Men Rape Us and You Let Them
“Men rape us.
They rape us in corner offices, and in cubicled workspaces. They rape us on college campuses and in correctional facilities. They rape us in million-dollar shiny glass residences – gaudy golden. And in pissy project stairwells under dim lights while kneeling on sticky steps.
Men rape us.
Stalking and hardly slick in plain sight, men prey on those of us who are innocent, and us indomitable ones, too. Those of us who are trying to get put on, and us already kissing the glass ceiling. They R. Kelly piss and fuck on those of us too young to understand rape’s breadth, and those of us who are Anita Hill, old enough to know that he won’t be held accountable.
Men rape us. And, women join in shaming us silent.
They shame us for not going to the police. They shame us for waiting too long to file a report. They shame us for being girls with asses that roll like mountains when we walk. For being women with breasts that bounce even when barricaded by bras. For having no ass or tits at all. For being pretty. And ugly too. These muthafuckas shame us for breathing.
Men are raping us.
Not all men, but many. The men in our homes, sharing our beds, raising our daughters, and rearing our sons. Yes, Harvey Weinstein is a rapist. R. Kelly is a rapist. Pill Cosby too. But so is Shaquan up the muthfuckin block, Tito around the muthfuckin corner, Jamal over in Howard Projects, and Uncle Whatever-The-Fuck-His-Name-Is!
Men rape the shit out of us.
While we pretend that this violence ain’t just that – violent as fuck – by reducing their rape to a hashtag and limiting it to Hollywood’s high-class. But, nah B. A hashtag is much too sanitary. Too gentle. Far too fucking limp for men who take power with stabbing dicks, mauling claws, and gnashing jaws glitzed in gold.
That’s why I write my rape story.”
Nicole Shawan Junior
Sexual Assault and the LGBTQ Community
As a community, LGBTQ people face higher rates of poverty, stigma, and marginalization, which put us at greater risk for sexual assault. We also face higher rates of hate-motivated violence, which can often take the form of sexual assault. Moreover, the ways in which society both hypersexualizes LGBTQ people and stigmatizes our relationships can lead to intimate partner violence that stems from internalized homophobia and shame.
Yet, as a community, we rarely talk about how sexual violence affects us or what our community’s unique needs are when it comes to preventing sexual assault and supporting and caring for survivors of sexual violence.
The CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey found for LGB people:
- 44 percent of lesbians and 61 percent of bisexual women experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner, compared to 35 percent of straight women
- 26 percent of gay men and 37 percent of bisexual men experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner, compared to 29 percent of straight men
- 46 percent of bisexual women have been raped, compared to 17 percent of straight women and 13 percent of lesbians
- 22 percent of bisexual women have been raped by an intimate partner, compared to 9 percent of straight women
- 40 percent of gay men and 47 percent of bisexual men have experienced sexual violence other than rape, compared to 21 percent of straight men
Within the LGBTQ community, transgender people and bisexual women face the most alarming rates of sexual violence. Among both of these populations, sexual violence begins early, often during childhood.
- The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey found that 47% of transgender people are sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime.
- Among people of color, American Indian (65%), multiracial (59%), Middle Eastern (58%) and Black (53%) respondents of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey were most likely to have been sexually assaulted in their lifetime
- Nearly half (48 percent) of bisexual women who are rape survivors experienced their first rape between ages 11 and 17.
For LGBTQ survivors of sexual assault, their identities – and the discrimination they face surrounding those identities – often make them hesitant to seek help from police, hospitals, shelters or rape crisis centers, the very resources that are supposed to help them.
85 percent of victim advocates surveyed by the NCAVP reported having worked with an LGBTQ survivor who was denied services because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey found that one in five (20%) respondents who were incarcerated in jail, prison, or juvenile detention in the past year were sexually assaulted by facility staff during that time. Additionally, 17% of respondents who stayed at one or more homeless shelters in the past year were sexually assaulted at the shelter because they were transgender.
