As grown-up as I believed I was, I didn’t have the power to stand up for myself or the experience to communicate what I wanted and needed, so I became a conduit for satisfying the needs of others and ended up miserable. When I was in high school, I dated an appalling-in-retrospect string of men […]
As a victim of childhood sexual abuse, and now a mother to a 7-year-old boy, one of my driving motivations is to prevent victimhood from becoming a family tradition. I was sexually abused as a young child. The trauma is a double wound—one for the actual assaults and another for growing up in an environment […]
One of the most important things I have learned is that rapists rarely act the part when they are not raping. Dear Dr. Camille Cosby, Forgive me the presumption of addressing you directly. If you do not mind, I would like to address you as Dr. Cosby. You earned your doctorate when you could have […]
We, as a culture, really don’t understand boys or men. Over the last month, a group of boys sexually assaulted other boys in Sayreville, New Jersey. They were football players and this was part of hazing new team members. The assaults occurred over a period of 10 days. After the principal cancelled the remainder of […]
This originally appeared on The Sex Positive Parent. Republished here with permission. The social order requires silence and looking away and not interfering, but when I see creepy men coming on to teenage girls, I say: Screw the social order. I just got home from my daily BART ride. I should be cooking dinner, but […]
