Recently in Violence Against Women Category

(Possible trigger warning:)

I ran across a very disturbing letter in a Dear Prudence column.  The letter-writer has a problem (to some extent long-standing) with her boyfriend:  he tickles her, although she's repeatly told him she doesn't like to be tickled : 

Whenever we are lying on the couch or in bed together, he will start tickling me, and when I react he gets on top of me and pins me down so that I can't defend myself. I have repeatedly told him that I hate being tickled....  He insists that because I laugh, I must enjoy it. He adds that I need to learn to master my mind, and once I "convince" myself that I am not ticklish, then I won't panic when he tickles me. What should I say to him that gets my point across?

Just a short note to let you all know that I took it upon myself to create a special section on the National PTA website to address the recent gang rape in Richmond, California, and provide information on how big a problem this is (not just a "bad apples" case as the community was trying to label it). I hope you'll take a look at my entry and those from Men Can Stop Rape, Break the Cycle, and Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Violence, and leave some feedback here and at the PTA Facebook page. Thanks.

Hi,

I just tried calling a DV shelter in my area.  I told them I have a disability.  They asked the nature of my disability and said that it probably wouldn't be a good fit for me because of the stairs. 

She has suggested that I contact Disability services for housing.  I know that these types of housing can take months or years to acquire, so I asked if she could recommend any other temporary living places where I could go if it gets bad again between now and when I could move into my long-term accessible housing.

She couldn't provide me with an accessible short term living place, and the reason is because I need the care of a home health aide every day.  She said that if I came to a shelter it would have to be just me, and I would be responsible for my own meals (i.e. have to be capable of doing that myself).  She said that the health aide would compromise their security.  I totally understand where she's coming from because even though my aide is discreet, I know that they can't take any chances to compromise the safety of the women there.

In my case, it's not domestic violence, it is occasional emotional abuse, but the last fight was so unprovoked that I've made up my mind to leave.  My point is that I don't necessarily need a shelter because I don't need to be "hidden" since he's not violent and he wouldn't come after me.  I will be needing some temporary housing though as these housing assignments can take months to process.  I would have felt more comfortable in a shelter, because it would be a safe environment with other women.  

My ultimate goal for long-term housing is a place that's accessible and is for women only. My biggest concern is that it is SAFE.  I've heard too many tragedies happening to disabled women who live on their own, and unfortunately most of the accessible places are in neighborhoods that are not as safe as others.

As far as the location of the long term housing, it doesn't matter what part of the country since I'm considering all possible options - I'm in the U.S. but I would consider other countries, too, if I'm healthy enough to make the trip and am able to find someone who could help me with the travel.

Some of you may have seen this article in the NYTimes. As it notes, "[t]he Obama administration has recommended political asylum for a Guatemalan woman fleeing horrific abuse by her husband," a recommendation that is expected to set precedent and influence future cases of asylum request.

Good news, right? I have to say, first, yes, and second, but...

On the "but" part, it strikes me as problematic that the United States presents itself--through its refugee policy--as a safe haven of domestic violence. This legal/symbolic maneuver obscures the disregard that this country has for domestic violence within its borders and particularly, the women who are victims of domestic violence. Further, it suggests domestic violence is "cultural," that is, a practice of backward societies, not something that would happen in the United States. Meanwhile, an estimated third of women murdered in the United States were killed by an intimate partner (the statistic is for 2005). For those interested in a discussion of this rhetorical strategy see philosopher Uma Narayan's discussion of "death by culture" in her 1997 book.

Secondly, the decision (if it is eventually taken, and the article suggests that it will) disavows the fact that violence in Central America bears the mark of American military aid. The US provided military aid to Guatemala for years, and only suspended it in 1990 when Guatemalan military forces killed an American citizen (meanwhile, it is thought that "About 200,000 people were killed or missing in Guatemala from 1960 to 1996, mostly Mayan Indian civilians"). Aid was restored in 2005, by Ronald Rumsfeld.

Thirdly, and related to the previous point, it positions America (or American men) as protecting women of color from men of color (very much in the spirit of Gayatri Chakravarthy Spivak's descriptive "white men saving brown women from brown men") in a way that is similar to how feminist discourses were activated to support wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is also false, to the extent that the trend in the last decade has been to exclude immigrants (both documented and undocumented) from access to basic health and welfare services and to increasingly link local to federal immigration enforcement, thus disencouraging women suffering from domestic violence from contacting the local police for protection.

This is not to say that the decision might be crucial for particular women escaping a violent husband and for progressing toward recognizing that women are individuals who may be persecuted on accounts of their belonging to "particular social group," that is, women (see definition of asylum). However, to the extent that this recognition is not accompanied by a similar reflection on the works of patriarchy in this country, and the constant reminder that the US is not a safe haven for domestic violence for the thousands of women affected by it every year, the decision only works to reinscribe a false positioning of the United States as the Western liberal democratic model to emulate and to foreclose two kinds of struggle, the feminist one at the domestic level, and the anti-imperialist one both at home and abroad.

This is a rant on the phrase "can't rape the willing," which, in recent days, I've heard many more people say.

About a week ago, I was telling some friends about a new hair salon in the Hampton Roads area (my hometown) in which attractive stylists are hired simply for that reason, as to attract more men. "Hot chicks cutting your hair," is their selling point, and you can sort of think of it as yet another Hooter's, except there are no wings and fried pickles, or the kick-ass roasted oysters, for that matter.

In response, one of my friends wrote me back: "But is anyone forcing those women? You can't rape the willing." This, for me, shows great lack of insight on the plights of women, as well as the challenges women face economically. For this, I'll try to frame the arguments through the lens of, firstly, economic choices, and secondly, as rape itself.

The controversy surrounding whether or not women ought to wear the traditional head scarf (niquab) continues to rage in Islam-centered countries, particularly Egypt.  In it, feminist scholars are attempting to reconcile a strict interpretation of what consitutes patriarchal oppression with a practice that surprisingly has been an effective and necessary means of self-defense for Muslim women.

A supreme irony has come to light, namely that the head scarf has a protective function for women, one that discourages sexual harrassment from men by providing an obvious and highly visible barrier against unwelcome behavior.  The headscarf unsubtly and resolutely broadcasts "hands off" and men know in no uncertain terms to not take liberties.  That this practice was originally set in place by the patriarchy for its own ends and forced upon women as a result has been superceded by the reality of what it provides; namely that in countries where unwelcome sexual advances and breaching of boundaries by men against women are common--practices which would not be tolerated in Western cultures.  The niquab, regardless of its designed function, has proven surprisingly effective.

My question is whether a similar scenario exists for us.  Are there patriarchal standards and practices forced upon women in our culture that end up inadvertantly being a means of protection?  If so, should we reclaim them for our own ends or criticize them for being part and parcel of an ignoble history of subjugation?  When we have sought to find every means of understanding violence against women, how to address it at its root, and above all how to advance successful strategies to keep women safe, is adopting a standard of dress or other means of protection like the head scarf in our best interest or against what we advocate?

I am an adult disabled person living with my parent.  He is not, and has never been physically abusive with me.  But there is infrequent emotional abuse that is unprovoked, uncalled for, and over the top with personal insults.  Yesterday there was another explosive episode.  It is really causing me so much pain, even though this doesn’t happen frequently.

I spoke with my mother today about the argument yesterday (my parents divorced when I was young).   I knew they’d had some crazy arguments when I was young - but I didn‘t think there was any violence.  Today I found out that my mother had to get a restraining order against him at one point during their marriage, and he was court ordered to get counseling.  He has always maintained that the counselor said that he was more stable mentally than she was, and which is why he was ultimately awarded custody of us, but my mother says that he got custody because he threatened her.

My father has NEVER been violent, or threatened violence with any of his children, although he did get very angry and yell.  My mother has been the one who was rough with me.  As a baby/toddler she pushed me, screamed at me, and threw things. 

So I hear all day, every day, excuses, jokes and justifications about rape. Really tired of it. As a survivor...how dare you?!

This is what I know about rape. I was sexually abused and raped all through my childhood and well into my twenties. I will not go into details. Not because it is a problem for me. It just seems to be a problem for everyone else to grasp. My story is not unusual. Quite the opposite.

Ten years of therapy. Ten years of constant physical and emotional pain and flashbacks. Insomnia. Sobbing. Eating disorders. Anger. Aggression. Grief. My muscles sprained and torn. Migraines. Sickness. Vomiting. Irregular heart beat and high blood pressure. Thoughts of suicide. Thoughts of murder!!

Ten years of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Ten years of having to claim disability benefits because I could not function. Ten years of poverty....and then more prejudice because of my disabilities. I may as well still be being raped.

I always wanted to be a dancer. Well, that's shot to s**t. By now, if I had been left alone....I would have had a very successful career. My whole life torn apart by patriarchy.

If you wish to offer support - that's really nice. But I am fine. I am writing this for one reason only. It is to make you think. Think of what rape can actually DO to a survivor. 

I am much, much more angry about the results, than I am about the rapes.

Everyone seems to have an opinion about rape. Well...unless you have suffered as survivors have, then I am sorry. I am not listening.

So go ahead, make rape-jokes. Call it a "misunderstanding". Say it couldn't really have been that bad. Or perhaps "it wasn't meant that way". 

Then come and live my life. Try and be a warrior and cope with THAT. If you are not prepared to then I am not listening.

So this morning I was catching up on my celebrity gossip when I came across this little gem. For those of you that can't click the link, I'll sum it up. Basically it's an interview where Chris Brown speaks about life post-Rihanna, and about his next comeback album. Okay, so everything is middling along okay until Chris drops this line: "I wasn't surprised that people turned their back on me", and then he goes on and talks about how dissappointed he was with Oprah and how the media treated him after the incident at the Grammy's. He also then praises men like P Diddy and Will Smith for standing up for him. He gives shout outs to all his "true fans" that "stood by me" as well.

On October 29th, 20 life-sentence convicted murderers and rapists are going to be released in North Carolina thanks to some crafty legal maneuvering by one convict. By exploiting a law made in 1974 that stated that a life-sentence is the equivalent to 80 years in prison, these convicts are now being released due to good behavior and the assistance of various other merit programs, which have cut sentences by as much as half. 

Now, the criminal justice is system is unfair. Many people receive sentences that are disproportionate to their crimes (drug possession comes to mind). It can ruin what few chances some people have at a life. There are many injustices in our "justice" system that really do keep certain groups of people at a disadvantage in our country today.

But. And I mean, a big BUT...

One of the convicts to be released kidnapped and raped a nine-year-old girl in 1978. That's 31 years compared to the original "80" that he was sentenced. Nineteen out of the twenty convicts to be released in just a few weeks are convicted of murder or rape. The twentieth was convicted of assault with intent to rape along with the two accounts of second-degree burglary. Woah, big difference. Also nevermind that "good behavior" also allows for multiple infractions (up to 27 on one convict's record) while in prison, including weapon possession, fighting, sexual acts, and verbal threats. 

As of right now, there is nothing the state can do regarding the twenty convicts to be released on the 29th. In addition, the releases will continue unless the state can find someone legal recourse to keep life-sentence convicts in prison.

I am 20 years old and was in a relationship for 3 & a half years with a guy that I met in highschool. He had (and still has) a couple of family problems and about halfway into the relationship he began to beat me up when he got upset with his family life. I was so in love with him (& he would also threaten to kill himself if I broke up with him), so I stayed with him. He always said he was really sorry & that it would never happen again but I don't think he was able to control himself & it continued to occur. He would never hit me in the face so no one ever found out & I was scared for his life.

When we both left for college he started to emotionally abuse me, which hurt more than the hitting ever could have. It was the worst time in my life & he cheated on me many times as well as countless other lies & betrayals. This went on until our sophmore year of college when I finally left him (mostly because he was just using me as someone to sleep with that that point- I can't say it was really of my own conviction).

About 10 months ago I broke up with him, but I am unable to get over him. I have tried to date other men but I always go on a couple of dates & then get super freaked out when they start to be interested in me. I always end up ending things with them & just wishing I was back with my highschool boyfriend. I know he is a terrible person & I feel that in some ways I've moved on, but I am unable to have other relationships with men. I'm scared that I'll never be able to be in love again and that I'll never find a man who can understand what I went through. Everything that happened was so traumatic that I can barely mention him to other people- only 1 friend knows some of what I went through with him & it doesn't seem to be a big deal to them. I really do not want to talk about this with any of my friends because I'm pretty sure they would just be shocked & horrified that I hid this for so long from them. I also think they might not believe me because he appears to other people to be very mild mannered.

My question is, how can I take steps to move on from him emotionally? How can I open myself up to other possible relationships? And will I ever get over all of this or does this stay with you forever? I just don't know anyone else who had this happen & I have no one who I think can help me. Thanks for any advice you can give.

In 2008, the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Department received a domestic violence-related phone call once every 17 minutes. Despite that statistic, there are currently only 96 units of safe housing available to domestic violence survivors and their families in Washington D.C.

