Sunday rape linkspam
Yes, it's the return of the rape linkspam! We're gonna be playing catch-up for a while as I had a rather large pile of links ready way back when I went on my hiatus. So there are a significant number of links today, most of them from May.
As a reminder, links are gathered on the delicious account first. Feel free to keep track of things there.
Now, disclaimers!
1. Trigger warning! Links deal with rape; click with care.
2. I don't always agree fully 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 time.
SlutWalk:
selftravels2010's Thoughts on race, class and Toronto's Slutwalk - 05/2011
"Two things stand out to me about the fun, sexy, naughtiness of ‘slut’. The first is that, as I’ve tried to argue above, for women who are already assumed to be ‘sluts’, whose bodies are naturalized as violable, there is little fun in claiming the term. My second point is that the sexy badness of it all relies on the very boundary between respectability and degeneracy that my understanding of feminism seeks to uproot. It keeps in place the line between ‘good’ women and ‘bad’ women, a line that I have argued is raced and classed. Some middle class white women can play with this boundary because they may have the ability to re-enter white middle class respectability as soon as they change their clothes. This is not true for most women. The stain of ‘slut’ sticks on some bodies more than others. "
I Blame the Patriarchy's Toronto activists take back the slut - 03/2011
"It turns out that ’slut’ isn’t just an adjective. It’s a character. A fictional character, beloved of patriarchal culture, who encrapulates eons of virgin/whore-fueled misogyny, and was invented to absolve violent dudes of rape behavior. Sluts are women deemed by the angry dude-mob to have so ineptly handled the duties of femininity that they must be shamed, mocked, and of course, fucked in perpetuity.
By which I mean, you may say “patayto” and I, “patahto,” but in the end it might be more advantageous to dismantle the slut rather than claim it. “Everyone’s a slut” just doesn’t have the same oomph as “nobody’s a slut.” "
The F-Word's Slutwalk London - 04/2011
"I have no interest whatsoever in reclaiming or reinventing a word that is used to attack and label women, let alone use it in reference to myself. I don't tend to wear the kind of clothes deemed "sluttish" and I feel massively uncomfortable with the whole "fuck you I can wear heels if I want to" attitude because I view heels as painful and restrictive and there's so much pressure on women to dress hyper-feminine anyway that it seems pretty self-defeating to me. I totally see the logic in this context - "fuck you I can wear heels and it's STILL his fault if he rapes me" - but it's just not a space I can get involved in without pretending to be someone I'm not. I'm afraid the idea of showing the world that "slut is something to be proud of" just makes me cringe. I'd rather be myself and reject all the bullshit labels society might throw at me. "
rmott62's The Ultimate Slut - 05/2011
"After all the Ultimate Slut is often under the control of the sex trade - she is the prostitute, she is inside violent porn, she is the escort, she is consumed by sex tourists.
So if you choose to re-brand the term Slut - know you can do from a position of deep privilege that the Ultimate Slut has no access to. If you choose to say it is empowering to be named as Slut - then listen and hear women and girls inside the sex trade that are stripped of power and any voice. "
bobipasquale's SlutWalk - Not Radical, Not Helpful? - 05/2011
"I feel SlutWalk seems to perpetuate the thinking that rape is an outlet to channel sexual frustration (by such actions as 2 protestors on the Toronto march shout ‘keep it in your pants, fool!’). Rape is a tool to bully, violate, oppress and inflict severe physical and mental agony on their victims. It is a deeply rooted hatred, and not merely a man who can’t help himself when he sees a short skirt. This common misconception is not only demeaning to those who are attacked, but it is also incredibly patronising to men depicting them as sex obsessed, mindless animals. I feel this is an imperative part of our fight to end violence against women. We should be continually speaking out about the real face of rape, and its haunting familiarity. "
the broken arted's more thoughts on slutwalk - 05/2011
"slutwalk is an essentially 'postfeminist' event, masquerading as a revolution. and men must be rejoicing in it, the same way they rejoice when women take pole dancing classes or stick a playboy bunny sticker on their car. it's raunch culture embedding itself, disguising itself as empowerment. and women are lapping it up. "
the broken arted's what offends me about slutwalk - 05/2011
"slutwalk is a post feminist event. it is an event that assumes there is no patriarchal context that slutwalk exists within. the word 'slut' is hateful and violent and has never belonged to us. 'slut' belongs to rapists and misogynists and pornographers. there is no subversion in this. this action is not a threat. do you think taking your clothes off is going to change anything? it's not. it will draw attention to you as a sexual being, not as a full human woman with rights and dreams and hopes and ambitions and achievements. this is a post feminist event in a patriarchal context and it makes me feel that the rapists have won. you think you have to take your clothes off to get noticed? well, in the context of patriarchy you do. dismantle the patriarchy by challenging it. don't embed yourself in it. "
To the Curb's SlutWalk: A Stroll Through White Supremacy - 05/2011
"If SlutWalk truly wanted to bring attention to the systematic ways in which women are harmed by regressive and misogynistic thinking, they could have done the heavy lifting of reaching out and supporting black, poor and transgender women in New Orleans, for whom the word “slut” carries a criminal sex offender record. Instead, they force us to keep bearing the multiple burdens that come with not only being a woman, but also being a working class woman of color. "
Salon's In defense of prudes - 05/2011
"I'm too sexual -- except for when I'm not sexual enough. Those are the classic oppositional forces that women face. A couple of years ago, I wrote an essay titled, "In defense of casual sex" and now I'm publishing a piece titled "In defense of prudes"; these arguments aren't in conflict. What I'm calling for is authentic sexual expression and exploration, whatever its form. So while it's kick-ass that so many women are proudly calling themselves sluts, I'd also like to defend the prudes, and those of us who would rather toss out those reductive categories altogether. The conversation really starts to get interesting when you say: I'm not a prude, but I'm not a slut; I'm ____. "
The Guardian's SlutWalk is not sexual liberation - 05/2011
"Advocates would be better off exposing the myriad ways in which the law and the culture enable myths about all types of women - sexually active or "chaste" alike. These myths facilitate sexual violence by undermining women's credibility when they report sex crimes. Whether we blame victims by calling them "sluts" (who thus asked to be raped), or by calling them "frigid" (who thus secretly want to be overpowered), the problem is that we're blaming them for their own victimisation no matter what they do. Encouraging women to be even more "sluttish" will not change this ugly reality. "
People of Color Organize!'s Four Brief Critiques of SlutWalk’s Whiteness, Privilege and Unexamined Power Dynamics - 05/2011
"A problem with initiatives where one’s work is all about everyone defining for themselves what’s best is that, as feminist organizer Jo Freeman wrote, the only ones who ever actually benefit are the connected, the privileged and the cunning. History bears out that, in a white supremacist society, those individuals are most assuredly white, and, in a women’s grouping, such are generally white women.
