Kat George: Last night I was sexually assaulted in the street (well, tonight, but... →
Last night I was sexually assaulted in the street (well, tonight, but I’m publishing today so I’ve edited as such). Let me be clear on this; I wasn’t actually physically harmed in anyway, but I was put under threat for my bodily integrity (that I might be raped or beaten), which, in Australia at…
“I thought about calling the police last night. Then what? Waiting for them to come find me in the street while I stood with my aggressors? Or scared the aggressors away with the threat of police and then spent the night trying to give detailed descriptions of two men I’d barely looked at in my desperation to evade them? It seemed nonsensical to call for the assistance of the law, especially when there would have been little or nothing that a police officer could have done for me, given the intangible nature of the attack. Why did I feel so powerless? Why should I have to feel so powerless? Why do I see no recourse to actual action when I’m put in such a vulnerable position?”
Dear tumblr: You read this piece, alright? And then after you read this piece you go and you read other pieces like this, because there’s even more poignant and thought-provoking ones, and because they all point to the same thing:
Think twice before you let your sons play those video games or watch those tv shows, or before you let your girls internalize what they see. Because nobody thinks any of this stuff has any effect, and nobody thinks that their children would ever grow up to misbehave, and everyone feels too busy to talk about these kinds of things,
and it is precisely these people who allow this nightmare to keep happening.
