ALL THE RAGE APRIL: Guest Post by Emilie from Emilie's Book World

Hello, everyone!

Welcome to another day of ALL THE RAGE APRIL! Today, we have a guest post by Emilie from Emilie's Book World. In it, she talks about her angry feelings regarding how our society treats sexual assault and its victims. Without further ado...

When Ciara asked me if I wanted to be part of her All the Rage April feature, I said yes immediately even though I hadn’t read the book yet. I just have a lot to say when it comes to sexual assault. And having now read All the Rage, I have even more.

All the Rage pretty much embodies the way our society is making women and girls feel when it comes to sexual assault. In the book, Romy was raped. There is no doubt about it in her mind and in mine. But, when you ask the people in her small town, they have a different opinion. What they’ll tell you is that Romy wasn’t raped because she liked the guy who assaulted her, she even sent an e-mail to her best friend saying she dreamt about him. SO that makes what that guy did okay and gives everyone else the right to call Romy a slut or a whore.

In what world is that even close to okay? Could that attitude be even more messed up?

With All the Rage, Courtney Summers did a fantastic job showing how those attitudes can make the victims feel. The whole time I was reading, my heart was breaking for Romy and I wanted to yell at everyone who kept telling her she was lying about having been assaulted. And once I finished reading All the Rage, I wanted to give the book to everyone I know. Because maybe if enough people read it and realize how our society’s screwed up thinking is making all these girls feel, then maybe something might start to change.

At the end of the day, that’s what needs to happen. Society needs to start thinking differently about sexual assault. We need to stop telling girls that by dressing a certain way they can avoid being raped. That if they learn certain self-defense techniques they’ll be able to fight off a potential attacker. That when they behave a certain way, they’re inviting unwanted attention. Instead, we should be teaching people that rape is not okay, that sexual assault is not okay and that it just shouldn’t be done. Or we could even just stop making victims of sexual assault feel like they were asking for it because they wore a short skirt, they were alone at night in an unsafe area, or because they were dancing a certain way at a party. It doesn’t matter how it starts. The change just needs to happen somewhere.

I’m not idealistic or optimistic enough to think that a change like that is going to happen over night. But the way I see it, if enough people read All the Rage, and more books like it get written and read, something might finally start changing. - Emilie

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Emilie!

ALL THE RAGE APRIL is off tomorrow but we'll be back soon with more guest and discussion posts!

- Ciara (Lost at Midnight)