A rapist doesn’t have to be a stranger to be legitimate. Someone you never saw. A man with obvious problems. But if you been public with him, danced one dance, kissed him goodbye lightly with a closed mouth, pressing charges will be as hard as keeping your legs closed while five fools try and run a train on you. These men friends of ours, who smile nicely, take you out to dinner, then lock the door behind you.
- Yasmine in For Colored Girls

When people think of rape, they might think of a stranger jumping out of a shadowy place and sexually attacking a woman walking alone at night. The thought of two people who know each other, going for dinner and the male counterpart sexually attacking the female counterpart is rare for some. Rape is an act of aggression and violence so even if the two people know each other well, and even if they were intimate or had sex before, no one has the right to force a sexual act on another person against his or her will.

We have heard, seen victims and read about rape, incestuous rape, and politically motivated rape, HIV infected men raping virgins, ritualistic rape to women raping men. But the cases of date rape being reported are very few and mostly go unreported. A blind eye has been given towards this kind of rape because people simple say it was the victim’s fault. ‘What were you doing in the first place, you seduced him. Don’t worry about it. It happens you might as well continue giving it to him!’ These are the words of our best friends when we share our date rape experiences. Big girls don’t cry but honestly that is so subversive. One would rather cry and not qualify in the ‘big girls’ zone.

I want people to know that date rape can happen to anyone, no matter what age, popularity, race or income group. Date rape is rape. Victims of date rape should not feel guilty. They are victims whose bodies, rights and trusts were violated.

This entry was posted on March 10th, 2011 at 9:33 am by Elizabeth Nyamuda and is filed under Reflections, Uncategorized, Women's issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.