Informed

Reading Time: 5 minutes It is also the case that this is a way of rhetorically displacing the victim — if the wife and family are the injured parties, the woman who has brought forth the charge is understood as victimizing a woman and children too.

A great deal of empirical evidence has shown that people who commit acts of intimate and sexual violence often do it more than once. But it is also true that people can commit horrific acts of violence against others and still be good to those they love. The psychological and cultural inability to come to terms with that reality results in many victims being disbelieved and treated quite badly.

Reading Time: < 1 minute I didn’t want to get all jokey about sexual assault so this isn’t my typical video but I wanted to say something, especially about one particular aspect of this whole shitshow that’s been chapping my ass.

Reading Time: 5 minutes The hearing was a celebration of male anger ― the power of anger to bring men together, to reinforce their certainty about what is owed to them as men and, of course, to sweep women’s anger and pain to the side. Kavanaugh and the Republican senators rarely addressed Blasey or her credibility directly; rather confusingly, the party line was that she, too, was a victim, and that they bore no ill will toward her.

Reading Time: < 1 minute We asked for your thoughts on the hearing and the testimony given by Ford and Kavanaugh. The response was overwhelming. Several VICE News followers shared their own stories of surviving sexual assault. We’ll continue to share more of your reactions in the coming days. 

Reading Time: 4 minutes This week I heard a sexual assault victim recount that as her coworker voiced his doubt about the veracity of Dr. Ford’s story, she’d spoken up that she had a similar experience. Her co-worker’s response was “Oh! Well, I believe you, I just don’t believe her.” Not surprisingly this is painfully reminiscent of the people who said they absolutely would vote for a woman president, “just not that woman”. It’s so much easier to doubt “that woman” when she isn’t standing in front of you. But “that woman” is not just telling her story, she is telling our stories.

Our stories are believable, and that is exactly why a misogynistic society will always be determined to destroy our credibility because as long as our stories can be framed as lies the behavior of rape culture can continue.