Sexual Assault Quotes

“In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“She knew I could tell with one glance, one look, one simple instant. It was her eyes. Despite the thick makeup, they were still dark-rimmed., haunted, and sad. Most of all though, they were familiar. The fact that we were in front of hundreds of strangers changed nothing at all. I'd spent a summer with those same eyes-scared, lost, confused-staring back at me. I would have known them anywhere.”
― Sarah Dessen, Just Listen

“No amount of me trying to explain myself was doing any good. I didn't even know what was going on inside of me, so how could I have explained it to them?”
― Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.

“I am a victim, I have no qualms with this word, only with the idea that it is all that I am.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“I draw a line down the middle of a chalkboard, sketching a male symbol on one side and a female symbol on the other. Then I ask just the men: What steps do you guys take, on a daily basis, to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? At first there is a kind of awkward silence as the men try to figure out if they've been asked a trick question. The silence gives way to a smattering of nervous laughter. Occasionally, a young a guy will raise his hand and say, 'I stay out of prison.' This is typically followed by another moment of laughter, before someone finally raises his hand and soberly states, 'Nothing. I don't think about it.' Then I ask women the same question. What steps do you take on a daily basis to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? Women throughout the audience immediately start raising their hands. As the men sit in stunned silence, the women recount safety precautions they take as part of their daily routine. Here are some of their answers: Hold my keys as a potential weapon. Look in the back seat of the car before getting in. Carry a cell phone. Don't go jogging at night. Lock all the windows when I sleep, even on hot summer nights. Be careful not to drink too much. Don't put my drink down and come back to it; make sure I see it being poured. Own a big dog. Carry Mace or pepper spray. Have an unlisted phone number. Have a man's voice on my answering machine. Park in well-lit areas. Don't use parking garages. Don't get on elevators with only one man, or with a group of men. Vary my route home from work. Watch what I wear. Don't use highway rest areas. Use a home alarm system. Don't wear headphones when jogging. Avoid forests or wooded areas, even in the daytime. Don't take a first-floor apartment. Go out in groups. Own a firearm. Meet men on first dates in public places. Make sure to have a car or cab fare. Don't make eye contact with men on the street. Make assertive eye contact with men on the street.”
― Jackson Katz, The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help

“You know all the ways you can kill a girl?

God, there are so many.”
― Courtney Summers, All the Rage

“... in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women's experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.”
― Judith Lewis Herman

“But no matter how much evil I see, I think it’s important for everyone to understand that there is much more light than darkness.”
― Robert Uttaro, To the Survivors: One Man's Journey as a Rape Crisis Counselor with True Stories of Sexual Violence

“[Referring to rape] It already is bigger than everything else. It lives in front of me, behind me, next to me, inside me every single day. My schedule is dictated by it, my habits by it, my music by it.”
― Daisy Whitney, The Mockingbirds

“The silence was killing me.

And that's all there ever was. Silence. It was all I knew. Keep quiet. Pretend nothing had happened, that nothing was wrong. And look how well that was turning out.”
― J. Lynn, Wait for You

“Think about it mate – the 'Long Gun'. That's a ladyboy bar.”
― Edward Williams, Framed & Hunted: A True Story of Occult Persecution

“Today I wore a pair of faded old jeans and a plain grey baggy shirt. I hadn't even taken a shower, and I did not put on an ounce of makeup. I grabbed a worn out black oversized jacket to cover myself with even though it is warm outside. I have made conscious decisions lately to look like less of what I felt a male would want to see. I want to disappear.”
― Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.

“It was a catch-22: If you didn’t put the trauma behind you, you couldn’t move on. But if you did put the trauma behind you, you willingly gave up your claim to the person you were before it happened.”
― Jodi Picoult, The Tenth Circle

“In my mind, I built stairways. At the end of the stairways, I imagined rooms. These were high, airy places with big windows and a cool breeze moving through. I imagined one room opening brightly onto another room until I'd built a house, a place with hallways and more staircases. I built many houses, one after another, and those gave rise to a city -- a calm, sparkling city near the ocean, a place like Vancouver. I put myself there, and that's where I lived, in the wide-open sky of my mind. I made friends and read books and went running on a footpath in a jewel-green park along the harbour. I ate pancakes drizzled in syrup and took baths and watched sunlight pour through trees. This wasn't longing, and it wasn't insanity. It was relief. It got me through.”
― Amanda Lindhout, A House in the Sky

“Making someone feel obligated, pressured or forced into doing something of a sexual nature that they don't want to is sexual coercion. This includes persistent attempts at sexual contact when the person has already refused you. Nobody owes you sex, ever; and no means no, always.”
― Miya Yamanouchi , Embrace Your Sexual Self: A Practical Guide for Women

“The thing that most people didn't understand, if they weren't in his line if work, was that a rape victim and a victim of a fatal accident were both gone forever. The difference was that the rape victim still had to go through the motions of being alive.”
― Jodi Picoult, The Tenth Circle

“We mute the realization of malevolence- which is too threatening to bear - by turning offenders into victims themselves and by describing their behavior as the result of forces beyond their control.”
― Anna Salter, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders

“Intimidated, old traumas triggered, and fearing for my safety, I did what I felt I needed to do.”
― Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.

