Hey look! Sunday rape linkspam
First things first, all the links I've ever collected in these posts are now organized on this delicious account. The delicious will continue to be updated as new links are gathered.
Second things second, this is a long one, but it's gonna be a while before I can update again.
Third things third, disclaimers:
1. Trigger warning! Links deal with rape; click with care.
2. I don't always agree 100% with everything contained in the links.
3. Sometimes the linked articles will have interesting discussions in the comments. Give them a read-through if you have the chance.
Strauss-Kahn:
Slate's "A Subject of Justice Like Any Other": Bernard-Henri Levy Makes the Case for Prosecuting Dominique Strauss-Kahn - 5/2011
"This is how Levy wants to save his friend's image: by mocking the notion that he would be treated as "a subject of justice like any other"; by disdaining a system in which "anyone can come along and accuse another fellow of any crime." How can a mere cleaning servant be allowed to claim sexual assault against someone so very far above her station?
Uh, par-dough-nay moi, mon-sewer, but 'round here, folks like to call that "equal justice." (But also? We have "innocent until proven guilty," which tends to work out OK for people who can hire good lawyers.) Strauss-Kahn is perfectly free to file counter-charges of, I dunno, what's the story? False imprisonment, sexual battery, whatever this scheming chambermaid did that sent the great man fleeing in a panic.
It's mind-boggling that this argument is coming from one of the most celebrated rhetoricians of our age, the same man who reportedly got NATO into the LIbyan war by persuading French president Nicolas Sarkozy to recognize the rebel government. If Levy had made the case against Qaddafi the way he makes the case for Strauss-Kahn, the Marines would be defending Tripoli. What does this accomplish, except hardening opinion against Strauss-Kahn, thereby depriving "the French left," as Levy warns, of "its champion"? And thereby strengthening the position of...Levy's new Libyan-war ally, Sarkozy? Who is influencing whom here? The conspiracy gets deeper. "
RH Reality Check's Schwarzenegger, Strauss-Kahn and The Media's Groping Problem - 5/2011
"And then please consider this: A man who’s known for grabbing women’s breasts and asses without their consent (a crime) is not just some amusing, slightly pathetic Pepe Le Pew cartoon until the day someone accuses him of non-consensual penetration. He was actually already a sexual predator! And yet, inevitably, as soon as someone does accuse him of rape, friends who are familiar with his history of non-consensual groping will rush to tell the press that the accusations are absurd, insulting, inconceivable! Sure, everyone knew the lion liked to chase gazelles and pin them down and bat them around a bit for fun, but he would never eat one. That’s just not in his nature.
Do you see the difference? One guy treats women rather shabbily, and he should be ashamed of himself. The other guy treats women like inanimate objects he is entitled to do whatever the fuck he wants to, and he should be ashamed of himself and also held legally responsible for his crimes. The line between the two is really not all that fine or blurry, you guys! It’s actually pretty recognizable!
But when you have a man who is known for both cheating repeatedly and taking a handful of another human being whenever he sees fit, the reporting inevitably becomes a horrifying clusterfuck of conflation, rationalization and misinformation. So banging someone other than your wife becomes the moral equivalent of sticking your hand down someone’s pants without her consent-both filed under the rubric of “sexual indiscretions” or “regrettable pecadilloes,” while “rape” remains this whole other thing that only monsters far outside the general population would ever do-and then of course people start saying it’s ridiculous, puritanical bullshit to assume that just because someone would cheat on his wife, he’s probably also capable of rape, because THAT IS ACTUALLY TRUE.
It’s somewhat less ridiculous, however, to assume that just because someone would commit non-penetrative sexual assaults, he might also be capable of committing penetrative ones. In fact, that’s not very ridiculous at all. You follow?"
Alas' Once Again, Bernard-Henri Lévy Defends Rape - 5/2011
"Yes. She pretends to be a victim, because we all know how fun being a victim is. If she really was a victim, why wouldn’t she have come forward years ago, so people like Bernard-Henri Lévy could have attacked her for insulting a Very Important Man?
Lévy’s defense of Strauss-Kahn is breathtaking in its feverish bravado. It makes the defense mounted by Ben Stein look pathetic - well, more pathetic. But it is not surprising to anyone familiar with Lévy’s work. It is kin with Lévy’s defense of Polanski - overheated, outraged, and oblivious to the idea that rape is a serious crime.
What seemed likely after Polanski now seems quite certain: Bernard-Henri Lévy sees nothing particularly wrong with rape. At least not when the rapist is a Rich, Important Man, and the victim is not. That a woman - a common woman, like a maid, or a thirteen-year-old girl - can actually accuse an Important Man of raping her is seen as an outrage; after all, what offense did he commit, other than raping her?
Lévy sees rape as a trivial matter; what he sees as outrageous is the rest of us, who persist in viewing it as a serious crime. In short, for all his protestation that he is a great egalitarian, Lévy doesn’t care about the physical safety of half of humanity. He may call himself a leftist, but when it comes to gender politics, there is nobody more reactionary than him."
SlutWalk:
rabble.ca's Slutwalk: To march or not to march - 5/2011
"According to Nassim Elbardouh, a community organizer and Muslim woman who grew up in Saskatoon, "Though I support the tremendous effort, I didn't go to Slutwalk because rather than focusing on lack of consent in sexual assault, there seemed to be a message that I have heard since I was a young girl -- that I am only a feminist under the white gaze if I dressed and behaved in certain exposing and forward ways. People need to realize that being 'scantily clad' is not the only patriarchal excuse that victimizes women. Sexual assaults against Muslim women are often minimized in our society because Muslim women are perceived as repressed, and therefore in need of sexual emancipation. I would much rather have attended a 'Do Not Rape' Walk.""
Musings & Moans of a Perpetual Optimist's A Response to Slut Walk! - 4/2011
"My first thought was WOW, there are a lot of people here. My second thought was where are all the people of colour and trans folk? I know this shouldn’t be surprising seeing as a lot of “mainstream” organizing often discredits and erases our narratives and lived experiences but a woman can hope can’t she? I quickly recognized that this space was not designed/welcoming of me- including my family, my friends and my lovers of colour. The walk ended at police headquarters on College Street. The idea was to publicly demand a response from the police and the city (specifically Rob Ford, who I refuse to call mayor) about “the hurtful occasion where a Toronto Police Services representative announced that women could reduce their risk of sexual assault by not dressing like "sluts".- Taken directly from the Slut Walk Facebook page.
I am so tired of how little consideration is given to which peoples and which bodies are able to be publicly visible during protests and which are not. There was no talk about how our bodies as women of colour are hyper-sexualized and how that links to gendered, racialized sexual violence! There was no talk about why men of colour (who let’s be honest are over represented in mainstream media as perpetrators of violence) would not show up to a march of this sort, even if their politics were deeply rooted in ending violence against women! There were no elders from our varying communities of colour speaking to the struggles they have fought and continue to endure as people of colour! There was no talk about the repercussions of how referring to oneself as a “slut” has serious cultural, religious and familial effects! This is not to say that people shouldn’t be able to call themselves sluts but let’s have an honest conversation about how this word leads to more violence for some/many of us."
Pakistan:
RH Reality Check's Mai Mukhtar, Gang Rape Victim in Pakistan - 5/2011
"A shocking story of violence in the form of gang rape of Ms Mai Mukhtar in Pakistan drew much attention when she came public with her rape a decade ago. The courageous decision of this woman from a remote village to go public with her rape broke a stigma of silence in Pakistan. Two weeks ago a three-member Supreme Court of Pakistan upheld the acquittal of five of the six men accused in her assault. This decision came five years after a lower court found that she had indeed been gang raped. All but one perpetrator was exonerated due to her not being able to substantially prove she was raped. This was seen worldwide as a government not “hearing” its women.
