Here's an Idea

[Content Note: Rape culture.]

If you are someone who has not been the victim of sexual violence, and you are about to say something asserting what rape (or some other form of sexual violence) is like, or say that anything else is like being raped, shut the fuck up.

I don't want to hear that losing a game is like being raped, and I don't want to hear that being raped is enjoyable, and I don't want to hear that it totally feels like you got raped by the IRS or an ATM machine fee.

I also don't want to hear that someone who has been raped has been broken, or had hir soul destroyed, or has been robbed of this or that, no matter how well-intentioned you are in trying to describe the horror of rape, because maybe so but MAYBE NOT.

And maybe the only thing that you know for certain when you've been raped is that how you regard that event can change, based on an infinite number of factors including obvious things like time and justice (or the lack thereof), and less obvious things like how you feel about yourself and what you may learn about culturally contextualizing rape and self-blame.

You think rape is this one thing, but it's so many things. Even for one person who has survived it.

If you seriously give a shit about people who have survived sexual violence, then shut the fuck up and listen.

And if you don't give a shit about us, just shut the fuck up.