This is Rape

Post Secret

2010-04-19T08:46:00.000-07:00

I don't think it's a coincidence that David Lisak Ph.D's "Frank" was a pre-law student.

Our work is in the semantics

2010-04-16T08:04:00.000-07:00

I had an epiphany the other day. We were sitting on the lawn by the river, chuckling over the duck's antics and discussing the semantics of Sexual Violence. You see there's a sense that we don't all know what sexual violence means, or sexual assault, or sexual abuse for that matter - and there seemed to be pro's and con's to them all.
Sexual assault connotes a physical (ie leaving visible wounds) attack.
Sexual abuse connotes an ongoing (more than once) violation.
Sexual violence is too ambiguous or only depicts rape.

That last one was the break through for me. I regularly do Sexual Violence brainstorms with people trying to highlight the myriad ways that mostly women experience sexual violence every day. Generally the class get's "rape" right off, which I then explain to be specifically referring to unwanted/non-consensual penetration, and then there's inevitably a lull when I ask "what else?

Then the lightening bolt flashed. THIS is part of our job. This teaching that sexual violence is inclusive of ANY unwanted/non-consensual sexual act, that EVERY woman (and lots of men) has experienced some touch or comment that they did not want or ask for. It's not that we need to change the language, we need to share the language, and be really clear with what that language is describing. Sexual violence doesn't have to leave a bruise, but it always leaves a mark. I can remember - if not all the times, then how it felt - to walk down the street and have men make me feel unsafe. To have the guy at the bar not get the hint to remove his hand from my waist when I kept inching away. I remember the guys who tried to test my boundaries, see how far they could go before I would actually say "no". The guys who wouldn't pay attention to the signals before that.

It's not that I didn't know this before - that people don't think about these things all the time like I do, that people may not understand that sexual violence is more than just rape at first. I've been all along trying to teach people, show people, have these conversations. But it took me this long to realize that this is the JOB. It's frustrating that we can't assume that people know what sexual violence is, and that it's wrong, but I suppose that ignoring it can't be all that effective either.

So on my new flier, it looks like this:
"Sexual Violence is any sexual behavior that is unwanted or non-consensual. It can be physical, verbal, a gesture, or other communication including visual or electronic which is unwanted by the recipient or affected bystander. One type of sexual violence is rape and the CDC estimates that in the US 1/6 women and 1/33 men will experience rape or attempted rape during their lives, but when we consider all of the other ways that people experience and are impacted by sexual violence we see that rape is only one example of sexual violence. Every woman (and lots of men) has at some time been touched or solicited in a way that was unwanted and non-consensual."
*It's a work in progress so feel free to comment!

Backlashing the Bystander

2010-03-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

So apparently one celebrity tweets that they're Big Pimpin', another celebrity respectfully points out that to "pimp" is akin to promoting the sexual slavery of women, and this article - which oddly appears to agree - does so while totally degrading the point through mocking that Celeb 2 actually took the moment to make a point. Fuck.

I WANT people to speak up respectfully when they see some behavior that degrades and humiliates. That's appropriate and I work hard every day to provide space and social support for people to do that. Then in an effort to be interesting snarking columnists put those who actually do speak up back into their places so that we can exist in a comfortably ignorant world again.

Unfunny, Jessica Wakeman.

Newest Ally

2010-02-26T09:19:00.000-08:00

Check it out. Now and often! (Clever name, btw!!)

The Rape Tunnel

2010-02-12T12:12:00.000-08:00

Not art, Rape. Trigger alert.

*Also, note to the interviewer - consenting to crawl through a tunnel - any tunnel - does not constitute consent to sex.

**Update: Turns out someone's responsible and Googled this and it's not real, but I'm leaving it up because if it's not real then someone made it up as...a joke? Awareness? In any possibility still a super FAIL.

Prevention: Good and the Bad

2010-02-04T08:29:00.000-08:00

Good: Gender Across Borders has spotted actual prevention messages! Hurray!

Bad: The Sexist has spotted messages that are not.

Prevention by Podcast

2010-02-03T08:17:00.000-08:00

I'm on my first podcast over at Prevention Connection discussion a manual I was part of compiling chock full of activities to use with kids to prevent sexual (and dating) violence! Check it out!!

Women calling out Rape

2010-01-29T12:33:00.000-08:00

Women on Twitter today were calling out Rape all over the place.

@WomanistMusings finds out about a Canadian policy to perform pelvic exams without consent on unconscious women in surgery (to be crystal: penetration without consent = Rape)*

and @TheSexist talks about the intensified victim blaming that happens when the victim is engaging in any kind of display that her body is her own (this is specific to a transwoman being raped, and transphobic/victim-blamers using the "trans" to eliminate the possibility of Rape.Also a lot of noise in this story because the accused is famous and therefore couldn't possibly be a rapist.) OH the victim-blaming/rapist-excusers that exist.OH the myths that would be funny, except they literally ruin people's lives.

I'd say "happy reading" but its definitely not - Rape happens while the world denies it.Or uses it as a learning tool.

*The medical field at large is an institution (as Renee points out) based on exploiting or ignoring women's bodies: "The medical profession has a history of discounting women's bodies or pathologizing us at every turn." Gynecology was founded upon terrorizing and torturing women of color, mental institutions FILLED with "problem" women pathologized into oblivion. It's sick (if you'll pardon the grotesque pun).

PostSecret

2009-12-14T09:07:00.000-08:00

-----Email Message-----
My boyfriend makes me use a wheelchair. He says it's the only way he's attracted to me. I wish I could fly away.

Dating Violence.

Sexual Violence.

I wish we didn't live in a culture that shames victims and makes them feel like what happens to them has to be their secret.

I post images regarding dating or sexual violence from postsecret.com in an attempt to center their context on the messages of violence, rather than of secrets. I think it's important to recognize how often experiences of violence are regarded as secret, as shameful. I think it's important to recognize that they are violence.

Probably not.

2009-12-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

It's rape when our culture drives us to base our worth in our body image validated by the opinion of a self-congratulating misogynist. Especially when his shtick only works by specifically undermining women's self esteem to gain power and control, hoping we'll "prove" ourselves by seeking his validating in the form of whether or not he'll fuck us.

Not "prevention-prevention"

2009-12-03T06:06:00.000-08:00

Victim blaming, perpetuating rape myths, and camouflaging offender accountability are not tactics of prevention. They are rape culture.

Gender Across Boarders has a great response up (and actually found the flier out on campus) which you should read, here I have a few things to add.

"Don't get so drunk you don't know what you're doing" GAB identifies this as good general advice, but victim blaming in this context. I'll go a step further. Generally, people probably don't intend to get so drunk that they don't know what they're doing. Particularly on college campuses, students may not have much experience with drinking, and may not be quite in tune with their limits. If the goal is, in fact, to be oblivious, then perhaps we need to identify these people not as inviting rape, but in desperate need of support. Why are they using drinking as a coping mechanism? And to be really clear, drinking - regardless of amounts - does not invite rape. Targeting (mostly women) intoxication is rape.

"Don't accept a drink from someone you've just met...only leave your drink with someone you trust." denies both the original assertion of the card which is that alcohol is the #1 drug used to facilitate rape (so one doesn't need to slip anything in, just have you drink), and the fact that most sexual assaults are perpetrated by an acquaintance means that the someone you trust may be the someone trying to take advantage.

Rape happens on purpose, not as an unfortunate side effect of drinking. These lessons on the cards reinforce the message to victims that if they were drinking they are at fault for "inviting" or "being vulnerable" to rape.

We are vulnerable not because we are drunk, but because we are women in a society which allows and makes excuses rapists. Also, following these "SMART" tactics (which insinuate you're not if you're unable or ignored) don't prevent rape. Not raping people prevents rape. Holding rapists accountable prevents rape. Viewing and valuing women as more than sex objects prevents rape.There are all sorts of better lists out there for easy ways to prevent rape (like not raping someone), including one I came up with, which you can see here . (Update: Rebecca Whisnant *!! swoon* was kind enough to send along this list of helpful rape prevention tips.) (Update II: Twisty picked up on this and edited the helpful rape prevention tips and makes me chuckle!)

Victim blaming - especially in "prevention" messaging - helps rapists and hurts victims.

WRONG

2009-11-13T06:51:00.000-08:00

Taking your son to Hooters as a way to "gauge sexual interest" and avoid actually having to talk to your son about sexuality = massive parenting fail. Objectifying women is NOT the same as developing healthy sexuality.

Clarification

2009-11-03T13:20:00.000-08:00

By the way, statements along the lines of "I'm not blaming the victim but..." or "I know she's had a hard life but..." or "I know she's young but..." or "I know it's not her fault but..." are a feminist party-foul. We will revoke your card. You will be just another Rape-apologist.

A not-so-rare-story

2009-11-02T12:22:00.000-08:00

3 men go to jail for repeatedly raping a child family member.

Lets think of some things wrong with this story.

1. a woman was sexually assaulted
2. by her family members
3 her mother didn't believe her
4. in the coverate, the mother not believing her seems like the real travesty (not the multiple sexual assaults...)
5. Judge hands out jail sentences saying that the men treated victim like an "unpaid, unwilling prostitute".
...hold the phone a minute...ponder that...Rape and prostitution. If prostitution is unpaid its like Rape? If prostitution is unwilling its like Rape? Or just prostitution is like Rape? People who have been Raped are like prostitutes? Prostitutes deserve to be/are asking to be Raped? Thinking that you have the right to use women for sex? Thinking you have the right to use children for sex? The ideas that uphold the consumption of prostitution, that allow for the consumption of pornography - these are the same that allow for Rape. Is that what the judge meant?

6...
What are the wrongs pulsing through your veins about this story?

Reality based sexual violence prevention

2009-09-28T08:28:00.000-07:00

What We Can Learn From the Dugard Case from Human Rights Watch

We have to consider the possibility that our policies on sexual violence do not protect us, have not increased the number of offenders brought to justice and waste precious resources in the fight against rape and sexual assault.

Focusing so many resources on registration and community notification ignores the reality of sexual violence in the United States.

Being in this work it's still sometimes baffling to me the discrepancy between what we in the movement know to be effective and what the society at large dedicates resources to.

PostSecret

2009-09-27T18:15:00.000-07:00

bewyrd on September 27, 2009
on #2...i never said no...i may have said yes...but with all my heart i meant no. it still isn't your fault. just maybe it isn't his either...but it doesn't change the effects. i've learned that.

sumth1ngcrazy on September 26, 2009
I said no once, and was ignored. Then I said yes when I shouldn't have and I live with that every day. I'm not sure which hurts worse.

1. Happy to see supportive (rather than blaming) comments, sorry that each had a similar experience which made them able to be supportive.
2. So positive that we as a culture have no idea what "consent" is. Consent is sexual violence prevention, and is so much more than "yes" or "no".

Mackenzie Phillips

2009-09-24T12:24:00.000-07:00

Of that night, Phillips writes in her book, "I woke up from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father."

nj.com

Waking up to being penetrated is Rape.
Your father penetrating you is Rape.

It's ok for her to interpret her experience for herself in the language that makes her comfortable. It's ok for her to have navigated that experience in ways that made sense to her, but it's important for us, everyone, and especially the media, to know that it's not consensual sex, this is Rape.

For a more indepth analysis see Rape Apologism and the Response to Mackenzie Phillips.

Drunk, painful, unwanted; Rape.

2009-09-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

It’s three in the morning. You have it inside you right now. It kind of hurts. You’ve had one too many cups of jungle juice. You think his name is Andrew, but you’re not really sure. You thought you would never be that girl, but there you are, in your drunken haze.

You wake up the day after to an unfamiliar ceiling, some guy who smells like booze, AXE body spray and, well, something else. He wants to cuddle and you’re starting to think maybe this drunken hook-up [ ________ ].

Reader: How did the AU Eagle complete that sentence?

a. You’re starting to think maybe this drunken hook-up was rape.

b. You’re starting to think maybe this drunken hook-up was a product of society’s shaming of female sexuality, which encourages women to resort to dangerous, heavily intoxicated, and painful sex with strangers instead of openly pursuing empowered, respectful, and satisfying sexual experiences with desired sexual partners.

c. You’re starting to think maybe this drunken hook-up could turn into something.

Amanda Hess has the write up at The Sexist on how this is, if nothing else, bad sex advice. She also points out that there's still a lot of confusion over whether or not it's Rape. Let's be clear:

If you wake up and someone's in the process of penetrating you - that's Rape.
If you weren't there for all the stuff that led up to that moment (ie were not actively, enthusiastically, lucidly engaged), then it was unwanted. Wanted means pursued - which means there was some activity happening. Unwanted = Rape.
If "huh?" is the first thing that crosses your mind, that's not a drunken hook-up, that's Rape.

“How the hell is that rape?” wrote one. “I hear of this kind of stuff happening all the time.”

Yea, it's Rape. And it happens all the time. That it happens is not nullifying.

Sure, I can imagine a world where kids (or adults) drink a lot and then have sex (sex, not rape). But pretending that we don't know the line between drunk-sex and Rape is just that - pretending. We know the difference when a person wants to be doing something, and when we're exploiting a vulnerable situation. Calling it "gray" or drunken, or regrettable, or normal - is a lie, and only shows your willingness to cover for rapists.

And for the apologists - or, unapologists as it were - at the Eagle: Using the "seriousness" of Rape and sexual assault to silence protests over bad media, only makes your media worse. Don't pretend to be defending women and victims by co-opting the very event you're minimizing.

Rape: Big Brother Style

2009-09-10T12:14:00.001-07:00

Holding 9 women captive under the pretense of being on reality TV, selling naked pictures and videos of them online without their knowledge, definitely Rape.

To clarify:

2009-09-02T18:52:00.001-07:00

When someone "cuddly" has "surprise sex" w/ women, it's rape. http://ow.ly/nQ0v

I only play a feminist on TV

2009-09-02T17:26:00.000-07:00

These days anybody who is allowed on TV and publicly claims to be a feminist isn’t one. She’s straight, conventionally attractive, takes pole dancing lessons, and espouses the belief that femininity empowerfulizes her. If any “feminist” should accidentally let it out that being sexually manipulative has not a high moral purpose, or that patriarchy even exists, let the ridicule fly.

Twisty discourages straight quoting, but I can't seem to help myself. Her prose and point are perfectly stunning...I hope if we met she'd forgive me.

This is definitely Rape.

2009-08-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

PostSecret

2009-08-04T07:59:00.000-07:00

PostSecret

2009-07-15T06:17:00.000-07:00

Priorities

2009-07-09T06:05:00.000-07:00

Texas just sentenced an 18 year old mentally handicapped boy to 100 years in jail for groping a 6 year old.

There's a woman that speaks to volunteers where I work about her experience of sexual assault. In short: She was out for a walk mid day on a VT dirt road by the river with her two infants. A man with a weapon forced her and her children into his car, and raped her in front of them, and threatened to find and kill all of them if she told. She went directly to the hospital for evidence collection, called the police to report, went to the state's attorney to press charges - and he rolled his eyes and asked how much time he would have to serve to satisfy her. Only after allowing her name to be published in the newspaper to garner media outrage at the court process did the (elected) public servant state's attorney do anything about the case, threatening that her (2 year old) would be put up on the stand to testify, would be cross examined, that the perpetrator would only get 2 years maximum....

Her rapist went to jail for 10 years. For aggravated sexual assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping a woman and her 2 kids.

