Feminist links: Rape and harassment
Most of the things I've found on Tumblr, I have found thanks to 
happiestsadist,
debbiedirtbag, and
ginasketch, plus some from
alicetheowl and
nickymccloud. There are also some links in this post courtesy of Ophelia Benson.
This review by Katie Coyle is amazing:First you’re taught to fear a phantom, a man in black, a man with a knife, a man who’ll pounce in dark alleys. Well-intentioned women-mothers, aunts, teachers-will train you to protect yourself: Don’t wear your hair in a ponytail; it’s easier to grab. Hold your keys in one hand; hold your pepper spray in the other. Avoid dark alleys. When you reach young adulthood, the lessons change. They acquire an undertone of disgust: Don’t drink so much. Don’t wear such short skirts. You’re sending mixed signals; you’re putting yourself at risk.
If you follow the advice and it never happens-if you end up one of the three out of four-you can convince yourself that safety is a product of your own making, a reflection of inherent goodness. But if you’re paying attention, you realize something doesn’t add up. Because it keeps happening: to your sisters; to your friends; to little girls and grown women you’ll never meet, in places like Cleveland, Texas; Steubenville, Ohio; New Delhi. Good people, bad people, neutral. It keeps happening in TV shows and novels and movies-they open on the missing girl, the dead girl, the raped girl. If you’re paying attention, you begin to realize that it isn’t happening. It is being done. And you are not safe. You have never been safe. You were born with a bulls-eye on your back. All you have ever been is lucky.
She continues, referring not to Hoffman's story but the genre overall:Among many other things, I’m tired of the way this story is told in fiction: from the point of view of the male detective, grizzled and weary, shaking his head over some beautiful broken body. The man represents cynicism; the body, innocence. By the end, his jaded worldview will be confirmed, or he will be saved-either way, he’ll need to see the body. I’ve read enough of this genre to know I’m tired of it. I’m tired of the way it puts women’s bodies to use, as footnotes. The dead girl is the beginning of the man’s story. Being dead, hers has ended before page one.
On her own blog, Coyle calls for something different:Lets get writing the girlpain. I mean, the emotionally raw, the dead-eyed, the furious, the hungry, sloppy, horny, anti-sex woman, with her messed up family life, her lack of mourning, her guttered soul. Boy troubles in the form of irretrievable loss. Girl troubles in the form of that hot straight girl who never flirts back. Gender itch. Striving. Race, Class fragments and intersections and bursts. Ferocity and passivity. Failing and just lying down a while with no one around.
Another fatal gang rape with mutilation, this one in South Africa, which has the highest rate of rape in the world. Sisonke Msimang writes,The radio is full of this story. Full of politicians and posers, trying to outdo one another. Like funeral criers. But it will end, the show. And there will be marches and petitions. There will be statements and rage. But it will happen again. Until we are inured to shock. It will happen again. Until our bones are worn into dust and our teeth crushed into the sand. It will happen and happen. Until we invent a way to stop being women... As long as we exist, we will be raped.
I keep seeing anti-feminist trolls claiming everywhere that rape is taken sooooo seriously and that men everywhere are in constant danger of false accusations from women. Uh-huh. Michael Kimmel on Steubenville:As I found in my interviews with more than 400 young men for my book Guyland, in the aftermath of these sorts of events -when high-status high school athletes commit felonies, especially gang rape- they are surrounded and protected by their fathers, their school administrations and their communities. These out-of-control, rapacious thugs are our school’s heroes - “our guys,” as the gang rapists at Glen Ridge High School in New Jersey were called nearly two decades ago. The players themselves hold to a code of silence, the omerta of sexual assault: No one ever rats out a fellow bro. The parents, the school and the community circle wagons in a culture of protection around the boys.
A few graphics, the first from
sneezythesquid:
One more from Slutwalk Seattle:
Don't tell me "pickup artists" have nothing to do with rape culture. The fact that a guy drives something he calls a "rape van" around should, in a just world, elicit focused attention from the law.
Another creep: the mayor of New York City. This isn't acceptable behavior for a regular man, let alone one running one of the largest cities in the U.S.
Laurie Anderson fought back against street harassment with her camera.As I walked along Houston Street with my fully automated Nikon. I felt armed, ready. I passed a man who muttered "Wanna fuck?" This was standard technique: the female passes and the male strikes at the last possible moment forcing the woman to backtrack if she should dare to object. I wheeled around, furious. "Did you say that?" He looked around surprised, then defiant "Yeah, so what the fuck if I did?" I raised my Nikon, took aim began to focus. His eyes darted back and forth, an undercover cop? CLICK.
