Recently in Sexual Assault Category

I do realize that most of you ladies are young feminists, but can any of you relate to the crime of gang rape that occurred long before you were born? I had a horrible experience:

I would like so much like to hear your feedback. Thank you.

So goes the lovely headline of a story about a 23 year-old woman who fell to her death from a 12 story-window after being sexually assaulted. Nice.

I was sexually assaulted today at work.

I've written before about the men that I work with on my blog, the cooks at my restaurant, here. 

Today, I was washing my hands at the sink in the back, when one of the cooks came up behind me, pressed the front of himself to my back, and pinned me against the sink. I froze up, and I couldn't think of anything to say, but I turned around to see who it was and I'm pretty sure my face was just as disgusted and as violated as I felt. 

Luckily, one of the other waiters was walking by, and he yelled, "Get off of that woman!" at the cook, and then he backed up. One of the other fry cooks saw it and just laughed, crowing "Did he just do that? Did he run up on you like that?" 

Some might cite the use of the word "assaulted" as being too strong a word, but I hardly think so. No, thankfully, I wasn't attacked. But OED says that assault is to "bombard someone... with something undesirable or unpleasant" so shut up. (Not you all here necessarily, but I posted this on my blog, too, and God only knows what sorts of people are going to run across it.) 

I'm upset by this. Angry, too. Angry that someone would think that it was acceptable to invade my very personal space to press up against my body. MY body. And angry at myself, as well, that I didn't say anything-- to either the cook or my manager. 

But what do you say? When I was first hired, the manager defined verbal sexual harassment as beginning the moment someone asks you to stop (telling a story, asking personal questions) and you don't. Touching, he said, is a zero tolerance game. 

But how do you go to the manager and say, "The skinny black cook with the glasses held me against the sink?" (No, I don't know his name). 

Besides, I don't want to cost someone their job. I don't even know if he knew what he was doing was wrong-- though that's not an excuse by any means. 

This is MY body. This is MY woman's body. My beautiful, curved and sloping, soft, strong, vital and necessary and exquisitely, personally made woman's body. It. Is. Mine. And you do not get to touch it, in any way, without my express permission. 

So why couldn't I think of anything to say? Why couldn't I defend this self of mine? Why did I need someone else to come along and break the silence that had been too tight and shocked for me to handle on my own? 

Maybe others have experienced it, too, a hypersexualized atmosphere in a restaurant workplace. Maybe it's because most people who work there are young and single. Maybe it's the only way the cooks have to entertain themselves. And to say anything would be to question the entire workplace's culture-- not that this is a bad thing, but I'm sure I would be seen as a bitch for not playing along like everyone else, and I wish I could handle that, but I don't know if I can. 

But I think I have to. If any of them touches me again, I'm going to the manager. And if he doesn't do something about it, then you better believe that I am. 

(Crossposted in an edited form at UneFemmePlusCourageuse )

(Note: this is not anti-male.  This is anti one male and others of his particular ilk.)

I gave a speech today on Take Back the Night marches (something I've been involved in for the past few years) in my notorious speech class , and wow, pardon , I didn't define rape for the uninformed entitled twenty-two-year-old men of America! Quelle horreur ! Because nobody could possibly know what that word means unless I, Gen Dusquesne, widely-renowned legal expert, informs them. I mean, Gott in Himmel , maybe all of his forays into the rooms of drunken girls who would never give him a second look sober were rape! Maybe that time he jumped out of the bushes and proceeded to fuck a girl was rape! He couldn't know! Because I never told him, in the one speech I gave on the topic. So he can't set boundaries for himself, he can't be expected to change if we uppity women won't give him exact instructions on what rape is and how not to do it.

Yeah, it was this guy . And here's his exact words,

"There is a lot of ambiguity in your speech. One of the greatest problems with sexual assault crimes is actually identify [sic] what a sexual assault is, because the line easily becomes fuzzy. Therefore, the problem step was not completely clear. If you can't clearly identify the problem, you can't ask people to take an action."

Hmm. Hmm . "Kein Problem ?" Let's look at some of the statistics I used, shall we?

"One in six women and one in thirty-three men will be sexually assualted in their lifetimes. College women are four times more likely to be sexually assaulted. According to campus police, there were four incidents of forcible sex offenses on campus during 2006. Sixty percent of sexual assaults are not reported to the police."