Most rapists never go to trial, let alone jail.

But a teenage mentally handicap boy will be in among those that do for 100 years. Somehow I don't feel like justice was served.

How to end Violence Against Women

2009-07-09T05:53:00.000-07:00

Ukraine has banned possession of pornography (except for medical purposes???)And I have lots of gut reactions.

*Porn is Violence Against Women. Don't bother arguing in comments - peruse some of the sites or readings that I've posted, ask to participate in a slide show that I present, and then we can have a discussion.
*Lots of feminists are decrying this - that's confusing to me.
*I appreciate governing bodies taking Violence Against Women seriously, but I wonder if that's the actual catalyst for the legislation, or are we on a moral crusade that has more to do with fear of nudity (and women) than it does with violent oppression.
*I have a hard time believing that legislation is the way to go - particularly legislation against individuals instead of against the industry, which is really the problem. Individuals that use porn, while perpetuating the system, are really hurt too by the industry that's exploiting them.
*On the other hand I can't get too fired up that consumers of violence against women will have a harder time obtaining (as Twisty would call it) their pay-per-rape.
*Medical purposes?! I'll buy masturbation/sex as pain relief (maybe) but I'm not taking porn as a medical cure. It's the illness.

Quoted

2009-06-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

I HAVE NEVER BEEN FREE OF THE FEAR OF RAPE. From a very early age I, like most women, have thought of rape as a part of my natural environment - something to be fearedand prayed against like fire or lightening...

RAPE IS AN ACT OF AGGRESSION in which the victim is denied her self-determination. It is an act of violence, which, if not actually followed by beatings or murder, nevertheless always carries with it the threat of death. And finally, rape is a form of mass terrorism, for the victims of rape are chosen indiscriminately, but the propagandists for male supremacy broadcast that it is women who cause rape by being unchaste or in the wrong place at the wrong time - in essence, by behaving as though they were free.

Susan Griffin, 1971

Anti-porn Web Resources

2009-06-09T11:28:00.000-07:00

Stop Porn Culture

Against Pornography

One Angry Girl

Genderberg

Andrea Dworkin website

Mediawatch

Off Our Backs

Rain and Thunder

Teen Voices

Byron Hurt

Hustling the Left

Robert Jensen

Stan Goff

Jackson Katz

Gail Dines

Biting Beaver

Prostitution Research and Education

Media Education Foundation

Also find Byron Hurt, Robert Jensen, Katha Pollit and Rebecca Whisnant on Facebook and friend them! (I just did!)

Summer Reading List!

2009-06-09T11:19:00.000-07:00

E. Buchwald, P. Fletcher, and M. Roth. Transforming a Rape Culture. (1993, Milkweed Editions). An anthology of ideas from feminist and anti-violence activists.

Jane Caputi, Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power, and Popular Culture, (2004, Popular Press). Essays take on the patriarchal myth, where serial killers are heroes, where goddesses are ritually slaughtered, and where pornography is the core story underlying militarism, environmental devastation, and racism.

Gail Dines, Robert Jensen, and Ann Russo. Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (1997, Routledge). Essential reading for everyone interested in how our society commodifies sex.

Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1979, Putnam), Letters From a War Zone (1993, Lawrence Hill Books) and Life and Death (1997, Little Brown). Works from the foremost feminist theorist of our time.

Christine Stark and Rebecca Whisnant, Not For Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography. (2004, Spinifex Press). An anthology of activists and survivors.

Melissa Farley, Ph.D., Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections (2007).

“No one really enjoys getting sold,” a woman in a legal Nevada brothel told Melissa Farley during the course of this research. “It's like you sign a contract to be raped.” In a 2-year research study of Nevada legal and illegal prostitution and sex trafficking, Farley reveals new information about the scope of the sex industry. She describes human rights violations against women in the Nevada legal brothels and how the multibillion-dollar illegal sex industry in Las Vegas works. She makes connections between legal and illegal prostitution, prostitution and sex trafficking, advertising for prostitution, political corruption, pornography, and organized crime. Farley explains how, although they are out of sight, the johns are ultimately the origin of the problem of sex trafficking – the men who demand the right to rent human beings in prostitution.

P. Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (2005, Routledge). Explores the social and personal implications of historical images (black men as rapists deserving of lynching and black women so immoral it was impossible to rape them) and more current concerns about the influence of prison culture on urban youth culture that glorifies connections between sex and violence.

Sheila Jeffreys, Beauty and Misogyny (2005, Psychology Press), Unpacking Queer Politics (2003, Polity Press), The Lesbian Heresy (1993, Spinifex Press). A lesbian-feminist analysis of pornography, “queer” culture, and misogyny.

*Robert Jensen, Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (2007, South End Press). A powerful critique of pornography and masculinity sparked by a vision of genuine social justice.

*Jackson Katz, The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help (2006, Source Books).

Arguing for a "far-reaching cultural revolution," Katz explores those aspects of American culture that promote violence against women. Offers ideas on how men can ally with women to change male aggressiveness and masculinity that lead to violence and abuse.

*Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (2005, Free Press). Describes the pervasive raunch culture where and our icons are porn stars, strippers and prostitutes, and women make sex objects of other women and ourselves,. The keywords of the women's movement (liberation, empowerment) have been converted into buzzwords for a female sexuality built on consumerism and objectification.

Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (1998, Harvard University Press) Public testimony from survivors of pornography.

Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women’s Equality (1988, Organizing Against Pornography). Out of print, but describes an important legal strategy that could empower victims through civil (not criminal) law.

Catharine MacKinnon, Women’s Lives, Men’s Laws (2007, Belknap Press), Are Women Human? (2006, Belknap Press). MacKinnon is an eloquent feminist lawyer and legal theorist.

M. A. Neal, New Black Man (2005, Routledge). Puts forth a revolutionary model of black masculinity for the twenty-first century, one that moves beyond patriarchy to embrace feminism and combat homophobia.

Neil Malamuth, Pornography and Sexual Aggression. (1984, Academic Press). One of the foremost researchers on the effects of pornography.

Pamela Paul, Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families. (2005, Times Books). Details how the ubiquity of pornography impacts our personal lives.

Dr. Diana Russell, Against Pornography: The Evidence of Harm (1993, Russell Publications). A feminist sociologist lays out the research on pornography.

Linda Lovelace, Ordeal. (1981, Berkeley Books). The survivor of the film Deep Throat tells her harrowing story.

Captive Daughters Media , Pornography: Driving the Demand in International Sex Trafficking available at http://www.captivedaughters.org/book.html

Who says beach reading has to be frivolous?

*indicates one's I've read.

RealityTV: Child Sexual Abuse

2009-06-09T08:28:00.000-07:00

I don't get cable so I haven't watched Charm School, but Jezebel reports that on an episode of some reality TV show based on making fun of women for their crazy antics, one woman discloses Child Sexual Assault. Amazingly, LOTS of the other women end up sharing similar experiences. So women and children are systematically brutalized and used, develop coping mechanisms that society uses to mock them and we call it entertainment. Unfortunately, realizing the prevalence of Sexual Assault in a group of women may be the more reality than most shows of the genre.

Via Jezebel: Charm School-ers Bond Over Shared Experiences of Sexual Assault

Quoted: MeMe Roth

2009-05-26T10:43:00.000-07:00

File this under "NO"

From the Guardian an interview with an "anti-fat advocate" who is not interested in questioning and challenging the myriad of ways in which capitalism, trauma, poverty, mis-education, media, 9-5 desk jobs, etc interact to influence obesity. She wants to shame Jennifer Love Hewitt into doing more lunges.

"The defence [sic] has been made in the case of sex criminals that there is pleasure on the part of the victim. The same is true with what we're doing with food. We may abuse our bodies with food, but it's incredibly pleasurable. From a food marketer's point of view, when your quote unquote victim is so willing and enjoying of the process, who's fighting back?"

1. "self" abuse is not the same as someone forcibly invading your personal and bodily space.
2. blaming the victim doesn't help in speaking of food industries and it certainly doesn't help victims of sexual assault
3. comparing the two in such terms minimizes both issues
4. comparing the two in such terms completely bans any nuanced conversation about issues that critically affect real people's real lives
5. shaming and scare tactics are not helpful. ever.

Beyond GHB

2009-05-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

Man charged for cow abortion drug in girl's drink
The Associated Press

A Pennsylvania man is in jail on charges he tried to kill the fetus of a 17-year-old girl by helping two teenage boys put an abortion-inducing cow hormone into her drink.

Forty-six-year-old Jonathan Imler, of Williamsburg, was charged and jailed in Blair County on Tuesday.

Police say the girl's 16-year-old boyfriend, who is the father of the child, another 17-year-old boy and Imler stole the hormone ProstaMate from a farm. The 17-year-old allegedly put a drop of it in the girl's Gatorade in March 2008.

The girl's mother has said a friend told her daughter about the drink's contents later that day.

Police say they plan to charge the boys.

The girl has since given birth. Her mother says the hormone apparently didn't harm the baby.

Information from: Altoona Mirror

I Blame the Rapists

2009-05-20T08:08:00.000-07:00

Blame Rapists for Rape, Not Women
Jaclyn Friedman

Last Tuesday, in the debut of Double X, Linda Hirshman said that the bloggers at Jezebel need to accept that they may be raped if they’re going to insist on being such public sluts (I'm paraphrasing here, but not as much as I wish I were). Latoya Peterson responded by rightly pointing out that screeds like Hirshman's give feminism a bad name. The internets erupted. And now, just what we needed, the Observer has swooped in to Explain It All To Us, clucking their editorial tongue about the whole "infighting" mess.

Missing from this entire kerfuffle is one crucial point. Women aren't raped because they're being sexual in public or private, and they're not raped because they're drunk. Women are raped because they're women.

Statistics vary, but we know that the vast majority of rapists aren't the men we randomly meet in bars one night—they're the ones we already know. The idea that women are more likely to be raped while they're being "bad" is a nasty myth created to keep women in our places. Rape has never been an act of sexual incontinence committed because we’re just too darn available and tempting, and being “smart” or “good” isn’t going to keep us safe.

Sure, men rape women in drunken party atmospheres. They also rape women on quiet nights in, but we get no warnings about the dangers of playing Trivial Pursuit in mixed company. Yes, rape risk increases when alcohol is involved, but if someone is drunk during a rape, it's more likely to have been the attacker than the victim. And yet where is the public service message warning men against the dangers of drinking and raping?

I'm not a big Jezebel defender on this subject, precisely because of the type of posts that Hirshman and the Observer point out. They excuse rapists' behavior and perpetuate the myth that if a woman was drinking or being sexual, she is in some way responsible for another person assaulting her. But Hirshman's complaints about Jezebel fall into the exact same—very dangerous—trap. If it's possible for women who are raped to deserve it as a "consequence of their own acts," as Hirshman says, then you can hardly blame the rapist for that act, now, can you?

This controversy isn't about "choice feminism"—dressing in skimpy clothing, drinking, and having casual sex aren't inherently feminist choices any more than wearing billowy skirts and Birkenstocks, drinking herbal tea, and being celibate are. But our approach to rape prevention is a feminist choice. We need to face the fact that focusing on the consequences of women’s actions instead of on the actions of rapists has done precious little to reduce the incidence of rape.

You know what else is a feminist choice? Refusing to do the work of the patriarchy. So if refusing to police my own sexuality and blaming rapists for rape in all circumstances makes me a slut, then I wear the name proudly.

To the dogs

2009-05-18T10:37:00.001-07:00

Clarification: having hidden cameras targeting women and taking pictures of their cleavage is not clever, it's sexual harassment. Also I find the idea of using pets/babies/etc to "lure" women equally creepy.

Just Say No

2009-05-13T12:20:00.000-07:00

Youth [abstinence] counselor accused of sex assault

Trumbull (AP) - Connecticut police have arrested a youth adviser accused of sexually assaulting a Trumbull girl being counseled to abstain from sex.

Vernitt Hoheb, 31, of Stratford surrendered Monday. He had been a youth counselor at Mount Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport until the allegations were made against him.

Trumbull police say Hoheb supervised a youth group at the church. The 16-year-old girl claims Hoheb sexually assaulted her in his car in the parking lot of a Trumbull gym where he had stopped while driving her home in March.

Hoheb allegedly said he had been counseling teenage girls, including the victim, on how to say "no" to sexual advances from adults.

In light of recent conversation - mostly stemming from Jessica Valenti's The Purity Myth release - this seems an especially highlighting example of how ideas of purity/virginity/abstinence still focus on girls as solely sexual objects, not as empowered, agent human beings.

Thomas has a brief analysis, I most appreciate his closing "As long as women have no voice in how their bodies are sexual, he’s happy."

Rape Prevention/Victim Blaming

2009-05-12T11:49:00.000-07:00

"When you tell me that I shouldn't drink too much alcohol because that increases my risk of being sexually assaulted, I hear that I was responsible for being raped because I was drunk.

When you tell me to take self-defense classes, or to yell and fight back if I am being attacked, I hear that my natural defense reaction to freeze was wrong.

When you tell me to walk confidently, I hear that my body posture made my offender want to sexually assault me.

When you offer me "tips" for my own safety, I hear that it was my behaviour in question, and not my offender's."

- Monika Penner

Rape discounted for global recession

2009-04-23T06:14:00.000-07:00

German brothels are offering all manner of discounts to encourage more buying of women. Related: women aren't making enough money to live and are increasingly turning to sex work to make ends meet.

Think Global Act Local

2009-04-01T18:21:00.000-07:00

We walk around with a disconnect like our lives have nothing to do with those suffering systematic Rape and mutilation as weapons of war. We walk around like we have no responsibility to those living less fortunate. Examples like these of how our daily, mindless consumption has worldwide effects are staggering. I think they are also the most useful.

In a capitalist nation our biggest power is our buying and spending power. Companies do not operate out of compassion but out of a bottom line and our duty as citizens of the world is to make their bottom line answer to our compassion. Instead of buying a new phone every two years, keep your old one til it dies - or buy a used one on ebay to keep the demand for the metals (mined by warring terrorist groups in the Congo and sold for weaponry to fuel their fight) down. Better yet, write your phone manufacturer, tell them of your plan, and vow to continue until they institute a policy to trace the materials they use. Encourage 10 of your friends to do the same. Donate the money you would have spent on a new phone to an organization working to end sexual violence.

Instead of an ostentatious diamond ring invest the money into an engagement canoe, or a down payment for a house, or donate the money to an organization working to end domestic violence. OR make sure your diamonds are registered and traced as non-conflict (most of these would come from Canada). DO NOT buy from DeBeers.

Make sure the gold in your wedding band was mined under environmentally sound sanctions (probably out of Utah).

You have spending power - use it wisely! Make it matter!

Sexual Assault Awareness

2009-04-01T11:25:00.000-07:00

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month!

Any readers in the Upper Valley be sure to check out the WISE display at DHMC, and come to our Film Series!

Friday Nights in April
Women's Health Resource Center
On the Mall in Lebanon NH
6 pm - candy, popcorn and cider provided!
Dialogue to follow...

Bring a friend! Bring a date! Bring your family! It's a hard topic but it's important, and it's a great time to connect with your community and realize all the ways in which we all contribute to putting an end to violence!

