I’ve now read both the articles and I thought I would reply to this one. Your position now makes far more sense — and it’s one that should be more widely shared and read. Sadly, voices like yours get lost in the general confusion and endless back and forth of people who have a more misandrist agenda. Having worked as a social worker with trafficked children I can say that it’s admirable that you’re on here being as restrained and eloquent as you are — even if it did take 30 years of therapy.

The conflation of your experiences like yours with generalised misandry under one banner is what is consistently undermining the efficacy of survivors stories and the progress of feminism more widely.

You and I disagree on the ubiquity of rape culture, I think that is a nihilistic position to take — but, here’s the crucial thing, I haven’t walked a mile in your shoes and you haven’t in mine. We could debate it back and forth, but we’d ultimately just agree to disagree I suspect. I am optimistic for the future and think you should be too.

A long time ago, a friend sent me a list of ‘creeps that hollywood needed to cancel’ — the top of the list was of course Weinstein… but lower down the list were people like the guy from Game of Thrones, who made an off the cuff remark about riding around on horses all day raping and stabbing. I told my friend that conflating Weinstein and a whole bunch of far less serious stuff wasn’t a good idea. It allows those who oppose progress to throw everything out on a technicality.

This is what has happened at every juncture in this century… Louis CK, Aziz Ansari, Johnny Depp and now Joe Biden. Everyone has the point where they’re no longer as vocal about #MeToo as they once were and the whole thing loses momentum. Now real conversation has given way to puff pieces by Jessica Valenti which offer very little insight, plenty of animated misandry and no solutions — and so the world keeps on turning and becomes ever more more dangerous for women and not in the slighest bit safer.

And that’s profoundly sad, because the world missed an excellent opportunity to read stories like yours. I hope you find peace and catharsis through writing this story.

This has been genuinely interesting and enlightening and I’m glad we took the time to talk it out :o)