I will be marching anyway because no woman deserves to be raped and rape-culture does nobody any favours. Not women, not men: not anyone.

I did not deserve to be raped by my boyfriend almost three years ago because I said no to sex. He wanted me to talk to him about my previous sexual experience with a mutual friend. He wanted to get off on me taking about it. I said no. I said I didn’t want to carry on and have sex. He held me against a wall by my throat while I said no and stop and don’t and spat in my face and called me a whore. 

The woman my boyfriend told me he had raped the day before I broke up with him last week did not deserve to be raped because they were all high and she was asleep and it was “just a silly game”. I had already planned to end the relationship. He had never been violent, or abusive, or threatening: he was just a bad boyfriend. After I told him it was over, he was begging me for another chance. Then suddenly he said  ”funny story, I sexually assaulted someone last night” and told me he and a female friend had raped someone with an object. He told me she was asleep, and when she woke up and cried they held her down and carried on. He thought I started yelling and threw him out of my house because he had cheated on me, and said it wasn’t sex it was a joke, a silly game, just fun. He said it wasn’t rape because afterwards she said it was funny. Then he said it wasn’t a sexual assaut, it was all consensual, and I am over-reacting. But he still started the story by telling me “I sexually assaulted someone”. He still said “funny story, I sexually assaulted someone”.  He still explained the assault with enough clarity and vivid detail for me to believe it was a real event, and the way he explained it at first was real: and his back-tracking that he only said “sexual assault” as a joke was just because when I started screaming he started to realise what he had done was wrong. And I have reported him to the Police. 

I am speaking to rape crisis counsellors again to deal with the shock and fallout in my life. He knew that I was a rape vicitm. He knew I was sexually assaulted when I was 14. He knows I am an outspoken feminist and a decent human being and that I would not find “funny story, I sexually asaulted someone ” funny. Not even if it was just as a really bad joke. 

Sexual assault is not a joke. Rape isn’t funny. 

No-one deserves to be raped. And no-one deserves to live in a society where people say it was it was okay to rape me becasue I had had sex with that man before, or it was okay to rape someone because it was “a silly joke and not about sex” or even to say “I only told you I sexually assaulted someone as a joke”.

Thank you for organising this event.