The horrific gang rape was done per orders of tribal leaders who wished to punish her family because her brother had relations with a girl from a powerful clan and higher caste. The act was payment for her family’s ‘crime of honor.’ Her brother was sodomized by a member of the alleged ‘aggrieved’ family, also as punishment.
Rape victims in Pakistan face the ordeal of tremendous social stigma, often leading victims to suicide. Instead of silence, shame, or suicide, Mai defied social and religious taboo and brought her attackers to court. After years in various courts in order to obtain justice, Mai raised her case to the highest levels of government and became a symbol of women’s struggle to end the social stigma that rape carries. For many years women like Mai had silently suffered without asking for justice."
Numbers:
Ms Magazine's 25 Facts About Rape in America - 5/2011
"The FBI’s definition of “forcible rape” in their Uniform Crime Report (UCR): “The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” [PDF]
What that definition leaves out: anal, oral and statutory rape; incest; rape with an object, finger or fist; rape of men
Number of men raped in any year, according to the UCR: 0 [PDF]
Estimated number of men actually raped each year, according to the Dept. of Justice: 93,000 [PDF]
Number of women raped in 2007 under the UCR definition: 91,874
Number of sexual assaults in 2007-which includes rapes the FBI leaves out-according to the National Crime Victimization Survey: 248,300
Dept. of Justice estimate of how many women are actually raped each year: 300,000 [PDF]
Number of arrests for rape in 2007 (UCR): 23,307
Percentage of rapes that result in incarceration: 0.35 percent [PDF]"
Reproductive justice:
RH Reality Check's Elected Batterers: Abortion Restrictions as Violence Against Women - 4/2011
"Actually, abusers and anti-choice policies (and the politicians who advocate for them) use many of the same oppressive tactics. Just like rape, sexual assault, harassment, and intimate partner violence, laws that limit women’s access to abortion care are all about power and control. They are designed so that state power over a woman’s body supersedes a woman’s own power over her body. It is assumed without question that the ultra-conservative politicians who champion these laws have the right to control women’s bodies - that making laws about women’s reproduction is completely within their professional purview. Violence is used by abusers in much the same way: to take and maintain power and show the victim that the abuser can and will exercise that power. Just as anti-choice politicians believe they have the right to govern women’s bodies, abusers believe they have the right to punish women physically - to keep them in line through bodily force and coercion. In both scenarios, women are deemed stupid children who do not deserve autonomy or control over their own destinies. Why else would they make laws telling us we have to go meet with Jesus-pushing CPC volunteer “counselors” 72 hours before an abortion so that we can really “think about it”?
Just as physical violence (and/or the threat of it) limits women’s ability to participate freely in society, laws restricting abortion access work to ensure that women have no chance of systemic political or economic equality. The reproductive justice movement has long recognized the overlapping oppressions of these types of violence and insisted that they be approached as they intersect, rather than individually. The movement to end violence against women and the pro-choice movement for too long have been acting as if they are challenging separate oppressive forces, when actually, those forces are variations of the same thing."
Bagley:
Yes Means Yes!'s Going To Prison: Bagley’s Wife Charged, Two Guilty Pleas - Relevant Source - 4/2011
"So then, Bagley is stuck with the argument that because FV signed a piece of paper at age 18, possibly with diminished capacity, possibly under duress, she agreed to whatever he did for years after, no matter how much she hated it, no matter how unsafe it was, no matter how much she wanted to leave. And that’s the stupidest fucking argument in the universe.
Bagley has only one chance, and that’s that the jury decides that women like FV don’t deserve any protection. People get so irrational in their hatred of sex work and specifically of women who do it, that I can’t discount that possibility. But the chance of that is pretty slim. I expect Bagley to go to trial, just because there’s probably no deal for him. Probably the offer, as folks say in the criminal law world, is “plead to the charge.” "
Reporters:
The Washington Post's A Post reporter shares her perspective on hazards for female journalists abroad - 4/2011
"Female reporters often say they feel for those who can’t catapult themselves out of these countries, places where wives, mothers and daughters have few legal rights. Their lives often include forced marriage, genital mutilation, beatings and a long list of daily indignities that make the problems of first-world women seem negligible.
“No matter what female reporters do, we can always leave,” said Tracy Wood, one of the pioneering war correspondents who contributed to “War Torn: Stories of War From the Women Reporters Who Covered Vietnam.” “What happens to the female civilians we leave behind? Women should cover war, because women have been living in war zones and in crumbling societies for thousands of years.”
Addario has done some of the profession’s most in-depth documentation of Afghan women who set themselves on fire to escape abusive marriages. In 2009, she won a MacArthur “genius grant” for her documentation of human rights violations, which were often crimes against women. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, she was able to enter homes and hospital wards where foreign men in many conservative societies would never be allowed access.
I think of the time I spent reporting in Congo, when male reporters cringed when I said I was working on a story about a hospital ward filled with women who had to have their vaginas reconstructed because the gang rapes by rebels were so brutal. “I won’t go near that story,” one male journalist said. I couldn’t allow myself to ignore it."
Haiti:
IPS' Women Turn Spotlight on Haiti's Silent Rape Epidemic - 3/2011
"Some 14 months after Haiti's earthquake, activists say there is an ongoing epidemic of rape and gender-based violence (GBV) in the country's more than 1,000 squalid displaced persons camps, where nearly a million people are still awaiting permanent housing.
According to Annie Gell, Bureau des Avocats Internationaux's coordinator of the Rape Accountability and Prevention Project in Port-au-Prince, "The lack of lighting, the lack of patrols, the inability of women to lock their doors" contribute to the "incredibly insecure situation for women and girls" in the camps.
She accused MINUSTAH, the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti, of "generally (staying) on the perimetre of camps," instead of going into the areas where women's lives are actually at risk, especially at night.
According to a March 2011 survey conducted by the Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law, "an alarming 14 percent of households surveyed reported that, since the earthquake, one or more members of their household had been victimised by rape or unwanted touching or both."
Marie Françoise Vital Metellus, a gender unit officer with MINUSTAH, told IPS the peacekeeping force has created a trained unit - the UNPOLs - to patrol in the camps and provide specialised assistance to women victims of GBV.
But she acknowledged that the number of camps is huge, and most of them are overcrowded. That makes the UNPOLs' work, along with the National Haitian Police's, particularly difficult.
"We're seeing more women coming forward to report rapes and GBV," Gell told IPS that adding, "a lot of people are moving out of camps because they're so insecure, so dangerous." "
Cleveland, TX:
Slate's Reporting on a Gang Rape in East Texas - 3/2011
"As long as we're asking questions, I have one: How can the New York Times fail to frame these quotes properly, to point out the stunning cultural misogyny that allows a brutal gang rape to be reinterpreted as vigilante moral policing? To report these details bare, without context, puts the misogyny squarely in the voice of the Times.
The kindest reading of what makes people blame the victims of rape is fear. We don’t want to imagine that what happened to this 11-year-old could happen to us or to our daughters, so we rationalize that it couldn’t, that we are not like her. But there’s much more going on. There’s deep-seated fear of and disgust for women and female sexuality. We don’t have the same reaction to a boy getting beat up as we do to a girl getting raped; we don’t tend to wonder what the boy did to provoke the bully."
The Congo:
The Curvature's New Congo Rape Statistics Inspire Competitive Headlines, Not Much Else - 5/2011
"I am in no way trying to suggest that these numbers do not matter. Nor am I arguing that they are not horrific, that they do not deserve attention, or that headlines on the topic are unwarranted. What I’m condemning is the objectifying and imperialistic tendency towards disaster porn. What I’m criticizing is the refusal to engage with the issue of violence in the Congo in an in-depth and ongoing basis that puts these numbers in context, and the decision to instead resort to pearl-clutching headlines designed to shock Western readers with information we already had and will continue to ignore.
I’m also making clear that the response to this extremely extended crisis would look a lot different were it occurring somewhere other than sub-Sahara Africa. It’s not that the media takes most rape seriously, or that even the most privileged rape survivors are immune to rape apologism, victim-blaming, and indifference - this entire blog is a testament to these things not being true.
