“It’s, like, weird how a 27-year-old can, like, love a 13-year-old and do stuff?” said the 6th-grader. “It’s just crazy. She’s not a good person.” Last week, social media was abuzz with yet another story about a female teacher having sex with her underage male student: “Second student stood guard inside school while Arizona teacher […]
Realizing that you are “abnormal” according to social norms and popular culture and religion, knowing that people believe you have somehow chosen your “abnormality” and that you can therefore un-choose it, tends to mess with your head. CN: rape, abuse I am not yet a teenager. (No, I will not get more specific. Don’t ask.) […]
You are my art, my theatre, my story, my growth, my lesson learned. But you are not my secret. My mother always used to say our secrets made us sick. If I told a little white lie about the latest cafeteria meal, she’d tell me that my body was really the one who’d be sorry if […]
According to the Duggars’ beliefs, the ethic of consent does not carry any serious moral weight. In fact, failure to gain consent can be seen as sparing the other person since you are not leading them into the sin of sexual desire. To bring those of you who have been cozily ensconced under a rock […]
I cannot tell you how many times men have groped my butt, touched my breasts, pulled up my skirt and tried to put their fingers in my panties all while dancing. Let me paint the scene for you: It’s the weekend and college parties are the highlight. You enter a room and the smell of […]
Seventeen years later, I finally have the courage to say, “I am a sexual abuse survivor,” and I need to heal myself. Trigger warning: This piece contains details about rape, sexual assault, and violence. The National Crime Victimization Survey recently revealed that 38% of victims of rape and sexual violence were men. Since men are often silent […]
This originally appeared on I Am Undergrounded. Republished here with permission. If one thing has always been clear to me, even when everything else in my life was a chaotic blur, it’s this: It takes a village to harm a child. My mother is sitting across from me warming her hands with a cup of tea […]
