When writing on subjects like this, there seems to be a tendency to jump back and forth from foot to foot, people wringing their hands as they try and decide how to tackle something of such sensitivity.

But then the out-stretched grasping hand catches the pull cord that is the chainsaw of bluntness and the only voice you can hear over the buzz of the engine is the one saying;

“Fuck it. Plough on regardless.”

There are no trembling hands here. No bitten lips or thoughtfully chewed fingers. Just maybe, wingspread, righteous indignance.

Let me begin this by putting my hand up and saying,

“Yes, I’ve been raped. Twice.”

Granted, not rape in any conventional sense of the term.

For a start, I’m a man – they were women.

The first happened in my youth and was rape through blackmail. Coercion through gentle threats. You can read about it elsewhere on the mountain. I was young, stupid, not in correct command of my faculties I could have prevented it, had I been thinking or something.

Sound familiar?

The second happened during a time of ill-health and insomnia. A semi fuck-buddy badgered her way into my home before university so she could have a joint and a cup of tea. She was allowed in only on the understanding that I was going back to sleep and wasn’t to be woken and that she would pull the door closed behind her.

I was doped up to the eyeballs on sleeping pills and other things in an effort to try and finally realize the impossible; sleep. I have vague memories of someone, her, opening the door to the room. Things fade out about there. They fade in again, she’s undressing beside the bed or so I think, the memory is fleeting but it’s there. Locked as I was into narcotic slumber, keeping the consciousness of those brief periods, was, is, almost impossible.

They come hard and fast after that.

Just scenes really, like bits taken from an editing room floor and edited badly together so they flicker and time jump.

Someone, her, gets under the covers.

Darkness

Someone, her, rolls up cuddling close.

Darkness

Someone, me, rolls away up against the wall.

Someone, her, bends up, lifting the covers as they remove their underwear.

Darkness

Someone, her, rifles up the covers as they sit up and tug down my boxers.

Darkness

A hand belonging to someone, her, reaches around clasping flesh in vaguely rough yet successful attempts to get someone, me, hard.

Darkness

In honesty, I’m still not quite sure the order of the last three.

Darkness

A flash of being mounted and grasping hands shoving me inside.

Darkness

Movement. Gasping, breathy movement, warmth.

Darkness

There is a flash of someone collapsing hard on my chest grunting as they finish and after a patch of darkness I’m left with a shaky memory of someone dragging on underwear as they smoke, their words scratched into my mind before I drift again.

“Fuck, I really just raped the shit out of you didn’t I?
Just came in and raped the shit out of you hehehe.”

I began to wake up a bit after that.

Sound familiar?

I’m sure there’s a multitude of geeks and normal men who would read this and be saying “What the fuck you complaining about buddy, you got laid! Result!” That’s not the point my simple friends, that can happen any time should I want it.

The point is, wanting it.

Rape statistics are unreliable. Many if not most rapes are not reported. Some are falsely reported. And that’s just dealing with the matter of male on female rape. We can’t even touch the numbers of female on male, female on female, male on male.

You go into a police station as a man and say that you’ve just been raped by a woman, the chances are you’ll be laughed back home.

Male on male will be recognized but the way the general male social psyche works, the shame, embarrassment and the stigma of weakness and everything else attached means its not likely to be reported.

As for female on female, I don’t really real feel qualified to comment on that. Although I know from research that female on female rapists are almost never caught or convicted and that apparently research on female rapists is rare. From what I’ve read, female rapist study seems based around those females who facilitate men to rape children.

However, I’m not really dealing with any of those, there are far more qualified people than I dealing with those subjects. Instead I intend to look at some of the more grassroots social aspects of sexual assault. I’m going tell a few stories, examine a few incidences and probably comment quite darkly. So if you have sort of attention span difficulties now would be the time to stop reading and head on over to a website with bright flashing colors or tits.

Before I go on, there is of course the matter of falsely reported rape or sexual assault.

It’s like a minefield lain by a blind epileptic.