Join our collaborative, community-based effort to ensure that victims of domestic violence and their children in the District of Columbia have adequate safe housing and housing support services. Our goal is to secure a Fiscal Year 2011 federal appropriation for the District of Columbia to sustain and increase capacity to meet the dire safe housing needs of victims and children. 

Because the District is not a state, local officials do not have access to alternate, sustainable revenue that their counterparts in states rely upon to fund safe housing and victim services. 38 states have access to alternate, sustainable revenue. Federal lawmakers are in a position to dedicate gap funding to stabilize and increase these services in DC. This funding would reform a broken system and save lives.

This means that wherever you live, we need your support! Please take two minutes to sign the petition provided at the link provided here: www.thepetitionsite.com/2/home-should-be-a-safe-place-initiative

Thank you for adding your voice!

I wanted to post this because I've seen a lot of abuse posts recently. Abuse posts are bad enough, but some of the advice I'm seeing is kind of bothering me. For some of you who don't know,I, like others, am an abuse survivor. When you're in an abusive relationship, to the outside world, the solution seems so easy, just get out and go. However, sometimes it's not that simple. Sometimes people don't have the financial means to leave. Or they just aren't ready to take that step. I see a lot of posters who mean well, but I see things that border on insensitive. Comments like "If I were you I'd leave", or "you need to find your voice and leave.." Yep, not as simple as finding your voice. 

Whenever people would say things like, "If I were in your position, I would have left a long time ago, or I don't know why you're staying" it didn't help. It made me feel worse. Like something was wrong with me, and why couldn't I just get out of my relationship? ("I'm a strong, independent, feminist, why can't I get it together?") It made me feel horrible. Like I couldn't talk to anyone without getting judged, or looked at like "The abused girl". While well meaning, sometimes it's not good advice. The thing to understand is, until the victim is ready to leave, all of the advice in the world, may not even matter. Sometimes the best you can do is to be constantly supportive, or provide resources like shelters, or emergency contact information, so that when the victim is finally ready to leave, they will have the necessary info.

Before you tell a person to leave, first assess and make sure you know he/she is able to do so. In some cases, a victim may not have the financial resources to just leave whenever they want to, in many cases a victim may be financially and emotionally dependent upon his/her abuser. Sometimes their self esteem is so wrecked that they truly believe that they deserve to be abused, or that it is their fault.

I know I may get criticized for this, but I just wanted to give some info so that the next time a friend, or a fellow feministing member is in the situation, you can be more understanding of their situation. (:

I always thought of myself as a strong individual. I am politically active "youngster" who has really taken life into her own hands, and I am proud of the women I am developing into. What I am not proud of is the anger I sometimes feel towards my gender. I stumbled upon the realization yesterday evening when I was walking to my car from a lovely evening with new friends and beautiful art. As I walked the ten minute walk to the parking garage, I began to evaluate my surroundings; Are there any men around? Am I completely alone on this street? Are there police around if something were to happen? If I did get attacked would my scream be heard and could I be saved?? After I asked myself those questions (something I routinely do when I'm walking alone at evening) I began to realize how angry it made me that I had to ask myself those questions! Initially, I felt resentment to myself for being weak enough to feel that but in reality I'm not being weak but realistic!

To say that violence against women is all too common would probably be the understatement of the year. However, this violence is doing more then just physical damage. The fact that I am able to get raped makes me ( I hate to say it) hate being a women. Not only are these men physically breaking women, but they're break our spirit as well.  As a budding feminist I feel terrible for the indignation I feel against my vagina but I just can't help it! The stories of the rapes and murders making me so frightened. What I'd like to say is we need to rise up against rape! Lets fight it! And I know people are fighting it, there are so many brilliant anti-violence campaigns out there. I mean hey, I've take RAD. And yet, I can't even imagine a time when I will feel safe walking on a street in the evening with out my car keys as a weapon at the ready. Am I being cynical? Am I being close minded? I'm just not sure. 

The one thing that I can be sure of is that, while this fear of rape is going to constantly present itself, I'm not going to let it stop me. Granted, my keys might be at the ready to poke any attackers eye out but I am still going to that dance concert! I am still going out with my friends! While violence against women has instilled fear in me, I'm going to try as hard as I can not to let it keep me down. 

From the article:

Mr Gardner, of Ottery St Mary, Devon, was given the £10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction, but he has since given it to the victim - who can not be identified for legal reasons - to help her rebuild her life.

Police hailed him as an ' outstanding member of the community' who showed ' unbelievable kindness'.

But he said: 'I didn't feel like I'd earned it. The fact that such a horrific thing happened to that lady, I thought it would benefit her life more than it would mine.

'I thought the money would go a lot further to improve her situation.

'I just wanted to help in any way possible and I hope this has done that.'

This is the kind of thing that gives me hope and proves that even when people like the rapist (who is serving two life sentences) exist, there is still kindness in the world.

A male student stabbed a female student at UCLA (my school, the building across from mine) today. He stabbed her in her THROAT. (WTF to the power of infinity). I remember hearing about a woman getting shot by a man at UC-Irvine a while back, and another instance of a man cutting a woman's throat on another school campus.

This is violence against a woman perpetrated by a young man. As feminists have repeatedly emphasized, we need a modification in the definition of masculinity in our cultures, a redefinition that excludes violence as a positive masculine trait.

This video of Jackson Katz is always good to see at moments like this.

ps. I don't know why in the news excerpt at UCLA's website there is no indication of the victim's gender. Is that positive, negative, or neutral?

Female Genital Mutilation: Three Generations Later has won an honorable mention in Nicholas Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn's Half the Sky Contest!

Esraa Bani is the Advocacy Assistant in the International Advocacy and U.S. Government Relations departments of Population Action International.

A little four year old lay in bed wrapped in blankets. Her teeth were chattering and her body was warm with fever because she lost too much blood. She laid still in her bed as tears rolled down her face. Days passed by without her sleeping or eating because the pain was too much for her frail body to bear.

Seventeen years later on March 14th, 1984 my mother was recalling that experience as she was cut open once again to give birth. She had so much scar tissue that she couldn't deliver naturally, she had to get cut AGAIN with a razor. As she passed out from the pain, she heard a baby cry and women cheering and celebrating. The last thing she heard was "it's a girl!".

It has been forty-two years and my mother still hasn't forgotten the day her parents decided to cut her, or perform Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) on her. She almost died giving birth to me because of a tradition that my grandmother was fearful to break. She is not alone. Annually, almost three million girls undergo this procedure because of a variety of reasons but mainly its a ritual of purification. Parents would rather push their little girls to the fringe of life than let go of this sacred ritual. They try to blind little girls to the cruel reality of FGM by having a party and showering them with gold and gifts.

Although my mother's generation took some strides towards the cessation of the tradition, it is still an enormous issue in Sudan. Approximately ninety percent of females in Northern Sudan have undergone FGM. The most prominent types of FGM in Northern Sudan are Types II and III. Ironically, Sudan was the first country in Africa to outlaw the practice, but no one really enforces that law. Today, Sudan has one of the highest rates of FGM. While in most countries the rates are going down, in Sudan due to the war in Darfur, it seems like it's actually spreading and being moved to tribes that never used to practice it.

Unlike many parents in northern Sudan, my mother (with the ultimate support of my father) decided to break this old sacred tradition. My mother refused to cut me and my sister. Her strength empowered her sisters to stop the tradition as well. This revolution started with ONE woman who said "enough is enough", ONE family at a time, from ONE generation to the other. Today, three generations later, here I am advocating to eradicate this practice. I've been speaking out against it and have been participating in projects around the world to erradicate FGM once and for all.

I just became a mother a couple of months ago, and I make a pledge today, just like my mother, to never cut my daughter.

Other Resources on Female Genital Mutilation:

 Stop FGM/C 

Calling for an End to Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting(UNFPA) 

Abandoning Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (Population Reference Bureau) 

Volunteerism and Community Mobilization for Combating FGM

Homicide is now the leading cause of work-place death, according to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics cites that homicide is the leading cause of death for WOMEN at work, accounting for 42% of all work-related fatalities. 

The link above is to a short segment on CNN regarding workplace violence. The segment highlights the recent murder of Annie Le at Yale University, the murder of a woman at a plastic factory, as well as the murder of a young woman named Erin who was beaten to death while working the night shift at Tim Horton's, which happened here in Maine where I live.

I am really disgusted that they are calling the murders mentioned herein, and others like it, "workplace violence." Yes, workplace violence is one component of what is going on here, but the segment fails to represent or highlight that this isn't just an issue about workplace violence, this is an issue about violence against women. All three of the women mentioned above were killed by men in isolated incidents; meaning, no other employees were targeted. These were deliberate, planned and viscous attacks.

I am not trying to undermine the men and women who have died in violent workplace related crimes. My point is that there is clearly a much deeper and systemic issue that many of us are aware of, that none of the news outlets want to address regarding brutality and violence against women - in the workplace and outside of it (The recent shooting at a PA health club comes to mind).

I wish CNN had done some research and given a little perspective on the topic that they were presenting. It makes me sad that even when the facts present themselves in such horrific ways, the individuals responsible for educating the majority of Americans fail time and time again to do their job. They fall short, for whatever reason, and it sickens me, because it continues to perpetuate the idea that everything is A-OK. That women are now safe, they have overcome and conquered. All of the issues of the past (oppression, subordination, misogyny, and the list goes on and on) are just that, in the past, when in reality, we still have so very far to go.

Hey everyone! Just a reminder that October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

While you're all being bombarded with pink items reminding us that it is also Breast Cancer Awareness Month, remember that domestic violence affects women (and men and children) and should be talked about as well. I really wish it was as visible as all of the breast cancer stuff, because domestic violence affects a lot of people too.

Here are some interesting links to check out:

The National Resource Center on Domestic Violence is a great site and has a link to Obama's DVAM declaration.

There's also a really interesting link to the Domestic Violence Census, which provides the numbers, state by state, of individuals who accessed some sort of dv services on a particlaur day.

And finally, a link to the Silent Witness Project's page. If any of you are not familiar with this project, I recommend checking out the website - it's really cool. It seems to be a little out of date, but still interesting.

Day after day, we get fed this line in North America about how most homicides by firearms are gang-related, or done by people with illegal weapons, so that it's no use regulating gun ownership. However, this article in The Star points out how crimes against women in Canada are the result of legal weapons. The registry in this case won't prevent murder, just pin down for sure who did it. I know in the U.S. gun-related legislation is a patchwork, but what are the stats down there?

Link to article.

There's an issue that needs to be addressed that I don't think has gotten enough attention: girl-on-girl hate and violence. We often discuss the problems with men directing violence against women, but what about the increasing occurrences of females directing violence against other females?? I think this problem has always been around under the surface, but lately it's becoming a wide-out-in-the-open problem. Ask anyone who has ever been a schoolteacher, and I'm sure they will tell you they have seen this firsthand. I saw it during the brief time when I was a schoolteacher, and I experienced it myself when I was in college. It seems that young girls are carrying more and more insecurity and anger these days, and they are all too eager to direct this insecurity and anger towards each other by calling each other "whores", "sluts" "bitches", and "ugly" instead of seeking out the roots of their feelings.

It's always nice when people write about how violence against women is still such a huge problem in this country...something most of us here on Feministing are well aware of. Here is an article from a Twin Cities, MN newspaper about just that.

Some highlights:

"But there's a larger factor to this perennial slaughter. It is not solely about firearms. Quite a number of female victims are stabbed, choked and bludgeoned to death. It is also not about state rankings, but about state of mind.

We are a culture that has not rid ourselves of the mind-set that women are inferior and still somehow possessions or personal property(...)

I frankly believe that education starts in the home and at an early age. We need to innoculate boys early in life, teaching them to respect women and treat them as equals.

And we need to tone down the media images and the songs and the commercials that continue to objectify women."

Sigh. About time someone else made the connection between objectifying women, our culture and its inherent sexism/misogyny and violence against women. Now if only more of our average fellow Americans would realize this...

This is just so hideous! How can people believe this (quoted from news report)

"By raping you and giving you a penis, I will correct you so you understand your role as a woman,"

South Africa has a highly liberal constitution but more work needs to be done in educating people as to what this means to them. It also becomes difficult when (mostly men) accuse one of attacking their African culture and imposing westernisation on them, even when their culture is encouraging treating women as second rate citizens.

Article Here

We had a case a while back where a woman was assaulted (including sexually) at a taxi rank for wearing a miniskirt.

Both of these things resulted in massive protests, but it's not something the local media really covered.

Walk a mile in her shoes is part of the White Ribbon Campaign to end violence against women. It takes place October 1 at Yonge and Dundas in Toronto.

While we're on the subject, here are some thought-provoking comments on assault.

Found in the comments section, Broadsides, Antonia Zerbisias' column.

