Friend’s post on being sexually harassed/assaulted & fighting back [TW]
Damn. Sexism and homophobia are alive and well in Northampton (so-called gay utopia) in 2013. Warning: This post will involve a lot of (well-deserved) swearing.
This dude cat-called me last night outside Local Burger on Main St. (very public location). I ignored him and walked into my partner’s apartment building. I hear this shit all the time, and I started to “get used to it” at age 12 (my first memory of this happening).
But then he follows me into the apartment building and keeps trying to talk to me. I said, “Hi. I’m going to my partner’s apartment. I’m gay. Take a hint. I’m NOT interested in you.” He says, “Ew. That’s weird, you piece of shit lesbian bitch.” So I grabbed him, pulled him outside and threw up up against the wall and said “don’t fucking call me a bitch, you homophobic piece of shit” at which point his buddies start “defending” him from me, calling me a crazy bitch and spitting in my face, and then chase me back into the apartment building and start punching the (all-glass) windows and screaming at me. One of his friends was a woman, who as far as I could tell just stood on the sidewalk and didn’t do anything. But given how much women internalize sexism, it wouldn’t surprise me if she, too defended these guys as defending themselves from a “crazy/violent/unprovoked” woman.
Really glad I stood up to those shitbags, but damn. We should not have to deal with this. We should not have to “get used to it”. Women should not have to live in fear of our bodies being up for grabs (literally). Queer people should not have to learn to expect to be harassed for being who we are.
The back-drop of this is the conversation about rape culture and self-defense. Of course I support women defending themselves from this shit. But this still puts the responsibility on women to protect ourselves from sexual violence. We need to challenge the culture that trained this guy to think it was OK to follow a woman into an apartment building in the first place and makes this behavior completely unacceptable. We need to build a culture that doesn’t train men to have such inflated egos that when a woman denies their sexual advances, they slip into a violent rage and attack them.
Enough is fucking enough. I refuse to live in fear. I refuse to apologize for defending myself from this bullshit. RAGE.
Friend’s post on being sexually harassed/assaulted & fighting back [TW]
The pictures from Steubenville don’t just show a girl being raped. They show that rape being condoned, encouraged, celebrated. What type of culture could possibly produce such pictures? Only one in which women’s autonomy and right to safety counts for so little that these rapists, and those who held the cameras, felt themselves ‘perfectly justified’. Only one in which rape and sexual humiliation of women and girls is so normalised that it does not register as a crime in the minds of the assailants. Only one in which victims are powerless, silenced, dismissed. It is impossible to imagine that in such a culture, assault and humiliation of this kind would not be routine - and indeed, the most conservative estimates suggest that ninety thousand women and ten thousand men are raped in the United States alone every year. That’s what makes the Steubenville case so very uncomfortable - and so important.
… Yes, it is possible to feel a sick spasm of pity for these young men whose tears in the courtroom were described at such melodramatic length by major news outlets. It is possible to feel pity for those who do violent acts, who hurt and shame others simply because they know nobody’s going to stop them and it seems like fun. Young people can get carried away in times of war, and here I include what we must surely think of in these circumstances as a gender war, especially when they’re on the winning team - and these boys were used to winning. Young people get carried away. But not always. And that ‘not always’ is where pity stops like bile in the throat.
In every situation where atrocity is normalised, in every death-camp and gulag and apartheid city, there are those who refuse to participate. The soldier who ignores the kill order. The prison guard who walks away. The families who risk their safety to shelter refugees. The men and boys who see rape and violence occurring and have the courage to say ‘stop’.
We have sympathy for those who lack that sort of courage only because we worry, even the best of us worry, that there might be circumstances in which we, too, would overlook evil. That’s the question facing every man and not a few women in America right now as the enormity of rape culture begins to dawn. It’s a question of cowardice, and of character. Something is going on - the casual rape and abuse and dehumanisation of women and girls, and some men - that’s so monstrous that to take its magnitude seriously would implicate a great many of us. The question is whether we have the courage to face it - this time.
Socialism Art Nature
The upshot of the Steubenville rape case is an unsettling reality: Any woman in the U.S. who dares to publicly seek justice through the courts against perpetrators of rape must be prepared to walk through an ocean of fire.
This American culture, which apologizes for rapists and demonizes the victim, is one in which no woman can truly feel equal as a full and free member of society. An end to women’s oppression in the U.S. is impossible without the complete abolition of the structures and traditions which reinforce that culture.
What happened in Steubenville was deplorable, but it is hardly an isolated incident. We need to ask ourselves what it is about our society allows for these kinds of crimes and these kinds of reactions to them — and what we can do to change it.