Jezebel
The Jezebel image is typically projected onto women who are perceived to be sexually promiscuous, lustful, and immoral. This stereotype can potentially be applied to women of all ethnic backgrounds; however, when race is considered, this image is often associated with Black women. According to Collins (2000), Jezebel was a powerful rationalization for the sexual atrocities perpetrated against enslaved African women. This image was necessary in order to justify the rape and forced breeding of Black women. As Christensen (1988) pointed out, it is paradoxical that “the only women to ever suffer socially sanctioned and induced sexual abuse were branded ‘loose and immoral’” (p. 192). Because Black women were portrayed as Jezebels, they became sexual temptresses who led men astray, rather than victims of abuse (Collins, 2000; West, 2000). Contemporary Jezebels are referred to as welfare queens, hoochies, freaks, and hoodrats. Although the names have changed, the message is the same: Black women are sexually available and sexually deviant. This image is reinforced in the media, in the form of music videos, rap songs, magazines, movies, and pornography (Collins, 2000). Because these images are so pervasive, they get projected onto all Black women. For example, after viewing sexually seductive rap videos featuring Black women, college students were more likely to describe Black women as indecent, sleazy, and sluttish (Gan, Zillmann, & Mitrook, 1997). The researchers concluded that the “perceived traits and conduct of a rather small number of female Black rappers were generalized to other members of the population, namely Black women” (p. 397). The Jezebel image is particularly destructive for Black rape survivors. As it did during slavery, this image continues to portray African American victims as responsible for their assaults, no matter what the circumstances.This reinforces rape myths, which promote the idea that a survivor’s behavior somehow contributed to her victimization, or that a perpetrator is less responsible for his actions. Research has shown that women, in general, are more likely to be blamed for their sexual assault if they were drinking, dressed in revealing clothing, or went to a man’s apartment (Marx, Wie, & Gross, 1996). Although Black women are susceptible to these rape myths, they are also burdened with the additional stereotype of Black women as promiscuous. In other words, Black women get a double dose of rape myths, those that target all survivors and those that claim Black women are especially deserving of sexual assault. If Black women are perceived as inherently promiscuous, then regardless of the situation, they are at greater risk of being blamed when they are raped. Fear of being blamed and reinforcing the Jezebel stereotype may also hinder the likelihood that Black women will disclose or report their rapes.
Living at the Intersection:
The Effects of Racism and Sexism on Black Rape Survivors
Roxanne Donovan
Michelle Williams
Recy Taylor, Who Fought for Justice After a 1944 Rape, Dies at 97
“Many ladies got raped,” Mrs. Taylor said in the film, interviewed by its director, Nancy Buirski. “The peoples there — they seemed like they wasn’t concerned about what happened to me, and they didn’t try and do nothing about it. I can’t help but tell the truth of what they done to me.”
I Believe You: Three Words That Can Change A Survivor’s Life | Jazmin Pruitt
Content Warning / Trigger Warning For Mentions of Violence
Black women have started ‘talking back,’ but it is still a fact that Black women’s stories have been erased, ignored, and generally unacknowledged. During Jazmin’s talk, she discusses what Black women, as well as society, can do to address the original injuries inflicted and preclude recurrence, as well as what remedies exist that will make Black women whole again.
#NotOneLess - Not Seeing Black Female Victims As Victims
Even so, during my research I noted little mention of race in these discussions—an observation that was shared by many of my research informants. Although race has no biological validity, it remains socially and politically relevant as a concept generated during European colonization. Race became a way to group and rank human beings according to specific physical attributes. As a social construct, race continues to uphold inequalities in access to education, health care, political participation, and quality of life. Many media outlets in Peru continue to skirt around the ways in which women’s experiences with violence and justice differ due to social markers such as class, geographic location, culture, or race. Rather, women are inadvertently portrayed as a monolithic group, and the mestiza woman in Peru—a woman of Indigenous and European ancestry—is viewed as the “average” woman and is therefore racially “neutral.”
Afro-Peruvian activists have worked tirelessly to change public opinion and bring about important sanctions to protect women. Their stance on ending violence against women includes calling attention to the way that other aspects of women’s identities, such as their culture and physical appearance, play into the harassment many women face. For these activists, the aggression they encounter has as much to do with their blackness as it does their gender.