But on the one hand, that is precisely the point. These same newspapers that report these numbers with horror and very little background or analysis will tomorrow resort to shaming and casting doubt on rape victims from their own communities. Tomorrow, when it is no longer convenient to feign interest in rape, it will be back to business as usual. Tomorrow, lines will be drawn between the “date rape” that so many women needlessly whine and exaggerate about and the “real” rape that is downplayed by taking it seriously - after all, what about those women in the Congo?"
Campus rape:
Men Can Stop Rape's When is a Hookup Not a Hookup? - 5/2011
"The sexual assault scenario can go something like this: a young woman is at a house party or club with a group of friends; she gets drunk. A guy - usually someone she sort of knows, like a friend of a friend - starts paying attention to her, and she becomes separated from her group of friends. Maybe she makes out with the guy - something some of her friends notice. Later, her friends see her, very drunk, getting in a cab with the guy or getting in his car or going upstairs with him, and they think, well, she made out with him earlier. They’re hooking up.
Afterwards, though, the friends find out from her that she didn’t want to get in the cab or the car or go upstairs and that she didn’t want to hook up.
This scenario leaves us with some questions we’re hoping that those of you on college campuses can help answer:
1. Is the above a common sexual assault scenario on your campus? Are there other common scenarios?
2. What attitudes and behaviors make it difficult for young men and women as bystanders to tell when a line might be crossed in a potential hookup?
3. How can a bystander - especially a young man - intervene to make sure an apparent hookup is safe and consensual?
4. If you provide services for sexual assault survivors on a college campus or/and conduct bystander trainings on a college campus, would you be willing to talk with us about your work?"
Media:
Feministe's Not Another Odd Future Think Piece: Rap, the Internet and Female Agency - 5/2011
"I know it’s not literally true, but it seems like literally every OF song is about “removing agency from the woman and putting their desires at the forefront.” In Tyler’s song “Blow,” he plays around a lot with race and interracial dynamics -cocaine is an obvious symbol for whiteness - but he also says, “And you call this shit rape, but I think that rape’s fun.” The rap-explicating site Rap Genius has an optimistic guess at the line’s meaning: “Tyler finds it fun to rape, which is likely a metaphor for something else.” But really, to a lot of right-thinking people (it would seem, maybe, hello right thinking people?!) thinking “rape is fun” just is a metaphor for removing agency from the woman, where “woman” means “anyone who’s not me.”
There are a lot of historic, built-in, hegemonic ways in which people are underserved politically. Being a woman is one of them, and being an ethnic minority is one of them. These are not necessarily competing ways of being screwed over by society. I understand the argument that as a group of young black men (and one gay black woman), they cram over the top imagery into their songs to, perhaps, show how powerless they really are. But - not to be an asshole about it - they’re also basically just kids, and kids are also usually powerless in fairly mundane ways (see above: “Luper” and having to go to school). Their raps are as much your standard is-sue youthful anger than anything else.
Really, it is the case that the historical thrust of rap has been to give voice to the underserved. But OF is not, like, N.W.A. or Public Enemy, and no one really thinks they are. What they’re do-ing, perhaps, is co-opting the extreme violence and confrontation of golden age gangsta rap and bending it in on itself, a post-modern turn, that depletes its ostensible social meaning. To reiterate a point I’ve made elsewhere: Pimp C needed to be freed from trumped up jail charges; Earl’s fans chanted for him to be freed… from a boarding school."
False reports:
Almost Diamond's Rape Myth #1: She's Probably Lying - 3/2011
"Tawana Brawley. Duke University men's lacrosse team.
If you see a rape allegation in the news, those words aren't far behind. They are talismans, touchstones for the idea that we must never, ever forget that women lie about rape. These women lied; therefore, women lie.
The truth is, of course, that some women do lie about having been raped. That shouldn't surprise us. People make false accusations about every type of crime, even murder, where it is excruciatingly difficult to do. If no woman ever lied about being raped, the gender might have some collective claim to sainthood.
The difference with rape is the reminder. Name someone who gave an acquaintance a gift then accused them of robbery. Find me a blog post about a robbery where one of these people is mentioned. Name someone who is used to demonstrate that insurance fraud occurs--every time a large insurance payout for theft makes the papers. Name one of those audacious people who tried to frame someone for a murder that never happened, even in fiction, then show me how their name comes up every time a body isn't found.
It doesn't happen. We're not told that people lie about these things. We're told that women lie about rape.
The implication in the "women lie" narrative is that we must be particularly on our guard against false accusations of rape, that any particular accusation is unlikely to be true. But is it?"
Rape culture:
ECHIDNE of the snakes' Trigger Warning: Female Journalists and Sexual Assault - 5/2011
"With the exception of that active attacker, "the mob", the quoted paragraph turns things upside down. It is Logan who suffered a brutal attack, it is female reporters who face the dangers of sexual assault and harassment. The people doing the harassment become a simple mob and then fade away altogether.
This may sound trivial. But once we begin focusing on the victims of the assault and on how they affect their own odds of being attacked, we are well on the way towards solving the problem by focusing on the victims, too. That means limiting their abilities to live the lives they wish.
It also feeds into a wider problem. As Logan mentions in the video interview, street harassment of women by men is a way of life in Egypt, as it is in many countries of this world, and when it happens the blame is often placed on the women. They shouldn't go out alone or they shouldn't dress "provocatively."
If we focus our solutions only on the victims of sexual assault, who is it we are ultimately protecting here? And whose lives we are limiting?"
ECHIDNE of the snakes' Be Invisible, Please! - 5/2011
"All this is familiar fare in the fundamentalist circles of many religions. Sexual allure is something only women have and the way to control that allure is by controlling women's visibility. Hence the strict dress codes for women, the sex segregation and the seclusion of women. Hence, also, the shaming of women who refuse to go along with those rules.
What would look odd about these arrangements to someone from another planet is this: It is the men who are the protected group in this kind of fundamentalism. They are seen as total slaves of their sexual desires, too frail and unreliable to be allowed to look at pictures of female politicians. But the conclusion from all this is not to seclude the men but to seclude the women."
RH Reality Check's STOKING FIRE: Hey Shorty! Combatting Sexual Harassment - 5/2011
"One survey conducted by Indiana University found that people who are regularly subjected to harassment--most, but not all of them female-report increased stress, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Many also confide that they are tormented by feelings of shame. In the worst cases, respondents say that their ability to concentrate is diminished and admit that they have contemplated suicide.
“Feeling powerless contributes to young people making unhealthy choices about their bodies, GGE’s Joanne Smith continues. “The more disempowered you feel, the more likely you are to keep quiet about abuse. If you later drop out of school, you’re more likely to get pregnant if you’re a girl or go to prison if you’re a boy. Learning to speak up, to say ‘STOP,’ lends itself to getting out of bad relationships and teaches you to follow your gut. It gives you the confidence not to go to that party or get into that car.”
In other words, children and teens who are subjected to emotional or physical abuse are adversely affected socially, intellectually, and emotionally. This, of course, would be horrific even if it affected only a small number of youth, but reality is far harsher. A 2006 report issued by the American Association of University Women found that 83 percent of students who were queried-yes, more than four out of five--reported having been sexually harassed. For some, it was a stranger screaming “Yo, Mami“ at her as she walked down the street; for others, the behavior was more menacing and ranged from being called a bitch, slut, or whore, to being badgered to go out on a date, to being violently assaulted. "
Politicususa's Texas Cheerleader Who Was Assaulted Never Had A Chance - 5/2011
" Silsbee took the “no bill” decision from the first grand jury as a complete exoneration of the defendants. D.A. David Sheffield said the grand jury could not determine if there was lack of consent. He also said this: “The case has deeply divided the community of Silsbee and especially Silsbee High School.” Sheffield stated that any retribution, threats or harassment of the victim could result in 3rd degree felony Retaliation charges being filed. That little word “could,” is in there, in place of “will result;” did you notice? Sheffield also told local station KFDM that “Because everyone had been drinking, it would have made it difficult to prove the allegations raised in this case.” Have you got that, reader? Have you quite got it? The same D.A. who didn’t bother to get expedited rape kit results told the Silsbee community that the victim was drunk at the time of the crime and that therefore, it would have been difficult to prove the allegations she made. This prosecutor, assigned to this case, discredited the victim to the entire community.