Meanwhile, online harassment continues apace, in the atheist community and elsewhere. Despite the squawks of harassers claiming that anti-harassers want to stifle their FREEZE PEACH!!!, the speech being stifled is actually that of women, many of whom quit blogging and commenting because it's exhausting to wake up constantly to this triggering shit in one's inbox. To quote one woman,I am really fucking tired of people who have harassed, stalked and threatened women I look up to and love being treated (by people like you) like they have some rational points, and we are just having a jolly chummy academic argument… [T]his “fight” has been about and remains about my fucking dignity as a human being. My right to inhabit atheist spaces without fear of reprisal or attack because of my gender. My right to be represented by other women.
I'm reminded of Echidne of the Snakes' old post The Right to Go Out. Misogynist attacks on women in public, everything from Tweets to actual rape, are fueled at least in part by the belief that public space in men's space and women are second-class citizens therein, only tolerated if they're protected by a man or acquiescing to what sexist men want.
Online harassment goes on not only in severely misogynist societies like India, not only in "At least you're not forced into a burqa, hon, so go make me a sammich" societies like the U.S., but even in the alleged "feminist paradise" that is Sweden. Christian Munthe, Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Gothenburg, has laid out a moral theory of such online attacks. I like this especially:If you want to claim that the behaviour exhibited by the net haters is dependent on or explained by either (i) objectively tough economic circumstances or powerlessness (private or generally in society) or (ii) subjective experience of such things, you need to show: (a) that net haters as a rule are in condition (i) or (ii), and you need to show (b) that anyone in (either of) those conditions will be prone to exhibit the net hate behaviour.
This is old news by now, but the people who blame rape victims for not having said "no" loudly enough are giving rapists cover.
If you have been the victim of abuse, you are not obligated to protect your abuser. However, others are not entitled to make you call your abuser out, either. Your mental health is paramount. Nor are you obliged to "get over it" on their timeline:I feel like ‘getting over’ abuse is like downloading a large file using dial-up internet in the 90s: it takes a really long time, it buffers really slowly, it randomly goes from like 20% to 3% to 60% to 43% and it randomly stops and then your brother has to use the phone and then it starts all over again and you feel like screaming and crying in frustration.
Finally, a sensitive post about women with rape fetishes and how they are not the problem.
Unlocked.
This entry was originally posted at http://ms-daisy-cutter.dreamwidth.org/1957532.html. Please comment there using either your DW account or OpenID.
happiestsadist,
debbiedirtbag, and
ginasketch, plus some from
alicetheowl and
nickymccloud. There are also some links in this post courtesy of Ophelia Benson.
This review by Katie Coyle is amazing:First you’re taught to fear a phantom, a man in black, a man with a knife, a man who’ll pounce in dark alleys. Well-intentioned women-mothers, aunts, teachers-will train you to protect yourself: Don’t wear your hair in a ponytail; it’s easier to grab. Hold your keys in one hand; hold your pepper spray in the other. Avoid dark alleys. When you reach young adulthood, the lessons change. They acquire an undertone of disgust: Don’t drink so much. Don’t wear such short skirts. You’re sending mixed signals; you’re putting yourself at risk.
If you follow the advice and it never happens-if you end up one of the three out of four-you can convince yourself that safety is a product of your own making, a reflection of inherent goodness. But if you’re paying attention, you realize something doesn’t add up. Because it keeps happening: to your sisters; to your friends; to little girls and grown women you’ll never meet, in places like Cleveland, Texas; Steubenville, Ohio; New Delhi. Good people, bad people, neutral. It keeps happening in TV shows and novels and movies-they open on the missing girl, the dead girl, the raped girl. If you’re paying attention, you begin to realize that it isn’t happening. It is being done. And you are not safe. You have never been safe. You were born with a bulls-eye on your back. All you have ever been is lucky.
She continues, referring not to Hoffman's story but the genre overall:Among many other things, I’m tired of the way this story is told in fiction: from the point of view of the male detective, grizzled and weary, shaking his head over some beautiful broken body. The man represents cynicism; the body, innocence. By the end, his jaded worldview will be confirmed, or he will be saved-either way, he’ll need to see the body. I’ve read enough of this genre to know I’m tired of it. I’m tired of the way it puts women’s bodies to use, as footnotes. The dead girl is the beginning of the man’s story. Being dead, hers has ended before page one.
On her own blog, Coyle calls for something different:Lets get writing the girlpain. I mean, the emotionally raw, the dead-eyed, the furious, the hungry, sloppy, horny, anti-sex woman, with her messed up family life, her lack of mourning, her guttered soul. Boy troubles in the form of irretrievable loss. Girl troubles in the form of that hot straight girl who never flirts back. Gender itch. Striving. Race, Class fragments and intersections and bursts. Ferocity and passivity. Failing and just lying down a while with no one around.
