PEPPER SPRAY PIZZA

Dear [local city],

I’m afraid to go back home because I don’t want to face the fact that people there just don’t give half as much a shit about rape as I do. They don’t understand rape, but they will pretend they do in order to “fix the rapist” and get away with not taking pre-emptive action against him. They think that they know how to fix a rapist, although probably none of these people have had the capacity to rape someone else, they’ve not been reformed because they’ve never been a rapist; nor are they trained social workers, but they will continue to say that their plan of action is to work with the rapist to change his ugly mindset because ultimately, that will stop more rapes from occurring.

They will soon forget to follow through. They will get wrapped up in their studies, their jobs, and their social lives, and they will not dedicate the extreme amount of time necessary to rehabilitate a repeat offender. They may share coffee with the rapist once or twice to find out what his “side of the story” is. And at the point when [Rapist’s Name] says that he can’t remember anything he’s done and that it only happened when he was blacked out, they will remind him that to make the decision to drink is to make the decision to rape. So stop drinking. And then they will have nowhere else to turn except to get on with their lives because it’s not like he actually raped any of their girlfriends, sisters, or mothers. They did the “right thing” and now they can wash their hands of it.

When will someone understand that [Rapist’s Name] will always deny to the faces of his friends any of the beliefs and assumptions that led him to justify those rapes in the first place! He doesn’t want to lose his community by showing us the way that he really thinks about women. And only once he rapes again will the “active” members of the community realize that to sympathize with a rapist is to entertain the idea that rape is okay.

The voice of doubt: So then what do you want us to do? Do you have some kind of plan that can help fix this?

Yes. What if for every man that raped, the survivors and their allies could plaster his name and face around town, letting everyone know what a dangerous piece of shit he is? What if survivors in the community were given the opportunity to safely verbally and/or physically take their anger out on the ones actually committing the abuse, instead of participating in passive, silent, mono-gendered marches? And what if every man that considered rape was too afraid of the social consequences to ever follow through with it? What if every man who raped previously was too afraid to commit the crime again? What if our community didn’t decide to exonerate rapists and instead decided to make this a safe and supportive space for empowering rape survivors? What if we made rape as rare an occurrence as society likes to pretend it is?