Rape Culture Has Always Been Here. Collective Outrage Has Not.
*There is no trigger warning on this post intentionally. I believe being triggered is an important human experience that should be felt, noticed, and supported, not simply warned about as if it’s a bad thing. If it’s not a good time for you to read this, save it for later.
When I was a therapist in my twenties back in the early 2010s, I had no idea what rape culture was. Not a clue.
Oh, I knew sexual assault was a trauma I would someday have to treat as a therapist. But in my twenty-something white-woman wisdom, with my shiny grad degree in hand (from a program that didn't discuss this idea even once), I figured SA was fairly rare. This was in the times before the incredible social movements of #MeToo and #ChurchToo.
Being a young female therapist at a small private practice in the Chicago suburbs, I was given mostly young teen girls as my clients, for a period of about 4-7 years.
And, gentle reader, the education that I received about sexual assault from these clients was (unfortunately) the most comprehensive education I could ever have received.
And it’s not that I was given young clients whose presenting issues were about recovering from sexual violence. Nope, they were usually teen girls struggling with your garden-variety anxiety, depression, failing grades, maybe some self-injury or disordered eating thrown in there, too.
You know, the usual.
No one prepared me for what I experienced while I was treating these fairly typical mental health issues. Over the span of 7 years, I had to get GOOD at holding space for when these girls inevitably came to one of our weekly sessions confessing to me in tears:
“I need to tell you something, Priscilla”
“I don’t remember what happened. But I KNOW something bad happened to me, and no one will believe me.”
“I thought he loved me; why would he hurt me? Maybe he didn’t realize what he was doing.”
“Do you think it was rape? My mom said it wasn’t.”
“It can’t be rape if I don’t remember, right, Priscilla?”
“Do you think this makes me a slut now? Everyone is talking about it.”
I also learned what kinds of parents these girls had held a particular pattern for the larger collective of rape culture responses. Being a pattern-recognizing neurodivergent person, I found there were three kinds of parent responses that were most common when I would inevitably call a parent meeting to help my traumatized clients get some support and decide their next steps:
The Dismissive Parent: “This stuff happens sometimes; I remember what happens at college parties. She tends to stretch the truth; anyway, it’s too hard to know what really happened.”
The Scared/Shocked Parent: “How could this happen? We tried so hard to prevent things like this from happening.”
The Outraged Parent that protects their daughter: “What do we do next? Should we file charges? Who do we call first?”
Keep in mind: I’m practicing in a wealthy, white-dominant suburb of Chicago. The first two types of parents were the most common.
Very, very few parents were outraged. Sure, a lot were triggered, especially the dismissive and scared ones. I noticed that, too.
I learned to ask the dismissive and scared parents about their own history with sexual assault.
“Tell me, has anything like this happened to you? What was your experience with sexual violence as a teen?”
I was hoping to help them to find some curiosity and empathy for their daughter’s experience. Some of them tearfully admitted they had experienced violence too, and thankfully sought therapy at my suggestion. Those parents were able to engage in the grief process with their victimized child. But most parents were offended that I even asked the question.
I noticed something even more interesting:
The most dismissive parents and the most scared were…yep–victims of sexual violence themselves (some of this is guesswork on my end, but a decent number of parents did confirm this, though most ended up doubling down on their dismissiveness.
They doth protesteth too much, as Shakespeare would say.
More interestingly, I noticed two things about those rarer parents who were actually outraged:
1) - they either had worked on healing from their own SA experience,
OR 2) - it had luckily and truly never happened to them at all.
The parents’ own sexual violence history had absolutely everything to do with their reactions to hearing about their daughter’s sexual assault.
As for my reactions, I was so alarmed. I was also starting to become suspicious about what was left out of my graduate school training. Because the culture was clearly set, and I was quickly catching up. I saw it now–this was rape culture. I was a therapist, living in rape culture. Tolerance of sexual violence against girls was everywhere, and I was woefully (and likely intentionally) under-equipped to understand how to even start addressing this clearly widespread societal cancer ravaging the young men of our society.
Okay, so now it’s 2026, and I’m noticing something different than what I experienced as a young therapist in the 2010s.
We're…angry now??
Honestly, it’s a little weird for me.
The most recent case that showcases the gory details about the tolerance of rape culture is “the Cornel 7”, or, more accurately, to include the 50 other silent participants: “The Cornel 57”.
Here’s what’s bothering me about this. And it’s not just about the level of rage I’m noticing on the internet about it; in fact, I don’t think we’re angry enough yet. We can get angrier. I believe in us.
