It just never occurred to me that a school’s policy and student culture could make a big difference in the way I would experience my body while on campus. I didn’t think there was anything to choose about a sexual culture. I’d only ever known the one I grew up in. But it did matter, and in ways I wouldn’t have even predicted.

It just never occurred to me that a school’s policy and student culture could make a big difference in the way I would experience my body while on campus. I didn’t think there was anything to choose about a sexual culture. I’d only ever known the one I grew up in. But it did matter, and in ways I wouldn’t have even predicted.

But actual rapists, men who are usually known to (and often loved by) their victims? Men who are sometimes our sports heroes, political leaders, buddies, boyfriends and fathers? Evidence suggests we don't despise them nearly as much as we should.

I want a future where women and girls get to be the subject of their own sexuality, not the object of somebody else’s. That we are the main characters in our own play, not props in somebody else’s—which is how women’s sexuality is treated now. Whatever the outside attitudes about sexuality it’s always about somebody’s agenda for us, and I want a world where we can have our own.

Given the realities of the U.S. criminal justice system, the prosecution may be unable to salvage this case. But just because that system fails victims on the regular doesn't mean we have to, too. French commentators are already calling for DSK to jump back into the country's presidential race and ride a wave of sympathy into office. Really, the stakes are greater than even that political prize. If we accept the narrative that only perfect women are raped, we risk sacrificing justice not only for this woman, but for victims of sexual assault everywhere. After all, nobody's perfect.

Feminism is what I do with my life, it’s how I spend my days, it’s my job, it’s not just an opinion I have among many other opinions.