Resilience

Rape culture is a brutal and everyday sort of thing. It surrounds us and it permeates the air that I breathe. Rape culture sits on the phrase "He hits you because he likes you" that we teach schoolgirls that leads to them thinking that hitting is liking. Rape culture is telling a woman it's her job to say no. It's her job to say no over, and over, and over, and over again. While telling a man that it's his job to want it, to say yes. Even when he doesn't. Rape culture is women in undervalued and underpaid positions sleeping with men who have power, trying to claw their way to the top just to someday get enough air to breathe. Rape culture is a man whistling as a woman walks by, immediately reminding her what he values her for. Rape culture is a group of boys assigning girls a score out of ten and her hearing it and wanting to prove them wrong and signing up for something she didn't want. Rape culture doesn't stop at a man in a dark alley taking something that doesn't belong to him. Rape culture doesn't start at man and woman in private ways. It doesn't start at men disfiguring women who are threats. Or women who aren't threats. It starts with people undervaluing people as people. It starts with human beings forgetting that human beings are sacred.

Globally this means that everyone is getting short-changed. Women who could have cured cancer last year are sitting in therapists' offices' processing grief that shouldn't have been given to them. People who could have solved world hunger are instead dead at the hands of others even if, in the end, they took their own life. Globally this means that crimes of lust or even just anger have taken the lives of millions - billions - even people who are still alive.

Organizations and frameworks help people who are victims of avoidable crimes. Human Rights Frameworks help to rewrite the concept that anyone is below being treated like a human. This helps, but this isn't everything if people aren't willing to hear it, if there are still dark alleys and ways to pretend that he never did that. To change this in daily life it takes resilience.

Resilience is every time you hear someone make a body comment about someone else telling them to shut up and sit down. Then waiting until they do. Demanding it. Resilience is hearing someone's score of your body and saying thanks, anyway good thing I got this on tape and will be reporting you. Resilience is hearing your friend tell you what a hottie he bagged and how she played hard to get and then telling him that you're going to call the cops, or her to double-check that he got consent. Resilience is such a divine thing. Such a female thing. Resilience is demanding space when it is not freely given. It is earning respect that was kept so close to their chest it bled. Resilience is giving your friend a place to stay because she can't sleep alone because she's afraid that he'll find her. Resilience is not standing behind someone just because you know them and you know that they wouldn't do that. Resilience is sitting at a funeral and thinking about the movie Promising Young Woman and wondering if following her lead would be all that bad. The three secrets of resilience are true, it's important to let it all in, let it all out, and then breathe, and they can help you get over an issue, but resilience is more in my opinion. Resilience is making sure it doesn't happen again.