Because we have Western epistemology, some think freedom is being able define our realities. Yet if our realties and dreams are dictated to us by a colonial mentality, then you are asking only to empower yourself in the market. Thus you are only fortifying what you claim to be destroying. Without a thorough understanding of how capital functions in the lives of women and actively rejecting that, one merely supports a set of values already in existence. "
The F Word's We’re Sluts, Not Feminists. Wherein my relationship with Slutwalk gets rocky. - 05/2011
"Rejecting the word feminist but embracing the word slut sounds, to me, a lot like we’ve all drank the systematic kool-aid. I feel a little bit like all those patriarchal powers-that-be are snickering, witnessing the success of their hard work, having scared women away from labeling themselves feminist and instead taking on the oppressive language used to keep us down, to insult us, to objectify us, and to rape us. Hoping that they’ll stop. That maybe they’ll like us, respect us, and join us, so long as we don’t make them feel too uncomfortable. So long as we look sexy while we march. "
WIMN's SlutWalk: A Black Feminist Comment on Media, Messages and Meaning - 05/2011
"I have problems with how Blogando reduces SlutWalk to white supremacy while overlooking the positives benefits of a heightened national conversation about rape and victim blaming. Yet I’m with her when she says that the reclamation of slut-hood “is not what we need.” Not because “slut” is foreign, hegemonic, or imperialist, or even because “feminists are out of touch” as Kirsten Powers of the New York Post wrongly suggests in a piece about “feminist folly” subheaded “This is idiocy, not liberation“), but because the supposed rewards for doing so are too shallow and the wages too steep. That is, the reclamation of slut-hood as a form of sexual freedom and expression offers African American and other WOC only a fraction of power [to self define] at best and an illusion at worst. "
WIMN's SlutWalk: Does The Media Make the Message? - 05/2011
"I’m not saying that everyone who disagrees with SlutWalk was duped by inaccurate media portrayals of the marches, the protesters, and their goals. More than 60 SlutWalk events have happened or will happen in cities around the world, and each of those events are grassroots efforts unique to each city. I suspect that even the most media-savvy among us would not be able to make an accurate judgment of each and every SlutWalk from consulting media coverage alone.
That is why I encourage anyone who has the opportunity to attend a SlutWalk event to just go. Even if you end up concluding that the event was trivial or exclusionary, your opinion will have greater credibility and impact if you can draw from your own observations. "
Yes Means Yes!'s Ed’s Teachable Moment: An Open Letter - 05/2011
"What you said about Laura Ingraham isn’t just a matter of foul language. Shit, I don’t care about that. I’m a New Yorker, and I grew up on construction sites, and I can and do use “fuck” as more than one part of speech in the same sentence. “Slut” isn’t “fuck.” “Slut” is about power, power to single out and label women, to isolate them and shut them up. No good can come from that. Laura Ingraham and I are not going to see eye to eye on pretty much anything, and she probably wouldn’t agree even with everything in this post, but if she’s a slut than so am I. Why not? I’m a sexual person, too. In fact, anyone who reads this blog would probably guess that my sexual history gives me more ammo to shock people than hers likely does. So why wouldn’t I be a slut, too? Because, of course, the term is a uniquely gendered putdown, an attack that can be made towards just about any woman at any time, but only to men under narrow circumstances that have to do with attacking their manhood. "
The Crunk Feminist Collective's SlutWalks v. Ho Strolls - 05/2011
"For me, so it is with the word slut. It is off-limits to me. But for those who have been shamed, and disciplined, and violently abused on the basis of its usage, they have the prerogative to determine whether to reclaim or not to. As a word used to shame white women who do not conform to morally conservative norms about chaste sexuality, the term very much reflects white women’s specific struggles around sexuality and abuse. Although plenty of Black women have been called “slut,” I believe Black women’s histories are different, in that Black female sexuality has always been understood from without to be deviant, hyper, and excessive. Therefore, the word slut has not been used to discipline (shame) us into chaste moral categories, as we have largely been understood to be unable to practice “normal” and “chaste” sexuality anyway. "
Racialicious' I Haven’t Actually Been Called a Slut - 05/2011
"And it is this self-same agency that has led me to passionately embrace causes like SlutWalk. The agency that marks the fact that my body is my business, that it’s not owned by or representative of anyone else, that I have every right to seek & build support for my body my way.
I do have a sexuality, I do have physicality, I am sexy damnit. And that is not a shameful thing, that is not a loss of dignity. It’s reclaiming ownership of what is rightly mine from the start - and making a stand to assert that no one has the right to abuse, insult, malign, harm, or attack anyone AT ALL, including me, for making our own damn bodily choices. Even if they are the slut-version of Voldemort. Even if they are “cheap STD-infected hookers”. Even if they’re not sexy. Even if they are sexy. "
The military:
RH Reality Check's Military Women Deserve First-Class Treatment, Not Second-Class Status - 05/2011
"I was deeply disappointed to learn that on May 24, the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives shut down debate on an amendment that would have provided abortion services to military women who become pregnant as a result of rape.
Under current law, the Department of Defense is barred from providing coverage for abortion except where the pregnant woman’s life is endangered. Unlike other federal bans on abortion coverage, the military ban provides no exception for cases of rape or incest. The current policy is shameful. Our military women, who serve and sacrifice for their country, should not have worse health care benefits than civilians who rely on the government for their insurance coverage. "
RH Reality Check's Defending the Rights of the Women Who Defend Us - 05/2011
"In the face of this epidemic, federal law denies servicewomen and military families coverage for abortion care, even in cases of rape or incest. By contrast, the federal bans on abortion coverage for women enrolled in Medicaid, disabled women enrolled in Medicare, federal employees (other than members of the armed services), women who receive health care through the Indian Health Service, and women in federal prisons, all include exceptions for rape survivors. (The only other coverage restriction that doesn’t include a rape exception is the ban on abortion coverage for another group of women serving our country - those in the Peace Corps.) Even extreme and unprecedented anti-choice bills pending in Congress include exceptions for rape and incest. "
Strauss-Kahn:
I Blame the Patriarchy's Hugs, Twisty: rapist is asshole - 05/2011
"Anyone who goes around calling himself “the great seducer” is undoubtedly a serial rapist, so naturally other women are beginning to turn up with accounts of Strauss-Kahn’s abuses. One of them, a young journalist who had previously publicly recounted her assault (with Strauss-Kahn’s name redacted), now describes his behavior during her attempted rape as that of a “rutting chimp.” Not surprisingly, the woman didn’t press charges at the time. She didn’t want her career to be permanently stained with “she’s the girl who accused Strauss-Kahn of rape.” Which is exactly how rapists get away with it: fear, humiliation, and shame are superb silencers. "
Echidne of the Snakes' Men say they are civilized, for the most part - 05/2011
"At first, he seems to distinguish between "regular guys" and those with power, as if regular guys have no power over anyone. To many people, pursuing women -- seduction, harassment, etc. -- and the desire to dominate others are the marks of a regular guy. What sets DSK and Schwarzenegger apart from regular guys is not their behavior, but their fame.