Totally ignoring Sheffield’s warning that retaliation against the victim could result in felony prosecutions, the Silsbee schools community started retaliating against the victim for daring to make an accusation against a football hero. If there was any effort to educate the school community about Retaliation, how serious it is, and how it would not be tolerated, there is no documentation of such an effort available online. Online, in fact, you can find the most outrageous, vicious and ugly gossip, spread by members of the Silsbee community against the victim, seeking in every possible way to undermine her account of the crime, to drag her name through the mud. Much of that gossip centered on how drunk she allegedly had been. The vicious gossips should remember to send D.A. David Sheffield a tip at Christmas for tacitly authorizing them to demean the victim on that basis. At the school, fellow students would yell “Slut!” and “Bitch!” at her, but nobody would report them to school administration. She was repeatedly harassed in the school cafeteria - but instead of disciplining those who were retaliating against her, the school administration told her to stay away from the cafeteria. For good measure, they told her not to attend homecoming. (She had apparently received threats saying that if she attended the homecoming, she would be shot with a gun). This is to say, the school administration itself retaliated against her but was never held legally accountable, despite that previous statement from David Sheffield, the prize-winning District Attorney who didn’t bother to get an expedited rape kit result. Various students claim Bolton threatened to shoot them. The implication is that if they as witnesses said anything to incriminate him, they would be killed. Silsbee schools never investigated these allegations."
Sex trafficking:
Colorlines' The Complexities of Sex Trafficking, and Some Simple Solutions - 4/2011
"Lloyd’s story grounds those of dozens of teens, and a few pre-teens, putting many faces on a pattern so normalized that it permeates our music, television, hospitals and police stations. When the reader starts to feel overwhelmed by the numbers, Lloyd presents a girl. As soon as the girls start to blend together, she returns to her own story. As soon as you’re overwhelmed by story, she gives you some analysis. It all builds toward a policy change so practical that I can only wonder why no one thought of it before: Bills such as the Safe Harbor Act in New York, which among other things mandates that underage people involved in the sex industry will not be charged with prostitution. Girls under the age of 17 are legally too young to consent to sex in New York, and yet they are charged regularly with sex crimes. The law took effect in April 2010.
Lloyd, whose heritage is Anglo and Roma, eloquently describes the role that race and class play in the popular understanding of sex trafficking. Girls who are trafficked across borders are thought of as victims, and so are white, middle-class American girls. But the black and Latina girls with whom Lloyd works are thought to have chosen their life, to be oversexed or scheming or too lazy to do anything but sell themselves. They are referred to as young adults, even when they are far under 15, and cops call their rapes “theft of services.” Even though federal law says that anyone under the age of 18 who is sold for sex is a victim of severe trafficking, with no need to prove coercion or force, if the girl is an American and of color, she will too often be arrested, charged with prostitution and jailed. "
Colorlines' How Can We Best Empower Sex Trafficking Survivors? [Reader Forum] - 4/2011
"On Wednesday, our publisher Rinku Sen reviewed a new book from Girls Educational and Mentoring Services founder Rachel Lloyd, titled Girls Like Us. In the book, Lloyd speaks frankly about her early life as a sex worker, and about her fight for rights for young women in similar situations, and presents common-sense systemic solutions to give these women and girls more agency over their own lives.
As Rinku wrote, sex work is an issue that pulls in race, gender, personal power and powerlessness, and ties the political and systemic to the personal and internal. And the subject resonated with a lot of you, for a variety of reasons."
Feministe's Oversimplifying Sex Slavery: Demi, Ashton, and Badvocacy - 4/2011
"Sex trafficking and slavery are some of the most complicated and layered global development issues out there, and these ads allow for no nuance. By making it about men and geared toward men, the ads suggest that there is no one else involved. In fact, trafficking and slavery involve many players - some women, some men, and even family members.
Women’s experiences are erased. A gradient exists among those who have been kidnapped and enslaved and those who are engaging in sex work commercially and voluntarily. It’s easy for anti-trafficking efforts to devolve into a paradigm whereby a [privileged] [man] rides in on a white horse to “rescue” a [poor] [woman]. With this dynamic, it’s easy to steamroll over the individual rights and dignity, and complicated personal experience, of the individual.
As Alanna Shaikh pointed out in her analysis of Greg Mortenson’s (Three Cups of Tea) unfortunate fall from grace, the public is constantly looking for that panacea and that happy ending. Sometimes we allow that
simple lie to continue because we don’t want to accept that road to success if far messier, far more meandering. Initiatives like DNA, which focus only on the end point - a total end to sex slavery - and suggest it’s easy to get there risk actually undermining everything it really takes to get there. And in that over-simplification is where women’s rights, voices, and experiences get squashed."
Consent:
Feministe's Towards my personal Sex-Positive Feminist 101 - 5/2011
"Most people don’t communicate directly about most things, and the stigma and high emotions around sexuality make it even harder for most people to communicate directly about sex. Hence, most sexual communication is highly indirect. Even among people who are accustomed to direct sexual communication - like many BDSMers - a lot of communication ends up being indirect and instinctive anyway; there’s just no way to discuss every possible reaction and every single desire ahead of time. Everyone fucks up sometimes. No one in the world has a perfect track record on creating a pressure-free environment for their partners to express what they want … or asking their partners for what they want … or even knowing what they want in the first place.
So, yes, I acknowledge that communicating about sex and getting what you want consensually can be really hard. However, it’s most important to not violate people’s boundaries. No matter how hard it is, it’s necessary to make a serious and genuine effort to measure and respect a partner’s consent every time sex happens. Feminist ideas of enthusiastic consent are designed to help this process."
Washington City Paper's Legal Consent, Morning-After Regret, and “Accidental” Rape - 11/2009
"I've heard this argument time and again: Telling people that consent ought to be based on "yes" instead of "no" is dangerous, because the nation's sex partners (and courtrooms) just don't agree with that standard. According to this theory, if a woman expects a man to respect her bodily autonomy implicitly, she's gonna get raped and there's nothing she can do about it.
Well: Of course not everyone agrees with it. That's why feminists devote books and blogs and documentaries to critiquing current models of consent-necause we believe by changing attitudes and changing laws, we can make lives (not to mention sex!) better. That being said: "yes means yes" is actually consistent with the legal standard in many jurisdictions, and if rapists go around assuming that "no means no," they may be in for an unpleasant surprise."
Men and rape:
Racialicious' Beyond Manning Up: An NYC Paramedic Speaks Out About Men’s Violence Against Women - 3/2011
"Despite what we’re told, people are hungry to talk about how privilege and power keeps us apart and holds us back. Young men know what’s going on, feel the strain of what they’re supposed to be, but our institutions won’t give them the language of how to talk about it, how to make sense of it, how to survive. What we’re left with is locker room banter and bad tv, an epidemic of crap media culture telling us how to be who we are.
This is what I believe: in our heart of hearts, men are not the monsters we’ve allowed media to make us. We are infinitely wiser, more compassionate and more complex than that. Fighting against gender violence really means ending patriarchy, which for men means finding that place beyond what we’re told we’re supposed to be, beyond “manning up,” and becoming what we really are."
The legal system:
Ms Magazine's The FBI’s Definition of Rape: Older Than a Lot of Things - 4/2011
"The FBI has been using this definition of rape for its Uniform Crime Report since 1929:
The carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will.
