"Let's talk about rape for a moment. Rape is not what George Lucas did to your childhood. Rape is not what happens when a sports team beats another sports team by a wide margin. Rape is not what happens when your electric bill is higher this month than it was last month. Rape is when a person violates another person in the most despicable, degrading way imaginable and among the myriad of terrible things humans can do to one another, rape is among the worst. I think the casual misappropriation of the concept of rape extending all the way to its widespread comical usage is disgusting even by Internet standards. Off my chest."—Jeffrey Rowland, author of the journal comic Overcompensating. (The comic at the link above the commentary may be triggering, because it represents the ubiquitous nasty attitudes about rape on which the author is commenting.)
You might recall this was also the subject of an "Important Announcement" at Shakesville back in April.
I would, btw, take issue with the use of the word degrading in the above quote, because of the widespread assumption that rape leaves its survivors broken (or "degraded"). Rape does not degrade its victims; it degrades its heinous perpetrators.
[H/T to Shaker Audrey.]
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