(no subject)
Sep. 21st, 2006 12:19 pmMy mind is just stuck on this case. To be dragged behind a car by your neck until you choke to death and your body scrapes open leaving your blood all over the road and not enough left of your face for an I.D. The fact that I wish this'd be classified a hate crime, but I'm cynical enough to know that won't happen.
Even though it happens all the damned time. Not usually as gruesomely, but all the time. When is rape going to become a hate crime? Wife-beating? Hell, when are these going to really get treated like crimes at all, instead of "What was she doing out so late?" and "Why didn't she just leave?"
I'm sick and tired of it. I cried myself to sleep one night because my father and I had a talk about crime statistics and whether clothing mattered, and he gave me the old line, "You don't enter a lion's den doused in steak sauce, and you don't wear a miniskirt while walking around at night" and part of me was scared to death that if something did happen to me someday dad would be sympathetic but a little corner of his mind would wonder what I'd been wearing. My husband had to do his best to comfort me after I freaked out at the ending of a CSI episode where a rape survivor was killed by her rapist to keep her from testifying, because I'd let myself hope that maybe in fiction this'd get as close to a happy ending as was possible. One of my best friends shrugged off the punch her latest boyfriend had given her with, "All men will hit you sooner or later, Steph".
Most of all, I'm sick and tired of remembering all this and so many other cases I've read about and other women I've known and then being told I'm 'too angry' when I talk about it.
What else am I supposed to be?
ETA:
flewellyn's take on the whole mess.
Even though it happens all the damned time. Not usually as gruesomely, but all the time. When is rape going to become a hate crime? Wife-beating? Hell, when are these going to really get treated like crimes at all, instead of "What was she doing out so late?" and "Why didn't she just leave?"
I'm sick and tired of it. I cried myself to sleep one night because my father and I had a talk about crime statistics and whether clothing mattered, and he gave me the old line, "You don't enter a lion's den doused in steak sauce, and you don't wear a miniskirt while walking around at night" and part of me was scared to death that if something did happen to me someday dad would be sympathetic but a little corner of his mind would wonder what I'd been wearing. My husband had to do his best to comfort me after I freaked out at the ending of a CSI episode where a rape survivor was killed by her rapist to keep her from testifying, because I'd let myself hope that maybe in fiction this'd get as close to a happy ending as was possible. One of my best friends shrugged off the punch her latest boyfriend had given her with, "All men will hit you sooner or later, Steph".
Most of all, I'm sick and tired of remembering all this and so many other cases I've read about and other women I've known and then being told I'm 'too angry' when I talk about it.
What else am I supposed to be?
ETA:
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