Bradamant comments on yesterday’s post,

Don’t know anything about the drugs but I do know that I’ve been beaten, raped, punched and abused sexually, emotionally, financially by a variety of men from all walks of life. The last guy I dated tried to kill me. So I decided a few years back that they were more trouble than its worth. I decided that I was better off alone and couldn’t risk another relationship. Now men around me complain that I’m bitter, angry, psycho etc. etc. which I’m not. I just want to be left out of their picture, at least on the sexual/emotional side of life.

So my question is: Why don’t these men who do these terrible things take all of those calm-me-down drugs? Why are we forced to deal with their aggression and then have to medicate ourselves in order to face life? Why are we medicating ourselves so that we are all Nice and Calm and Submissive instead of just releasing our justifiable anger on to the perpetrators of these crimes?

I don’t know, but it’s another form of victimization our society makes us undergo.  These people rape us, we become “sick,” and they keep on living their lives—able to forget us, able to enjoy the things we only hope we’ll one day be able to endure.  How dare they, I scream.  How can they do this to us, as human beings?

Our lives are not just full of sadness.  They’re sad.  We’re sad.  And instead of receiving support, instead of our communities gathering around us, we get drugs and therapy.  We see people’s eyes shift, hear the timber of their voice rise.  They don’t want to know.  They don’t want to know us.  Our experiences define us.  Rapists’ actions seem to be something they once did, a sad reality we just have to deal with.  If we can’t cope—can’t suppress, rather—we’re wallowing, “bitter, angry, psycho etc. etc.,” or we can’t “leave the past where it belongs, get on with life.”

So society encourages “treatment.”  They tell us again and again that we’re sick and out of control.  We feel out of control, so we believe them.  We take their pills.  We undergo their therapy.  We drain our bank accounts, and we drain our energy, because the world doesn’t accommodate “broken” people.  We—we accommodate the rapists.

The rape never stops for us.

The rapists?  They’re free, the lot of them.  So many Andys, so many more victims.  Do you know of one who only hurt one of us, saw the error of his ways, and then stopped?  And yet the wise woman judge told me, “he sounded apologetic in the voicemail.”  All the restraining order asked was that he stay away from me and that he be forced to undergo a psychological evaluation.  Instead, I was denied the restraining order and told, “I hope you get some help.”

Why don’t our societies tell them the same?  Because our social structure is built by the same people who are committing these heinous acts?  Because people don’t like to think about the sick things people do?  Because people are afraid to face their own experiences as victims?  Because of ignorance or just plain stupidity?  All of the above, and so much more.

I want to make it stop—as badly as I wanted Andy to stop.

But the therapist and the drugs and so many, too many people tell us to stop thinking about these things and these reasons.  They scream, Stop it!  Shut up!  It’s too ugly!  Why would you want people to know this about you?

So, again, why?  What do all the collective reasons reduce to?

Society is more scared of the rape victim than it is of the rapist.