Mormon: "There is no such thing as rape."

[Violet]

I believe he is proposing that they dress less slutty. Apparently, very few people are aware that rape has nothing to do with what a woman is wearing. We have had this conversation on these forums before.

And some of them disagree with 'has nothing to do with it' from more experience than they'd like to number. In some cases it has little to do with it, in some cases it's somewhat central to its occurrence. You'll notice I dress fantastically quite often nowadays, because I love doing it. Did you think I never did so in the past? Every time I went the extra mile to look amazing I was made later to regret it horribly.

Often times it can happen when you're willing to have sex, but (understandably) you have limits on where you will go at the time. Being forced to deepthroat because someone else has you tightly and painfully by the hair and you have no control and you can't do anything to stop it under threat of being hit and at first you try to push away and you're smacked in response... that's as much rape as not wanting sex at all and being forced to engage in it.

Some of the time it really doesn't matter what you're wearing, can be fucking winter out and you just got inside and are still wearing winter clothes and it happens. But I call that these are a tiny minority of the time, and that it occurs when they're in the mood for sex in the first place or are made to be in the mood by how sexy the presentation of your body is (and clothes are a tool that adds to presentation, listen to the costume-maker/impromptu actress here). It doesn't always (it doesn't even often) not enter into the equation. It is a sexual domination. and should think I know the difference given that I was plenty physically dominated outside of sex as well. Beating, shoving, slapping, throwing, crushing, tickle torture, binding, biting, yanking on hair or a shirt collar.... these are demonstrations of physical domination that is not necessarily sexual. It can be as a part of rape, but it doesn't have to be for rape to occur. Sometimes one can reach the point where they don't have the will to fight it any longer and they just do whatever they are told to do out of terror, hollowness, and patheticness.

There's strictly emotional domination (abuse) too, which can also be a part of rape, but isn't necessarily so. Mocking, sneering, jeering, constant failure to cuddle or hug or kiss, ordering, devaluing, jealousy if I was ever with someone else (that never worked out well for me either), threatening, ignoring, really horrible things to say or do to a transwoman, making me promise not to start hormone therapy when I was 14 (breaking promises is usually a bad idea in such situations), using someone for money and entertainment, refusing to share a bed with at night (even after having sex with them)... all of this can (and often does) happen during rape, but it can all be done by itself, and rape doesn't require it to happen. All the more horrible was his always 'encouraging' I be myself and to 'rule my own life' while punishing me endlessly for trying for it.

To say nothing of social domination. I didn't have more than a handful of "friends" throughout my entire middleschool and highschool and even the beginning of my college. This isn't (as I probably made it sound) because I didn't want them... it's entirely because any secret you try to keep from such people eventually gets back to them and hell hath no wrath like an angry tyrant. Eventually one becomes dependent on it since it is the ONLY option: every other option, even being alone, was ruthlessly exterminated. When your family doesn't accept you for yourself, and you have no friends to lean on (because you have no friends), and your a lonely and depressed girl with no hope for the future and no love of the present and with a past she only remembers horrible things out of... one can cling to the one something that accepts any part of her at all. And when that one something won't let one ever seek any other somethings... suicide is considered and rejected because she isn't even worth having death, and all she considers for her future is a long and childless future as little more than a toy. And yes... social domination can be a part of rape (an implied 'if call for help and wake my parents: you won't have me to turn to any longer... and your parents will add pity to their lack of acceptance of you. They'd probably send you off to some degaying camp to 'get better' since they don't think they have a daughter' shushing finger and glare).... but it doesn't have to be, and it is done by itself plenty.

It irritates me endlessly when people tell me rape has nothing to do with sex. Most of mine had everything to do with it... they usually happened during sex in the first place or at the least the person I was with wanted it and I didn't and I had to anyway. Even the winter example was sexual: being stripped of my winter clothes and shirt and thrown barebacked into the fresh snow and held down there for what seemed like forever while he made me suck him off and swallow it... after which he left me lying there. Often feminists tell me rape is solely about domination... but I've been dominated in all sorts of ways, and rape is always with a sexual intent from everything I've experienced. Domination of rape isn't even always physical (note the times I engaged in sexual activity only because they wanted it and I was bullied into doing it without complaint when all I wanted to do was cry, and I got trained out of crying for being slapped for it)... but it is ALWAYS sexual. Whatever rapes are not sexual either happen to everyone lucky enough to not be me (and I've been raped by several men, and abused in all of my noted varieties by many whom I interacted with)... or are in such a minority of rapes that I can't even fathom how they would exist.

Absurd that I can tell people I'm a transwoman with no difficulty, but I can scarcely force myself to say this without first asking a good friend of mine if it's written well, (I can't read back over what I wrote. It hurt enough the first time) and even then I don't want to say it and I have an intense desire just to X this window and forget about responding to this thread and I'm shaking reliving memories I suppressed for years because I never dealt with them then. It's why this has been both the best and worst month of my life... best because I found someone who does love me and who I love and who doesn't abuse me... worst because memories are flooding me that I'd forgotten, and I am reliving the ones I mostly ignored. I'm used to running away from anything I can't deal with, always hiding behind a facade, forever escaping reality as best as I can...

I believe I have a quite solid understanding of the rapists who everyone seems to believe are monsters. They are model sons, academic geniuses, accepted and beloved children, dog lovers, vegetarians, community-minded, cool-headed, family men, wonderful brothers...

Until they reach the bedroom with someone who has nowhere to go and who can't hurt them and who can't call for help from anywhere ever and who has nobody to tell and if she told somebody she'd encounter only a solid wall of unwillingness to do anything about it and would only make her own situation worse by speaking of it.