my point.

Something's been bugging me for the last day and a half.  Perhaps you heard that a girl in Provo was running along the Provo river trail, and was attacked, and sexually assaulted.  You probably also saw stuff being passed around like wildfire on facebook, "Girls - don't run alone!"  "This is why you don't run at night!"  "Women - please be smart!"

I didn't plan on this turning into a long treatise, but I have a feeling it's going to.  And the few people it's pointed at will probably whine about Jen Gulbrandsen and her feminist idealism and blah blah blah be glad you're out of that blah blah blah bob law blah.  And that's fine.  I expect them to.  And I also expect a text from someone in the morning saying something along the lines of, "why do you even care what certain people think or say?"

Tonight I care because people get raped every day.

By people they don't know.  By a date.  By a spouse.  By a parent.  By a friend.  By a colleague.  By a mentor.  By a teacher.  By a boss.  By a random stranger.

I mean, this happens on a consistent basis and the best we can come up with is "be safe" or "be smart".

Pretty sure women who are safe and smart are raped ALL THE TIME.

Yes, we do need to be safe and we do need to be smart, but how about we start changing how our society views rape, shall we?  How about we start teaching boys to respect girls from an early age?  How about we remind men that women are not objects?  How about we stop telling this girl what she did wrong by running late at night by herself (something she's surely heard a million times by now) and instead focus on what we can do to eliminate this?

I have an idea - why don't we stop deluding ourselves into believing that a little post on facebook or a message board or twitter or anywhere on the interwebs about being "careful" will actually have any measure of change in our world.

My name is Jen Gulbrandsen, and I'm really pissed off.