It’s very easy to ruin one person’s life.

I’ve been there, had an ex-girlfriend who in a fit of sheer spite went around a pub saying I’d been improper. The spite being that I hadn’t been upset enough when we’d broken up. I also have friends who suffered similar threats to their freedom and reputation from scorned lovers. It can be and is a generally terrifying experience where your first move upon hearing the rumor should be to go to your lawyer first then the police.

Don’t wait; don’t think it’ll blow over. If you’ve nothing to fear go straight to a lawyer and the police.

If anything, don’t feel rage at these women who abuse the immense potential power they have to right petty wrongs. Be that a lover who has left them, a man who won’t look at them or any of a myriad of reasons. Sad, cruel and clawing creatures, pity them, but protect yourself as they can destroy you.

But I’m not here to deal with them either.

I’m here to deal with obfuscation. Willful denial. Peer pressure silence and dulled social acceptance and tolerance. The blind eye in plain sight.

For me…

Maybe not you.

It’s the slow building ring of a fire alarm bell.

The sort of rage that hammers up until it swallows you.

That’s what this is for.

This is for the weak and wounded.

Put on your just face and listen to me for a moment.

Aside from a little unsettled indignance, both incidences that I would put as close to rape as I’m ever going to feel outside a police or prison cell, left me feeling little less than a shrug. Yes, they were wrong, yes things should have been different, but fuck it, I’ve been through worse. You pick yourself up and you move on.

Maybe it’s a man thing, maybe its just my head and way of dealing with things.

Thing is though, I know it doesn’t work like that for others.

I know it’s the gnawing in the darkness.

The unknowable IF-WHAT-WHY-HOW.

I’ve seen it wreck cruel echoes through a relationship of mine and I’ve been hard pushed to understand all its nuances until long after the fallout of that relationship and I began to research the topic.

I was once at times of argument doubting, unkind toward the topic with my then girlfriend and this, this is in part payment for my sins where sins are crimes.

The rest is just pure vehemence.

Would the crowd part and those who’ve been violated move over there?

Those who don’t fully understand but wish they could, over there.

And you, you…

We’ll get to you later.

I, you, we don’t have courts or implements of vengeance.

And then there are those of us who fall through the cracks.

Still like a junkie, we can shake rattle and wince as we look toward some sort of shadowy karma for whom there exists no bat signal.

Friends move in strange ways, they are ever expanding interconnecting circles of groups, where someone knows a couple and that couple know a few others and so on and so forth.

You all know the way these things move.

Yet it is with horror I’m drawn back away from all the circles of friends I know. Because I know too much, heard too far. And it’s not the information I have that bothers me the most, it’s the fact that none of those closer connected to it are going to do anything about it. That it is just an accepted fact, that sometimes it’s even joked about, that nothing will ever happen to the people perpetrating these crimes and that because of this they have been allowed commit these crimes over and over.

And the only reaction?

People tut-tut-tutting, shaking their heads, saying something like “he’s a scumbag” and then maybe cracking a joke.

Of the jokes, I’m guilty too, I apologize, but I needed something to take the venom from what I’d been told and humor even black gallows humor – is better than sitting with the demon of truth.

Pull your hair, chop up your dresses and devour normality so some semblance of sanity can survive.

Sound familiar?

I’d like to give the disclaimer that every referenced story, every example I hammer out before commenting, they’re all true. Just given slightly vague to protect those involved, since in many of these cases I don’t have the permission of to print this.

Sometimes, just sometimes though, in realms of grey, you have to bad to do good.

I’m reminded of a conversation between two friends about a girl who wouldn’t give up the ghost and have sex. It was said jokingly, in that joking manner that is deadly serious and no one actually knows you’re joking. You’d have given him the benefit of the doubt, that is, until you know the background of one of the people present.

“You should just have raped her. That’s what I would have done.”

It might have been some sort of sick gallows humor if it weren’t for the fact that the person who said it to my friend was a best friend with what can be best described as a serial rapist, who was also present.

