A note before you read: This post discusses rape, sexual assault and sexual violence, including their impacts. Please look after yourself and read only if and when you feel comfortable doing so.
If anything in this post brings things up for you, support is available in Australia through 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732, by text on 0458 737 732, or via their online chat. In an emergency, call 000.
The message came in response to something I shared.
Ostensibly, it might not even have been
about Jane Doe, and her rape at the hands of the Cornell 7,
(I want to read those essays by the way,
but they will be guarded as jealously as the Epstein Files, I am sure)
nor about the other men in that chat,
who said nothing, did nothing,
and enabled with their silence.
I have read that one man, one lone man,
gave the victim the screenshots.
But I digress, and by digress I mean
that the pot, the cauldron
of my rage boils over
and I cannot hope to contain it.
I shared something that merely commented
on what happens if we worry too much
about protecting the bright future of our rapists.
Is this the epitome of the American dream?
A little rape need not get in your way
of running businesses and then the country.
He wrote that I should look into this case more,
as though I haven’t already scoured every available source
of more reliable information — because I am Jane Doe,
and this matters.
He’d read that it was consensual.
Ah, I see now what was missing from my reading.
I’d not had it mansplained to me.
Is this the part where I’m meant to be grateful?
Were he any other internet troll, some random stranger,
I’d have blocked instantly, and not wasted time
playing chess with this pigeon, but —
I know this man.
We were friends, once upon a time.
I suppose you’d say we’re acquaintances now,
but by the end of this poem we will be ex-friends.
Because I am Jane Doe, and he is all men.
Apparently this man, an educated scientific brain,
knows so little of consent that if any of the night was consensual,
it follows to him that nothing in it was rape.
To him, if the drugs made her unable to consent,
then drugs and alcohol equally exonerate her rapists.
He was not there any more than I was,
and yet he knows, apparently, that she enjoyed it.
He is not Jane Doe.
He has never had to decide whether or not
to risk his own reputation by disclosing that he was raped.
He has never lain there, not wanting this,
but not knowing how to stop it.
He has never thought it would be better if he was unconscious at this point.
He has seen a case of false rape allegation (allegedly),
so now he is cautious.
(I suppose that is harder for him,
than having to be cautious walking down the street,
having to be cautious calling a cab,
having to be cautious accepting a drink
from someone you know and trust.)
Never mind all the cases of real rape, reported or otherwise.
He says he prefers not to believe everything he reads online.
Funny then, that he’s willing to believe that the Cornell 7 are innocent?
I paused before I hit the block button.
I’ve never wanted to live in an echo chamber,
but this, this is not diversity of opinion, this is rape culture.
I am already Jane Doe.
I will not stand by while men like this make more women Jane Doe.
Until no woman is Jane Doe, every woman is Jane Doe.
Speak now