But it’s this:
Why now?
Rape culture is hardly newsworthy.
Maybe because we are losing respect for Ivy League institutions, like we have lost respect for many other trusted institutions in recent months.
Maybe the reality of rape culture is starting to finally dawn on some privileged people. Some white women. Maybe some of the men, too. Black and brown folks are hardly clutching their pearls in shock about any of this.
Maybe the fact that there have been zero prosecutions or any real investigations into some of the most sexually violent and soul-eradicating not-so-secret files to ever exist. And we’ve watched them all be continually excused–all because of privilege and power.
Maybe the fact that we elected a pedophile and rapist as President is actually having the effect it needs to. Rape culture has always been present, utterly despicable and under-prosecuted.
Maybe we’ve finally had enough.
Maybe there are FINALLY more outraged people than there are scared or dismissive people.
God, I hope it’s that.
Because I am hopeful about this rising anger I’m noticing in the collective. I genuinely wonder if our tolerance for rape has been the thing that has actually started to change. I have been WAITING, alongside other sexual assault survivors like myself, for MORE OUTRAGE.
But I’m not going to sit down because I feel hopeful.
I also know that long-term anger that has no action attached to it brings no change.
Unresolved anger brings depression and complacency. Anger needs a direction. We must call for justice. We must talk about it; we must teach our sons. We must tolerate our discomfort and name our previous silence for what it is–cowardice.
I learned to speak. Because I was not immediately outraged, like that third group of parents. I was scared. I didn’t know I had unnamed memories of sexual violence. But hearing about my client’s SA stories gave me courage to find my outraged voice. So I’m doing it again. I have some things to say to my readers:
Dads, your silence is deafening. DEAFENING. We all hear it. Use your voice. People will listen to you. Silence will not protect you anymore. No one is going to praise you for being a nice, non aggressive man anymore. We will rightfully judge you for being just like the other 50 men in that Cornel group chat who said nothing at all. Silent participants. We will keep our distance from you, because we know your silence is just as dangerous.
Moms, your defensiveness about your golden boys and protecting their sparkling futures is just not trendy anymore. Your pick-me vibes and clawing at proximity to male power is embarrassing and frankly - extremely violent to our daughters. Stop it. Your defensiveness may be protecting something old. What happened to you that you'd rather forget? Start there.
Finally, to my fellow sisters and brothers, all of us who are survivors of sexual violence: I have real hope about this new shift, I do not have more despair. And I’ve felt my fair share of despair about rape culture. But I believe we can create a new age for women and girls. We must become outraged protectors of vulnerable children, or they will be without protection in rape culture.
Be afraid if you notice this, but I challenge you to not ONLY be afraid. Take real breaks from social media as you need, identify your internal and mental health responses as you read about these stories. Get real support. Don’t ignore it.
Make it your intention that your rage, grief, and triggers have liberating expression. If you can, tell your story. Name the names. Create art from your pain, scream in your car, break some stuff outside. Let your outrage have space.
Of course, don’t speak about what happened to you if you are not ready, but don’t simply collapse because it feels like too much.
Make it your intention to work towards expression, expression, expression. You deserve to release what was violently done to you. Otherwise, the violence done to your body and your nervous system persists in your daily life in the form of depression, numbness, and panic. I truly believe outrage is the best answer for us survivors. If you can’t find your personal outrage, ask a good therapist for help with that. (It’s in there, trust me.)
Maybe our culture can change if we are outraged enough. Because outrage is never silent.
This is my standing declaration:
JUSTICE FOR JANE DOE (brave, courageous woman, protect her at all costs)
JUSTICE FOR NOLAN WELLS (the moms protecting those boys oughta be ashamed of themselves)
JUSTICE FOR DR. CHRISTINE FORD (brave, courageous woman who was publicly gaslit in front of the entire world, only to be rewarded with a rapist on the Supreme Court)
JUSTICE FOR ANITA HILL (first time this has happened in recent Supreme Court history.)
About the Author:
Priscilla Dean, LCPC, TTP, is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor and the founder of Evergreen Counseling in Wheaton, Illinois, a trauma-informed therapy practice she started in 2018.
She has worked with clients in the Wheaton area for 16 years. She specializes in developmental trauma and disordered eating, and she is a certified Transforming Touch practitioner, using a somatic approach for clients who haven't found relief in talk therapy alone. Priscilla is also a certified Enneagram teacher.
She believes trauma can heal when we let our pain be felt instead of pushing past it, and she is honest that she is still walking that path herself.
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