A woman at my work, who is a comic book author, sent me a link with a note saying “Thought you might want to look into this”. I clicked on the link and to my surprise I found a blog written by Scott Adams, the creator of the popular comic Dilbert.

I began reading and I am pretty sure my co-workers watched as my eyes grew wider and wider. This blog was talking about how it is a natural instinct for men to rape women. He says that rapists are not to blame for their actions, but instead it is society that has denied the basic facts of human nature.

You can read the blog in entirety here. Even though I hate to even drive traffic to this guy’s blog, I think it is important for you to see just how insulting and dangerous this man’s words are. Not only are his statements incredibly hurtful to rape victims, but what message does he send to impressionable young men? Go ahead and rape that girl you want to sleep with… it is natural and it is society’s problem if you get in trouble.

As many of you know, I try to be as active as possible in righting wrongs that I see in the world around me. I have learned that I have to pick my battles carefully or I will go insane. This one was just too much for me. I had to do something.

This isn’t just about someone of notoriety saying something stupid, this is about my safety as a woman. Is this really how some men think? Is that why I have been told by multiple men that even if some guys knew that, while I was in “The Life”, I was not making money, but being pimped and beaten, they still would have taken part? That is what I think when I put on my Sex Trafficking Survivor cap, but there is a cap I can also wear that I do not speak of as much…that of a rape victim.

Unfortunately, you will be hard pressed to find even one sex trafficking survivor who has not been raped and I am no exception. Usually, I bring up the story of my first rape to prove a point. You see, after I was raped and shoved out of the hotel room, I was more scared of going back to my pimp and telling him that I hadn’t gotten any money from the trick because he would be angry with me. He was and I paid the price….a beating for a being raped.

The rape itself I only remember strange things about. I remember the guy said he was a Teamster (whatever that means) and that he had power, so there was no point in telling anyone he had raped me. He was old and fat and balding and his teeth were almost brown. He had the look of someone who had spent a few days locked in solitude with his drug of choice.

I remember how seedy the motel was…so cheap that the front door led right into the parking lot. I remember that I must have left my purse in the bed area because he raped me in the bathroom and somehow had time to go through my purse (of course there was never any money in it…my pimp took the money after every trick ).

I didn’t put up too much of a fight. He outweighed me by at least 100 pounds and I didn’t know what kind of drugs he was on. I just wanted to get out of there alive. I begged him to wear a condom, which he obliged…such a gentleman. He held my arms behind me and pushed up on my hands trying to hurt my shoulders, but my shoulders were too flexible and he got mad so instead he positioned me so my hip bones were jutting into the edge of the counter which hurt me enough for his satisfaction apparently.

I was there for under an hour. When he was finished, he grabbed me and my purse and threw us both out of the room and, like I said, all I could think about was how mad my pimp was gonna be. Of course, I didn’t call the police…the police who I had tried to ask for help once before after a particularly bad beating, only to get the response “We know what you are. What do you expect?” There was no way I was going through that again.

And that brings me back to Scott Adams’ blog. At the time I believed it was my fault that I had been raped. I had gotten myself into the situation and I deserved to be hurt like that…comes with the territory….and obviously I had done something wrong, I mean, I did get a beating for it too.

This comic book writer is saying that it is not a man’s fault when he rapes a woman. It is natural. He says the problem lies with a society that prosecutes men for doing what they feel right doing…having sex with anything they want whether the other participant is willing or not. This is disgusting. I strongly believe in the 1st Amendment. I do not, however, agree with such hateful, discriminatory and dangerous words to be published by a man whom many admire.

I have created a petition on change.org asking him to publicly apologize in every major news outlet by August 17th, 2011. Should he choose to ignore the repercussions of what he has said, I have done research on every company that advertises with the papers that publish his work. I will continue until I find everyone who has ever given him a dollar and go after them. Money talks and if he will not answer the pleas of men, women, boys and girls who find his published theory harmful, then he will surely listen when his paycheck shrinks.

You can find the link to the petition here. We have written a press release to be distributed when we reach 5,000 signatures, so let’s try to get there quickly. In the first day we already obtained 600 signatures so I think we can do this.

Please believe that your action, however small you may think it is, WILL make a difference. I think we have already proven that.

Nikki Junker

More Than A Purpose