Rape is always bad

2009-04-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

Jezebel comments on an NPR segment discussing prison rape. I really appreciate the point that Rape is never ok, deserved, or brought upon oneself. Minimizing Rape against some minimizes the act in general and decreases our empathy for victims. Prison rape always gets "joked" about in my high school classes as we talk about male victims, and I am careful to make the point that far from funny, prison Rape is a most solid example of a hierarchy of power that uses Rape as a tactic of domination.

If a woman walks down the street in a short skirt, and every one chooses to let her pass - there is no sexual assault.

If a woman chooses to drink to the point of blackout, and no one chooses to sexually assault her, she won't experience Rape.

If a person goes to prison to "pay" for a crime, and no one chooses to violate them, they will serve their sentence without Rape.

No one deserves or asks to be Raped, and only by stopping perpetration can we stop assault. Prevention has to come from people choosing not to violate others.

Post Secret Sexual Assault

2009-04-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

These have two vastly different tones but both are sexual assault, and one is not funnier than the other. It's interesting to me that these were both within the same week because I find them to be a perfect example of the spectrum that our culture "supports" - and believe that supporting or laughing at one contributes to endorsing the other.

Sexual Violence in PostSecret

2009-03-22T12:56:00.001-07:00

This weeks installment of "secret" sexual assault.

Working out our own trauma and supporting someone though theirs might be impossible to separate, but when does the influence become inhibiting and end up hurting?

Sexual Violence in PostSecrets

2009-03-15T05:23:00.000-07:00

As a weekly reader of PostSecret, I regularly find examples of sexual violence that people have been holding as their deepest secrets. Many don't or haven't come to the conclusion that what happened was violence at all and are still living with shame and embarrassment and I ache for them because this is the world we live in, and while I like PostSecret, it pains me that a the receiving end of a post card is the only place some people feel safe to disclose. This week had 3 - 2 from victims and 1 from a perpetrator.

The Problem with Consent

2009-02-20T18:27:00.000-08:00

A solution by Twisty Faster at I Blame the Patriarchy.

Although this condition does not obtain with regard to any other crime you can think of, when it comes to rape, women are currently considered to exist in a state of perpetual “yes!”. This is because “yes!” is consistent with global accords governing fair use of women. Victims of robbery or attempted murder don’t have to prove that they said no to being robbed or murdered; the presumption is that not even women would consent to being killed. But because penetration by males is what women are for, if we are raped we have to prove not just that we didn’t say yes, which is impossible to prove, but that we specifically and emphatically said no, which is also impossible to prove.

There are rules about what sort of woman can even attempt to make the “I said no” argument in court. Women who typically are not eligible to opt out of consent include: women who drink in bars, women who walk alone, women who walk at night, women who use drugs, women belonging to certain castes, women who dress a certain way, women who don’t dress a certain way, women who are married to men, women who have had multiple sex partners, women who may have said yes last month, women who may have said yes at the beginning but who, three minutes in, found it disagreeable and changed to “no,” women who didn’t fight back hard enough, women who didn’t tell anyone or report it right away, women whose physical similarity to pornulated women aroused the defendant, women whose behavior at the party aroused the defendant, teens with a “reputation,” and prostituted women.

Prostituted women are indistinguishable from sex itself. This is true to varying degrees of all women, but prostituted women particularly are imagined to manifest so cavalier an attitude toward being used at any and all times by any and all comers that it is considered impossible to rape them. Prostituted women can never say no to sex because they are sex.

The Twist-Solution

My wacky consent scheme flips it around. According to my scheme, women would abide in a persistent legal condition of not having given consent to sex. Conversely, men, who after all are constantly declaiming that their lack of impulse control is a product of evolution and there’s not a thing they can do about it, would abide in a persistent legal state of pre-rape.

Women can still have all the sex they want; if they adjudge that their dude hasn’t raped them, all they have to do is not call the cops.

But if, at any time during the course of the proceedings, up to and including the storied infinitesimal microsecond preceding the sacred spilling of dudely seed, the woman elects to biff off to the nearest taco stand; and if her egress from the sweaty tableau is in any way impeded by the pronger (such an impediment would include everything from “traditional” brute force, to that insistently whispered declamation “just a couple more minutes, I’m almost there” the dread seriousness of which the fervid oaf dramatizes by that ever-so-slight tightening of his grip on her wrist); or if, in three hours or three days or, perhaps in the case of childhood abuse, in 13 years it begins to dawn on her that she has been badly used by an opportunistic predator, she has simply to make a call.

Presto! The dude is already a rapist, because, legally, consent never existed.

The cessation of rape would be immediate. Men would begin aligning their boinking protocols along non-barbaric lines in a hurry. It would suddenly be in their best interest to make damn sure that nothing in their behavior, either prior or subsequent to hiding the salami, would cause their partner to believe she has been abused.

She's so genius I feel giddy.

Sexting is the new Rainbow

2009-02-02T12:53:00.000-08:00

Sex 'Cells' for Naked Teenagers
from the NYPost.
Reading this article made me question using the NYPost as a news source for an article, but there were several points I wanted to highlight about this teen "sexting" uproar.

In case you're unfamiliar, the idea is that middle and high school students are suddenly using their cellular/email/webcam technologies to send nudie pictures or sexual texts to classmates. Now, Cosmo has been suggesting that women take their feminine (read sexual) wiles to text since texting was invented, but now apparently the teens have caught on (duh - who else reads Cosmo in the first place??) and suddenly cell phones are perverting our youth.

1. I think the term "sexting" is wildly creative.

2. I am not sure that sending pictures or sexual texts is in itself inappropriate. I do realize that the decision making process that teens are using may be lacking. Deciding to send naked pictures, who to send them to and what the ramifications may be appears was clearly not fully baked for some teens. Well what do you expect?! Their frontal cortex hasn't fully developed! This is why we don't consider them adults! Being able to figure out the cell phone's secret functions doesn't mean they have the maturity to know how to deal with them. That's why parents were invented! Some teens may be sending boob shots to a boy they just met at a party, some may be using them as one part of a healthy sexual relationship (hey, you can't get STDs from a text) with a partner. The fact that all sexual/technological uses are being lumped together is clearly not a full picture of the behavior.

5. Every article I've read about the sexting phenom has focused predominantly on the fact that girls are getting naked and sending it to the boys. Where is the conversation about WHY young girls feel so pressured to objectify themselves? and WHERE is the accountability for these boys who are sending and circulating the pictures on? I don't want to hear the garbage about "the girls should know better" - I'm one to believe that trusting is a good trait and that faith in humanity shouldn't go punished - but beyond that; If a girl tells something private to a partner (an integral part of healthy relationships) and the partner then violates that trust, and that girl he is the problem. Not her.

4. The fact that "more than 50% of the girls who sexted did so under pressure" is alarming, but not shocking. We know that teens are experiencing dating violence, but we're having a much harder time as a society addressing this, and are instead freaking out about Teens! Sexting! instead of Teens! Abusing! So also not shocking that instead of addressing the epidemic of men's violence against women, rape and teen dating violence, the media likes to write about young girls sexting, complete with minor-in-a-lacy-thong graphic.

5. Note that all this shock and awe over our sexualized (read slutty) youth (read girls) didn't stop the post from reprinting a sexual image of a minor...apparently sex sells for more than just teens.

This is mildly reminiscent of the whole "rainbow parties" teen craze that was supposedly sweeping the nation a few years ago, which leads me to wonder if sexting is similarly a fantasy of overly anxious parents.

Violence and Women's Health

2009-02-02T12:47:00.000-08:00

SPEAK UP ABOUT HOW VIOLENCE & COERCION AFFECT WOMEN'S REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

With Congress and state legislatures across the country coming into session, analysts expect hundreds of bills to be introduced that would in some way restrict women’s access to reproductive health information and services. This year, the Family Violence Prevention Fund (FVPF) is urging experts, service providers and advocates to consider helping spread the word about the reproductive health consequences of abuse, and the ways restrictions on women’s access to reproductive health care can harm victims of violence or coercion.

“For a long time, many of us who work to stop domestic, dating and sexual violence have stayed in the background on reproductive health issues,” said FVPF President Esta Soler. “As a result, we may have missed some opportunities to educate the public about how difficult it can be for victims of violence and coercion to access the reproductive health services they need. It’s time for more of us to speak up and say that restrictions on women’s access to reproductive health care can do grave and lasting damage to women who are trying to survive coercion or violence.”

The need for action is urgent. In the next few months, legislatures are likely to consider laws and regulations that would, among other things: make it harder for women to access emergency contraception; allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control; and require school-based sex education programs to teach abstinence-only and prohibit them from providing contraceptive information or services. Because victims of abuse are at increased risk for sexually transmitted infections including HIV, unintended pregnancies and poor birth outcomes, access to these services and programs is critical.

Last year, bills were introduced in several states to prevent women from being coerced into having abortions – in most cases, by lawmakers who have worked for years to make it harder for women to access reproductive health care services. The rationale for this legislation is that women who are victims of violence are being forced to have abortions, as part of that violence.

Violence prevention experts agree that coerced abortion is wrong, but note that it is only one facet of the complex and common problem of sexual and reproductive control. Research shows that women in abusive relationships often experience a range of coercive behaviors, and may have partners who interfere with their birth control, impregnate them against their will, or intentionally expose them to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Focusing only on coerced abortion ignores the larger, more complicated reality of abuse and reproductive control, they say.

kNOwMORE
To support this work, last fall the FVPF launched the KnowMoreSayMore initiative to create a dialogue about the birth control sabotage and reproductive coercion that many teens and young women face, which can result in unintended pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, miscarriage, infertility, coerced abortion, poor birth outcomes including preterm birth and low birth-weight babies, and other serious health problems.

Its website, www.KnowMoreSayMore.org, features the stories of several women who are sharing their experiences with birth control sabotage and reproductive coercion.

“These stories underscore that it is impossible for many women to negotiate safe sex because they are not in healthy, respectful relationships,” Soler continued. “That’s one reason abused women experience more sexually transmitted infections, HIV, unintended pregnancies and abortions. We can help lawmakers understand that subtler forms of violence, such as exposing a partner to HIV or refusing to use birth control, are terribly dangerous. The more we share that information, the more we will be able to do to make services available to victims and improve their reproductive health outcomes.”

Action in ‘09
This year, the FVPF is working with advocates and legislators around the country on legislation that would provide effective interventions to victims of violence in reproductive health care settings, as an alternative to coerced abortion bills. This kind of intervention can improve the health and safety of women experiencing abuse and control. The FVPF has created model legislation for these projects, which aim to educate health care providers about how to identify abuse and reproductive coercion, prevent the health effects of such violence, decrease unintended pregnancy, and partner with advocates to improve the health and safety of individuals who are experiencing violence.

“Most lawmakers, and even some advocates and health care providers, don’t fully understand the relationship between physical and sexual abuse, and reproductive health,” said FVPF Public Policy Director Kiersten Stewart. “It is imperative that we change that. Violence and coercion have a direct impact on women’s reproductive health and we must ensure that victims of violence have access to the information and services they need to keep themselves safe. At the same time, we must help those who care about reducing unintended pregnancies and abortion understand that they must address violence and abuse head-on to be successful.”

The FVPF initiative also supports expanding sex education to teach young people the importance of healthy, respectful relationships.

The FVPF’s kNOwMORE initiative is funded with generous support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

The Family Violence Prevention Fund has developed a new toolkit to give violence prevention leaders and others the tools to advocate for legislation that is not limited to coerced abortion, but addresses the reproductive health needs of all victims of violence. The kit includes sample proactive legislation, educational materials on coerced abortion legislation, as well as fact sheets, talking points, sample opinion articles and letters-to-the-editor on this issue.

To request a copy, please contact lisa@endabuse.org.

For more information, please visit www.KnowMoreSayMore.org.

The Not Rape Epidemic

2008-12-22T09:15:00.000-08:00

By Latoya Peterson
Published in Yes Means Yes and posted on Racialicious

*Trigger Warning*

Latoya’s Note: So, as promised, here’s the original version of the essay that appears in Yes Means Yes. If you see this popping up in your reader, I do not recommend you read it at work.

Rape is only four letters, one small syllable, and yet it is one of the hardest words to coax from your lips when you need it most.

Entering our teenage years in the sex saturated ’90s, my friends and I knew tons about rape. We knew to always be aware while walking, to hold your keys out as a possible weapon against an attack. We knew that we shouldn’t walk alone at night, and if we absolutely had to, we were to avoid shortcuts, dark paths, or alleyways. We even learned ways to combat date rape, even though none of us were old enough to have friends that drove, or to be invited to parties with alcohol. We memorized the mantras, chanting them like a yogic sutra, crafting our words into a protective charm with which to ward off potential rapists: do not walk alone at night. Put a napkin over your drink at parties. Don’t get into cars with strange men. If someone tries to abduct you, scream loudly and try to attack them because a rapist tries to pick women who are easy targets.

Yes, we learned a lot about rape.

What we were not prepared for was everything else. Rape was something we could identify, an act with a strict definition and two distinct scenarios. Not rape was something else entirely.

Not rape was all those other little things that we experienced everyday and struggled to learn how to deal with those situations. In those days, my ears were filled with secrets that were not my own, the confessions of not rapes experienced by the girls I knew then and the women I know now.

When I was twelve, my best friend at the time had met a guy and lied to him about her age. She told him she was sixteen and she did have the body to back it up. Some “poor hapless” guy sleeping with her accidentally would make complete sense - except for the fact that guy was twenty-five. He eventually slept with her, taking her virginity, even after he figured out how old we were. After all, it’s kind of a dead giveaway if you’re picking your girlfriend up at a middle school.

Another friend of mine friend shocked me one day after a guy (man really) walked past us and she broke down into a sobbing heap where we stood. She confided in me that when she was eleven she had a child, but her mother had forced her to put the child up for adoption. The baby’s father was the guy who had nonchalantly passed her by on the street. We were thirteen at the time, a few weeks shy of entering high school.

Later, I found out that she was at school when she met her future abuser/baby daddy. He was aware she was about eleven - what other age group is enrolled in Middle School? At the time, this guy was about nineteen. He strung her along in this grand relationship fantasy, helping her to cut school as they drove around and had sex in the back of his car. When she got pregnant with his child, he dropped her. However, living in the same area means she would run into him about once a month, normally leading to an outburst of tears or screaming fits on her end and cool indifference (with the occasional “you were just a slut anyway”) from him.

In high school, I had two Asian friends I was fairly close with. We would often end up hanging out after school at the mall with all the other teenagers our age. Occasionally, we would take the bus to the really nice mall in the upper class neighborhood, so we could be broke in style. It was there - in the affluent neighborhood - that my Asian friends dealt with the worst of their harassment. I can remember that each friend, on different occasions, was approached by older white men in their thirties and forties and quizzed about their ethnic backgrounds, ages, and dating status. These men always seemed to slip cards into their hands, asking them to call them later. My friends smiled demurely, always waiting until the man had gone before throwing their number away.

The years kept passing and the stories kept coming.

My ex-boyfriend had a friend who had been dating the same girl for about seven years. I found out the girl was eighteen at the time of their breakup. Eighteen minus seven equals what? The girl was eleven when they began dating while the man involved was nineteen. When the relationship ended, he was twenty-seven. I expressed disgust, and my ex had told me that while everyone else in their friend circle had felt the same way, the girl’s parents were fine with it, even allowing the guy to spend the night at their home. “Besides,” my ex offered nonchalantly, “she had the body of a grown woman at age eleven.”