How is the problem not clear? Sexual assault itself is a problem. I don't give a shit if you define it as an unrequested ass slap or a full-on violent rape. They are both problems, one is more serious than the other, but they both represent facets of the gross lack of respect for women's bodies in our society. All forms of sexual assault are problems that need to be taken care of to ensure equality between men and women in our society. I've been harrassed on the street and I've been raped, and no one should have to go through either experience. The fact that a funny story one of my friends told me the other day (in which his friend went to New York City, got on the wrong train, ended up in a bad neighbourhood at 3 am, asked a guy for directions, was told to give the guy $10 if he wanted directions, laughed it off, walked away to find a group of "unfriendly looking guys" waiting for him, and turned around to find $10 direction guy waiting again) was hilarious for him but sent chills up my spine? That's not okay. That there are neighbourhoods that I know far better than my boyfriend does that I would not feel comfortable walking through at night without him or another trusted male there with me is not okay. That this freaked me out so bad is not okay. That a dude has come up to me and a female friend telling me his name is "Ben Dover," and asked where our boyfriends are, with three huge friends behind him, is not okay. That my high school boyfriend thought it was okay to have sex with me when I had already told him no is not okay. Got it?

No, I don't think you do. RAINN 's definition is,

"Sexual assault is a broader category that the Justice Department uses to classify rape, attempted rape, and other violent felonies that fall short of rape. Rape is defined as forced vaginal, oral, or anal penetration."

(I referenced RAINN multiple times in the speech. So he has an easy source to look stuff up.)

But really? What his comments read to me as is, "you haven't given me all the answers in five minutes. Therefore, I will keep on being a rapist or potential rapist and I will not question my actions or think about this further, because I have not been spoon-fed absolutely everything, simply told some important facts and that it is wrong."

Then again, maybe it was just my repeated references to sexual assault as a cultural problem which could be changed rather than a "natural" one that luckily for him can't be changed. He doesn't want to lose his easy excuse, don'tcha know.

Fucking bastard.

I have recently become obsessed with Battlestar Galactica and have watched everything through Season 3 on DVD (I am impatiently awaiting the release of Season 4.0). The show brings up so many issues including race, gender, sexuality, class, and politics.

One episode that I found especially intriguing was "The Farm" in Season 2. Lt. Kara Thrace "Starbuck" is held hostage in a medical facility where her cylon-docotr, suggests that being pregnant would be a better use for her than continuing as a fighter pilot. She is repeatedly drugged and it is implied that the doctor may have harvested her eggs or removed one of here ovaries. Starbuck being the strong woman that she is murders her doctor. In her escape, she finds many women hooked up to machines to impregnate them. She destroys the machines stopping their rape

At this point, I want to celebrate, jump up and down, hoot and holler. But Starbuck's doctor, the head honcho in this "hospital," is a black man. Here BSG is holding hands with the likes of Birth of a Nation and lynch mobs. BSG is taking part in the American stock story that black men rape white women. This relationship has been used to justify not only casrtration of black men, but also the paternalistic "caring" for white women. Black women are all but erased.

Now this is not the only portrayal of rape on the show. Two cylon detainnees, Gina Six and Athena, were both vitims of rape. Gina Six's story (in episodes "Pegasus" "Resurrection Ship") is an incredibly sad portrayal of how some victims cannot cope with the aftermath; although it is worth noting that Gina Six is dealing with alot more than just sexual assault. Ultimately, she murders Admiral Cain, the woman who is ultimately responsible for her rape and torture, as she is the commanding officer. And it is later reealed Admiral Cain and Gina Six were lovers (Razor), which is another bag of worms, as they are only lesbian or homosexual couple depicted o nthe show thus far (unless something happens in 4.0). Ultimately, she takes her life with an atomic explosion, really driving home how scarring violence can be.

(Warning this could trigger victims of Sexual Assault)

Sometimes I wish I wasn't a survivor. Actually I do wish I wasn't a damn survivor. I wish that I was never molested and raped as a kid. But it happen. And up until recently, I had blacked out my whole childhood. Deciding to completely forget my past. I mean what you can't remember wont hurt you right?

And that worked, for a bit at least. Now here I am having one of the toughest week's I've ever had as a survivor of sexual abuse. All I can think of is what happened to me. All the things I blacked out, well they are vivid in my mind now.

And what makes it worse, is that the person who did all this fucked up shit to me was my own father. My own fucking father molested me.

I use to always deny he did anything, I didn't want my mom to feel even worse about keeping us in that situation until I was old enough so that we could fight for termination of his parental rights and I could tell a judge I really didn't want him as my father. I never wanted my mom to feel like it was her fault. Cause it wasn't her fault. She was abused. He would verbally abuse her and sometimes physically abuse her. She couldn't leave that situation for fear of him killing us. And he tried. The one thing I was always able to remember before my flashbacks started was how when I was around three years old, he put a gun to my head. I remember it. And it's crazy. Cause I was a baby. But I remember my mom begging him to stop; I remember her face, and her tears going down her face as she tried to figure out how to calm him down. So the last thing I wanted to do was tell her that her now ex husband, my father, molested me. I can't even believe im writing this.

