get free or die tryin'.

[Content: rape, rape culture]

If I have told you that one of your friends raped me, and you tell me you are not taking sides, you have taken a side. Your decision was to support me or not support me. There was no third option. “Not taking sides” is “I don’t support you,” dressed up like morality and the higher ground. If “sides” was the problem, further discussion, introspective consideration, and information-seeking would effect a solution.

I perhaps could have accepted a friend who said, “I believe you, and I believe Flint is a rapist. But condemning all rapists as people who should never have friends or family or happiness probably won’t stop them raping, or change what happened to you. I would like to continue trying to speak to him and support him because I still care about him, and I think he needs help to change. How will that affect my relationship with you? What do you need from me?” If “taking sides” was the problem, finding out if I was requiring sides-taking would have been the first step to finding a solution.

But nobody asked this of me. Nobody asked this of me because “taking sides’ wasn’t the problem: “I don’t want to deal with your rape” was the problem. And defining a rape victim discussing her rape as “forcing sides” is the solution, because now you’ve made the rape victim never want to talk to you again. Congratulations! Sides have been forced, and you have chosen one, while successfully covering your tracks. Now you don’t have to deal with rape, which was the actual problem you were seeking to solve.