The “Me Too” Movement is a social media movement where people confess a time where they were sexually assaulted or raped by posting “Me too.” The number of people on my facebook who participated really opened my eyes to how serious an issue it is. It also opened my eyes to the amount of people willing to make excuses and blame the victim for such a traumatic and horrifying event.
Here are some of the things I saw on the other end of “Me Too:”
- She needs to respect herself more.
- Be more careful next time.
- Maybe you should cover up more.
- Are you sure you didn’t seduce him?
And the victim blaming goes on…See how every excuse is pointing at the person being abused and not the abuser? There is a huge lack of empathy in this nation. For some reason we believe that if it didn’t happen to us that somehow we must be superior to those who suffered at the hands of a rapist. It’s worst when I hear these things from other women who have never been abused or raped. We never look at the behavior of the perpetrator and say things like:
- Why did they think it was okay to hurt her?
- They must have no morals to do something like that
- Who would even think of doing something so disgusting?
Why don’t we do that? Simple reason, because we believe that if we do everything right then bad things won’t happen to us; that if we are good people then we shouldn’t suffer any consequences. This is also our downfall, it makes you somewhat narcissistic to believe that and so we get on a high horse believing that rape and sexual assault only happens to loose women or women who have multiple partner, but that is simply not true. It happens to virgins, prostitutes and even children. NO ONE deserves to get raped, NOTHING can excuse the actions of a rapist. It’s just plain wrong, not getting raped should be the standard and not the exception.
We as a nation have become so self-absorbed and so self-involved that we forgot what it’s like to shed tears for our fellow man. We forgot that we as humans are connected and we have disconnected ourselves to the point where we shrug our shoulders at another’s misfortune instead of saying, “What can I do to help?” We’ve become cold and distant so when people speak out against rape and sexual assault instead of listening and trying to understand, we rather make a generic list of excuses for why it’s their fault instead of showing any empathy or compassion for human life and this kind of thinking will ultimately be how humanity will crumble.