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Margaret Cho Talks About How Her Korean Upbringing Turned A Blind Eye To Her Sexual Abuse

By Niki Cruz
Published on: 11:44 PST, Oct 29, 2015

In an interview with Billboard, comedian Margaret Cho sat down for a discussion that turned very raw, as she spoke about the sexual abuse she endured at a very young age. One of the issues she tackled by talking about being raped is her conservative Korean culture, and how she felt silenced in her pain as a teen because of her family’s culture.

Author Danielle Bacher recounts their candid conversation and noted that the comedian felt stifled by her environment and how she grew up. “She says that sexual molestation is an excusable offense in her traditional Korean family’s eyes… Her family believes that people shouldn’t make a fuss about things that have happened to them in the past.”

For Cho, not only did it make her uneasy, but she also didn’t agree with this side of her Asian culture. “It makes me unwelcome in some ways… Like, if they don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist.”

Cho was raped at a very young age, and then again at the age of 14 when an acquaintance sexually assaulted her. She said it was a different time back then, and she had no clue how to stop it from happening, because she was living in a world where young actresses like Brooke Shields were being sexualized at a very young age.

She said of the time, “Men had so much control and entitlement over women.”

Unlike many other victims, Margaret Cho decided to report her rape, which meant that the news got around at her high school. Instead of her peers reaching out to support or comfort her, they took this information and decided to belittle her. According to Cho, her classmates bullied her and said, “You are so ugly and fat that the only way anyone would have sex with you is if they were crazy and raped you. So don’t act like you are hot and somebody wanted to f–k you. It’s because you are disgusting, and you deserve to be raped.”

These days, Cho deals with her tragedies through counseling and different creative projects. The comedian has a new album out with a song that details her experience, which is titled, “I Want to Kill My Rapist.” The raw lyrics are as follows:

“I thought I forgave you, but I’d mistake you. I’ll shake you and I’ll bake you. You better run now while I’m having fun now. Here comes the sun now, and you’ll be done now. I see clearly and sincerely, you’ll pay dearly.”

Cho told the author that writing the song about the “huge issue” that went on in her was very “cathartic.”

The last we heard from Cho, it was the news that she was divorcing her husband Al Ridenour. Back in December, the comedian filed for divorce after separating in September of 2014. The two had an 11-year marriage.

Back in 2013, Cho spoke about her unconventional marriage on the talk show The Real. Back then she explained how being in an open marriage worked for them. She detailed that since she’s bisexual, she wanted to be with both sexes and didn’t want to limit herself. Cho said that her husband also agreed that he didn’t want to sleep with one person for the rest of his life either. She called the idea of sleeping with one person forever “gross.”

The two don’t share any children, and Cho hasn’t commented about the news of her divorce.

As for what Cho has coming up, the comedian is currently stopping from location to location as part of her psyCHO tour, and marrying same-sex couples with each stop she makes.

[Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images]

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