Call It What You Will

In February a lawmaker from Georgia recently decided that the language for a complaint about rape, stalking, and domestic violence is too harsh. He proposes that a victim (I call them survivors) be called the "accuser" instead of victim.  

Image pulled from hope4survivors.com

To me this is beyond idiotic. We don't call kidnapping, theft, attempted murder, or physical battery victims "accusers." We call them victims because that's what they are, and to some small minded people it's because we can see or quantify the damage done. But that is true with the above crimes as well, it's just not an item missing. 

Also in January politicians started to try to redefine the actual word rape by rewriting an abortion law. The proposal was to say that abortion would receive no funding except in cases of "forcible" rape. After the years that women have spent to make sure all survivors are treated with the dignity, respect and support they deserve--lawmakers want to negate it all and say only if force is used. Keep in mind not all states have even adjusted "force" to in their laws to include date rape drugs or other narcotics used to eliminate a woman's senses (i.e. too much alcohol).

These proposed play on words are another case of people calling into question crimes against women that no one wants to talk about it. These crimes are dirty, deviant, disgusting, violating and affect a woman for her whole life in one way or another. No one wants to talk about those crimes where victims can talk back; but we, as a society, have to talk about them in order to make change in this world. 

Image pulled from http://victimempowermentsa.wordpress.com/

I hope these proposals are all turned down and not brought up again. A person only has to say the word "no" for it to be rape--and if a person it not able to speak, it's still a "no." It does NOT matter whether a rapist uses drugs, alcohol, body, knife, threat or a gun: It's still rape and a violation of that woman. Lawmakers can call it what the will, but survivors know what happened.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, please call and talk to someone: 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or by logging on to the online hotline at http://www.rainn.org/.