“Hand off my ass or I'll rip off your balls.”
― Katie McGarry, Dare You To

“Tell me what good touch is and what is bad for I am young and I have no dad. -Jenifer”
― Durgesh Satpathy, Equating the Equations of Insanity: A Journey from Grief to Victory

“I always like to say "be the Swede". Show up for the vulnerable, do your part, help each other and face the darkest parts alongside survivors.”
― Chanel Miller

“Don't castrate,
But educate,
At least to masturbate!”
― Himmilicious

“Even if everyone knows her story, no one really knows how she feels. It pours out now: her rage, her shame, her guilt-- it still lingers. But with the telling comes a sense of empowerment. She has no culpability in the Brijee matter. None, other than being naive and being a woman. During the inquiry she had tapped into the righteousness that was her due; she slapped down the least suggestion that she might be a fault. She had learned a lesson: to show weakness, to be tearful or shattered didn't serve her. One shouldn't just hope to be treated well: one must insist on it.”
― Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water

“He told me that if I hung up, he'd do it. He would commit suicide. He told me that if I called the cops he would kill every single one of them and I knew that he had the potential and the means to do it”
― Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.

“I don’t care if men accused of assault have good relationships with their wives or daughters or women they deem valuable. How do you treat women you have no stake in protecting?”
― Tavi Gevinson

“When I talk of my assault, I find myself avoiding the brutal facts. (...) why can't I say, 'when I was sexually assaulted' or 'when I was sexually abused' or the most dreaded of all: 'when I was raped'? (...)
The real words hit me in the stomach, open me up as I try to say them more often in all the truth that they are. Th words, the truth of what happened, sometimes become more muddied than the acts themselves, slick with the shame and guilt society has taught us to feel as survivors of sexual violence. You worry it'll make you seem dramatic or 'crazy', that it'll make you seem too loud or too controversial. You worry that it'll make the person you're talking to uncomfortable, and you know it'll make you uncomfortable. But aren't we already uncomfortable? The silencing of the truth, the avoidance of reality, perpetuates the stigma that already falls so hard on survivors. This use of language is not a fault of us survivors - really, it's a strength; a way of protecting ourselves from the harshness of what the world thinks of us. We have to protect ourselves and we do so with euphemisms and brevities. We make things just that bit easier for ourselves by not having to voice the terrors of our pasts. We make the words lighter because we think it will stop them feeling so heavy.
We shouldn't have to use these devices to protect ourselves - we should already feel safe in speaking our truths. We should be supported by those around us in our society to speak our realities, and we should be allowed to use whichever words feel right in expressing ourselves. With the risk of being predictable here, let's compare the use of language of rape culture to the usual honesty used with other crimes: 'when I was beaten up', 'when my house was broken into'. For these crimes we don't use timid, cotton-wooled language. The crimes, though obviously very different in nature, still consist of some person taking something from another; they all consist of a victim who was not to blame; they all are a form of violence. The language used when talking of sexual assault and rape extends the shame and guilt that survivors suffer. The hiding, the quietness of it all, makes us wonder: was it my fault? If I can't say it out loud, if I can't put it in the right words, maybe it wan't that bad? If it just makes people feel awkward, perhaps I shouldn't bring it up, maybe I shouldn't speak of it at all?
(...) Personally I'm going to start trying to reclaim the words of the terrible things people did to me to try and clear out the tough stains of shame and guilt. I am trying to say it more. So, I will write it: I was sexually assaulted, I was sexually abused, I was raped.”
― Catriona Morton, The Way We Survive: Notes on Rape Culture

“The stigma around rape and survival is already profound, so when it's committed by someone else in the queer community, the stigma is compounded by queer phobia and various myths like 'women can't rape women'. If you add the stigma of rape to the stigma of being queer, the reality becomes a cruel and silencing world that invalidates you from every angle.”
― Catriona Morton, The Way We Survive: Notes on Rape Culture

“She also doesn't like how I talk to women. She says I called Mrs. Z. a grizzly bear a few times. It's my wife, no? That I was winking and blinking at the girls, a few pinches. A lie... maybe I patted, but I never pinched. Besides, I know for a fact a couple of them loved it. She says, No. None of them liked it. Not one. They only put up with it because it wasn't time yet in history to holler. (An American-born girl has some nerve to mention history.)”
― Grace Paley, Later the Same Day

“Sex being ninety percent in the mind and what with Quran grooming Muslims into unquestioning believers, even as the Islamic credo is unconducive for intellectual engagement, they merely exist, having nothing else but sex on their minds, which obsession tends to lead some even to weird sexual perversions.”
― B.S. Murthy

“Sex is always about seeking attention, and never the
act!”
― Abhaidev, Notes from the Edge of Sanity