It’s a group thing maybe.

Maybe amongst certain groups of men coerced sex, bullied sex, forced sex, taken sex is an acceptable way of getting laid.

I know of one person who pushed a woman down a flight of stairs because she spurned his advances, laughed at him for hitting on her.

Still, like zombies we remain friends with them, nod, shake our heads, but push it out of mind’s eye.

I have a friend; well she’s not really that much of a friend anymore. It’s just that in these cases, with regard to our friends, she has seen more than I, heard further than I’d want to. If only because the proximity to these people makes my skin crawl. The problem here is that she used to meet with me and offload all the slime and the filth she had heard into my brain then leave me with the kind words.

“Course you can’t tell anyone.
And no, you’re not allowed do anything about it.”

Picture me now, foaming at the mouth, twisting at the keys. You’re gonna’ need that to help ye with the rage.

Every sort of filth and wanton depravity.

Every time we’d meet. Every time without fail. She’d tell me something, something horrible and then chain me into inaction. There was the threat of being disowned within the circles, there were other more vague threats and there was the clear and present threat of loss of friendship.

Well this is that point.

That infamous line in the sand, where your hands crisscross over each other in passing and you say;

“Fuck it. No more will I live with this evil.”

And no more should you. Any of you.

This is the same friend who told me how her best friend went drinking with two other friends. It was the good sort of rampant drinking session that spans a couple of days. What voice can I put it in? The friendly circumstantial farmer, the Christian doomsayer, what voice do you want it in? Ah sure didn’t her two friends – one of whom was amongst her oldest – gangrape her? And didn’t one of them later flee to Asia just as the other would square up to my once friend of the evil whispers and threaten her with what?

Death, violence, something?

Oh but you can’t tell.

Can’t act on it.

Can’t do anything.

You promise?

I promise.

This is the same group of people who been harboring a friend amongst them who’ve routinely waits until his female friends, acquaintances are asleep – normally, from drink, drugs or a mixture – before he rapes them.

And he’ll boast about it later to his male friends. Don’t think he, they, don’t do that. Don’t think they’re above that; don’t think shame somehow pushes them into silence about what they’ve done.

How about the friend we have who was beaten up, knocked unconscious for a few days or so, who returns home once he’s healed. Only to embark on a nice little adventure where when female friends wake up partially underdressed. Bras pulled up, panties pulled down and him looming over them wanking over their breasts or cunts or faces.

Sound familiar?

Oh, one girl starts the dissonance but isn’t believed. It’s only until others join the chorus that anything is done and the warning is issued and he gets to flee off away free unburdened to China.

Sound familiar?

The problem here is, this is a double-sided crime. Because if you take into account that he was beaten unconscious and therefore the fact that these new behavioral traits could be a result of frontal lobe damage, then his family need to be told.

But then not reporting any sort of sexual assault is the same, because by remaining silent, even if you are just the best friend with all the information you are condemning others to suffer.

We’ll leave the circles of people I know in a moment, but before we do, I want to leave with one last image of what sort of people I’m dealing with. The sort of numb, ever present, silence.

Same once friend again with the whisperings of evil.

Little brother of a best friend, just back from Thailand, drunk and I think maybe on pills, getting loose lipped and boastful – the forgotten inner monologue.

In fact, maybe it’s not an inner monologue problem; maybe it’s wanting to be caught. Maybe it’s worse than that.

Why – and I really do ask you – why?

Why would anyone at a drinking session want to know about that time you got yourself a prostitute in Thailand and she turned out to be really very quite underage and that she was sobbing but that you did it anyway.

Why the fuck would you tell us that and why the fuck would you be laughing as you told us.

Tell me.

Great, so you’re telling me he fucked a child? A minor?

And you did what?

You did nothing?

Oh you came and told me.

Thank you.

Oh I’ve been told worse has gone on, its only the very visible chomping and chewing at my bit that has probably saved me being told these other horrors.

Sound familiar?

