My So-Called Post-Feminist Life

Deborah Kogan has something epic to say:

Fast-forward to 1988: I am raped by an acquaintance the night before my graduation from college. The next morning, before donning cap and gown, I stumble into the University Health Services building to report the crime. I’m advised not to press charges. “They’ll smear you,” I’m told by the female psychologist assigned to my case. I don’t want to be smeared. I’ve got a life to live. Twenty-five years later, while watching CNN lament the effects of the Steubenville rape on two promising lives — the rapists’, not the victim’s — I’ll hold two competing thoughts: nothing has changed; I wish I’d been braver. I decide to Google my rapist’s name, something I’ve never done in the quarter-century since the crime. His promise, I note, has been duly fulfilled. He’s successful. He’s married — to a woman who recently spoke on a “Lean In” panel with Sheryl Sandberg.

Because life’s like that.

The whole thing is wow: “The author’s 2002 book about her career as a war photographer was titled “Shutterbabe” — against her wishes.” Don’t miss a word of it. Or a word of this other article, which is mostly about men (and a few women) who are really, really great and righteous.