Rape culture is what happens when survivors of rape are blamed for provoking an attack, for not being “smart” enough about their choices, or for otherwise being responsible for their rape.
Over the past week, political analyst Zerlina Maxwell has received racially fueled death threats for speaking out against rape. Maxwell, who is a rape survivor, appeared on a Fox News segment with Sean Hannity last week about the possibility of arming women to prevent rape. She said the responsibility should lie instead with men. In response to her remarks, Maxwell received a torrent of abuse on social media with commenters saying she deserved to be gang-raped and killed. Zerlina Maxwell joins us to discuss her ordeal and her refusal to be silent in the face of the threats against her. [includes rush transcript]
“A campaign of victim-blaming has begun against the young woman who was raped in Steubenville. She and her family need to know that there are people who support her. We support you Jane Doe, and all other Jane Does everywhere. Send your solidarity now. Many people have been engaging in postcard campaigns — but you can and should also leave a message (or photo, or quote, or link) on this Tumblr.”
Socialism Art Nature
1 in 3 Native Women will be Raped in Their Lifetime
That’s a good point. Any man who argues that men cannot be taught not to rape — and that rape is just something that men inevitably do and cannot change their behavior — should have a permanent restraining order put on him (which he should be required to publicly display at all times) and be required to receive express written consent from any woman before he can come within 50 feet of her.
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Here’s the thing - when you argue that it’s impossible to teach men not to rape, you are saying that rape is natural for men. That this is just something men do. Well I’m sorry, but I think more highly of men than that. (And if you are a man who is making this argument, you’ll forgive me if I don’t ever want to be in a room alone with you.)
And when you insist that the only way to prevent rape is for women change their behavior - whether it’s recommending that they carry a weapon or not wear certain kinds of clothing - you are not only giving out false information, you are arguing that misogyny is a given. That the world will continue to be a dangerous and unfair place for women and we should just get used to the fact. It’s a pessimistic and frankly, lazy, view on life. Because when you argue that this is “just the way things are,” what you are really saying is - I don’t care enough to do anything about it.
Socialism Art Nature
Here’s the thing - when you argue that it’s impossible to teach men not to rape, you are saying that rape is natural for men. That this is just something men do. Well I’m sorry, but I think more highly of men than that. (And if you are a man who is making this argument, you’ll forgive me if I don’t ever want to be in a room alone with you.)
And when you insist that the only way to prevent rape is for women change their behavior - whether it’s recommending that they carry a weapon or not wear certain kinds of clothing - you are not only giving out false information, you are arguing that misogyny is a given. That the world will continue to be a dangerous and unfair place for women and we should just get used to the fact. It’s a pessimistic and frankly, lazy, view on life. Because when you argue that this is “just the way things are,” what you are really saying is - I don’t care enough to do anything about it.
In January, Anonymous made headlines for decidedly nonpolitical reasons as they exposed yet another sports town as a safe harbor for rapists. Two local jocks, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, were stupid enough to take pictures of themselves sexually assaulting an intoxicated and unconscious girl while several of their friends were not only stupid enough to record themselves joking about it, they put it online. But the defense team for Mays and Richmond have a very peculiar notion of how to keep their clients out of jail. Via The Atlantic Wire:
The very public trial of the very publicly shamed “rape crew” will begin on Wednesday in Steubenville, Ohio, and despite pre-trial testimony from three as-yet-untried high-school athletes who say they witnessed an unconscious 16-year-old dragged around by her hands and feet, and slurring her words, and at one point lying on the ground before she was penetrated, it appears that the lawyers for Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond will say the case’s Jane Doe consented to the whole thing. We’re not kidding. “Defense attorneys believe the girl, who lived across the river in Weirton, W.Va., made a decision to excessively drink and — against her friends’ wishes — to leave with the boys. They assert that she consented to sex,” reports the Cleveland Plain-Dealer‘s Rachel Dissell. Richmond’s attorney, Walter Madison, is getting specific, citing “an abundance of evidence here that she was making decisions, cognitive choices … She didn’t affirmatively say no.”
It’s clear that the defense is banking on rape culture carrying the day. In the alternate reality of rape culture, rape isn’t rape if the girl was “asking for it.” They’re hoping for a jury where at least of few of them will subscribe to Bill O’Reilly’s personal theory of responibility. Said theory states that a drunken woman that gets raped really has no one to blame but herself. She was, after all, drunk and everyone knows that drunk people deserve to have non-consensual sex forced on them. Victim blaming is a prime component of rape culture.