When I was at Carleton University, a group of women once suggested that men refrain from using a footpath from academic buildings to a distant parking lot after dark. Thus, women would know that any man on the path was dangerous. You should have heard the outrage from the men - "I don't rape women so why should I have my freedom limited!" The men appeared to be unaware of the fact that they often suggested women not use the path after dark in order to prevent themselves from being sexually assaulted. Well, women don't rape people either (for the most part) but our freedom just isn't worth as much, apparently.

Posted by: hysperia | September 16, 2009 at 01:38 AM

At the very least, women should pay 50% less tax than men do because of all the extra precautions we are forced to take to be safe from men. Also, we are allowed nowhere near the enjoyment of public space that men have. We should be compensated accordingly.

Posted by: sooey | September 16, 2009 at 01:24 PM

Quoted in: Women and violence By Barrie Levy, Seal Press, 2008, ISBN 1580052444, 9781580052443 - p. 27

Prime Minister Golda Meir met with her cabinet to discuss a series of rapes that had occurred in the state. Her all-male cabinet suggested addressing the problem by instituting a 9:00 p.m. curfew for women and girls; after a lengthy discussion, Meir said that since the rapists were men, a better solution would be to institute a curfew for men instead. According to Meir, the cabinet was silent for a time - and then decided against a curfew.

The NFL season started last weekand recaptured the attention of the American people.  The NFL is clearly the most popular sport in America, and this week, its most talked about player this year, Michael Vick was placed on the active roster for the Philadelphia Eagles, and he is eligible to play in week 3. 

Michael Vick is clearly the most controversial player to enter the NFL due to his conviction for dog fighting two years ago.  The thoughts of protest and boos, debates of whether he should play or be suspend have consumed the sports world for a while now.  Maybe we find his crime so disturbing because we are not used to stories of the torture of animals and dogfighting making the front page of newspapers, or maybe it is because we can't envision someone we cheered for doing something so terrible, or most likely we can't imagine the mind set of someone who would do something so terrible. 

While Vick's crime was shocking other NFL players and other sports atheletes do terrible things.  NFL player Brandon Marshell has repeatedly been accused of domestic violence, but if he does it one more time then he gets a four game suspension.  However, no body is protesting whether or not Brandon Marshell should be allowed to play or should have to work with his community to repair his image.  Fighting dogs and torturing living animals is terrible(clearly an understatement), but domestic violence is often overlooked.  The message becomes don't kick a dog ever, but you can hit your wife or girlfriend and eventually you might be in trouble.  Maybe the American public needs more education about the seriousness of domestice violence, but we seem to care less about abused women than we do about abused animals.

How do people determine who victims are in society?

I recently broke my nose. I was drinking, wearing shoes with no grip, and not looking as I was walking down carpeted stairs in a dark bar. I missed a step and took a swan dive down to the floor, leaving me with a very bloody broken nose and cuts all over my face.

I honestly didn't think anything of it when I went to the hospital the next day. My face was unrecognizable, my eyes were swollen, black and blue, my lip was bruised and three times its normal size, I was laughing at how horrible I must look as I sat in the ER with my roommate, waiting to get everything checked out.

In the waiting room, I was met with stares. I brushed it off as people just nervously reacting to a disturbing looking injury. At the triage, I told my story, complete with laughter. The nurse shot me a look but wrote what I said on paper and I was taken to a room.

It was there that a nurse and a doctor, both men, asked me if I was physically threatened by anyone in my life. Knowing this was probably protocol, I answered no. They stared at me and the doctor turned to the nurse and said, "You can ask her more questions," and then left. The nurse turned to me and told me that I could tell them what happened and there will be no judgments. I simply answered, "I'm admitting to falling down the stairs. I don't expect you to judge me."

The next day I went to work, on the bus I was stared at, people were whispering behind their hands, shooting me sympathetic looks. I wrote everything off as paranoia until a cashier at the pharmacy next to my work commented while ringing up my Neosporin and Advil, "It looks like he loves you, honey."

I was so completely appalled.

Of late, there has been a lot of coverage on celebrities who have publicly been in a domestic dispute. The trend has been quite disturbing. I've blogged about why this is damaging and how hurtful, as a victim of domestic abuse, it is to see the victim perpetually blamed for the attack.

What do you think? Is this something I'm imagining? Should women do more to avoid being abused, raped, beaten? I don't think so. Whether we are at home and hurt behind closed doors, whether the woman is just a victim of a "war crime", or if she's a famous figure and choked in plan view; it's always the victim's fault.

Here's my post on that, it's a bit passionate, but this is something very close to my heart.

With all the steps forward our society has taken, it is still fun and politically correct to laugh at someone that has been beaten, who has been publicly humiliated, who is now subject to derision and late night humor. How did this happen? Why is this okay?

Women are murdered and the press asks "what did she do, who were her friends?" Why is her death somehow her responsibility? How can she still be faulted? She's not even here to defend herself, and the press treats the crime as if she could have somehow avoided it.

This is what I freaking hate so much: the notion that we, as women, can somehow avoid being abused if we "do the right thing". Go to the right school, don't sleep around, have popular friends, come from an un-broken home. We should be able to look around and identify, at first sight, that our future high school boyfriend will someday grab our neck and choke us until we pass out, and avoid him at all costs. It is our responsibility to remain un-abused; it is not the abusers fault, because we should have known. And if we are slutty, bitchy, bi sexual, lesbian, wear tight clothing; well we are just asking for it, we deserve it.

Young women are being taught that if they make the right choices, they work hard and be who society wants them to be, that they'll avoid abuse, violence, rape and this kind of suffering. We are breeding ignorance! Enough!

Women who are victims of violence somehow deserve to be there, and they laugh at our suffering. For viewers that have endured the shame, hurt and humiliation, this is just another roadblock in front of healing. The problem is, this perpetuates the cycle. When will it end? There are people just dying to know.

-Sophia

[This is crossposted at http://womenundefined.blogspot.com]

I am so devastated about how Caster Semenya's privacy has been violated. I think she should be able to keep her medal, continue to run with women and be regarded as whatever gender she feels reflects her identity. My prayers and warm thoughts are with her.

I am also afraid for her safety. While violence against women is a worldwide problem, gender-based violence in the form of rape is particularly prevalent in South Africa. Along with rape in South Africa is the pervasiveness of corrective rape. While sexual orientation and gender should not be confused with each other, queer folks are targeted for these heinous crimes for similar reasons.

Now more than ever, we must be reminded about this petition . We have to be ready to flex our gender tolerance muscles. Allies cannot be silent on this. I am determined to use this case as an opportunity to stand against hateful comments that might arise in my professional, familial or social circles. Gender is a social construction, not a matter of testosterone or reproductive capability.

Last Friday night after a high school football game, Jazmine Thompson was in a car with three other female friends when Daniel Floyd Williams approached them, asked for sex, walked away, came back waving a gun and fired at the young women. Jazmine was killed . Her life is over. Daniel was charged with second-degree murder.

This is ridiculous! I’m tired of reading about boys and men who think they are so entitled to women’s attention and bodies on the street that they react with anger when the women reject them .

Jazmine is not the first (nor surely the last) female to be killed in such a senseless way by a man. Gender-based violence like this is most often (but not always) perpetrated by a man against his former or current intimate partner, often when he feels rejected or as though he’s lost control over “his” woman. But, as this story shows, such violence happens between complete strangers, too.  Here are stories about four other women who, like Jazmine, were murdered by unknown men after rejecting them.

We must all do our part to help end the idea that men can and should prove their manhood and masculintiy through sexual conquests and that rejection by a woman justifies retaliation in the form of insults, physical abuse, and murder. This mindset and behavior must end.

(cross-posted at Stop Street Harassment blog )

I have mixed feelings about Joey Dowdy’s new domestic violence video . It’s been on a few listservs this week and I figured I’d post on it. Joey’s name may ring a bell if you are plugged into the dance scene. He was the choreographer for the Backstreet Boys and has gone on to be a go-to guy for health and fitness. Anyway, in his video he discloses that he grew up around violence because his mother was once in a domestic violence relationship. The video is a tribute to her for having the courage to "rise above" the violence.

I think his video makes an important contribution. It restates a fact that doesn’t get as much press coverage: when survivors can rely on others for emotional and practical support, they are less likely to be abused again. This message is important in a context that is quick to oversimplify what is involved in leaving a batterer and abuser. I think that friends and loved ones would do better to help survivors by meeting them where they are at when they are providing support.

However, his video overall doesn't offer the practical support he references.  Frames in his P-S-Aish dance video that read, “Never let a person strike you” and “Take control” were really offensive. I think it’s fair to say that women, or survivors of violence of other genders, never “let” people strike them. And the notion that survivors can simply just “Take control” is really loaded. At different points for some people, violence can truly be a totalizing experience in which escape is bleak. When other power inequalities are involved — which in the case of women is the default — framing that implies that people have the control to stop someone from hitting them is really insensitive.

This from Dan Savage. I disagree. To put it very very very mildly. Lack of ejaculation into a female body part was very very very likely *not* the problem, Dan.

Thoughts?

You may have heard that the recession is coming to an end . These reports have cited tons of economic data to bolster their claims. While progress is important to measure, all that number crunching doesn't account for the many ways this recession affects and continues to affect some of the most marginalized members of society: women and people of color. I am no economist but I do reside in the state with the highest unemployment rate in the nation, Michigan. From my vantage point, the end of the recession isn't as rosy as it sounds. One indicator is the heightened level of violence this summer.

As 1 of the 40,000+ students returning to the University of Michigan this fall, I have received almost 10 Crime Alert e-mails this summer, 3 within this month alone. I can't tell you how disconcerting it is to have "assault," "armed robbery," "home invasion," or  "purse snatching" in the subject line of an e-mail reporting a violent crime that has happened a short walking distance from my house, or on the very street I live on. Yes, I will admit that I may think twice about carrying my laptop to a night class this fall. But one fact continuously grounds my fear: I am not returning back in September to home foreclosure, or unemployment -- but to graduate school.

What is not to be missed about these Michigan-based crimes is that many of them involve theft or robbery and many of the suspects were black men. It seems to me that this is the recession story that hasn't gotten as much traction -- violence and theft in the midst of economic despair. Economic despair in this country, whether we're in a recession or not, is highly racialized and gendered . Further, it's important to note that along with campus crimes, friends of mine who volunteer at battered women's shelters in neighboring towns have reported that shelters have also been overflowing with survivors this summer. I am not trying to explain away -- or excuse -- Michigan-based violence as being prompted by the recession alone. But it is definitely a factor that often goes ignored in media coverage.

While the heightened threat of violence is a legitimate concern, it is not just a campus safety issue; it's a matter of public policy. Part of the remedy is affordable housing and ladders to gainful employment. Lastly, for all you non-Michiganders, keep these crime alerts, and other effects from the recession that aren't always tallied, in the back of your mind when being greeted with newscaster excitement about the end of the recession. Because even as the economic tide allegedly turns, women and people of color have yet to receive the memo.

I do not watch "Megan Wants A Millionaire" because I can't stand her. The title repulses me. However, what grabbed my attention, is one of the reality contestants is a "person of interest" in the death of a swimsuit model. She was found in a suitcase in a dumpster over the weekend. He made a report to police on Saturday and has since fleed. He has a prior record for domestic violence. I am sad for her family. The silver lining is Vh1 did pull the show from its website and will not air future episodes for now. Vh1 has sunk to new lows, but I am glad to hear they did that.

What is disturbing is someone having prior record for domestic violence is allowed to be on a dating show, for lack of a better term.  Are background checks done or just overlooked? Is that all it takes, a woman being found dead in a dumpster to bring attention? For all we know, he could of assaulted more women, but they were afraid to come forward. If that is the situation, I hope more women will have to the courage to speak up.

Imagine you are a bit of a night owl.  One evening, a touch after midnight, the upstairs neighbors in your apartment building are stomping the ungodly hell out of the floor over your head.  This, while somewhat rare in position and time, is not unusual on the whole; your roommate often complains about the stomping feet over her head at most hours of the day, and you get a decent sampling during what few hours you spend in the living room, watching TV.

This night's a little different, though.  At one point you start to think, is the lady upstairs crying?   Not long after you hear her yelling, "Leave me alone!" two or three times, the crashing footsteps starting to crescendo even relative to the volume they had been holding, and it's definitely not your imagination.

Shifting out of hypothetical mode and into the actual factuals...

It's pretty clear something's wrong.  I, possessing a sturdier frame and most likely more martial arts training than the adult male on the upstairs premises, briefy entertain the urge to go up there and, if I see what I think I'm going to see, bash his head against the wall until he stops twitching.  (Yeah, violence is bad- I get that way about this stuff, what can I say.)  But that's probably going to cause more problems than it solves, and in any case, I have no way to get into their apartment.

The only real alternative is to call the police, so I do that.  I decide against telling them anything about myself, save my first name (they have my phone number, obviously).  I say I'm outside rather than under their feet; I figure this way the cops don't get my ID and it sounds even worse, since it's a lot harder to hear something like that from outside the building.

