Congrats, You're an Asshole

Your day goes like all the others; you turn on your phone, pull up your social media, and begin doomscrolling. Then, after some time, your thumb freezes.

The words glare at you from the screen, screaming and demanding attention: ‘I am Jane Doe’. You scroll a little; there’s more. ‘I am Jane Doe’, ‘I am Jane Doe’, ‘Jane Doe is me’, and so on. You deep-dive; you just read the replies and comments of these posts.

Your reaction is an eye-roll. Your reaction is to think negatively. Your reaction is not believing them.

You call it a trend. You call it performative. You call it exaggeration. You call it attention seeking. You call it lies. You call it slander.

It's all just noise to you.

Congrats, you’re an asshole.

You keep on going, too.

You call them hoes. You call them sluts. You call them whores.

‘They were asking for it’, ‘they shouldn’t have worn that’, ‘this is what happens when you make poor choices’, ‘they chose to drink that much’, etc.

‘If it was true, they would’ve reported it’. ‘If it was true, they wouldn’t have kept contact with them’. ‘They should’ve known better’.

Congrats, you’re an ASSHOLE.

Person after person, after person, after person; they all courageously state their experiences, beginning and/or ending with ‘I am Jane Doe’. Sexual harassment, sexual assault, sexual abuse; they all speak of when they said ‘no’ but the men heard ‘yes’, of fighting back but still losing, of freezing and dissociating during, of feeling beaten but left with no bruises, of the pain it still causes.

And yet, you get mad for the wrong reason.

Congrats, YOU’RE an ASSHOLE.

You act like the abusers. You blame the clothes again. You blame their lack of speaking up before. You say they’re lying; ‘he’s way too nice’. You say ‘not all men’ and worry that his life will be ruined.

You don’t care about the women. You make assumptions, based on the littlest bits of information you found inside social media posts. You didn’t look for articles of the situation. You didn’t see how bad these men were.

You just saw women coming forward, marching to the drums of the war they’ve been fighting all their existence.

Congrats, YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE.

You are crossing a mighty thin line. You are throwing yourself into something that you clearly don’t understand. You are standing in the middle of a room, judging everyone’s trauma responses and acting victim when they clap back.

You have no business believing the men based on nothing.

You have no business not believing women based on your own assumptions.

You look stupid, shouting ‘not all men’ with the unwanted crowd. Women don’t want to hear it. Women don’t care if ‘it’s not all men’; it doesn’t delete their fear, anxiety, worry, pain, trauma, and rage.

It doesn’t change that women will do whatever it takes to not let it happen again.

And yet, you turn on your sisters and call them crazy.

CONGRATS, YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE.

Stop giving abusers free passes; choose the victims’ voice always. Listen. Learn. Understand. Rage with them; don’t blame them.

Rape is about power. It doesn’t matter what they wore, how they acted, what they did, or how old they were; a man decided to hurt them, so he did.

Reports often go unheard. Reports often end with little-to-no justice served.

There is no such thing as a perfect victim. You need to open your eyes and see that the world is not so safe, that danger lurks behind closed doors.

You are not Jane Doe.

'Unfortunately, you could be'.

WAKE UP!

just to clarify: this focuses specifically on the topic of the online reaction to women coming forward about sexual abuse from men.

it's not meant to invalidate or erase experiences of those who have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of women, because yes, women can be abusers, too. And men can be amongst those abused. all genders can be.

and, sadly, sexual abuse is not the only form of abuse there is.

it can happen to anyone. all survivors deserve to be heard.