A Text that Hurts

It’s hard for me to write about any of the topics shaking the internet these days. I get a lump in my throat and my eyes fill with tears. It hurts. In Romania, we’re talking about abused women and rape culture, while America is a few steps away from civil war. Do you know what hurts the most? The fact that the fight is always of the victims’ and the aggressors don’t even seem to look in their direction.

It hurts, but let’s see what pain manages to write.

When I see the number of raped women and I know that more than once friends of mine were hit on by guys when we were in town I just get sick. None of them was dressed provocatively. It didn’t happen to me. A while ago this thing made me feel kinda strange, somehow that it doesn’t happen to me because I’m ugly or something, but in time I realized that probably I have an attitude that keeps unwanted people at a distance. I don’t know where it came from or how you create that, but I feel lucky.

I’m grossed out when I see guys of any age touching girls who really have nothing to do with them. Of course, if they want to hook up, no one is stopping them, but still, they should upgrade from Homo Neanderthal to Romanticism. I remember moments from a party in a small pub in the town when a guy fueled by hormones and alcohol would prowl on my friends and no matter how much they would move to get rid of them, they would somehow teleport next to them. And from there to something in their drink the only thing missing is a hint of psychosis.

An unconsented sexual act is called RAPE. In any context. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about two strangers, friends or a new relationship. A vagina that produces lubricant is not consent. On the contrary, vaginas have a self-cleaning system and in some parts of the month, they produce a discharge that can easily be confused with lubricant. And if we are talking about this, then do men ask to be raped whenever they have an erection?

As you can see, I’m not at all ashamed to name anatomical terms. And I believe biology teachers, parents, doctors etc shouldn’t be ashamed either. Why aren’t you grossed out to say ‘stomach’ or ‘kidney’, but you are grossed out by ‘menstruation’, ‘vagina’, ‘penis’? They are part of the human body.

Look at the picture below. You can find there how some UTIS feel. How many of them do you know?

Yes. Without sex ed, all these infections will remain a mystery. Even more, they will be freely transmitted during the sexual act (whether it is contented or not). It seems to me that rape is a very risky thing because many times you don’t know anything about the victim’s history. We think that a clean pretty girl, with her hair and makeup done, cannot carry any disease. Oh well… Some of these infections can be connected from public toilets too and without a test, you can’t tell if you have something or not. Of course, hygiene can diminish the risk, but in some cases, hygiene can’t do anything either - if the infection exists, it needs to be treated. But hygiene and treatment are also part of sex ed…

But how do you treat it when in Romania where people’s biggest fears are the gynaecologist and the psychologist? If you go to the gynaecologist you’re definitely a slut, no other way, and if you go to the psychologist you’re definitely disturbed, no other way.

(If you need sex ed advice, please do not hesitate to write to me. In time, I gathered some knowledge and I really don’t mind sharing it with anyone who needs it. I can recommend some YouTube channels and I can listen to your problems. Just write to me.)

Now, in Romania the shame, uncertainty and stereotype pandemic surfaces. And now it exploded because people are sick of priests intervening in the problems of the state, because people are sick of people trying to justify rape, because people are sick of hiding behind the bush.

The situation in Romania is very bad mentality-wise. And some parts are messed out because of ignorance, not of bad will. What is the first reaction (many times unconsciously) when you see a person of colour? ‘Look a black guy/girl!’. I was also reacting like this in my first few weeks in a multicultural community. For us, it’s shocking to see something like and that’s normal because in Romania you only see Afro-Americans on TV and very seldom on the streets. But can you imagine how Romania would react if they would start to ‘appear’ there too? Recently there was a series of news about some people of colour from Sri Lanka who were brought to work at a bakery in a village. That would be the reaction.

And what can we expect from Romania when the BME (Black Minority Ethnics) community in the United Kingdom still suffers from different types of discrimination and bullying - at school, at work etc. Many of them don’t have a permanent job or they live on the streets, scientific studies are mostly made on white people, therefore many of their needs remain unidentified. The same way there are more studies on men than on women. And still, we’re talking about a country where most people of colour are integrated and live a normal life.

But let’s go to another English speaking country. In the USA buildings are burning because people from the BME community are asking for their rights to be respected just like any other citizen’s. Do you know why this thing hurts me so badly? Let me tell you a story. This year I studied a text - Recitatif - in which Toni Morrison created these two main characters so the reader can’t tell which one is why and which one is black. She places them in different situations, gives them different qualities, but not even at the end of the text can you figure out which one is which. Her goal is to prove that you can’t judge people just like that. And we were talking about this in class and our teacher asked us which one we think is of colour and which one is white. Silence. ‘Hold on, you haven’t asked yourself that?’. ‘No.’. ‘It means that Toni Morrison reached her goal.’ Our generation became colourblind to skin tone. But our generation is not yet leading and won’t be in the near future.

What should be done? Violent protests are not the optimal solution, but what else can some citizens do when their rights have been thrown out the window multiple times? And the reasons why these protests aren’t calming down is that authorities continue to violate human rights. All human rights. Just look at Donald Trump’s Twitter account. He said that the protesters are part of terrorist groups, he encourages authorities to take more severe measures and he’s happy for anything bad happening to protesters (arrests, violence etc). The infection was there too for a long time, but now it was also fueled by the president’s incompetence.

Last year I read a book - ‘The Hate U Give - THUG’ - written in 2017 by a black author, Angie Thomas, and inspired by Oscar Grant’s murder in 2009 just a few weeks before Barack Obama was stepping up as president. The novel tells Starr’s story, a 16-year-old girl who was a witness to the murder of her best friend by a cop. The young girl is relatively privileged - she has an uncle working as a cop, she goes to a private school away from the neighbourhood she lives in and no one there knows the reality that Starr is living. But she feels that hiding is unfair to her friend and her community. The novel presents very well the frustration that we see now in the news - vandalism, arson etc. The US is not at the first mistake and people are sick of it. Last year I didn’t feel the book, but now I feel it with every piece of my body. And as I was saying, it hurts.

2009, 2017, 2020. Did anything really change? No, unfortunately. Because rape culture and racism and fear and hate and uncertainty are behaviours that formed in hundreds of years. They can’t be changed in a few dozens. And then is it worth fighting? Absolutely. Without break. Changes are small- 50 students who aren’t judging people by their colour, campaigns supporting women’s and minority ethnics’ rights. And when you look at them it seems to hurt less. A little less.