I believe this article caught my attention because it’s a very visual way to represent the way sexual assault and rape weighs on a person. To carry your mattress around must be a great burden, especially during the school day, moving from class to class, hour to hour, and this girl is extremely brave to do this, and she is amazingly courageous and selfless to do this for the other victims in her school as well. I have seen this in magazines recently, and in newspapers. This is the kind of publicity that sexual assault and rape need to gather, they need to get the nation educated and angry, because anger is what can empower change.
This, more personally, probably caught my attention because I know a lot of people who are victims of sexual assault and/or rape, and after showing them, many of them are excited about the publicity this is getting, they are glad that someone is finally getting close to showing those who haven’t experienced this kind of trauma what it’s like every day. I really hope this school makes the right decision and expels her and many others’ rapist, so she can go to her classes safely without being reminded of that terrible event by seeing him. If the school did, this would set a precedent for the future that rapists and sexual criminals will be expelled. If not, I’m sure the school would face some social consequences, because like I said, anger brings change.
This should not die down with the days the school doesn’t do anything, though. The longer this goes on, the less people will talk about it. The less these articles will be passed around. People will get bored, they’ll forget, they’ll think that its a big bummer to be seeing something this upsetting all the time and they’ll ignore it, but they don’t think about how these victims can’t just ignore it.
It’s in their face. It’s there every day. It’s there when they walk to school. It’s there when they go home and it’s dark and they hold their keys between their fingers, just in case. It’s there when they hear people use ‘rape’ as a synonym for beat or win against and no one says anything. It’s there when they can’t sleep in their bed anymore because it brings back memories. It’s there when you sit in class, when you go to get coffee, when you move, when you breathe. It’s there like a mattress over your shoulder.
But you can’t put it down.
Anger brings change. Maybe we need a little bit more anger, anyway.
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