Rape Culture Quotes

“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

“I am not sure if we are numbed to the reality of rape, but here's the sad irony. While the word rape can add an edginess to your language, talking about actual rape is taboo. I didn't know this until one of my friends was raped. Then I knew this, because I didn't want to tell anyone. If she were mugged, I would have told everyone and raged.”
― Christine Stockton, Sluts

“Standing behind predators makes prey of us all.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“What do I want now? I want to be treated with the respect I deserve in the current VA system and not be retraumatized. I want the men who did this to me to be punished and if that isn't possible, I want reassurance what happened to me will never ever happen to another woman in the Armed services. I want some restitution of the damage I have.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Conduct Unbecoming: Rape, Torture, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from Military Commanders

“The chief care of the legislators [in the colonies of New England] was the maintenance of orderly conduct and good morals in the community: thus they constantly invaded the domain of conscience, and there was scarcely a sin which was no subject to magisterial censure. The reader is aware of the rigor with which these laws punished rape and adultery; intercourse between unmarried persons was likewise severely repressed. The judge was empowered to inflict either a pecuniary penalty, a whipping, or marriage, on the misdemeanants; and if the records of the old courts of New Haven may be believed, prosecutions of this kind were not unfrequent. We find a sentence, bearing date the 1st of May, 1660, inflicting a fine and reprimand on a young woman who was accused of using improper language, and of allowing herself to be kissed. The Code of 1650 abounds in preventive measures. It punishes idleness and drunkenness with severity. Innkeepers were forbidden to furnish more than certain quantities of liquor to each customer; and simple lying, whenever it may be injurious, is checked by a fine or a flogging. In other places, the legislator, entirely forgetting the great principles of religious toleration which he had himself demanded in Europe, makes attendance on divine service compulsory, and goes so far as to visit with severe punishment, and even with death, Christians who choose to worship God according to a ritual differing from his own. Sometimes, indeed, the zeal for regulation induces him to descend to the most frivolous particulars: thus a law is to be found in the same code which prohibits the use of tobacco. It must not be forgotten that these fantastical and vexatious laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely voted by all the persons interested in them, and that the manners of the community were even more austere and puritanical than the laws....

These errors are no doubt discreditable to human reason; they attest the inferiority of our nature, which is incapable of laying firm hold upon what is true and just, and is often reduced to the alternative of two excesses. In strict connection with this penal legislation, which bears such striking marks of a narrow, sectarian spirit, and of those religious passions which had been warmed by persecution and were still fermenting among the people, a body of political laws is to be found, which, though written two hundred years ago, is still in advance of the liberties of our own age.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“They tell you to get a guy friend to walk you home, not realizing that guy friends can rape you. Take a cab! But the cab driver can rape you. Take an uber, but they're even more rapey. Take the metro -- rapists ride free.
What if everyone was like me, I wondered, and hunted down their respective Will's? Would the economy collapse?”
― Vera Kurian, Never Saw Me Coming

“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

“As long as we see rapists as average men overcome by lust in a particular moment, as opposed to the opportunistic predators they typically are, we will keep giving criminals a pass to commit more violence in our communities.”
― Kate Harding, Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture and What We Can Do about It

“I see every fallen body on the cover of a crime novel, and I can't help thinking that everyone wants their teenage girls ruined”
― Leanne Hall, The Gaps

“Justifiable homicide exists (for instance, if you’re killing someone to stop a rape), but justifiable rape? Do you ever need to rape someone to stop any other crime? The only people who openly justify rape are those who run blatantly woman-hating societies, where women are objects.”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk about Rape

“I can imagine murdering, but not raping. Murder is worse than rape, I know, but there are lots of reasons to do it. If I were in a state of out-of-control rage, if someone were threatening to harm me or someone else, if killing someone were the only way to avoid some terrible catastrophe …”
― Sohaila Abdulali, What We Talk About When We Talk about Rape

“En los casos de violación me choca muchísimo que la gente diga: "Bueno, ¿y por qué no te enfrentaste a él?". Si te despertaras y te encontraras con un ladrón en casa robándote, nadie te preguntaría: "Bueno, ¿y por qué no te enfrentaste a él?". Esa persona ya ha infringido una regla no escrita, ¿por qué iba de repente a atenerse a razones? ¿Qué podría llevarte a pensar que si le dijeras que parase iba a hacerlo? Y en este caso, si yo estaba inconsciente, ¿por qué seguía habiendo tantas preguntas?”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“...from all accounts, the war within the war is a war on women's bodies.”
― Karyn L. Freedman, One Hour in Paris: A True Story of Rape and Recovery

“Just as it is not the penis that commits rape, and not testosterone that drives it and not overwhelming sexual desire either, castration whether surgical or chemical will not eliminate men's hatred of women.”
― Germaine Greer, On Rape