I wrote the following as a hypothetical rant to a male friend who I adore in every way except for the fact that he constantly jokes about rape. I object every time, but the response is the one you're ALL familiar with: exasperated, implying that I'm just too sensitive and need to lighten up.
This was not written for Feministing, but not knowing what to do with this once I'd written it, I decided others might like to read it, because it is simply stream-of-consciousness and not structured. I thought about putting an introduction, after the fact, to make it more like a letter or something, and more linear for Feministing readers, but that's not how it was written and it felt more honest to leave it as it is.
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I wonder if you joked about slavery and lynchings all the time you were in africa? Or if you're around orthodox jews, do you casually joke about the holocaust and feel exasperated at their lack of humour when they fail to see the funny side? Probably not. Those things are considered 'history', but you'd never joke about them. Rape is happening now, to our friends and family. There are probably many girls you know (and even some boys) who've never told anyone. On a larger scale, literally thousands of girls a year are trafficked in and out of this country and many others to be sold into sex slavery.

I'm sure my suggesting that rape jokes are misogynistic seems as if I'm trying to portray women as constant victims, threatened even by simple words. But I refuse to pretend that I'm the one with the problem, instead of this casual approach to rape being the problem, which is the reality. If my comparisons above aren't good enough, and you're still convinced there's something different about this case, try to see it from the perspective of a woman. There is no escaping the endless harrassment from men, in daylight, at nighttime. The response that comes back is 'Don't go out if you don't want to be harrassed.' If you're a woman, society views you as an overgrown child who doesn't have the right to go to the places men can go to, or do the things men can do. And if you do, you're blamed for what happens. When a woman is raped, people go out of their way to blame her. Here's just a few examples. A 17 year-old girl went to court over her rape, where it was suggested that she was responsible for the attack for wearing underwear with the words 'little devil' on it*. A friend of ours was assaulted when she was 14. Authorities told her she was responsible for wearing make-up and having highlights in her hair. An 18 year-old woman was attacked a few years ago, and the judge stated she was probably grateful for the attention. The headline printed was 'Rape girl grateful for sex'. This list goes on and on, these are not isolated incidents. Even paedophillia, if the victim happens to be female, brings on a similar response. Girls as young as five have been accused, in british 21st century courts, of leading their attackers on.

If this were not the case - if women who were raped were not accused of being responsible - I wouldn't worry so much. The fact that women are blamed for their rapes - and that people think rape is funny, too - hurts almost more than the fact that women are raped in the first place. I do not fear rape nearly as much as I fear a society that not only renders rape victims powerless, but pours scorn on them and makes them feel like worthless pieces of shit who deserved what they got and whose situation is something to banter about over a pint. Sexual violence, to a woman, is not something that just happens 'out there' to other people. It is always close to home.
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This weekend I went to see Quantum of Solace, and thanks to my severely reduced expectations, rather enjoyed losing myself in the car, boat and plane chases.  One scene, however, snapped me from my suspended reality back to the misogynist world that Bond operates in.

Trigger Warning

Hi Feministing Community!  I am struggling with finding some resources on acquaintance sexual assault and thought that maybe someone here would have some suggestions.  I have found some decent academic articles, but am having a very tough time finding good books, specifically books geared towards survivors and not counselors. I have found some great resources for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, but nothing specifically geared towards acquaintance sexual assault survivors.  I have sifted through a bunch of books that are chock full o' blame and have ridiculous and harming 'safety' and 'prevention' tips and feel like I've hit a wall in finding any really stellar books.  Does anyone have any suggestion on books geared towards survivors that deal with acquaintance sexual assault, drug-facilitated sexual assault or stalking?

I'm having abit of an argument with a freind, she pointed out this   site to me, I said I thougth it was bullshit and she thinks it offers sensible advice.

While I don't dispute  common sense I am SICK of the respobility being hauled upon women and women who didn't do what they 'should' have done being blamed for being raped, sites like this do not offer anything postitve in my opinion espcially when they have such delsightful statements such as this

'Don't Put Yourself in a Situation Where You Could Be Raped
At first glance, this is the biggest "NO DUH!" statement we could make. And yet, it is something that the nearly 100,000 US women -- who are raped every year -- didn't manage! '