When I was a little girl, I was so afraid of the dark that I couldn't sleep with my door open, even a crack. I was afraid of the deeper black that lay condensed in my denim and dresses. I think it's safe to say, I've outgrown my Winnie the Pooh night light by now. I read an article recently, about fear being an evolutionary catalyst. It is why we are afraid of the dark and snakes (and snakes in the dark) but not electrified rails or C4. Fear has helped humans survive and evolve. Now, I'll admit that I still sleep with my door shut tight, but while that evolutionary catalyst has loosed its grip, another has taken hold. You see, little boys and girls grow up in the dark, fearing its vast 'unknowingness', it's unfortunate that outside the void lies something truly terrifying. It's the reason I never walk alone at night, the reason I curl inward on subways, the reason I hug the walls of buildings in the city. Nightmarish wild eyes and hands grasping at parts of me that I am not willing to give, yet others are willing to take. A crime that only exists because of an inbred perception of a stronger gender. As if we had a choice in the matter. You think we want to be asked what we did to encourage this?
This is a silent crime. No one talks about it. Vowels and consonants too razor sharp to speak of without bleeding from all the wrong places.
Example.
After World War II, when the triumphant Red and Allied armies marched into Berlin, the world believed the horrors of war were over. Prisoners freed and blood no longer flooding Europe's roads.
The world was wrong.
In the days and weeks following the Second Great War, approximately 100,000 women and children were raped... in Berlin. It is estimated that two million women and children were raped in the whole of the German territory. Hundreds of thousands were results of the Russian army. Tens of thousands were the results of the British and US armies. See, no one talks about these orgies of nightmarish soldiers because they were the good guys. The heroes. When I told my friend about this, they simply replied, "Yeah, that was awful, but what the Germans did was way worse...". As if stating one crime might discredit the other. A battle of 'which one really hurt more people', is not the issue. A piece of history isn't being taught in classrooms because the 'good' men went overseas to risk their lives for democracy. The 'good' men won the war. Need I remind you, Stalin and Lenin tag-teamed the execution of their own people twice as fast as the Germans and long before Adolf even held a paintbrush.
I am 18 years old and I am no longer afraid of the dark. I am 18 and I am terrified of a crime that I have never encountered. I am 18 and I have a one in four chance of being brutally raped. I am 18 and I still sleep with my door shut tight, not to keep the dark out, but to defend myself from the things that lurk in it.
This is a silent crime.
