When I was 15 I got raped at a party.

When I was 15 I got raped at a party. It was my first time drinking and I was wearing a Hawaiian shirt with long khaki shorts. And I never pursued legal action against my rapist for a number of reasons. Number one, I didn't think anything would come of it. Number two, I was told that he was an undocumented immigrant and I didn't want to involve innocent family members. And number three, I didn't think anyone would believe me because after my rapist raped me, he contacted me on Snapchat and asked if we were cool to cover his tracks and because I was 15 years old and had no idea how to process the horrors that he had just subjected me to, I agreed that we were cool. And so, we were cool. How could I ever claim that he had brutally raped me when I had afterwards agreed that we were cool on Snapchat? And months later when I worked up the courage to confront him and tell him, hey, like you raped me and you know you raped me, you know what he said to me? He said, sorry, broken heart emoji. I'm sorry, broken heart emoji. You are taught to perceive rape as a black and white issue because having a super strict black and white definition of rape keeps the rape culture going around. It keeps it alive, it sustains it. My rapist went on to rape several other girls in the same way that he raped me and he would sustain friendships with them too, so that he couldn't look guilty. How could he be a rapist if we said on Snapchat that we're cool? The silver lining of this Cornell case, if there is any, is that it's getting people to talk. And in my personal opinion, the more we talk about rape culture, the more we can dismantle it. My rapist ruined my life and he's not even the last one that assaulted me. But what also ruined my life beyond getting raped itself was the horrible conversations and narratives and rumors and assumptions I was subjected to because of rape culture. I lived the rest of my high school experience thinking I was a whore and being told to my face that I was a whore because my rape did not fit the girl walking down a dark alleyway at night and getting violated stereotype of what rape looks like. We don't always get to see justice for victims on a massive scale, right? But we can seek justice by continuing to have these conversations, whether it be to your followers or to your family or to your friends in public or in private, just keep talking about it. Just keep talking about it.