That definition excludes victims of forced anal or oral sex, rape with an object, statutory rape and male rape. And that definition hasn’t been changed in 82 years."
Second things second, this is a long one, but it's gonna be a while before I can update again.
Third things third, disclaimers:
1. Trigger warning! Links deal with rape; click with care.
2. I don't always agree 100% with everything contained in the links.
3. Sometimes the linked articles will have interesting discussions in the comments. Give them a read-through if you have the chance.
Strauss-Kahn:
Slate's "A Subject of Justice Like Any Other": Bernard-Henri Levy Makes the Case for Prosecuting Dominique Strauss-Kahn - 5/2011
"This is how Levy wants to save his friend's image: by mocking the notion that he would be treated as "a subject of justice like any other"; by disdaining a system in which "anyone can come along and accuse another fellow of any crime." How can a mere cleaning servant be allowed to claim sexual assault against someone so very far above her station?
Uh, par-dough-nay moi, mon-sewer, but 'round here, folks like to call that "equal justice." (But also? We have "innocent until proven guilty," which tends to work out OK for people who can hire good lawyers.) Strauss-Kahn is perfectly free to file counter-charges of, I dunno, what's the story? False imprisonment, sexual battery, whatever this scheming chambermaid did that sent the great man fleeing in a panic.
It's mind-boggling that this argument is coming from one of the most celebrated rhetoricians of our age, the same man who reportedly got NATO into the LIbyan war by persuading French president Nicolas Sarkozy to recognize the rebel government. If Levy had made the case against Qaddafi the way he makes the case for Strauss-Kahn, the Marines would be defending Tripoli. What does this accomplish, except hardening opinion against Strauss-Kahn, thereby depriving "the French left," as Levy warns, of "its champion"? And thereby strengthening the position of...Levy's new Libyan-war ally, Sarkozy? Who is influencing whom here? The conspiracy gets deeper. "
RH Reality Check's Schwarzenegger, Strauss-Kahn and The Media's Groping Problem - 5/2011
"And then please consider this: A man who’s known for grabbing women’s breasts and asses without their consent (a crime) is not just some amusing, slightly pathetic Pepe Le Pew cartoon until the day someone accuses him of non-consensual penetration. He was actually already a sexual predator! And yet, inevitably, as soon as someone does accuse him of rape, friends who are familiar with his history of non-consensual groping will rush to tell the press that the accusations are absurd, insulting, inconceivable! Sure, everyone knew the lion liked to chase gazelles and pin them down and bat them around a bit for fun, but he would never eat one. That’s just not in his nature.
Do you see the difference? One guy treats women rather shabbily, and he should be ashamed of himself. The other guy treats women like inanimate objects he is entitled to do whatever the fuck he wants to, and he should be ashamed of himself and also held legally responsible for his crimes. The line between the two is really not all that fine or blurry, you guys! It’s actually pretty recognizable!
But when you have a man who is known for both cheating repeatedly and taking a handful of another human being whenever he sees fit, the reporting inevitably becomes a horrifying clusterfuck of conflation, rationalization and misinformation. So banging someone other than your wife becomes the moral equivalent of sticking your hand down someone’s pants without her consent-both filed under the rubric of “sexual indiscretions” or “regrettable pecadilloes,” while “rape” remains this whole other thing that only monsters far outside the general population would ever do-and then of course people start saying it’s ridiculous, puritanical bullshit to assume that just because someone would cheat on his wife, he’s probably also capable of rape, because THAT IS ACTUALLY TRUE.
It’s somewhat less ridiculous, however, to assume that just because someone would commit non-penetrative sexual assaults, he might also be capable of committing penetrative ones. In fact, that’s not very ridiculous at all. You follow?"
Alas' Once Again, Bernard-Henri Lévy Defends Rape - 5/2011
"Yes. She pretends to be a victim, because we all know how fun being a victim is. If she really was a victim, why wouldn’t she have come forward years ago, so people like Bernard-Henri Lévy could have attacked her for insulting a Very Important Man?
Lévy’s defense of Strauss-Kahn is breathtaking in its feverish bravado. It makes the defense mounted by Ben Stein look pathetic - well, more pathetic. But it is not surprising to anyone familiar with Lévy’s work. It is kin with Lévy’s defense of Polanski - overheated, outraged, and oblivious to the idea that rape is a serious crime.
What seemed likely after Polanski now seems quite certain: Bernard-Henri Lévy sees nothing particularly wrong with rape. At least not when the rapist is a Rich, Important Man, and the victim is not. That a woman - a common woman, like a maid, or a thirteen-year-old girl - can actually accuse an Important Man of raping her is seen as an outrage; after all, what offense did he commit, other than raping her?
Lévy sees rape as a trivial matter; what he sees as outrageous is the rest of us, who persist in viewing it as a serious crime. In short, for all his protestation that he is a great egalitarian, Lévy doesn’t care about the physical safety of half of humanity. He may call himself a leftist, but when it comes to gender politics, there is nobody more reactionary than him."
SlutWalk:
rabble.ca's Slutwalk: To march or not to march - 5/2011
"According to Nassim Elbardouh, a community organizer and Muslim woman who grew up in Saskatoon, "Though I support the tremendous effort, I didn't go to Slutwalk because rather than focusing on lack of consent in sexual assault, there seemed to be a message that I have heard since I was a young girl -- that I am only a feminist under the white gaze if I dressed and behaved in certain exposing and forward ways. People need to realize that being 'scantily clad' is not the only patriarchal excuse that victimizes women. Sexual assaults against Muslim women are often minimized in our society because Muslim women are perceived as repressed, and therefore in need of sexual emancipation. I would much rather have attended a 'Do Not Rape' Walk.""
Musings & Moans of a Perpetual Optimist's A Response to Slut Walk! - 4/2011
"My first thought was WOW, there are a lot of people here. My second thought was where are all the people of colour and trans folk? I know this shouldn’t be surprising seeing as a lot of “mainstream” organizing often discredits and erases our narratives and lived experiences but a woman can hope can’t she? I quickly recognized that this space was not designed/welcoming of me- including my family, my friends and my lovers of colour. The walk ended at police headquarters on College Street. The idea was to publicly demand a response from the police and the city (specifically Rob Ford, who I refuse to call mayor) about “the hurtful occasion where a Toronto Police Services representative announced that women could reduce their risk of sexual assault by not dressing like "sluts".- Taken directly from the Slut Walk Facebook page.
I am so tired of how little consideration is given to which peoples and which bodies are able to be publicly visible during protests and which are not. There was no talk about how our bodies as women of colour are hyper-sexualized and how that links to gendered, racialized sexual violence! There was no talk about why men of colour (who let’s be honest are over represented in mainstream media as perpetrators of violence) would not show up to a march of this sort, even if their politics were deeply rooted in ending violence against women! There were no elders from our varying communities of colour speaking to the struggles they have fought and continue to endure as people of colour! There was no talk about the repercussions of how referring to oneself as a “slut” has serious cultural, religious and familial effects! This is not to say that people shouldn’t be able to call themselves sluts but let’s have an honest conversation about how this word leads to more violence for some/many of us."
Pakistan:
RH Reality Check's Mai Mukhtar, Gang Rape Victim in Pakistan - 5/2011
"A shocking story of violence in the form of gang rape of Ms Mai Mukhtar in Pakistan drew much attention when she came public with her rape a decade ago. The courageous decision of this woman from a remote village to go public with her rape broke a stigma of silence in Pakistan. Two weeks ago a three-member Supreme Court of Pakistan upheld the acquittal of five of the six men accused in her assault. This decision came five years after a lower court found that she had indeed been gang raped. All but one perpetrator was exonerated due to her not being able to substantially prove she was raped. This was seen worldwide as a government not “hearing” its women.
The horrific gang rape was done per orders of tribal leaders who wished to punish her family because her brother had relations with a girl from a powerful clan and higher caste. The act was payment for her family’s ‘crime of honor.’ Her brother was sodomized by a member of the alleged ‘aggrieved’ family, also as punishment.
