An 8-year-old girl camper began swimming near the edge of the pool by me. She was a tiny girl with a bubbly personality, and she was very attached to me. Upon seeing us talking, the boy swam over and started chasing her around the water. It was clear from the way she was trying to get away from him and her screeching that she wanted to be left alone — her body language and tense demeanor should have showed that she was uncomfortable — but if that wasn’t enough of a clue, the “stop” she yelled in protest should have been enough for him to go away.

That’s when it really hit me how serious the situation was. I could immediately picture it escalating. I didn’t see an 8-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy anymore; I saw the two of them as fully grown and matured adults. The girl was still small and skinny, and the boy was large enough to overpower her with little effort. I could see her running away from him, trying to push off his advances in a more sexual situation, but him refusing to believe that she really wanted him to stop. I saw him ignoring her physical protests right along with the verbal ones, convinced she wanted him there. It horrified me.

I reprimanded him immediately, insisting that when someone asks you to stop, it’s important to listen. Almost seconds later, a male counselor standing by the same section of the pool told him not to listen to me and to continue his pursuit of this little girl, despite her obvious protests. Here were two boys, roughly 10 years apart in age, but with the same views on women: that consent doesn’t matter. It’s not a generational thing: this mindset has clearly been ingrained into the public psyche from an early age. How often are we told not to take no for an answer? How often do we see children pestering their parents about getting a new toy until they eventually give in? How often do we hear about a woman’s whims coming with her menstrual cycle? How often do we see on television shows and in movies a woman “changing her mind” about a man who is persistent enough or who just proves himself worthy? The idea that a woman will change her mind is so ingrained that we can’t always recognize it at first.

If you think that the nice guy ranting only happens on the internet, you’ve never had to deal with your thoroughly drunken friend shouting about how no girls would go out with a nice guy like him, even though he’s surrounded by single women he ignores because they aren’t attractive enough for him.

If you think guys getting pissy and escalating matters because you told people to stop making sex jokes is a feature of the internet, well, you’ve never asked anyone to stop making jokes that make you uncomfortable.

If you think that inappropriate comments and requests for sex are an internet thing, you’ve never tried to stop a coworker or boss from hitting on you repeatedly, or a head of security, or the guy at the convenience store across the street.

If you think that being shouted at and asked to show people your tits just because you present as a woman only happens in chat rooms and online games, you’ve never walked past a frat house, or, unfortunately, through the main thoroughfares of either university I’ve attended.

If you think unasked for commentary on a woman’s looks only happens because girls post pictures on internet forums (which probably means they’re asking for it), you’ve never been at a bus stop, or the city square, or a mall, or… well, anywhere, really.

If you think insecure men trying to drive women out of activism only happens in online male-dominated communities, you’ve never paid attention politics. Or Fox. Or CNN, sadly.

If you think the reaction to rape victims is bad on twitter, try sharing that experience in person. Or try even standing up for a rape victim. Count how many minutes until someone points out “but men can be falsely accused! The woman just changed her mind! You just can’t believe those drunk *insert varying level of insulting reference to gender*!”

The day after this last rape, I lost my shit. I went from the quiet, but kind of jumpy little girl I used to be to something far more terrifying. I was cynical, paranoid, and avoidant. It was hard to make friends, and honestly, I wasn’t even really interested. I ran away from home, ran away from that town, and started a new life elsewhere. I still haven’t stopped running. I haven’t lived in any one place for longer than a couple years, and usually less than a couple months. I regularly walk away from entire social groups, starting fresh elsewhere.

[…]

We’re the ones affected by your attempts at being “nice.” We’re the ones who can’t go to a social event without loading up on xanax. We’re the ones people call “crazy” and “bitchy” and “fucked up.” If I’m any of those things, it was because YOU made me that way. YOU acted badly, YOU imposed yourself on me, and YOU crossed a line.

In Vietnam, the U.S Military Command made rape ‘socially acceptable’ in fact, it was unwritten, but clear policy. When GIs were encouraged to rape Vietnamese women and girls (and they were sometimes advised to “search” women “with their penises”) a weapon of mass political terrorism was forged. Since the Vietnamese women were distinguished by their heroic contributions to their people’s liberation struggle, the military retaliation specifically suited for them was rape. While women were hardly immune to the violence inflicted on men, they were especially singled out as victims of terrorism by a sexist military force governed by the principle that was exclusively a man’s affair.

“I saw one case where a woman was shot by a sniper, one of our snipers” a GI said.

“When we got up to her she was asking for water. And the lieutenant said to kill her. So he ripped her clothes, they stabbed her in both breasts, they spread her eagle and shoved an E tool (entrenching) up her vagina. And then they took that out and used a tree limb and she was shot”

In the same way that rape was an institutionalized ingredient of aggression carried out against the Vietnamese people, designed to intimidate and terrorize the women, slave owners encouraged the terroristic use of rape to put Black women in their place. If Black women had achieved a sense of their own strength and a strong urge to resist, the violent sexual assaults —so the slaveholders might have reasoned— would remind the women of their essential and inalterable femaleness. In the male supremacist vision of the period, this meant passivity, acquiescence and weakness.

Here’s the real reason that rape jokes are troubled territory –

Because the rape victims say so.

They get to say that. They get to feel that way. On this, they can set the cultural rules.

It’s not about right or wrong, or logic versus emotion, or arguments of oversensitivity and hypocrisy — you have the free speech to make whatever jokes you want or talk about rape in whatever way you feel is illuminating. But they get to be upset about it. And call you on it. And be hurt by it.

But consider this:

You get to not be a rape victim.

They, however, are not afforded that luxury. Ever again.

That may be the most important consideration of them all.