RAPE IS Not An Opportunity! IT IS A CRIMINAL ACT

This post includes part of a re-post, because I am incensed and reacting to: A FEMALE CONGRESS WOMAN suggesting that rape is an opportunity for women!!  Her name is: Rep. Jean Schmidt of Ohio….she is suggesting that women who get pregnant from a rape, should see this as an opportunity to raise that child.RAPE IN OUR CULTUREAs the mother of two daughters–when did I tell them or how did they find out–that there was something called rape, and that women in all societies are vulnerable, in the face of men?Did I sit down with them and have this direct conversation? (More on that later.) I do remember discussions about locking car doors, doing the same when they were babysitting, and later making sure that their university campus life included mace and the ability to seek medical services right on campus. I made sure they were informed in the best way that I could. Knowledge is power.And do you remember…as a female or as a male, when you first learned about rape?

I was in grade school when I was in the dining room reading the Chicago Tribune and landed on some piece about a Jewish man in Germany during WW II, who had to sit on the street with a sign around him that read, I RAPE GERMAN WOMEN.

“What’s rape?” I asked my mother. Five o’clock on a busy evening, she making dinner. She told me something vague, probably that included the word assault. So I looked rape up in the dictionary. Then I began to understand. But not really…you start to put things together, but slowly..two missing girls in Chicago, then another girl missing. Always girls. Girls aren’t safe. There is something about being a girl…

(And please note, that I am fully aware that boys and men can also be vulnerable.)

OUT IN THE WORLD

There has always been lots of talk about safety, and about fear. People talk about the old days. For some, the old days were safe. That’s crazy talk. Women have never been totally safe from rape. Many mornings I walked to my high school by myself, a good two mile walk. Many evenings I walked home alone. It was often dark and cold in Chicago, but I was fine. I was a latch-key kid. When I look back on this, basically, I was lucky.

In college, a group of boys from Loyola tried to harm Kathy T. when she was walking alone near Lake Michigan. She got away. Another guy with mental issues, tried to break into a dorm room. Before I was married, my name in the paper, I got a phone call from some guy who I admit used language I was not totally familiar with. But instinct tells you he’s talking about something evil. I hung up, called the police. I learned, realized more and more, that being a woman can lead to that heart-stopping moment when you are encountering something frightening, something not right and your body tells you–you are in danger, you need to get out of this situation!

Then you’re a mother, and you get a call one Tuesday morning when your two young daughters are in school. The voice says he “has your daughter.” You hang up. Call the school, get the principal and say: I’M RIGHT HERE AND YOU WLL GO TO EACH CLASSROOM AND FIND MY GIRLS, AND THEN YOU WILL COME BACK AND TELL ME THEY ARE THERE, THEY ARE FINE. Your heart is pounding, but eventually he comes back–your children are okay.

There’s the elevator door that opens mid-day in the hospital, you in your nursing school smock, and there’s one man in the elevator. You get on, you are riding down together and this man, who is wearing a stethoscope, says he has some cookies in his car. Would you like to go there with him? EVEN DOCTORS! When the elevator door opens, you walk really fast to get away from this creep.

Of course as you live, as you raise your children, there comes a time when you have to, you absolutely have to talk to them about rape. For me THE TALK was precipitated by an incident, a teen had been raped in a shopping center near our neighborhood. It was all over the news; my older daughter wondered WHY I wasn’t talking about it. I was wrong. Knowledge is always power.

BE CAREFUL. AND THANKS TO S.A.N.E. which stands for SEXUAL ASSAULT NURSE EXAMINER. 

For there is absolutely no question that each and every woman on the planet can be vulnerable. Each one of us has to be smart, has to be careful. Will it change? We are in a flurry of political activity now that questions women still, makes fun of them and their fears, does not understand that one 20 minute experience can implant fear on the brain FOREVER. That’s what incensed me about the statement of Rep. Jean Smith.WAKE UP WOMEN!  And charge the men in your lives to protect women. RAISE YOUR SONS to honor women. Be thankful for some changes in society, like S.A.N.E. (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) nurses who are specially trained in the medical, psychological, and forensic examination of a sexual assault victim. Because this is real–and there was a time when a medical person would walk into the ER and call out, “Who’s the rape?” That won’t happen anymore. Police, nurses, ER workers–all should now be trained to care for a victim using specific standards. To learn more go here.   Thanks for reading.

PHOTO: thanks to BU TODAY and Cydney Scott

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