Rape victims in Pakistan face the ordeal of tremendous social stigma, often leading victims to suicide. Instead of silence, shame, or suicide, Mai defied social and religious taboo and brought her attackers to court. After years in various courts in order to obtain justice, Mai raised her case to the highest levels of government and became a symbol of women’s struggle to end the social stigma that rape carries. For many years women like Mai had silently suffered without asking for justice."
Numbers:
Ms Magazine's 25 Facts About Rape in America - 5/2011
"The FBI’s definition of “forcible rape” in their Uniform Crime Report (UCR): “The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” [PDF]
What that definition leaves out: anal, oral and statutory rape; incest; rape with an object, finger or fist; rape of men
Number of men raped in any year, according to the UCR: 0 [PDF]
Estimated number of men actually raped each year, according to the Dept. of Justice: 93,000 [PDF]
Number of women raped in 2007 under the UCR definition: 91,874
Number of sexual assaults in 2007-which includes rapes the FBI leaves out-according to the National Crime Victimization Survey: 248,300
Dept. of Justice estimate of how many women are actually raped each year: 300,000 [PDF]
Number of arrests for rape in 2007 (UCR): 23,307
Percentage of rapes that result in incarceration: 0.35 percent [PDF]"
Reproductive justice:
RH Reality Check's Elected Batterers: Abortion Restrictions as Violence Against Women - 4/2011
"Actually, abusers and anti-choice policies (and the politicians who advocate for them) use many of the same oppressive tactics. Just like rape, sexual assault, harassment, and intimate partner violence, laws that limit women’s access to abortion care are all about power and control. They are designed so that state power over a woman’s body supersedes a woman’s own power over her body. It is assumed without question that the ultra-conservative politicians who champion these laws have the right to control women’s bodies - that making laws about women’s reproduction is completely within their professional purview. Violence is used by abusers in much the same way: to take and maintain power and show the victim that the abuser can and will exercise that power. Just as anti-choice politicians believe they have the right to govern women’s bodies, abusers believe they have the right to punish women physically - to keep them in line through bodily force and coercion. In both scenarios, women are deemed stupid children who do not deserve autonomy or control over their own destinies. Why else would they make laws telling us we have to go meet with Jesus-pushing CPC volunteer “counselors” 72 hours before an abortion so that we can really “think about it”?
Just as physical violence (and/or the threat of it) limits women’s ability to participate freely in society, laws restricting abortion access work to ensure that women have no chance of systemic political or economic equality. The reproductive justice movement has long recognized the overlapping oppressions of these types of violence and insisted that they be approached as they intersect, rather than individually. The movement to end violence against women and the pro-choice movement for too long have been acting as if they are challenging separate oppressive forces, when actually, those forces are variations of the same thing."
Bagley:
Yes Means Yes!'s Going To Prison: Bagley’s Wife Charged, Two Guilty Pleas - Relevant Source - 4/2011
"So then, Bagley is stuck with the argument that because FV signed a piece of paper at age 18, possibly with diminished capacity, possibly under duress, she agreed to whatever he did for years after, no matter how much she hated it, no matter how unsafe it was, no matter how much she wanted to leave. And that’s the stupidest fucking argument in the universe.
Bagley has only one chance, and that’s that the jury decides that women like FV don’t deserve any protection. People get so irrational in their hatred of sex work and specifically of women who do it, that I can’t discount that possibility. But the chance of that is pretty slim. I expect Bagley to go to trial, just because there’s probably no deal for him. Probably the offer, as folks say in the criminal law world, is “plead to the charge.” "
Reporters:
The Washington Post's A Post reporter shares her perspective on hazards for female journalists abroad - 4/2011
"Female reporters often say they feel for those who can’t catapult themselves out of these countries, places where wives, mothers and daughters have few legal rights. Their lives often include forced marriage, genital mutilation, beatings and a long list of daily indignities that make the problems of first-world women seem negligible.
“No matter what female reporters do, we can always leave,” said Tracy Wood, one of the pioneering war correspondents who contributed to “War Torn: Stories of War From the Women Reporters Who Covered Vietnam.” “What happens to the female civilians we leave behind? Women should cover war, because women have been living in war zones and in crumbling societies for thousands of years.”
Addario has done some of the profession’s most in-depth documentation of Afghan women who set themselves on fire to escape abusive marriages. In 2009, she won a MacArthur “genius grant” for her documentation of human rights violations, which were often crimes against women. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, she was able to enter homes and hospital wards where foreign men in many conservative societies would never be allowed access.
I think of the time I spent reporting in Congo, when male reporters cringed when I said I was working on a story about a hospital ward filled with women who had to have their vaginas reconstructed because the gang rapes by rebels were so brutal. “I won’t go near that story,” one male journalist said. I couldn’t allow myself to ignore it."
Haiti:
IPS' Women Turn Spotlight on Haiti's Silent Rape Epidemic - 3/2011
"Some 14 months after Haiti's earthquake, activists say there is an ongoing epidemic of rape and gender-based violence (GBV) in the country's more than 1,000 squalid displaced persons camps, where nearly a million people are still awaiting permanent housing.
According to Annie Gell, Bureau des Avocats Internationaux's coordinator of the Rape Accountability and Prevention Project in Port-au-Prince, "The lack of lighting, the lack of patrols, the inability of women to lock their doors" contribute to the "incredibly insecure situation for women and girls" in the camps.
She accused MINUSTAH, the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti, of "generally (staying) on the perimetre of camps," instead of going into the areas where women's lives are actually at risk, especially at night.
According to a March 2011 survey conducted by the Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law, "an alarming 14 percent of households surveyed reported that, since the earthquake, one or more members of their household had been victimised by rape or unwanted touching or both."
Marie Françoise Vital Metellus, a gender unit officer with MINUSTAH, told IPS the peacekeeping force has created a trained unit - the UNPOLs - to patrol in the camps and provide specialised assistance to women victims of GBV.
But she acknowledged that the number of camps is huge, and most of them are overcrowded. That makes the UNPOLs' work, along with the National Haitian Police's, particularly difficult.
"We're seeing more women coming forward to report rapes and GBV," Gell told IPS that adding, "a lot of people are moving out of camps because they're so insecure, so dangerous." "
Cleveland, TX:
Slate's Reporting on a Gang Rape in East Texas - 3/2011
"As long as we're asking questions, I have one: How can the New York Times fail to frame these quotes properly, to point out the stunning cultural misogyny that allows a brutal gang rape to be reinterpreted as vigilante moral policing? To report these details bare, without context, puts the misogyny squarely in the voice of the Times.
The kindest reading of what makes people blame the victims of rape is fear. We don’t want to imagine that what happened to this 11-year-old could happen to us or to our daughters, so we rationalize that it couldn’t, that we are not like her. But there’s much more going on. There’s deep-seated fear of and disgust for women and female sexuality. We don’t have the same reaction to a boy getting beat up as we do to a girl getting raped; we don’t tend to wonder what the boy did to provoke the bully."
The Congo:
The Curvature's New Congo Rape Statistics Inspire Competitive Headlines, Not Much Else - 5/2011
"I am in no way trying to suggest that these numbers do not matter. Nor am I arguing that they are not horrific, that they do not deserve attention, or that headlines on the topic are unwarranted. What I’m condemning is the objectifying and imperialistic tendency towards disaster porn. What I’m criticizing is the refusal to engage with the issue of violence in the Congo in an in-depth and ongoing basis that puts these numbers in context, and the decision to instead resort to pearl-clutching headlines designed to shock Western readers with information we already had and will continue to ignore.
I’m also making clear that the response to this extremely extended crisis would look a lot different were it occurring somewhere other than sub-Sahara Africa. It’s not that the media takes most rape seriously, or that even the most privileged rape survivors are immune to rape apologism, victim-blaming, and indifference - this entire blog is a testament to these things not being true.
