Too Ugly

Trigger warning. This article is about rape and beauty in American culture.




I was just shocked at an article that came up on my Facebook feed titled "Society (and My Rapist) Says I'm Too Ugly to be Raped."  I am 40 years old. I took women's studies courses in college.  I have taken several trainings in a few states about working with survivors of domestic violence. My first experience with rape was in connection to this (no, I wasn't raped). Yet this is the first time I've come across this topic in writing.

My nine year old brother looked at me and told me that I was so ugly that I should be thankful when someone finally raped me because it would be the only chance I ever got to have sex.

I had never been as shocked as when I heard those words coming from a child's mouth. I started screaming at him (yeah, my first response to horror was to scream, we were a loud family), and my stepmother came running. She started screaming at me for being so mean to him and telling me not to be so rude.

I finally managed to tell my stepmom what her son had said, and she paused. She looked at my brother and asked him if he understood what he was talking about. Smart kid that he was, he said, "No, and I'm too young to understand it." She believed him and told him not to say that again.

My little brother went upstairs to watch tv, and I tried to explain to my stepmother that he wasn't too young to have it explained to him because he was obviously old enough to be subjected to the topic. She told me that I was being ridiculous, he's just a kid.

A week later I was watching an after school special about date rape, and my brother wanted to watch tv. I didn't want to change the channel, and my stepmother came in and told me to change the channel because my brother was too young to learn about rape.

That's how my white, male brother wasn't told how serious rape is and why it's a problem and ohhhh, why people shouldn't rape other people.

I have no idea if anybody ever told him that rape isn't sex or that rape isn't about beauty. Do you think he ever learned that sex isn't necessarily about physical beauty, either, for that matter? I don't know my brother anymore, and this is part of why I decided I didn't want him in my adult life. These days the only interactions I have with him are ever few years I see him when I visit family and ever few months I see photos of him in a diaper or mostly naked and chained to a chair on my Facebook feed.

My father is always telling me he's a good guy, and I should like him. I honestly don't know if he is a good kid (a good kid who's over thirty, but last I checked he was still living with his mommy), and I have no desire to find out. Anybody who isn't told that rape is a problem isn't a friend of mine.