“ When potential sex criminals believe that their potential victims will be be treated poorly by the police they will be more likely to cross the line from potential criminal to real criminal. For effective change to be a priority those in charge need to understand that a lack of training or bad training of investigators on how they interact with those who report sex crimes is linked to public safety
“ What they mean to convey, of course, is that the girl was not physically injured. But saying she “was not hurt” is a piss-poor way of saying that, especially since two of the key narratives of the rape culture are: 1. Sexual violence isn’t real violence; and 2. Sexual assault only counts as a serious trauma if a survivor is left with physical injury. Neither of those are true….It’s not the media’s job to decide that for her.
“ Watching the news every single day, there’s a murder, there’s a rape, there’s a sexual assault, there’s a child molestation. All these things happen every single day and we just get numb to it. So when your eyes are opened, and your heart is opened and your spirit is open to this work, every day you want to scream. Every day you weep, because it doesn’t end. And then you look around and you don’t seem people getting angry. You don’t see people saying, “what?!” It’s a news cycle. And you put that up against the objectification of women and girls in so much media that we consume, like when you’re driving into the Midtown Tunnel and there are these billboards twenty stories high of a woman’s midriff, right next to billboards for strip clubs. Put that against all the other things I just spoke about, and it’s rather daunting. Every day, there’s another reminder of what we’re up against.
“ And what do these stories tell us? In Cleveland, the molester ‘befriended’ his victim. The Lombard man ‘had sex with‘ his victim. The typical narrative that surrounds reports of rape and sexual assault, one where the words ‘rape’ and ‘rapist’ and ‘raped’ are rarely used in lieu of euphemisms that distance the rapist from the crime. Words that leave room for interpretation and debate. Words that are designed to dilute the power, the intensity, and the violence of the crime.
“ Someone who can so easily decide to commit rape needs to be viewed as a persistent danger to the public. It wasn’t the wife’s cheating which caused this rape it was this man’s underlying willingness to rape.
This is one of my favourite blogs. They look at everything and anything critically, and while giving their opinion, it’s more of a space to deliver the goods and let the readers decide how they feel on their own. I often find myself uncomfortable with things I see in fashion magazines/movies/tv/etc, but don’t know how to articulate those feelings well.
Anyway. I highly suggest you check out this article, and check out the archives for other interesting ones as well! :)
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Rape culture is telling girls and women to be careful about what you wear, how you wear it, how you carry yourself, where you walk, when you walk there, with whom you walk, whom you trust, what you do, where you do it, with whom you do it, what you drink, how much you drink, whether you make eye contact, if you’re alone, if you’re with a stranger, if you’re in a group, if you’re in a group of strangers, if it’s dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if you’re carrying something, how you carry it, what kind of shoes you’re wearing in case you have to run, what kind of purse you carry, what jewelry you wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people you sleep with, what kind of people you sleep with, who your friends are, to whom you give your number, who’s around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment where you can see who’s at the door before they can see you, to check before you open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch your back always be aware of your surroundings and never let your guard down for a moment lest you be sexually assaulted and if you are and didn’t follow all the rules IT’S YOUR FAULT.
I like the sarcasm but wtf is this shit. Seriously. Everyone is so rape-proof these days that this disgusting crime is being treated like a social norm.
Credits: myrobotvoice on LJ
“ Particularly in areas around erotica and sexual violence, people want to deny the direct link between representations and how we live our lives. I think that it’s possible to embrace the knowledge that there’s a direct link between representations and choices we make in our lives that does not make that link absolute, that does not say, ‘oh if I look at a movie in which a woman is fucked to death I will go out and think that I should let myself be fucked to death by any man who wants to fuck me.’ I think that’s an absurd sense of a direct link. But that is not to say that if I watched enough of those images I might not come away thinking that certain forms of unacceptable male violence and coercion in relationship to my female body are acceptable.
Rape culture, meet rapist. How do you do?
“ This again reinforces the idea that most rapists are not the root cause of the rapes they commit. When people talk about the goal of living in a society where anyone, child or adult, could walk naked down the street without fear of rape they are talking about living in a society free of sexploitation. Yet many people still support the idea that nakedness or even a bare midriff can cause rape. Boys and men who exploit girls according to their perceived sexualness are often falsely presented as passive entities who are controlled by the behavior of girls.