But on the one hand, that is precisely the point. These same newspapers that report these numbers with horror and very little background or analysis will tomorrow resort to shaming and casting doubt on rape victims from their own communities. Tomorrow, when it is no longer convenient to feign interest in rape, it will be back to business as usual. Tomorrow, lines will be drawn between the “date rape” that so many women needlessly whine and exaggerate about and the “real” rape that is downplayed by taking it seriously - after all, what about those women in the Congo?"
Campus rape:
Men Can Stop Rape's When is a Hookup Not a Hookup? - 5/2011
"The sexual assault scenario can go something like this: a young woman is at a house party or club with a group of friends; she gets drunk. A guy - usually someone she sort of knows, like a friend of a friend - starts paying attention to her, and she becomes separated from her group of friends. Maybe she makes out with the guy - something some of her friends notice. Later, her friends see her, very drunk, getting in a cab with the guy or getting in his car or going upstairs with him, and they think, well, she made out with him earlier. They’re hooking up.
Afterwards, though, the friends find out from her that she didn’t want to get in the cab or the car or go upstairs and that she didn’t want to hook up.
This scenario leaves us with some questions we’re hoping that those of you on college campuses can help answer:
1. Is the above a common sexual assault scenario on your campus? Are there other common scenarios?
2. What attitudes and behaviors make it difficult for young men and women as bystanders to tell when a line might be crossed in a potential hookup?
3. How can a bystander - especially a young man - intervene to make sure an apparent hookup is safe and consensual?
4. If you provide services for sexual assault survivors on a college campus or/and conduct bystander trainings on a college campus, would you be willing to talk with us about your work?"
Media:
Feministe's Not Another Odd Future Think Piece: Rap, the Internet and Female Agency - 5/2011
"I know it’s not literally true, but it seems like literally every OF song is about “removing agency from the woman and putting their desires at the forefront.” In Tyler’s song “Blow,” he plays around a lot with race and interracial dynamics -cocaine is an obvious symbol for whiteness - but he also says, “And you call this shit rape, but I think that rape’s fun.” The rap-explicating site Rap Genius has an optimistic guess at the line’s meaning: “Tyler finds it fun to rape, which is likely a metaphor for something else.” But really, to a lot of right-thinking people (it would seem, maybe, hello right thinking people?!) thinking “rape is fun” just is a metaphor for removing agency from the woman, where “woman” means “anyone who’s not me.”
There are a lot of historic, built-in, hegemonic ways in which people are underserved politically. Being a woman is one of them, and being an ethnic minority is one of them. These are not necessarily competing ways of being screwed over by society. I understand the argument that as a group of young black men (and one gay black woman), they cram over the top imagery into their songs to, perhaps, show how powerless they really are. But - not to be an asshole about it - they’re also basically just kids, and kids are also usually powerless in fairly mundane ways (see above: “Luper” and having to go to school). Their raps are as much your standard is-sue youthful anger than anything else.
Really, it is the case that the historical thrust of rap has been to give voice to the underserved. But OF is not, like, N.W.A. or Public Enemy, and no one really thinks they are. What they’re do-ing, perhaps, is co-opting the extreme violence and confrontation of golden age gangsta rap and bending it in on itself, a post-modern turn, that depletes its ostensible social meaning. To reiterate a point I’ve made elsewhere: Pimp C needed to be freed from trumped up jail charges; Earl’s fans chanted for him to be freed… from a boarding school."
False reports:
Almost Diamond's Rape Myth #1: She's Probably Lying - 3/2011
"Tawana Brawley. Duke University men's lacrosse team.
If you see a rape allegation in the news, those words aren't far behind. They are talismans, touchstones for the idea that we must never, ever forget that women lie about rape. These women lied; therefore, women lie.
The truth is, of course, that some women do lie about having been raped. That shouldn't surprise us. People make false accusations about every type of crime, even murder, where it is excruciatingly difficult to do. If no woman ever lied about being raped, the gender might have some collective claim to sainthood.
The difference with rape is the reminder. Name someone who gave an acquaintance a gift then accused them of robbery. Find me a blog post about a robbery where one of these people is mentioned. Name someone who is used to demonstrate that insurance fraud occurs--every time a large insurance payout for theft makes the papers. Name one of those audacious people who tried to frame someone for a murder that never happened, even in fiction, then show me how their name comes up every time a body isn't found.
It doesn't happen. We're not told that people lie about these things. We're told that women lie about rape.
The implication in the "women lie" narrative is that we must be particularly on our guard against false accusations of rape, that any particular accusation is unlikely to be true. But is it?"
Rape culture:
ECHIDNE of the snakes' Trigger Warning: Female Journalists and Sexual Assault - 5/2011
"With the exception of that active attacker, "the mob", the quoted paragraph turns things upside down. It is Logan who suffered a brutal attack, it is female reporters who face the dangers of sexual assault and harassment. The people doing the harassment become a simple mob and then fade away altogether.
This may sound trivial. But once we begin focusing on the victims of the assault and on how they affect their own odds of being attacked, we are well on the way towards solving the problem by focusing on the victims, too. That means limiting their abilities to live the lives they wish.
It also feeds into a wider problem. As Logan mentions in the video interview, street harassment of women by men is a way of life in Egypt, as it is in many countries of this world, and when it happens the blame is often placed on the women. They shouldn't go out alone or they shouldn't dress "provocatively."
If we focus our solutions only on the victims of sexual assault, who is it we are ultimately protecting here? And whose lives we are limiting?"
ECHIDNE of the snakes' Be Invisible, Please! - 5/2011
"All this is familiar fare in the fundamentalist circles of many religions. Sexual allure is something only women have and the way to control that allure is by controlling women's visibility. Hence the strict dress codes for women, the sex segregation and the seclusion of women. Hence, also, the shaming of women who refuse to go along with those rules.
What would look odd about these arrangements to someone from another planet is this: It is the men who are the protected group in this kind of fundamentalism. They are seen as total slaves of their sexual desires, too frail and unreliable to be allowed to look at pictures of female politicians. But the conclusion from all this is not to seclude the men but to seclude the women."
RH Reality Check's STOKING FIRE: Hey Shorty! Combatting Sexual Harassment - 5/2011
"One survey conducted by Indiana University found that people who are regularly subjected to harassment--most, but not all of them female-report increased stress, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Many also confide that they are tormented by feelings of shame. In the worst cases, respondents say that their ability to concentrate is diminished and admit that they have contemplated suicide.
“Feeling powerless contributes to young people making unhealthy choices about their bodies, GGE’s Joanne Smith continues. “The more disempowered you feel, the more likely you are to keep quiet about abuse. If you later drop out of school, you’re more likely to get pregnant if you’re a girl or go to prison if you’re a boy. Learning to speak up, to say ‘STOP,’ lends itself to getting out of bad relationships and teaches you to follow your gut. It gives you the confidence not to go to that party or get into that car.”
In other words, children and teens who are subjected to emotional or physical abuse are adversely affected socially, intellectually, and emotionally. This, of course, would be horrific even if it affected only a small number of youth, but reality is far harsher. A 2006 report issued by the American Association of University Women found that 83 percent of students who were queried-yes, more than four out of five--reported having been sexually harassed. For some, it was a stranger screaming “Yo, Mami“ at her as she walked down the street; for others, the behavior was more menacing and ranged from being called a bitch, slut, or whore, to being badgered to go out on a date, to being violently assaulted. "
Politicususa's Texas Cheerleader Who Was Assaulted Never Had A Chance - 5/2011
" Silsbee took the “no bill” decision from the first grand jury as a complete exoneration of the defendants. D.A. David Sheffield said the grand jury could not determine if there was lack of consent. He also said this: “The case has deeply divided the community of Silsbee and especially Silsbee High School.” Sheffield stated that any retribution, threats or harassment of the victim could result in 3rd degree felony Retaliation charges being filed. That little word “could,” is in there, in place of “will result;” did you notice? Sheffield also told local station KFDM that “Because everyone had been drinking, it would have made it difficult to prove the allegations raised in this case.” Have you got that, reader? Have you quite got it? The same D.A. who didn’t bother to get expedited rape kit results told the Silsbee community that the victim was drunk at the time of the crime and that therefore, it would have been difficult to prove the allegations she made. This prosecutor, assigned to this case, discredited the victim to the entire community.