Sofia Arizaga, a veteran activist, told me that she often walks down the street with earbuds in to shut out comments men whisper and shout to her. They call out negra (black) or morena (brown) in a sexually suggestive manner, she said, and have even approached her asking, “How much?,” assuming that she is a sex worker and inquiring about her rates. I heard endless variations of stories of similar experiences from other women I spoke to, and I lived such incidents myself as a black woman moving through the streets of Lima. Harassment on the basis of gender and racial identity are daily occurrences, though they seem invisible to people who do not experience them firsthand.
How Violence against Black Women Impacts their Overall Health
https://54.204.251.142/how-violence-against-black-women-impacts-their-overall-health/
Ward is among the 1.3 million women who experience sexual, domestic, or intimate partner violence each year and whose abuse triggers seemingly unrelated health conditions. A recent Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital study found significant links between domestic violence and many chronic health conditions, including stress-related physical consequences like asthma, memory damage, arthritis, and other diseases that can last as many as 20 years after the abuse has ended.
Black’s 2011 report on domestic violence-related illness found that victims of intimate partner and sexual violence make more visits to health providers over their lifetime, have more hospital stays, have longer duration of hospital stays, and are at risk of a wide range of physical, mental, reproductive, and other health consequences over their lifetime than non-victims. Additionally, sustained exposure to violence has been linked with central nervous system problems, including back pain, headaches, and seizures.
“The health care system’s response must be strengthened and better coordinated for sexual violence, stalking, and intimate partner violence survivors to help navigate the health care system and access needed services and resources in the short and long term,” Black said.
Suggestions for more succinctly linking domestic and intimate partner violence to chronic conditions years after abuse include providing more physicians and other health care professionals with training on forensic and patient care issues related to sexual violence.
“One strategy to improve access is co-located, multi-disciplinary service centers that include mental health, legal, economic, housing and other related services for survivors. It is also important that services are specifically designed to meet the needs of a wide range of different populations such as teens, older adults, men, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people,” Black said.
Meeting the needs of African-American women impacted by violence, according to the National Coalition against Domestic Violence, may be hindered by cultural idioms that deter reporting victimization. Despite making up 29 percent of all victimized women and DV / IPV being among the leading causes of death for Black women ages 15 to 35, Black women are less likely than others to file complaints.
Mental health social worker, Feminista Jones, ties the unwillingness to report abuse among African-American women to a culture of race loyalty. “A strong sense of cultural affinity and loyalty to community and race renders many of us silent, so our stories often go untold. One of the biggest related impediments is our hesitation in trusting the police or the justice system,” Jones wrote in a recent {Times} magazine article. “As Black people, we don’t always feel comfortable surrendering ‘our own’ to the treatment of a racially-biased police state and as women, we don’t always feel safe calling police officers who may harm us instead of helping us.”
“I don’t care if a woman was to walk by you butt booty ass naked! If she don’t give you permission to touch her, then bitch don’t you fucking touch her. It’s simple as that!”— Random Black Woman’s Take on Rape, and Sexual assault against women (via rivers-wash-over-me)
(Source: thesecretescape23)
“He says ‘I don’t get it, why are you still a virgin at 24?’ He says ‘I don’t believe you, I’ve seen you walk, virgins don’t walk like that’ He says, ‘That ain’t natural, people are supposed to fuck.’ He asks ‘Why though? No offence though.’ I ask ‘When was your first time?’ He says ‘I was 12’ He says ‘I know what you’re thinking, that’s too young.’ I look at his knuckles, he has two good hands. He says ‘She was older than me.’ I ask ‘How old?’ And he says ‘It’s better that the girl is older, that’s how I learnt all things I know’ He licks his lips. I ask again ‘How old?’ He says ‘I could use one finger to make you sob’ I think of my brother in prison and I can’t remember his face. I ask again ‘How old?’ He says ‘Boys become men in the laps of women, you know?’ I think of my mother’s face lined with her bad choices in men. He says ‘If you were mine you wouldn’t get away with this shit, I’d eat you for hours, I’d gut you like fruit.’ I think of my cousin’s circumcision, how he feels like a mermaid, not human from the waist down. He says ‘I’d look after you, you know?’ I laugh, I ask for the last time ‘How old?’ He says ‘34.’ He says ‘She was beautiful though and I know what you’re thinking but it’s not like that, I’m a man, I’m a man, I’m a man. No one could ever hurt me’.”— Warsan Shire, Crude Conversations With Boys Who Fake Laughter Often (via paintdeath)
(Source: ofveins)
Afton Williamson Discusses Being Sexually Abused At Age 6
“At 13, I started losing my hair to PTSD. So I shaved my head. That’s how I entered high school. I was terrified but I was strong,” she explained. “It was during these 4 years that God spoke to me. Told me who I was. Showed me what I would become. The isolation of being different pushed me so close to Him it was just the 2 of us. He told me I had to fight. So I did.”
