MagiStream

What are your thoughts on sex crimes themselves? They're abhorrent, anyone exploiting another person like that should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Do you believe people 'ask for it' when they dress provocatively? NO, that's not indicating consent.

What is consent to you? When 2 people know each other and each verbally consents to having sex.

How do you think society's portrayal of sex crimes hinders or helps us? It definitely hinders us as some movies portray rape in a positive light, as though the perpetrator had "good reason" to do what he did. NEVER is this true!

Do you think the media plays a role in all of this? Yes

Do you believe men can be a victim of sex crimes too? Absolutely, and often at the hands of other men. Children and disabled people are often raped as well.

Have sex crimes affected you or loved ones? Yes

Do they leave harmful and lasting affects? Absolutely, it's a very traumatic experience that can take years of therapy to deal with. Some people never completely heal from the emotional damage caused by sexual assault

Do you think there's a way to stop sex crimes? Once a rapist is convicted I think they should spend the rest of their life in jail. Sex crimes have a very high recidivism rate, conservatively stated as 32.% It's not worth the risk to society to release the individuals only to have them rape more people.

What are your thoughts on sex crimes themselves?
I think they're some of the worst kinds of crimes a person can commit.

Do you believe people 'ask for it' when they dress provocatively?
No. The only way people can ask for something is by literally saying "I want this" and continuing to express that.

What is consent to you?
Consent is usually verbal, such as a simple "Yes, I want this," but can also be nonverbal, such as enthusiastic nodding or a thumbs up I guess. It's also not just something related to sex, like I think more people should be mindful of things like touching people in general or looking through your things without permission. An example is my sister's boyfriend taking her phone and reading her text messages without permission. She gets rightfully mad at him and he tries to play it off as no big deal but it is actually a violation of her privacy because she did not give him consent to read her private messages.

Have you ever experienced sex crimes?
Not really. Kind of maybe when I was like 11 with an older neighbor boy but I don't know if that would really count. It was mostly just bad-touching via "you have to let me see you naked and touch you or I'll tell your mom" and he did threaten to touch my younger sister earlier but I threatened him back not to, but we were all really just a bunch of stupid kids, he was like, 14 I think? So I don't really hold a grudge, not that I see him anymore, and when I was younger I got over it fast by getting revenge on him, so I considered the matter handled. It helped that he was pretty dumb and easy to trick, so all I had to do was find a few dead animals in the woods and put them on his porch and say creepy things to him that implied future violence, make intense prolonged eye contact and do stuff like make a snowman in the yard directly facing their house wearing a baseball cap just the way he did, and then wait until his mom sent him out to play w/his younger brother and then, like, start carefully impaling the snowman with sticks. He actually got pretty hysterical with that and kind of snapped and started trying to shoot me with his BB gun. He didn't get me but I pretended to get hit and started screaming and his mom was PISSED at him. I got bored after about 2 years of messing with him, but it was very satisfying. Weirdly enough, I think I would've been more traumatized if I was older by a few years, but my mental state at 11 was way more "alright, so what am I going to do about it to get even?" and the answer was usually "complex revenge that verges on psychological torture as imagined by an 11yo," but puberty like messed up my hormones and made me more defensive and cagey than my younger "we attack at dawn" mentality, so I probably would've just repressed everything. Still, I think I succeeded in traumatizing that guy more than he traumatized me.

How do you think society's portrayal of sex crimes hinders or helps us?
I think things have improved a lot, but there's still way too much victim blaming going on. I also hate it when famous/rich people get away with basically no punishment.

Do you think the media plays a role in all of this?
Oh, definitely.

Do you believe men can be a victim of sex crimes too?
If someone can have sex with you, you can be the victim of a sex crime. So yeah, literally anyone can be a victim to a sex crime.

