To move forward, we’ll need to admit that the problem doesn’t lie with a few bad apple abusers but with a whole culture that imagines that women don’t really have sexual desire, that we need to be cajoled, persuaded, seduced, manipulated, blackmailed or even outright forced into it. There will be need to be complicated and prolonged conversations between young men and young women about what constitutes consent, what is an abuse of power, why we encourage men — who are already taller, stronger, more muscled — to be the sexual aggressors, while still presuming that girls will make themselves pretty and wait around to be asked. These prolonged conversations … Continue reading Naomi Alderman