There aren\'t even words for how angry that makes me...it\'s ignorance like that which causes r*pe survivors to feel like their voices are silenced and go unheard. How can someone ACTUALLY think like that?! So I guess since my r*pist didn\'t jump out of a bush then i wasn\'t "technically r*ped"...what an asshole.

Thanks for sharing this, even though it\'s upsetting it shows how important it is for all of us to be heard.

You\'re welcome. While Richard Rojo\'s words were infuriating, they illuminated a larger sentiment in society that subscribes to an arbitrarily defined hierarchy of rapes based on type and perpetrator.

That hierarchy, by design, serves only to invalidate the feelings and experiences of most survivors in favor of a narrowly defined and arbitrary set of criteria that says "rape is only X or Y, everything else is a lesser experience to be treated differently." Not in so many words, but that is the unspoken message being conveyed by comments such as those uttered by Rojo.

There was something similar in the UK news a few years ago.
This was a lady who was herself a rape survivor (stranger rape, very high-profile case at the time) who was calling for "date rape" to be considered as a lesser offence in law - apparently she seemed to think that this would help improve the conviction rate (???)

No-one is denying that the attack that happened on her was horrific, but that does not make what happened to me any less damaging!

I think ideas like this are just divisive and unhelpful - at the end of the day we\'re all dealing with the same trauma, regardless of the individual circumstances around the event.