Helen W Mallon
1 min readApr 18, 2019

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Ed, you bring up an interesting point. Why would a woman, 20 years later, ‘suddenly’ decide that a prior sexual encounter was abusive? When I was in a sexually exploitive relationship long ago, I didn’t want to admit that I was a victim. I thought I was doing something liberating in its transgression. Actually, what was being transgressed was not only my body, but my sense of self worth. As a teenager and young woman, I thought that being used sexually by men proved that I could be popular, socially worthy— which speaks to how problematic it is that our culture rewards both males and females for predator/prey behavior. #MeToo is changing that paradigm, and it’s going to take a long time to work out the kinks. It has to become the norm that women (and men) engage in mutual consent. Under the old paradigm, women were not supposed to question their silence. #MeToo gives us permission to do that, and, yes, to look again at prior sexual encounters in the light of mutual responsibility. If we don’t call out bad behavior, how is anything going to change?

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Helen W Mallon
Helen W Mallon

Written by Helen W Mallon

Writing in the space of healing and spirituality.

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