“The Breaks” actress would go on to defy odds, leaving her hometown of Toledo and graduating both college and graduate school. Sadly, the cycle of abuse continued.
“Over the years, as I was fighting everything and everyone it seemed, I had to fight my past. My present. The abuse never stopped. Abusive relationships, toxic friendships, multiple rapes: the last one 3wks before college graduation, a guy I called ‘friend,‘” she went on.
Despite finding success, the pain of being abused continued to manifest in some terrible and dangerous ways. Thankfully, Williamson writes that she’s now at peace:
Ex-Doctor Gets Light Jail Sentence After Abusing Four Patients
“I never got the friendly thing from David Newman. He was very straight to the point,” she said.
Four hours later around 2 a.m., she remembers groggily walking down the hallway with her IV on the way to the restroom, trying to piece together whether or not what she experienced was a dream or reality.
She remembers Newman forcing her to take an unnecessary amount of morphine even after she refused and then positioning between the bed and the wall and masturbating while he molested her. At some point, he also ejaculated on her.
“I was in and out of consciousness, and one of the first things I felt was him groping my breast,” she said. “It wasn’t really real until I realized I couldn’t move. I can’t say I know my eyes weren’t open, but I couldn’t see.” I felt the bed move. And the groping was making me like, ‘Get off me.’ I’m trying to move. I’m trying to fight. And it’s like either he’s really strong or I’m not doing anything at all.”
According to The Cut, records show Aja was given four milligrams of morphine in addition to an unauthorized dose of propofol, the same drug which killed Michael Jackson.
When she finally reached her sister’s home near Mt. Sinai around 6 a.m., in the same neighborhood she grew up in, her sister phoned her concerns to the police. Those accusations, along with the sheet and hospital gown Aja carried with her, creating a paper trail of offenses against Newman which would be brought into court later. Luckily in her drugged state she knew she would need to collect certain items as collateral to protect herself.
Aja’s sister accompanied her to Harlem Hospital where a rape kit was administered to her. When forensic scientists sprayed the sheets with luminol and found nothing after examining it under uv lights. In a split second decision, Aja instructed a technician administering the exam to spray her with luminol. At first the technician objected then obliged.
“I heard the whole room go” as she sucked in her breath to demonstrate the sound. “It was all over my face, all over between my breasts like I told her. I remember she started crying, and she was like, ‘Aja, don’t move.’ And she took the samples off my face. I believe that’s the only thing that caught him.”
Investigators were able to match Newman as the perpetrator from a sample collected near her right eye. Aja believes had it not been for her instruction, Newman may have walked free.
BALTIMORE (WJZ) – A promising high school student’s life cut short—killed in a crime that’s horrified the city. Now police say they’ve tracked down the two men who sexually assaulted and strangled 16-year-old Arnesha Bowers and then lit her home on fire.
Meghan McCorkell has more on how police tracked down the killers.
Investigators say 16-year-old Arnesha Bowers knew her attackers and they used her cell phone records to track them down.
Inside a burning home, investigators found the body of 16-year-old Arnesha Bowers — bound, sexually assaulted and strangled.
“I can only imagine what the last moments of Arnesha’s life were like. It had to have been pure hell,” said Major Stanley Brandford, Baltimore Police Department.
Now police say these are the two men who killed the teen — 23-year-old Adonay Dixon and 20-year-old John Childs.
Adonay Dixon and John Childs. Photo/ Baltimore Police
“Nothing is more important than tracking down and jailing cowards who take the life of an innocent child. Nothing,” said Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts.
According to court documents, Childs and Dixon were hanging out with the teen at a party when they followed her home and plotted a burglary.
Investigators say Childs and Dixon broke into the home through a basement window, but were soon discovered by Bowers.
Childs told police while he ransacked the house for money, Dixon dragged the teen into the basement. Detectives say she was strangled with an electrical cord before the house went up in flames.
