Rape

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/03/the-math-that-keeps-helping-college-rapists.html

“A relatively small proportion of men are responsible for a large number of rapes,” the 2002 study notes. “ I have never raped anyone or even had to resist the temptation. But I have lived my life in a rape culture, a culture where men so often get away with it that any women is a potential victim with every reason to be suspicious of a male stranger who is a little too friendly. I have lived my life in the culture that these few men and the ideas and institutions that let them get away with it have created. It is not a good place to be female. It is also not a good place to be male. Unless, of course, you are the kind of man who would rather get away with it than to live in a world where women do not have to fear men in general because the ones who want to get away with it and can look just like the ones who don't.

Rape Poem
by Marge Piercy

“There is no difference between being raped
and being pushed down a flight of cement steps
except that the wounds also bleed inside.

There is no difference between being raped
and being run over by a truck
except that afterward men ask if you enjoyed it.

There is no difference between being raped
and being bit on the ankle by a rattlesnake
except that people ask if your skirt was short
and why you were out alone anyhow.

There is no difference between being raped
and going head first through a windshield
except that afterward you are afraid
not of cars
but half the human race.

The rapist is your boyfriend’s brother.
He sits beside you in the movies eating popcorn.
Rape fattens on the fantasies of the normal male
like a maggot in garbage.

Fear of rape is a cold wind blowing
all of the time on a woman’s hunched back.
Never to stroll alone on a sand road through pine woods,
never to climb a trail across a bald
without that aluminum in the mouth
when I see a man climbing toward me.

Never to open the door to a knock
without that razor just grazing the throat.
The fear of the dark side of hedges,
the back seat of the car, the empty house
rattling keys like a snake’s warning.
The fear of the smiling man
in whose pocket is a knife.
The fear of the serious man
in whose fist is locked hatred.

All it takes to cast a rapist to be able to see your body
as jackhammer, as blowtorch, as adding-machine-gun.
All it takes is hating that body
your own, your self, your muscle softens to flab.

All it takes is to push what you hate,
what you fear onto the soft alien flesh.
To bucket out invincible as a tank
armored with treads without senses
to possess and punish in one act,
to rip up pleasure, to murder those who dare
live in the left flesh open to love.”

(Source: neverapologizeforstrength)