One year older, one year more jaded

It was my birthday the other day. I like my birthday. It's fun and I milk it for every drop. :) For example, when the security company came to the house to install our new system, I told him it was my birthday and got $30 off.

Been watching the news with a lot of disgust lately. Especially the Pickton thing. The media is sensationalizing it, sucking it for every last headline. I hate it. And finding out that he'd been arrested for attempted murder years before all these killings, and released because the woman he tried to kill was a prostitute and therefore, "not credible" just felt like a kick in the gut. I cannot fathom the pain that caused the families of his victims.

Listen to me: Prostitutes are people too. They know better than to report a rape because cops will not take them seriously. If a prostitute says, "This guy tried to kill me" and has the DAMN STAB WOUNDS to prove it, take her seriously.

You know, this week when Stockwell "Doris" Day was going on about under-reporting of crimes, he was on crack, but he was inadvertently right when it comes to sexual assaults. We do not report them. I was listening to CBC radio that afternoon, and they had on the statistician who did the survey on crime that Doris was misconstruing. Yes, there are tons of crimes that go unreported - mostly petty theft and minor crimes like that. But sexual assaults go unreported a lot.

The reasons for that are complex, including the victims feeling ashamed of what happened, scared of repercussions, just wanting to forget (as if that's possible), and last of all, what is really sad, is the reaction of the police. Police are very difficult to deal with after an assault. They often minimize it, mock it, ask assholish questions, make the victims feel even worse. Shit like this is more than enough to validate our opinions of police. And that's ordinary folx. People in the sex trade? Gah. I'm so sorry to be part of the society that treats them as less than human