Totally ignoring Sheffield’s warning that retaliation against the victim could result in felony prosecutions, the Silsbee schools community started retaliating against the victim for daring to make an accusation against a football hero. If there was any effort to educate the school community about Retaliation, how serious it is, and how it would not be tolerated, there is no documentation of such an effort available online. Online, in fact, you can find the most outrageous, vicious and ugly gossip, spread by members of the Silsbee community against the victim, seeking in every possible way to undermine her account of the crime, to drag her name through the mud. Much of that gossip centered on how drunk she allegedly had been. The vicious gossips should remember to send D.A. David Sheffield a tip at Christmas for tacitly authorizing them to demean the victim on that basis. At the school, fellow students would yell “Slut!” and “Bitch!” at her, but nobody would report them to school administration. She was repeatedly harassed in the school cafeteria - but instead of disciplining those who were retaliating against her, the school administration told her to stay away from the cafeteria. For good measure, they told her not to attend homecoming. (She had apparently received threats saying that if she attended the homecoming, she would be shot with a gun). This is to say, the school administration itself retaliated against her but was never held legally accountable, despite that previous statement from David Sheffield, the prize-winning District Attorney who didn’t bother to get an expedited rape kit result. Various students claim Bolton threatened to shoot them. The implication is that if they as witnesses said anything to incriminate him, they would be killed. Silsbee schools never investigated these allegations."
Sex trafficking:
Colorlines' The Complexities of Sex Trafficking, and Some Simple Solutions - 4/2011
"Lloyd’s story grounds those of dozens of teens, and a few pre-teens, putting many faces on a pattern so normalized that it permeates our music, television, hospitals and police stations. When the reader starts to feel overwhelmed by the numbers, Lloyd presents a girl. As soon as the girls start to blend together, she returns to her own story. As soon as you’re overwhelmed by story, she gives you some analysis. It all builds toward a policy change so practical that I can only wonder why no one thought of it before: Bills such as the Safe Harbor Act in New York, which among other things mandates that underage people involved in the sex industry will not be charged with prostitution. Girls under the age of 17 are legally too young to consent to sex in New York, and yet they are charged regularly with sex crimes. The law took effect in April 2010.
Lloyd, whose heritage is Anglo and Roma, eloquently describes the role that race and class play in the popular understanding of sex trafficking. Girls who are trafficked across borders are thought of as victims, and so are white, middle-class American girls. But the black and Latina girls with whom Lloyd works are thought to have chosen their life, to be oversexed or scheming or too lazy to do anything but sell themselves. They are referred to as young adults, even when they are far under 15, and cops call their rapes “theft of services.” Even though federal law says that anyone under the age of 18 who is sold for sex is a victim of severe trafficking, with no need to prove coercion or force, if the girl is an American and of color, she will too often be arrested, charged with prostitution and jailed. "
Colorlines' How Can We Best Empower Sex Trafficking Survivors? [Reader Forum] - 4/2011
"On Wednesday, our publisher Rinku Sen reviewed a new book from Girls Educational and Mentoring Services founder Rachel Lloyd, titled Girls Like Us. In the book, Lloyd speaks frankly about her early life as a sex worker, and about her fight for rights for young women in similar situations, and presents common-sense systemic solutions to give these women and girls more agency over their own lives.
As Rinku wrote, sex work is an issue that pulls in race, gender, personal power and powerlessness, and ties the political and systemic to the personal and internal. And the subject resonated with a lot of you, for a variety of reasons."
Feministe's Oversimplifying Sex Slavery: Demi, Ashton, and Badvocacy - 4/2011
"Sex trafficking and slavery are some of the most complicated and layered global development issues out there, and these ads allow for no nuance. By making it about men and geared toward men, the ads suggest that there is no one else involved. In fact, trafficking and slavery involve many players - some women, some men, and even family members.
Women’s experiences are erased. A gradient exists among those who have been kidnapped and enslaved and those who are engaging in sex work commercially and voluntarily. It’s easy for anti-trafficking efforts to devolve into a paradigm whereby a [privileged] [man] rides in on a white horse to “rescue” a [poor] [woman]. With this dynamic, it’s easy to steamroll over the individual rights and dignity, and complicated personal experience, of the individual.
As Alanna Shaikh pointed out in her analysis of Greg Mortenson’s (Three Cups of Tea) unfortunate fall from grace, the public is constantly looking for that panacea and that happy ending. Sometimes we allow that
simple lie to continue because we don’t want to accept that road to success if far messier, far more meandering. Initiatives like DNA, which focus only on the end point - a total end to sex slavery - and suggest it’s easy to get there risk actually undermining everything it really takes to get there. And in that over-simplification is where women’s rights, voices, and experiences get squashed."
Consent:
Feministe's Towards my personal Sex-Positive Feminist 101 - 5/2011
"Most people don’t communicate directly about most things, and the stigma and high emotions around sexuality make it even harder for most people to communicate directly about sex. Hence, most sexual communication is highly indirect. Even among people who are accustomed to direct sexual communication - like many BDSMers - a lot of communication ends up being indirect and instinctive anyway; there’s just no way to discuss every possible reaction and every single desire ahead of time. Everyone fucks up sometimes. No one in the world has a perfect track record on creating a pressure-free environment for their partners to express what they want … or asking their partners for what they want … or even knowing what they want in the first place.
So, yes, I acknowledge that communicating about sex and getting what you want consensually can be really hard. However, it’s most important to not violate people’s boundaries. No matter how hard it is, it’s necessary to make a serious and genuine effort to measure and respect a partner’s consent every time sex happens. Feminist ideas of enthusiastic consent are designed to help this process."
Washington City Paper's Legal Consent, Morning-After Regret, and “Accidental” Rape - 11/2009
"I've heard this argument time and again: Telling people that consent ought to be based on "yes" instead of "no" is dangerous, because the nation's sex partners (and courtrooms) just don't agree with that standard. According to this theory, if a woman expects a man to respect her bodily autonomy implicitly, she's gonna get raped and there's nothing she can do about it.
Well: Of course not everyone agrees with it. That's why feminists devote books and blogs and documentaries to critiquing current models of consent-necause we believe by changing attitudes and changing laws, we can make lives (not to mention sex!) better. That being said: "yes means yes" is actually consistent with the legal standard in many jurisdictions, and if rapists go around assuming that "no means no," they may be in for an unpleasant surprise."
Men and rape:
Racialicious' Beyond Manning Up: An NYC Paramedic Speaks Out About Men’s Violence Against Women - 3/2011
"Despite what we’re told, people are hungry to talk about how privilege and power keeps us apart and holds us back. Young men know what’s going on, feel the strain of what they’re supposed to be, but our institutions won’t give them the language of how to talk about it, how to make sense of it, how to survive. What we’re left with is locker room banter and bad tv, an epidemic of crap media culture telling us how to be who we are.
This is what I believe: in our heart of hearts, men are not the monsters we’ve allowed media to make us. We are infinitely wiser, more compassionate and more complex than that. Fighting against gender violence really means ending patriarchy, which for men means finding that place beyond what we’re told we’re supposed to be, beyond “manning up,” and becoming what we really are."
The legal system:
Ms Magazine's The FBI’s Definition of Rape: Older Than a Lot of Things - 4/2011
"The FBI has been using this definition of rape for its Uniform Crime Report since 1929:
The carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will.
That definition excludes victims of forced anal or oral sex, rape with an object, statutory rape and male rape. And that definition hasn’t been changed in 82 years."