to directly talk to him about what happened, because -- even though we never talked directly about it -- I saw evidence that he felt terrible about it, and I was sure that I could devastate him by talking about it more. But still... I should have talked to him. I also feel as though I should have supported her more, but I don't know what I could have said. There were people who told her that she shouldn't be having a consensual relationship with her rapist. It seemed wrong to tell her that -- I felt like it eroded her agency, attacked her right to choose -- so I didn't say it. If I had said it, though, would that have been helpful to her? What could I have done to be a better resource for her? Especially given that I was such close friends with him? I was young(er), but that's no excuse. Then again, what am I excusing? I did nothing. But I should have done more. Now, again, I have a friend, a good friend, who assaulted someone. It's a friend in the local S&M community. I don't know the survivor at all. I have to talk to my friend about it, but what do I say, and what happens next? Feminism instructs us that we should listen to the voices of survivors, that community mores and community condemnation are what stops rape from happening. I believe these things to be true; and there are people close to me who have survived rape, and I really want to make sure I'm doing everything I can to ensure that rape stops happening. But I intensely wish that I had more guidance on what exactly to say, how exactly to act, to change the mores. I emailed my ex-boyfriend Mr. Chastity for advice, because he's got one of the finest ethical minds I've ever been lucky enough to engage with. Here's part of what he wrote back: I've tried to distill your messages into a few questions, and I ended up with "How does one parse a situation in which a friend, and an otherwise noble person, seems to have done serious wrong?" and "What are a person's moral obligations in this case?" Nobody is compos