Twenty minutes later the cops show up.  I slide out onto the porch about five minutes after that, as it's very dark and I'm basically concealed.  But instead of overhearing some substantial portion of the conversation (the stairs and doors here are outside), the cops are already heading back downstairs, saying, "Sorry to bother you," and back to their car.  I knew the odds of anything actually happening were slim, but still, this irritates me.

What all this leads to is one question:  Could I, or should I, have done anything different?

The only thing that sticks out is that I could have given them my information, so that they would have less reason to believe it's just some idiot trying to get back at this guy for something when nothing's actually wrong.  But the people upstairs don't appear to talk to anyone, save the kid and his couple of skating buddies, and I don't know what the reaction would be if the cops came to my door and made it obvious I was the one that ratted him out.  There's the concern of retaliation against me, or worse, my roommate, but also the consideration that if he got abusive again, he'd try to muffle it so I couldn't tell what was going on.  Obviously I'd rather no one get beaten up at all, but if it has to happen, better that I know so I can call the cops again.  I could identify myself at that point and hope they take it more seriously.  That's my logic, anyway; I've never been around this before, so I have no idea if it's flawed.

Thoughts/ideas?

Pop Quiz: How many Black female sex workers do you have to kill to get some national media coverage ? Apparently 5. Jarniece Hargrove. Ernestine Battle. Jackie Thorpe. Taraha Nicholson. Melody Wiggins. A sixth body has been found and 3 more are missing.

Family members of the victims confirm that up until recently, authorities simply weren't doing their best: Tynatta James, sister of Ernestine Battle said to an AP Reporter : ''I didn't really feel like they were doing all they could. I just feel like they recently started to get involved in the cases after the last lady.''

They’ll call a North Carolinian murderer a potential serial killer, but they won’t call it a potential hate crime on race, gender and sexuality lines. After all, if the last season of The Wire taught us nothing, it taught us that social concern rises when the headlines are about a serial killer instead of someone who is a murderer of the marginalized. See, because then it’s just another news cycle. This somewhat explains why these murders have been happening since 2005 and many of us are just hearing about this now.

Washington Post has a deeply disturbing article about the rape epidemic in the Congo. Rape was widely used as a tool by rebel forces during the Congo-Rawandan conflict, but now it is the Congolese soldiers who are raping women.

"The number of soldiers roaming these eastern hills has almost tripled to 60,000, and rapes have doubled or tripled in the areas they are deployed. Aid groups said the number of rapes so far this year is probably in the thousands.

Though Congolese President Joseph Kabila recently declared a policy of "zero tolerance" for sexual violence, fewer than a dozen soldiers have been convicted of rape this year. In May, the U.N. Security Council handed Kabila a list of five senior army officials, including a general, accused of rape, but so far none have been prosecuted."

The content of the article is heart-wrenching, but it's well written, and I highly recommend reading it if you can.  Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will be in Congo today and "has vowed to make sexual violence a priority in Congo, where the United States pays about a quarter of the cost of U.N. peacekeeping efforts." 

My best friend is in an abusive (emotionally and psychologically) relationship. I've tried talking to her about it but she shuts down and refuses to talk. Recently it has become almost impossible to meet with her alone. We will make plans to meet when her husband is working but he changes his schedule so he can join us. He is not aware that I know what goes on (as far as I can tell). He acts amicably towards me, which I believe is a good thing because I'm concerned he may try and cut off my contact with her if he had a problem with me.

I don't know what to do. I know to make sure I don't force her to make a decision because that will only lead to her choosing him. I don't think she knows my opinion of him, although I have made it clear that she doesn't deserve to be treated badly. It is important that I'm here for her so that when/if she leaves she has support.

Is it a good tactic to try and remain on her husband's good side? I'm worried that by not taking a bigger stand, I'm just allowing the abuse to go on. Also I want to call a DV phoneline but I when I go to the websites I can never find out whether it's ok to call about emotional abuse when there is currently no physical abuse.

I want my friend out of this situation. She is severely depressed and I'm seriously worried for her. He has already made her cut off contact with her parents. He is extremely manipulative and uses emotional blackmail to make her think she is the one to blame.

There is one other issue here. I also am potentially in a similar situation, although I am not married. This affects my credibility when talking with her about this. I'm also hoping that if I can call the DV hotline about emotional abuse, they can give me advice too.

This happened in the same county where I grew up. As the story unfolds, we learn that this man's motive for shooting up an aerobics class and killing several women. He wrote a web diary about it and hoped others could learn from him? What kind of lesson, I wonder?

One issue this incident brings up. Men are more likely to externalize their anger, while women are more like to internalize it. This man was angry because he couldn't find a girlfriend, so he murdered women in an aerobics class to punish us for it. When women are single, our culture tells us there must be something wrong with us. Can you imagine a woman going into a men's fitness class and shooting the place up because she couldn't find a boyfriend? No. But if she did, the media would have a field day. "Scorned woman gone crazy."

I know that this tragedy is still very fresh and I hope everyone keeps the loved ones of the victims (as well as the survivors) in their thoughts. But keep your eyes peeled for any coverage of this story that includes a discussion of gender-based violence.

I am disgusted this morning with middle-England rag the Daily Mail for criticising Harriet Harman's new call for teaching about non-violent relationships to children. I barely wish to link to it but here it is.

Harriet Harman, the Deputy Leader and Equalities Minister, is in charge while Gordon Brown in on holiday. Her every move this week is being torn apart as though some terrible pushing of the feminist agenda.

She called for children from age 5 to be taught about having healthy, non-violent relationships. This will mean, in part, teaching boys about not perpetrating domestic violence against women, because as we all know, statistically women are more at risk. However, in classic "what about the menz!" style, the Mail says "some critics" have attacked Ms. Harman because men "are far more likely to be the victims of violent crime". And the numbers of girls carrying out violence is rising. These "critics" include Tory MPs (shame on them) and the director of a right wing think tank.

Yes, men are victims of crime more often, but teaching healthy, non-violent relationships is nothing to so with street/gang crime etc. It's about the times when someone who you thought you could trust and love abuses that power. It would appear that Harman doesn't even mean just teaching boy about violence against women, because domestic violence can occur in any relationship perpetrated by woman or man, against woman or man. I'm sure she knows this and the initiative is meant to address all of that. But the Mail's headline mentions "wife-beating" and tries to frame the initiative as purely about helping women.

After an 8-year marriage, I left, stayed with a friend (not male) for 2 1/2 months until i was able to get my house back. After moving in and being on my own for only about a month, I called him. We started seeing each other exclusively for 5 months but lived in separate places. I have been in a deep depression for what seems like forever and have really been struggling lately. I went out of state to visit family for two weeks and while I was up there, he told me he didn't want to see me anymore and he wanted to "go out with someone."

I have a question. When the abuser finds a new girlfriend, why is that so hard? Why do I want to analyze the way we interacted to try to figure out what went wrong? Why can't I stand the thought of him with another person? Why does it hurt so much? I have come very far on my path to establishing my own true self back, apparently not as far as I thought. My divorce will be final next month. I am dedicated to following through with it.

My kids (not by him) hate him and would leave me if we ever got back together so its a no-brainer but why do I have such strong feelings over still wanting his attention, still wanting to talk to him, trying to make him want me instead of her when I know he is a liar, a controlling manipulative user of people until they're of no value to him. Its like I have this craving for his attention but I don't want to be married to him. I like want him as my friend so we can still talk and have our conversations where we finish each other's sentences. Help. I feel like an idiot. Please tell me this is a "normal" phase to be going through and it will pass and I will hate him again like I did when he wouldn't move out of my house nor pay for it or the utilities or the cable bill. What is wrong with me?

I have just completed a 40 hour training course to become a Domestic Violence Counselor. And part of our 'homework' in this course was to share what we learn with our friends. So, my friends, here is a short summary of what I have learned:

28% of homes experience domestic violence. This number is probably lower than it actually is.

1 in 4 women will be or are in an abusive relationship.

45% of women and 75% of men who grow up in an abusive household will pass on the abuse in their adult relationships by either being abusive (battering) or having an abusive partner.

95% of batterers are men. The number of women batterers is on the rise.

A victim usually leaves the batterer 5-7 times before ze leaves the batterer for good. (so be patient with your friends!)

75% of women who are killed by intimate partners are killed in the first 24 hours after leaving them. It is the most dangerous time for victims.

The leading cause of death in pregnant or recently pregnant women is homicide. Battering usually increases and worsens during this period.

Substance abuse is involved in 61% of domestic violence cases, but is NOT the cause of a batterer's behavior (though it may make it worse.)

Domestically Violent relationships happen about equally across all races, all economic classes (though perhaps less physical abuse in circles of higher Edu.) all religious communities, and in straight and queer communities. This touches everyone .

Many people who are in abusive relationships do not recognize them as such. The abuse may take physical form in hitting, bumping, strangling, stalking, punching, neglect (with respect to food, medicine, and more) etc. It may be sexual abuse such as rape, groping and unwelcomed touches. It may be intellectual in the form of restricting what the victim reads, or what information is available to ze. It may be spiritual in the form of forcing or prohibiting the victim to/from attending certain religious services. It may be psychological or emotional, using 'crazy-making tactics'. It may be verbal in the form of obscenities, hurtful comments, and the like. It may be financial in the sense that the batterer controls all the finances and/assets.

And the list goes on.

The law only recognizes physical abuse as domestic violence.

Here are some reasons why it can be hard to leave:

the victim loves the batterer the victim has kids with the batterer the victim wants to avoid the stigma of divorce (which may be more severe in different cultures) they are financially unable to leave (the batterer has seized all her assets, or is her source of income) they feel isolated and without resources or options their family and community does not support them in leaving

Domestic Violence is about control. It follows what is known as "The Cycle of Violence." First, there is the honeymoon period where everything is great. Next, tension builds (victims and survivors often describe it as a period of 'walking on eggshells'.) Finally, it is broken with a period of violence. After, it returns to the honeymoon period. Basically, he beats you up, then buys you flowers. There is an interim period of building tension, and then he does it again.

As the batterer's career continues, the cycles become more and more frequent . This is why some abusive relationships may begin with cycles that last a year or more to complete, but then progress to a month, a week, a day... It is also why on batterer may beat one partner once a year, but beat his next partner once a month. This cycle is the BATTERER'S cycle, not the victim's.

Batterer's treatment has a 4% success rate. Get out and don't look back.

If you or someone you know is being battered (which may be any sort of abusive relationship, not just physically), please call or refer them to this DV hotline: 909-988-5559

Here's an article about my academic advisor at SMU, Dr. Victoria Lockwood, who is embarking upon two small islands near Tahiti to study domestic violence from an anthropological perspective.

First an explanation of my source-- the excerpt below was pulled from Campus Watch , an email newsletter sent out every weekday by the campus police department at the university at which I work and formerly attended, The University of Texas at Austin.  Campus Watch details the incidents reported to the police department on campus during the previous day-- ipods getting stolen, vandalism, things like that.  It is compiled by an officer who works in the department (which you'll probably be able to tell).  This is pulled from the newsletter sent today, July 14, 2009:

Years ago, following the initial military success of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the temporary fall of the Taliban, the people of Afghanistan were promised that the occupying armies would rebuild the country and improve life for the Afghan people.

Today, eight years after the U.S. entered Kabul, there are still piles of garbage in the streets. There is no running water. There is only intermittent electricity in the cities, and none in the countryside. Afghans live under the constant threat of military violence.

The U.S. invasion has been a failure, and increasing the U.S. troop presence will not undo the destruction the war has brought to the daily lives of Afghans.

As humanitarians and as feminists, it is the welfare of the civilian population in Afghanistan that concerns us most deeply. That is why it was so discouraging to learn that the Feminist Majority Foundation has lent its good name -- and the good name of feminism in general -- to advocate for further troop escalation and war.

On its foundation Web site, the first stated objective of the Feminist Majority Foundation's "Campaign for Afghan Women and Girls" is to "expand peacekeeping forces."

First of all, coalition troops are combat forces and are there to fight a war, not to preserve peace. Not even the Pentagon uses that language to describe U.S. forces there. More importantly, the tired claim that one of the chief objectives of the military occupation of Afghanistan is to liberate Afghan women is not only absurd, it is offensive.

Waging war does not lead to the liberation of women anywhere. Women always disproportionately suffer the effects of war, and to think that women's rights can be won with bullets and bloodshed is a position dangerous in its naïveté. The Feminist Majority should know this instinctively.

Here are the facts: After the invasion, Americans received reports that newly liberated women had cast off their burquas and gone back to work. Those reports were mythmaking and propaganda. Aside from a small number of women in Kabul, life for Afghan women since the fall of the Taliban has remained the same or become much worse.

Hello fellow Community bloggers. After several attempts at creating a new account, I seem to have created one that works.  Huzzah!

On to the topic of my post.

