Ashley Judd Pens Powerful Essay About Violence Towards Women, References Own Experience with Rape

Ashley Judd just penned a powerful essay about the sexual violence she received on Twitter over the weekend after posting a competitive tweet pertaining a basketball game.

“During a conference championship game on Sunday, I posted a comment to Twitter that some found unsportsmanlike….The volume of hatred that exploded at me in response was staggering,” the 46-year-old actress wrote in an essay for Mic.com.

“I routinely cope with tweets that sexualize, objectify, insult, degrade and even physically threaten me. I have already – recently, in fact – looked into what is legally actionable in light of such abuse, and have supplied Twitter with scores of reports about the horrifying content on its platform. But this particular tsunami of gender-based violence and misogyny flooding my Twitter feed was overwhelming,” Ashley added.

“What happened to me is the devastating social norm experienced by millions of girls and women on the Internet. Online harassers use the slightest excuse (or no excuse at all) to dismember our personhood….The themes embedded in this particular incident reflect the universal ways we talk about girls and women. When they are violated, we ask, why was she wearing that? What was she doing in that neighborhood? What time was it? Had she been drinking?,” Ashley wrote.

Ashley also detailed that she has been the victim of sexual violence. “The summer of 1984 was tough for me. I experienced two rapes by an adult and systematic molestation from another adult, who also had another man in the room watching (I now understand this was to ensure he had a witness, in order to undermine me in the event I tried to report the incident). I have done purgative, cathartic work on those particular acts of violence. The nature of recovering from trauma is that it can be ongoing, with deeper levels of healing and freedom coming with indefatigable persistence to keep chipping away at it.”

Read her whole essay here.