![\"woman-1006102_640\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/664\/2016\/05\/woman-1006102_640-300x169.jpg\")
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Picture this: a\u00a0man is angry, or had a bit too much to drink, or he feels very festive and celebratory for whatever reason. So he finds an unconscious woman\u00a0and forcibly sticks his finger or an instrument deep in her eye.<\/p>\n
Hideous, huh? What a monster. He deserves to be locked up. We can\u2019t have that kind of a menace in our society.<\/p>\n
Okay, now imagine the man does the same thing to her ear, hurting her and drawing blood.<\/p>\n
Still hideous, right? What kind of a whack job would do that to\u00a0someone? He needs to be kept off the streets and away from society.<\/p>\n
What if he crammed something into her mouth, so hard it hurt? Horrible, sick.<\/p>\n
Alrighty then,\u00a0what if he crammed a body part or an instrument into another bodily opening? An extremely sensitive opening he couldn\u2019t even get to unless her underpants\u00a0were pulled off, the one associated with any number of cultural and religious taboos? The one which, culturally speaking, when entered, is often claimed to change a woman\u2019s whole identity, from a virgin to something else, from a Miss to a Missus?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll tell you what would happen. An enormous number of people\u00a0would ask why the woman was unconscious, \u00a0why she was even attending the establishment where the man was, what she was wearing, if she was a virgin, if she\u2019d ever had casual sex before or looked like the kind of person who would want it.\u00a0Somebody would chime in and ask if she was black or white. Somebody else would make officious comments about how every woman needs to take self-defense classes and carry a whistle because rape never happens to women who are prepared. The modesty fetishists would be there with bells on the ends of their floor-length skirts, trying to convince\u00a0everyone that modesty in thought, word and deed will keep your daughter out of danger. Deeply creepy bachelor men will use the word \u201ccourtship.\u201d Someone will bring up abortion for some reason. There will be tongue-clucking and hand-wringing about the poor man who raped her, his potential, his youthful carelessness, what a wonderful life he could have had if only he weren\u2019t punished for hurting a child of God in a severe, traumatic and life-changing way.<\/p>\n
I know this because it\u2019s happened to me. I\u2019ve been raped. That\u2019s not an extraordinary thing to admit.\u00a0One in four women has. One in ten men has as well. It\u2019s a very common crime, but we\u2019re not supposed to talk about it. It makes people uncomfortable. It makes them so uncomfortable that they start to rationalize, and to make up ways in which it wasn\u2019t really rape or in which it was the victim\u2019s fault. They claim rape has to involve sexual arousal, so this or that\u00a0didn\u2019t count. They claim you\u2019d have to be physically hurt much worse, or it doesn\u2019t count. They\u00a0inform me that I have \u201cunresolved issues\u201d when I mention having been raped, because nice girls don\u2019t talk about such things. They try to think of ways that they could lower their chance of ever being raped, and then they claim that anyone who doesn\u2019t do just what they think they\u2019d have done must have been asking for it, or that they deserved it because they were \u201ccareless.\u201d<\/p>\n
I live in the Ohio Valley, internationally famous for a rape with slap-on-the-wrist consequences for the rapists. People tried to rationalize that rape the exact same way they\u2019re trying to rationalize the rape and the slap-on-the-wrist consequences that are all over the news right now. I have seen so many asinine remarks this week, from fellow Catholics as well as anybody else. So, I\u2019m talking about Brock Turner, and about the Steubenville Big Red Rapists, but I\u2019m also talking about everybody. Everyone who rapes, everyone who\u2019s been raped and everybody who makes asinine remarks. Particularly, I\u2019m talking to my fellow Catholics.<\/p>\n
I shouldn\u2019t have to tell people this, but: if you penatrate a person\u2019s anus or vagina, however slightly, with any body part or instrument, against their will, that is rape. It\u2019s rape every time. It\u2019s rape if they drank too much and passed out. It\u2019s rape if she\u2019s your wife. It\u2019s rape if you were angry rather than sexually aroused. It\u2019s rape if you tricked or threatened her instead of physically holding her down. It\u2019s rape if the victim is male. It\u2019s rape if the rapist is a woman. It\u2019s rape if the rapist himself was sexually abused as a child.<\/p>\n
Rape is a mortal sin. Rape is one of the few crimes\u00a0I can think of wherein the rapist is always committing a mortal sin. You can kill someone in self-defense. You can steal because you\u2019re starving. You can lie and perjure yourself out of fear of consequences. But you can\u2019t rape for a good reason. Rape is always a mortal sin.\u00a0\u00a0It always means you\u2019re a horrible, cold-blooded and violent monster and you ought to spend the rest of your life rotting in jail. Even if you\u2019re an athlete with potential. Even if you\u2019ve never done it before. Even if you just meant it in fun.<\/p>\n
Even if she left herself vulnerable in some way or another. We\u2019re all vulnerable, all the time. You can reduce your chances of being raped, but you\u2019re always vulnerable. \u00a0It can happen to you. It can happen to you if you\u2019re male. It can happen to you if you\u2019re a body builder or a martial artist. It can happen to you if you carry a whistle or a switchblade or a can of mace. It can happen if you go to the bathroom in groups and never get drunk. It can happen if you practice \u201ccourtship.\u201d It can happen to you. You are not different than I am. One day, you could be the one who is told you have \u201cunresolved issues\u201d because someone doesn\u2019t want to hear about what happened. You could be the one who was told you shouldn\u2019t have done whatever it is you did. You could be the one who feels filthy and ashamed, as if you\u2019re the one in mortal sin, and everyone will act as if you\u2019re right to feel ashamed.<\/p>\n
No one deserves rape. Not drunk women, not sorority girls, not people who wear short skirts, not girls who date abusive men, not trans\u00a0people or gay people\u00a0or transvestites or intersex people. Not even rapists.\u00a0Nothing justifies it, ever.<\/p>\n
To any rape survivors reading this: it\u2019s not your fault, it\u2019s your rapist\u2019s fault. Always. Whatever you\u2019re telling yourself about what you could have done differently, whatever\u2019s been said to you about purity: it\u2019s still not your fault. You\u2019re pure and they\u2019re not. They\u2019ve made themselves filthy and it\u2019s all. Their. Fault. You\u2019re not evil for being raped, you\u2019re not crazy for talking about it. You\u2019re not the one who is wrong. On behalf of all Catholics I apologize for any Catholics\u00a0who haven\u2019t made that absolutely clear.<\/p>\n
(Image via pixabay)<\/p>\n
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Picture this: a\u00a0man is angry, or had a bit too much to drink, or he feels very festive and celebratory for whatever reason. So he finds an unconscious woman\u00a0and forcibly sticks his finger or an instrument deep in her eye. Hideous, huh? What a monster. He deserves to be locked up. We can\u2019t have that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2694,"featured_media":271,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,71,285],"tags":[277,354,355,352,353,150,257],"class_list":["post-392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ohio-valley","category-suffering","category-whole-life","tag-crime","tag-mortal-sin","tag-rant","tag-rape","tag-rapist","tag-sin","tag-trauma"],"yoast_head":"\n