Message on shirt: 'I was raped'

SEATTLE -- You just might run into someone wearing a T-shirt that says "I was raped."

The phrase is printed across a new shirt sold online from a Seattle-based organization founded by a local rape survivor.

Heather Corrina's Web site Scarleteen.com offers teens "sex ed for the real world." The site offers detailed information on a wide array of topics having to do with sexuality in an attempt to educate teens and young adults and to encourage open, ongoing conversation.

The t-shirt campaign is a part of the "I was raped" project which also includes a documentary. The project, for which Corrina teamed up with feminist writer Jennifer Baumgardner, aims to highlight the prevalence of rape and to help victims break their silence.

Corrina says when she was raped years ago, she didn't even understand exactly what had happened.

"And to even have had that language to know what to call it or to know it had happened to somebody else would have made a tremendous difference for me in terms of not feeling like it was something I should be ashamed of," she said.

She hopes the site and the T-shirt will let other rape victims know they are not alone.

"I suspect that there might be a day I wear that T-shirt on the bus where a woman next to me, who I have never met before, says 'I was, too,'" she wrote in a statement on her Web site.

But Lucy Berliner, director of the Harborview Center for Sexual Assault, isn't so sure that's all that will happen.

"You have to think about the consequences and it's not likely to happen that you've got everyone who's been raped wearing a t-shirt saying 'I've been raped,'" she said.

Berliner hesitated to say victims should wear their pain on their sleeve. The T-shirt, she said, fills her head with questions.

"What is this person looking for? Are they trying to get a reaction? Are they trying to see what I think?" she said.

When asked why she chose such a strong message, Corrina said it's more for the benefit of the person wearing the shirt rather than for those who see it.

"Because we think there are a lot of women who need it," she said. "It's certainly not for everybody. Everybody's feelings processes a little bit different."

"Oh, I think absolutely. You could wear this and be met with scorn and embarrassment."

That's what Berliner fears. Experts say rape victims may think they're ready to make a bold statement until they don't get the reaction they were hoping for.

Even if a rape victim wears the shirt for her own personal benefit, she will inevitably have to face the reactions to its strong message. Experts say the wrong reaction can scar the victim in devastating ways for years and years.

"So while I agree with the idea behind it, I would worry about whether someone was ready to take what came with it," she said. "It's definitely going to open up conversation."

One out of three is not most. Keep backtracking and your view may someday approach reality upon this subject.

But yes, it was a travesty that “Crystal Gail Mangum” the “Durham Dirt-bag” was not charged with filing a false report.

Nowadays with DNA scans, vaginal trauma, skin under fingernails, signs of force; it is a lot harder to make a rape charge stick against an innocent man.

Who said anything about making rape charges stick?

Just the accusation alone is enough to ruin a man. And when charges of rape are filed as an act of spite or to retaliate, then a man is doomed.

He must hire an attorney, he must face the shame of being accused of rape - his whole life has been turned upside down.

And in the meantime, she gets to hide behind a secret wall of anonomynity and throw stones.

That’s why it is imperative that those who cry rape must be publicly named.

It will drive away the drunk whores like Mangum. And it will empower the true rape victims.

And yes, some men are falsely accused of rape, and I have absolutely no respect at all for the girls who falsely accuse men of raping them and think that they’re one of the lowest kinds of liars out there, but to stereotype most rape accusations as being false is really disrespectful to the women and girls who have actually been raped.

What I meant by ‘raise awareness’ is not that people have no idea that rape occurs, but that society in general tends to ‘sweep it under the rug’ and pretend it doesn’t really happen when, in reality, they would be shocked at how often it happens... it isn’t that often that the public hears about it, or it’s even reported...

I disagree. I think that rape is now so hyped up, that people have inflated ideas of how often it occurs. From Oprah Winfrey to Lifetime to "Take Back the Night" rallies, rape has become, for some, another way to claim victimhood and therefore privileged status, in the same way that "domestic violence" has been hyped up to where a woman can now have virtually any man in her life thrown in jail with a phone call, whether a crime has even been committed or not.

In addition, the definition of rape has changed. Once it meant a man physically forced himself on a woman, but now men can and have been prosecuted for simply not recognizing reluctance, however subtle, on the part of the woman to engage in sex, even if she does not actually say "no" or offer any physical resistance. In a California case a couple of years ago, which I am too lazy to look up a link for, a boy was convicted of rape even though the girl consented to sex, merely because, at some point well into the act, she stated that she needed to go home. Instead of immmediately leaping off of her, he continued to completion, and now he is in jail.

I have known a couple of victims of real rape, and for women like that, I am truly sorry, and I would very much like to see the perpetrators hanged. However, to the extent that actual victims of rape feel that the crime is trivialized, they have only their lying sisters to blame.

“Corrina says when she was raped years ago, she didn’t even understand exactly what had happened.

She may have only come to “understand” that she was raped after being indoctrinated into whackjjob feminism. Depending on how deep into left-wing feminism you get, rape can be defined as consensual sex that the woman later regrets. I once dated a hard-core feminist who showed me some truly frightening materials that explained how even if a woman believes that sex is consensual at the time; if she later comes to believe that she was unfairly coerced into the act (read: seduced), then that is rape and the man should be sent to prison. The most left-wing feminists essentially believe that men should be sent to prison solely on the word of any woman that regrets a sexual encounter for any reason.”

She didn’t understand what was happening because she was 12. The information is there on her website.

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