Incident number 1

Whoooooooo. Difficult. Why did I start writing this. Ok, here goes. I imagine it will get less coherent as it goes along, but you'll get the gist of it from the first sentence.

Raped at a party at age 17. I was a… that is to say that I hadn't had sex up until that point. If you use the "V" word it always makes it sound a bit, a bit as if it is somehow more terrible than if it had happened to someone who had had sex. Well, cobblers to that.

It... I mean, I don't really know what to say now. Do you want details? In a way, I'd like to tell you the whole story but what's the point? Everything else that happened that evening pales in to insignificance compared to that. If I say the following it's as if I'm somehow justifying something about it, but I can assure you that my feeling about this particular thing are VERY strong indeed and VERY unwavering. Having said all that, I was at this party completely sober, and a drunk barman from a pub we used to go to kept following me around. He followed me into the bathroom and started trying to undo his belt while I was in there, and I told him to fuck off. I thought he'd leave me alone but he didn't. He attacked me after everyone else (drunk obviously) had gone to bed.

And that's it for details.
Later that week someone I knew said "Oooh, I heard you got off with Mark at the weekend. Did you know he has a girlfriend and a baby?" (or words to that effect).

I nearly threw up. I nearly tried to find out his phone number so I could call her up and tell her, but she probably knew what sort of person he was.

Events conspire against people who have been assaulted. People thought I'd "got off" with the guy. What good would protest do? 17 year old girl, against the word of a 21 year old with a kid. What a horrible… ok… I'm trying not to resort to swearing but I don't know why I am, because in truth, as well as being a bleak minded, vile excuse for a human being, he was (is, obviously) at heart a vicious misogynist ANIMAL. Christ, what goes on in people like that's heads.

I thought I'd "got over it" for a long time, but then Incident no.2 happened, and everything went haywire again. People wonder why women get jumpy about things, and call us reactionary PC'ers. Well… look, it comes down to this - I just don't understand this impulse in some men, but if they haven't got the strength of character to sort these feelings out in themselves, what the fuck are we going to do. Are we always going to live in fear of this? I just don't get it. There are fundamental differences between men and women, and in some men this… this extreme form of obsession with sexual power, of expressing power over people by inflicting this unbelievable violation on them. I mean what the hell is going on?