YES, I am sure.

The article “A Letter To My Students: Stop Rape Now By Doing These Ten Things” was very interesting to me. I am glad we had to read this because everyone should be informed about what to do when a rape or sexual assault occurs. There was one part of the article that really stood out to me. “Never ask someone who says he/she has been raped: ‘Are you sure?’” I can imagine that a lot of the time, rape or sexual assault is not reported because people might doubt what really happened. What is considered rape? Maybe I led them on? Maybe they made a mistake and I do not want them to be reprimanded for something they did not intend to do. There are so many reasons that rape is not reported and I can not begin to imagine the thoughts going through someone’s head who has been raped or experienced anything along the lines of rape. Asking “Are you sure?” is probably the worst thing that someone can do. But it is also something that someone does not usually intent to sound doubtful or disbelieving. I can understand that it is a very automatic response to a statement like “I was raped”. Although it happens more than we think, it is not an easy thing to hear or understand. Asking “Are you sure?” might make it seem like they are trying to avoid the problem and avoid doing something about it because it might be inconvenient to them. The person, who has been raped and is being asked the question, might reverse the courage they built up when confessing what happened and might now believe that saying something could cause more harm than good. But no harm can be done in the case of reporting a sexually aggressive act. Only good.

Another part of this paper, which refers to never joking about a rape, made me think of a conversation I had the other day. I was talking with a group of friends and someone said “This team is going to rape us on Saturday” meaning the sports team they were playing was going to defeat them badly. And I did not really think anything of it until another friend said, “Don’t say rape. We are women and this is actually a problem” (or something along those lines). This interaction was very interesting to me because it can take courage for someone to call out another friend for incorrectly using an offensive or controversial term. And in relation to last class, I am now thinking that she should have said, “Don’t say rape. We are people and this is actually a problem” because any person can get raped and this issue is not specific to women alone.