(ThySistas.com) If you believe toxic masculinity is a problem once must also understand toxic femininity is just as dangerous. Maybe we don’t understand the use of that term because women are not targeted as predators in the same manner that we view men. Yes, we know there are women that have committed murder and many other heinous crimes. However, it seems that we don’t pay as much attention to the female sexual predator as we do the male. We sound the alarm, as we should, about the men in community that harm women, children and even other men.
However, it seems there is a group that is in many cases silences. Women, children, and yes men, that are victims of abuse, rape and sexual assault at the hands of women often times receive no justice and no acknowledgement of their suffering. Boys and girls raped by women are just as scarred as such that are raped by men. It is time that pain isn’t swept under the rug.
The double standard of rape culture must be addressed. Rape culture is not something that only harms women, and the predators are not all men. There is no but, in this regard, rape is rape no matter who commits it. The trauma is damaging, and no woman nor man should have to endure such. If we, as women, are not willing to open our eyes to the face that there are predators among us we are further enabling predators.
Far too often so much focus is put on men that abuse their relationships as husbands, fathers, uncles, cousins and brothers by assaulting in their dealing with the girls and women in their family that we totally disregard the wives, mothers, aunts, cousins and sisters that do the same. We overlook the fact that most babysitters are females…and sometimes the baby sister is molesting children.
You may say I don’t understand the scary implications of this being dealt within community at the same level we are dealing with male predators. However, I truly do understand. Someone had to tell my story, and that of girls and boys that have endured what I have. There are countless days, when the rape culture debate is persisting, that I ask myself where I fit into this movement. How is it that I feel so alone among women on the subject of rape? Why is it I feel betrayed in a sense? After much thought I realize it’s because only my violations concerning men are worth #MeToo. It feels that my trauma involving a female predator is simply not important enough for this, or any, movement because it will require women to look at each other. It will require the same level of accountability we expect me to have when dealing with their own.
Dear female predator, I know you exist. I know some of you are standing in our mist as we address men regarding rape culture. I know I’m not the only girl whose life was ruined in many areas because a woman saw fit to kill the innocence in me. You don’t acknowledge the faces like mine among the women, and you don’t realize my anxiety attacks and nightmares are, in part, the result of the monster that is you.
My first encounter with sexual abuse wasn’t at the hands of a man…but of you a woman. I will continue to stand up for all that have been sexually abuse, and fight against all sexual predators meaning that includes you… female predator. Its time we acknowledge rape culture is not just a woman’s issue it’s a human problem.
Staff Writer; Chelle’ St James
May also connect with this sister via Twitter; ChelleStJames.