Sexual Violence Quotes

Jokes and media slurs about rape and its survivors not only desensitize the issue but also have an impact on rape conviction rates!"Widespread “myths and stereotypes” about rape victims may give jurors “preconceived ideas” that could affect their decisions in court. When victims were demonised in the media, you can see how juries would bring their preconceptions to bear."-Alison Saunders, head of the Crown Prosecution Service, UK.

Alison Saunders head of the Crown Prosecution Service

Why Is It So Important to Remember?When you were abused, those around you acted as if it weren’t happening. Since no one else acknowledged the abuse, you sometimes felt that it wasn’t real. Because of this you felt confused. You couldn’t trust your own experience and perceptions. Moreover, others’ denial led you to suppress your memories, thus further obscuring the issue.You can end your own denial by remembering. Allowing yourself to remember is a way of confirming in your own mind that you didn’t just imagine it. Because the person who abused you did not acknowledge your pain, you may have also thought that perhaps it wasn’t as bad as you felt it was. In order to acknowledge to yourself that it really was that bad, you need to remember as much detail as possible. Because by denying what happened to you, you are doing to yourself exactly what others have done to you in the past: You are negating and denying yourself.

Beverly Engel

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.

Judith Lewis Herman

We hit every jazz and blues club on and off Bourbon Street, dancing and drinking until we girls were drunk enough to go with the boys to the strip clubs which outnumbered all other businesses in the French Quarter. Here is where my solution unfolded.

Darwun St. James

- Rape is a unique crime, representing both a physical and psychological violation.More than with any other crime the victim can experience reporting rape as a form of revictimisation.l In no other crime is the victim subject to so much scrutiny at trial, where the most likely defence is that the victim consented to the crime. Powerful stereotypes function to limit the definition of what counts as ‘real rape’."Kelly, L., Lovett, J., & Regan, L. (2005). A gap or a chasm?: attrition in reported rape cases. London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate.

Liz Kelly

We mute the realization of malevolence- which is too threatening to bear - by turning offenders into victims themselves and by describing their behavior as the result of forces beyond their control.

Anna C. Salter

In 2011, actor Johnny Depp told the November issue of Vanity Fair that he felt participating in a photoshoot was akin to rape."Well, you just feel like you're being raped somehow. Raped . . . It feels like a kind of weird - just weird, man. But whenever you have a photo shoot or something like that, it's like - you just feel dumb. It's just so stupid," he said.Likening instances of being flustered or uneasy to the often life-shattering experience of rape has become a far too common comparison in modern lexicon.The phrase "Facebook rape" is perhaps the most widely used, which implies one person has posted on another person's Facebook account - usually something intended to embarrass the person.But the casual, flippant use of the term "rape" in instances that do not involve sexual violence is highly problematic in that it trivialises one of the most despicable invasions of a human being.Desensitising the masses to the term "rape" is just another way the conversation surrounding sexual assault is derailed or diluted in society.Rape is, and should be considered universally, as a serious societal sickness that occurs within the "toxic silence" that surrounds sexual assault as Tara Moss put so elegantly in her recent Q&A appearance.Further to that, the use of the term can be a trigger for rape survivors in that it may jolt terrifying memories of their own experience.According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, up to 57 per cent of rape survivors suffer post-traumatic stress disorder in their lifetime, with "triggers" including inflammatory words like rape causing deeply traumatic recollections.Beware desensitising the term "rape", Newcastle Herald, June 6, 2014

Emma Elsworth

Most women are all too familiar with men like Calvin Smith. Men whose sense of prerogative renders them deaf when women say, "No thanks," "Not interested," or even "Fuck off, creep.

Jon Krakauer

Are you gay, Cherie? Me, No… I’m not anything… I-I mean I prefer not to indulge, I stammered.“Really... how do you mean?”Well love has been an elusive story, like a fairytale adults tell children but I have never known any of it to be true. In reality it reminds me of religion. I am not sure God is real either, if God is real why do so many innocents suffer?Innocents suffer because it is their destiny to suffer.What? What does that mean?” I’m annoyed.God has nothing to do with it. We are born into this world to experience all that is not God-like, so we can then be inspired to reach for higher spiritual goals.I have never thought of it that way before. If that is so then I must be preparing for sainthood. Am I to think that all of my suffering as a child has been to prepare me for greatness?

Darwun St. James

... in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women's experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.

Judith Lewis Herman

It is not a single crime when a child is photographed while sexually assaulted (raped.) It is a life time crime that should have life time punishments attached to it. If the surviving child is, more often than not, going to suffer for life for the crime(s) committed against them, shouldn't the pedophiles suffer just as long? If it often takes decades for survivors to come to terms with exactly how much damage was caused to them, why are there time limits for prosecution?

Sierra D. Waters

The story of my birth that my mother told me went like this: "When you were coming out I wasn't ready yet and neither was the nurse. The nurse tried to push you back in, but I shit on the table and when you came out, you landed in my shit."If there ever was a way to sum things up, the story of my birth was it.

Sierra D. Waters

Intimidated, old traumas triggered, and fearing for my safety, I did what I felt I needed to do.

Sierra D. Waters

He told me that if I hung up, he'd do it. He would commit suicide. He told me that if I called the cops he would kill every single one of them and I knew that he had the potential and the means to do it

Sierra D. Waters

Sexual satisfaction eases the stranglehold of materialism, since status symbols no longer look sexual, but irrelevant. Product lust weakens where emotional and sexual lust intensifies. The price we pay for artificially buoying up this market is our heart's desire. The beauty myth keeps a gap of fantasy between men and women. That gap is made with mirrors; no law of nature supports it. It keeps us spending vast sums of money and looking distractedly around us, but its smoke and reflection interfere with our freedom to be sexually ourselves.

Naomi Wolf

The maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold.Or, if your ad revenue or your seven-figure salary or your privileged sexual status depend on it, it is an operable condition.

Naomi Wolf

Women who love themselves are threatening; but men who love real women, more so.

Naomi Wolf

But no matter how much evil I see, I think it’s important for everyone to understand that there is much more light than darkness.

Robert Uttaro

Today I wore a pair of faded old jeans and a plain grey baggy shirt. I hadn't even taken a shower, and I did not put on an ounce of makeup. I grabbed a worn out black oversized jacket to cover myself with even though it is warm outside. I have made conscious decisions lately to look like less of what I felt a male would want to see. I want to disappear.

Sierra D. Waters

Sexual Violence Quotes

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