Me Too

I don't think there is anybody who has not been affected by this movement.

Maybe it has provided an opportunity for you to open up about your own experiences. Maybe it has opened your eyes to the extent of people who have a story. Maybe you learnt a close friend or family member has had an experience of their own. In any case, I'm sure your eyes have been opened.

It's so important that we don't allow this to follow in the footsteps of other viral sensations, spoken about for a few days, even weeks, before eventually slipping into the void and rarely discussed again. We must keep the conversation going and empower all those with a story to continue to fight.

My own story is one I've struggled to share. With my innocence taken away from me at 14 years old, years of self-loathing have led me to this point. One thing I keep telling myself is that he may have controlled me in that moment but I can't let him control the rest of my life. While I have faced multiple struggles in the aftermath of the incident, I am hoping as I begin to address this issue openly I can overcome my current mindstate.

But this movement is only the beginning. We need to start to change the conversation. To realise the power of our words. Firstly, rape jokes are never funny. Don't make them. In fact, laughing at rape jokes helps to normalise that behaviour in the minds of society and more terrifyingly, the rapists.

How can we demonise their behaviour if the next day they're listening to people laugh about sexual assault? 'Got your rape alarm' they might giggle as your head to get a taxi. Part of me is glad they can laugh because then, it's likely they haven't had the experience themselves. The rest of me is angry that they can be so thoughtless.

If you become brave enough to correct how people talk about it we can erase the glamorisation and hopefully deter one person at a time.

The other day I found myself in an Uber at around 10.30 pm for what would have probably been a 5-minute walk. This driver seemed annoyed by me not choosing to walk and repeatedly made comments about the distance of the journey.

I apologised for being tired of walked grasping my keys between my fingers and constantly looking over my shoulder to get home. After telling him although unfortunate it wasn't safe for people, particularly girls, to be walking alone late at night, he laughed. I prayed no woman (or anybody) in his family ever experienced anything of the sort. Man would he regret that laugh if they ever did.

I've realised it's hard for people to understand the severity of the situation until either being in it or seeing the effects of it. We need to find a way to change this because we can't keep waiting for souls to be broken before we extinguish the cause.

Can you imagine how satisfying it would be if our grandchildren or even their grandchildren are horrified by thought of the society we currently live in, because to them it is just a story they are told, not the reality?

Although like any situation there will always be people who break laws (legal or societal) by reversing the normalisation of the crime we can minimise this number. It should not be the case that nearly everybody has experienced or knows somebody who has experienced sexual assault.

Me too. And her and her and him.