‘Kiran wore a rather fabulous sparkly green blouse on the day we spent together. She took me to Gokulnagar, where she and other sex workers live and work in colourful houses set in a row backing on to an undeveloped parcel of land. It was a peaceful morning scene, with kids running around, smells of cooking and washing, women clustered around a sleeping newborn baby. The baby was so cute I pulled out my camera to take a picture, only to be smacked down. It’s bad luck to take pictures of babies with their eyes closed.’

An extract from What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape by Sohaila Abdulali was selected by JFA Human Rights Journal and featured on their platform. Visit JFA here and read the extract in full.

‘A woman walks into a hardware store. It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it’s actually the beginning of one of the videos made by the “It’s On Us” campaign to demonstrate just how cracked some of our justifications for rape are.’

Bookstagrammer @iambookaanan on What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape by Sohaila Abdulali.

The campaign video shared by @iambookaanan can be watched in full HERE.

Buy What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape via myriadeditions.com.

Sohaila talks about Indian brothels, trauma dentists in Australia, rape survivors and the new normal. Thank you to Revolution Books in New York who arranged this online event. Watch again here.

Sohaila Abdulali joins fellow author Ashwini Desphpande with straight-forward and urgent measure governments can put in place to curb domestic abuse and sexual violence during the global lockdown.

– There is a shadow pandemic on the rise and it is following the trail of the spread of COVID19 from China to Europe and the USA – rising cases of domestic abuse against women.

– In India the National Commission of Women has seen a spike in reported cases of domestic abuse during the lockdown. This is worrying particularly because there is massive underreporting of domestic abuse in India.

– Underreporting occurs because women are scared, lack resources and/or self-confidence, don’t know about hotlines, are culturally conditioned to believe abuse is acceptable. Data from the National Family Health Survey revealed that 52% of women think it is okay for their husbands to beat them up. In contrast, 42% of the men think beating their wives is par for the course.

Read their article in full here.

Sohaila Abdulali, author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape, talks to much-heralded US podcast, Tell Me About Your Father about growing up in an eccentric, upper-class Muslim family in India and how her father played a central role her in recovery from a sexual assault when she was a teenager.

Listen again now.

Sohaila Abdulali is interviewed by Elle magazine to celebrate the publication of What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape by Mundi (Turkish edition).

Paola Cortes delves into What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape by Sohaila Abdulali for Rosa Distrito, highlighting her favourite passages.

‘Why don’t you talk about rape? Why not remove the taboo from the topic and finally accept that the violation continues due to the reluctance to speak clearly and clearly about it? Why the fear of authorities, teachers and parents to treat it?’

Read more HERE.

Ruth van der Kolk wrote an article for Nederlands Dagblad, focusing it on Sohaila Abdulali’s integral work towards influencing and challenging the way we discuss rape and sexual abuse. You can read it in full HERE. Sohaila’s book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape was published in 2018 and is available now.

The Tribune India on Houston and Colorado Jaipur Literature Festivals. Both festivals featured author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape, Sohaila Abdulali, as guest speaker.

“JLF brings together speakers from the Occident and the Orient. We discuss and debate issues that may emerge from the primary theme of the book and place these issues within the context of local, national, and international perspectives,” Sanjoy Roy, festival producer.

Both U.S. Jaipur Literature Festivals follow the main literary event which took part this January in India, at which Sohaila also spoke.

 Sohaila Abdulali was recently invited to discuss sexual assault with Catriona Morton, writer and sexual assault survivor, on BBC Radio 5. In this article, Dazed the value of creating platforms which support survivors, offering safe and encouraging spaces to talk about sexual abuse and how Catriona’s new podcast, After: Surviving Sexual Assault has created just that. The article highlights Sohaila’s book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape to underline the value of conversation.

Sohaila Abdulali recently toured her book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape, to the Netherlands and the UK for a set of talks and signings. We’re grateful to photographer Lisa Lee for taking photographs at Sohaila’s event at Waterstones Tottenham Court Road, where she was in conversation with author and founder of Clear Lines Festival, Winnie M. Li.

 Sohaila Abdulali was invited to talk with social affairs editor Jackie Long live on Channel 4 News. They touch on victim blaming, speaking out and how our attitude to rape is changing. Watch in full HERE.

‘In an interview with VEJA, Sohaila Abdulali described the situation as a rape of Bollywood (a kind of Hollywood in India), with violence, aggressive men and death threats. But, on a daily basis, the most common cases are those caused by partners. “I do not believe all men are capable of raping. For soldiers, who use abuse as a war crime, it can be part of a function. In a relationship, it can be part of the dynamic, the will to have sex. What I know is that it’s a choice. It is not something natural, it is not something that men can not avoid, as if it were a biological impulse. They can avoid yes. They can control themselves, ” she said.’

Read more on their website.

 Dee Dag shares 8 feminist quotes by Muslim writers which she has collected over the years  for Book Riot. She includes an extract of What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape by Sohaila Abdulali.

“Who gets raped? Who do we think gets raped? Are girls who can shit and vomit on command immune? What about sex workers? Even if we acknowledge that anyone can be raped, who deserves to be raped? When are we willing to call it rape? At what point do you lose sympathy of your peers? When you’ve drunk too much, when you’ve had sex with x number of men in the past, when you’re just not a nice person? … Maybe acknowledging that all sorts of women get raped by all sorts of men messes too much with the comfortable narrative that says only good girls get raped. Oh, but it also says good girls don’t get raped. Both these things can’t be true, and sex workers aren’t good girls, so how can they be raped, and if they’re raped, they’re human and hurt, and we can’t have that. So let’s just shut our eyes and maybe the whole confusing thing will go away.”

 Brandeis Magazine feature What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape by Sohaila Abdulali, including an abridged excerpt from the book in which Sohaila questions how we heal from rape, and if a world without rape possible.

Yes! Magazine featured an excerpt from What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape by Sohaila Abdulali on their website. Have a read HERE.

Sohaila Abdulali on BDC News: ‘Let’s get real – I have yet to see a single woman anywhere actually gain anything by pointing the finger at a rapist or harasser. So let us accord women speaking out about sexual abuse at least the respect of not starting with the fear that they are out to get men. Historically, in every culture, there is one group that has consistendly lied about rape: Rapists.’ Read in full here. 

Sudha Kumar reports from the All About Women Festival at Sydney Opera House, featuring Sohaila Abdulali, author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape.

‘What #MeToo has done is crumbled the walls that made sexual harassment of all kinds taboo. Today it is acceptable to talk about it. You are listened to. There is engagement.’ Read more here.

Sohaila Abdulali is author of the moment on The New Press, featuring in their Author Spotlight.

‘I’ve told stories both of people who have found forgiveness, and of people who carry rage like a hot stone in their chests. Funnily enough, I’m not sure there’s always a tension between the two. If the ultimate aim is to find peace for yourself, then both revenge and mercy are tools you have. Use whatever works. I’m not advocating going out and creating mayhem, but healthy anger is no bad thing.’

Read the entire interview over on The New Press website.

More than a year in, #metoo has held some powerful men to account. But has it gone far enough, and what are the next steps? Explore how the #metoo movement must evolve to represent women worldwide. This particular discussion from All About Women 2019 features Michelle Obama’s former Chief of Staff Tina Tchen, New York Times journalist Emily Steel and author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape Sohaila Abdulali. With Lenore Taylor of Guardian Australia they reflect on the wins of the movement so far and how to create longlasting change.

Rakuten Overdrive recommends What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape in a new reading list. Read the full list here.

Sohaila Abdulali in conversation with Jane Gilmore at the Wheeler Centre for their #MeToo, Year Two Festival.

The Sunday Morning Herald shares insights from All About Women Festival, held at Sydney Opera House, in which author Sohaila Abdulali featured.

The #MeToo movement exposed hundreds of predators, but the exposition of sexual harassment, assault, and misconduct isn’t enough. In the #MeToo: Year Two discussion, author Sohaila Abdulali said: “It’s fantastic to have the conversation, but the old systems which allowed the abuse are still there.”

Read their report online.

“What are we talking about, with rape?” Abdulali asked. “We’re talking about an entire culture of a way that men treat women, and then we all treat each other.”

Rape will continue as long as we are, as she so nicely put it, “mesmerised by patriarchy.”

“You could go out and be marching in the streets and demonstrating against rape, but if you come in and you give your son the first helping, it’s cancelling everything you’ve done.”

Aparna Ananthuni reports back after watching Sohaila at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre. Read the entire article on the Indian Link website.

It’s time to include men in the MeToo movement. This was one of the conclusions journalists Emily Steel, Sohaila Abdulali and lawyer Tina Tchen reached as they discussed the next phase of the feminist movement at All About Women last week.

When asked by an audience member about how to counsel men who want to be involved but who were concerned about doing the wrong thing, Tchen acknowledged it was an uncomfortable transition but an important one.

“We are changing very deeply held societal norms about how men and women interact in the workplace and that is to the good,” she said, “but we (as advocates) have to create spaces where men can be part of the conversations. We are not going to solve this without men as allies, without men engaged, and there are many men who want to be part of this conversation.”

Tchen said it was important to help men to engage with this movement productively. “We have to be patient and not jump down the throats of someone who says something in not exactly the right way.”

The panel agreed the backlash was already happening, with Tchen pointing to comments from speaker Anthony Robbins in April 2018 about male employers shying away from hiring attractive women and instead opting for less qualified men. According to Tchen, its about seeing workplace culture as a whole, rather than separating the issues of sexual harassment, diversity inclusion and pay equity.

Steel said the most important thing was to listen to women’s stories. “For so long, we’ve heard these statistics and knew the numbers, but we weren’t really listening to the stories behind that and that’s something that once it’s out of the box, you can’t put back in.”

However, Abdulali cautioned against too much tiptoeing around men. “[This idea of ] men worrying about how they should behave – they should worry!” she said to thunderous applause from the audience. “We worry forever about how we behave, and the men who I’ve talked to who are worried are the ones who should behave … Let’s be real about backlash.”

Read the full write up on the All About Women Festival on The Guardian website.

‘Indian women were dressing up and fighting wars hundreds of years before there were any suffragettes,’ says Sohaila Abdulali, author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape. Backstage at the All About Women festival held in Sydney in March, Guardian Australia posed the same question to Abdulali and three other diverse women: what do outsiders get wrong about your experience of feminism? For Leta Hong Fincher, an expert in China’s emerging feminist movement, it’s that a movement exists there at all. Watch a highlights video here.

 ‘Women’s anger – and the potential to harness its power to bring about societal change – was the focus of last night’s topical Zeitgeist series session Rage, Rape and Revolution at Adelaide Writers’ Week.’

In Daily: Adelaide’s Independent News discusses a group discussion Sohaila was involved in at the writers’ festival in Adelaide. Read their write-up here.

“When I started writing this book,
nobody was talking about rape. And even in
that short time, people are now starting to want to speak about their experiences and
understand them. That people want to
understand and talk about it – makes me feel
hopeful. There’s a lot in the world to feel
hopeless about too, but there’s still hope.”

Sohaila was interviewed by Marieke Hardy for The Saturday Paper. Read in full by clicking here.

‘I know rape is entrenched, quotidian, epidemic. I know many people are clueless, malign, brutal. I know all this because I have seen all this. I see the trolls on Twitter, and roll my eyes at the newspaper headlines unable to sing a different tune, that insist on making me a sad downtrodden victim. But I also see some other things, things that would not have been possible when I wrote my first piece: My 80-year-old uncles and aunts showing up at my book launch radiating support and love, after almost four decades of not saying a word about the subject. My mother’s driver, hearing about my book, casually asking, “Have you mentioned your own rape?” The woman in Mumbai who wept while asking what to do about her father who loves her but is smothering her for her own protection. The hundreds of people in Jaipur who broke into spontaneous applause when I talked about rapists being ordinary men. The young man who stood up in the audience and said, “What can we do, Mam? What can we do to make it better?”’

Read the entire article by Sohaila in the Guardian online.

 What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape was one of three books chosen by Outlook magazine as new release must-reads.

The Motherload Book Club features What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape in a line up of nonfiction feminist titles.

‘It’s important to understand rape in part because every victim is someone’s sister, daughter, mother, friend. Rape is like that proverbial pebble in a pond that causes ripples far and wide – except it is not a pebble but a boulder, a giant calamity that crashes explosively into someone’s life, and then flings shrapnel into her present, her future, her lovers, her children present and future, her job, her soul, her day, her night, her year, her life. It is never, as the Stanford rapist Brock Turner’s father said, just “20 minutes of action.” It is a trauma that requires everyone in her life to help her come through. That includes you.’

Sohaila wrote an article for The New Press on rape being an issue which shouldn’t just be resigned to the Feminist Studies section, but on every nonfiction shelf in every bookstore.

Sohaila’s title, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape, was featured by Scroll.In on their round up of nonfiction tiles to best understand India and the world.

Sohaila was interviewed by Hello Giggles, a blog for independent women.

HG: ‘You also talk about the intricacies of “yes means yes and no means no.” Can you explain what people get wrong about that, and why it’s so complicated?’

SA: ‘I think this has a lot to do with gender. Women are taught to please and be polite. Sometimes we say yes to the most awful things just to keep the peace. And sometimes we say no because we don’t believe we deserve pleasure. In a world where we are taught sex is for men to enjoy and women to endure, it’s no wonder everyone gets baffled by each other’s signals. This is not an excuse for rapists—it’s simply an acknowledgement that language is complicated, and that a “yes” under duress (not knowing your rights; worrying about your job; thinking it’s your fault for being in this situation, etc.) isn’t the same as a “yes” given freely.’

Read the interview in full over on their website now.

 Sohaila features in Australian Women’s Weekly as one of their Inspiring Women. Read the full article by clicking here.

VICE ran an extract of What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape – read it over on their website now.

‘Sohaila talks about how she told her daughter about, how her own parents normalised rape and that helped her get over what happened to her. She also talks about how she does not want to centre her entire life around that single incident and hopes that more victims are given control to recount their stories in a way they are comfortable with.’

