I have to be careful how i write about this and would respect readers to accept my reason for asking them not to discuss names involved in the case.
As you all know a footballer was found guilty of rape last week and was sentenced to a period in prison, That was the courts desicion and in line with justice the footballer still has option of appeal.
However i want to talk about to things now, The reaction from some sections of twitter and ho it feels to be raped.
Twitter reaction was similar to what we saw with the Luis Suarez/Patrice Evra racism storm, Liverpool stood by their player and claimed that *he had done nothing wrong* and the fans (well most of them followed that line) swallowed the line.
Well it was the same in the recent case of rape with some vile and disgusting comments.
This is a response to those idiots that made fun of rape.
Unless you have been raped you have no idea how it feels, not just physically, but mentally. Being forced to have someone else penis forced inside your own body is one of the most terrifying things that can ever happen, as you muscles tense up and the man forces his penis in with violence and the pain is stronger, While the rapist is happy getting his rocks of violating your body.
And even when the rape is over and spend you 24 hours in the bath and shower trying to get clean you still feel dirty, the physical scar will heal, but the mental battle has just begun.
You will have to battle with suicidal thoughts on a daily basis, fighting the urge to cut your wrist, or just cut yourself to try and deal with pain, all medicines have to be hidden away in a locked box ( it only takes 5 mins to swallow drugs that could end your life), you have to have constant company, no surprise visitors, all phones turned done so not to make you jump.
And this is all before you even try and go outside into the street, To be honest you will never be able to forget about being raped, but in time you can learn how to deal with and live a fairly normal life (if you have the right support), If you don't have the right support it could mean you life is basically over.
As you know i believe in free speech and have witnessed many times when people joke about what will happen to people who are put in prison, while they are criminals i would not wish being raped on anyone.
Again i will ask that you do not name the victim in the football case in the comments.
But please lets stop making light of rape, its not nice, its life changing and it represents the most personal violation that can be done to you.
Having asked for some legal advice i have been advised to post this
"FOR THE AVOIDANCE OF ANY DOUBT, I am not responsible for comments left on this site - I am unable to monitor it 24/7. However, should I be made aware of any comments left in relation to this article that break any laws of England & Wales, I will of course delete them immediately and co-operate fully with with any police investigation as to the identity of the commenter."
I know i can trust you guys to make sure i do not have to delete any comments.
Agree entirely, there are some weird people in this World.
ReplyDeleteWell said.
Without going into specifics on any case...... there's a different between physical rape, and mental rape? Both can be devastating.
ReplyDeleteRape is, in any circumstances, inexcusable.
ReplyDeleteHowever, man's inhumanity to man has a terrible history. The Holocaust, the First and Second World Wars, Stalin's Great Purge and Pol Pot's exterminations all resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people. You can go back through the Napoleonic Wars back via the Christians thrown to the lions in Roman amphitheatres, the Peloponnesian Wars and to before the recording of history to see this.
What is even more disturbing is that all the worst instances have occurred in the last century, not in ancient history.
I mention the above because I want to set the chosen topic in some perspective and in order to learn something. That is not to offer any comfort to, or excuses on behalf of, anyone who has committed rape.
In all these cases of violence, there is a similarity. One person's wish to do something without consideration of what the other person/people feels.
Although not a Christian myself, I am aware of the teaching of Christ Do unto others as you would be done by. It is known as the Golden Rule and is a difficult imperative to live by.
Early on in our great English tradition of kings, Alfred the Great lived from 849-899. He was a highly intelligent man, centuries ahead of his time. He inverted the Golden Rule thus: Don't to others what you would not want done to yourself.
Not as difficult to follow but just as easy to understand. If Libertarianism is not at base about this, then it is nothing.
Just as long as we keep the word "rape" to the criminal code definition, i.e. the forcible non-consensual act of sex accomplished by use of violence or upon a helpless individual, I think we will all agree that such a thing is no fit subject for humour or derision of a person. It is when the word is used to connote other behaviours, such as leering or even up to and including seduction, that the force of the word itself is lost, and it might be well to bring this out through satire. The act itself, when conflated with these other behaviours, loses its power to horrify when that's done. I will be sick the next time I hear some daft woman say "He was raping me with his eyes!" Some may say it's a bit of poetic licence, and what it means is "he was looking at me in an uninvited lascivious way"; but what that does is to fail to draw a line between crudeness and brutality. All of this to make the point that when you start moving off people's actions and start condemning them for what you believe their thoughts must be, you're headed for moralising that can't be confined just to acts that contravene the law, and you are liable to fall into the Polly Toynbee self-righteous "We're better PERSONS than you are!"-snare based just on beliefs you have of what you think their beliefs are. But I think we can safely say that anyone who jokes about forcible rape is morally culpable for being a cruel person, because their words are a deliberate act, that of harassment of an undeserving person. I leave it to the shysters out there to come up with arguments over whether that is, can be, or should be a criminal offence.
ReplyDeleteVery good point and especially, with your final remark, brings the possibility of a conflict with the maxim I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
ReplyDeleteI would still opt for free speech in peacetime.