Hello Laura,
Thank you so much for creating a safe forum for women to share and unburden themselves. I was raped in the late 60’s in Canada by a US Marine. I had had many pleasant conversations with this man and I thought he was my friend. One evening he offered to give me a ride home from my student job, ostensibly to save me the taxi fare, held a military issue knife to my throat and raped me. I was terrified that cutting my throat was going to be part of his fantasy.
Some time later I read that groups of US soldiers in Viet Nam would walk into people’s homes and drag young women from their family dinners out to a hut nearby and group rape them. After the rapes the soldiers would allow the woman to start running away and then shoot her, saying that they had shot a Viet Kong trying to escape.
I realized after reading this that if I had not been in a western country where murder would have been messy to conceal, this man would probably have killed me as part of his carefully planned and ritualized practice.
I did not report the incident. There was a great deal of victim blaming and vicious grilling in courtrooms at the time. I’m not sure it has changed very much.
Now in my 70’s, I see that rape culture is still active and in professional roles women’s contributions, even when excellent, are still often minimized in relation to lesser contributions from men.
I’m very pleased to see many more women in the sciences, some female leaders of countries and the first female Vice President in the US. Back in the 70’s I optimistically expected to see female equality in my lifetime. I realize now that we still have a long way to go.
The invention of social media is a huge game changer. Thank you so much, again, for creating this site.