rape is possible, very very possible, that is is all at once something I am responsible for stopping, something I must be active in preventing, and something that is very likely to happen to me no matter what I do because it is just something that happens.

Anti-Rape nail polish
Rohypnol -Detecting Straws

I would like to not be raped, so I would like our discussions about the possibility of rape not to frame it as something that just ... happens, like a tornado. I need us to understand and be explicit about where the fault and cause of rape lies, and this makes me a radical.

I would like that nobody be raped. I would like to restructure our social construction of power so that rape is not a thing that happens by default to the less powerful - the incarcerated, the homeless, children, refugees, the occupied and invaded, the mentally ill and institutionally committed, the disabled, the visibly queer and the quietly non normative.

I would like the performance of power not to include rape within its toolset.

No, I would like to restructure how power is performed so that it doesn't involve any violation of any body or mind, so that it doesn't require violence and invasion to enforce.

I don't know how we can do that, so I guess I need to demolish institutions of power, so that I don't get raped. This is why I am radical.

I would like to not get raped, so I need to disrupt how we're constructing and socializing gender. I need us to start raising men to feel free to express pain and sadness and loss and disappointment instead of rolling everything up into anger and frustration. We need to stop condoning violent expressions of that anger with 'boys will be boys' or 'what did you expect?'. We need to support men instead of telling them that boys don't cry.

"It's just a scratch. Man up - quit acting like such a girl."

We need to destroy gendered entitlement to the bodies of women, femmefolk, children, and other at-risk people, so that one's social status, popularity, situation, or emotional state do not create an environment in which one is entitled to commit rape. I need it to not matter who you are when you rape someone, which means I need to destroy the cult of status.

"Justin runs most of our workshops, I find it hard to believe he'd assault someone like that. Are you sure you didn't just give him the wrong signals?"

So I need to change how we construct and interpret gender so that it doesn't automatically include assumptions about power, entitlement, and autonomy, so that I don't get raped, which is why I am a radical.

I need to destroy the idea that our bodies are valuable only through the eyes of men, which means destroying institutions of virginity and purity, of fanatically protective fathers and jealous boyfriends, abstinence education and constant narratives of sluts, madonnas, whores, teases, and cold bitches.

"She's mine, you hear? So stay the fuck away from her!"

I need to do destroy reflexive resentment towards those of us who do not use our bodies for the enjoyment of men in a society where normatively attractive bodies are punished for being too seductive and alluring and normatively unattractive bodies are punished for not being attractive enough, and that punishment is still all too often assault, harassment, and rape no matter what the body.

"Cockteases like you should be taught a lesson"

So I need to destroy how we view, evaluate, reward, or punish people based on the bodies they have and the way they choose to use them. I would like to not get raped because my body is not made for the enjoyment and use for other people, nor for their evaluation and punishment, and this makes me a radical.


I am a radical because I need to not belong to a society that institutionally and organically supports a culture that enables rape. Burn it all down, and rebuild it better, because I would like to not get raped.