Not rape came in other many other forms as well. No one escaped - all my friends had some kind of experience with it during their teen years.

Not rape was being pressured into losing your virginity in a swimming pool pump room to keep your older boyfriend happy.

Not rape was waking up in the middle of the night to find a trusted family friend in bed with you - and having nightmares about something that you can’t remember during the daylight hours.

Not rape was having your mother’s boyfriends ask you for sexual favors.

Not rape was feeling the same group of boys grope you between classes, day after day after day.

Not rape was being twelve years old, having a “boyfriend” who was twenty-four and trading sex for free rides, pocket money, Reeboks, and a place to stay when your mother was tripping.

My friends and I confided in each other, swapping stories, sharing out pain, while keeping it all hidden from the adults in our lives. After all, who could we tell? This wasn’t rape - it didn’t fit the definitions. This was Not rape. We should have known better. We were the ones who would take the blame. We would be punished, and no one wanted that. So, these actions went on, aided by a cloak of silence.

For me, Not rape came in the form of a guy from around the neighborhood. I remember that they called him Puffy because he looked like the rapper Sean “Puffy” Combs. He was friends with a guy I was friends with, T. I was home alone on hot summer day when I heard a knock on the patio door. I peeked through the blinds and recognized Puffy, so I opened the door a few inches. He asked if I had seen T around, and I told him no. The conversation continued, the contents so trivial that they are lost to memory.

So, I have no idea why he chose to pause and look me full in the face before saying:

“I can do whatever I want to you.”

My youthful braggadocio got the best of me, so I spat out, “Oh, what the fuck ever,” moving to pull the door closed.

Quick as a cobra, his hand darted past the screen, catching my wrist as I reached for the latch. A bit of tugging quickly turned sinister as I realized he wasn’t playing around.

He pinned me in the doorway, forcing me down to the floor barely inside my apartment. Holding my arm behind my back with one hand as I struggled against him, he calmly, deliberately allowed his free hand to explore my body. He squeezed my still budding breasts, then slipped his hands down my pants, taking his time while feeling up my behind. When he was finished, he let me up, saying again, “I can do whatever I want.” After he finished his cold display of power, he walked away.

After he left, I closed the balcony door, locked it, and put the security bar in the window, even though it was broad daylight.

I felt disgusting and dirty and used. I remember wanting to take a shower, but instead taking a seat on the couch trying to process what had happened and what I could do next.

Fighting him was out, as he had already proved he was stronger than I was. I considered telling some of my guy friends, but I quickly realized I had nothing to tell them. After all, I wasn’t raped, and it would really come to my word against his. As I was the neighborhood newcomer, I was at a disadvantage on that front. Telling my mom was out as well - I’d only get into trouble for opening the door for boys while she was at work.

I gritted my teeth in frustration. There was nothing I could do to him that wouldn’t come back on me worse. So I got up, took my shower, and stayed silent.

A few weeks later, I ran into T and some other guys from the neighborhood while I was walking to the store with one of my friends. T informed us that they were going to hang out in one of the empty apartments in the neighborhood. This was a popular activity in my old neighborhood - some guys would normally find a way to gain entry into one of the vacant apartments or townhouses and then use the place as a clubhouse for a few days.

My friend was game, but I felt myself hesitate. The memory of my Not rape was still fresh in my mind and T was still friends with Puffy. There was also the possibility that Puffy would be there in the apartment, and that was a confrontation I did not want. I refused, and my friend was angry at me for passing up the chance to hang out with the cutest boys in the neighborhood. Since I had never told this particular friend what happened, I shrugged off her anger and made an excuse to head home.

A few days after that meeting, I was on the school bus headed to morning classes. The local news report was on and the announcement that came across the airwaves stunned the normally rowdy bus into silence. The voice on the radio informed us of a brutal rape that occurred in our neighborhood. Due to the savage nature of the crime, all six of the teenage defendants would be tried as adults. The names were read and a collective gasp rose from the bus - T’s name was on that list! Jay, a guy who knew about the friendly flirtation I had going with T, leaned over and joked “Uh-huh - T’s gonna get you!”

I remained silent as my mind was racing. The strongest, most persistent thought rose to the top of my mind - oh my God, that could have been me.

At the time, I didn’t know how right I was.

A few years later, I was a high school junior on top of the world. For the most part, memories of my Not rape had been buried in the back of my mind somewhere. My third year in high school was consumed by two major responsibilities: student government and mock trial.

When I was sixteen, I knew I was destined to be a lawyer and I took advantage of every opportunity that would push me toward that goal. I signed up for mock trial and as part of our responsibilities our trial team was supposed to watch a criminal proceeding in action.

On the day we arrived at the local courthouse, there were three trials on the docket: a traffic case, a murder case, and a rape case. Nixing the traffic case, we trouped into the first courtroom which held the murder trial, only to find that the trial was on hold, pending pre-trial motions. We turned back and went into the courtroom where the rape trial was being held.

Never did it cross my mind that I would walk through the doors to see to picture of my Not rapist, captured in a Polaroid and displayed on a whiteboard with the other five rapists being tried. The prosecution was speaking, so we were quickly caught up on the specifics of the case.

While the rape had occurred in 1997 and most of the defendants - including T - had been convicted in 1998, this was the trial to determine the fate of the last of the six, a man who claimed he had left the scene before any crime had occurred.

Through word of mouth, I had learned that T had been sentenced and he would not be eligible for parole until he was forty-six years old. (I have since learned that T should be released by the end of this year. His victim should be about 21 years of age.) I had also learned that the crime was a gang rape, but knew no other details.

The prosecutor pulled out a picture of the girl the six boys had brutalized. In the first photo she was bright-eyed and neat looking, her dark hair pulled into a high ponytail which complimented her fair skin. She was dressed in athletic casual wear, as if she was on her way to a track meet.

The prosecutor then pulled out a second picture, taken post assault. Her face was a mass of purple and red bruises. One of her eyes was blood red - the attorney informed us that she had received extensive damage to the blood vessels in her eyes. The other eye was swollen shut. Her lips were also bloodied and bruised. He placed the two photographs side by side. From photo to photo, the girl had been rendered unrecognizable.

Quietly laying out the facts, the prosecutor deftly painted a tale of horror. The girl had met T and another boy (my Not rapist? I still didn’t know his government name) on a bus. The boys had convinced her to come with them and they led her to a vacant apartment. Unknown to the girl, there were four other men also hanging out that day. She was forced to give oral sex to some of the men, and then she was beaten, raped, and sodomized. She was found in the apartment unconscious, surrounded by used condoms, semen, and fecal matter.

My blood ran cold as I tried to process what I was hearing.

T was capable of this? The prosecutor was still speaking, and he made mention that there appeared to be one main ringleader with the other five guys going along for the ride. My teammates sat in rapt attention while I tried to figure out how soon we could leave. On one hand, I realized that my Not rapist and T were behind bars already, instead of roaming the streets to do this to someone else.

And yet, a part of me wondered if I should have spoken up. If I had told someone, anyone, could I have prevented this from happening? I regarded the girl’s picture once again. It is pretty rare to see the expression “beaten to a bloody pulp” illustrated in real life. I should have said something, I thought to myself, I should have tried.

My internal monologue was interrupted by the defense attorney taking the floor. He pointed out his client from the photos lining the wall, and calmly explained how his client was present in the apartment, but left before the attack began. He built his case, explaining that his client was generally a good kid, but outnumbered, and that his client opted to leave the area instead of participate in any wrongdoing. He then turned to the jury and said:

You will also hear that —– wasn’t such a good girl after all. You will hear that she skipped school. You will hear that she smoked marijuana. You will hear that she willingly skipped school to go smoke marijuana with two boys she had just met.

My mouth fell open out of shock. There wasn’t even a question of consent in this case - the damage to the girl’s face attested to that. And yet, here was this defense attorney trying to assassinate the victim’s character. For what? Why was what she was doing that day even relevant in the context of what she experienced?

The defense attorney finished his opening statement and the judge started dispensing instructions to the jury. I forced myself to swallow the bile in my throat. As the judge dismissed the court for a break, I scooted out of the room and took a deep breath of air. My team went for lunch, and I persuaded them not to go back to watch the next part of the trial.

That day in court was the day I fully understood the concept of being raped twice - first during the act and then later during the court proceedings. That was also the day I realized that telling someone about my Not rape would have netted a similar, if not more dismissive response. I had no evidence of the act, no used condom wrapper, no rape kit, no forced penetration.

If the defense attorney was attempting to sow the seeds of doubt in the face of indisputable evidence, what would have happened if I had chosen to speak up?

This is how the Not Rape epidemic spreads - through fear and silence, which become complicit in perpetuating the behaviors described here. Women of all backgrounds are affected by these kinds of acts, regardless of race, ethnicity, or social class. So many of us carry the scars of the past with us into our daily lives. Most of us have pushed these stories to the back of our minds, trying to have some semblance of a normal life that includes romantic and sexual relationships. However, waiting just behind the tongue is story after story of the horrors other women experience and hide deep within the self behind a protective wall of silence.

As I continue to discuss these issues, I continue to be surprised when revealing my story reveals an outpouring of emotion or confession from other women. When I first began discussing my Not Rape and all of the baggage that comes with it, I expected to be blamed or not to be believed.

I never expected that each woman I told would respond with her own story in kind.

I am twenty-four years old now, ten years removed from my Not rape. I still think of the girl who was assaulted and hope that she was still able to have something of a normal life. As I matured, I came to understand more about the situation. As the years passed, my shame turned to anger, and I began learning the tools I could have used to fight back.

At age fourteen, I lacked the words to speak my experience into reality. Without those words, I was rendered silent and impotent, burdened with the knowledge of what did not happen, but unable to free myself by talking about what did happen.

I cannot change the experiences of the past.

But, I can teach these words, so that they may one day be used by a young girl to save herself.

Not rape comes in many forms - it is often known by other names. What happened to me is called a sexual assault. It is not the same as rape, but it is damaging and painful. My friends experienced statutory rape, molest, and coercion.

What happened in the courtroom is a byproduct of rape culture - when what happens to women in marginalized, when beyond a shadow of a doubt still isn’t enough, when your past, manner of dress, grade point average or intoxication level are used to excuse the despicable acts of sexual violence inflicted upon you by another.

Internalized shame is what I experienced, that heavy feeling that it was my fault for allowing the sexual assault to happen. There was a fear that if I spoke up, people would look at me differently, or worse, wouldn’t believe me at all.

Without these words, those experiences feed off each other, perpetuating a culture of silence and allowing these attacks to continue.

With the proper tools, we equip our girls to speak of their truth and to end the silence that is complicit in rape culture.

Teenaged girls need to know that dating an older man will not make them cooler, and that older man cannot rescue them from their parents. Teenaged boys should be able to help as well, trying to keep their friends away from predators. (My male friends did this for me a few times if they were around, coming to my aid of some guy started acting up. For some reason, the simple presence of another man is enough to make these kind of men leave.) Adult men should be cautioned about the effects of the actions and how most of these girls are not of the age of consent. And parents should be made aware that their children are being targeted by predatory men and that they should stay vigilant.

Adults, particularly older women, should take an active interest in the young girls they know.
My boyfriend has two younger sisters. One of them recently entered her teenage years. Her body started to develop and she has attracted more male attention. I notice small changes in her - how she looks at the floor a lot more than she used to, or how she seems uncomfortable going anywhere without a group of girlfriends. She still looks like an average teenager but she is often hesitant and uncomfortable, unless she is around her peers. However, I knew her before she developed so quickly. And I notice the change that a year (as well as taking the metro to and from school) starts. I’m fairly certain she’s trying to navigate the minefield of male attention she receives.

After all, I’ve walked that same field as well.

Finally, we need to cast a critical eye on how rape culture is perpetuated on an institutional level. From how hospitals distribute rape kits to keeping tags on questionable verdicts, we must take the lead in telling the criminal justice system that rape apologists and enablers will not be tolerated.

But above all, we must give girls the tools they need to defend themselves against sexual predators.

The small things we can do - paying attention, giving the words they need, instilling the confidence in which to handle these situations and providing a non judgmental ear when a student or teen approaches us with a problem - may be the best, an perhaps only, weapons they have to continue the fight against this epidemic.

Rape is yours

2008-12-22T08:45:00.000-08:00

Thomas Says:
December 19, 2008 at 11:11 am

Anna, Hanne Blank’s piece references, of all people, Augustine of Hippo, and late-Roman Christian theologian, as an early example of the line of thinking that the body is not the sum of the experience, and assaults don’t count. My view on it is, if you’ve been assaulted, you didn’t deserve it or ask for it, but you have to live with it: so you own it, in an intellectual property sense. You can define it however you want — sex, not sex, lost/didn’t lose virginity; talk about it or stay silent; get angry, get sad, or refuse to spend a minute being angry or sad because of what someone else did against your will — you didn’t want it, but as long as it’s been thrown at you, it’s yours and you can do with it whatever works for you.

Found in Yes Means Yes comments on the Real First Time

No control = rape

2008-12-18T09:30:00.001-08:00

Image
Commentary

Bystander Effect

2008-12-17T11:31:00.001-08:00

Wiggin murder put 'bystander effect' to the test

By Brent Curtis Staff Writer

Article published Nov 30, 2008

As Castleton State College instructor Linda Wiggin was being beaten to death in her Poultney home earlier this month, at least one person heard her repeated cries for help, according to court documents.

Yet no one called police until days later.

Wiggin, 49, was allegedly beaten to death by her boyfriend, 41-year-old David Denny, who occasionally lived with her in the first floor of the home she owned at 186 College St. He has been charged with second-degree murder.

As an argument between Wiggin and Denny escalated on Nov. 10, one of the four college students that Wiggin rented rooms to on the second floor told police she heard most of the argument, including Wiggin's repeated calls of "help please" or "help police."

But police weren't called until days after Wiggin's death, prompting outrage from some residents who wondered why the student or her roommates hadn't notified police sooner.

The student's reaction, however, isn't uncommon, according to psychologists and sociologists. In fact, it is case in point of a disturbing social phenomenon: the bystander effect.

Despite repeated attempts to contact the tenants at the Wiggin home, none could be reached.

While most people believe they would know how to react in a situation where another person's well-being, or even their own life could be in danger, many bystanders do nothing because of doubts, fear of repercussions or even the simple belief that someone else will call for help.

Evan Harrington, a social and forensic psychologist who teaches at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, said he has witnessed such phenomena firsthand when he stumbled upon a mugging in New York Central Park several years ago.

As a man was being mugged and beaten in broad daylight, Harrington said he noticed other passers-by witnessed the event but failed to respond. In the end, Harrington said he chose to take action by calling police.

Looking back on that incident, Harrington said he witnessed more than a mugging; he had seen multiple social and psychological phenomena take place.

Onlookers to a criminal act who are part of a crowd often reinforce such beliefs by looking to their fellow bystanders to see how they react in what is known in sociological terms as "pluralistic ignorance" and "diffusion of responsibility."

Pluralistic ignorance holds that individuals will act against their own beliefs if they run contrary to the actions of a group. Therefore, an individual in a group of people who are doing nothing during an emergency situation are likely to imitate the actions of those around based on the belief that the opinion of the group to do nothing is the correct action, he said.

The other phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility holds that if a group of people witness a crime or emergency, the individuals within the group are less likely to render help out of the belief that someone else in the group will or already has done so, he said.

