It can be difficult for those who have never experienced sexual violence to understand and address the pain of survivors. […]
Shame and Shearing: The Politics of Women’s Hair in Independence-Era Ireland
[gblockquote]The mother pleaded with them and asked them if they had daughters or sisters of their own. Without answering they […]
Najila and Neymar; or, The Normalization of Violence against Women in Brazil
You may have heard of Neymar, Brazil’s soccer darling.1 With the speed and skill to rival the all-time greats, he’s […]
Teaching Abélard and Héloïse
One of the wearying inevitabilities of 2018 was that even the most cursory glance at the news was likely to […]
The Privilege of Despair
A preternatural calm settled over me on Saturday afternoon as I heard the news of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the […]
Demanding to Be Heard: African American Women’s Voices from Slave Narratives to #MeToo
The #Metoo movement has made public what women have long known: that sexual assault and harassment are endemic in many […]
Don’t Bring that Anti-Choice Nonsense to the #MeToo Movement, Peggy Noonan
There have been any number of smart, critical takes on the #MeToo movement and the wave of sexual harassment allegations […]
Netflix’s Jessica Jones as a Story of Resiliency
Modern television is not known for its nuanced portrayal of rape and sexual violence. Much of the recent discussion about […]
Worlds of Rape, Words of Rape
Stories of rape again fill the news. Rolling Stone featured an article by Sabrina Rubin Erdely about University of Virginia’s responses […]
This is the Culture of Sexual Violence
There are two family pictures in a box of photographs that are the only few I have of my father and me. My mother always told me my father doted on me and I was definitely becoming “daddy’s little girl.” Yet, the images of a seemingly happy family are overshadowed by the knowledge that at the time these two pictures were taken, my father had or was raping his stepdaughter: my teenage sister.