The disregard for a woman’s voice that underlies sexual violence is inseparable from the disregard afterward if a woman goes to the police, the university authorities, her family, her church, the courts, to the hospital for a rape kit, and is ignored, discredited, blamed, shamed, disbelieved. They are both assaults on the full humanity and membership of a person in her society, and the devaluation in the latter arena enables the former. Sexual assault can only thrive in situations of unequal audibility, credibility, and consequence. This, far more than any other disparity, is the precondition
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