real life

If we talked about other crimes the way we talk about rape.

 

 

 

 

By KATE LEAVER

Sometimes, all it takes is an eloquent American girl in a beanie and seven perfect tweets to make a complex issue, simple.

Here’s New Yorker web editor Caitlin Kelly just casually demonstrating everything that’s wrong with the way we speak about rape. Let’s call this series of tweets, “If Everyone Spoke About Theft The Way We Speak About Rape”.

Or, alternative title: “Dear Everyone Who Has Ever Doubted, Denied, or Misunderstood Victim-Blaming, Read This F*cking Thing.”

Here’s a pretend conversation between someone who has had their wallet stolen, and the victim-blamer.

Yeah.

Take a bow, Caitlin Kelly.

Feminists, victim’s rights advocates, rape survivors and people with functioning social consciences spend hours of their lives trying to explain the deeply flawed way we treat victims of sexual assault. How we doubt them, how we challenge them, how we do everything possible to deflect blame onto them rather than the perpetrators of abuse.

And here’s this one woman, neatly summing up the whole argument with a stolen wallet analogy.

Show this to everyone and anyone in your life who needs to see it. You know who they are.

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