Oh I got others man, I got a fucking Bible of inhumane abuse.

The builder who calls to the door to pick up some forgotten equipment yet lingers in the doorway sweating and licking his lips as he tells me about how you can get girls in Thailand, girls of any age, as young as you want them.

Fifteen years old. What do you do with that information?

Let’s move back though.

Why are they protecting them?

I know the voices of the women involved. They wouldn’t be believed. They couldn’t prove it. It would cause too much trouble. They don’t want people knowing that about them. It would split the circles of friends apart.

And on and on and on…

And somehow, these people have been blessed by friends who enable them to enable their abusers, their rapists to get away, scot-free so they can abuse and rape again, hoorah for the sisterhood.

You there – reading this – are you protecting someone?

Do you know something?

How about you?

Are you the whisperer? Lessening the weight on your shoulders by controlling other people’s reality and infecting them with evil?

By being the man or woman holding the screw cap to the genie’s bottle firmly closed, whether you con yourself into believing it’s for your friend’s own good, her wishes or otherwise, do you honestly feel like a better person?

Okay draw back, settle down…

Somewhere in America, driving back from getting drugs, your drunken cousin while at the wheel starts the lecherous leer and words toward you before shoving his hands down your pants?

What do you do?

Nothing.

Cry. Tell your ex-boyfriend, but tell him he can do…

Nothing.

Months later. You’re date raped. He forces himself on you. Fuck it you probably wanted it anyway, right? Don’t make me slap you again.

What do you do?

Cry, sob, wash.

Nothing.

Tell your ex-boyfriend, but tell him he can do…

Nothing.

Anything sound familiar yet?

Excuse me while I draw the needle back off the record and get to a crux point example in this.

Somewhere in Australia.

Possibly gold coast.

Possibly an island.

Possibly just one of the two best-known cities.

Maybe the colder one.

Who knows, it could even have been Brisbane.

Starts a little something like…

I guess it all started when I started working at a popular bar/restaurant club in an equally popular part of…

Sound familiar?

Don’t think I’m going to stop, even if it does.

The staff always had fun behind the bar, like real fun! No matter how busy it was we always entertained ourselves.

It’s got those ominous footsteps. Do you remember a girlfriend telling you a story like this? Do you remember your best friend starting a story like this?

After work we’d get the shots out then after we’d cleaned up, between two thirty / three in the morning then the hardcore drinking would start.

Ah. Drinking. I’m sure there’s a couple of you nodding your heads saying “Well that’s the problem right there my friend. She was drinking.” And why shouldn’t a woman be allowed to drink?

So we would all be pissed as hell and wide awake, you know what it’s like, all wired and drunk, wanting more, wanting to chill out somewhere. That’s where The the came in…every Friday and Saturday…4am “Lets go to The the!” The the was a night club near, anyone that’s visited knows it. The the opens at 11pm and closes at about 6am.

But because we were all staff from the other place we were always allowed to stay while they cleaned up…it was probably all over by 7 – 7.30. The owners of The the were always very generous, never making us line up, never kicking us out, always watching our drunken backs. That’s how I met them really…

As apparently civilized creatures, are we prepared to put legal limits on what women and women alone can drink because we have built an unsafe society and must now vocally recognize they are prone to being raped by men not raised right?

First time I met them I honestly thought to myself “how the hell did he get her?” She is beautiful, of some foreign extraction, skinny with amazing eyes and smile – the sort of woman who makes men melt. He was goofy looking, glasses, even kind of pudgy wavering on the fatty side. But who knows opposites attract so I never thought about it again.

I’m not quite happy with that defense. I don’t like how rape cases get thrown out of court so easily if alcohol is involved. I know too many men who use it to their advantage, too many men who will never face any repercussions because alcohol was involved and how can she be even sure she said no if she was drunk?

