Stop Slut Shaming

Slut shaming brings out my anger and sometimes when it’s released can be so raw it frightens me.

It happens when I see something about women being blamed for being raped.

Or hear about a woman who told a man she didn’t want to have sex but he had sex with her anyway.

This time I just happened to come across a rape case where the rapist was acquitted because she was wearing a thong/g-string 😡

Which then carried on to a couple of rugby players who were acquitted, because THEY said it was consensual, even though the woman had been seen with blood on her pants by her taxi driver and lacerations in her vagina by her doctor.

Most women don’t go around wanting to accuse men of raping them.

The fact that I have a friend who was told to not look pretty when she went to court for her case against her pedophile tells you all you need to know about the justice system.

It’s a part of larger systems that just don’t work. Systems we are supposed to put our trust in.

And it breaks me to know there are people experiencing the repercussions of this broken system.

I never went to court against my rapists. The first time I didn’t even tell anyone it happened. Because I thought it was my fault.

Both times I believed it was something I did.

I didn’t have the courage to step up against the men who did that to me.

So to see these women who are using every ounce of strength they have to take their rapists to courts, to then be told it’s their fault because of what they wore absolutely shatters me.

Last year I found it in my heart to forgive the humans who assaulted me and even say thank you and I love you. Because I’m far on the other side and know who I am without anyone else’s judgement now.

I almost didn’t make it here.

Suicide was an option more than not.

How many women are walking around broken, feeling like they made it happen because that is what this world tells us?

And I’ve always had to live with the thought of – did I cause another woman pain by not saying anything? Is someone else out there hating themselves because I said nothing?

I hated myself for most of my life. I hated my body and abused it because that’s what others had done.

I had no love for myself.

I have so much admiration for the women who choose to take their attackers on head first in the court knowing full well that what they are going to experience is a whole lot of victim blaming.

And this is where my judgemental bitch comes out because I don’t understand how a lawyer can say a women was raped because of the underwear she was wearing and go home and sleep at night.

For fucks sake this needs to change.

I will take every dagger thrown at me when I am seen in my naked body if it means one step closer to women not being victim blamed and shamed.

Because for too many years I thought it was because of who I am that those men hurt me.

No longer!

Naked bodies belong to no one but the person it is presented from. Nakedness does not mean permission. Nakedness does not entitle someone to show disrespect. It is how we were born. It has no meaning until you give it one.

I used to give it a big meaning.

And if you are someone who calls someone a slut because of what they are wearing or how they choose to make money and thinks that gives you the right to disrespect, touch, tell them your expectations because it’s such a blessing for you to be there with them then I invite you to look at your own perceptions because that is thinking how a rapist thinks.

And I want to believe not everyone thinks like that.

I truly do.

Xo S