rape culture
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#MuteChrisBrown Too, Because He's Clearly Committed to Being Trash
In recent weeks, there’s been a lot of renewed talk about toxic masculinity, particularly amongst viewers of Surviving R. Kelly and the legions debating the necessity of Gillette’s controversial ad asking men to be accountable. In all of these dialogues, perhaps what has been most striking is how many men instinctively equate masculinity with toxic…
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Cops Sexually Assault At Least 100 Women Every Year and No One Talks About It
When discussing America’s police state, we often talk about “black bodies.” The conversation is peppered with words like “brutality” and “police violence.” But no one talks about another brutal act of violence committed by law enforcement figures. We have known about it for years but have mostly overlooked it. Everyone—including this writer—has the information but…
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Remy Ma, Bill Cosby and How Women Contribute to Rape Culture
At some point, we as women are going to have to stop being active participants in something that drags us down, keeps victims languishing and suffering in the dark, dismisses our stories and creates a climate where men like Bill Cosby, R. Kelly and Brett Kavanaugh can be accused and/or convicted of sexual assault and…
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D.C. Principal Mocked Student’s Sexual Assault Claim, Lawsuit Says
A Washington, D.C., high school principal was recorded mocking a student’s sexual assault claim made last June, according to a lawsuit and an audio recording obtained by the Washington Post. The girl allegedly went to Aqueelha James, principal of Roosevelt High School, to report that a male student forced her into a bathroom stall, began…
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#WhyIDidntReport: A List of Reasons for Every Time It Happened
There are a lot of reasons why a woman may not report when she has been sexually assaulted. It does not go without notice that most of these reasons would be completely misunderstood by most men, but totally reasonable to a woman. If you are a man, you should understand that a lot of the…
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President Rape Culture Has Spoken: Kavanaugh Is Totally Innocent
Donald Trump continued his streak of defending accused abusers while simultaneously attacking alleged victims this morning. Just before 9 a.m., Trump took to Twitter to speak his mind about Christine Blasey Ford’s request that the Federal Bureau of Investigations look into her claims that Judge Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both high…
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Do All of Your Clothes Have To Be Off for It To Be Considered Rape?
The state of California has laws that prohibit the unwanted touching of another person’s “intimate parts.” Per the California penal code, those parts include the “sexual organ, anus, groin, or buttocks of any person, and the breast of a female.” To violate the statute constitutes sexual assault, and a sexual assault that leads to “non-consensual…
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You Can’t Love and Support R. Kelly and Also Love Black Women and Children
For 24 years now (24!), R. Kelly’s behavior has been as essential to his place in the zeitgeist as his music. He married Aaliyah in 1994, which also happened to be my freshman year of high school. The infamous tape was leaked and distributed in 2002, when I was in college. Dave Chappelle’s “Piss on…