Laurie Penny, on her rape.
This probably doesn’t need any sort of signal boost, but I thought I’d do my little part to keep it circulating, because the topic means something to me. This is an important post, because it really makes something clear: until we let go of the illusions that a) nice guys don’t rape, and b) anyone who commits rape is totally incapable of being a nice guy in other parts of their life, we will never be able to have a proper grown up conversation about the topic. We must be able to understand that rape can be as much accident as malice, and that does not diminish the pain of the victims. We must let go of the urge to say “This person wouldn’t do that, he’s too nice, the girl must be lying”. It is possible for a person to be nice, *and* to have done that. Rape does not obliterate niceness, any more than niceness excuses rape.