What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape Quotes

“Having sex is like a cup of tea. If you wouldn't force someone to drink tea, why would you force them to fuck? If someone said they wanted tea, and then changed their mind when you made it, would you pour it down their throat?”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“I think we have to start by humanizing rapists, not to downplay their actions but to face the fact that rapists are human. That makes the crime worse, not better. Humans have choices, and rape is a horrible one.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“Telling doesn't always come with a reward: comfort, closure, justice. Sometimes, women tell but everyone acts as if they said nothing at all.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“You do not lose innocence when you learn about terrible acts; you lose your innocence when you commit them. An open cultural of tolerance, honesty, and discussion is the best way to safeguard innocence, not destroy it.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“Girls and boys get completely different messages about sex. We assume that sex feels good for boys, but girls learn early that losing their virginity is supposed to hurt. We create the idea that sex is uncomfortable for girls, and we raise girls who don’t think they deserve pleasure, and boys who at best don’t care about their partners’ pleasure, and at worst are actively abusive.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“Discussions about rape are so often irrational, and sometimes outright bizarre. It's the only crime to which people respond by wanting to lock up the victims. It's the only crime that is so bad that victims are supposed to be destroyed beyond repair by it, but simultaneously not so bad that the men who do it should be treated like criminals.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“It's time to throw one idiotic notion overboard—the notion that men can't stop, that there's a point of no return once you're sexually aroused. We keep talking about women's agency, but men have agency too. Guys, tell me this: if you were in the middle of hot sex and really, really into it, and your grandmother walked into the room and peered at you over her glasses, would you stop, or would you keep going?”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“No matter how much you heal, you can never be unraped, any more than you can be undead.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“We've created a narrative that says that either it didn't happen to you, or you deserved it.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“How you act with your rapist afterwards, and even how you might feel about your rapist afterwards, doesn't indicate the seriousness of either the crime or your trauma.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“Why are we afraid of "angry women"? I think we owe it to our daughters to teach them that some things are really worth getting angry about.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“Rape culture. The totality of all the big and little things we do, say and believe that ultimately lead to the conclusion that it's okay to rape.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“Power corrupts everything that is already corrupt about rape: who is believed, who is accountable, who is punished, and why.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“But in the US legal system, if you are invested, informed and interested in your subject, you're not fit to judge your peers. If you've been raped, then you can't have an opinion about it because you're too biased, too emotional, too close to it.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“For anyone whose main concern in all this is the subjugation of men rather than the liberation of women, I have some advice: grow a pair. Of eyes. I don't think we need to worry too much about the imminent avalanche of ruined men falling from on high. Plenty of them get passes.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“If you had your wallet stolen on a dark, deserted street, you might kick yourself for being out too late, or having too much cash in it, or not looking over your shoulder, but you probably wouldn't feel you deserved to be robbed and beaten, and you would probably think of yourself as the victim, and the person who mugged you as the criminal. With sexual assault, that formula doesn't work.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“Saying "But she consented" is just one of the myriad ways we are so quick to blame the victim. Yes, we have choices. We choose between humiliation now or humiliation later, we choose between short skirts and long, we choose when to leave and when to stay. We choose when to say yes is just easier than saying no, at least in that moment. None of these choices equals consent.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“Why do we keep quiet? The easy answer is shame, and often that is the reason. We think it's our fault for being available or vulnerable or clueless. All over the world, we blame ourselves, quite unable to take on board that another human being committed the crime. It's easier to feel ashamed than to accept that someone violated us in the most viciously intimate way and we couldn't do anything about it.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“Sometimes I wonder if we consider bad table manners a worse breach of protocol than forcing a random object up a personal orifice.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“I can imagine murdering, but not raping. Murder is worse than rape, I know, but there are lots of reasons to do it. If I were in a state of out-of-control rage, if someone were threatening to harm me or someone else, if killing someone were the only way to avoid some terrible catastrophe …”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“Justifiable homicide exists (for instance, if you’re killing someone to stop a rape), but justifiable rape? Do you ever need to rape someone to stop any other crime? The only people who openly justify rape are those who run blatantly woman-hating societies, where women are objects.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“Imagine being a child with a secret for which there are no words, only dark shapes sliding around in your vision, shapes nobody else sees. Imagine what would be unleashed if so many people didn’t have to waste so much time dealing with flashbacks, secret-keeping, suicidal thoughts, low self-esteem, crippling fear of … everything, and on down the dreary list. Imagine the fantastic, the amazing, the mind-boggling things so many rape survivors could do, say, create or be if they didn’t have to waste time being traumatized and stymied and made small. Imagine the art that we could create, the songs we could sing, the forests we could plant, the life-changing planet-saving gizmos we could invent, instead of wasting our time trying to stop our hearts from pounding if we hear footsteps behind us on our way to the bus stop. It’s such a wholesale waste of potential.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“RAPE DRAINS the light. Like J.K. Rowling’s fantastically terrifying Dementors, it sucks joy. And, along with draining the light from victims’ lives, it tends to drain the light from sensible conversation. Discussions about rape are so often irrational, and sometimes outright bizarre. It’s the only crime to which people respond by wanting to lock up the victims. It’s the only crime that is so bad that victims are supposed to be destroyed beyond repair by it, but simultaneously not so bad that the men who do it should be treated like other criminals.

I want to let some light back in.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“Rape on campus is always because people are rapists. We just don't want to think about the uncomfortable truth that a rapist is just a guy, any guy, who rapes.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“There's something both frightening and exhilarating about a man, an ordinary man, saying "I raped." It's frightening because it gives the lie to the "Monster" theory of rape, that keeps perpetrators in the "other" category.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“Human beings are complex, and one person may bounce back quickly from a crime that breaks another's spirit.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

“There's a subversive little thread that often weaves itself into any discussion of women actually speaking out about and taking space to claim their histories of sexual violence. It's an insidious thread that has choked us for far too long. I call it the Lose-Lose Rape Conundrum. It unwinds like this. If you talk about it, you're a helpless victim angling for sympathy. If you're not a helpless victim, then it wasn't such a big deal, so why are you talking about it? If you're surviving and living your life, why are you ruining some poor man's life? Either it's a big deal, so you're ruined, or it's not a big deal and you should be quiet.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape