Disgraceful! Piers Morgan Tweets Shia LaBeouf Was Not Sexually Assaulted

In an interview with Dazed & Confused magazine, Shia LaBeouf reported?that he was raped by a woman during his #IAMSORRY performance art installation in Los Angeles.

LaBeouf stated that while he was still and silent for the art piece, a woman came in, whipped his legs, pulled off his clothes, and raped him.

Piers Morgan was quick to begin criticizing LaBeouf today, calling his claims ?truly pathetic.?

__________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

Morgan has continued to assert on Twitter throughout today that LaBeouf isn’t a ?real rape victim? and that he ?wasn’t raped? because ?he did nothing? to stop it.?He also insisted that if LaBeouf was raped, he must report to the police to be credible in his claim. He’s also rather perplexed that others are defending LaBeouf and his claims. Perhaps I can help him to understand why that might be so.

You see Mr. Morgan, those who have been victims of rape and sexual assault find your comments eerily familiar. Devaluing a victim’s claim by saying they are not ?real victims? and that they should have done something to prevent their own rape or insisting that a credible victim would have reported the attack sounds an awful lot like victim blaming and minimizing. Rape victims have been there, and many are still there today.

Furthermore, men have a far more difficult time disclosing instances of rape and sexual assault. Most report that it compromises their masculine identity to do so, whether it was a male or a female perpetrator. Particularly when a female has assaulted them, men struggle with messages that they should have enjoyed the act since men are supposed to have as much sex with as many women as they possibly can to be truly ?masculine,? and a woman can’t actually overpower a real man, can she? Your insistence upon calling LaBeouf a ?little man? and telling him to ?grow up? seems to correlate a bit too closely with those explanations men give when they say they don’t report sexual assault.

Finally, Mr. Morgan, I don’t know if you have noticed the messages coming from those brave souls who actually work as advocates for victims of rape and sexual assault. They are everywhere. You may not have taken the time to consider their messages and what they mean, so I will help you with that too. Rape is not defined by the presence of a ?no.? Rape is defined by the absence of a ?yes.? Many victims do not or can not?say ?no,? so rape is no longer defined in that way. The fact that this woman tested the limits of whether or not LaBeouf would move and break character and then performed sexual acts on his non-consenting body is rape. To tell a victim that he is not allowed to define it as so takes that much more consent away from him and undermines his ability to define his own experience.

There was a whole movement Mr. Morgan on Twitter over the summer. You know Twitter, don’t you? You have used it all day to cyberbully a victim, so you should. That movement was called #yesallwomen, and it involved many, many women coming together to discuss the ways in which women have to fear men. In other words, the hashtag represented the statement that not all men rape, but yes, all women have to fear rape. One of the major criticisms offered by men on the hashtag was that men experience rape as well, and narrowing our discussion to only female victims of rape made male victims invisible. Many said that our statistics (1 in 6 women, 1 in 33 men will be victims of rape and sexual assault in their lifetime) are inaccurate since men rarely report due to the extreme criticism they face when they do so.

A lot of what you are saying sir is only proving them right.

Let us know your thoughts at the Liberal America Facebook page. Sign up for our free daily newsletter to receive more great stories like this one.