<![CDATA[it is unacceptible to use the term ‘raped’ to describe a game, exam…]]>in the last decade, in south africa anyways, but i assume further afield as well, there has been a tendency to slangify negative words and so words like ‘sick’ and ‘wicked’ which used to have negative connotations have now been made cool (is ‘cool’ still cool?) words for the in-crowd which is perhaps a desensitization of another kind to be looked at another time…

but recently, on two separate occasions, i heard the latest word usage (well it may not be the latest, i am a bit slower to catch up on cool these days) which completely crosses the line and both times i interjected and crushed it immediately and will continue to do so no matter how normative the usage becomes…

and it was the use of the word ‘rape’ in the context (on the one occasion) of some sports match where the one guy was asked how they did and responded by saying ‘we got raped 8-1’ or something like that

i believe there are some things that should never be joked about [and i realise that for me the list is far more extreme than most because i would take it so far as saying i don’t think marriage is something that should be joked about purely because it has largely become quite a joke and i’m not sure how far breaking it down in jest has had to do with that] and rape is certainly one of them – i personally know of at least four people who have gone through that horrible destructive evil (there really doesn’t seem to be any kind of word that comes close to describing how bad it is) act of senseless violence and so to take a word like that and normalise it or inject it into every day conversation seems to completely piss on the faces of everyone who has had to endure that

and i cannot imagine what it must do to someone who has been through that experience to hear the word ‘rape’ being used so lightly to describe a lost game of sport

i hope that you will join me in refusing to let this become a norm of conversation by taking a stand every time you hear it and helping people to really ‘get’ that what we say does matter… it is unacceptible.

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