sexual violence

She Said and Women Talking examine the collective power of women’s words for a MeToo era.

“We’re going to do what it takes,” says co-pastor Gloria White-Hammond, “to be our sister’s keeper.”

Ruth Everhart's book, Ruined: A Memoir, comes out today. It's a gripping story about sexual violence and looking at our theology in the midst of difficult realities.

I had a chance to talk with Ruth about the value of women, what it was like to write the memoir, and how we understand God's sovereignty and power in the midst of violence. 

Of all the violence on Game of Thrones, one scene from the fifth season stands out in public opinion as particularly horrific.

The shooting that rocked California last week raised questions about treating the mentally ill and why there are so many semi-automatic weapons on our streets. But what caught the nation's eye this time around was that the shooter made clear his motives: Twenty-two-year-old Elliot Rodger hated women. He wrote a manifesto announcing his intention to reap vengeance on women for denying him the sexual attention he believed was his entitlement.

Beverly Donofrio had just been “looking for a monastery to join, for Christ’s sake.” She had closed her laptop, having bookmarked religious communities she might write to, then had fallen into a deep sleep. During the night she was raped at knife point in her home in Mexico.

If you haven’t realized the urgent need for an expanded Violence Against Women Act, read today’s New York Times, where novelist Louise Erdrich restates the theme that runs through her powerful novel The Round House (reviewed in a previous post): Native American women are being battered and raped by non-native men, and they have no legal support for pursuing justice—because non-natives are immune from prosecution by tribal courts.

It's hard to imagine a more efficient way to rack up diverse denunciations than Rep. Todd Akin's approach in an interview on Sunday, when in one breath he both promoted a foul bit of junk science alleging that rape victims don't generally get pregnant (and thus don't need abortion services) and coined the term "legitimate rape." Pretty much everyone everywhere has condemned his comments, and rightly so.

A number of rape victims have written responses, including Shauna Prewitt, whose post at xoJane went viral and taught a lot of us something appalling that we didn't know.