“They sexually assaulted, strangled and set fire to Arnesha,” said Deputy Commissioner Kevin Davis, Baltimore Police Department.
Bowers’ grandmother tells WJZ she is devastated by the loss.
“Arnesha had a beautiful smile and everyone would comment when they met her, ‘You have a lovely smile.’ She had a beautiful heart to match,” her grandmother, Sandra Bowers, said.
Neighbors are relieved the two suspects are now behind bars.
“It definitely eases my mind because we were kind of worried like what was going on and we didn’t know,” said Charles Bronson, neighbor.
Childs and Dixon face multiple charges, including first-degree murder.
John Childs was released on bond from the Baltimore County jail on a burglary charge just five days before the murder.
(via ablackwomansurvivingrape)
Stephanie Mills and Phylicia Rashad are the older aunties in your family that invite the family rapost over to the family gatherings. They are the aunties who fixes his plate, makes his drink and goes around introducing him to his new nieces alone and walk away. They are the aunties who handle the situations when the family rapists has once again assaulted another cousin. They are the reason why so and so don’t come around anymore after speaking out. Rapists don’t get away with rape alone. Someone knows something, someone is always protecting them. Someone with power and authority covers for them and turns the blame on the victim. These older aunties will never protect you, they are just as guilty as the family rapist.
Penny For Your Thoughts: A Sexual Abuse Survivor’s Manifesto | MadameNoire
I was scared, more afraid of dying than I was of telling my secret. So I told. I told the way generations of girls told before me, the way generations of girls would tell after me, the way girls still tell today and will tell tomorrow. Even when we girls wait until we’re women to tell, it’s still the little girl within us that’s talking when we do. (Of course, it’s not just girls who tell. It’s boys, too.) We tell because we’re scared (like I was). We tell because we’re angry. We tell because we’re tired, and it’s too much to carry by ourselves. We don’t always tell the “right” person, whoever the right person is. Sometimes we just tell someone who will listen. We don’t always tell a parent because our parent may not only belong to us. Sometimes our parent is our molester’s parent, too. Sometimes our rapist is our parent’s spouse. Sometimes our abuser is a beloved of our loved ones. He is the proud receiver of hugs and pats on the back in an otherwise admirable life. That’s when we victims become wise in our young age, wise enough to know that people are not the sum of their sins.
Life is not an SVU episode; there isn’t always law and order. A 2013 story in The Atlantic stated that “One in three-to-four girls, and one in five-to-seven boys are sexually abused before they turn 18, an overwhelming incidence of which happens within the family,” adding that those within-the-family incidents are “notoriously underreported.”
In real life, when a family member sexually abuses a child, police aren’t involved. Which means that we victims coexist with our abusers. We grow up understanding their actions as mistakes, not crimes. But to be clear, molestation and rape are crimes. Severely punishable crimes at that.
Still, we survivors share a table with our abuser at Christmas. We sit in a living room where our abuser’s family photo with his kids hangs. We learn to talk about our abuser in casual conversation without crying. We cast an admiring eye on our abuser’s artwork, not letting their evil obscure their good. We express concern upon hearing that our abuser isn’t in good health when all we want to do is scream, “Who gives a f–k! Do you really think I care about him after what he did to me?!?”
“I feel so fucked up sexually. I feel like I’ll never be okay. I can smell him on me and it makes me sick to my damn stomach. Out of all things they could have done why this? I can deal with the mental trauma. I can deal with nightmares and flashbacks and panic attacks of bad things. What I can’t deal with is not being able to touch my own body without throwing up. That’s the most intimate betrayal to me. I can handle someone hitting me and yelling at me and screaming at me. I don’t know how to handle feeling someone inside of me. Them touching my vagina. I can’t deal with that pain. I can’t deal with waking up in the middle of the night contemplating weather or not to take a drink of water because I can still taste his semen in my mouth and drinking the damn water only makes it worse. I can’t understand and grasp why the fuck I can’t even touch my own body without feeling dirty. I feel so dirty when I touch myself. I feel like I’m doing something bad. I feel like if I enjoy anything sexual then I asked for it. Like I feel like if I enjoyed sex then I was asking to be raped. I know that I haven’t completely separated sex from being raped. And I thought I had but apparently I haven’t. It’s still the same thing to me. It’s still someone on top of me getting what they want and I’m just there just for their enjoyment.”— ablackwomansurvivingrape
A Black Woman Surviving Rape
I’m tired of holding my feelings in without people asking me if I’m ok. I’m writing this blog because even though I am a survivor of all the things listed above, I am also a black woman. When I went to find people to talk to about my past, I couldn’t find one black woman who was willing and open enough to talk about the secretes that we hide. That is one of the things that have made healing so much worse for me. The books out there specifically for black women are few and far between. (I am in no way saying that rape has a color or a gender to it, I am not saying that other women’s rapes are less important than anyone else’s).
