There’s a poisonous double standard in our society which says that it’s reverse-sexist and wrong for women to feel threatened by creepy-awkward male behaviour because our fear implies that we hold the negative, stereotypical view that All Men Are Predators, but that if we’re raped or sexually assaulted by any man with whom we’ve had prior social interaction – and particularly if he’s expressed some sexual or romantic interest in us during that time – it’s reasonable for observers to ask what precautions we took to prevent the assault from happening, or to suggest that we maybe led the guy on by not stating our feelings plainly. The result is a situation where women are punished if we reject, avoid or identify creepy men, and then told it’s our fault if we’re assaulted by someone we plainly ought to have rejected, avoided, identified.
- 9th September
2012 - 09
- 10th July
2012 - 10
Cookies for Breakfast: So a Girl Walks into a Comedy Club....
Trigger warning: rape, rape jokes.
Click the link to read the full entry.
This is something that happened to a friend of mine in her own words.
“So, on Friday night my friend and I were at her house and wanted to get out and do something for the evening. We brainstormed ideas and she brought up the idea of seeing a show at the Laugh Factory. I’d never been, I thought…
- 9th December
2011 - 09
[TW: rape, rape culture] Researchers gave a group of men and women quotes from the British lad mags FHM, Loaded, Nuts and Zoo, as well as excerpts from interviews with actual convicted rapists originally published in the book The Rapist Files. The participants couldn’t reliably identify which statements came from magazines and which from rapists — what’s more, they rated the magazine quotes as slightly more derogatory than the statements made by men serving time for raping women. The researchers also showed both sets of quotes to a separate group of men — the men were more likely to identify with the rapists’ statements than the lad mag excerpts. The only slightly bright spot in the study: when researchers randomly (and sometimes incorrectly) labelled the quotes as coming from either rapists or magazines, the men were more likely to identify with the ones allegedly drawn from mags. At least they didn’t want to agree with rapists.Can you tell the difference between a men’s magazine and a rapist? | Jezebel
The full story includes quotes used in the study, and they are profoundly disturbing. We couldn’t read the whole list.
(via sparkamovement)
- 14th November
2011 - 14
- 6th November
2011 - 06
Facebook Finally Removes Its Pro-Rape Pages
YAY!
It only took two long months, over 186,000 signatures on a petition to Mark Zuckerberg, and finally a furious Twitter campaign to get Facebook to remove Pages that graphically celebrated and encouraged rape and sexual violence.
This time, anyway.
Warning: some readers might find the rest of this article and its links disturbing.
Unfortunately this was not the first time Facebook had to be externally pressured to enforce its own Terms around the flashpoint topic of sexual violence. And no, we’re not talking about consensual spanky-spanky between adults. (I’m sure Facebook would have taken that Page down much sooner.)
The first round was in August, when people demanded that Facebook take down a so-called “rape humor” page called “You know she’s playing hard to get when your [SIC] chasing her down an alleyway.”
Facebook defended keeping the rape page as a sort-of everyday, harmless thing, and in a statement to the BBC likened the pro-rape page to “pub jokes.” (Remind me to never go drinking with Facebook.)
- 30th October
2011 - 30
Lead banner carriers for the men’s section of the Canberra Reclaim the Night
- 26th September
2011 - 26
This is a poster that USC Men Care made against sexual assault. It was posted on the bulletin board on our floor. Someone took a sharpie turned this anti-rape message into a joke about women belonging in the kitchen. Sooooo not only are you saying that there are cases when a woman saying no can be disregarded, but those situations are when you need to put her in her place in the household. Hilarious
Welcome, everybody, to 2011.
(via feminismisforlovers)
- 12th September
2011 - 12
(TW) I wasn’t “asking for it.” I was five.
Short Shorts. A Hello Kitty T-Shirt. Cork Wedges. Pigtails.
Stop holding victims accountable for their wardrobes.
Start holding rapists accountable for raping.
