Hey All,
The other night I was surfing the cable channels and I happened upon one where this twenty-something guy was giving a speech to a large and apparently enthralled audience. (They kept clapping and whistling and yelling out their support). I thought, okay, let's see what this guy's talking about. See if there's something I can learn here.
He was a phenomenal speaker but all I can tell you after about two minutes of listening, was that I was stunned. I mean
stunned by what he was saying.
Let me take a minute to say at the outset of my rant of a thread - that I don't have anything against the guy per-se. Matter of fact, he was a dynamic speaker and it's obvious he's an ambitious young man who's going places. More power to him on that score.
No. It wasn't so much the messenger as it is the message.
The scene was this. The guy's pacing across the stage, talking forcefully, while behind him an attractive college-aged blonde woman sits in a chair looking miserable, lost and forlorn. At first I thought maybe performance art (then again, maybe it is).
Anyway, the guys starts saying that if a woman's been raped, if she's been hurt like that, if a man's taken her dignity? All she has to do to take her power back, to erase it all is to say to herself and everyone else that it never happened, that's she's still a virgin.
!!!
There I was sitting on the edge of my bed, remote in hand, slack-jawed and wide-eyed going, " 'SCUSE ME?!! Run that by me again there bucko!"
.....
If you just say you're a virgin, you can erase it all and make it go away.....
IMO - There's something truly sinister in that philosophy.
First of all - right from the start - the guy's jumping to the same conclusion so many do in thinking that rape is about sex. Well it's not. It's about power; or rather attacking someone in a most heinous fashion in order to take their personal power from them.
Then to intimate that denial is the answer?
Rape victims don't need a whitewash. They need a voice - a confident one - so they can stand up in a court of law, point to their attacker and say "That person over there hurt me in the most viscous way possible and I demand justice for myself!!!"
Rape victims need the power of vindication. The ability to testify on their behalf - not just to others but too themselves - that they have been legitimately wronged because they have been. They need to be heard so that they can heal. Not sent into the dismal light of deluded denial where they can be haunted by what happened to them while they pretend that it never did.
IMO - Telling a woman that if she simply says, "This never happened and I am still a virgin"......telling her that that statement will give her power over her attacker?
You might as well being saying to her, "Hey. You're the one who wore that low-cut dress. You deserved it!"
Do you understand where I'm coming from here people?
But wait...just like the ShamWow commercial...there's more!!
So, I'm still sitting there hang-dogged watching the blonde on the tv sit in her chair looking all ashmed of herself when I hear the guy say that if a woman's made the wrong choices, fallen in with the wrong man, made "mistakes" of a sexual nature? Well, boy howdy! She can take it all back, erase it all by saying she's still a virgin!!!
Say what?
So in other words, instead of stepping onto the bridge of adulthood where a person owns up to their own slips, all we have to do as women is pretend it never happened in the first place and that we're still pure as the driven snow?
(Knocking on the computer screen.....Hello! Can someone tell me if this is the 21st century or the 11th 'cuz I be confused!!)
This gentleman and his accolytes want women to lie and say we didn't screw up and that we're "still virgins"? Why? Is it because we're too feeble in their eyes to grow a set and admit too ourselves, "Man, I really messed up bad there! Hope I do better next time!"
Or are we simply helpless little dolls who need to be protected from our own humanity? Have our heads patted and sent off to the parlour to sip tea!
Give me a friggin break!!!
And where does that leave us birthmothers? I mean, let's face it, ain't one of us EVER going to able to claim virginity. Most other folk on the planet either truth be told - including the speaker and his followers.
Nope, nope, nope.
As for our young women; our beloved daughters, sisters, nieces, co-workers? Asking them to deny their pain or their history or their experiences in order to make them pristine?
Pushing our beloved daughters back into the terrible and defeaning silence where they can dwell in shame and fear?
Not on my watch young man!
Not on my watch!!!!