rape culture

I know he did not finish our program duration. I know that I finished the program with no friends, and very few people who even believed me. I consider myself very lucky to have survived the situation with mostly just a bruised ego, but I will always feel guilty.

The tale of women faking the big O has been around forever, and is often bandied about as a joke. But when it becomes an act of self protection, it is a massive negotiation on a woman's sexuality.

My story isn’t meant to hold a mirror to society and say, “You, too, can be strong like me.” It’s meant to hold a mirror to society and say, “You, too, are complicit in rape culture. Let’s work on that.”

Dear Men’s Fitness, We read your “How to turn a ‘no’ into a ‘yes'” post yesterday [as of writing], and noticed a few rogue errors. Considering we have an office full of women, we thought we’d give you some handy advice on how to REALLY “turn things around” when one of us laydeez is apparently a total B and has the audacity to reject you.

As moms and dads, we probably don’t talk directly about rape to kids, at least not until they’re older. But we’re still sending messages about sex and consent all the time. Because of that, we need to make sure we’re not teaching them some very dangerous lessons, even if just by accident.

I felt unique in my passion for martial arts, my affinity for Call of Duty, my go-with-the-flow attitude toward boyish adventures. I wanted to be “one of the guys,” while still retaining the distinction of my sexuality. I longed to be the quintessential cool girl — desirable yet approachable. But in retrospect, all that really amounted to internalized misogyny.

For more than 20 years, I believed I was a slut. A shameful, vile, one-time slut, but a slut all the same. It was you, Mr White Canterbury shorts, that led me to believe this. But, since reading the letter from Brock Turner’s victim, I realized, what you did, Mr White Canterbury Shorts, was in fact rape.

[N]o one held my molester down and called the police for what he did to me. He was quietly escorted away, and over the course of a few months, the whispers of support turned into accusations.