Listen to The Week podcast with Sohaila in full here.

 The Hindu Business Line discussed the array of amazing feminists who featured at Jaipur Literature Festival, including Sohaila, Germaine Greer, Mary Beard, Parvati Sharma, Ira Mukhoty, Audrey Truschke and Rana Safvi. Read the full article here.

According to Abdulali, a rape victim should not be frowned upon, rather be made powerful with support from family and friends and even the close ones should know how to handle the delicate situation.

“Be horrified but don’t fall off your chair that she has to take care of you. Believe her, no ifs, ands, or buts. Let her take the lead, if she wants to talk Ok, if she wants to be quiet Ok. If she wants to cry Ok, If she wants to joke Ok, If she wants to throw things Ok. Ask her what she wants, no need to help.”

“Encourage her to get help—medical, legal, physical mental—but don’t force it. Don’t ask for details but let her know you are open if she wants to elaborate. Don’t question her judgement, let her frame it the way she wants. Don’t try to understand, just be there,” were a few of the ways Abdulali said a situation like rape and the victim’s emotions should be handled.

Read the entire piece here on DNA India.

‘We need the words. We need to train guys that you should care whether the woman’s into it, and we need to train ourselves that it matters what we want, because words are great, but I think there’s more going on with consent.’

Read the full transcript or watch Sohaila’s interview with Jeffrey Brown on the PBS website.

‘Sohaila Abdulali has no “Shame Gene.” The “brown bisexual middle-aged atheist Muslim survivor immigrant writer,” or so she posits herself in her new book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape, has struggled for years to understand why so many rape survivors—including herself—are shamed for their silence, for their outspokenness, for their very existence. Abdulali argues she wasn’t born with a “Shame Gene,” thus justifying why she “has the nerve” to write this challenging, nuanced and altogether triumphant book.’

Read the entire interview with Sohaila and Lauren Puckett on The Rumpus here.

‘Then the other thing is — it’s not anybody’s duty to speak. It’s not a survivor’s duty to speak out and cure rape, like an extra added burden on us. I’m finding this now with the book, I love talking about the book, I’m really interested in this topic. But I don’t really feel it’s my role to have the answers.’

Read Sohaila’s full interview with Mary Elizabeth Williams on Salon here.

‘I think it would transform the world [if we were to have sensible conversations about rape], because I think we lose a lot by not talking about it. There are two sides to it – there’s the victim’s side and the perpetrator’s side. On the victim’s side, we lose a lot because as anyone who has been raped knows, it’s really awful to feel alone, like no-one understands you and like there’s no help; just to feel bad about it and to have no recourse. The other thing we do by not talking about it is to give a free pass to rapists, because we act like they don’t exist, or we pretend they’re out there and there’s nothing we can do about it. That way we take away the opportunity to actually do something, to change society, to change how we talk to our kids. I think we lose a lot.’

Listen to the full interview here.

Sohaila’s title, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape, was featured in the WIA Report of Recent Books of Interest to Women Scholars.  Intrigued which other titles made the list? Have a look here.

‘Most rapists are men who choose to rape. That counts more than whether their victims are tough or weak, rich or poor – all those factors come into play, but that one choice is at the heart of the matter. And while men from New York to New Delhi make that choice, we all have a rape problem.’

Read Sohaila’s article in The Telegraph here.

‘If we can’t stick to our ossified expectations of how we are supposed to behave, then we have to rethink everything we know about male privilege, who gets to say yes and no and stop, and both consent and pleasure. It’s very exciting! It implies being able to rethink and redefine how we conduct ourselves in the world.’

Sohaila in conversation with E CE Miller for Bustle. Read the full article here.

‘What do people get wrong when they talk about rape?’

‘Oh, everything. For one thing, the idea that women somehow bring it on themselves. I mean, we have countries in the world where that’s kind of the law, right? In Iran, if you show your head and you get raped, then you’re [responsible for] it. And also [the idea] that men can’t help it. Many of the men I know absolutely can help it, and they choose not to do it.

Read the full interview over on the Longreads website here.

‘Many of our required reading texts use the author’s personal experience as a starting point for a discussion about larger societal issues. As Abdulali notes, this can make them difficult to categorize properly:

“Essays? Not really. Sociology? Not Learned or Academic enough. Psychology? No, too opinionated. Research? Not comprehensive enough. Memoir? Heaven forbid.”

‘Do you suppose that’s why nonfiction discussing the continued oppression of 51 percent of the world’s population frequently ends up stashed on the “Women’s Studies” shelf in bookstores, as opposed to, say, the “Current Affairs” display?’

Sohaila Abdulali featured on Electric Lit in an article by Kate Harding, discussing how non-fiction, feminist titles end up hidden away and not on the political shelf. Read the entire article here.