So then I started seeing them at work. They would come up for some gigs, I always served them first, they were very likeable. I soon discovered she was a journalist for one of the major papers. We’d drunkenly talk at The the and we started getting along really well. I never really took much of an über-friendly attitude to him, but she really seemed to want to be my friend, I don’t know if it was because of whom I knew or if she just needed more girlfriends. I kind of got the impression their relationship was under strain, but they never ever showed it. She was bitchy towards all my other friends and none of them really liked her but she always placed all her attention towards me so I just guessed I was her kind of girl? I went to catholic school, I know how easy it is to be bitchy and not realize.

Time and time again we hear of date-rape drugs. GHB, Rohypnol. How often are these found in the bloodstream when a woman has called that she was drugged? Rarely. I’ll tell you the real date-rape drug. Alcohol. Plain and simple. It’s not just a case of she drank too much it’s her fault.

Picture this:

Woman in bar gets approached by a pleasant looking man who offers to buy her a drink. They get talking, it’s a nice enough time, he continues to buy her drink, she’s starting to feel a bit tipsy, he’s starting to seem a bit more interesting, he keeps buying her drinks. It’d be rude not to accept. Things begin to blur.

Now I’ve seen men round on women in clubs for refusing drinks. Social constraints come into play. Manners. Everything.

I don’t want to be rude.

Oh I just turned around and there’s another full drink.

I said no but he laughingly bought me one anyway.

In fact, why the fuck did he give her so much drink? More to the point, why didn’t he suggest maybe to leave before she was blind drunk? Yes of course, people should know their limits but so few people do in the heat and weft of the moment that the point is moot.

It’s just an example.

I’m sure though, in your eyes, it’s still her fault.

You have eyes, why were you encouraging her?

With the sheer volume of constant partying at my job, I felt like I beginning to burn out fast and had to quit. They were totally understanding about it. Didn’t think much more about bar work until a year later when things had turned and my life wasn’t going very well. I was having trouble finding work and my boyfriend was a drug addict. I was in a bad place and I needed money.

Sound familiar?

I rang him up and asked him if the offer to work was still there. She asked can I work both nights (Friday & Saturday – midnight start 7am finish) I just said yes, I needed the money, I needed to feel like I had a life again. The first night I started, he came up to me and said “You know you’re allowed to drink as much as you want here. You got to keep awake, keep happy.” I was a bit blown away, I’d really not wanted to drink, but it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. The staff would stop serving every three hours and have a shot of tequila and a Jäger-bomb and everyone would cheer.

Sounds so familiar, I could have lived it myself.

Alarm bells ringing yet?

Anything you think you should be telling someone?

Anyone whom you might reconsider the advice you gave?

Or the support in their stoic psychological self-mutilation.

Anything, any of you, might, want to reconsider?

Anything at all?

People were so fucked up on drugs, even the staff, no one noticed anything, and anything could have been going on. I would have a full glass of top quality vodka all night. So this went on for a few months, I gradually noticed he began taking more of an interest to me, asking me to come in earlier, and obviously being so drunk by 7am he would offer to drive me home which I would gladly accept.

Sounds almost like the honey pot.

Goldilocks and the one bear with the cock he couldn’t keep under wraps.

Don’t look at me like that.

You there – sitting behind your monitor.

This is just one story of misery. I haven’t even started on the mass rape that occurs village by village in places like the Congo. Or the sanctioned sort like America in Vietnam.

White on yellow. It’s okay. White on black. The good ol’days. White on white. Was she asking for it?

A few times he jokingly said I looked hot and then “let’s go”. I kind of just laughed it off. At no stage did I get into trouble for being so drunk. Yet I remember stumbling to my front door so many times then nothing, out-cold. Occasionally when he told me I was looking hot, it would seen flattering, I wouldn’t mind, I’d tell him his DJ-ing was getting better.

I’m a man. I listen to men talk. It seems to be an accepted thing to ply women with alcohol and of course, if she’s into it, alcohol and drugs. Free things given as gifts touch the inner child in us and validate the less secure of us. Everyone likes to be pampered. It’s a pity women don’t often realize being pampered means they’re going to have to lie back and spread their legs while some beer-breathed moron stabs away with such rapidity they won’t even have time to get wet.

