This gives me shivers when I look at it. I feel so sorry for the women anyone who has to live with the fact that they have been sexually assaulted and then have privileged women and men wax on about how rape is the fault of the woman victim.

[EDIT: I am a fool and assumed the person in the photograph was female but was then helpfully informed that the person is in fact male. I apologise for the mistake. Rape is serious and horrible regardless of who it happens to and I think across the board perpetrators get away with it more than they are prosecuted and rape victims end up being criminalised more than they see justice done.]

Rape, abuse etc happens to both sexes but we’re still in a society where being a woman means that it’s okay for guys to grab your ass/boobs in a bar, where it’s fine for guys to yell obscene things at you while you’re walking down the street, where people still ask ‘were you drunk?’ if you try and report any type of sexual assault. This is why it annoys me when events like slutwalk get torn down for just being about publicity. There is so much shame attached to rape and I feel by talking about it, by publicising it we see a) how widespread the problem is b) how diverse the victims are c) we can really see how many people are getting away with it. You can’t say it’s just ‘one type of girl’ when people from all sexes, races and fashion styles are victims. [sidenote: and who is ‘that type of girl’ anyway? And why should (s)he be considered okay to attack? Regardless of your fashion choice, sexuality or behaviour it should never be considered okay for someone else to put their hands upon you let alone violently attack you]

3% of men report being having non consensual sex in their lifetime. One in twenty women do. It makes me so sad that people genuinely think there is inequality in favour of women in any country when in some countries: women aren’t allowed to drive, girls have their clitoris removed, women are stoned to death and where in our country: men get paid more than women, there is no affordable day care, rape prosecutions are succesfull less than 40% of the time, anorexia is on the rise  and more women than the population of Wales are abused a year! The list goes on and on.  

We’ve come so far and as a Western woman I am so so lucky for the fact that I can vote, have a job and live my life pretty freely but we still have so far to go and this picture speaks volumes for that. It’s only when we start teaching men ‘hey, don’t rape women’ rather than ‘girls, protect yourselves’ that we might be on the right track. If we start there perhaps we can just be like ‘Hey, don’t rape anyone?’ and then we will all be safe to live our lives. 

That girl boy doesn’t look much over eighteen if that and it just breaks my heart. And if I hear the term ‘grey rape’ one more time.. Rape is rape. It’s never acceptable. End of.