Their alleged offenses are crimes against women, of course, but more specifically, they are crimes against women in the labor field. Some women decline jobs, or do their jobs differently, to avoid harassment, including being grabbed and raped. Let's not forget that this is economic discrimination. "
Tiger Beatdown's The ethics of feminist solidarity - 05/2011
"However, French media and, disappointingly enough, French feminists creating catchy slogans, do not mention France’s hand in the fate of this woman’s home country. They now stand in solidarity with the victim, “they are all chambermaids”. A solidarity that doesn’t take into account the role of the oppressor in these events is the kind of one sided, privileged noise that continues to perpetuate the problem. There seems to be no acknowledgement from feminist organizations of the fact that there is a power imbalance, that an immigrant woman from a former French colony is significantly more vulnerable and more likely to be attacked, that she lacks the privileges that native French women get to enjoy and that, in France, women like her are constantly subjected to racial slurs and attacks (included from their very own government, who displays a shameful Islamophobic and patriarchal stance towards the bodies of Muslim women). "
The Daily's Accusing the accuser - 05/2011
"That is not particularly comforting information. It’s nice to imagine that if we just don’t go to particular places or don’t wear particular things, we’ll avoid being assaulted, but that’s not the case. Media focus on an alleged victim’s behavior reinforces the idea that her sexual past is a relevant issue. It’s equivalent to reporting a robbery case by investigating whether the victim ever treated friends to dinner. It doesn’t indicate that he was more likely to hand over his wallet when there was a knife to his throat. "
Feministe's Who is the Victim in the “DSK Affair”? - 05/2011
"This rather alarming tendency to ignore things like - the fact that rape is not a good thing - also manifests itself in the idea that this shouldn’t be covered because it is a matter of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s “private life.” And that is for me the most astounding thing so far in this whole media debacle: How in the world can politicians and journalists, as did the Marianne Magazine director in talk show Ce Soir Ou Jamais, actually argue that rape charges are off-limits because they’re private, and that this is DSK’s private life, rather than a crime? Aside from the patent absurdity of the statement, it clarifies an important point: To his supporters, this is a matter of DSK’s private life. Not the victim’s. His. And we encounter yet again the sickening notion that women’s bodies aren’t, y’know, their own. They are in fact at men’s disposal and if we talk about it, then we are violating said men’s privacy. "
The Guardian's How Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest awoke a dormant anger in the heart of France's women - 05/2011
"Simon Jackson, an English historian at Sciences Po, the elite political studies institute in Paris, shares the view that, in France, male attitudes to sex lag behind Britain in terms of equality. "I think that's in large part the product of serious and continuing deficits in the opportunities women enjoy professionally, educationally and socially in France, which is one of the least gender-equal countries in the EU." Figures for 2011 lay bare those deficits: women make up 18.5% of MPs and 85% of casual workers. In the gender pay gap survey released at Davos, France came 46th. Britain was 15th.
This view of France as a stalled feminist project is not just one held by Anglo-Saxons; many French feel it, too. In the Nouvel Observateur magazine last week, editor Laurent Joffrin wrote that an "indulgence of overly insistent advances, which end up as affronts to the dignity of women, are a French archaism which is broadly spread across all [political] parties and all milieus". "
TIME's Cherchez les Femmes - 05/2011
"For French women, this could be the end of an era in which talking too forcefully about inequities between men and women has been rejected as too old-school, too angry, too American. French feminists have struggled for decades to walk the line between their goal of female empowerment and the cultural mandate of seduction, to stake out a position of Gallic exceptionalism that would essentially allow women to have it both ways. "At some point," says Chris Blache, a spokeswoman for the feminist group La Barbe, "women came to feel that life wasn't too bad, many things had been gained since the 1970s and we didn't need to fight anymore."
NY Times' Hotel Housekeepers at Risk - 05/2011
"On top of that, they have to be sexually accosted by guests? Sadly, yes. And more often than you’d think. It’s not an everyday occurrence but it happens enough to make this question all too familiar: “Mr. Tomsky, can you give the new girl Room 3501 until next Tuesday? That man is back, the one who loves to let his robe fall open every time I try to clean.” So, yes, we assign the room to the new girl.
But not before hotel managers roll up to the room, flanked by security guards, to request that the guest vacate during cleaning, or at least promise to remain fully clothed or risk expulsion. Often it need not be discussed in detail: those guests who can’t seem to tie their robe properly usually know exactly what they’re guilty of. Typically, an unsolicited phone call from management inquiring if the service in their room is up-to-standard, and offering to send a manager to supervise the next cleaning, improves their behavior "
NY Times' For Hotel Housekeepers, Sexual Affronts a Known Hazard - 05/2011
"Housekeepers and officials with the main hotel workers union, Unite Here, said that housekeepers were often too embarrassed or scared to report incidents to management or the police. Sometimes they fear that management, often embracing the motto “the customer is always right,” will believe the customer over the housekeeper and that the worker may end up getting fired.
