I was interviewed by Zosia Bielski from the Globe and Mail, and our conversation is featured in Friday’s paper. She asked me some great questions about sexual violence against women, trauma, and recovery. She also wrote a second piece for Friday’s paper, which explores a number of issues connected to the recent media focus on rape culture. In this article she looks at various “outmoded messages” exhorting women to “cover up and drink less,” coming from the National Post’s Barbara Kay, “Princeton Mom” Susan Patton, and Slate’s Emily Yoffe. As Bielski says, these messages are an extreme form of risk reduction, which is “a contentious strategy that too often sounds like victim blaming.” Victim blaming is a corrosive and disturbing consequence of risk reduction strategies, and yet, it is only part of the problem. Risk reduction, as a strategy for preventing a particular outcome, only works when the person at risk is in control of the outcome. As such, as a strategy for curbing violence against women, it is a total failure. What’s more, these strategies are all aimed at ‘stranger rape’, which accounts for less than 20% of cases of sexual violence. Finally, by focusing on the individual victim, bystander, or even perpetrator, risk reduction strategies turn our attention away from the broader social, institutional, religious and cultural norms that allow for the worldwide pervasiveness of sexual violence against women.

One Hour in Paris is featured in Dianne Rinehart’s article in Wednesday’s Toronto Star. It is an important article about survivors of sexual violence coming forward and speaking publicly about their experiences. Rinehart does an excellent job exploring both the various challenges that women face in coming out as rape survivors as well as the personal and political benefits of doing so. The article also points to the disturbing resurgence of victim blaming that we’ve seen in some high-profile publications (notably, Emily Yoffe’s article in Slate) and also charts the recent debates over the existence of a rape culture (with references to Caroline Kitchens’ much maligned piece in Time and Zerlina Maxwell’s awesome hashtag revolution of a response). Rinehart also discusses a number of the organizational initiatives that are springing up to help women share their stores, including the inspirational The Voices and Faces Project and Eve Ensler’s powerful campaign One Billion Rising for Justice.