rape culture
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Bill Cosby Wasn’t ‘Publicly Lynched’; He Hanged Himself
Just hours after Bill Cosby was found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault, his publicists were busy making the media rounds. Publicist Andrew Wyatt called his recent guilty verdict a “public lynching,” and publicist Ebonee Benson invoked the story of Emmett Till—whose accuser, Carolyn Bryant Donham, admitted that she lied, which resulted in…
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The Voices Missing From #MeToo: Experiencing Sexual Assault as Butch
He was my dude, my nigga, my friend. The details of that night are mine to keep, a privacy I allow myself, even as I often openly share my childhood sexual trauma. This particular violation—rape—came at a crossroads in my life. I was figuring out two things: blackness and butchness, and trying hard to do…
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We Don’t Love Men Like Fabolous. We Just Hate Women
If there’s a takeaway from the revelation of and the reaction to Fabolous’ abuse of Emily Bustamante, his longtime girlfriend and the mother of his two children, it’s that there are no fresh takeaways from it. We should know by now not to allow a man’s laid-back public persona to make us assume he’s not…
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Playing the Blame Game: Consent Is Both Simpler and More Complicated Than You Think
He liked me. I liked him back. I exchanged my phone number for his beeper information, and it was a go. In the days of analog communication—before inboxes and DMs—that is what a hookup entailed. His responses to my pages were timely, and he didn’t mind spending countless hours discussing hip-hop. I was digging Ghostface.…
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The Conversation About Aziz Ansari Is an Uncomfortable Mess, Which Is Why We Need to Have It
If there were one word to accurately describe the now-much-discussed piece in which a young woman accuses Aziz Ansari of sexual assault on their first date, it would be “messy.” What’s laid in front of readers is an awkward and, at times, bare account of how the date devolved into a veritable tug-of-war of sexual…
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Thoughts Can Do Harm: In Defense of ‘Policing’ Our Fantasies
I wanted to kill my boyfriend in ways that let me observe his suffering and return the power in our relationship to my hands. The thought crossed my mind in the heat of an argument. It is a dangerous, albeit relatable, thought for many people who have experienced romantic love. Although I will not commit…
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What Well-Meaning Men Don’t Understand When It Comes to Life as a Woman
It seems we can’t go but a few days without hearing about another famous man’s name being linked to sexual harassment allegations. This has led to conversations from well-meaning men who don’t understand the prevalence of the threat of harassment. Well-meaning men have asked everything from the stupid, “Do I need to apologize to every…
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How, if You’re a Man, to Deal With the Fact That You’re Probably Trash
The one thing I keep coming back to when thinking about Louis C.K. now isn’t the bizarre and abusive sexual habits revealed, in detail, last week by the New York Times—repeated forms of sexual misconduct that confirm the long-standing rumors about him and validate platforms such as Gawker, which first reported on this several years…
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Watch: Gabrielle Union Gets Candid About Her Own Rape
As he raped me, I began to hover over myself. I could see the whole room. I looked at that poor crying girl as she was being raped and thought, “Things like this happen to bad people. Things like this don’t happen to people like me.” My psyche, my body, my soul, simply could not…