trigger warning: a game called rape
Just yesterday, a close friend of mine told me she’d visited this school recently where there was a popular game played by the students called rape.
I’m pretty sure most of you have already guessed what it was all about.
The boys stand in a line and the girls stand in another, and when the game starts, the boys go after the girls. They all “capture” the “weakest” or slowest running girl and then proceed to “rape” her. As far as I know, private parts were left alone, but the girl may be groped around a bit.
This sort of behavior isn’t anything new, especially among younger children who are largely unaware of what rape really is. I have read plenty of news articles about 5th graders playing conventional tag games in the schoolyard and calling it rape.
But this particular group of people was definitely capable of understanding. We’re talking 15-to-17-year-olds here.
And the acid icing on the bitter cake? The teachers didn’t fucking mind.
You heard me right. They didn’t fucking mind.
Keep in mind this was a consensual game played by willing boys and girls.
I just…don’t know what to think. I really don’t know what to think. Consensual or not…it sickens me. It sickens me that they could ever think of rape as a game, as something to rejoice and giggle over. It sickens me that the teachers don’t even try to put an end to it. It sickens me that they don’t try to teach their students about the severe consequences of rape on society and survivors.
Consensual or not, rape is not a game, and it sickens me that people are treating it as such. (I am not referring to fantasies played out between two safe, responsible people who take time to understand and please each other, and do not take the concept of rape as something light.)
But a rape game played in public in a K-12 school environment in front of other little kids? This sort of thing just ingrains into young, impressionable minds that rape is normal and fun and okay, which it’s not.
I don’t know what to think. I don’t understand not only how anyone could treat rape as some sick form of entertainment in the middle of a fucking schoolyard, and I don’t understand how mature adults could just stand by and do absolutelynothing.
And you know what sucks even more? Most people are not comfortable discussing rape in a responsible manner but are then okay with things like this.
And it sickens me.
Rape is not a game. It’s not a game, and it’s not a joke, and it’s not okay, and this sort of behavior disgusts me like nothing else.