Miscommunication. Misunderstanding. All Misnomers for the same damn thing. — A man pulls me to the floor. I let him. I am drunk. I have not eaten more than two granola bars in two days. We are in a well-lit area, the floor of a hotel crowded with twentysomethings, Birthright participants like us. …

For Men (and Everyone Else) — We take the Ten Commandments as seriously as religion. We follow them as though they were a sign from G-D that He loves us and wants us to be happy. We treat them like a Covenant that we must refer back to every single day of our lives to make…

When I was a child, I thought it was the clothes. — When I was a child, I thought it was the clothes. The girls in my class who were safe? They all seemed to have the same clothes. They wore glitter nail polish and jelly sandals, hoop earrings and the same short black skirt. …

Rape killed the best woman I’ve ever known, so no. I’m still not over it. — My friend killed herself, and for the longest time I thought it was my fault. That night, she was drinking. D was always drinking, by then. She drank during the day. She drank all night long. She drank and sometimes she popped pills, but why would I worry about that…

Those little obnoxious truths hiding in plain sight — None of us were there. None of us know what really happened. However, there are some things we absolutely know for certain, and most of y’all are getting it wrong. Johnny Depp most certainly does have a history of violence. Magazines used to write oh-so-cute features about how Johnny Depp…

For Girls Whose Mothers Did Not Mother Us — When I was eight, my mother took me roller skating. I used to love to roller skate when I was young. I would skate faster and faster around the ring, losing myself in the latest pop songs, pretending I had no body. Pretending I was all emotion and no heart. …

What is love all about, anyway? — When I was a mermaid and he was a handsome prince, I fell in love. I fell in love with a man I barely knew. I fell in love because I was looking for freedom for just one night. I fell in love like I was looking for a way…

Perseus murdered her to save his society from accountability — In this infamous 18-foot statue, the ‘hero’ Perseus stands on Medusa’s naked, decapitated body. Her severed head swings from his left hand. Most of us learned in middle school that Medusa was despised by the Greeks for her ugliness, her solitude, her irate feminism. “She could turn a man to…

If it happened and you didn’t want it to, it was sexual assault — He stuck his hand down my pants without asking. He put his hand on my underwear, and I did not want him to. When I told him no, he screamed at me for being “frigid,” “sexually repressed.” The wrong kind of girl. Men who don’t let women say no are…