Ms. Babbington said a co-worker once encountered a naked guest who chased her around the room. “She was just panicking,” Ms. Babbington said. “She was very new in the country and she demanded to talk to the police. Her manager sat her down to calm her down and told her not to call the police, that it wouldn’t be good for the hotel.” "
Colorlines' One More DSK Rape Case Takeaway: Discuss at Your Own Risk - 05/2011
"“I’m sorry about what happened to you. I’m here if you need to discuss it. I’m also sorry about the Guinean mom of a teenage daughter who is stuck in protective custody because she was allegedly raped and beaten by the head of the IMF who could have been the next president of France. Her family’s intense poverty in Guinea-a former French colony-doesn’t negate what is happening to her in adopted home. Neither does an uncertain financial future. When it comes down to it, this her pain. Not yours, not mine, not anybody else’s. So don’t call her stupid.” "
Colorlines' Takeaways from the DSK Rape Case - 05/2011
"The Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape case has triggered a fusillade of coverage relevant to race and gender justice. Sadly, I don’t have the (wo)manpower to follow and synthesize all of it. So, as major takeaways emerge, I’m going to round them up. Here’s the first of a growing list: "
Feministe's Accused rapists find a friend in Bernard-Henri Levy - 05/2011
"But that’s not really the issue here. Levi’s complaint is that anyone would be able to level any sort of complaint against Strauss-Kahn. Other women coming forward and saying that Kahn acted (to put it extremely mildly) inappropriately towards them, and another woman who says Kahn tried to rape her, too? They are trying to “settle old scores or further their own little affairs;” the woman who came forward and said she kept the attempted rape a secret “pretends to have been the victim.” Kahn, on the other hand, is a champion, and the kind of man who should be accorded deference no matter what he does.
Kahn, of course, deserves his day in court. But if even putting him in the court room is an indignity he should not have to face, I’m not sure how justice can be done. And I’m not sure how tarring the women who have accused him of assault furthers a just outcome. "
Tiger Beatdown's ‘But, his reputation will be ruined! And what about France?’ - 05/2011
"Another favourite comment comes from Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the environment minister, who informs us that there’s a victim we’re not discussing at all here: France, because, you know, the downfall of such a great man would be a terrible loss for France. The French media is vacillating between declaring Strauss-Kahn’s career over and saying that it might have a chance at being salvaged ‘if the charges can be dropped quickly.’ Focus, naturally, on redeeming Strauss-Kahn, not on ensuring that his accuser’s words and physical evidence receive a fair chance to be heard in a court of law. We must, you know, focus on blotting the stain from this very nice and very powerful man’s reputation. "
ThinkProgress' Ben Stein Responds To IMF Chief’s Arrest By Blaming The Alleged Victim - 05/2011
"Stein and Levy’s real objection to this whole affair seems to be that in this country, we treat illustrious men the same as everyone else in criminal cases, and take women seriously when they say they’ve been raped. They apparently resent the fact that the justice system is taking the word of an African maid against a famous economist. At the risk of stating the obvious, if the New York police had not immediately investigated the maid’s complaint and detained Strauss Kahn, they would have been giving him special treatment - something conservatives claim to detest. "
Race:
Tamua Lomax's Untitled - 11/2007
"Sexual violence against back women is often incomprehensible because black women are shrouded in a sexual mystery-one which begs for ongoing demystification. This “sexual mystery” leaves us open to all sorts of violent attacks. Thus, it is time to put the myth to an end (this goes to black women who have internalized the myth as well): “BLACK WOMEN” ARE NOT INNATELY EROTIC OR MORE SEXUAL THAN ANY OTHER GROUP OF WOMEN. Sexuality and femininity are performed on an individual basis. It is not a group effort. However, there does seem to be guidelines that we are expected to work within (or else there will be a price to pay). "
Reproductive justice:
Tiger Beatdown's Rape: Surprisingly NOT Like Having a Flat Tyre, Actually - 05/2011
"The ongoing twisted machinations conservatives will use to deny access to reproductive justice just in general are really quite astounding, but this particular instance may just take the cake for the month. ‘Compassionate’ conservatives who believe people shouldn’t have access to contraception and other reproductive health tools want to assure us that of course there should be an ‘exception for rape or the life of the mother,’ while the rest of them just tell us that rape is your fault to begin with, so you ought to make lemonade and have that baby anyway. And now, apparently, not only is the rape your fault, but so is the unwanted and unplanned pregnancy that might result because, you know, you really ought to have made sure your spare tyre was inflated. Or something. "
Rape culture:
The Curvature's Omaha Teacher Retained Position After Multiple Student Allegations of Sexual Assault - 05/2011
"While I do not in any way wish to minimize the experience of the student who was the direct target of his harassment - none of us experienced what she did - our teacher inevitably victimized all of his female students by proxy, by stealing our sense of safety in the classroom. This is how misogynistic harassment and assault work - by terrorizing not only the direct victim, but all women who witness and know of it. We are taught that we, too, can become the victim at any time. We are made hyper-aware of the fact that we will be treated differently and made more vulnerable because of our genders. We are made defensive in our everyday lives. "
Pakistan:
IPS News' PAKISTAN: Rape Victims Left Feeling Hopeless - 05/2011
"Lawyer Faisal Siddiqi cited the Court’s verdict in the Mukhtar Mai gang-rape case, which acquitted five of six men accused of raping Mai, 32 years old and divorced, as punishment for a crime her brother supposedly committed.
"I know two of my clients certainly stuck to their struggle from the strength they derived from Mai’s example," Siddiqi told IPS, calling the verdict the death of the Mukhtar Mai phenomenon. "Tomorrow they may decide to abandon their fight saying if Mai could not get justice, they didn’t stand a chance."
To barrister Amber Darr, the 86-page judgment simply reeks of a chauvinistic mindset. "It took me a while to realise that divorce would have something to do with it," she told IPS. She said the court has definitely placed a lesser value on a divorced, older woman. "
The church:
IPS News' Q&A: "Clergy Sexual Abuse of Women Is a Violent Abuse of Power" - 05/2011
"Ninety to 95 percent of victims of clergy sexual exploitation are women, according to recent estimates by the Columbia Theological Seminary's Rev. Pamela Cooper White, and yet very few studies have been conducted on this issue.
Now, the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF), founded in 1895 and which represents more than a hundred social justice-oriented student movements from around the world, is breaking the silence with the publication of a book entitled "When Pastors and Priests Prey - Identifying, Preventing and Overcoming Clergy Sexual Abuse of Women". "
General:
The Portland Phoenix's Turning feminist theory into a visceral rape deterrent - 04/2011
"CYNDI AMATO | executive director, Sexual Assault Response Services of Southern Maine | "I thought about how much time women spend from the time that they understand that they should be fearful, and trying to keep themselves safe. The head space, emotional, and physical space, takes up so much time and it's so oppressive, and if we had the opportunity...and the space and freedom to reach our potential, what could be achieved? That's my fantasy. If we were fearless. I wonder what it would feel like. I think it would be pretty cool. I think we'd be lighter and happier, and I think we'd all be glowing. I think every woman has a dark spot on her aura, so to speak." "
As a reminder, links are gathered on the delicious account first. Feel free to keep track of things there.
