In a Guardian opinion column, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett argues that noughties lad culture — lads' mags, tabloids, rape jokes, and a media monoculture run mostly by older men — normalised abuse and taught girls like her that being preyed on was ordinary, which is why the unmasking of Russell Brand and the Guardian and ITV investigation into David Walliams, who denies the allegations, took so long. Recalling her own assault and citing her book The Vagenda, she says women who endured that era are still reconciling the half of themselves that knew it was violated with the half that survived a world that refused to listen.