Another fatal gang rape with mutilation, this one in South Africa, which has the highest rate of rape in the world. Sisonke Msimang writes,The radio is full of this story. Full of politicians and posers, trying to outdo one another. Like funeral criers. But it will end, the show. And there will be marches and petitions. There will be statements and rage. But it will happen again. Until we are inured to shock. It will happen again. Until our bones are worn into dust and our teeth crushed into the sand. It will happen and happen. Until we invent a way to stop being women... As long as we exist, we will be raped.
I keep seeing anti-feminist trolls claiming everywhere that rape is taken sooooo seriously and that men everywhere are in constant danger of false accusations from women. Uh-huh. Michael Kimmel on Steubenville:As I found in my interviews with more than 400 young men for my book Guyland, in the aftermath of these sorts of events -when high-status high school athletes commit felonies, especially gang rape- they are surrounded and protected by their fathers, their school administrations and their communities. These out-of-control, rapacious thugs are our school’s heroes - “our guys,” as the gang rapists at Glen Ridge High School in New Jersey were called nearly two decades ago. The players themselves hold to a code of silence, the omerta of sexual assault: No one ever rats out a fellow bro. The parents, the school and the community circle wagons in a culture of protection around the boys.
A few graphics, the first from
sneezythesquid:
One more from Slutwalk Seattle:
Don't tell me "pickup artists" have nothing to do with rape culture. The fact that a guy drives something he calls a "rape van" around should, in a just world, elicit focused attention from the law.
Another creep: the mayor of New York City. This isn't acceptable behavior for a regular man, let alone one running one of the largest cities in the U.S.
Laurie Anderson fought back against street harassment with her camera.As I walked along Houston Street with my fully automated Nikon. I felt armed, ready. I passed a man who muttered "Wanna fuck?" This was standard technique: the female passes and the male strikes at the last possible moment forcing the woman to backtrack if she should dare to object. I wheeled around, furious. "Did you say that?" He looked around surprised, then defiant "Yeah, so what the fuck if I did?" I raised my Nikon, took aim began to focus. His eyes darted back and forth, an undercover cop? CLICK.
Meanwhile, online harassment continues apace, in the atheist community and elsewhere. Despite the squawks of harassers claiming that anti-harassers want to stifle their FREEZE PEACH!!!, the speech being stifled is actually that of women, many of whom quit blogging and commenting because it's exhausting to wake up constantly to this triggering shit in one's inbox. To quote one woman,I am really fucking tired of people who have harassed, stalked and threatened women I look up to and love being treated (by people like you) like they have some rational points, and we are just having a jolly chummy academic argument… [T]his “fight” has been about and remains about my fucking dignity as a human being. My right to inhabit atheist spaces without fear of reprisal or attack because of my gender. My right to be represented by other women.
I'm reminded of Echidne of the Snakes' old post The Right to Go Out. Misogynist attacks on women in public, everything from Tweets to actual rape, are fueled at least in part by the belief that public space in men's space and women are second-class citizens therein, only tolerated if they're protected by a man or acquiescing to what sexist men want.
Online harassment goes on not only in severely misogynist societies like India, not only in "At least you're not forced into a burqa, hon, so go make me a sammich" societies like the U.S., but even in the alleged "feminist paradise" that is Sweden. Christian Munthe, Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Gothenburg, has laid out a moral theory of such online attacks. I like this especially:If you want to claim that the behaviour exhibited by the net haters is dependent on or explained by either (i) objectively tough economic circumstances or powerlessness (private or generally in society) or (ii) subjective experience of such things, you need to show: (a) that net haters as a rule are in condition (i) or (ii), and you need to show (b) that anyone in (either of) those conditions will be prone to exhibit the net hate behaviour.
This is old news by now, but the people who blame rape victims for not having said "no" loudly enough are giving rapists cover.
If you have been the victim of abuse, you are not obligated to protect your abuser. However, others are not entitled to make you call your abuser out, either. Your mental health is paramount. Nor are you obliged to "get over it" on their timeline:I feel like ‘getting over’ abuse is like downloading a large file using dial-up internet in the 90s: it takes a really long time, it buffers really slowly, it randomly goes from like 20% to 3% to 60% to 43% and it randomly stops and then your brother has to use the phone and then it starts all over again and you feel like screaming and crying in frustration.
Finally, a sensitive post about women with rape fetishes and how they are not the problem.
Unlocked.
This entry was originally posted at http://ms-daisy-cutter.dreamwidth.org/1957532.html. Please comment there using either your DW account or OpenID.