While there are sometimes those in a crowd concerned with their own safety, and thus unwilling to get involved, Harrington said he believes it's more likely that most onlookers don't believe what they are seeing. In the case of the mugging that he witnessed, for example, he said it would be easier for most people to believe the two men were "horsing around" rather than believe a crime was taking place.

Harrington said the same sort of disbelief and doubt takes place every day at a much more subtle level when people witness behavior that troubles them but leaves them unconvinced a crime is taking place.

"It's like when you see people in the supermarket where a parent is hitting a child," he said. "It could be child abuse, but corporal punishment is generally accepted in this country, and an onlooker might tend to believe that what they are seeing is a private matter and none of their business."

That sort of thinking factors into incidents of domestic abuse, as well, he said, in cases where onlookers or those in earshot might believe the curses and shouting they hear are a private affair.

An onlooker's propensity to lend help becomes even more unlikely when there is a belief that there could be consequences to their actions, said Jack Levin, a professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University.

"In a small town where there are few murders taking place, that's not on the mind of bystanders who are likely to be concerned with more mundane consequences such as embarrassment or being shunned or angering your landlord or her boyfriend," Levin said, referring to the circumstances in the Wiggin case.

Also, because arguments between Wiggin and Denny weren't uncommon, Levin said it's possible that the students believed the fighting downstairs was no different than arguments in the past.

"I don't want to excuse apathetic behavior, and bystanders should always err on the side of caution, but the possibility of retaliation or even eviction may have played a role here," Levin said.

Even when domestic incidents involve neighbors who aren't the landlord, many people opt not to get involved out of fear of angering a neighbor they will have to live with after the police intervene, Levin said.

That sort of thinking is something State Police Detective Tim Oliver said he can relate to.

Oliver, who oversees the detective division at the State Police barracks in Rutland, said he has heard from neighbors in his own cases, as well as anecdotally from other officers, the explanation that people overhearing a domestic incident don't want to get involved for fear of being "jerk neighbors."

But while he said he understands neighbors' fears of angering a couple next door or wasting police officers' time, Oliver echoed Levin's words that it's better to take a chance than it is to let a potentially violent and deadly encounter play out.

"It's better to be safe than sorry and err on the side of caution," Oliver said.

From a victim's point of view, Harrington said the best way to get help in an emergency is to be specific when calling for help.

"Rather than diffuse the responsibility, you should put it on one witness, even if it amounts to pointing at someone in particular and saying 'Hey, you, call the police,' " he said. "It makes the call for help personal, and it frees the witness from doubts that they might be doing the wrong thing because even if it does turn out to be a false alarm the witness can say 'Look, they told me to get help.'"

From a legislative standpoint, Vermont, like many other states, passed a Good Samaritan law 40 years ago that shields those who render aid from any legal liability. Vermont's Samaritan law also threatens a $100 fine against anyone who watches a life-threatening effect unfold but does nothing.

At least, that's how the law works theoretically.

In practice, the law, titled "Emergency Medical Care," is rarely invoked as a protection, and has never been called on, so far as state crime statisticians are aware, to punish someone for inaction. Like most Samaritan laws, the law in Vermont was tailored to free witnesses of a medical emergency from any doubts about rendering assistance.

The extremely rare use of the law was troubling to lawmakers interviewed last week. But legislators serving in the House and Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the notion of stiffening the law and applying it to criminal cases, such as Wiggin's slaying.

Sen. John Campbell, D-Windsor, who is vice-chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he believes witnesses to criminal events have a "moral obligation" to call police.

"In this case, my God, how much clearer can you get," he said, referring to the Wiggin case. "We have a moral responsibility as human beings to render assistance."

However, he said he doesn't believe moral responsibilities translate well into legal obligations.

Making participation on the part of onlookers a legal responsibility with potential criminal sanctions would be a "slippery slope," Campbell cautioned.

"As much as I find this distressing … from a prosecutorial standpoint, it's difficult to prove, number one, and number two, it would open a lot of people up to liability. It would be a Pandora's Box," he said. "The message of this at day's end is we all need to look in the mirror and say, 'Could we have done something to prevent someone else's death?"

Campbell's concerns about walking a legislative tightrope were echoed by Assistant Attorney General Michael McShane, who said tailoring a law that would coerce people to intervene in criminal acts would potentially compel bystanders to either put themselves in harm's way or open themselves to legal liability.

"It's tricky to see that and it could end badly," McShane said. "It's a tricky place to legislate in."

However, Rep. Margaret Flory, R-Pittsford, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said she believes bystanders already may be civilly liable for their actions or lack thereof based on one of the few Supreme Court decisions that has cited the state's Good Samaritan law.

In Sabia vs. The State of Vermont, Flory said the court talked about a civil duty to report during emergencies — a finding she said could include observations of any criminal activity.

"There's a big difference between a criminal and a private action," she said. "I don't think there's any way that someone could be held criminally negligent under the existing law, but who knows what kind of private suit could be brought?"

Like Campbell, Flory said she didn't believe a law that criminally punished witnesses who didn't act when crimes were taking place would be a good idea. In Flory's opinion, such a law would dilute the effectiveness of mandatory reporting laws applying to teachers, counselors and medical personnel who are compelled to report any criminal activity that they learn about.

"You can get to a point that there are so many mandatory reporters that the law is no longer effective," she said.

Contact Brent Curtis at brent.curtis@ rutlandherald.com.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008811300401

Alcohol is the #1 drug used to Rape

2008-12-15T07:16:00.000-08:00

Sociological Images blog has a post on recent (though not new) alcohol ads encouraging Rape.

*Consent is statutorily impossible if a person is intoxicated. Therefore encouraging someone to drink, then taking advantage is Rape. Whether or not they claim it. And you are taking advantage.

Quoted: Coaching men

2008-12-12T10:02:00.001-08:00

Cross posted from Prevent-Connect Digest 929 and The Consequences of a Naked Foot

I would want them to be aware that historically, sexual assault was framed as a women's issue - ie: "it's their problem, let them deal with it." Thanks to the hard work of many people over the past thirty years, we've now come to realize that statistically violent assaults of all kinds, especially sexual assault, are overwhelmingly perpetrated by men (regardless of the gender of the victim); this points us toward the roots of such violence, and shines a long overdue light on masculine culture. Clearly any effort intent on eradicating violence must put educating males front and center; across the nation in the last fifteen years there has been a definitive shift toward primary prevention efforts where such education is the focus.

I would want them to be aware that the central component of sexual violence is misogyny. This misogyny perpetuates today despite the changing roles of women in the real world, because the language with which we refer to women has not shifted; much of what we say and do continues to reflect the attitude that women are no just different than men, but are less than men. Once you establish that a group of people have less value than you do, you pave the way for justifying all kinds of behavior that otherwise would be unconscionable in a just, decent, and democratic society.

I would want them to be aware that misogyny hurts men. Not just because our daughters, sisters, partners/wives, mothers, and peers are being hurt, but also because in a society where a certain identity is considered sub-standard everyone's behavior is viewed and critiqued through this distorted lens.

I would want them to be aware that if they want to end violence on their campus, they must do more than merely provide workshops for their students; they must stop
reinforcing negative belief systems. This means no more shouting at their players "C'mon, run faster you pussy!", or "You're throwing like a girl", or "It's game time, let's go beat those faggots." [yes, actual quotes from college coaches and athletes].

So, to be fair, that last point isn't a trend. Yet. Maybe instead of being curious "about 'Trends' in sexual violence and prevention work", these coaches could be encouraged to be trend setters...

Stephen Montagna

Quoted

2008-10-07T09:48:00.000-07:00

Men who want to support women in our struggle for freedom and justice should understand that it is not terrifically important to us that they learn to cry; it is important to us that they stop the crimes of violence against us. – Andrea Dworkin

CWAR: Rape violently reflects the sexism in a society where power is unequally distributed between women and men, black and white, poor and rich…In rape, the woman is not a sexual being but a vulnerable piece of public property; the man does not violate society’s norms so much as take them to a logical conclusion.

"people will be less likely to use sex or sexuality as a weapon against
others in a world that respects one's sexuality as part of one's humanity."

“if you’re the exception that proves the rule, and the rule is that women are inferior, you haven’t made any progress.

I think it’s funny that people are always saying that our culture is oversexualized, because I think we’re totally undersexualized. All we are is overcommercialized.

When people talk about female empowerment, what they usually mean is women accepting happily, or if not happily at least smilingly, where we’re at. A sexually liberated woman right now is a woman who looks at Maxim and doesn’t feel bummed out by it.

If we’re going to have sexual role models, it should be the women who enjoy sex the most, not the women who get paid the most to enact it.” – Ariel Levy

“Rape is not an isolated act that can be rooted out from patriarchy without ending patriarchy itself. The same men and power structure who victimize women are engaged in the act of raping Vietnam, raping Black people, and the very earth we live upon…No simple reforms can eliminate rape.”

"I have never been free of the fear of Rape. From a very early age I, like most women, have thought of rape as a part of my natural environment – something to be feared and prayed against like fire or lightening…

Rape is an act of aggression in which the victim is denied her self-determination. It is an act of violence, which, if not actually followed by beatings or murder, nevertheless always carries with it the threat of death. And finally, rape is a form of mass terrorism, for the victims of rape are chosen indiscriminately, but the propagandists for male supremacy broadcast that it is women who cause rape by being unchaste or in the wrong place at the wrong time – in essence, by behaving as though they were free." Susan Griffin “Rape – The All-American Crime” 1971

How NOT to Rape Someone

2008-10-02T11:56:00.000-07:00

Don’t assume that a person wants to have sex.

Understand and respect that all people have their own
boundaries (and the only way to know them is to ASK!)

Be aware that alcohol and other drugs are not an excuse to
ignore cues from your partner.

Know that a person is incapable of consent if intoxicated—
and penetration without consent is rape.

Appreciate a well-crafted outfit without assuming that the person wearing it wants to have sex with you.

Enjoy flirting as a way to hone your wit, without assuming the person wants to have sex with you.

Don’t assume that some sexual activity, or past activity, means a person wants to have sex with you now.

Always provide opportunity for your partner to say “no” and respect their answer—even if it’s not what you were hoping for.

If you feel like someone’s sending mixed messages—ask them.

It’s ok to want to have sex, it is not ok to expect it.

Wasilla: Come for the fishing, stay for the Raping

2008-09-30T06:59:00.000-07:00

Rape and Republicans

2008-09-10T14:39:00.000-07:00

A new study by Child Trends reinforced the 1:5 statistic we know about the likelihood that a woman will be raped in her youth. What's just beginning to be talked about is how this relates to reproductive health. The Family Violence Prevention Fund is using this new research to highlight an issue that's largely overlooked: how dating violence - including sexual violence - relates to reproductive heath, and by extension, the upcoming election.

Not only does the (republican) government want to control women's bodies - it's a trick that abusive partners have learned as well. When we talk about teen pregnancy, we need to include the conversation of how and WHY these girls are having babies. Lack of comprehensive health education? Coercive dating partners (again, lack of comprehensive health education including sexual violence education)? Doesn't matter to the GOP - those sluts are going to have the freedom to make their own choice - just like Bristol Palin - as long as their choice is forced pregnancy and marriage to the boy owning the penis that the sperm shot out of. Who cares if he's abusive and the pregnancy is a result of birth control sabotage and rape? Not Sarah Palin (who thinks any rape survivor who has the audacity to demand justice should have to pay for their own Evidence Collection Kit).

Ladies, don't kid yourself the GOP hates you. Even you white, upper classed privileged ones that support them.

More links atFeministing

Bystanders

2008-07-24T11:04:00.001-07:00

I Blame the Patriarchy

2008-07-15T10:26:00.000-07:00

Twisty's back from her blogging hiatus with a vengence.

Check her post on Rape Culture

Must Read

2008-07-09T12:06:00.001-07:00

It's not new and I admit to being shamefully under-read in the Dworkin arena but I'm building a mandatory reading list for I don't know who and this has been added.

I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There is No Rape*

*There's a typo - the large paragraph on page 6 (paragraph 34) should be crossed out.

Virginity and Rape

2008-06-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

I went to a sexual assault a few weeks ago and the victim described it as her first time. I looked her in the eye and said "That was NOT your first time. That will NOT be the story that you tell your friends when you all someday look back and reminisce. That was NOT sex."

GIRLdrive ponders a bit more how Rape and virginity intersect.

Some hope

2008-06-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

Posted by brownfemipower on La Chola blog:

*The statement below was forwarded to me by friend, colleague and comrade William Jelani Cobb. Please feel free to add your name to the statement and to forward it to others.*

The Online Petition (currently holding 377 signatures)

–Mark Anthony Neal

*Statement of Black Men Against the Exploitation of Black Women*

Six years have gone by since we first heard the allegations that R. Kelly had filmed himself having sex with an underage girl. During that time we have seen the videotape being hawked on street corners in Black communities, as if the dehumanization of one of our own was not at stake. We have seen entertainers rally around him and watched his career reach new heights despite the grave possibility that he had molested and urinated on a 13-year old girl. We saw African Americans purchase millions of his records despite the long history of such charges swirling around the singer. Worst of all, we have witnessed the sad vision of Black people cheering his acquittal with a fervor usually reserved for community heroes and shaken our heads at the stunning lack of outrage over the verdict in the broader Black community.

Over these years, justice has been delayed and it has been denied. Perhaps a jury can accept R. Kelly’s absurd defense and find “reasonable doubt” despite the fact that the film was shot in his home and featured a man who was identical to him. Perhaps they doubted that the young woman in the courtroom was, in fact, the same person featured in the ten year old video. But there is no doubt about this: some young Black woman was filmed being degraded and exploited by a much older Black man, some daughter of our community was left unprotected, and somewhere another Black woman is being molested, abused or raped and our callous handling of this case will make it that much more difficult for her to come forward and be believed. And each of us is responsible for it.

We have proudly seen the community take to the streets in defense of Black men who have been the victims of police violence or racist attacks, but that righteous outrage only highlights the silence surrounding this verdict.

We believe that our judgment has been clouded by celebrity-worship; we believe that we are a community in crisis and that our addiction to sexism has reached such an extreme that many of us cannot even recognize child molestation when we see it.

We recognize the absolute necessity for Black men to speak in a single, unified voice and state something that should be absolutely obvious: that the women of our community are full human beings, that we cannot and will not tolerate the poisonous hatred of women that has already damaged our families, relationships and culture.

We believe that our daughters are precious and they deserve our protection. We believe that Black men must take responsibility for our contributions to this terrible state of affairs and make an effort to change our lives and our communities.

This is about more than R. Kelly’s claims to innocence. *It is about our survival as a community*. Until we believe that our daughters, sisters, mothers, wives and friends are worthy of justice, until we believe that rape, domestic violence and the casual sexism that permeates our culture are absolutely unacceptable, until we recognize that the first priority of any community is the protection of its young, we will remain in this tragic dead-end.

We ask that you:

o Sign your name if you are a Black male who supports this statement:

http://www.petitiononline.com/rkelly/petition.html

o Forward this statement to your entire network and ask other Black males to sign as well

o Make a personal pledge to never support R. Kelly again in any form or fashion, unless he publicly apologizes for his behavior and gets help for his long-standing sexual conduct, in his private life and in his music

o Make a commitment in your own life to never to hit, beat, molest, rape, or exploit Black females in any way and, if you have, to take ownership for your behavior, seek emotional and spiritual help, and, over time, become a voice against all forms of Black female exploitation

o Challenge other Black males, no matter their age, class or educational background, or status in life, if they engage in behavior and language that is exploitative and or disrespectful to Black females in any way. If you say nothing, you become just as guilty.

o Learn to listen to the voices, concerns, needs, criticisms, and challenges of Black females, because they are our equals, and because in listening we will learn a new and different kind of Black manhood

We support the work of scholars, activists and organizations that are helping to redefine Black manhood in healthy ways. Additional resources are listed below.

