I don’t want a protector. I want safety.

Online conversations around rape are so infused with excuses for the rapists that I don’t think we realize it. This is the thing with cultural values. They’re sweet and toxic and we imbibe them.

Unfortunately the more we talk about rape, the more it becomes a casual conversation. People say “but we need to talk about it”. Yeah, no! We need to NOT talk about it without knowing about it. That’s because when we talk about it out of our ass, based on just disconnected observations and no concrete knowledge of it, we perpetuate the culture. Now besides the atrocity that rape is, open discussions about it by mindless and clueless humans add another layer of abuse and trauma to the victims. We don’t realize it but rape victims walk and breathe amongst us. They can hear us and read us. Most of our conversations, online and in real life, are devoid of compassion. We talk nonstop of protection when actually, the conversation has to be around safety.

Rape shouldn’t be a topic on Clubhouse by men and women in their twenties, mansplaining my experience in full force, just a bunch of privileged college kids who likely have either never had sexual assault happen or are too intimidated by the culture to call it out. Coward people have led no life-changing movements in this world. They won’t start by bringing the change for rape culture.

So here’s a plea! If all you know about rape is through an actual rape then you only know about a crime that happened. You don’t know how this is a different crime with a nuance that’s steeped in patriarchy, fed by misogyny. All you know is that a woman or a child or a man got raped. That’s all that the news clip educates you on. So if you want to mouth off on Clubhouse go ahead and do it AFTER reading literature that would help you have lucid and informative conversations.

Here’s another plea! If you think that somehow, despite all that your gender has suffered, you can’t align your allegiance with women, then just think before you speak on open forums and consider three things,

1. Is it kind?

2. Is it necessary?

3. Is it true?

Trust me, you’ll find a lot of direction.