Writer and activist Jennifer Baumgardner has created a new T-shirt (with the guy who invented the '90s staple "Vinnie's Tampon Case"). The shirt reads: "I was raped."
In a New York Times story about the shirts, journalist Susan Dominus writes: What was she going for? A shirt that would let rape victims "own the experience," [Baumgardner] says, and would help chip away the cone of silence that surrounds a crime with humiliation at its core.
A woman on the website Scarleteen.com, which is selling the shirts, writes,
What it illustrates is how difficult rape can be to speak about, and how often those of us who have survived sexual assaults and abuses feel (largely because we are told, by our rapists and by the people around us) it is something shameful we must keep locked up inside ourselves: the open safe is a gesture of unlocking that silence, having that conversation, refusing to keep something which is often so huge so deeply hidden and silenced.
Reader Comments ( Page 3 of 3)
31. Why so few responses?
Eric at 8:57PM on Apr 20th 2008
32. I like the T-Shirt Chris Aable authored and invented:
"Masturbate Proudly"
There's even a www.MasterbateProudly.org under construction.
If more people would live by that philosophy, there would be less rape, less unwanted pregnancy, less STDs, less AIDS & HIV, and a lot happier world.
Sex should only be among mature consenting adults, preferably in a committed relationship - otherwise,
"Masturbate Proudly"
It saves a lot of time, and since sex is mostly mental, it can be heck of a lot more satisgfying with the right imagination.
LindaL at 5:59PM on May 6th 2008