I will confirm first and foremost that I do know women who have been raped, momentarily dispossessed from their bodies by a sexually deviant aggressor. As a listener, I can’t sit there and try to empathize because “I understand” is completely false. I don’t. I’ve never had that happen to me. While the act of rape isn’t limited to women, it overwhelmingly happens to them, and, as such, I’ve never been asked by society to become an expert in how to prevent such a heinous act.
That’s part of male privilege. I’ve never had to change my clothes or consider looking more down to earth to avoid being raped. I’ve walked by myself in the middle of night, inebriated to the gills, and bumped by innocent strangers, but no one ever took that as a sign that I was asked for a proverbial “it.” I have a lot of other “isms” I
