Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters
Love (in no particular order): Josh (aka sagansapien), my fur children, veggies (especially asparagus), pumpkins, sunflowers, when books are perfectly broken in, documentaries, sociology, feminism, carl sagan, weeds, chickens, my amazing, world-changing beautiful friends, futurama, human rights of all varieties, red wine, old trees and hammocks
Dislike: intolerance, injustice, hatred and condiments, particularly mayo
I want this necklace very badly. 100% of the proceeds go directly to the Joyful Heart Foundation, started by Mariska Hargitay (who I just so happen to think is super freaking awesome).
Yes, yes, so much yes! This division is so reflective of the patriarchy’s constant attempt to turn women against each other in an effort to weaken the unified effort for gender equality. Amazing how it is so apparent even within the feminist movement. -anotherdeadhead
This is a call to end the SlutWars.
On the off-chance the global SlutWalk movement hasn’t hit your radar, here’s a brief primer: SlutWalk is worldwide grassroots movement challenging rape culture, victim-blaming, and working to end sexual violence. It started in January 2011, when a …
(via farahjoon)
Let’s look a little more closely at that correlation between rape and alcohol. That’s not a correlation between female drinking and rape. It’s a correlation between all drinking and rape. In fact, studies have shown that it’s more likely that a male rapist has been drinking than that his female victim has. So if we want to raise awareness about the links between drinking and rape, we should start by getting the word out to men that alcohol is likely to impair their ability to respond appropriately if a sexual partner says “no.” When was the last time you read that article in any kind of publication?
This is such an important article. We seriously need to look at the way that we talk about sexual violence in mainstream culture. 98% of rapists are male and that is the demographic we should be targeting when we talk about creating a world without rape. Doesn’t it make more sense to tell men not rape, rather than to tell potential victims (male/female/transgender) to protect themselves from being raped? No one says it will be easy, but I think it is worth a shot.
In addition, we need to stop victim blaming. No one ever asks to be assaulted and no one ever deserves it. I don’t care what they are wearing, how much they have had to drink or where they were at what time of the day.
Our culture spends a lot of time reinforcing the message that women are always vulnerable to sexual assault and should be on constant guard to prevent themselves from becoming the victim of sexual violence. Many of these safety tips are certainly good safety tips to practice for everyone (not just women), but we should really be teaching men not to rape, rather than expecting women to take extreme precautions to not be raped. This mentality leads survivors of sexual assault to ask questions like, “What could I have done to prevent this?” or “What did I do to cause this to happen to me?” and fuels the victim blaming mentality that often accompanies sexual violence. So here are some better tips that I found that will help you to prevent sexual assault in your community:
1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.
2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!
3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!
4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.
5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!
6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.
7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.
8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.
9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!
10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident”you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.
This blog post from the Rappahanock Council Against Sexual Assault speaks to the important role that parents can play in making sure that their children grow into adults who understand that good sex is safe, consensual and subjective. If only more parents would speak to their children early and often we might have a chance of dismantling our nation’s disgraceful rape culture, while ensuring the sexual health and happiness of future generations.
Seriously. I love the show and I understand how this was relevant to the story line, but it isn’t ever okay to normalize rape. Just one more example of how the media mainstreams and perpetuates rape culture.
It isn’t just strangers who rape. And anyone can be a victim.
(via bibliofeminista)
From pervocracy:
I could not have said this better in a lifetime. Every post about rape on an major blog is littered with comments from one or all of these people.
Mr. What About The Men
“The real problem here is all these false rape accusations that are destroying our society! 90 million men are falsely accused of rape every second! A woman just has to sort of mumble a word starting with ‘r’ and a man instantly gets a life sentence! There are no instances on record of a woman actually being raped!”
Ms. Tough Girl
“If women would learn martial arts—70-year-olds and women with disabilities can do this if they put their minds to it, darnit—and carry weapons everywhere, no one would ever get raped! All you have to do is be ready to threaten your own friends and lovers with lethal force at any moment, any anyone who can’t do that must be weak or something.”
Mr. Model Victims Only Please
“The victim was no angel herself. If you look at her record, she’s been arrested several times, she’s a single mother, and she’s living on welfare. So it’s not like she was some innocent little virgin beforehand. None of this makes it right, but I’m just saying, let’s not overreact like a good woman got ruined.”
Ms. Fashion Police
“Did you hear what she was wearing? I’m sorry but that’s just not common sense. If you go out looking like a piece of meat, you have to expect you’ll get treated like a piece of meat.”
Mr. I’m Not Blaming Her But It’s Her Fault
“Rape is never the victim’s fault, of course. But I just want people to admit that she has some responsibility. That she maybe played a part in it. That in an alternate universe where she’d done things differently and she lived in a steel Battlemech wearing a chastity belt, she wouldn’t have gotten raped, and she did make the choice to not use a Battlemech. I just need people to acknowledge that.”
Ms. Couples Therapy
“I dunno, seems to me like they both made mistakes. Maybe he just wasn’t reading her signals, or maybe she wasn’t communicating clearly to him. A lot can get caught up in an emotional moment like that and I bet they both feel really bad right now.”
