Society is actually kind of ok with women and kids being raped. A thread.

(I know you’re not consciously ok with it – at least I hope not – but as a society we always manage to find a way to justify it.
Allow me to explain:)

Predatory men look for gaps. The gaps are the little blind spots in our communities. They aren't looking for victims, they are looking for the spaces in society that you are not focused on or don’t want to focus on. When you let them exist there, they find their victims.

Priests got (get) away with rape for so long because nobody wanted to look. They needed the priests to be virtuous and god-fearing so that their lives and beliefs weren’t threatened. The gap is a powerful place to be. Groups of people need you to be untouchable.

Society is kind of ok with rape when the alternative is questioning a belief system and standing up to the power within it. It’s a perfect position for a predator. Lives are ruined, people are traumatized… but in a socially acceptable way where nobody’s ideology is threatened.

“I’m sorry about the rape but not sorry enough to focus on things that might make me uncomfortable or ruin this thing that is important to me.”
The rapist knows you feel this way.
This is why he found the gap in the first place, because he knew he could count on you.

There is always going to be a group of dudes who are quietly “allowed” to rape, it just changes based on the way society does. They’re allowed because pointing them out threatens a part of our belief system/position in society/career prospects.
THEY KNOW THIS.

Once you decide a particular group is virtuous, victimized, stunning and brave, downtrodden, elevated, superior, inferior, interesting or whatever label you decide to put on it, you create a gap for predators to take advantage of

and you remove the right of their victims to have boundaries because they belong to the special group.

If you are covering your ears when people tell you about sexual assault you are no different from the catholic who believed a few rapes were “unfortunate” but not indicative of a widespread problem, even if you are wrapped in a rainbow flag and covered in glitter.

One thing is very clear:
Those same self-declared progressive types that would scream at conservative catholics for turning a blind eye will do the very same themselves if their own religion is under threat.

It’s not the rape, it’s who commits it that defines who will be condemned and who will be ignored.

For some reason the thread breaks off here.
Continued: https://twitter.com/therestofus5/status/1256299981423742976?s=20