Setting: A conference room in a Brooklyn hospital. There is a circle of chairs, but only two have women sitting in them, making introductions. One woman is 31, fat, with an Alternative Lifestyle Haircut, and biracial: Margaret E.I. The other woman is 18, thin, white with bobbed brown hair, and wears a remarkably preserved vintage dress. Also...she seems to be flickering in and
My father molested me. He wasn’t the worst molester in the world, or even a particularly dedicated one (his other interests - choir, hiking, his compost heap – got in the way), but he did it and two years ago I told the police. I learned a lot that year. For example, did you know that a sex offender isn’t necessarily charged according to the most current Sexual Offences Act? They’re charged according to the…
It’s February 2014. Thanks to a number of survivor-activists, the media has thrust the issue of sexual assault on college campuses into the mainstream. The Department of Education has received federal complaints against, investigated, and/or is in the process of investigating numerous American colleges and universities, including Yale, UNC, USC, Occidental, Dartmouth, UConn, Emerson, Amherst, Carnegie Mellon, Hanover College, and Penn State over…
Last week I got an email from Jesse Lerner-Kinglake at Just Detention International, a health and human rights organization that "seeks to end sexual abuse in all forms of detention." She thought Toast readers might be interested in participating in their holiday campaign to send letters and cards to prisoners who have experienced sexual assault. Last year, JDI delivered 10,000+ unique holiday messages to incarcerated survivors – a record total that we hope to surpass…
A strange thing happened on October 8th. Commentary began to circulate about an interview with Chris Brown in the Guardian, propelled by the implications of an offhand reference he made to his own sexual history. Brown described his first sexual encounter at the age of eight with a teenage girl. The reaction itself, originating largely from a Flavorwire response to the interview, arrived on a Tuesday, a full four days after the interview was…
There are many things I’ve done in my life that I am not proud of. I’ve lied. I’ve stolen. I’ve misled boyfriends regarding the extent of my interest in jazz-fusion music. But I am perhaps least proud of a phase I had in my early twenties, when I became hooked on storefront psychics. Alone or with similarly miserable girlfriends, I walked into their offices—neon sign, red flocked velvet wallpaper, almost always located within stumbling distance…
