Gun Control: Hot or Not?

[Mewtwo-D2]

You know, I would not have gotten so hostile if DTZ had not called me delusional and paranoid for having been sexually victimized. It was not my fault that I was targetted for abuse, and I am making sure that I will never be in a position of weakness again. The rape victims I know didn't choose to be raped, and now most of them choose to arm themselves rather than risk being sexually victimized again.

Instead of making this about my politics, how about acknowledging that this is a legitimate women's issue? And a legitimate men's issue, but few people like to confront that.

[Mewtwo-D2]

Now that I'm on my own computer, maybe I can enlighten all of the people blaming me for my victimization as to what living in fear really is.

I was victimized at 12. I was a shy new student in a public school, after having gone to private school my whole life. I was about 5'4'' and maybe 130 lbs. I also had a large bust I was shy about. From the first week, I had boys approaching me in the halls demanding sexual favors. I was told that if they caught me alone, they were going to rape me. Daily, I heard boys telling me that they knew where I lived, what my schedule was, and that they were going to find me and rape me. I was too afraid to tell anyone, so I would just cry. I was able to take solace in one person- Kuro_Espeon. Even girls would tell me that their guy friends wanted me to perform sexual favors on them. I couldn't eat my lunch without people howling at me like I was a stripper. All I could do was hang my head and cry. I was insulted, I was spit at, I had my notes and books stolen, I had false stories about me told to teachers, and I had only one person in the whole school who would talk to me as if I were human.

I became bulimic and I stopped trying to treat my teenage acne. I stopped wearing any shirts that weren't XXL. I almost stopped brushing my hair- I let it grow really long so I could hide behind it. If anyone so much as mentioned the word 'sex', I would cry, or sometimes throw up. I would throw up after biology lectures because I was still so scared from what had happened to me. I still saw some of those boys in the hall, and they were still much bigger than me. I still was sure that they would rape me unless I was as unattractive as possible. I gained 150 lbs. in four years, and would miss school for any reason. I believed fervently that if I was alone with a male besides my father or brother, he would try to rape me. I made no male friends for almost three years- I wouldn't even talk to boys. I'd just hide behind my curtain of hair, my self-inflicted obesity, my acne, and my XXL T-shirt and cry if one tried to talk to me. I had nightmares about rape almost every night for four years.

So don't you dare talk to me about living in fear. That is living in fear- being too paralyzed to live your life. With help from pokemaniacbill, I began to realize that not everyone was out to victimize me. I took charge of my life, and said that I would never be a victim again. I was never going to sit by passively and cry while things went wrong. I was going to take my life into my own hands, and would take any measures necessary to not be made into a victim again. I am not a vigilante killer, and I will not be striding through the streets of DC, killing any man in sight. I will carry my gun in all legal places, and hopefully will never have to draw it at any point in my life. A gun is a tool, and I would not use it unless I was actively in danger. But you can not talk to me about living in fear unless you have ever been in active fear of your own body. You do not understand, and you will never understand unless you yourself have been sexually victimized. I hope it never happens to you.


Now I just have to wait to get flamed for daring to be angry at the people who sexually abused me.


EDIT: Now that I think on it, could you two tell me just why it is you are so threatened by the fact that I refuse to be a victim of sexual intimidation?

[Heald]

Guns ought to be banned. They're so gauche. They need to be banned so people think up more inventive ways of killing each other.

Think about it: how many people do you hear getting shot? And how many people do you hear getting killed through interpretive dance? Exactly. People have gotten boring and predictable. If everyone has a gun, people are always ready for each other, and thus, if someone pulls out a gun, chances are someone else has a gun too, and therefore someone is going to go down like Monica.

However, take the guns out of the equation, and instead of hearing about 'another' school shooting, you hear about some Chinese kid who massacred several of his classmates with trained killer bees, or two guys who decide Columbine is too conventional and decide to blow up all reason with a context bomb. What about an army of trained squirrels that fire darts out of bamboo pipes? What about playing a tune on the ukulele of death that is so bizarre that it literally melts the victim?

And when was the last time you heard of someone strangling another person with their feet?

Yes, it is certainly true that people will kill each other, whether or not they have guns, so ban the guns and tap into that creative strain! The dimension-skipping volkswagen of doom awaits.

[Mewtwo-D2]

Actually, now that I think on it- could you two tell me why it is that you're so threatened by my refusal to be a victim of sexual intimidation? Please, do enlighten me. I'd really love to hear a reason why I shouldn't feel safe in my own body.
I already know DTZ considers a dead rape victim morally superior to a woman with a rapist dead at her feet, but Last Exile, I thought you had a functioning brain.

[Last Exile]

Okay...You asked for it.

Do you honestly think I've had a perfect life?

You don't want to know the number of times my dad almost beat me to death, tried to strangle me to death or hit and run me. You don't want to know the number of times my mother almost killed him to defend me. You don't want to know the number of times I had other students feel me up or strip and beat me in high school. Or that an old man felt me up on the bus in 9th grade. (So don't tell me I don't know what it means to be a victim of sexual violence because I know EXACTLY what it means and how it feels!) Or the number of death threat notes or pranks I had pulled off in my lockers and desks while teachers did nothing against it. Or the taunts and slams I got about my weight especially from the phys ed teachers. Or the number of times I had racial slurs cast from me from even the teachers as well as the students or the principal and the school counsellor suggest I was the problem and may have even asked for it. Or the number of taunts and pranks my relatives and father pulled on me and my mother after she divorced my father. Or being attacked at knifepoint by white supremacist skinheads 1 block from my house. Or the years I've had to live in virtual poverty in envy of the luxuries and priviliges eveyrone else had while I've lived plainly ever since my parents split. And aside from the occassional solace from my busy mother trying to raise me single, I was alone. I didn't have anyone to set them off or help me.

