I'd Change Rape
If I could change the hungry stares
The way they look at her
Like a bag of meat
Good enough to eat
Good enough to chew out and then
Good enough to throw out
I’d change that all in a heartbeat
If I could change the fate
Of a girl who goes walking out late
Who then never returns home
Because of some man’s lusty hate
You wouldn’t need to give me a due date
I’d change that fate
Justice
Served on a plate.
If I could walk alone at night
Myself, a girl of 5”1, go walking out at night
It’d be so sweet
So sweet to have that right
I wouldn’t have to worry
Wouldn’t have to fear a rapist’s smite
I’d be free
Equality
Taken to a new height
They say things like “Don’t provoke men
With your spaghetti straps and short shorts.”
What are men, then?
Animals we need to put in a pen?
I can get slut-shamed by society’s priest
But I can’t get protection from the real beast?
See a man can control himself
I'm not hating on men
But society likes to blame the victim
People are lazy
They say “She must have done something
to make him rape her -- she’s crazy!”
Because according to some
The line between yes and no is “hazy.”
“She’s a whore, she deserved it”
What the public doesn’t know is
That’s she was a virgin, she reserved it
For a special man
Not a sinful man
“She’s a slut, she deserved it”
What I would change
What I would stop
Is the way we treat girls.
You can’t buy them at a shop
They aren’t objects for you to buy.
You don’t look with a hand, you look with an eye.
I would stop rape
And give every girl who’s been through it and lived
A big, red, superhero cape
The angels sent down by cold-hearted preacher
An angel so lost you can’t even reach her
She deserves so much more
But we call her a whore
Tell her that in her future
There’s nothing in store.
I would take rape
Make it so old, so done
That it’d be a VHS tape
I wish I didn’t have to live in fear
Wonder if tomorrow I’ll still be here
If we didn’t live in the shadow of a man’s lust
That would be a world so true and just
If I could stop rape, this awful crime
I would change it on a dime
So that way I wouldn’t have to see these girls in their prime
Be brought down by the worst kind of slime
I’m not about to sit here and become a silent mime
Afraid to to tell, afraid to chime
We cover society’s victims with a drape
And they play along
Covering every scar and scrape
It’d seem like the victims have no escape
From their abusers and from their “so-called” protector
Both of which take the girl and slut-sham, yell, and lecture
When what we ought to do is learn to respect her
What we need to do is
Get rid of the ape
That thinks that it can just tape
Shattered emotions back together like a broken string
The ape that takes the shape of a heroic man in a cape
If I could change one thing
I’d change rape.