This is going to be a tough sell for even a disgusting misogynist like O’Reilly. The pictures from that night are clearly of an unconscious or barely conscious girl. The video from the “Rape Crew” clearly indicates that the girl was not able to communicate in any meaningful fashion. One particularly vile segment of the video shows one of these upstanding citizens making joke after joke about how “dead” the girl was.
“…an abundance of evidence here that she was making decisions, cognitive choices … She didn’t affirmatively say no.”
Really? Good luck with that.
Socialism Art Nature
Defending the Steubenville rape survivor from vicious attacks - An idea.
a friend writes:
Apparently, the young woman who was raped in Steubenville is essentially trapped in her house because of the extreme number of death threats and attacks she is receiving. The threats are so serious that the police have posted two officers posted at her family’s house. I can only imagine that these threats will grow as the defense attorney’s build a case based on destroying her reputation.
Large number of rape survivors already suffer from PTSD and depression. I can only imagine the trauma this poor young woman is suffering. She and her family need to know that there are people around the country who support her. In NYC, we are having a meeting on the fight against sexual violence and we’ll circulate postcards where people can write their own messages of support and send them together to the attorney. Imagine if people all across the country did this and she received more than 1,000 messages of support. Let’s make it happen. My best educated guess for where to send messages is to the OH Attorney general who is prosecuting the case:
General Mike DeWine 30 E. Broad St., 14th Floor Columbus, OH 43215
Defending the Steubenville rape survivor from vicious attacks - An idea.
What war on women?
Number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq: 6,614.
Number of women, in the same period, killed as the result of domestic violence in the US: 11,766.
Approximately 3 women in the U.S. are killed every 24 hours by a spouse or a known intimate. (Over 1,000 every year).
Homicide as a result of domestic violence accounts for 30% of all homicides against women every year.
FOX News likes to talk endlessly about how evil “the Taliban” is and how we have to go “over there” and kill them all in order to protect women. But they don’t have shit to say about those very same conditions of misogynistic murder and sexual assault against women right here in the U.S.
A real “war on terror” would mean a full-scale assault on police departments and bastions of male misogyny across the U.S.!
We spend $700 billion dollars a year on the US military and are dropping bombs on people in a “war on terror” in the Middle East. But there’s a war OF terror right here at home. It’s not the Taliban shooting black kids dead in the streets of America or sexually assaulting female college students across the U.S. It’s the American police doing these things; it’s the hordes of American male misogynists doing these things. And both of these groups of savages are fully backed by the courts and the entire political-legal-social structure of this putrid society hypocritically called “the land of the free”!
A real “war on terror” would mean a full-scale assault on police departments and bastions of male misogyny across the U.S.!
Democratic strategist Zerlina Maxwell on Monday said she would not be silenced by vulgar insults and threats of violence, and would continue speaking out against rape.
“I’m certainly taking steps to protect my emotional health, but I will not be quiet because I refuse to be bullied into silence,” she said on MSNBC.
During a segment on Fox News’ Hannity, Maxwell suggested that the onus of preventing rape should be on men rather than women. She warned that suggesting women should carry guns to prevent themselves from being raped could easily devolve into a victim-blaming mentality.
“I think women should not have to go out and get a gun,” she explained on MSNBC. “Women should not have to not wear skirts or heels, and they should not have to do anything to prevent rape from happening from them. I think we need to be refocusing like a laser on the perpetrators of the rapes.”
Maxwell, who is herself a survivor of sexual assault, said the situation proved her point.
“I’m saying that there is a rape culture and attacks on women, and then I’m attacked. I think it illustrates that we do have a problem.”
Socialism Art Nature
[TW] America, there’s a disturbing pattern here. A woman of color makes public comments that rape is bad and that men need to stop doing it, and in response, she receives a deluge of racially-tinged death- and rape-threats from the hordes of barbaric males that populate this country like so many writhing maggots.
![[TRIGGER WARNING BELOW]
Remember That Time A Rapist Got Convicted And The Internet Threatened To Kill The Victim For It? »
What happened in Steubenville was deplorable, but it is hardly an isolated incident. We need to ask ourselves what it is about our society allows for these kinds of crimes and these kinds of reactions to them — and what we can do to change it.
Rape culture is what happens when survivors of rape are blamed for provoking an attack, for not being “smart” enough about their choices, or for otherwise being responsible for their rape.
Jane Doe was roofied, by the way. This is rape culture.
But you have a choice.Ask coaches to educate their students about sexual assault.Ask CNN to apologize for their coverage of the Steubenville trial.Read about 10 ways you can help end rape culture.](https://upworthy-production.s3.amazonaws.com/nugget/5147786308496c0002012c9e/attachments/rapeculturecnn.jpeg)
In rape culture, this is consent.