A response to the wave of victim blaming on Tumblr today. Feel free to share.
- 28th August
2011 - 28
(Source: drown-in-watercolors, via happyfeminist-deactivated201208)
- 21st August
2011 - 21
The people you meet when you write about rape
**Trigger Warning** Rape apologists, rape naysayers, rape deniers
Mr. What About The Men
“The real problem here is all these false rape accusations that are destroying our society! 90 million men are falsely accused of rape every second! A woman just has to sort of mumble a word starting with ‘r’ and a man instantly gets a life sentence! There are no instances on record of a woman actually being raped!”
Ms. Tough Girl
“If women would learn martial arts—70-year-olds and women with disabilities can do this if they put their minds to it, darnit—and carry weapons everywhere, no one would ever get raped! All you have to do is be ready to threaten your own friends and lovers with lethal force at any moment, any anyone who can’t do that must be weak or something.”
Mr. Model Victims Only Please
“The victim was no angel herself. If you look at her record, she’s been arrested several times, she’s a single mother, and she’s living on welfare. So it’s not like she was some innocent little virgin beforehand. None of this makes it right, but I’m just saying, let’s not overreact like a good woman got ruined.”
Ms. Fashion Police
“Did you hear what she was wearing? I’m sorry but that’s just not common sense. If you go out looking like a piece of meat, you have to expect you’ll get treated like a piece of meat.”
Mr. I’m Not Blaming Her But It’s Her Fault
“Rape is never the victim’s fault, of course. But I just want people to admit that she has some responsibility. That she maybe played a part in it. That in an alternate universe where she’d done things differently and she lived in a steel Battlemech wearing a chastity belt, she wouldn’t have gotten raped, and she did make the choice to not use a Battlemech. I just need people to acknowledge that.”
Ms. Couples Therapy
“I dunno, seems to me like they both made mistakes. Maybe he just wasn’t reading her signals, or maybe she wasn’t communicating clearly to him. A lot can get caught up in an emotional moment like that and I bet they both feel really bad right now.”
Mr. Offensive And/Or Baffling Metaphor
“Look, if you walk down a dark alley with a wallet stuffed full of money, sure it’s still a crime when you get mugged, but what if the mugger is just trying to feed his family because he was laid off by an evil solicitor and the ghost showed him a lone crutch leaning in the corner?”
Ms. CSI
“If you put the pieces together, her story just doesn’t wash. She claims that he ripped her pants off, but her pants have a button fly. Ha! And she waited a whole forty minutes after the supposed rape to call the police—who would do that?”
Mr. Troll
“lol bitch deserved it loooollll”
Ms. You Don’t Just Get To Decide Whether You Consent
“She was seen earlier in the night drinking with this guy, talking to him, and even making out with him! And then she went up to his apartment! What did she think would happen? No one ever goes to a guy’s apartment unless they’re consenting to every sex act he could possibly want.”
Mr. How Do I Not Rape Someone It Is So Difficult
“I just don’t understand how to tell if someone is ‘consenting’ or not. What if she secretly decides she doesn’t like it—am I a rapist then? What if she changes her mind midway through? Or afterwards? It’s impossible to know what women want, so how am I supposed to know if they want to have sex with me or not?”
Ms. Traditional Values
“You know, back when women dressed modestly and simply didn’t go out drinking with strangers or going home with people they’d just met, this sort of thing didn’t happen.”
Mr. This Wouldn’t Happen If Women Would Just Fuck Me Already
“This sort of thing is inevitable when women constantly act as gatekeepers and doom beta males to a life of frustration and loneliness. Of course rape is horrible, but the pent-up rage felt by men cast aside just because they weren’t billionaire underwear models has to express itself somehow.”
Ms. Avoid The R-Word
“Wow, that is just not cool. Having sex under those circumstances—I mean, treating a girl like that—you know, being inappropriate with her—is a totally insensitive and downright mean thing to do.”(Source: the Pervocracy)
