Lunar Obverse

We’re protesting rape culture. We’re protesting rape apologism. We’re protesting the silencing of rape victims; we’re protesting a society that automatically disbelieves and seeks to discredit women who report assaults. We’re protesting all of that. And do you want to know what rape culture, rape apologism, the silencing and discrediting of women who report attacks on them, looks like? It looks like you telling a man that you’ve been attacked, and him asking you for proof that you’ve been attacked, and you providing him with that proof — actual, verifiable, indisputable proof, not just a little of it, but multiple proofs, if you are lucky enough to have them — that it happened to you, and that man responding to you with the word “if.” “If” it happened. “If” it is happening. When you have just given him proof that it happened, it happens, it is happening right now.

None of us in #MooreandMe doubted that Keith Olbermann had been told to kill himself. None of us did. When we saw proof, we believed it, and we condemned it instantly. We never dehumanized him to such an extent that we would refuse to believe him if he was being verbally assaulted, and we never hesitated to say that verbally assaulting Keith Olbermann was wrong. We were not hypocrites. But when I told Keith Olbermann I was being attacked, he asked for proof, and I gave it, and I said I had more proof I could give him, and he still refused to acknowledge it, he still talked about “if.”

THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT RAPE CULTURE CONSISTS OF. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT WE ARE PROTESTING.