January 24, 2015 - 22:16
Alrighty, a little backstory before we begin. One of my oldest friends of 10+ years (let's call her E) has always been an outsider. She's always had trouble relating to other people, has low self-esteem, is very judgemental, and holds more extreme views.
Storytime. E is (very) British and goes to university up in the north of England. Her university is known for its booze-centric culture and not for its academic rigour. It's also truly in the middle of nowhere. It takes about four hours to get up there via train. Last summer, I decide to take a trip up there to see her for a long weekend. She picked me up at the train station and we walked about 45 minutes to her dorm. E caught me up on her drunken shenanigans, one of which involved a girl she particualarly hated. This girl has a reputation for dressing "slutty" and enjoying one-night stands. She then proceeds to horrify me by telling me that she witnessed her being raped by one of her other male friends behind a pub. I asked her if she tried to stop it, she said she didn't because "the whore brought it on herself, what did she expect by dressing the way she did." The girl dropped out a month later.
As a Bryn Mawr woman, I was disgusted by E's behavior. How dare she say that she deserved to be violated like that. I think that going to a woman's college makes you more aware to how society holds both women and men to unfair standards. I feel that the culture of Bryn Mawr has taught me to never, ever blame a victim of a rape because there's nothing that a victim can do to "deserve" it. I sometimes confuse the reality of Bryn Mawr with the reality of the Rest of the World. At BMC, you are guaranteed shelter, kindness, therapy, and understanding if something like this happened to you. In the Rest of the World, you are guaranteed harsh judgement and apathy.
E and I are no longer friends. This incident contributed to me telling her to go screw herself and her awful views. The last straw involved her barfing tequila on me at 4am and then passing out her dorm floor.