Then I drove home one day and got pulled over. It was bound to happen. I blew at least three times over the limit. This was on the Friday night. My lawyer advised me to leave the job, which I did, I was so nervous, so burnt out. I got my mum to ring up on the Saturday and tell him I couldn’t work tonight. About Thursday later that week I rang him and told him I think I had a problem and I couldn’t work for him any more. He completely understood. Later she rang me and wanted me to come over to their house to hang out and stuff, but I was too embarrassed. I felt bad.

Simple interruption here.

What were they doing, as apparently sane and competent adults, letting anyone as drunk as she describes drive home?

Probably another few months later, I was out on the town and ended up back at The the. I got blind drunk and was still there by closing time. I think I must have run out of taxi fare or just couldn’t drive, but I asked him to drop me off and he said yes just let me lock up. So he drove me home, I said do you want to come in he helped me walk in cause I was too drunk to stand. I think he kissed me, I’m not sure, the memory is there but I passed out after or during. There’s the law broken right there. By law no Australian drinking establishment can continue serving someone alcohol when they are clearly inebriated. If they do they face massive fines.

Sound familiar yet?

Feel like men do you?

I’m just not sure what the attraction of kissing a paralytic drunk is. I like interaction; if I wanted stillness I’d fuck dead things. If I wanted blind compliance I’d buy myself a love-doll. And since when is being invited in secret code for “I want you inside me. Right here. Right now.”

I woke up to my phone messaging. It was him saying I was a naughty girl and he thinks he should come back over.

Naughty eh?

I can see that conversation now. So yeah, there she was, unable to walk, head rolling back and forth, so I held her head still so I could slip her the tongue.

Damn what a naughty

Filthy girl.

I passed out again, I don’t know if I answered. Even if I did it couldn’t of been very comprehensible, I was still ruined. I passed out again on the couch in the lounge.

They’re best when they’re fading in and out of consciousness. Less likely to tell you what a crap selfish lay you are.

I remember hearing something banging and crashing as someone broke one of my windows in. I passed out again and I came to I saw him climbing through my dinning room window knocking over chairs. All my doors were locked. Breaking in was the only way he could get in.

Just when you thought he couldn’t our boy ramps it up a notch.

Sound familiar?

I don’t remember him talking to me or anything, just him on top of me, taking our clothes off. I remember him taking my panties off…if only because it was my period and I remember absently thinking, “yuck, he’s going to see the pad I’m wearing.”

It’s those absent-minded drunk thoughts that allow you the grace to laugh at the horrors that happen to you when you imbibe too much. Like falling face first out of a tall tree whilst wondering – did you hang the washing out? Or as you spin up over the bonnet of the car pondering what t-shirt you’ll wear tonight.

I mean really.

Oh god I’m being raped.

Aw shit, I’m on my period, he’ll be disgusted.

Once again we’ve failed our daughters.

We have taught them nothing useful in the wider world. We have only taught them to be ashamed of themselves and that they deserve whatever life throws at them if they are not good little girls.

I remembering him sitting me on top of him, like he was sitting and I was in his lap. Then nothing. Then, when it was over I guess, I was lying on the couch again and he was putting on his pants. He unlocked the door while he was still pulling up his pants and held his shoes and stuff as he stumbled out the door like a scolded cat. I passed out again only to woken up by another message from him telling me not to call because of her.

Sound familiar yet?

I hope you’re reading.

Running away from the scene of the crime then having the gall to tell her not to phone because your girlfriend is home?

Anyone at all, really, anyone at all having familiarity bells ringing here?

So that was it. Upset afterwards, I stayed pretty drunk to try and numb everything. I guess during that time I must have told someone that I thought I’d fucked him. She obviously found out and to this day she treats me like shit. If I try and approach her she pushes past me, if I try and tell her my story she walks away. If she turns up at a party I’m at like last weekend, she has me forcibly removed, not even given time to get my bag. He just doesn’t even look at me. I have no idea what she thinks happened. I was so upset by what happened I was suicidal. For hurting her, for him been such a cunt.