I count Jodi Picoult novels among a guilty pleasure of mine.   In one such novel, The 10th Circle, a 14 year old girl is raped by her recently ex boyfriend while drunk at a party.  She even cites some seemingly true statistics (like, based on the amount of rapes that are reported, then the percent of the suspects that are arrested, then brought to trial, then convicted, then do jail time, roughly 94% of rapists walk free).

The story that unfolds is entirely too realistic . . . the girl is called a slut by her peers, insensitive comments abound, her parents' marriage falls apart, and a friend of the rapist actually encourages her to drop the charges because she 'knew she wanted it.'  The prosecutor tells her not to expect much from the trial, and she pretty much collapses into herself. 

My question is, how do we teach teenagers (male and female, queer, trans, all of the above) the nuances of valid consent, and how to respond when someone says that someone else raped them?   After all, the subject of consent is rarely, if ever, taught during sex education.  Prospective partners should want an ENTHUSIASTIC YES before engaging in any type of sexual activity.  Shouldn't we all want willing participants in our sexual adventures?  I think teenagers especially could benefit from this concept.  We should stop shaming them for having consentual intercourse and start making them feel bad for not respecting the bodies and autonomy of their peers. Not that I ever think shaming is appropriate or effective, but making teenagers (and everyone) think twice about rape can never be bad.

Furthermore, the average American seems to believe that it is entirely acceptable to quesiton someone who makes an accusation of rape, even when the evidence is blaring in their favor.

I found a few resources I wanted to share, but so far this is all I got.  Any thoughts?

Just Yell Fire

Scarleteen

I have more, but feministing limited me to two links. 

Thanks for reading, and please participate.  I need some ideas.

By Selene Kaye, Advocacy Coordinator, ACLU Women's Rights Project

Last Friday Vice President Biden announced the appointment of Lynn Rosenthal as the White House Advisor on Violence Against Women, the first time such a position has existed. We welcome the high-level attention this will bring to violence against women, one of the most critical women’s right issues of our day, and the appointment of such an effective and experienced women’s advocate.

Ms. Rosenthal has been a powerful advocate for housing and economic justice for survivors of violence, two of the most important factors in women’s ability to escape violent situations. As an editorial in yesterday’s New York Times lays out,

Ms. Rosenthal’s challenge, and the administration’s, will be to improve the carrying out of existing laws intended to protect women, starting with better coordination of the activities of all the government bureaucracies involved, including the Justice Department, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In particular, we look forward to a new emphasis on HUD’s implementation of the Violence Against Women Act’s provisions protecting survivors from housing discrimination .

Ms. Rosenthal has also been a strong ally in efforts to hold police and government accountable for protecting women and children’s safety by enforcing court protective orders. We hope that she will be a force for implementing any recommendations that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will issue in the ACLU’s case, Jessica Gonzales v. USA .

More broadly, this appointment is an opportunity for the administration to look holistically at the issue of violence against women and how it intersects with poverty, racism, immigration status, substance abuse, homelessness, and other factors that make women and girls vulnerable to violence. It is also an opportunity for the administration to recognize the integral role that violence plays in women’s involvement in the criminal justice system .

We urge Ms. Rosenthal to move government response to the violence that women and girls experience away from a punitive one and in the direction of prevention, services, and empowerment.

To learn more about the ACLU’s work to combat violence against women, visit www.aclu.org/womensrights/violence .

Crossposted on The-F-Word.org

It looks like Dutch animal rights group Animals Awake is taking a few cues from Peta, an organization I've criticized heartily for treating women like a piece of meat to get men to stop eating meat.  The embed and html links don't appear to be working on this site, so here's a link to the video instead.

Warning : the video is quite graphic in its depiction of violence against women, so if you're especially sensitive to this, please don't watch.  Here's a sanitized description of it instead:

Playboy Playmate and all-around sexy vegetarian Ancilla Tilia is shown performing a Burlesque kind of strip tease for a roomful of ogling men.  It's all in good taste until a fisherman approaches her and hits her across the face with some kind of fishing instrument that looks like a two-by-four with a hook at the end and proceeds to disembowel her.  The text "Stripping alive is not okay" then flashes on the screen, along with some supplemental text about how thousands of fish are flayed live every day.  The slightly-less-graphic, behind-the-scenes photo shoot is here .

I don't even know what to say about this story besides the fact that every detail of it disgusts me.

It disgusts me that the police officer abused the woman. It disgusts me that he sexually assaulted her. And it disgusts me reading his misogynist comments he said to the woman such as,

"If you're going to act like a woman I'm going to treat you like a woman."

Then the woman describes that after the arrest,

"They took my pug and he told me he was taking him to the pound where he would be "put down."

I think the most disgusting part of this story is that this incident is considered a misdemeanor charge and probably won't affect the police officer's future patrolling. I can't believe incidences like this slip through the system.

This article from BBC announces that a man was convicted of manslaughter, not murder, for stabbing his wife and her lover when he caught them having sex. He claims that he didn't know what he was doing, and granted, he did try to save their lives immediately after knifing them. However, the jury agreed that his crime fit under the category of manslaughter through provocation, i.e. the pair provoked the man to kill them by having an affair. Whether or not this man deserves to be convicted of murder or not, his specific ruling in this case sets a horrible, frightening precedence.

This is a really slow response to a post I saw a while ago (apologies for the delay - things are hectic at the moment!).

Someone posted about an incident they had witnessed where I was woman was clearly being assaulted by her partner, but the police refused to follow it up because the woman was too afraid to cooperate. I'm sure others have followed up on that but I just wanted to ask whether in the US you have the same law we do here in the UK; essentially that the police are able to prosecute incidents of domestic violence even if the woman is too afraid to give evidence. It's not always an ideal solution - the woman often feels even more disempowered because the choice wasn't hers, but it does mean that some men who thought they could carry on getting away with this behaviour indefinitely have been arrested, prosecuted and jailed. If the same law doesn't exist in the US, perhaps time to lobby for it?

The Chicago Chapter of the National Organization for Women has been following the Abbate case in Chicago. Police Officer Anthony Abbate was sentenced only to two years of probation for beating a female bartender after she refused to serve him more alcohol. Here are links to the Chicago NOW blog and the AP article regarding the case:

Board member and chair of the Reproductive Rights team, Michelle Staeger, has so far made appearances on the local NBC news in Chicago and on WBBM radio. She will be making additional appearances on local radio and tv speaking out against Judge John Fleming's lenient sentence. Here is the official CNOW press release:

I have always considered myself a feminist, so I tought it could be interesting to participate in a feminist forum. The only somewhat active Forum i found in Germany is Emma, a community founded by Alice Schwarzer (maybe you're familiar with it). Of course I'm also a bit to blame myself since I knew from the beginning that the forum was probably rather conservative. Nonetheless, I thought it would be even more intresting to share my views with people who have other opinions than me.

Well, i was wrong. I posted in a thread about prostitution, since i think it's important they hear the side of a prostitute(like me) and maybe realize that not everything is black and white. I will not recite my very elaborate ( :-) ) considerations on this subject now because it is not important for what I wish to say in this post.

As I had anticipated, critical as well as insulting responses came fast. I wanted to respond in a calm, but also non-apologetic way. But this was not possible since i had been banned! Apparently, my post was considered provocative, which is strange since the only thing I did was not to have the same opinion. I was neither aggressive and certainly not insulting.

It makes sad that the said community, or at least the forum-redactor, is so narrow-minded not to let my voice through. Enjoy your stagnation! I posted this Blog in the category of violence against women since this censoring is clearly violent against my right to free speech.

Now I look forward to read many intresting things here (only discovered feministing recently) and hope that I will not get banned for my opinions, but I have high hopes since feministing considers itself to be progressive:-)

Extremely disturbing survey results out of South Africa this morning, indicating that 25% of men in that country admit to having raped a woman at least once.

I was hit especially hard by this quote from the bbc article:

"...practices such as gang rape were common because they were considered a form of male bonding"

It has started me thinking about how this dimension of "male bonding" over sexual exploits still contributes to rape culture in this country...and around the world.

I'm just amazed at how different conditions are for women country-to-country. I'm not sure how to proceess this new survey data other than with a total sense of dismay.

According to a new survey conducted in South Africa:

One in four men in South Africa may have raped someone. More than half had attacked more than one victim, data from a new survey suggests. One in 20 men surveyed said they had raped a woman or girl in the last year. The study found that 73% of respondents said they had carried out their first assault before the age of 20.

Read more about it on BBC.

Not sure what kind of discussion this can lead to, other than perhaps increased awareness of just how vulnerable women are in certain developing countries, and how widespread the use of rape as a tool of repression still is.

;

I think this video speaks for itself - but, my thoughts.

I'm a pansexual masochist. Not the heavy stuff but more then your average woman I suppose. I'm game to try most sexual experiences at least once and I trust my partners to respect me, my body and my emotions and my dignity.

But once a (male) partner did take it too far. I won't describe what happened, only that it was humiliating and it injured me and destroyed our relationship which had appeared (but obviously was not) healthy to me.

When I asked him "Why?" he responded; "I saw it in a music video."

And later, at a friend's house watching MTV I saw it too. The woman in the video had what happened to me done suddenly, violently and without her consent. And the video had her enjoying it, as the man sung about how she can't get enough of him and she keeps coming back for more.

How is violence against women so mainstream it's SEXY?

Apparently MTV says that choking women, raping them, gang raping them, sexually humilating them is the best backdrop to play music against.

My friend has a friend in a DV situation (I'm not sure if it is physical - I know it is definitely emotionally abusive and extremely controlling to the point where she changed her religion and clothing). She is still married to him and they have children together.  She is waiting the situation out until she can make enough money to support the children - which according to her calculations will be at least a year and a half.  She believes it is in the best interest of the children to stay there instead of in a shelter because it's a better standard of living.  Since a shelter would only be temporary living, she would not have enough money to support three children at the end of the stay there.

My friend has been trying to get her to talk with a hotline or women's center.  Her friend has not yet done this.  Her friend has expressed that she wants to get out of the situation, but then she also says that she's afraid she'll never find anyone else because her husband has treated her so much better than anyone else in her life.

One of my suggestions to my friend was to send her friend websites where she could read personal stories of other women in these types of situations, who had the same fears, but who were able to escape the situations, and experience the freedom to live a safer life.  Does anyone have any suggestions for good reading material for women who really do want to leave, but are having a hard time getting the confidence to do so?  Thanks!

A friend of mine is spending a year abroad in Japan, and has been keeping a blog of his experiences, generally about drinking, eating, sightseeing, and, well, more drinking. This post shocked me. 

Fuck the guy trying to beat his girl on the Oedo Line platform tonight.

Fuck the social conditioning that stopped the girl from running, yelling, hitting him back, or doing anything but whimper.

Fuck the fact that I needed to risk getting my gaijin ass thrown in jail for trying to stop the guy.

Fuck the bystanders fifteen feet away that pretended not to notice. Fuck the fact that they had been pretending not to notice for the whole thirty seconds it took me to realize what was happening, see it, and run down the escalator.

Fuck pretending not to understand my very loud, very articulate “??????” ("someone help!")

Fuck the security cameras covering the entire station, and the station agents that saw all this happen and did nothing.

Check out the rest of his post, "Fuck Harmony."

When I read it through a second time, I was very struck by how he seemed overwhelmed by his first exposure to the sort of behavior I hear about on the community blog all of the time. It's also the first negative thing I've heard him write about Japan.

The interesting thing, though, is that he seemed to think that the apathy he witnessed was particular to Japan, while some of his commenters pointed out that they could just as well imagine a similar event occurring in the U.S.

What do y'all think?

I heard this story on NPR this evening coming home from work and it made me so f-ing angry I could barely drive. Not the part about corporate arbitration, but the part that Wade Goodwyn leads with, the part about the brutal rape of this 20-year old female Halliburton employee by 4 of her male co-workers while they were posted in Iraq. Listen and see if it doesn't make you mad, too. 

Just had to share this with someone. 

Hello Feministing community,

For the past few weeks I've been overhearing a situation in the apartment next to mine that has become increasingly alarming.  Originally, I would just hear the couple next door screaming at each other every day, which although clearly dysfunctional, did not seem to be a violent situation. Then, last week, I noticed the woman on crutches, which immediately raised red flags.  Later that same day, I overheard the man screaming at the woman while she just wailed and sobbed.  It was chilling to hear, but I wasn't sure if I had enough direct evidence of violence to call the police.  After that I decided to just be vigilant and keep my eyes and ears open in case anything happened.

Today, I heard the couple fighting and heard a loud crash followed by the woman screaming in pain and crying.  I immediately called the police, who sent two cars over to the couple's apartment.  However, the police called me to tell me that the couple would not answer the door and therefore the police could not do anything further.  Sadly, from everything I heard about domestic violence situations, I knew that this was the usual routine.

Now I am concerned that my calling the police could potentially escalate the situation to further violence, and I am not sure what to do. All day I have been feeling so conflicted, wondering if I did the right thing. I am planning to notify the apartment management about the situation tomorrow, but again, I am not sure how much that will help. I have considered trying to approach the woman with the number for a DV hotline or shelter, but I never see the woman alone.  Every time she is outside the apartment, the man is outside as well, watching her.  I also am concerned that my getting involved could lead to an unsafe situation for me.

