At the time of writing, my last post has 1,645 notes.
Thanks to all the rebloggers; every notification email woke me. Special thanks must go to those who reblogged to say something about the ‘real’ meaning of the word. They seem to be mostly men. Colour me surprised.
The archaic definition of ‘rape’ is, indeed, something about pillaging and carrying off. Usually of a woman, with specific intent of having sexual intercourse with her. The archaic definition of the crime of rape held that it was a crime against the property of the woman’s father or husband. It’s not difficult to see the relationship between the archaic definition of the word and the archaic definition of the crime.
Meanings of words change. Definitions of crimes change. In some countries, (cis) men cannot be legally raped because they do not have vaginas. In others, women cannot be raped by their husbands, as it is held that by agreeing to marriage, a woman agreed to unfettered sexual access to her body regardless of how she actually feels about it. The term date rape was coined when people realised that the majority of rapes are committed by someone known the the victim; someone who should be ‘safe’, and that strangers very rarely leap out from behind a woman and drag her off into the undergrowth.
Rape is a crime of power.
Words have power.
One of the common triggers for survivors of rape is the word itself. And the thing about survivors is that we usually look pretty much the same as people who haven’t been raped. Would you, if you had never had serious, life-threatening cancer (or a close family member or friend who was so diagnosed) walk into the local oncology ward and make a joke that compares being towed to not knowing if you’ll survive this latest round of chemo and pills? Probably not.
And a thought on the whole ‘we make jokes to deal with this stuff’? Yes. I may make a very dark joke about how being assaulted and raped destroyed half my life. I may make a joke about the years of self-harm and the erosion of my self confidence and the times I tried to take my own life and the feelings I felt EVERY TIME another female friend disclosed that she had been raped. But rape is not the punchline. That, as a survivor of rape, is something I feel that I can do from time to time. It is a hard-won privilege, and I will never use it to make another survivor feel uncomfortable, especially if I don’t know that they’re a survivor.
But thanks for taking the time to point out the archaic meaning of the word. It’s handy for those of us who live in the now to know who values their lazy privilege over the actual, lived experience of countless others.