Still, like junkies we adhere to hammered-in social convention and feel bad for her, the one he cheated-sorry-raped on.

My boyfriend at the time rang a mutual friend of his and him and her to try and put my mind at peace. What did she know? He said he’d heard nothing, but he said if he had cheated on her and she found out she would leave him. This is the last I know of it. It’s a small town. I hate to think what’s been said. Most of the guys I worked with at The the I was great mates with. Now they won’t even look at me when I see them out. One guy on Facebook said he heard I fucked everyone at The the. So that’s the end…that’s all I know…and there’s not a thing I can do.

And there’s not a thing I can do

And there’s not a thing I can do.

How many times has that echoed from someone’s lips as they cry alone or in the arms of a friend?

Sound familiar?

That’s what our friend in Australia is up against though. He may be a two-bit DJ pumped up by a powerful nightclub-running respected journalist. But the power behind him is strident enough, blind enough, that really, what can one poor raped manic-depressive unemployed hope to do against them?

Nothing.

Nothing but cry.

Hands open, arms spread, turn around and face me.

I, We, Us, They, Them,

Have failed you.

And there’s nothing you or we can do about it.

It’s bad enough I know circles of friends, who hide, accept and socialize with what are in medical terms serial rapists. That’s the same people who are accepting of people who travel to distant countries to rape children.

Or that I know there are millions of you out there.

Afraid. Scarred. Touched by the invisible hand into doing nothing.

See, you twisted harpies, who use this to destroy people you like, do you see the damage you do to people actually harmed?

No, shit, sorry, I forgot you care for nothing but yourselves.

It’s no wonder when exposed you’re revealed to be weeping friendless blancmanges

What’s worse…

Is if you think you have it bad.

Then you have only to look to the poorer parts of the world.

Open Your Eyes.
And Look.

Look at hypocrisy and look at everything we as simple humans would decry as evil.

Congolese marauders (I refuse to grant them the liberty of the word rebel) storm villages, rape women and children. They hold down young girls and cut their lips off.

Slave markets in Saudi Arabia where a virgin will fetch you top money.

Brothels in Ireland where Eastern European girls are enslaved to fuck fuck fuck and fuck again until they’re allowed sleep.

American soldiers who get medals for raping terrified Vietnamese.

United Nation troops in the Balkans revealed to have been using brothels where women are kept against their own will. Better yet, UN troops revealed to have been frequenting brothels where the main commodity is girls young enough to be these soldier’s daughters.

Open Your Eyes.
Look.

It’s all around you.

And yet.

You do

Nothing.

Don’t look at me like I’m a fucking monster. I was raised with fucking manners. If I had my way I’d have all of them shot. It’s you, you who do nothing.

And what’s worst?

What’s the very worst of it.

These are our daughters and we have failed them.

We have failed them because we have taught them to be ashamed about the most basic things of their bodies.

We have failed them because we view those who have been raped as the weak and wounded.

The fragile.

And in doing so, we have crippled them.

Yes, rape is horrible. Yes, it should never ever ever happen.

That’s simple humanity right there.

Simple, basic humanity.

Where we have failed is that we have taught our daughters to be weak.

What was once proud.

We made ashamed.

What was one strong and wise.

We broke and indoctrinated.

Now free, they wander like all other recently freed oppressed peoples, dazed and unsure of their place, looking for another master.

When your daughter, wife, girlfriend, sister comes running to you sobbing asking you not to tell anything about the horrible thing that happened to her.

Here is one simple thing you must remember.

We taught them to be victims.

Every representation we show them of this most heinous invasion of self, is a quivering mess, refusing police internal exams because they feel violated enough. We show them not taking it any further because nothing will happen anyway or taking it further and forcing them to have their sexual history drawn over hot coals until they feel like the guilty ones. Or worse, we make them face their grinning, sneering rapists.

