Despicable Me?

Someone found my likening Blythe Harris’ experience to rape “despicable.”

To which my response is: as I point out in the comments, “As a survivor of rape, I feel entitled to make those comparisons, which feel authentic to me. And really, is judging how a survivor, of any violent crime or personal intrusion, responds any less despicable? I’m sorry that not all survivors of rape have the ‘right’ response, according to your arbitrary standards, but that’s really not their–or my–problem. Maybe you should get off your politically correct high horse, pay attention to what a real person is saying, and actually learn something.”

But, more to the point, perhaps one of the problems we have as women, and as a feminist movement, is that we’re too busy rushing to judge each other to actually understand each other. Understanding, of course, takes time–time that, of essence, takes away from the thrill of judgment. Which, of necessity, involves a rush.

In short, why yes, as a survivor of rape I DO feel the right to contextualize my own experience.

Telling women how they’re “allowed” to feel about what’s happened to them is contributing to the problem, in that it’s operating under the assumption that there is an “allowed” response for a woman to have.  That “good” girls respond one way and “bad” girls respond another.  That while one survivor gets praise, another is “despicable”–because, presumably, her skirt was too short she didn’t do what good girls do.

If you have a problem with that, then fuck you.