Books:
Who’s Gonna Take the Weight, Kevin Powell
New Black Man, Mark Anthony Neal
Deals with the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot, Pearl Cleage
Traps: African American Men on Gender and Sexuality, Rudolph Byrd and Beverly Guy-Sheftall

Films:
I Am A Man: Black Masculinity in America, by Byron Hurt
Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, by Byron Hurt
NO! The Rape Documentary, by Aishah Simmons

Organizations
The 2025 Campaign: www.2025bmb.org
Men Stopping Violence: www.menstoppingviolence.org

R.Kelly

2008-06-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

See Nobody Loves a Black Girl for pretty straight up (and heart breaking)post on the R.Kelly verdict. Also Racialicious for some really stomach churning commentary. I'm not writing any more about it because really, why are we surprised? Seems like a pretty typical Rape trial to me.

Women! Protect yourselves!

2008-06-04T09:55:00.001-07:00

"These [risk reduction] programs focus on how women can reduce their chances of being sexually assaulted. I agree that women benefit from these education programs, but let us not mistake this for prevention...If a woman has done everything in her power to reduce her risk, then a man who has the proclivity for abuse or need for power will just move on to another woman or target," -Jackson Katz

Monday discussion

2008-04-28T08:30:00.001-07:00

Consider the statement:
"Consent is more attributed than exercised" taken from the study Sexual Boundaries: An Examination of the Importance of Talking Before Touching

Leave thoughts in comments!

Rape is like a slice of chocolate cake

2008-04-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

"Rape is simply sex (I am talking about 'husband-rape' here)... Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal…To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting force-feeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence.”

What's perhaps more amazing is the fact that this is not from your run of the mill crazy ass cartoon villain, nope. It's from a public official. Obvi.

I do want to find a silver lining in the manner of the media report of Nick Eriksen's statement, skillfully critiqued by the Londonist

Eriksen's statement was made in a post on his blog which has since been taken down, but fortunately preserved for prosterity here: http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:qPWIb-wzBFMJ:sirjohnbull.blogspot.com/2005/08/rape-lies-lies-lies.html (copy and paste)

The Gift of Fear

2008-04-04T12:25:00.001-07:00

By Gavin de Becker

I imagine this conversation after a stranger is told no by a woman he has approached:

Man: What a bitch. What's your problem, lady? I was just trying to offer a little help to a pretty woman. What are you so paranoid about?

Woman: You're right. I shouldn't be wary. I'm overreacting about nothing. I mean, just because a man makes an unsolicited and persistent approach in an underground parking lot in a society where crimes against women have risen four times faster than the general crime rate, and three out of four women will suffer a violent crime; and just because I've personally heard horror stories from every female friend I've ever had; and just because I have to consider where I park, where I walk, whome I talk to, and whom I date in the context of whether someone will kill me or rape me or scare me half to death; and just because several times a week someone makes an inappropriate remark, stares at me, harasses me, follows me or drives alonside my care pacing me; and just because I have to deal with the apartment manager who gives me the creeps for reasons I haven't figure out, yet I can tell by the way he looks at me that given an opportunity he'd do something that would get us both on the evening news; and just because these are life-and-death issues most men know nothing about so that I"m made to feel foolish for being cautious even though I live at the center of a swirl of possible hazards doesn't mean a woman should be wary of a stranger who ignores the word "no." [original emphasis]

...

At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.

Validated

2008-03-31T19:40:00.000-07:00

nate
I'm very scared I'm going to rape someone now
without knowing it

Kate
really?

nate
by doing something stupid
in a very wary "should I be doing this" sort of thing
which I suppose is good

Kate
i have to say that makes me feel really good about myself

nate
yeah, I'm afraid you have made me a more aware male

nate
I went through this weekend's events like 100 times to make sure it was okay

Kate
if you're ever worried, just ask

nate
yeah, and I did
I asked when I wasn't sure

***
one down...:)

The Unacceptable Reality

2008-03-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

Women Rape themselves

2008-03-05T06:26:00.000-08:00

Another article by Heather Mac Donald. In case you haven't the stomach to read the entirity, allow me to bullet point:

To prevent Rape, women should follow several simple steps:
*Don't drink
*Wear nothing other than baggy sweats
*Don't talk to men
*Don't kiss men
*Don't go anywhere alone
*Better yet, don't leave your house

The 10th graders I teach get it better than this woman. She makes me think twice about freedom of speech.

Let me be clear: being drunk does not make me vulnerable; being a woman does.

Heather Mac Donald
A Thought Experiment on Campus RapeFalse statistics, or evil administrators?2 March 2008
In the Winter issue of City Journal, I wrote an article contesting universities’ common claim that rape is an epidemic on campus. That claim rests in part on a famous statistic published by University of Arizona health professor Mary Koss in 1987—that fully a quarter of all college girls will be raped, or be the targets of attempted rape, by the time they graduate. Koss has written a response, which the website of the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault has just posted, defending the notion of ubiquitous campus rape.

Let me propose a thought experiment. An unapprehended rapist has assaulted two women in a particular area of State University’s campus—.04 percent of the female undergraduate population. Would the State University administrators tell girls to stay away from the area until the rapist is caught? Or would they remain silent about whether girls should continue to frequent that area of the campus, because “rape is never a woman’s fault”? The first, of course, because students’ safety is the administrators’ paramount concern, regardless of whether female students have a “right” to frequent that dangerous area at night.

Campus rape researchers and advocates, modifying Koss’s statistic slightly, say that they believe that a whopping one-fifth to one-quarter of college women are raped by their fellow students. Virtually all of these alleged rapes could be avoided if the girls took certain steps: don’t get into bed with a guy when you are very drunk, don’t take off your clothes, don’t get involved in oral sex, and so on. Such advice is fully consistent with female empowerment. It recognizes that girls have the power to stop “campus rape.” It treats them as moral agents able to control their fates.

But when I suggest to campus sexual assault administrators that they could stop what Koss calls the “rape pandemic” overnight if they persuaded girls to exercise more prudence, I inevitably receive responses like the following (these are my interlocutors’ actual words): “I am uncomfortable with the idea of ‘recommending that female students exercise more modesty and restraint’—this indicates that if they are raped it could be their fault—it is never their fault.” Or: “Yes, modesty would have a certain impact, but who’s responsible?”

There are two possible reasons why the administrators refuse to take the most efficacious, practical action to end campus rape—counseling sexual prudence. Either they know in their heart of hearts that what is happening on campuses is not really rape, but something much more ambiguous and also much less traumatic than real rape. Or—and this possibility is too horrible to contemplate—these self-professed women’s advocates really do believe that a drunken hookup is rape, and yet are withholding from women the simplest, surest way to prevent being raped, simply in order to preserve the principle of male fault. If the latter situation actually prevails, I conclude that the campus rape movement is purely political, interested solely in casting men as the evil perpetrators of the patriarchy rather than in most effectively protecting potential victims of a traumatic crime.

In her response, Koss says that “Men are supposed to know that [it is] wrong to have sex with a woman who is unable to consent due to intoxication.” Some men may know that; others may not. By all means, try to educate as many as you can. But the point is, if you want to protect women right now, the surest way of doing so is persuading them to avoid risky sexual encounters, rather than hoping that the drunken men with whom they have gotten into bed have a solid sense of ethics. What if a man knows that it is wrong to have sex with a very drunk woman but is himself too drunk to act on that knowledge—who’s going to protect the woman then? It is certainly ironic that feminists are relying on men to protect women when the women are perfectly able to determine whether a drunken night ends in intercourse. Moreover, if drunkenness cancels a woman’s responsibility for her actions, why does a drunken man who has sex that he may regret the next day nevertheless remain responsible? Are women less responsible for their actions than men?

Koss also claims that women who do not view “promiscuous sex” as rape suffer “equal emotional distress to women who view their experience as rape.” It is unclear whether the women she characterizes as “viewing their experience as rape” actually have been raped. Even assuming that they have, however, the 2000 Department of Justice study of campus rape found that those women whom the researchers characterized as rape victims “generally did not state that their victimization resulted in physical or emotional injuries.” The researchers did not reveal the actual numbers behind that “generally,” but presumably they were not insignificant. Moreover, 65 percent of those whom the researchers called “completed rape” victims and three-quarters of “attempted rape” victims said that they did not think that their experiences were “serious enough to report”—a judgment inconceivable from a real rape victim.

If it were the case that millions of rape victims graduated from college each year with serious emotional trauma, we’d have heard about it. Their parents would have demanded that colleges prevent this crime “pandemic.” Alternative academic institutions would have sprung up, guaranteeing a safe place for women to study and learn. None of this has happened, because the millions of women whom campus rape researchers designate as victims don’t suffer serious emotional trauma and don’t think of themselves as victims. You would have thought that that would be celebrated as a sign of strong womanhood.

Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor of City Journal and the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Her most recent book, coauthored with Victor Davis Hanson and Steven Malanga, is The Immigration Solution.

What Campus Rape Crisis?

2008-03-03T08:51:00.000-08:00

As much as I hate to reproduce this it's as much an example of popular rape culture as I've ever seen. And an even stronger representation of the saturation in our culture because it comes from a woman.

It is amazing to me how one can have some facts, and completely miss the point, and in terms of "rape bureaucracy", I'm sure she makes much more money whoring the rape culture than I do fighting it.

From the Los Angeles Times
What campus rape crisis?

Promiscuity and hype have created a phony epidemic at colleges.
By Heather Mac Donald

February 24, 2008

It's a lonely job, working the phones at a college rape crisis center. Day after day, you wait for the casualties to show up from the alleged campus rape epidemic -- but no one calls. Could this mean that the crisis is overblown? No. It means, according to campus sexual-assault organizations, that the abuse of coeds is worse than anyone had ever imagined. It means that consultants and counselors need more funding to persuade student rape victims to break the silence of their suffering.

It is a central claim of these organizations that between a fifth and a quarter of all college women will be raped or will be the targets of attempted rape by the end of their college years. Harvard's Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response uses the 20% to 25% statistic. Websites at New York University, Syracuse University, Penn State and the University of Virginia, among many other places, use the figures as well.

And who will be the assailants of these women? Not terrifying strangers who will grab them in dark alleys, but the guys sitting next to them in class or at the cafeteria.

If the one-in-four statistic is correct, campus rape represents a crime wave of unprecedented proportions. No felony, much less one as serious as rape, has a victimization rate remotely approaching 20% or 25%, even over many years. The 2006 violent crime rate in Detroit, one of the most violent cities in the U.S., was 2,400 murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults per 100,000 inhabitants -- a rate of 2.4%.

Such a crime wave -- in which millions of young women would graduate having suffered the most terrifying assault, short of murder, that a woman can experience -- would require nothing less than a state of emergency. Admissions policies, which if the numbers are true are allowing in tens of thousands of vicious criminals, would require a complete revision, perhaps banning male students entirely. The nation's nearly 10 million female undergraduates would need to take the most stringent safety precautions.

None of this crisis response occurs, of course -- because the crisis doesn't exist.

So where do the numbers come from? During the 1980s, feminist researchers committed to the rape-culture theory discovered that asking women directly if they had been raped yielded disappointing results -- very few women said that they had been. So Ms. magazine commissioned University of Arizona public health professor Mary Koss to develop a different way to measure the prevalence of rape.

Rather than asking female students about rape per se, Koss asked them if they had ever experienced actions that she then classified as rape. One question, for example, asked, "Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?" -- a question that is ambiguous on several fronts, including the woman's degree of incapacitation, the causal relation between being given a drink and having sexual intercourse, and the man's intentions. Koss' method produced the 25% rate, which Ms. then published.

It was a flawed study on a number of levels, but the most powerful refutation came from her own subjects: 73% of the women whom the study characterized as rape victims told the researchers that they hadn't been raped. Further, 42% of the study's supposed victims said they had had intercourse again with their alleged assailants -- though it is highly unlikely that a raped woman would have sex again with the fiend who attacked her.

Despite all this, the numbers have stuck. Today, John Foubert, an education professor at William and Mary College (and founder of a group called One-in-Four, which works on sexual assault issues and has chapters on 17 campuses), says, "The one-in-four statistic has been replicated in several studies for several decades. To the extent that social science can prove anything, which I believe it can, the one-in-four statistic has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt. My instincts tell me that the statistic is actually much higher."

Yet subsequent campus rape studies keep turning up the pesky divergence between the victims' and the researchers' point of view.

A 2006 survey of sorority women at the University of Virginia, for example, found that only 23% of the subjects whom the survey characterized as rape victims felt that they had been raped -- a result that the university's director of sexual and domestic violence services calls "discouraging." Equally damning was a 2000 campus rape study conducted under the aegis of the Department of Justice. Sixty-five percent of those whom the researchers called "completed rape" victims and three-quarters of "attempted rape" victims said that they did not think that their experiences were "serious enough to report."

Believing in the campus rape epidemic, it turns out, requires ignoring women's own interpretations of their experiences.

Nevertheless, none of the weaknesses in the research has had the slightest drag on the campus "anti-rape" movement, because the movement is political, not empirical. In a rape culture, which "condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as a norm," sexual assault will wind up underreported, argued Carole Goldberg, the director of Yale's Sexual Harassment and Assault Resources and Education Center, in a March 2007 newsletter. Campus rape centers and 24-hour hotlines, aided by tens of millions of dollars of federal funding, are ubiquitous.

Needless to say, those facilities don't appear to get a tremendous amount of use. For example, Hillary Wing-Richards, the associate director of sexual-assault prevention at James Madison University, said the school's campus rape "help line" gets a varying number of calls, some of which are "request-for-information calls" -- where to go, who to talk to and the like.

"Some months there are 10 and others, one or two," she said.

Referring to rape hotlines, risk management consultant Brett Sokolow laments: "The problem is, on so many of our campuses, very few people ever call. And mostly we've resigned ourselves to the underutilization of these resources."

Federal law requires colleges to publish reported crimes affecting their students. The numbers of reported sexual assaults -- the law does not require their confirmation -- usually run under half a dozen a year on private campuses, and maybe two to three times that at large public universities.

So what reality does lie behind the rape hype? I believe that it's the booze-fueled hookup culture of one-night, or sometimes just partial-night, stands. Students in the '60s demanded that college administrators stop setting rules for fraternization. The colleges meekly complied and opened a Pandora's box of boorish, promiscuous behavior that gets cruder each year.

This culture has been written about widely. College women -- as well as men -- reportedly drink heavily before and during parties. For the women, that drinking is often goal-oriented, suggests Karin Agness, a recent University of Virginia graduate and founder of NeW, a club for conservative university women: It frees the drinker from responsibility and "provides an excuse for engaging in behavior that she ordinarily wouldn't." Nights can include a meaningless sexual encounter with a guy whom the girl may not even know.

In all these drunken couplings, there may be some deplorable instances of forced and truly non-consensual sex. But most campus "rape" cases exist in the gray area of seeming cooperation and tacit consent, which is why they are almost never prosecuted criminally.

