Madel

“This is rape's legacy, the countless deaths women die just trying to keep existing in the world as it is.”
― Roxane Gay, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

“Because of course I feared that i might be overreacting, overemotional, oversensitive, weak, playing victim, crying wolf, blowing things out of proportion, making things up. Because generations of women have heard that they're irrational, melodramatic, neurotic, hysterical, hormonal, psycho, fragile and bossy.

Because girls are coached out of the womb to be nonconfrontational, agreeable, solicitous, deferential, demure, nurturing, to be tuned in to others, and to shrink and shut up.

Because speaking up for myself was not how I learned English. Because I'm fluent in Apology, in Question Mark, in Giggle, in Bowing Down, in Self-Sacrifice.”
― Elissa Bassist, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

“Sometimes people tell me that something bad happened to me, but I am brave and strong. I don’t want to be told that I am brave or strong. I am not right just because he was wrong. I don’t want to be made noble. I want someone willing to watch me thrash and crumple because that, too, is the truth, and it needs a witness. “He broke me,” I say to a friend. “You’re not broken,” she whispers back. I turn my palms up, wishing I could show her the pieces.”
― Roxane Gay, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

“Perhaps the most horrifying thing about nonconsensual sex is that, in an instant, it erases you. Your own desires, your safety and well-being, your ownership of the body that may very well have been the only thing you ever felt sure you owned—all of it becomes irrelevant, even nonexistent. You don’t need to be a helpless, innocent child to be changed by that.”
― Roxane Gay, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture