Poem: She Was Asking For It (Never Again)

Poem:  She Was Asking For It (Never Again)

By Ajax the Great (Pete Jackson)

(FIVE-ALARM TRIGGER WARNING:  rape and other violence against women, current and historical atrocities, misogyny, racism, antisemitism, genocide, gynocide)

A young woman was raped the other day

Like so many others every day

She was apparently "no angel"

She was a "wild party girl" who "broke all the rules"

What is your first thought, my friends

When you hear this horrible news?

I would hazard a guess you would give a stock answer:

"You know she was asking for it, right?"

I bet you would say the same 

About the Rape of the Sabine Women

Upon which Rome's (vain)glory was founded

They were asking for it too, right?

Would you say the same about the millions of women

Who were murdered, tortured, and raped 

During the Inquisition and the Burning Times?

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the First Nations women

Who were murdered, tortured, and raped

In the name of Manifest Destiny 

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the transatlantic slave trade?

You know the women didn't knock themselves up 

Forced to breed more "black ivory" for Master

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the women victims of the Spanish Civil War

Two terrors, Red and White 

Two sides of the same evil coin

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the very literal Rape of Nanjing

Mass murder, mass rape, and mass torture 

In the name of the Empire of the Rising Sun

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the Jews and countless others

During the Holocaust and otherwise 

Half of six million is three million women

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the devil with whom the Allies made a deal

A devil named Joseph Stalin

Whose army raped countless civilian women 

They were asking for it too, right?

Revenge for genocide tastes sweet at first

Then leaves a very bitter aftertaste 

Pay it forward, its name is Nakba, 1948

They were asking for it too, right?

Rape is the gift that keeps on giving

Cycle of violence, see October 7, 2023

A new day that will live in infamy

#MeToo unless you're a Jew, right?

A taste of the enemy's own medicine 

Becomes an overdose in the ruins of Gaza

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind

If everyone is asking for it, then who isn't?

Male desecration of the Sacred Feminine 

Sure as hell knows no bounds

The banality of evil writ very, very large

All masked by, "they were asking for it"

The Keystone Lie is thus laid waste

And with it, the whole stack of lies

Has now collapsed faster than you can say,

You guessed it:  "They were asking for it"

So let me ask you one more time again

About the young woman who was raped

Who was supposedly "no angel"

What is your answer now?

Because if your answer to her now

Is anything other than "NEVER AGAIN!"

With NO asterisks or qualifications

Then you, too, must be "asking for it".

(Mic drop)

ALTERNATE ABRIDGED VERSION:

Replace stanzas 11, 12, and 13 with the following two generic stanzas if one feels it is still too soon to include any references to current/recent events in the Middle East:

Revenge for genocide tastes sweet at first

Then leaves a very bitter aftertaste 

Rape is the gift that keeps on giving

They were asking for it too, right?

A taste of the enemy's own medicine 

Becomes an overdose in the ruins of war

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind

If everyone is asking for it, then who isn't?