"Ninety-nine percent of all college rape cases would be thrown out of court in a twinkling," observes University of Pennsylvania history professor Alan Kors.

Many students hold on to the view that women usually have the power to determine whether a campus social event ends with intercourse. A female Rutgers student expressed a common sentiment in a university sexual-assault survey: "When we go out to parties and I see girls and the way they dress and the way they act ... and just the way they are, under the influence and um, then they like accuse them of like, 'Oh yeah, my boyfriend did this to me' or whatever, I honestly always think it's their fault."

But suggest to a rape bureaucrat that female students share responsibility for the outcome of an evening and that greater sexual restraint would prevent campus "rape," and you might as well be saying that women should don the burka.

College officials have responded to the fallout of the college sexual revolution not with sound advice but with bizarre and anachronistic legalisms for responding to postcoital second thoughts.

University of Virginia students, for example, may demand a formal adjudication before the Sexual Assault Board; they can request a "structured meeting" with the Office of the Dean of Students by filing a formal complaint; or they can seek voluntary mediation.

Risk-management consultants travel the country to help colleges craft legal rules for student sexual congress.

"If one partner puts a condom on the other, does that signify that they are consenting to intercourse?" asks Alan D. Berkowitz, a campus rape consultant. Short of guiding the thus-sheathed instrumentality to port, it's hard to imagine a clearer signal of consent, although Berkowitz apparently finds it "inherently ambiguous."

And even as the campus rape industry decries alleged male predation, a parallel campus sex bureaucracy sends the message that students should have recreational sex at every opportunity.

New York University offers workshops on orgasms and "Sex Toys for Safer Sex" ("an evening with rubber, silicone and vibrating toys") in residence halls and various student clubs. Brown University's Student Services helps students answer the compelling question: "How can I bring sex toys into my relationship?" Princeton University's "Safer Sex Jeopardy" game for freshmen lists six types of vibrators and eight kinds of penile toys.

Why, exactly, are schools offering workshops on orgasms? Are students already so saturated with knowledge of the evolution of constitutional democracy, say, that colleges should reroute their resources to matters available on porn websites?

Remarkably, many students emerge from this farrago of mixed messages with common sense intact.

In a November column in the University of Virginia's student newspaper, a third-year student gave the real scoop on frat parties: They're filled with men hoping to have sex. Rather than calling these men "rapists," columnist Katelyn Kiley offered some practical wisdom to the women trooping off to Virginia's fraternity row:

"It's probably a good idea to keep your clothes on, and at the end of the night, to go home to your own bed. Interestingly enough, that's how you get [the guys] to keep asking you back."

Maybe such young iconoclasts can take up another discredited idea: College is for learning. Fighting male dominance or catering to the libidinal impulses released in the 1960s are sorry substitutes for the pursuit of knowledge.

Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor of City Journal, from which this is adapted.

More on Male Priviledge

2008-02-21T09:53:00.001-08:00

Men Against Violence yahoo group
Posted by: "karen henninger"
Wed Feb 20, 2008 5:25 am (PST)

You expect Men to be rational and to respond to facts -research- with rationality, logic, fairness, and honesty. Think again. Many Men instead respond with their need to retain their comfortability and social position and while rationality plays a large part in their responses, there is a root of irrationality going on. Without confronting the REALITY of what is really going on, you can just get lost in wasted, useless, conversation where one is not really interested in communication but instead, interested in maintaining their power, and reacting with fear and control. Conversation itself becomes the tool-weapon for power and control, rather than the penis.

NY TImes

2008-02-18T11:46:00.000-08:00

INTERNATIONAL / MIDDLE EAST | February 13, 2008
Limbo for U.S. Women Reporting Iraq Assaults
By JAMES RISEN
Women who say they were sexually assaulted in Iraq by co-workers have found themselves unable to seek justice.

"Let's don't go forward"

2008-02-18T11:39:00.001-08:00

From: Terri Spahr Nelson
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 2:05 PM
Subject: State senator comments on rape

Put this one in the catagory of 'we've still got miles to go in our
education efforts on sexual assault...'

The following comes from the website/blog "Think Progress" at
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/14/tn-state-senator-rape-just-isnt-what-it-used-to-be/

Tennessee state senator: rape just isn't what it used to be.
Last week, after a debate on amending the Tennessee constitution to
say that it doesn't guarantee the right to abortion, state Sen. Doug
Henry (D) stood up and reflected on how rape has changed:

"Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I
was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman,
against her will, by some party not her spouse. Today it's
simply, "Let's don't go forward with this act."

Go to the link (above) to view the video of his comments in the
legislature or send an e-mail to him at: (sen.douglas.henry@legislature.state.tn.us) to let him know how wrong
he is about rape and how insensitive he was to all rape victims with
this comment.

Let's keep on doing what we're doing everyday on behalf of rape
victims because we still have a way to go.

Terri Spahr Nelson
http://www.tsnelson.com
New resources for sexual assault victims, military victims and victims of violent crime

2008-02-18T08:58:00.000-08:00

I want women not to say 'no' but to flat out say, 'if you have sex with me right now you will be a rapist.'

-Dartmouth Survivor Stories

Commander in Chief

2008-01-17T07:09:00.001-08:00

January 15, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Politics and Misogyny
By BOB HERBERT

With Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s win in New Hampshire, gender issues are suddenly in the news. Where has everybody been?

If there was ever a story that deserved more coverage by the news media, it’s the dark persistence of misogyny in America. Sexism in its myriad destructive forms permeates nearly every aspect of American life. For many men, it’s the true national pastime, much bigger than baseball or football.

Little attention is being paid to the toll that misogyny takes on society in general, and women and girls in particular.

Its forms are limitless. Hard-core pornography is a multibillion-dollar business, having spread far beyond the stereotyped raincoat crowd to anyone with a laptop and a password. Crowds of crazed photographers risk life and limb to get shots of Paris Hilton or Britney Spears without their underwear. At New York Jets home games, men regularly gather at Gate D to urge female fans to expose themselves.

In its grimmest aspects, misogyny manifests itself in hideous violence — from brutal beatings and rape to outright torture and murder. Fifteen months ago, a gunman invaded an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania, separated the girls from the boys, and then shot 10 of the girls, killing five.

The cable news channels revel in stories about women (almost always young and attractive) who come to a gruesome end at the hands of violent men. The stories seldom, if ever, raise the issue of misogyny, which permeates not just the crimes themselves, but the coverage as well.

The latest of these obsessively covered stories concerned a pregnant marine, Maria Frances Lauterbach, who had complained to authorities that she had been raped by a fellow marine. Her body was found last week buried in a backyard fire pit in North Carolina.

It just so happens that the Democratic presidential candidates are campaigning this week in the misogyny capital of America: Nevada. It’s a perfect place to bring up the way women are viewed and treated in this society, but don’t hold your breath. Presidential wannabes are hardly in the habit of insulting the locals.

Prostitution is legal in much of Nevada and heavily promoted even where it’s not. In Las Vegas, where prostitution is illegal but flourishes nevertheless, Mayor Oscar Goodman has said that creating a series of legal, “magnificent” brothels would be a great development tool for his city.

The fundamental problem in all of this is that women and girls are dehumanized, opening the floodgates to every kind of mistreatment. “Once you dehumanize somebody, everything else is possible,” said Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director of the women’s advocacy group Equality Now.

A grotesque exercise in the dehumanization of women is carried out routinely at Sheri’s Ranch, a legal brothel about an hour’s ride outside of Vegas. There the women have to respond like Pavlov’s dog to an electronic bell that might ring at any hour of the day or night. At the sound of the bell, the prostitutes have five minutes to get to an assembly area where they line up, virtually naked, and submit to a humiliating inspection by any prospective customer who has happened to drop by.

If you don’t think this is an issue worthy of a presidential campaign, consider the scandalous way that women are treated in the military and the fact that the winner of this election will become the commander in chief.

The sexual mistreatment of women in the military is widespread. The Defense Department financed a study in 2003 of female veterans seeking health assistance from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Nearly a third of those surveyed said they had been the victim of a rape or attempted rape during their service.

The Associated Press reported in 2006 that more than 80 military recruiters had been disciplined over the course of a year because of sexual misconduct with young women and girls who had considered joining the military.

There continue to be widespread complaints from women about rape and other forms of sexual attacks in the military, and about a culture that tends to protect the attackers.

To what extent are the candidates of either party concerned about these matters? Do they have any sense of how extensive and debilitating the mistreatment of women and girls really is?

We’ve become so used to the disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous and even violent treatment of women that we hardly notice it. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed against women and girls every day. Fashionable ads in mainstream publications play off of that violence, exploiting themes of death and dismemberment, female submissiveness and child pornography.

If we’ve opened the door to the issue of sexism in the presidential campaign, then let’s have at it. It’s a big and important issue that deserves much more than lip service.

Pornography is...

2008-01-16T07:09:00.000-08:00

"What the end of the world looks like."

My new policy is to have every boyfriend read Robert Jensen's Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity if/when the topic of porn comes up. (I also highly recommend to anyone beyond the boyfriend population)

Lusty Linda says "Ow"

2007-12-13T16:06:00.001-08:00

Apparently there's more than one woman-hating pencil product out there. First there was the headless doggie-style sharpener, and now Shakes shows us this: Lusty Linda the pen holder.

You'll note from the packaging that Lusty Linda can utter "8 lusty sayings," which fall into one of two categories—"good mood" or "bad mood," controlled by the click of a switch. Says one site (screen cap) that sells Lusty Linda, "too bad all women did not have such a switch." Ho ho ho!

Her "bad mood" sayings include "Ow," "Help, Help!" and "Get out you, you dirty old man." You know, because rape is hilarious.

Recently "men's rights activists" scoffed at the idea that we were offended by the pencil sharpener, which blogger Glenn Sacks wrote "depicts a conventional, common sex act which women enjoy." (What woman enjoys fucking without her head, I don't know.) I wonder if they'll find more excuses as to how "Help!" and "Ow!" are actually cries of unabashed pleasure.

Cara puts it well:

This promotes rape. If you buy one of these things, you are promoting rape. If you laugh at one of these things, you are promoting rape. If you don’t laugh but still think that it’s a harmless joke, you are promoting rape. If one of your friends has one, or thinks it’s funny, and you don’t say anything about it, you are promoting rape.

Via How many more times do we have to say it? Rape is not funny.

Feministing

Thoughts on porn

2007-12-11T06:19:00.000-08:00

It hurts.

It hurts to know that no matter who you are as a woman you can be reduced to a thing to be penetrated, and that men will buy movies about that, and that in many of those movies your humiliation will be the central theme. It hurts to know that so much of the pornography that men are buying fuses sexual desire with cruelty.

It hurts women, and men like it, and it hurts just to know that.

From Alternet's article on Robert Jensen's book Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity.

We sit quietly, until one of them says, "That wasn't fair."

I know that it wasn't fair. What I had told them was true, and they had asked me to tell them. But it wasn't fair to push it. If I were them, if I were a woman, I wouldn't want to know that. Life is difficult enough without knowing things like that, without having to face that one lives in a society in which no matter who you are -- as an individual, as a person with hopes and dreams, with strengths and weaknesses -- you are something to be fucked and laughed at and left on the side of the road by men. Because you are a woman.

Pornography forces women to face up to how men see them.

Blog debate in response to the previous article.

By and large, what drives women being paid
to have themselves used sexually is men.

"Gee, I wonder why women get Raped?"

2007-12-10T11:50:00.001-08:00

American Apparel: Anti-sweatshop, Anti-woman.

"They always go free, the ones with the choice."

2007-12-10T08:00:00.001-08:00

The best video I've seen on international Prostitution and Trafficking of women.

Dateline Predatory Drug Experiment

2007-12-06T11:13:00.000-08:00

Dateline experiment in Predatory Drugs (I LOATHE "date rape"). This makes me NEVER want to go to a bar. Having been drugged - dispite all the "proper precautions" - I absolutely resent sharing living space with guys who are not only not appauled, but enthusiastic about drugging women to Rape them. Even more, I resent the victim blaming implications that I hear every day about women being "stupid" drinking too much, accepting drinks, leaving drinks unattended. It is not being intoxicated that makes me vulnerable when I go out. It is being a woman and there is nothing I can do to change that.

Pleasure and Danger

2007-11-01T09:28:00.000-07:00

The tension between sexual pleasure and sexual danger is a powerful one in women’s lives. Sexuality is simultaneously a domain of restriction, repression, and danger as well as a domain of exploration, pleasure, and agency. To focus only on pleasure and gratification ignores the patriarchal structure in which women act, yet to speak only of sexual violence and oppression ignores women’s experience with sexual agency and choice and unwittingly increases the sexual terror and despair in which women live. [Vance, Carole S. (1984). Pleasure and Danger: Towards a Politics of Sexuality. In Carole S. Vance, (ed.) Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (p. 1)]

There's no such thing as 'Gray Rape"

2007-10-23T12:17:00.001-07:00

I was surprisingly impressed with this article from the Times. That is until I got to the comments. I'm constantly struck by people who absolutely do not understand what they're talking about. While ignorance may be rampant, when it comes to Rape, it's also dangerous. I come to work every day hoping that I can somehow figure out a way to reach these people into an enlightened consciousness. Yesterday, fortunately, I had a beacon of hope:

I was at a high school talking about Sexual Violence. We were discussing the fact that the majority of perpetrators of SV against not only women, but male victims as well, were men. Not just men, but heterosexual men. Illustrating that it's not about sex, it's about power, control, entitlement and the way that we have constructed masculinity. My co-facilitator made the suggestion that in the instance of hetero-identified men Raping gay-identified men could in fact be considered a hate crime. A boy in the class pipped up "isn't every Rape a hate crime?" and I remembered why I do this work.

2007-10-01T10:42:00.000-07:00

Rap musician Master P apologized in front of a congressional panel on Tuesday for the misogynist lyrics that have laced his platinum-selling albums. "I want to apologize to all the women out there. I was honestly wrong," he said, adding that being a father adjusted his attitude. The hearings were arranged after radio host Don Imus was fired for slurring black women in a manner that some felt was influenced by hip-hop.

Why Aren't We Shocked?

2007-09-24T07:52:00.000-07:00

The New York Times
October 16, 2006
By Bob Herbert, Op-Ed Columnist

"Who needs a brain when you have these?"

—message on an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt for young women

In the recent shootings at an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania and a large public high school in Colorado, the killers went out of their way to separate the girls from the boys, and then deliberately attacked only the girls.

Ten girls were shot and five killed at the Amish school. One girl was killed and a number of others were molested in the Colorado attack.

In the widespread coverage that followed these crimes, very little was made of the fact that only girls were targeted. Imagine if a gunman had gone into a school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews.

There would have been thunderous outrage. The country would have first recoiled in horror, and then mobilized in an effort to eradicate that kind of murderous bigotry. There would have been calls for action and reflection. And the attack would have been seen for what it really was: a hate crime.

None of that occurred because these were just girls, and we have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence against females is more or less to be expected. Stories about the rape, murder and mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as familiar to us as weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the Pennsylvania attack was that this terrible thing happened at a school in Amish country, not that it happened to girls.

The disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous treatment of women is so pervasive and so mainstream that it has just about lost its ability to shock. Guys at sporting events and other public venues have shown no qualms about raising an insistent chant to nearby women to show their breasts. An ad for a major long-distance telephone carrier shows three apparently naked women holding a billing statement from a competitor. The text asks, "When was the last time you got screwed?"

