How To Silence a Rape Apologist

Ebony Edwards-Ellis
5 min readMar 21, 2019
Rape apologist meme courtesy of Quickmeme

Full disclosure: I am not an expert. That is, I am not a sex crimes prosecutor, a cop working in Special Victims, an educator, an FBI profiler, a therapist who treats/studies sex offenders, a rape crisis counselor, or a sexual assault survivor. I am just a forty-two-year-old college dropout feminist who has been listening to rape apologia for my entire life. Or, more accurately, I am a woman who is fed up with dealing with people (mostly men) who push back on (non-controversial) statements like “men have no right to rape women.”

I’ve been getting this pushback my whole life. All women do, given that rape culture is a thing. Due to all the practice I’ve had, I’ve gotten pretty good at silencing the (mostly male) rape apologists. So below, I’ve listed a few of the more ridiculous rape apologist “arguments” I’ve heard and my rebuttals below:

1.) The False Accuser Rationale

Rape apologist: Women lie.When women accuse celebrities of rape, they’re usually doing it for attention/money.

Me: Oh, yeah? Name one of Cosby’s accusers. And while you’re at it, tell me the name of of Brock Turner’s accuser. And what was the name of the girl who accused those football players in Stuebenfield, Ohio of rape?

Rape apologist: Well, uh, women lie about being raped all the time. About 30%…

--

--

Ebony Edwards-Ellis

Author of "Former First Lady" and "Memoir of a Royal Consort." Twitter provocateur, aspiring shut-in, and newly minted Roosevelt Islander.