It was hard for me to find counseling (I would always end up trying to explain my culture background to my therapists more than the assaults itself, no one could really understand what it’s like to be a black woman, which is totally understandable). I had bought the books that were out there and read them over and over until I had felt like I had the words memorized, it was as if I had wrote them, I had read them that much. But it wasn’t enough, I had always felt like I was the only black woman who has been raped (I know it’s not true though), I felt like it was just me against the world. I got tired of being one of 2 black women in support groups, I felt alone.
I'm writing this blog because the black community has its dark deep secrets. We don’t stand up for each other, especially when it comes to the abuse and rape of each other. We always blame the victim. We tell our daughters who have been molested by their mothers’ boyfriends, by their uncles, by their fathers and brothers; we tell our sons who have been molested by their fathers, their uncles, their mothers boyfriends that it’s their fault. That they shouldn’t have been “fast” that they shouldn’t be talking to older men because we give them the wrong idea.
We blame our children for their rapes and molestations. We take the predators side, oh well they couldn’t have done that. We tell our boys and young men and men that if a woman has raped you then you must have wanted it. That having an erection doesn’t mean consent no more than being wet is an answer to yes. We drill into their heads that because an older woman has hit on them and made sexual advances it’s okay when it’s not. He’s a good person, or well he didn’t do it, he goes to the church. HE GOES TO THE CHURCH???? We hide behind the church and the bible to protect the monsters walking our neighborhoods. As if going to church makes you innocent.
We ignore our children when they come crying to us, we tell them to stop crying, suck it up, it’s happened to us before (as if that makes it okay, as if us being molested as children makes it okay and excusable for our children to go through the same hurt and abuse). We silence Black Women when they speak up about being hit and abused. We tell them to go to church, we shun them for seeking therapy, and we banish them from the community when they point a finger at the “brotha” who hurt them. We tell Black Women that they are bringing down men every time they report a rape and abuse and we don’t stand by their side. That’s what we are doing and no one gives a damn about it. We are dying; we are killing ourselves by keeping pain inside. We don’t have to keep holding on to the pain, we don’t have to carry that burden with us, and we don’t have to feel ashamed anymore. We can talk about it, it’s okay, and you’re not the only one out there who’s going through it alone.
This blog is for Black Women who have cried in the shower, this is for Black Women who have self harmed just to ease the pain, this is for Black Women who have taken a drink or a hit to silence the flashbacks, this is for every Black Woman who has thought about killing herself because no one would listen. This is for Black Women and Black Girls who are faced with picking between their gender and their race, without everyone else understaning that we are both Women and Black. This is for Trans Women who are killed and abused everyday without notice, This is for indigenous Black Women who have no one to turn to because everyone is against you. This is for you. This is for every Black Woman that is surviving rape and it is from a black woman’s perspective.
Covered in blood.
My beautiful white dress has been
Beaten so much
The back is ripped and its
Seam is torn.
My sparkly white dress is
Smudged whit unearthly prints
And stains that cannot be
Removed.
My innocent white dress was ripped
Apart into pieces and
Carelessly put back together again.
I’ve tried to burn it, drown it
Pour alcohol on it to set on fire
And it still finds its way to the
Front of my closet
Dirty, fire stains, muddy, smeared with
Blood reeking
Of Jack Daniels, holding on by
A thread.
Sitting in front of what use to be
My white dress, I scream, I bellow
And finally I cry.
Realizing the blood, the torn seam
Smudges and pieces were only visible
To me.
The damage I had done to my own
White dress can be fixed,
Even if I can't get the blood out.
©Golden Rays