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writing for godot

Rape Survivors as Pawns of the Righteous

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Written by Ilene Flannery Wells   
Wednesday, 24 October 2012 13:45
Rape survivors are being traumatized, and our society suffers as a whole, when the act of rape is used as a rhetorical pawn in the game of chess to control women's lives.

This issue at hand, is NOT about abortion, it is about EQUALITY!

The fundamental question is: Does the woman, or does the State control if, when, and how many times she will become a mother?

The answer is obvious, to me anyway.

Yet, this debate continues to go down the "rape rabbit hole", as I have been calling it.  Rape is being used as an acceptable exception to an unacceptable infringement on a woman's fundamental freedom as a citizen of this country. And now more righteous MEN are speaking out against that! 

Do these men have no shame?

I was lucky. I fought off my attacker at the point of a gun.  I came THIS close to being raped. Others were not so lucky.  However, I know how traumatized the millions of women who have been sexually assaulted feel, being used this way, and having to relive their assault again, and again, because they cannot get away from that particular "R" word.

The worst of it, is the way the rape talk is sending everyone down the rabbit hole, and we lose focus on the fundamental issue of equality. And no one wins, and the rape survivors will continue to be used as pawns.

This MUST end.

So, I won't have any of it anymore, and I am asking all of the women's rights supporters to do the same.  If anyone brings up when life begins or brings up any argument for any restrictions beyond Roe v Wade, I just go back to the fundamental question I posed above. 

This is not about abortion or birth control. When women control their reproduction, they control their futures, their very destiny. To legislate that away is oppression.

If everyone remembered that, perhaps this whole debate would be over, and all of the volunteer and paid efforts that is spent to oppress women, could instead go toward helping women.  Perhaps helping to find a way for a woman to continue the pregnancy if she wants to, but is in a financial bind, or needs to get away from an abusive situation, or whatever it is. Help them pay for daycare afterwards...and doctor bills...and food.

And then, perhaps, the only time we, as members of a society that is supposed To be for "justice for all", would talk about rape, would be when we discuss how to END it.

Then... perhaps... the flashbacks of my own sexual assault will start to go back to the recesses of my brain where I had been keeping them somewhat successfully until I kept hearing that particular "R" word at ever increasing intervals since 2010.
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