If any of you have advice, or have dealt with this type of situation before, I would really appreciate hearing from you.

Thanks.

I saw this article today on Huffington Post , and the wind was taken out of me. I know that abuse, torture, etc is wrong, and that my level of anger that these things were--and continue to be--done by representatives of our country should have remained consistently high through all of the reports that have come out over the years. Yet, like many Americans I would assume, I just got tired of being so angry at the Bush administration that now that it is gone, until today I didn't even have the energy to want them held responsible for the laundry lists of wrongs they committed.

So here I am, looking for some positive reinforcement from my daily left-wing bubble of media (Talking Points Memo, Feministing, Huffington Post et al), when I saw that article. It made me furious. It made me sad. It made me start thinking about when the Abu Ghraib scandal first hit, and how the only people prosecuted were those with very little power in the military. The fact that the Bush administration--and now the Obama administration--can turn such a blind eye to rape, sexual assault, pedophilia--and whoever knows what else--is shocking to me. The intersections of class, race, and international soveriegnty that are at play here have finally made me understand that I cannot let my anger subside. I have resisted in my mind those who have called for a truth commission. I now know that we must, as a country, demand accountability.

I guess what makes me the saddest is that I'm really not all that shocked. Rape and sexual assault have long been the armes de predilection of the US military forces, especially against non-caucasian groups. From the reports that have surfaced, sexual violence was a systematic tool used by United States military forces in prisons throughout the world. Men, women, and children have been assaulted by our military, and there are photos that purportedly document it.

What has really gotten to me is how the Obama administration is handling these photos. He has said in interviews that "One of the biggest mistakes that is made in Washington is this notion you have to dumb down things for the public." But when it comes to not releasing the photos for fear of international retribution? We're not dumb, Mr. President. We understand that the real issue these photos will create is whether or not Americans can be tried for war crimes. We understand that what is at stake is not a loss of security, but a potential loss of sovereignty under your watch.

For my money, there is more at stake than war crimes. My love of country has been more challenged in the past hours than ever before. If we are to be a beacon on the hill, is there not a need to light the path that got us here, no matter how dark? Is there not a need to turn that light inward? How can we expect countries to be better than us?

As feminists, our struggle is necessarily bound to those who still suffer in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and any number of other detention sites. I end with an open question: what do we need to do? What can we start here?

On the evening of May 11, at approximately 7:52pm, I was walking with two of my friends towards our college campus.  As we were standing on a busy corner, we witnessed a man holding a woman in a headlock as they walked through a parking lot.  She was pleading with him to let go, repeatedly saying, "You're hurting me" and "Stop."  We yelled at him to let go of her and approached them.  Two other men were walking about 20 feet behind who witnessed this and began to aid us in trying to get him to let her go.  When he finally did he yelled at my friends and I saying he would slap us if we tried to get involved.  He began walking faster, leaving the woman approximately 20 feet behind him. I approached her, touched her arm, and asked her if she wanted to come with my friends and I.  I told her we could contact someone.  She smiled at me and said she was okay.

As she walked back to the attacker, I asked my friend to call the police.  Before we could even complete dialing, the woman slowed her pace down from that of the man's, waited until he was farther away, then turned and ran down the opposite corner.  He turned and started to chase her, so I followed running on the opposite side of the street so I could give my friend the location for the police.  A cop car arrived immediately, followed by three more patrol cars.   They separated the man and woman by a police car, took names and reports from myself and my friends, and proceeded to talk to the victim.

As a Muslim woman I find this disturbing on so many levels

I hate to see such sexist remarks under the guise of Islamic Law.  There is nothing in Islam that says that women share a responsibility for domestic violence or that violence against one's spouse is ever acceptable.  This is one man's opinion, that unfortunately has horrible consequences for many women in Saudi

This week I have been reflecting on those that would choose to ignore the importance of dealing with domestic violence in America. After over 30 years of the modern domestic violence movement, we still struggle for funding, we face budget cuts and reductions when the economy goes bad (though domestic violence rises) and we rarely are the primary focus of public policy makers in America. This week the news is consumed with coverage of the swine flu, an important public health issue in America. As of May 2, there have been 167 confirmed cases of the swine flu in the United States and one death. But there has been little news about the mass killings of 68 people across America in the last 52 days, with men doing all the killing and virtually all related to men with a history of violence against women.

Public health officials in the United States fear a global pandemic from the so-called H1-N1 virus. A pandemic is defined as a global outbreak of disease that causes serious illness or death and then spreads easily from person to person worldwide. Pandemics differ from seasonal outbreaks of an illness. The news today quoted many officials talking about high levels of illness, death, social disruption, and economic loss from pandemics. We must all be vigilant about addressing swine flu in the days ahead. But the pandemic of violence by men against women, men, and children has killed more people in the last 52 days in America than swine flu. This pandemic has been going on now for hundreds of years causing high levels of mental and physical illness, death, social disruption, and economic loss.

Connie Culp, recipient of the most extensive face transplant to date, is the victim of a shotgun blast to the face, courtesy of her husband. In 2004, he shattered her nose, cheeks, the roof of her mouth and one eye, permanently disfiguring and nearly killing his wife.

According to the article, she has endured over 30 operations to her face, and will require more operations in the future. Before the transplant, Connie could not eat solid food or breathe one her own. Surgeons transplanted not just skin but also bone, muscle, nerves and blood vessels.

Kudos to Connie Culp for having the courage to get up every morning and keep fighting to live a full life. And many thanks to the donor & grieving family who made this possible. As for her assailant/husband, may he enjoy his prison stay for many, many years to come.

An article in the New York Times todays features a Chicago-based support group for women and their children who have left abusive husbands.

The group, Safe Families for Children, understands that it's difficult for abused mothers to get back on their feet again while also taking care of their children and so has created a sort of foster program for children. The program allows mothers to leave their children with families (after allowing the mothers to choose the family) for any length of time and when the mother comes back for her children, she doesn't need to go through the courts. The mother is allowed to visit whenever she wants and the program claims that many adoptive families become very close to the original family. 

There are child psychologists who think the program is a bad idea, saying that children shouldn't be separated from their mothers unless risk is imminent and that it's better that they go to relatives instead of strangers. But risk is always imminent (and most imminent) right after a woman leaves an abusive spouse and responsible relatives are not always available. 

The program was created by a child psychologist, David Anderson, who is also involved with a Christian service agency and the foster program relies on churches to find families. 

Connie Culp, a woman whose face was destroyed by her now dead husband with a shotgun blast has had the courage to show her transplanted face to the word.

Please check out the full article.

I have no other words.

NPR story here.

Lack of funding and jurisdictional restrictions results in a huge number of sexual assault committed on Native American Lands going uninvestigated and unprosecuted. There are a lot of different issues here, obviously rape culture, but also the US's priorities not including Native American issues.

It sounds like there are law-makers are trying to address this issue with the new bill, The Tribal Law and Order Act. Here is some info from Amnesty International on the new bill.

Protip:  Remember ladies, if you choose to wait for a bus on a major street in the fine city of Portland, you are A DIRTY, DIRTY WHORE and are therefore subject to being accosted by Portland's Finest, rudely questioned, and whisked away in a patrol car to enjoy  the unexpected never-to-be-forgotten thrill of being  fingerprinted, photographed, and booked for prostitution, and held for hours in a jail cell.

Evidently, only whores and wanton sluts take public transportation in Portland-who knew ?!

Yes, this happened to a woman, Ann Marie Selby, on July 30th, around 7:30 pm, on the streets of Portland.  Read the article here.

After reading this, am I the only one that was reminded of the "religious police"?  Thank god she was "...wearing what her attorney describes as a hooded sweatshirt, loose knee-length skirt and Crocs shoes", because who knows where she would have ended up had it been a warm day and she had chosen to wear a whore outfit such as *gasp* shorts and a tank top, or an above the knee skirt! Whorewhorewhorewhorewhore!!!

On Wednesday, April 29th at 8pm, Jessica Valenti will be speaking about her experience and work involved in co-editing Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World without Rape. The event will take place at Held Auditorium (304 Barnard Hall) on the Barnard College Campus.

This event is free and open to the public. Q&A session following the talk. Questions or concerns may be directed to Anna Tekippe at art2110@columbia.edu.

So reads the final line of the introduction to the interactive "joke" used as a promotional tool for "Obsessed," which opened in theaters yesterday.

For context, here is the paragraph preceding "Don't worry, it's only a joke:"

"Now it's time to put your friends in harm's way... that is to say, as the new object of Lisa Sheridan's affections.  Simply upload their photo, give us some tasty info, and we'll do the rest."

The interactive site, "Get OBSESSED With Ali," does exactly that: you give them a photograph and a handful of details about your friend and they insert them into the pre-made stalker-template message, replete with the language associated with stalkers' communication to their victims.

In 2000 the National Violence Against Women Survey found that "[stalking] is more prevalent than previously thought: 8.1 percent of surveyed women and 2.2 percent of surveyed men reported being stalked at some time in their life; 1.0 percent of women surveyed and 0.4 percent of men surveyed reported being stalked in the 12 months preceding the survey.  Approximately 1 million women and 371,000 men are stalked annually in the United States" (Shaw & Lee, 428).

According to the Stalking Resource Center, stalking is generally defined as "a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear" (Stalking Fact Sheet).  As discussed in "Stalking Victimization in the United States," Supplemental Victimization Survey (SVS), funded by the Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women, measured the incidence of particular behaviors associated with stalking: "making unwanted phone calls," "following or spying on the victim," "leaving unwanted items, presents, or flowers," "sending unsolicited or unwanted letters or e-mails," "waiting at places for the victim," "showing up at places without a legitimate reason," and "posting information or spreading rumors about the victim on the internet, in a public place, or by word of mouth" (Baum, et. al, 1).  Though each of these acts, individually, don't necessarily amount to criminality, "collectively and repetitively these behaviors may cause a victim to fear for his or her safety or the safety of a family member" (ibid.) 

Here are a few facts (from Stalking Resource Center's "Stalking Fact Sheet"):

This is a story I know well. Or, at least I believe that I know well. Lisa Stebic has a "contentious" split from a "controlling" husband. When she files a protection order to get him evicted from the house, she disappears. Her husband is the prime suspect, but has not been charged, will probably never be charged, unless they find her body.

This brings to my mind one of the saddest, scariest and most depressing facets of domestic violence: that when the  victim/survivor tries to leave, that's the most dangerous time, the time when they are most likely to be hurt or killed, because when an abuser sees that his victim is slipping out of his grasp, or trying to free herself, that's when that abuser panics, that's when their basic insecurity and cowrdice assert themselves in the strongest way, and that's when they become desparate to hold on to the power they have.

For everyone who blames women for not leaving their abusers? Fuck. You. I don't know exactly what was going on in this relationship, and I admit that I'm looking at this story through a particular lens, but everything in this article screams out to me that this is another victim of domestic violence who has been killed while she was trying to free herself. And you know what? That fact that women or men in these relationships, who know in their heart or hearts that their partner is very sick and very scary, don't want to rock the boat because they know how dangerous it could be, that they have to hear a lot of numb-nuts telling them how stupid they are to stay-that boils my blood.

Delara Darabi is a 23-year-old Iranian woman who allegedly stabbed her 58-year-old cousin to death when she was 17. However, Delara claims that, at the time, she took the blame for the murder to protect her boyfriend, since she was under age and thought she could not be sentenced to death. The autopsy revealed that the stabber was right-handed. Delara is left-handed. But Delara was nevertheless sentenced to death by hanging, and it is believed that she is scheduled to be executed next Monday, April 20. She will be hanged in public and her body will be exposed for 5 hours.
According to Iranian law, she could have her sentence commuted if the family of the deceased accepts a sum in money given by Delara's family. But they refuse to accept this money. Her only hope now is international pressure, which has been previously found effective.

There are several ways you can try to help Delara have her sentence commuted:

I came across this parody of ShamWOW; ShamHO they call it - "It's like a shammy, it's like sponge-- but it's designed exclusively to clean up hooker blood!"

Absolutely disgusting.

Be aware, he punches the 'German prostitute' in the nose.

Here's the link.

I don't watch Oprah, but I have a healthy respect for her. I think it's important to hear men talk honestly about this subject, but I wonder if their answers in this case are too glib. Too much what we want to hear. one man says, "Oh, you know, i grew up in an abusive household..." Another says, "Oh, you know, it's my own insecurities." Fine, I guess. Maybe my problem is that this doesn't mesh with my own work with abusers, who have been uniformly sullen and defensive, or maybe it's the fact that people who go on TV and talk about the intimate details of their life always seem kind of creepy to me.

Or maybe it's the fact that DV seems to be a bandwagon that everyone's jumped on because of what was done to Rhianna. I like that this is visible now, and hollywood's addressing it, but...gah, why didn't this happen 20 years ago? 50?

