In What World?

In what world would you ever justify a crime by laying blame on the victim?

If I leave my front door unlocked, does it give someone permission to come inside?

If the door is thrown wide open, does that mean that anyone is invited to come and take whatever they'd like?

If there is a can of spray paint sitting next to a car which has already been vandalized with "Wash me," is permission granted to spray paint the car?

If someone drives a red convertible with undercarriage lights, plays profanity-laced music and parks outside of casinos, does it mean they deserve to have their tires slashed?

If a child is playing on a playground and her skirt gets hiked up, is she inviting abuse?

What if a person in a position of authority was shown a photo of a person driving a car that was reported stolen? And what if the photo was acquired via a text sent from the phone of the person in the picture? Would the lead be pursued?

Or would the person be told, "You cannot prove that you did not give them permission to drive it. You cannot prove that they sent the text?"

What if tens and hundreds of people had seen the photo? Get over it? Just be more careful with your car?

Do we only fail to acknowledge a crime when it involves a woman's body and her word against a man's?

Somehow, I can't imagine a world where we'd say, "You invited that robbery," or "You encouraged that break in." Yet, the fallback in cases of sexual assault seems to be that a woman's behavior is what sparked the episode. Episode, because most times it isn't even considered a crime.

Bottom line is it does not matter what a woman wears. It does not matter where she is. It doesn't matter what she tweets. It is her body, not yours.

If you struggle with that, how about this, the list of deaths on our collective conscience is growing. It isn't that girls are weak, it isn't that boys don't know better, it is simply that men and women are not working hard enough to acknowledge that we indeed have a problem of rape culture and it isn't going to stop by itself. We have to talk.

We have to shift the mysterious, the dubious, unfair beliefs about women and their bodies.

We have to acknowledge the world that we live in, the world that we want our children to grow up in, and the distance we need to travel to make the move to a better world.

Are you ready to help change the world?