I know exactly what evil men and teen boys are capable of. I felt it every day for 9 years. But I refused to let them get the better of me. I refuse to sink to the level of criminals and perpetrators. I will never compromise my tolerance, self-beliefs, values or integrity like that. Violence is not the solution. Violence begets violence. The people that do that in high school and the world do it because if there's one thing they like more than a victim's fear, it's a violent reaction that makes the victim look worse than the attacker. I know I'm stronger than those scum and I will not lose to them. And the funny thing was, a few weeks before Year 12 finished, nearly all of the guys that gave me crap said they were sorry for what they did and that they admired me for never caving in to them and they wished me to have a good life. I never gave up, I refused to lose or lower myself. And I survived. I'm stronger for it and I've moved on.

And I admit there wasn't a day between Year 5 and Year 12 I didn't think of doing myself in, or dreaming up a way to kill some of those bastards at school or of killing my father. But I constantly reminded myself of two things. One, giving into those twisted desires would mean I failed and that I was worse than those people. Second, that I would let down the two people that believed in me and raised me well - my mother and myself. That's what kept me going through those years and I made it through. Life has been better since then. Hardly ideal, but better. I believed I would make it through and life would be better on the other side, which it is.

Do I claim to be perfect? No. I'm still overweight but much less than I once was and I don't stigmatise or despise myself for my weight or body. I screwed up my honours year in genetics but I found computer science and I'm doing well at that now. I have steady work now after years of unemployment and thinking I'd never find work. I am extroverted, highly sociable and self-confident. I've had to work hard to fix my life and to get over the misery and pain fo the first 18 years of my life which I rarely think about or remember for obvious reasons. I'm 26 as of earlier this month and still haven't had my first kiss, let alone a girlfriend. I have plenty of reasons to be resentful and to be mad at the world and life.

But there's a problem, M2. The world doesn't care. We all have our own problems and scars. Now I'm not undermining yours in any way at all. Rape is the worst crime of all, far worse than murder. A late colleague of mine who was a psychologist in criminal and child fields once told me that you could possibly cure a murderer but there was no hope in hell of curing a rapist or sexual predator because they were the most evil of them all. They are the scum of the earth. Last month I saw a pedophile in a net cafe watching videos of young boys nude. I wanted to pick up the keyboard next to him and beat him to death in disgust, but I didn't because it's wrong to kill someone even if they deserve it. It wouldn't say much about me as a human being. The world knows evil exists and that bad things happen to people. As much as we'd like to prevent it all and save everyone from harm and expel all evil from the world, that is impossible. What happened to you is wrong, tragic and disgusting. I do empathise with you, knowing how sick and cruel sexual violence is. But I have to say this - move on. People can only help you and empathise so much. In the end, people expect you to be a functional human being, to cope with any crap life deals you because in the end, you are but one person in a world of over six billion. There are people that live and suffer in worse conditions/events than us. The best thing you can do is stand up for yourself, value and believe in yourself, don't remain quiest if something happens to you (i never did) and move on. If you let it linger it will get the better of you, hold you back and never let you move forward. Fear is the ultimate mind killer. But in the end, fear is a message of synaptic impulses triggered by the mind. You can override any reaction in the body.

On some of your other points, I would never have unprotected sex, that is idiotic and clownish. I wouldn't risk getting the woman I was doing it with pregnant or infected with an STD or anything like that. I maintain my clothes, pay rent to my mum when all my friends don't pay their parents one cent, clean my room, do the housework, work my job hard and well which my supervisors really appreciate, work at uni damn hard which my lecturer and tutor appreciate. And don't compare me to two of the most evil men in history. I'm brown skinned and am still taunted about it almost daily from people on the street or online. Don't compare me to those two pinaccles of evil. They're two people who would kill me in a heartbeat just for my skin colour. If there's one thing I hate after rapists, it's aryan scum/Neo-nazis, just like the ones who almost killed me six years ago. So don't go there.

Good on you for getting over it. But you haven't fully convinced me. If you need a gun, you're still resorting to low means in my eyes. This is a point the two of us will never agree on. So will you stop labelling me as a child and knowing nothing about your kind of plight when I know it all too well and I had to grow up too fast and faced death more times than you'll care to face it yourself. I wouldn't wish my life on anyone. But I won't throw away the fact I am alive, that I have a decent life better than half of the people on this planet and that I will persevere. And that one day I will find a woman to be happy wih long-term and to make her happy too, but I'm not going to look for one until I'm financially secure enough and secure in my own life to be able to treat her well and support her. I have no regrets for going that long with stuff like that. There is far worse that could have happened to me.

As for idiots like DTZ, go fuck yourself. Stop your bravado and your taunts, you make me sick. Stop relying on the internet to find victims to taunt to make you feel better. Leave her alone.

Now give it a rest and leave me alone, M2. I've taken two weeks to get over my damn cold and I need sleep or I won't get enough study done for my computing exam. I don't want to post in this topic anymore, I'm sick of arguing and the last thing I need right now is another flame war. Where the hell are you Misc mods or are you too busy sucking each other off? Some job you guys do...not.

Anyone else who wants to fire something at me had better watch their mouth and facts, or you'd better be waving a white flag high and clear, because if you aren't, it'll be the last thing you ever do.

[RedStarWarrior]

Whiny bitches...