Rae’s Rules to Remember #30: People are NOT Property

I was scrolling through my Twitter feed and came across a CNN post titled:

“Pakistani woman dies after being beaten and set on fire for rejecting a marriage proposal”

Yeah… you read that correctly.

I don’t even know where to begin right now. I am livid. I am infuriated. I am livid. I am fucking disgusted.

To make all of this worse (just when you thought it was impossible) she was only 18. She was a child. At the time of the attack, she was home babysitting her 5-year-old sister while the rest of their family was away. And it wasn’t just one person that did this to her. There were four of them. Four men stormed into her home, beat her, and set her on fire.

Another story that I heard recently was that a man flagged down two women in a car. He starts talking to one of them and flirting, and because she rejected his advances he opened fire on them. The woman’s friend had her daughter in the backseat. So now a three year old girl is fighting for her life because a man doesn’t know how to deal with being told no.

I know that not all men are like this and not all women are treated this way. I also know that women could be the attackers, or that this could happen with people who are gender non-conforming. None of that really matters right now. None of that could ever make this okay. Thinking that you have the right to end someone’s life because they tell you no, basically says that you think you have some sort of entitlement that doesn’t actually exist.

You NEVER have the right to another human beings body or their life.

There are 7 billion people on this planet. One telling you “no” is not the end of the world. Yeah rejection hurts but its a part of life.

You are not entitled. Another human being is not your fucking property, so the next time that someone tells you “no,” get the fuck over yourself and move on.