Jennifer Baumgardner, a Brooklyn writer has designed a simple T-shirt with a complicated message. The T-shirt shows a picture of a safe, with a tiny card inside which reads, "I was raped."

She hopes that the simple message will make an unassuming object, like the T-shirt, and open the sensitive topic [1] for everyday conversation. She says,

"So many people who’ve been raped tend to doubt the experience. I do think it’s often empowering for women and men to own that experience and divest themselves of some of the shame and secrecy of it — and realize that they’re not the ones that should be ashamed.”

Baumgardner also designed a T-shirt reading, "I had an abortion." When she test-wore the shirt past a group of young men she found, “I’d be afraid that it would invite the same derision and hostility that I associate with the rape." The insight that she still had those feelings and the fact that the T-shirt helped with them, she said, made the experience [2] worthwhile.

After all the comments this morning [3] about the judge's decision to outlaw the word "rape" from his courtroom, I'm curious: Is this an appropriate way to start discussion? Or is the forum of a T-shirt too casual for the topic?

Source [4]