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Spotlight on Guante

I'm late to the party, but I just discovered Guante. His poem "Ten Responses to the Phrase Man Up" has been viewed over half a million times and will be published in the Button Poetry anthology "Viral". I heard that poem first, and it got me hooked, but his poem "Action" truly moved me.


"Rape Culture is silence." I don't think I've ever heard a more perfect definition of Rape Culture the one he gives in this poem. It is silence. It's us not having the conversations we should be having with our friends and our siblings and our kids. We should be telling our girlfriends to stop slut-shaming and our guy friends to stop using violent terms for sex. We should be telling our kids about enthusiastic consent. ("Consent is not the absence of a no. It's the presence of a yes.") Rape Culture is perpetuated by our silence, by our fear of the potential social isolation that comes from standing up for what's right. Well whatever. I'd rather lose a friend than my integrity.

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