Now, disclaimers!
1. Trigger warning! Links deal with rape; click with care.
2. I don't always agree fully 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 time.
SlutWalk:
selftravels2010's Thoughts on race, class and Toronto's Slutwalk - 05/2011
"Two things stand out to me about the fun, sexy, naughtiness of ‘slut’. The first is that, as I’ve tried to argue above, for women who are already assumed to be ‘sluts’, whose bodies are naturalized as violable, there is little fun in claiming the term. My second point is that the sexy badness of it all relies on the very boundary between respectability and degeneracy that my understanding of feminism seeks to uproot. It keeps in place the line between ‘good’ women and ‘bad’ women, a line that I have argued is raced and classed. Some middle class white women can play with this boundary because they may have the ability to re-enter white middle class respectability as soon as they change their clothes. This is not true for most women. The stain of ‘slut’ sticks on some bodies more than others. "
I Blame the Patriarchy's Toronto activists take back the slut - 03/2011
"It turns out that ’slut’ isn’t just an adjective. It’s a character. A fictional character, beloved of patriarchal culture, who encrapulates eons of virgin/whore-fueled misogyny, and was invented to absolve violent dudes of rape behavior. Sluts are women deemed by the angry dude-mob to have so ineptly handled the duties of femininity that they must be shamed, mocked, and of course, fucked in perpetuity.
By which I mean, you may say “patayto” and I, “patahto,” but in the end it might be more advantageous to dismantle the slut rather than claim it. “Everyone’s a slut” just doesn’t have the same oomph as “nobody’s a slut.” "
The F-Word's Slutwalk London - 04/2011
"I have no interest whatsoever in reclaiming or reinventing a word that is used to attack and label women, let alone use it in reference to myself. I don't tend to wear the kind of clothes deemed "sluttish" and I feel massively uncomfortable with the whole "fuck you I can wear heels if I want to" attitude because I view heels as painful and restrictive and there's so much pressure on women to dress hyper-feminine anyway that it seems pretty self-defeating to me. I totally see the logic in this context - "fuck you I can wear heels and it's STILL his fault if he rapes me" - but it's just not a space I can get involved in without pretending to be someone I'm not. I'm afraid the idea of showing the world that "slut is something to be proud of" just makes me cringe. I'd rather be myself and reject all the bullshit labels society might throw at me. "
rmott62's The Ultimate Slut - 05/2011
"After all the Ultimate Slut is often under the control of the sex trade - she is the prostitute, she is inside violent porn, she is the escort, she is consumed by sex tourists.
So if you choose to re-brand the term Slut - know you can do from a position of deep privilege that the Ultimate Slut has no access to. If you choose to say it is empowering to be named as Slut - then listen and hear women and girls inside the sex trade that are stripped of power and any voice. "
bobipasquale's SlutWalk - Not Radical, Not Helpful? - 05/2011
"I feel SlutWalk seems to perpetuate the thinking that rape is an outlet to channel sexual frustration (by such actions as 2 protestors on the Toronto march shout ‘keep it in your pants, fool!’). Rape is a tool to bully, violate, oppress and inflict severe physical and mental agony on their victims. It is a deeply rooted hatred, and not merely a man who can’t help himself when he sees a short skirt. This common misconception is not only demeaning to those who are attacked, but it is also incredibly patronising to men depicting them as sex obsessed, mindless animals. I feel this is an imperative part of our fight to end violence against women. We should be continually speaking out about the real face of rape, and its haunting familiarity. "
the broken arted's more thoughts on slutwalk - 05/2011
"slutwalk is an essentially 'postfeminist' event, masquerading as a revolution. and men must be rejoicing in it, the same way they rejoice when women take pole dancing classes or stick a playboy bunny sticker on their car. it's raunch culture embedding itself, disguising itself as empowerment. and women are lapping it up. "
the broken arted's what offends me about slutwalk - 05/2011
"slutwalk is a post feminist event. it is an event that assumes there is no patriarchal context that slutwalk exists within. the word 'slut' is hateful and violent and has never belonged to us. 'slut' belongs to rapists and misogynists and pornographers. there is no subversion in this. this action is not a threat. do you think taking your clothes off is going to change anything? it's not. it will draw attention to you as a sexual being, not as a full human woman with rights and dreams and hopes and ambitions and achievements. this is a post feminist event in a patriarchal context and it makes me feel that the rapists have won. you think you have to take your clothes off to get noticed? well, in the context of patriarchy you do. dismantle the patriarchy by challenging it. don't embed yourself in it. "
To the Curb's SlutWalk: A Stroll Through White Supremacy - 05/2011
"If SlutWalk truly wanted to bring attention to the systematic ways in which women are harmed by regressive and misogynistic thinking, they could have done the heavy lifting of reaching out and supporting black, poor and transgender women in New Orleans, for whom the word “slut” carries a criminal sex offender record. Instead, they force us to keep bearing the multiple burdens that come with not only being a woman, but also being a working class woman of color. "
Salon's In defense of prudes - 05/2011
"I'm too sexual -- except for when I'm not sexual enough. Those are the classic oppositional forces that women face. A couple of years ago, I wrote an essay titled, "In defense of casual sex" and now I'm publishing a piece titled "In defense of prudes"; these arguments aren't in conflict. What I'm calling for is authentic sexual expression and exploration, whatever its form. So while it's kick-ass that so many women are proudly calling themselves sluts, I'd also like to defend the prudes, and those of us who would rather toss out those reductive categories altogether. The conversation really starts to get interesting when you say: I'm not a prude, but I'm not a slut; I'm ____. "
The Guardian's SlutWalk is not sexual liberation - 05/2011
"Advocates would be better off exposing the myriad ways in which the law and the culture enable myths about all types of women - sexually active or "chaste" alike. These myths facilitate sexual violence by undermining women's credibility when they report sex crimes. Whether we blame victims by calling them "sluts" (who thus asked to be raped), or by calling them "frigid" (who thus secretly want to be overpowered), the problem is that we're blaming them for their own victimisation no matter what they do. Encouraging women to be even more "sluttish" will not change this ugly reality. "
People of Color Organize!'s Four Brief Critiques of SlutWalk’s Whiteness, Privilege and Unexamined Power Dynamics - 05/2011
"A problem with initiatives where one’s work is all about everyone defining for themselves what’s best is that, as feminist organizer Jo Freeman wrote, the only ones who ever actually benefit are the connected, the privileged and the cunning. History bears out that, in a white supremacist society, those individuals are most assuredly white, and, in a women’s grouping, such are generally white women.
