There is a point in One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2 where the language of survival finally becomes the language of retaliation. “The Arsonist” is that point. The song is not simply about having survived an attempt to destroy you. It is about what happens afterward, when the person who has been burned decides that the fire did not finish him and that the scars it left behind have become part of his strength. Manson himself described the song as the moment when the narrative of the two chapters “crystallizes into a battle stance,” and, referring to the painting he created for it, said that the “burned scar tissue” had formed into armor. That description gets very close to the heart of the song. The fire has not disappeared. It has changed him. The title is important because Manson does not call the song The Survivor or The Victim . He calls it "The Arsonist." An arsonist deliberately starts a fire, and this changes the entire perspective of the song. The speaker is no...
As waves of sexual assault accusations against powerful figures in entertainment, politics, and business surfaced, which led to a growing public recognition of the widespread nature of sexual assault in American culture, some activists went a step further and fought for legal protections for abuse survivors. On February 27, 2018 Evan Rachel Wood appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to testify about her experiences with sexual assault on behalf of the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act, which went into effect at the federal level in 2016 but still needed to be implemented in all 50 states. The law gives sexual abuse survivors the right to have their rape kit preserved for the entire duration of the statute of limitations (or up to 20 years), as well as the right to know their forensic results. EVAN RACHEL WOOD'S 2018 TESTIMONY ABOUT BEING RAPED AND TORTURED BY UNNAMED ABUSER My name is Evan Rachel Wood and I am an artist. But I am also a domestic violence and sexu...