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This is why we need to talk about sexual violence and social media

I wrote a piece about sexual violence and social media.

It seemed a fairly straight forward piece. A piece that barely mentioned the Rehtaeh Parsons case. Read it for yourself; you'll see that her story was but a blip in the entire piece.

It seems that my article made its way to the 'Defend the Boys' camp.

I assume that's what happened, because it's the only explanation for the following two e-mails in my inbox.

WARNING: THIS STUFF IS NASTY, VICTIM-BLAMING 101 CRAP. Please exercise self-care. Seriously. It's awful.

I omitted the two people's names because I had no idea who they were, so I'm assuming these are real people involved in the story. I did not feel it was fair to put those people on blast. But, it does tell me that the person who sent the e-mails must have some connection to the community in question.

For this e-mail, note the weak sauce apology and attempt to make it seem like they're just a 'truther' and they're doing me a favour. Never mind that they presumably read my original piece on my site which means they easily could have perused the rest of the site to see my work.

You want to know why sexual assault victims don't come forward? You want to know why we don't get justice? THIS is why.

Jesus Christ, people! Rehtaeh Parsons is dead. Sadly, the gossip about her is not.