Have sex crimes affected you or loved ones?
I think I already answered my minor experience, which I would only like half-count as like a minor molestation. Besides myself, yep. I don't know anybody who's a guy who's been the victim of a sex crime, or if they are they haven't mentioned it to me, but I have lots of female relatives and friends who've exchanged their own horror stories that are either a literal assault in their past to a near-miss that they had almost turn into an assault. Usually these stories come up with topics like "Who's the worst boyfriend you've ever had?" or just general talking about their dating life that someone else relates to. Kinda depressing that normal "girl talk" involves a lot of violent topics.

Do they leave harmful and lasting affects?
Oh, definitely. I think it varies from person to person depending on their experience and how they handle things, as well as their support group and living environment. You would think more people would have almost exactly the same reaction or recovery process or just general way of emotionally processing what happened, but I've seen a lot of variation from "deeply traumatized to the point that they will no longer have sex probably ever again" to "so now I've got a new app on my phone so I can give out an SOS if a date goes bad again."

Do you think there's a way to stop sex crimes?
Probably not. As long as people are having sex, you'd be hard-put to 100% stop sex crimes from happening. I do, however, think there are lots of ways to REDUCE sex crimes. I think the biggest one would be doing our best to eliminate stuff like rape culture and toxic masculinity and put more of the focus on "teaching people to be the kind of people who do not rape people" vs the current focus, which is more on "maybe you should learn self-defense and not go out at night or alone and carry pepper spray 24/7 and wear turtlenecks and pants and a belt that's hard to remove and always remain situationally aware in parking lots and carry a stabby thing on your keychain that's also cute and pink and a phone app that sends a date's license plate to your bff in case he murders you and a rape whistle and these cute bedazzled knuckledusters if you don't want to be raped." Like, I do think people should learn self-defense and take safety measures before going out with a stranger, but I think the focus should be on changing the people doing the raping instead of the people who just wanted to go on a date or get groceries or take a walk in the park. Like it's really clear who the problem is. Spoiler alert: it's the rapists.

Any other thoughts?
I think people need to take stalkers more seriously and figure out a way to protect people being stalked. It's a very terrifying experience from what I've heard and can imagine, and it's especially scary because apparently it can be very difficult to prove, and stalkers can be very sneaky and methodical about it. Also, it's scary how obsessed some stalkers can be. Like, if someone is literally willing to follow you to a totally different state then they are probably going to try to kill you at some point. I had one friend who had to deal with a very frightening stalker, and she got basically no help from the police and admitted that at some point she was convinced that the only way things would end was if one of them was dead. Fortunately he died in some kind of random car accident, so she didn't have to think too hard about how the hell she was going to kill this guy in self-defense when he inevitably escalated past cornering her in bars when she was out with friends and like touching her hair and leaving super creepy letters in her mail and spamming all her social media and calling her at work and...yeah that was totally going to end in violence at some point.

My grandfather was a pedophile and decided when I was a young toddler, he would take away the most sacred thing a child could have; Their innocence. He had possibly done so to my mother as well when she was young, but trauma sometimes erases memories for your own sake. I do not remember my rape, I was too small for one thing and for another I experienced dissociation during and still do to this day. I am not attached to the world around me anymore, I feel like I am not a part of it. My psyche was ruined.
the old man is dead now and I am thankful for it, and I should never have to be thankful for someone's passing, but that man in particular did not deserve the life he had for lusting over his own blood. I loved him as a child. I played with him. It's the only memory I have of him, now. And I hate this. I don't even get to have the memories to hate him with, only the ones of him smiling and laughing with me. All I have to take with me is knowing that my family caught him in the act, and that it was possibly multiple times.

I think he told me that I could have a baby with him during it, because when I was small I was terrified of the concept and strangely knew how it could happen. Despite not remembering having sex at all, I still knew somehow that I /could be/ and it tormented me. A small illness and I was scared I had a baby inside of me. And nobody told me why for years. It was only a few years ago that I found out. I'm still healing, but it's agonizingly slow.

I don't know why I texted this out, but I needed to vent about it somewhere where multiple people in my situation could see and know they are not alone.