2015 Sep 30
by Yasonil Piyatissa
It starts off simply. A girl softly glides along an icy floor in a soberly empty corridor, an ideal setting to a beginning of a horror story, and peeks in: so it begins, as it has begun and then ended lives along with it since the beginning of time.
The first frame of the video portrays innocence and trust. A typical and seemingly harmless college evening. Trustingly and unsuspectingly each girl either sips a drink a friend pours for her as a favour, gets comfortable with a boy that only seems to be fooling around or limply pushes away an aggressor that lacks respect for who she truly wants to be. Caution was unnecessary as they couldn’t fear what they couldn’t even imagine. But they now know that to trust those with lust is self-destructing.
For a man it is just a sadistic pleasure that flashes by and dies instantly while a woman simultaneously dies inside. As you enter her sanity leaves. As you thrust deeper the shallower you are. The hole you are unwelcomingly filling overflows and leaks through her eyes. Where she wanted to be kissed gently, she was bitten. Where she wanted to feel a soft linger, she was strangled. Where she wanted to feel a glissading passion, she was jammed into. But sick men don’t understand that because if they did she wouldn’t know how it feels. And till it happens to you, you won’t know how I feel.
As those women were helplessly violated could you continue watching without the goose bumps on your arms and the reflexive flinch interrupting you? “The following contains graphic contents that maybe emotionally unsettling…” it read. Emotionally unsettling for the viewers who probably won’t even entirely watch the gruesome scenes as they can’t help turning away from the screen to save themselves from the trauma? Yes, you do detect a heavy dose of sarcasm in my tone. Dear Reader, the one who is emotionally unsettled is not you or I but the one in five college women who will be sexually assaulted this year.
To save another who now has no reason to be saved is near impossible. But to stop yourself from hunting for selfish and broken pleasure is the least you can do. Because the one making it happen cowardly runs away, leaving him with only a pathetic conscience as result. But the one it happened to has nowhere to run and only places to hide. Give reason for the lyrics of the song to no longer be “Till it happens to you, you won’t know. It won’t be real” but “Because it won’t happen to you, you won’t know. It won’t be real”.