That being said, I just didn't have the most positive reaction to this, and I wonder what others think.

So I'm taking a 40-hour domestic abuse training at the very awesome House of Ruth, and lemme tell you - for a sheltered little college kid, this stuff is intense . All sorts of individuals take this course, but what blows you away are the stories of the domestic violence survivors sitting right next to you. It makes you realize that battered women come in all shapes, sizes, cultures, classes, ages, and more. Compared to my tiny 20 years of life, it seems like they have experienced and learned so much more than I'll ever know. I think I almost cried during the first class because I was so blown away by the horrors that they had to endure and by the the sheer strength of having had overcome them.

Sadly, a lot of this knowledge is not made aware of by the public. Back at my sheltered private university, a group of friends and I had gotten around to talking about the (sigh) Rhianna and Chris Brown situation. "I don't understand why she stayed with him," they said. "I feel bad for her, but I'm not that sympathetic to her situation anymore."

Upon hearing this, I started twitching with anger (and may have blown a blood vessel or two). I'm known to get very touchy when it comes to gender inequality issues, but having no sympathy towards a woman who is obviously in a fucked-up situation is just fucked up in itself. My friends couldn't understand why, amongst her many friends and publicists and millions of dollars, Rhianna did not leave her batterer. "It's such a selfish act," one of them said. "What kind of message is she sending her fans by staying with him?" When the world is pitted against you, they argued, why can't you just do what everyone is telling you to do?

I was sooo not down with the victim-blaming my friends so clearly demonstrated. At the House of Ruth, we were given about 2034809384023 reasons as to why women don't leave their batterers; love and fear are supposed to be the top two. When someone has you so psychologically wrapped around their finger, there are so many other factors that come into play. Some women choose to leave their batterers, and some choose to stay. What I have learned from the House of Ruth is that it is up to the individual herself to decide what she wants to do with her life - it is her personal choice , and we should respect that.

I'm not saying that I am condoning Rhianna staying with her batterer. I'm just incredibley upset that at an educated institution of higher education we are still making the mistake of victim-blaming. In a setting where we value social movement, activism, and equality, we only continue to perpetuate stereotypes of battered women 'deserving it' and placing her at fault. Where does the cycle end??

I've seen a lot of posts on Feministing about anti-DV ads, but I have yet to see one that tackles something other than physical abuse. I recently came across a PSA that deals with another all-too-common form of domestic violence: verbal abuse.

I think it's important to highlight that, while physical abuse is obviously a very serious problem as well, there are more components to an abusive relationship, and not all abuse is in the form of swinging fists. Thoughts?

But is it really anything new?

Trigger warning.

A little more than a week ago, Courtney published this article on an ad put out by Do Something to create awareness about the frequency of domestic violence in the lives of teenagers.  Now, the Brits have their version .

(Note this video contains graphic violence.)

The ad was sponsored by Women's Aid , which is a UK national charity "working to end domestic violence against women and children."  So as part of their campaign, they received the pro-bono help of director Joe Wright and actress Keira Knightley.

As the BBC describes it,

The two minute TV and cinema ad, for the charity Women's Aid, shows the star being beaten by her partner after she returns home from a film set.

[...]

As the camera pans out, the location is revealed to be an empty film set, where 24-year-old Knightley cowers on the floor as the beating continues. A strapline reads: "Isn't it time someone called cut?"

The ad uses an interesting play between reality and the film.  I use the word interesting hesitantly.  Knightley says in the film, as the beating begins, "This wasn't in the script, I didn't agree to this."  First, let me acknowlege the strength of that point.  That line makes a wonderful point that no abused partner signed up for the abuse.  They didn't ask for it, agree to it, nor do they have control over it.  Secondly, it makes the point that even when we're watching violence on a screen, that a reality of that image would be much different.

But at the same time, how many times has Knightley agreed to participate in depictions of violence against women in films?  She typically plays some form of a feisty woman, and is often shown overcoming or surpassing some kind of physical attack.  I tend to like her performances, though I wouldn't note her as particularly feminist in her choice of roles.  So are my expectations to high, or is this pretty hypocritical?

I think highly of Knightley's choice to volunteer her time to raise awareness about an issue that is killing 2 women per week, according to Women's Aid (I'm assuming that is a UK statistic).  But isn't their some sick irony between the way violence against women is disregarded in film, and the fact that this group chose to use the exact same Hollywood-style medium to promote their point?  We see this kind of violence on TV all the time .  Why is this group's shocking use of violence different than any Lifetime channel horror films or Spike TV's action shows?

What do you think of the ad?

Via this article published by the BBC .

By Ariela Migdal, Staff Attorney, ACLU Women's Rights Project

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and schools and colleges around the country are waking up to the power of Title IX — the federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education programs — to combat sexual violence on campus.School administrators can't afford to ignore Title IX.

In the past year, the Supreme Court ruled that victims of sexual harassment can bring both Title IX claims and constitutional claims against schools that deliberately ignored harassment that they knew was going on at the school. And well-known universities continue to be forced to reform ineffective sexual assault prevention and response programs.

In early 2009, Arizona State University settled a case in which a rape victim alleged that ASU had expelled a prominent athlete from campus because of his egregious sexual harassment of other women, only to arrange, at the behest of the athletics department, to have him re-admitted with no supervision.After the athlete allegedly raped the plaintiff in her dorm room, the student victim brought a Title IX lawsuit, in which the ACLU filed an amicus brief . In the resulting settlement, the school not only paid the victim money damages, it also agreed to reform its sexual assault program, starting with appointing a statewide student safety coordinator to review and reform its policies for reporting and investigating incidents of sexual harassment.

The case — which was widely publicized , and followed on the heels of other high-profile Title IX sexual assault lawsuits in recent years — should galvanize students to use Title IX as a tool to demand more effective policies to prevent and deal with incidents of sexual violence on campus.

In order to encourage students to capitalize on recent Title IX cases involving sexual violence and harassment, the ACLU Women's Rights Project has collaborated with Students Active for Ending Rape (SAFER) to bring students the information and resources they need to use Title IX to prevent sexual violence in schools. Go to www.aclu.org/sexualassault , and then work with fellow students and school administrators to make your campus a safer place.

I'm a first year at Smith College and recently received this e-mail from a fellow student and was absolutely appalled by our school administration's treatment of this individual. I'm hoping any alumn Smithies or anyone else who wants to lend a voice to this woman can help to contact the school administration about this. I feel that domestic abuse is a very important issue and that my school is failing to take a feminist or even sympathetic stance towards the victim.

If you would like to help, spread the word or contact any of the people listed at the bottom of the letter!

This is my first time posting on a site like this--I've considered myself a feminist basically my whole life, but it's only been recently that I've let the rage out. It's a good feeling. Anyway, back to my point.

I am a senior at the foremost Catholic university in the country (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post the name of it. The last thing I need is someone crawling up my ass right before graduation, but you'll probably be able to guess it from this post) Every year, the university hosts a giant 5 on 5 basketball tournament that raises money to help underprivileged youth in Jamaica. Great--so much fun, good cause, shouldn't be a problem.

The teams are allowed to submit their own team names. They are subject to review and censorship from the university, but usually only if they reference drugs or alcohol or are obscene. The commission also releases a "Top 10 Funniest" team names every year. This year, as I sat at the captain's meeting listening to them, my "feminist" rage just about started to boil over.

How does the team name "Unlike Rihanna, We Put Our Hands Up on Defense" sound to you? As someone who has been working with victims of domestic violence for the past three months, my initial reaction was to puke a little. Seriously? Is the name really implying that Rihanna didn't try to protect herself and that's why she got hurt--but don't worry, the team will be great? Another one that made the list--Chris Brown's Best Hits. Yeah, hilarious.

They released the entire list of names yesterday. With over 600, luckily I had very little to do today (I love being a senior) but go through them. I counted almost 20 names making light of the Chris Brown and Rihanna domestic violence scandal. I'll post some of them here:

More Physical Than Chris Brown

If We Don't Beat you, Chris Brown Will

Hits Like Chris Brown

Chris Brown Beat Down

We Get Beat Worse Than Rihanna

We Will Beat You Down Like Chris Brown

Okay I really don't think I'm being oversensitive here. Domestic violence is definitely not something to take lightly. It's joking around like this that perpetuates beliefs such as domestic violence isn't a real issue or that it's the victim's fault. Some of these team names are essentially equating being good at basketball with beating up your girlfriend--same thing, right?

Oh, and there are two other team names that caught my eye. There's a group on campus that's called Men Against Violence--does really good work, brought Jackson Katz to campus, that kind of stuff. This year, one team named themselves Men Against Men Against Violence, and another Women Against Men Against Violence. So taking out the double negative (yes I learned something in high school English) that equates to Men/Women For Violence? Sounds like fun right?

Anyway, that's my rant. I'm sick of people joking about things like domestic violence. Yes, Chris Brown and Rihanna are a public couple and that opens them up to public scrutiny. But this is domestic violence we're talking about. When I brought this up to the Commissioner of the basketball tournament, here was the response:"There are no rules about popular culture references. This means that we get harmless jokes about Snuggies all the way up to Heath Ledger, Plaxico Burress, Chris Brown and their respective incidents.... We feel we cannot adequately divide crimes like these on a scale into what's allowable and what isn't."

Yes, because beating up a woman is JUST the same as a Snuggie. I'm totally mollified now, thanks.

I don't know if anyone has posted anything about this yet, but I just find it terrifying.

Shawn Johnson, 17-year-old Olympic gymnast and Dancing with the Stars contestant, and her family are currently incredibly fearful for her life (and rightfully so) because a man who has an obvious obsession with her drove from Florida to California and tried to jump a fence to get into the studios in which DWTS is filmed. He was arrested and told police that he felt that they were meant to be together. In his car, they found loaded guns, duct tape, and love letters to Johnson.

This is terrifying. I don't have the time to really comment on it at this moment, but I wanted to get it out there and hear everyone else's comments.

Here's the news story as well as the video from MSNBC.com.

I find myself frothing over with rage today and I can think of no better a group to discuss the source of my ire with than all of you at Feministing. Over the past few weeks it has been all but impossible to avoid the coverage and speculation regarding the Chris Brown/Rihanna situation. I use that word as the case is pending, but really it's an attack, not a "situation" or an "incident". It seems everyone has their own opinion on the subject, which is hardly surprising given their celebrity status, but what is genuinely surprising is the consistency in the responses I hear. I expected a backlash from those ignorant people and members of the media who see no problem with a woman getting hit, but I really did not expect to have this ignorance and hatred mirrored in many of the seemingly intelligent, compassionate people around me. Not a single person I have talked to about this has failed to mention Rihanna's behavior leading up to the attack, even while condemning what Chris Brown did. They all seem to feel it necessary to add, "but that doesn't make it ok for her to hit or provoke him though". They will be doing fine, talking about how appalled they are by what he did, etc., etc., and then, right there at the end, they stop and say "but still...". It is this "but" that is driving me insane. I have no illusions about the amount of misogyny in the world, but even I am shocked at how many people feel the need to draw a causal line between Rihanna's behavior and the fact that she was brutally beaten by someone close to her. Though I don't need to tell all of you, apparently it needs to be said in general- there is NEVER an excuse to put your hands on a woman. Ever, ever, ever. Physical violence is a choice made by the attacker, plain and simple, not something brought on by the victim of that violence by using manipulation and mind-control.

How do feminist organizations respond to people who engage in extreme victim blaming and rape minamilizing? By honoring them at luncheons as key note speakers! 

True story.

Exibit A: Bill O’Reilley's statement about a "bomed" and "moronic" (his words) 18 year old girl who was raped and murdered:  

 “Now Moore, Jennifer Moore, 18, on her way to college. She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She's walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug. All right. Now she's out of her mind, drunk.”

Read more here: http://mediamatters.org/items/200608040004

O'Reilley was then invited to speak at a March 19th luncheon for the It Happened To Alexa Foundation , whose mission is to “assist rape victims and their families by easing the financial burden they face while traveling to attend the criminal trial.”

Now, I am not one to put down organizations doing the very important work of assisting rape survivors, but I believe their choice of speakers is outregeous. Not only are they honoring someone who consistantly uses victim blaming tactics, but then a member of this organization admitted to benefiting from his controversial image in promoting their event, saying on a national violence prevention list serve that:

"Frankly - the controversy helped us sell even more tickets."  

I believe that when we see wrong being done, especially from a feminist organization, we should speak up. Is we don't hold ourselves to a high standard in choosing those who speak for us, how can we hold others accountable?

You can contact the It Happened To Alexa Foundation here:

125 South First Street
Lewiston, New York 14092
Phone: (716) 754-9105; 877-77-ALEXA (25392)
Fax: (716) 754-4676

info@ithappenedtoalexa.org

Today I recieved an email from the chief of security on my university campus.  It reads as follows:

During the early morning hours of Sunday,  March 22, 2009,  a female Drew student was returning to her room after visiting friends when she was assaulted in Holloway  Hall. The attack took place in the hallway in front of her room. Her quick thinking and decisive actions enabled her to push the attacker out of her room and secure the door, keeping him from entering.....

