Men Explain Things to Me

by Rebecca Solnit

Violence is one way to silence people, to deny their voice and their credibility, to assert your right to control over their right to exist.

Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender.

Clearly the ready availability of guns is a huge problem for the United States, but despite this availability to everyone, murder is still a crime committed by men 90 percent of the time.

What’s meant by “reproductive rights,” of course, is the right of women to control their own bodies. Didn’t I mention earlier that violence against women is a control issue?

young female athletes, unlike those male football players in Steubenville, aren’t likely to urinate on unconscious boys, let alone violate them and boast about it in YouTube videos and Twitter feeds.