By Hannah Giorgis @ TheAtlantic.com, June 29

On Tuesday, Brooklyn Nine-Nine star and former NFL linebacker Terry Crews testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee to advocate for H.R. 5578, the bill often referred to as the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights. In a stirring, vulnerable account, Crews detailed the profound impact of the sexual assault he first alleged last October in a series of tweets. [....]

Since the first few days after [....] watershed investigations into the alleged predations of Harvey Weinstein, Crews has lent his voice—and his stature—to the subsequent outpouring of #MeToo narratives. The actor is not new to addressing toxic masculinity; he has been advocating against men’s allegiance to harmful gender roles for years. His 2014 book, Manhood: How to Be a Better Man—or Just Live With One, traced the actor’s experiences with living alongside an alcoholic father, admitting to a pornography addiction, and slowly abandoning the “Marlboro Man” ideal of masculinity. But now he has named himself as an affected party rather than just an enthusiastic ally [....]

It is difficult to overstate the visceral impact—and rarity—of seeing a black man, one as statuesque and imposing as Crews, step forward to identify himself as a survivor of sexual assault and reject external demands that he bury his shame. Crews has spoken at length about the tenacity of shame, the way it embeds itself more deeply in survivors’ psyches with each dismissal of their accounts. He has acknowledged that his race and size render his story unbelievable to some, that those same factors kept him from responding to his alleged assailant with violence for fear of being stereotyped as a “thug”—or facing violence at the hands of police [....]