Because we have Western epistemology, some think freedom is being able define our realities. Yet if our realties and dreams are dictated to us by a colonial mentality, then you are asking only to empower yourself in the market. Thus you are only fortifying what you claim to be destroying. Without a thorough understanding of how capital functions in the lives of women and actively rejecting that, one merely supports a set of values already in existence. "
The F Word's We’re Sluts, Not Feminists. Wherein my relationship with Slutwalk gets rocky. - 05/2011
"Rejecting the word feminist but embracing the word slut sounds, to me, a lot like we’ve all drank the systematic kool-aid. I feel a little bit like all those patriarchal powers-that-be are snickering, witnessing the success of their hard work, having scared women away from labeling themselves feminist and instead taking on the oppressive language used to keep us down, to insult us, to objectify us, and to rape us. Hoping that they’ll stop. That maybe they’ll like us, respect us, and join us, so long as we don’t make them feel too uncomfortable. So long as we look sexy while we march. "
WIMN's SlutWalk: A Black Feminist Comment on Media, Messages and Meaning - 05/2011
"I have problems with how Blogando reduces SlutWalk to white supremacy while overlooking the positives benefits of a heightened national conversation about rape and victim blaming. Yet I’m with her when she says that the reclamation of slut-hood “is not what we need.” Not because “slut” is foreign, hegemonic, or imperialist, or even because “feminists are out of touch” as Kirsten Powers of the New York Post wrongly suggests in a piece about “feminist folly” subheaded “This is idiocy, not liberation“), but because the supposed rewards for doing so are too shallow and the wages too steep. That is, the reclamation of slut-hood as a form of sexual freedom and expression offers African American and other WOC only a fraction of power [to self define] at best and an illusion at worst. "
WIMN's SlutWalk: Does The Media Make the Message? - 05/2011
"I’m not saying that everyone who disagrees with SlutWalk was duped by inaccurate media portrayals of the marches, the protesters, and their goals. More than 60 SlutWalk events have happened or will happen in cities around the world, and each of those events are grassroots efforts unique to each city. I suspect that even the most media-savvy among us would not be able to make an accurate judgment of each and every SlutWalk from consulting media coverage alone.
That is why I encourage anyone who has the opportunity to attend a SlutWalk event to just go. Even if you end up concluding that the event was trivial or exclusionary, your opinion will have greater credibility and impact if you can draw from your own observations. "
Yes Means Yes!'s Ed’s Teachable Moment: An Open Letter - 05/2011
"What you said about Laura Ingraham isn’t just a matter of foul language. Shit, I don’t care about that. I’m a New Yorker, and I grew up on construction sites, and I can and do use “fuck” as more than one part of speech in the same sentence. “Slut” isn’t “fuck.” “Slut” is about power, power to single out and label women, to isolate them and shut them up. No good can come from that. Laura Ingraham and I are not going to see eye to eye on pretty much anything, and she probably wouldn’t agree even with everything in this post, but if she’s a slut than so am I. Why not? I’m a sexual person, too. In fact, anyone who reads this blog would probably guess that my sexual history gives me more ammo to shock people than hers likely does. So why wouldn’t I be a slut, too? Because, of course, the term is a uniquely gendered putdown, an attack that can be made towards just about any woman at any time, but only to men under narrow circumstances that have to do with attacking their manhood. "
The Crunk Feminist Collective's SlutWalks v. Ho Strolls - 05/2011
"For me, so it is with the word slut. It is off-limits to me. But for those who have been shamed, and disciplined, and violently abused on the basis of its usage, they have the prerogative to determine whether to reclaim or not to. As a word used to shame white women who do not conform to morally conservative norms about chaste sexuality, the term very much reflects white women’s specific struggles around sexuality and abuse. Although plenty of Black women have been called “slut,” I believe Black women’s histories are different, in that Black female sexuality has always been understood from without to be deviant, hyper, and excessive. Therefore, the word slut has not been used to discipline (shame) us into chaste moral categories, as we have largely been understood to be unable to practice “normal” and “chaste” sexuality anyway. "
Racialicious' I Haven’t Actually Been Called a Slut - 05/2011
"And it is this self-same agency that has led me to passionately embrace causes like SlutWalk. The agency that marks the fact that my body is my business, that it’s not owned by or representative of anyone else, that I have every right to seek & build support for my body my way.
I do have a sexuality, I do have physicality, I am sexy damnit. And that is not a shameful thing, that is not a loss of dignity. It’s reclaiming ownership of what is rightly mine from the start - and making a stand to assert that no one has the right to abuse, insult, malign, harm, or attack anyone AT ALL, including me, for making our own damn bodily choices. Even if they are the slut-version of Voldemort. Even if they are “cheap STD-infected hookers”. Even if they’re not sexy. Even if they are sexy. "
The military:
RH Reality Check's Military Women Deserve First-Class Treatment, Not Second-Class Status - 05/2011
"I was deeply disappointed to learn that on May 24, the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives shut down debate on an amendment that would have provided abortion services to military women who become pregnant as a result of rape.
Under current law, the Department of Defense is barred from providing coverage for abortion except where the pregnant woman’s life is endangered. Unlike other federal bans on abortion coverage, the military ban provides no exception for cases of rape or incest. The current policy is shameful. Our military women, who serve and sacrifice for their country, should not have worse health care benefits than civilians who rely on the government for their insurance coverage. "
RH Reality Check's Defending the Rights of the Women Who Defend Us - 05/2011
"In the face of this epidemic, federal law denies servicewomen and military families coverage for abortion care, even in cases of rape or incest. By contrast, the federal bans on abortion coverage for women enrolled in Medicaid, disabled women enrolled in Medicare, federal employees (other than members of the armed services), women who receive health care through the Indian Health Service, and women in federal prisons, all include exceptions for rape survivors. (The only other coverage restriction that doesn’t include a rape exception is the ban on abortion coverage for another group of women serving our country - those in the Peace Corps.) Even extreme and unprecedented anti-choice bills pending in Congress include exceptions for rape and incest. "
Strauss-Kahn:
I Blame the Patriarchy's Hugs, Twisty: rapist is asshole - 05/2011
"Anyone who goes around calling himself “the great seducer” is undoubtedly a serial rapist, so naturally other women are beginning to turn up with accounts of Strauss-Kahn’s abuses. One of them, a young journalist who had previously publicly recounted her assault (with Strauss-Kahn’s name redacted), now describes his behavior during her attempted rape as that of a “rutting chimp.” Not surprisingly, the woman didn’t press charges at the time. She didn’t want her career to be permanently stained with “she’s the girl who accused Strauss-Kahn of rape.” Which is exactly how rapists get away with it: fear, humiliation, and shame are superb silencers. "
Echidne of the Snakes' Men say they are civilized, for the most part - 05/2011
"At first, he seems to distinguish between "regular guys" and those with power, as if regular guys have no power over anyone. To many people, pursuing women -- seduction, harassment, etc. -- and the desire to dominate others are the marks of a regular guy. What sets DSK and Schwarzenegger apart from regular guys is not their behavior, but their fame.
