This is not a safe post. The links which follow contain real people sharing their stories of rape, and reading them made me feel seriously sick.

It started here, with one woman telling her story in a blog post. The times she was raped, the results of reporting or not reporting it, the reactions, the fallout. It’s hard enough to read just on its own. And then there are the comments, see people read the comments and felt a need to share their stories. So there are more on that site than just Elyse’s. But see, I didn’t go to the Skepchick site today, I saw that from this post on Pharyngula, which has a large and well-established crowd of commenters, who have also chimed in with their stories.

At this point I’ve read them all. I felt like I had to, like I somehow owed it to these people to read their stories.

And it’s awful.

There are so many of them, and there are so many similarities between them. Elyse talked about “the script”, and how it needs to be rewritten, and after you read ten or twelve of those stories you see her point. Because the parts that are most similar aren’t the rapes themselves, but the attitudes of everyone else. The third-parties, police and friends and family and witnesses, these are where you see the same things over and over. This is where there’s a script people are following.

I don’t have any witty snark or words of wisdom to add. I just feel hollow and sick after reading all those stories. I’m going to finish up here, take a shower, and curl up with a book.

I will, however, first post a few hopefully useful links. Here’s a summary of the Crystal Clear Consent rules that the Pharyngulite Horde are working on, with links to the ongoing discussion and refinement of same. And here’s a link to a useful part of the National Domestic Violence Hotline website which I also found in the comments and thought was worth passing along.

That’s all I have for now. Feel free to comment, but don’t expect me to respond tonight.

Take care of yourselves, and take care of each other.