Out of touch, half senile due to their elevated position, Judges make them jump through hoops like show ponies. There is never any real thought to just how difficult it is to face the ordeal of trying to bring justice to the man who forced himself inside you.

They didn’t lick that off the street.

We taught them that.

And we’re still teaching them that.

Boys and girls.

Elsewhere in the world warlords and important men are replacing their wives with pretty dancing boys they abuse.

Get gangraped? You can expect the lash.

Get raped? You can expect to have an uncle kill you.

And that last one? I’m not talking about a poor country; I’m talking about England.

We taught them all how to be weak.

But worst of all, we enslaved our own daughters and we taught them to be victims.

This isn’t here to offer solutions.

This is here to stand as a call to arms.

Are you harboring someone?

Do you know something?

Has something happened to you?

Stand the fuck up.

I’ll get behind you.

Email me. Talk to me here.

Maybe we can do something. Maybe we can’t. That’s just one avenue.

These people –

That’s right, you, I told you we’d get back to you…

They need to be stopped.

They need to know they can never do what they did to you again.

No other women should suffer what you suffered.

And for you, you worm-tongued dissident, you like my once friend, the egomaniac intent on controlling other people’s reality for whatever reason be it delusion – be it because you believe someone who has been raped has the right state of mind to say don’t do anything, be it because you yourself don’t want the trouble such accusations would bring.

For you, the scum, the villainy who allow this silence and obfuscation to continue, I have nothing but contempt.

If you’re alone in this. If your back is against the wall.

I, We, All of Us need you to be strong.

The tide turns here.

If words, if talking cannot salve that wound.

Then we need you to think about things that make you strong with rage.

Like for instance, did you know it was customary for police officers to ask you if you’d experienced an orgasm during the rape?

I mean imagine that?

Imagine actually having to answer that.

Worse again. If by some miracle, some strange quirk of fate or nervousness you managed to or just told the police what they were leering and slavering for – that you did.

Well then. It wasn’t rape.

The law?

Even if they did convict.

What’s he going to get, a couple years, out on good behavior?

That’ll help.

But it won’t soothe the rage.

You need more than that.

If you can, if it’s someone known to you.

I’m advocating you pick up that phone Don’t shake. Let’s be calm about this. You’re strong now.

You have a mountain behind you.

Whether you know it or not.

I want you to find him and I want you to confront him. Have a Dictaphone in your pocket. Something that can record him good and proper. Don’t show him anything. Don’t want him running away. I want you to talk to him. Don’t threaten. Just ask him why. Listen.

And when he’s done -

I want you to turn around and walk away. From there, you’ll have a level of closure, you’ll have been strong and you’ll have begun what can only be called ‘The Process’.

Of retribution Of redemption

Confront them

Because sometimes.

That’s all they’ll understand.

And maybe if you all rise up against those who raped you in school, in university or after the work Christmas get-together.

Maybe.

They’ll begin teaching you to be strong.

Because you, those who get that chance, you need to be strong for those who never do. The poor unfortunates jumped from behind walking home, dragged kicking and screaming into bushes.

You need be strong for them because they’re going to need you.

I don’t want to have to sit sadly by your side anymore.

I don’t want to hear any more stories of unreported horrors.

I simply want you all to be strong enough to open the mouths you were born with and use your voices.

Because if they refuse to -

Maybe then you can begin to teach each other how to be strong.

Until then, you don’t leave me with much. Everyone is a suspect, if only by their silence and their blind eyes.

And in realizing that I’m forced to adapt a Marshal Law quote.

“I’m a human hunter… I hunt humans… Haven’t found any yet.”

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While the Mountain may be reached at Themountain at bigrockcandymountain dot info, the Admin would like to stress; The mountain is not a counseling service. If that’s what you feel you need, we can help you find a good and respectable one in your area, but we’re not one ourselves. One last time for the people in the cheap seats; We are not a counseling service. We do want to hear from you, we just need to stress; we are also not a vendetta service.