Their alleged offenses are crimes against women, of course, but more specifically, they are crimes against women in the labor field. Some women decline jobs, or do their jobs differently, to avoid harassment, including being grabbed and raped. Let's not forget that this is economic discrimination. "
Tiger Beatdown's The ethics of feminist solidarity - 05/2011
"However, French media and, disappointingly enough, French feminists creating catchy slogans, do not mention France’s hand in the fate of this woman’s home country. They now stand in solidarity with the victim, “they are all chambermaids”. A solidarity that doesn’t take into account the role of the oppressor in these events is the kind of one sided, privileged noise that continues to perpetuate the problem. There seems to be no acknowledgement from feminist organizations of the fact that there is a power imbalance, that an immigrant woman from a former French colony is significantly more vulnerable and more likely to be attacked, that she lacks the privileges that native French women get to enjoy and that, in France, women like her are constantly subjected to racial slurs and attacks (included from their very own government, who displays a shameful Islamophobic and patriarchal stance towards the bodies of Muslim women). "
The Daily's Accusing the accuser - 05/2011
"That is not particularly comforting information. It’s nice to imagine that if we just don’t go to particular places or don’t wear particular things, we’ll avoid being assaulted, but that’s not the case. Media focus on an alleged victim’s behavior reinforces the idea that her sexual past is a relevant issue. It’s equivalent to reporting a robbery case by investigating whether the victim ever treated friends to dinner. It doesn’t indicate that he was more likely to hand over his wallet when there was a knife to his throat. "
Feministe's Who is the Victim in the “DSK Affair”? - 05/2011
"This rather alarming tendency to ignore things like - the fact that rape is not a good thing - also manifests itself in the idea that this shouldn’t be covered because it is a matter of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s “private life.” And that is for me the most astounding thing so far in this whole media debacle: How in the world can politicians and journalists, as did the Marianne Magazine director in talk show Ce Soir Ou Jamais, actually argue that rape charges are off-limits because they’re private, and that this is DSK’s private life, rather than a crime? Aside from the patent absurdity of the statement, it clarifies an important point: To his supporters, this is a matter of DSK’s private life. Not the victim’s. His. And we encounter yet again the sickening notion that women’s bodies aren’t, y’know, their own. They are in fact at men’s disposal and if we talk about it, then we are violating said men’s privacy. "
The Guardian's How Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest awoke a dormant anger in the heart of France's women - 05/2011
"Simon Jackson, an English historian at Sciences Po, the elite political studies institute in Paris, shares the view that, in France, male attitudes to sex lag behind Britain in terms of equality. "I think that's in large part the product of serious and continuing deficits in the opportunities women enjoy professionally, educationally and socially in France, which is one of the least gender-equal countries in the EU." Figures for 2011 lay bare those deficits: women make up 18.5% of MPs and 85% of casual workers. In the gender pay gap survey released at Davos, France came 46th. Britain was 15th.
This view of France as a stalled feminist project is not just one held by Anglo-Saxons; many French feel it, too. In the Nouvel Observateur magazine last week, editor Laurent Joffrin wrote that an "indulgence of overly insistent advances, which end up as affronts to the dignity of women, are a French archaism which is broadly spread across all [political] parties and all milieus". "
TIME's Cherchez les Femmes - 05/2011
"For French women, this could be the end of an era in which talking too forcefully about inequities between men and women has been rejected as too old-school, too angry, too American. French feminists have struggled for decades to walk the line between their goal of female empowerment and the cultural mandate of seduction, to stake out a position of Gallic exceptionalism that would essentially allow women to have it both ways. "At some point," says Chris Blache, a spokeswoman for the feminist group La Barbe, "women came to feel that life wasn't too bad, many things had been gained since the 1970s and we didn't need to fight anymore."
NY Times' Hotel Housekeepers at Risk - 05/2011
"On top of that, they have to be sexually accosted by guests? Sadly, yes. And more often than you’d think. It’s not an everyday occurrence but it happens enough to make this question all too familiar: “Mr. Tomsky, can you give the new girl Room 3501 until next Tuesday? That man is back, the one who loves to let his robe fall open every time I try to clean.” So, yes, we assign the room to the new girl.
But not before hotel managers roll up to the room, flanked by security guards, to request that the guest vacate during cleaning, or at least promise to remain fully clothed or risk expulsion. Often it need not be discussed in detail: those guests who can’t seem to tie their robe properly usually know exactly what they’re guilty of. Typically, an unsolicited phone call from management inquiring if the service in their room is up-to-standard, and offering to send a manager to supervise the next cleaning, improves their behavior "
NY Times' For Hotel Housekeepers, Sexual Affronts a Known Hazard - 05/2011
"Housekeepers and officials with the main hotel workers union, Unite Here, said that housekeepers were often too embarrassed or scared to report incidents to management or the police. Sometimes they fear that management, often embracing the motto “the customer is always right,” will believe the customer over the housekeeper and that the worker may end up getting fired.