“If men felt empowered to talk about sex with their partner, especially before any sexual relationship has occurred, many harmful situations could perhaps be avoided. Many men see talking about sex as embarrassing, awkward or feminine. To avoid our boys becoming men who harm women, we need to encourage them to talk openly about sex and their feelings towards it. We need to encourage them to want to talk about sex with women, to see it as a part of the process of love and relationships, instead of leaving communication as solely the burden of the feminine partner to take on. Consent doesn't have to necessarily be sexy, but it should have to be talked about in an open and understanding way.”
― Catriona Morton, The Way We Survive: Notes on Rape Culture

“Sometimes, when I'm on my lowest, I wonder if it wouldn't be better if he would've just rape me.”
― Anonym-s

“You could be Jesus in drag, but if you're brown, they're sure you're selling.”
― bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism

“Born losers, born losers
How dare you aspire to demolish our self esteem
Covering our mouth so that we can't scream

Born losers, born losers
Know that you should always watch your back
We're waiting for the right moment to fervently attack

Born losers, born losers
Women should push you down a treacherous
hill
So you can see how edginess has its own thrill”
― Aida Mandic, The News Presents Many Views

“Born losers, born losers
Society has no place for you filthy bastards anymore
We've decided to organize and loudly roar

Born losers, born losers
We will band together to viciously tear you apart
And gladly throw every fucking lethal dart”
― Aida Mandic, The News Presents Many Views

“Born losers, born losers
Do you think that we can't destroy you all
By setting up the steps so that you fall

Born losers, born losers
How about we ensure that you end up dead
When you try to force us to give you head

Born losers, born losers
Don't you dare assume you can slit our throat
Unless rivers are where you want to float”
― Aida Mandic, The News Presents Many Views

“.... according to the myth that virgin blood is a panacea for disease and illness, infant rape and baby rape were being used as a cure for AIDS in South Africa and elsewhere. In was or peace, it seemed, women and children were at high risk.”
― Karyn L. Freedman, One Hour in Paris: A True Story of Rape and Recovery

“He was about to traipse through my body like an unwanted trespasser, but I wasn't going to lose my life because of it. His dirty footsteps through my temple would leave traces, but traces were better than bones.”
― Vanessa de Largie, Without My Consent

“Time can feel frozen in moments of terror, as if your entire life, past and present, is laid out before you. One sees their life with clarity for the first time.”
― Vanessa de Largie, Without My Consent

“How subtly he made off with all the power, and how easily I gifted it to him. It still gives me a shot of shame, even though intellectually I know I did nothing wrong".”
― Kate Ruby, Tell Me Your Lies

“We also need to recognise that denial is used by abusers to protect themselves. People who work with sexual offenders talk about a ‘triad of cognitive distortion’. This means that almost every abuser ‘thinks wrongly’ and this is a key area of work for treatment with sexual offenders. Basically they have three wrong thought patterns, and these are denial, minimisation and blame.”
― Carolyn Spring

“The Dark Cloud
Is the decision I could have made to go into a homicidal rage when my bullies laughed at my father’s leg because he was shot in his ankle during the Bosnian War
Is the rage I felt when 4 of my friends were raped in college because rapists like to roar
Is the fierce determination I have to make sure that no woman ever gets raped
Is the tragic end of girls and babies who were slaughtered while their rapists escaped”
― Aida Mandic, The Dark Cloud

“The Dark Cloud
Is the moving target of death that scares all of us
Is the danger of an Indian woman in New Delhi getting raped and executed on a bus
Is the expiration date you are dealt with when you speak the truth
Is the manner you have when you get straight to the root”
― Aida Mandic, The Dark Cloud

“The Dark Cloud
Is the loneliness you go through because isolation is common and friends are not
Is the story of 50,000 raped Bosniak women which history forgot
Is the intense pressure of being crushed under a pile of mental weight
Is the backstabbing ex-boyfriend who took you for granted and compelled you to question the integrity of your relationship, including the first date”
― Aida Mandic, The Dark Cloud

“There is no space made for accountability; no space for people to take on board the harm they've done or to work to try to rectify or repair the situation. Simply locking people up will not teach them about male supremacy, toxic masculinity, consent and why sexual violence occurs in our societies. Further, the system breeds denial and actually reinforces a lack of accountability from those who have committed harm - think of the defence attorney appointed on behalf of accused perpetrators to vehemently deny any wrongdoing. The concept of 'innocent until proven guilty' reigns supreme, with all efforts going towards maintaining innocence rather than encouraging accountability. Wealthy, powerful men are taught to sue those who accuse them in any public capacity.”
― Catriona Morton, The Way We Survive: Notes on Rape Culture

“We are born of women, learn about life from women, and learn to love through women
- yet we violate our women, despise our women, harm our women.

Isn't it time we stood alongside our women, fought fervently for our women?”
― Anubha Saxena