No Accident

by Laura Bates

It’s not a cranberry-filled, sentimental celebration of American ego and colonialist brutality.

“The things that scare us are so very different from the things that scare them.”

“You’d never say, well, how was he supposed to know she didn’t want him to take her phone? It was right there in her pocket, he might have thought she wanted to give it to him—that’s why he robbed her. Why are we so willing to give a guy the benefit of the doubt when it’s rape?”

“And why couldn’t he take the time to damn well check?” May adds hotly. “If you’re not sure, it should be on you to make sure. The onus is on him to know for certain she wants it, not on her to find a way to fucking protest.”

“I just wanted him to know what it was like, to feel that same fear. The fear we all feel practically every fucking day. A kind of fear he might go his whole life without ever once experiencing.

“We’re supposed to decide that girls’ lives mean more than boys’ sports,”

“We should take the scars we don’t see as seriously as the ones we do.”