An ad for Clinique moisturizing lotion shows a woman's face with the lotion spattered across it to simulate the climactic shot of a porn video.

We have a problem. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed on women every day, and there is no escaping the fact that in the most sensational stories, large segments of the population are titillated by that violence. Weï¿½ve been watching the sexualized image of the murdered 6–year–old JonBenet Ramsey for 10 years. JonBenet is dead. Her mother is dead. And weï¿½re still watching the video of this poor child prancing in lipstick and high heels.

What have we learned since then? That there's big money to be made from thongs, spandex tops and sexy makeovers for little girls. In a misogynistic culture, it's never too early to drill into the minds of girls that what really matters is their appearance and their ability to please men sexually.

A girl or woman is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so in the U.S. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond the ability of any agency to count. We're all implicated in this carnage because the relentless violence against women and girls is linked at its core to the wider society's casual willingness to dehumanize women and girls, to see them first and foremost as sexual vessels—objects—and never, ever as the equals of men.

"Once you dehumanize somebody, everything is possible," said Taina Bien-Aimï¿½, executive director of the women's advocacy group Equality Now.

That was never clearer than in some of the extreme forms of pornography that have spread like nuclear waste across mainstream America. Forget the embarrassed, inhibited raincoat crowd of the old days. Now Mr. Solid Citizen can come home, log on to this $7 billion mega-industry and get his kicks watching real women being beaten and sexually assaulted on Web sites with names like "Ravished Bride" and "Rough Sex—Where Whores Get Owned."

Then, of course, there's gangsta rap, and the video games where the players themselves get to maul and molest women, the rise of pimp culture (the Academy Award–winning song this year was "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp"), and on and on.

You're deluded if you think this is all about fun and games. It's all part of a devastating continuum of misogyny that at its farthest extreme touches down in places like the one–room Amish schoolhouse in normally quiet Nickel Mines, Pa.

Copyright © 2006 The New York Times

What are you?

2007-09-13T18:24:00.001-07:00

Reading List

2007-09-05T18:44:00.000-07:00

I've been grossly bereft of time to blog, however I wanted to post these recent posts lest they go unnoticed, unappreciated, un-considered.

Pornographication extends itself to morning coffee. While you may have seen the original news blitz back in January, the normalization in such a short amount of time is worth noting. Also the callus response to attempts at moral and personal integrity. Apparently integrity is now misconstrued as an annoyance rather than a virtue.

A sickening example of why bystander education should be mandatory. You are a bystander. Always. What you choose do as such has massive implications in the world.

Gray Rape doesn't exist. A survivor has the right to define her experience, but the crime remains - Rape by any other name is still Rape. Furthermore, I think that we have a responsibility to our community, to other survivors, and to ourselves not to minimize/sacrifice/concede in order to make those operative in the patriarchy more comfortable.

That's all I can stomach for the night.

"Pimping Breasts" or "Mammory Philanthropy"

2007-08-30T11:44:00.000-07:00

"Free Implants" offers a space for women to submit themselves pornographied so that "benefactors" can view and *hopefully* "donate" to the women's breast augmentation surgery.

Twisty calls the "philanthropy" an example of the "normalization of prostitution" and I have to agree - especially because the owner of the site takes an entire quarter of the women's "donations". As a side note - what's with the language (philanthropy, donation, benefactor) denying the women's true labor in creating the porn material? By one woman's account, it ends up being about $10/hr - less than I made working retail. So really, there is no generosity, there's barely a wage for labor rendered. Way to completely erase women's work. I'm also considering the terms "prostitution" and "pornography" in regards to this story. I'm not sure there's much of a difference here.

Pyramid of Abuse

2007-08-09T03:52:00.000-07:00

While in this instance there was not evidence of sexual assault, relationship violence - and murder - is just the next step in the pyramid of violence against women.

This story is pretty straight forward, her boyfriend killed her and then "tried" to kill himself (interesting that he was successful with one and not the other). It should illuminate the Rape culture that allows men to think that violence and murder are acceptable (necessary?) behaviors in "dealing" with "their" women. They can foster this mentality because we live in a world where pushing the boundaries up the pyramid of abuse is rarely challenged until its too late.

People roll their eyes when I start to call out sexist language (or armbands) but they exist on a continuum and allow for violence to progress. It is our responsibility to be intolerant from beginning to end, not wait until a woman is dead.

PYRAMID OF ABUSE

12. MURDER

11. RAPE/SEXUAL ASSAULT

10. PHYSICAL ABUSE
Hitting, punching, slapping, burning, pushing, pinching

9. VERBAL ABUSE
Name calling, yelling, threats, verbal intimidation

8. VICTIMIZATION
She deserved it, it was her fault, victim blaming, she should have known better, why was she walking alone at night?

7. .76
wage gap

6. GLASS CEILING
Females as workers/secretaries/managers; not CEOs

5. TITLE IX/EDUCATION
Lesser facilities/equipment, unequal media coverage, double standards, no equal access to sports or education

4. TRADITIONAL ROLES
Women as secretary/man as boss, woman at home/man at work, woman as domestic/nurse/teacher/ man as CEO

3. OBJECTIFICATION
Magazines, TV, showing body parts only, scantily dressed

2. LANGUAGE
Bitch, ho, slut, stupid, over-emotional, chick, broad

1. JOKES
Saturday Night Live, dumb blondes, etc.

Girly = shameful

2007-08-07T16:50:00.000-07:00

BBC reports that Thai police are being forced to wear pink, girly armbands as punishment for minor infractions as a way to shame them into submission. Girly because female consists of shame and submission in a Rape culture. When I brought this up in my sociology class on Class, Power and Social Change, I was told by the professor that it worked because no boy wants to be a girl because they are boys, not because girls and the feminine are degraded and devalued perpetually by societies which thrive on the oppression of women through gender tension. Another example of being told "don't be such a girl" and all of the inherent value judgment that women are lesser, being woman is shameful, and one should strive always to avoid such a label. He told me I couldn't suck the fun out of everything. (In case you haven't heard, feminists have no humor.)

Airman Raped herself. Three times.

2007-08-07T16:39:00.000-07:00

Seriously. Even worse, with Judges like this presiding in our "justice" system.

More Sexist Ads

2007-08-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

via feministing

Dogfighting or Rape?

2007-08-01T15:09:00.000-07:00

"It's really a sad day in this country when somehow ... Michael Vick would have been better off raping a woman if you look at the outcry of what happened," Zeise said. "Had he done that, he probably would have been suspended for four games and he'd be back on the field. But because this has become a political issue, all of a sudden the commissioner has lost his stomach for it."

Man's Best Friend

2007-07-29T16:25:00.000-07:00

CNN's Larry Smith: Dog fighting a worse crime than rape

You're going to love this. In a Nancy Grace segment last night about Atlanta Falcons' Michael Vick and his recent arrest for running a dogfighting ring, CNN sports anchor Larry Smith said that Vick's crimes were worse than rape. Yeah.

The below transcript followed a short clip of Kobe Bryant proclaiming his innocence, which Grace used to make a point about how Vick should speak up in the media:

SMITH: Yes, well, that's -- he's been in a lot of trouble lately, when you think about all the other incidents, and this is just the worst one of all. Keep in mind, too, that while Kobe Bryant is a situation we can sort of compare this to, this really is much worse. Not only can you argue that the crimes are much worse in terms of, you know, killing dogs and that kind of thing, but as an NFL starting quarterback, you are the most visible face in that city. I`ve said all along, in fact, you know, if you go through and, you know, very quickly name 10 mayors of major cities in the country...

GRACE: Larry Smith, did I just hear you say...

SMITH: ... you could have a harder time doing that...

GRACE: ... mistreatment of...

SMITH: ... than naming 10 NFL starting quarterbacks.

GRACE: Did I just hear Larry Smith, CNN sports correspondent and anchor, state that crimes on a dog are much worse than crimes on a woman? Did I hear that?

I don't know, Nancy. But I certainly fucking heard it. Tell CNN what you think here.

via Feministing

2007-07-22T20:25:00.000-07:00

PostSecret

"Our lives are not fodder for compromise."

2007-07-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

"I know the art and theater of politics. There are times when you have to position yourself just to be heard. But there are also issues that are so important... that to try and position yourself out of it is to lay down the mantle of leadership. Women’s lives are at stake, and our lives are not fodder for compromise.”

Elizabeth Edwards addressing Planned Parenthood

via The American Prospect (Dana Goldstein also has recaps of Clinton and Obama's addresses at the same forum.)

Nebraska Rape Mistrial

2007-07-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

No wonder only 98% of Rape survivors ever see their attacker convicted. Would you want to survive this after surviving an attack?

Relationship Rape

2007-07-11T09:11:00.000-07:00

An old Dan Savage column that I think is really important. Rape comes in all different forms, not all are savage, not all are emotionally scarring, not all are called out as Rape. It still is.

Q: This isn't the sort of question you usually answer, but I hope you will consider it anyway.

I was in a good relationship with a guy, Enis for naming's sake, for three years. About a year ago, Enis asked me if we could have anal sex. I might lose your sympathy here, but I have no interest in anal sex at all. I had a traumatic experience with anal sex that resulted in some permanent damage; I cannot do it without a lot of pain.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Jeffersonian

I told Enis no and that I was surprised he asked, given my past. I offered to do him, if that was what he was looking for. He refused, telling me he wasn't gay. He asked me to reconsider a few more times, but I always told him no. Enis even attempted to just "add it in" while we were having sex once. It fucking hurt, and I flipped out on him. I told him I wasn't going to change my mind, and if he had to have anal sex then he could have it with someone else, giving him an out if it mattered that much to him.

A month ago, we were making love. I was restrained to the bed; we did this all the time. The next thing I knew, he's fingering my anus. I told him to stop, but he wouldn't. He took his time, stretching and lubing. I was screaming and crying for him to stop the whole time. I won't get into how much it hurt, but suffice it to say, I nearly passed out from blood loss as a result of his tearing open old scars. He freaked out when he saw the amount of blood on the bed and called 911. (This was after he'd had an orgasm). I spent a week in the hospital and ended up with 30 stitches to rerepair the damage. I'm still in a lot of pain.

I refused to see him while I was in the hospital. I didn't take his calls. I gave the flowers he sent to other patients. He utterly and completely betrayed my trust. I trusted him with my safety when I let him restrain me, and he took advantage and hurt me. I want nothing to do with him ever again. I've been told he's been on suicide watch at the local hospital several times since the incident. His friends and family tell me he's sorry, that he didn't mean to hurt me, and that I should forgive him. I realize that he may have not intended to hurt me; he did use lubrication, and attempted to open me up a bit first. If he had meant to hurt me then he would have just shoved his way in. But the fact is, I said no.

So, my question to you: Do I forgive him or let him wallow in guilt? I'm not traumatized (emotionally, anyway), though of course my heart is broken, and I know I'll move on. I am not pursuing legal action. He and his family paid for my medical bills and other expenses.

Thank you for your time. —No Cute Acronym

A: Forgive him? Your ex wants you to forgive him? His friends and family are pestering you about forgiving him?

Good fucking god.

Your ex should get down on his knees twice a day and thank his lucky fucking stars that you didn't press charges. He raped you — you know that, right? The word "rape" doesn't appear anywhere in your letter, NCA, which I hope isn't a sign that you see this "incident" as anything other than a full-blown sexual assault. So what if Enis used lube? So what if he took his time? Some rapists use condoms and say "please" and "thank you." They're still rapists.

And, I'm sorry, but why aren't you pressing charges?

On to Enis: So your ex feels awful about this. The poor little douche feels so very, very terrible that he's had to be hospitalized. Why, he's even contemplated suicide. Good. He should feel terrible. Forever. Which is why I hereby forbid you to forgive Enis. Ever. Make the mistake of forgiving this speck of shit, NCA, and 10 minutes later a little voice in the back of his head would start telling him that this rape wasn't that big a deal — after all, the woman he tied up, anally raped and landed in the hospital didn't press charges — she even forgave him. How bad could it really have been? No reason he shouldn't pull this same stunt with his next girlfriend. ...

We can't have that, NCA, so Enis's family and friends will just have to go fuck themselves. And if you find yourself wavering, if you find yourself tempted to forgive him, consider this: Enis is attempting to bully you into forgiving him just as he attempted to bully you into anal sex. But since he can't tie you to a bed and fuck forgiveness from you, he's using the threat of suicide to get what he wants. Repeat after me, NCA: Enis had no right to fuck with your ass then, and he has no right to fuck with your head now.

Finally, I'm sorry you felt I might not sympathize with you — a woman brutalized by someone she thought she could trust — due to your lack of interest in anal sex. No one has to "do" anal sex to win my sympathy. I'm a fan, as everyone knows, but anal sex isn't a litmus test. In addition to feeling sympathy for you, NCA, I sincerely hope that you weren't emotionally traumatized by this experience, as you claim. It would be a good idea, however, to see a counselor once or twice just to make sure.

Summer Blockbusters

2007-07-03T20:47:00.000-07:00

Captivity

Hitman

Accidental Rape

2007-06-28T13:49:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last 2 days at a conference put on by CALCASA and the US Dept of Justice on sexual assault programs on campuses. It was amazing, I can't rave about it enough and I've come away with lots of things to think about. For now, I'm preoccupied with this:

Can Rape be accidental?

The endnote interactive theater designed to demonstrate possible scenarios of acquaintance Rape on college campuses did a role play where

Two people meet in class, they see each other at parties, start to talk, hang out. They end up studying one night, order pizza, drink some, start fooling around. She starts kissing him, they're wrestling around, tickling. "Stop" is said several times in the context of tickling. The male says that almost every time she said "stop" in a sexual context he did, and she resumed the kissing/tickling/wrestling. He said at the point when they are on his bed, and she takes off his shirt, he assumes this is an affirmative to sexual intercourse. She whispers "stop" once while he's inside of her, then says nothing and he continues, they fall asleep, he calls her a few days later. Then finds out she's accusing him of Rape. It could happen to anyone right? It happens every weekend...

This situation is Rape. She says "stop" to sexual intercourse and he chose not to stop. The point is to show a grey area that may muddle the concept of consent. The fact that there can not be grey area in consent - that nothing besides an explicit affirmation to sexual intercourse constitutes consent is another post.

My conflict comes from this; the workshop I was at directly prior to this skit was on the mindset of a Rapist. The presenter (Sabrina Garcia, who was incredible) very specifically said "Rape is NOT an accident." She maintained that the mindset, justification and entitlement necessary for someone to perpetrate sexual assault needs to be fostered. Rapists know what they are doing, and they know how to use language, social constructs, and specifically Rape myths to minimize their action to anything other than Rape. The fact of the matter is that it is Rape and they are Rapists on purpose.

David Lisak also maintains that while only about 7% of men Rape, those that do are repeat offenders. The "nice guy, didn't know what he was doing" is a myth which allows these men to minimize and continue their behavior. He found that 63% of Rapists are repeat offenders.

I want to believe in the good in people, but at the same time, I believe in my soul that Rape is evil.

Are these mutually exclusive? Is there such a thing as accidental Rape? Does believing in accidental Rape allow us to focus on education (such as the skits) to clear away the confusion? Or does it just perpetuate a myth which allows Rape to continue?