Ms. Babbington said a co-worker once encountered a naked guest who chased her around the room. “She was just panicking,” Ms. Babbington said. “She was very new in the country and she demanded to talk to the police. Her manager sat her down to calm her down and told her not to call the police, that it wouldn’t be good for the hotel.” "
Colorlines' One More DSK Rape Case Takeaway: Discuss at Your Own Risk - 05/2011
"“I’m sorry about what happened to you. I’m here if you need to discuss it. I’m also sorry about the Guinean mom of a teenage daughter who is stuck in protective custody because she was allegedly raped and beaten by the head of the IMF who could have been the next president of France. Her family’s intense poverty in Guinea-a former French colony-doesn’t negate what is happening to her in adopted home. Neither does an uncertain financial future. When it comes down to it, this her pain. Not yours, not mine, not anybody else’s. So don’t call her stupid.” "
Colorlines' Takeaways from the DSK Rape Case - 05/2011
"The Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape case has triggered a fusillade of coverage relevant to race and gender justice. Sadly, I don’t have the (wo)manpower to follow and synthesize all of it. So, as major takeaways emerge, I’m going to round them up. Here’s the first of a growing list: "
Feministe's Accused rapists find a friend in Bernard-Henri Levy - 05/2011
"But that’s not really the issue here. Levi’s complaint is that anyone would be able to level any sort of complaint against Strauss-Kahn. Other women coming forward and saying that Kahn acted (to put it extremely mildly) inappropriately towards them, and another woman who says Kahn tried to rape her, too? They are trying to “settle old scores or further their own little affairs;” the woman who came forward and said she kept the attempted rape a secret “pretends to have been the victim.” Kahn, on the other hand, is a champion, and the kind of man who should be accorded deference no matter what he does.
Kahn, of course, deserves his day in court. But if even putting him in the court room is an indignity he should not have to face, I’m not sure how justice can be done. And I’m not sure how tarring the women who have accused him of assault furthers a just outcome. "
Tiger Beatdown's ‘But, his reputation will be ruined! And what about France?’ - 05/2011
"Another favourite comment comes from Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the environment minister, who informs us that there’s a victim we’re not discussing at all here: France, because, you know, the downfall of such a great man would be a terrible loss for France. The French media is vacillating between declaring Strauss-Kahn’s career over and saying that it might have a chance at being salvaged ‘if the charges can be dropped quickly.’ Focus, naturally, on redeeming Strauss-Kahn, not on ensuring that his accuser’s words and physical evidence receive a fair chance to be heard in a court of law. We must, you know, focus on blotting the stain from this very nice and very powerful man’s reputation. "
ThinkProgress' Ben Stein Responds To IMF Chief’s Arrest By Blaming The Alleged Victim - 05/2011
"Stein and Levy’s real objection to this whole affair seems to be that in this country, we treat illustrious men the same as everyone else in criminal cases, and take women seriously when they say they’ve been raped. They apparently resent the fact that the justice system is taking the word of an African maid against a famous economist. At the risk of stating the obvious, if the New York police had not immediately investigated the maid’s complaint and detained Strauss Kahn, they would have been giving him special treatment - something conservatives claim to detest. "
Race:
Tamua Lomax's Untitled - 11/2007
"Sexual violence against back women is often incomprehensible because black women are shrouded in a sexual mystery-one which begs for ongoing demystification. This “sexual mystery” leaves us open to all sorts of violent attacks. Thus, it is time to put the myth to an end (this goes to black women who have internalized the myth as well): “BLACK WOMEN” ARE NOT INNATELY EROTIC OR MORE SEXUAL THAN ANY OTHER GROUP OF WOMEN. Sexuality and femininity are performed on an individual basis. It is not a group effort. However, there does seem to be guidelines that we are expected to work within (or else there will be a price to pay). "
Reproductive justice:
Tiger Beatdown's Rape: Surprisingly NOT Like Having a Flat Tyre, Actually - 05/2011
"The ongoing twisted machinations conservatives will use to deny access to reproductive justice just in general are really quite astounding, but this particular instance may just take the cake for the month. ‘Compassionate’ conservatives who believe people shouldn’t have access to contraception and other reproductive health tools want to assure us that of course there should be an ‘exception for rape or the life of the mother,’ while the rest of them just tell us that rape is your fault to begin with, so you ought to make lemonade and have that baby anyway. And now, apparently, not only is the rape your fault, but so is the unwanted and unplanned pregnancy that might result because, you know, you really ought to have made sure your spare tyre was inflated. Or something. "
Rape culture:
The Curvature's Omaha Teacher Retained Position After Multiple Student Allegations of Sexual Assault - 05/2011
"While I do not in any way wish to minimize the experience of the student who was the direct target of his harassment - none of us experienced what she did - our teacher inevitably victimized all of his female students by proxy, by stealing our sense of safety in the classroom. This is how misogynistic harassment and assault work - by terrorizing not only the direct victim, but all women who witness and know of it. We are taught that we, too, can become the victim at any time. We are made hyper-aware of the fact that we will be treated differently and made more vulnerable because of our genders. We are made defensive in our everyday lives. "
Pakistan:
IPS News' PAKISTAN: Rape Victims Left Feeling Hopeless - 05/2011
"Lawyer Faisal Siddiqi cited the Court’s verdict in the Mukhtar Mai gang-rape case, which acquitted five of six men accused of raping Mai, 32 years old and divorced, as punishment for a crime her brother supposedly committed.
"I know two of my clients certainly stuck to their struggle from the strength they derived from Mai’s example," Siddiqi told IPS, calling the verdict the death of the Mukhtar Mai phenomenon. "Tomorrow they may decide to abandon their fight saying if Mai could not get justice, they didn’t stand a chance."
To barrister Amber Darr, the 86-page judgment simply reeks of a chauvinistic mindset. "It took me a while to realise that divorce would have something to do with it," she told IPS. She said the court has definitely placed a lesser value on a divorced, older woman. "
The church:
IPS News' Q&A: "Clergy Sexual Abuse of Women Is a Violent Abuse of Power" - 05/2011
"Ninety to 95 percent of victims of clergy sexual exploitation are women, according to recent estimates by the Columbia Theological Seminary's Rev. Pamela Cooper White, and yet very few studies have been conducted on this issue.
Now, the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF), founded in 1895 and which represents more than a hundred social justice-oriented student movements from around the world, is breaking the silence with the publication of a book entitled "When Pastors and Priests Prey - Identifying, Preventing and Overcoming Clergy Sexual Abuse of Women". "
General:
The Portland Phoenix's Turning feminist theory into a visceral rape deterrent - 04/2011
"CYNDI AMATO | executive director, Sexual Assault Response Services of Southern Maine | "I thought about how much time women spend from the time that they understand that they should be fearful, and trying to keep themselves safe. The head space, emotional, and physical space, takes up so much time and it's so oppressive, and if we had the opportunity...and the space and freedom to reach our potential, what could be achieved? That's my fantasy. If we were fearless. I wonder what it would feel like. I think it would be pretty cool. I think we'd be lighter and happier, and I think we'd all be glowing. I think every woman has a dark spot on her aura, so to speak." "