Mr. Offensive And/Or Baffling Metaphor
“Look, if you walk down a dark alley with a wallet stuffed full of money, sure it’s still a crime when you get mugged, but what if the mugger is just trying to feed his family because he was laid off by an evil solicitor and the ghost showed him a lone crutch leaning in the corner?”
Ms. CSI
“If you put the pieces together, her story just doesn’t wash. She claims that he ripped her pants off, but her pants have a button fly. Ha! And she waited a whole forty minutes after the supposed rape to call the police—who would do that?”
Mr. Troll
“lol bitch deserved it loooollll”
Ms. You Don’t Just Get To Decide Whether You Consent
“She was seen earlier in the night drinking with this guy, talking to him, and even making out with him! And then she went up to his apartment! What did she think would happen? No one ever goes to a guy’s apartment unless they’re consenting to every sex act he could possibly want.”
Mr. How Do I Not Rape Someone It Is So Difficult
“I just don’t understand how to tell if someone is ‘consenting’ or not. What if she secretly decides she doesn’t like it—am I a rapist then? What if she changes her mind midway through? Or afterwards? It’s impossible to know what women want, so how am I supposed to know if they want to have sex with me or not?”
Ms. Traditional Values
“You know, back when women dressed modestly and simply didn’t go out drinking with strangers or going home with people they’d just met, this sort of thing didn’t happen.”
Mr. This Wouldn’t Happen If Women Would Just Fuck Me Already
“This sort of thing is inevitable when women constantly act as gatekeepers and doom beta males to a life of frustration and loneliness. Of course rape is horrible, but the pent-up rage felt by men cast aside just because they weren’t billionaire underwear models has to express itself somehow.”
Ms. Avoid The R-Word
“Wow, that is just not cool. Having sex under those circumstances—I mean, treating a girl like that—you know, being inappropriate with her—is a totally insensitive and downright mean thing to do.”Sad, but true. Although the spelling & grammar is often a bit worse….
Unfortunately this is very true. Let’s stop making excuses people and start dismantling our rape culture.
Rah, rah, sis boom bah: Silsbee High School in Texas wants their cheerleaders smiling, energetic, and willing to cheer for their rapists by name. Go team!
H.S., a Silsbee student, reported being raped in 2008 by Rakheem Bolton, a fellow student and athletic star, with the help of two of his friends. In the end, Bolton recently ended up getting off without serving any jail time by pleading guilty to a lesser assault charge, spending two years on probation, doing community service, paying a fine, and attending anger management courses. Hardly seems like an adequate punishment, but it’s unfortunately not uncommon for attackers to bargain down their charges. What really gets the blood boiling is how the students’ high school treated the victim when the rape charge was levied.
Bolton was set to be on the school’s varsity basketball team, and they couldn’t risk losing by barring him from playing for a silly thing like a rape charge. That could impact their chances at winning. Who cares about the traumatic impact it would have an a cheerleader who needed to vocally support a team including her rapist?
But H.S. fulfilled her role as a cheerleader, participating in all the cheers for the team as a group. She simply refused to shout the first name of the man who assaulted her when he stood up alone to make free throws. It seems like she was being more than accommodating, when an student athlete facing trial on rape charges most likely should have been suspended from the team, even if his presence wasn’t a source of immediate distress to his victim in her position as cheerleader. In a display of extreme disrespect for a rape survivor and disregard for her well-being, school officials insisted that H.S. had to scream “Rakheem” with the rest of the cheerleaders, or she’d be kicked off the squad.
Not only that, Caroline Heldman reports on Ms. Magazine’s blog that school officials pushed H.S. “to keep a low profile, such as avoiding the school cafeteria and not taking part in homecoming activities.” As though she should somehow be ashamed for having been raped and brought charges against her attacker. Where exactly was she supposed to eat so as to not cause discomfort to the star athlete? H.S. also refused to take this offensive “advice.”
H.S. sued her school district for removing her from the cheerleading squad. In an absurd court ruling, the 5th U.S. Circuit of Appeals decided to uphold the school’s decision, claiming that a cheerleader was but a “mouthpiece” for a school to use to “disseminate speech — namely, support for its athletic teams.” Her silence apparently “constituted substantial interference with the work of the school because, as a cheerleader, H.S. was at the basketball game for the purpose of cheering, a position she undertook voluntarily.” Well, I’m sure H.S. never expected to be “volunteering” to cheer for someone who had assaulted her. And the idea that just being silent during Bolton’s free throws, a barely noticeable act, was “substantial interference with the work of the school” — um, we’re talking extracurricular sports, not classroom disruption — makes little sense.
Tell Silsbee officials that this is no way to treat rape victims, and insist that they publicly issue an apology to H.S. immediately. Furthermore, tell them to instate a policy outlining appropriate treatment of sexual assault survivors, which does not put the onus on the victim to ensure smooth interactions at the school.
Seriously? What the in the hell is this school thinking???
I performed this piece for my Literature in Performance course over the summer. Love it.
