They believe her. They just don't care.

This is the part that hurts the most. All the evidence, all of the corroboration, all the expert testimony, all the likeable snow white victims in the world won’t make them do the right thing.

There could be video of the whole assault. Hell, he could confess! And it still wouldn’t be enough. Because it’s never been about whether they #believesurvivors or not. THEY JUST DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT SURVIVORS’ PAIN.

⚫ Because they are selfish and sexual assault survivors are inconvenient to their goals and their worldview.

⚫ Because they don’t value women enough to do the work of extending human compassion.

This is the sad reality that took me years as a young, optimistic sexologist to realize. Years and years of

⚫ "maybe they don’t understand"
⚫ “maybe they just need it explained this way”
⚫ "maybe they don’t know how common it is or how painful it is, so if we tell our stories and humanize it for them they will get it…“

…before finally it occurred to me that they understand perfectly fucking well. And they don’t care.
Btw: This "they” I reference isn’t just the Senate today. It’s the police. It’s college administrations. It’s the NFL. It’s the Catholic Church. It’s the news media. It’s every “nice guy” who seems like a perfectly normal rational functioning adult but is on Facebook saying “well I don’t know… she didn’t report it at the time…”

Because pretending be ignorant or judicious or “see both sides” makes you sound like less of a sociopath than that you’re simply cruel.
This is why I do the work that I do.
This is why WE NEED COMPASSION BASED SEXUALITY EDUCATION NOW.