The victim in this case had not been drinking, nor was she doing anything out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, this case points out the dangers we all live with today. Please be alert, walk with friends, keep your doors locked and do not key people into your residence halls. Safety is everyone's responsibility.

The Chief

(emphasis mine)

As if it matters?  ugh.

Today on the front page of the Redeye (a free daily edition of the Chicago Tribune) I was surprised to find an article about domestic violence.

It was really unexpected and I was happy that the article was on the cover because I feel that this issue is so hidden from the public a lot of the time and not talked about. Of course, the reason it was probably on the cover (or had an article written on it at all) was because of the recent Chris Brown violence against Rihanna, but the article hardly mentioned that.

One of the things I liked most in the article was how someone from the West Side Domestic Abuse Project said they were trying to re-shape the question surrounding domestic violence from "Why doesn't she leave?" to "Why doesn't he stop?"

The article isn't perfect and I have my worries about these types of programs that are trying to rehabilitate the abuser (how can it really work if the abuser doesn't want to be there?) but I thought it would be interesting to share with everyone here. Here is an exerpt, and you can read the rest here.

On a recent Friday evening, 14 men squeezed into the tight offices of Avance, a counseling center in Lincoln Square, to explore why they abused their significant others.

Avance director Jorge Argueta surveyed the circle of men and asked a twentysomething man with a blond crew cut what had driven him to violence.

"To have control," the young man answered.

"And you?" Argueta asked the man beside him.

"Control," he nodded.

Sitting quietly in the corner wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a cell phone earpiece, a man named Juan, the only man attending the group voluntarily, said he hoped to reunite with his wife. She took their child and left their Logan Square home after Juan hurled a chair during a fight about who should watch the toddler.

"I felt I lost control of the situation," Juan said, explaining his outburst. "I felt disrespected."

Just what drives a person to abuse a partner has been top of mind in recent weeks as pop darling Chris Brown faces charges that he brutally beat pop star girlfriend Rihanna. Now that Brown and Rihanna have reportedly reunited, a chorus of people are cautioning Rihanna to leave. Oprah Winfrey recently warned on her show, "He will hit you again."

Domestic violence seems to be all the rage these days once we all found out Chris beat up Rihanna. Yesterday the New York Times had another interesting article on teenage girls still supporting and idolizing Chris, while blaming Rihanna for bringing it on. Apparently that's nothing new, as the Boston Globe came out with a similar article earlier this Monday.

What was inspiring was reading about Day One, a non profit who partners with New York City youth to end dating abuse and domestic violence through community education, legal advocacy, supportive services and leadership development. Better to educate them while they're young.

Meanwhile I was listening to a Hawaiian radio show a couple of days ago and the DJ reported that 25 year-old Royal Kaukani was killed by her ex-boyfriend Toi Nofoa Tuesday. He rode up to her parked car, got off his bike, and shot her several times in the head.

Last year, Kaukani had filed two temporary restraining orders against Nofoa. In her petitions she stated a deeply disturbing history of violence with Nofoa including: being thrown down the stairs in 2006,being thrown across the room in June 2008, and being kidnapped at gunpoint in September 2008.

In December 2008, the court granted Kaukani's request for a restraining order only to have Kaukani, a month later, ask the court to dissolve the order. She stated  the two had gotten back together and were planning to get married. The court denied her request.

This was Hawaii's third death due to domestic violence this year.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 1,200 deaths and two million injuries to women from intimate partner violence each year. On average, three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends each day in this country.

Martha Forbes, executive director of the Capital Area Family Violence Intervention Center in Louisiana, states 75 percent of murders involving intimate partners in the United States occur either when the woman leaves the relationship or shortly afterward. “An abusive relationship is all about power and control,” she said. “Once a woman leaves, that power and control is gone.”

Most people who have not experienced a domestic violence situation or relationship have no concept of why many women act the way they do in those situations. To them, it makes no sense. Naturally. If he is hurting you, then leave--what's the big deal? And if you are dumb enough to stay or keep going back to him, well then there's nothing we can do to help you.

I have always called that period of my life, simply, brainwashed. I was constantly doubting myself, thought I did something wrong, scared he would get mad at me at anytime, about anything. I was walking on eggshells constantly. He started hanging around another girl and I became mad with jealousy. And yet, I still couldn't leave.

Finally, I did. Six times as a matter of fact. And it was extremely hard every time.

A friend of mine put it well--most people cannot conceive what it's like to have a crime committed in one's own home by someone we love and whom otherwise, most of the time, seems to care about us.

I still don't know that I can clearly define an abuser or spot one right away. I do know that I am hyper-aware now of bad tempers, any kind of judgments, any slight hint of control or jealousies. I don't plan on ever letting someone hurt me that much ever again.

On March 12, the hubby and I watched "Worldfocus," an English-language news program from Germany on one of our public broadcasting stations. The top story, with extended coverage, was of the double-digit fatalities in a shooting spree by a 17-year-old boy. The first fatal scene was the boy's high school, where all but one of his 11 victims were women and girls. He added five more murders during his escape, then killed himself.
 

The hubby and I were struck that the anchorman made a point of the gender of the school victims, but that the rest of the broadcast trot out the "usual suspects" of motive--violent video games and loner status, though some students interviewed by police said he was quiet and others said he was popular. I made a promise to myself to see what the follow-up to the story would reveal.

In the days that followed the breaking story, more about the gunboy was revealed--he had average to below-average grades, took antidepressants, was unhappy, may have warned about the attacks in an internet chat room, may NOT have warned about the attacks in an internet chat room. Many stories I read entirely erased the gender of his victims--both female and male. One cached story from the San Francisco Gate talked about targeting women, but when I clicked through to the story, the gender-specific statement had disappeared. All that was left was a bare-bones story that seemed have been taken from the preliminary breaking news of the tragedy.

The AP did something right for a change by covering this story, although they did use the tired old euphemism "sex slave" at one point.

The story contains graphic descriptions of rape and other violent acts, so I reckon that it calls for a trigger warning.  Whatever your situation, the story is heartbreaking at best.

News story here .

I tried to click through to the HEALAfrica organization which is helping some of these women, but got a Service Unavailable error.  Hopefully their site is just temporarily down due to an explosion of interest brought on by the news story.

I just don't know:

I'm a great big believer in innocent until proven guilty, but I also know that a lot of domestic violence is never convicted, and more than a few murderers have gotten out on technicalities. The man in this story-Muzzammil Hassan-said in the latest installment of this saga that he did not kill his wife.

The original story on CNN-and I may be remembering this incorrectly, so if anyone else remembers differently, please let me know-seemed to infer that he had confessed.

Does anyone have additional info on this?

This letter was written by the CEO of my organization to invite Chris Brown to participate in our Batterer's Intervention Programs.

Dear Chris,

You can help us end domestic and dating violence. SafeHaven of Tarrant County would like to help you address what you are experiencing following the recent episode of dating violence with Rihanna. If you choose to take responsibility for your actions, the following information will interest you. Violence against women cannot be ignored and must be addressed by every member of the community, whether celebrity or not. With that in mind, we would like to invite you to participate in our Batterer's Intervention Program, where we educate abusers on new behaviors and skills that will aid in ending domestic and dating violence. The 36-hour psycho-educational program, designed to stop abusive behavior, includes sessions in anger management, effective communication, problem solving skills and assertive versus aggressive behavior. The sessions take place twice a week over an 18-week period. During the sessions, you can ask questions and share perceptions and feelings related to abuse. We will be happy to help you find accommodations and a recording studio during your stay.

As a result of this educational experience, you may find the courage to take a strong stand against dating and domestic violence. After you learn the skills you need to lead an abuse-free life, your voice can help us keep all girlfriends, wives, mothers, daughters and sisters safe from violence. You can spread the word among the public, your fans, and the Hollywood community alike that violence against women is never the answer and will not be tolerated.

Sincerely,

Mary Lee Hafley
President and CEO

A few weeks ago, I found Hollaback NYC. It's a blog dedicated to ending street harassment by snapping pictures of the perpetrators and posting them online. I think it's sassy and bold and I love the women who created it and participate in it. As I read through the entries it occurred to me how powerful storytelling is. We can say that street harassment is a problem for women but until we read that every day a woman in New York experiences a threat, or a vulgar reference to her body, or a crude, unwanted advance, we fail to grasp the human consequences. Stats and numbers help us prove our case when we say that violence against women is an epidemic, but the strength to move hearts and minds lies in narratives of women who have experienced it. Gendered violence comes in many forms, whether it be street harassment, domestic abuse, or rape. The UN estimates that one third of the female population of the world has experienced violence over their lifetimes. That's one billions stories.

That's why I started A Billion Lights. It's a blog for capturing those stories, a safe space for women to share their experiences. I believe that every story told sheds new light on the problem of violence against women. Every time silence is broken, new light is brought into the life that kept the silence. Every time one woman connects with another and offers sympathy and understanding, light is cast where there used to be only shadows.

Please help me tell these stories. The blog will post first person stories from and about women who have experienced violence. I will never publish a last name or any ostensibly identifiable information such as an address. The site is here.

Let's start lighting candles.

Morning ladies,

Following on from the recent studies about how a frightening amount of people in the UK think that domestic violence is justified in certain circumstances, have a look at this storyin the news today.

Although obviously it's a victory for the victim, her family, and sufferers of DV that the murderer received a 'life' sentence, what undermines the impact of the sentencing is the fact that judge felt the need to mention that the murderer's "uncontrolled temper had been triggered on the night by something the victim said or did." Because we all know that angry words from your wife trigger you pushing a knife into her neck, right?

It's also telling that ITN, reporting the story, felt the need to present it thus: "A man who stabbed his partner 177 times in a brutal attack triggered by nagging has been jailed for life. "

I'm so stunned and dismayed by the victim-blaming in this article I'm tempted to complain both to those who reported it, and the judiciary. When will people understand? IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU DID, WHAT YOU SAID, OR WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE, NOTHING MAKES A MAN HIT OR HURT YOU EXCEPT THE MAN HIMSELF!!!

arrrgh.

This morning on a local radio station there was a representative from the YWCA. The topic was domestic abuse (they started discussing the Rihanna/Chris Brown situation, which lead into local services and support, etc). The YWCA rep brought up an perspective I hadn't really considered before.

He asked why we always expect abuse victims to leave their abusers. Why do we never put any pressure on or expect the abusers to leave? The implication is that in order to be safe, victims (or survivors) are supposed to pick up their lives and leave. Which isn't always possible or easy to do. But why does it always have to be their responsibility to get out of the situation? Why aren't we pressuring the abuser to be the one to leave?

In the typical case, in order to get out of an abusive situation, a victim has to leave their home, often taking children with them. This can be very difficult and disruptive. And often this can heighten the threat of violence because the abuser is losing control. So the abused is not only expected to pick up and move their life (even if they are not living with the abuser, we still expect them to leave the situation), but they often put themselves at greater risk by doing so.

And what? The abuser gets to stay comfortably in their home and their current situation? Why isn't there more pressure to make them the ones who have to pick and leave? Why isn't there more pressure to make the abuser the one who is responsible for ending the abusive relationship?

This is the first time I've thought about it from this perspective, so I'm not really sure what I think yet. What does everyone else think?

I've been at university a while, but I've found feminist activism slightly lacking on campus. There's some wonderful people who are feminists, and a general feminist attitude in the social science department where I spend a lot of my time. However, there are no feminist groups here, and my university, which was one of the last in Britain to have a Gender Studies department, has just abolished it as a subject because no one was taking it. So last saturday, when I heard a local group were doing something for International Women's Day on the subject of domestic violence, I knew I had to do it. Some family members and some friends have been victims of domestic violence, and I've always felt fairly powerless to help them. Plus, I've had so much crappy experience with sexism lately, that being around feminists was fantastic, it was like coming up for air. Here's what we did:

We gathered in a local bar, dressed all in bright red. There I was introduced to a woman who I was told was an artist and responsible for the project. The plan was to walk around and approach groups of three women together, tell them about the project and ask them to take a photo with us. One of us in red would stand next to the three women, with her back turned, who represented those who were not survivors, and the red woman portrayed the 1/4 women in Britain who experiences some form of domestic/partner violence in her lifetime. Then the photos would be put in a local exhibition.

We split up into pairs or threes and set off in the city, trying to find women. We got five photos in an hour and a half, which is fairly fast considering it was hard to find groups of women in threes! Almost all the women we approached were happy to participate, although we did get three very senior women who didn't like the idea at all. We found one woman in a cowgirl hat who was on her hen night (or bachelorette party, if you will) with her friends. She said she didn't think she would ever be a victim, but was happy to help. We got a bunch of kids, perhaps aged 12 or 13, interested, and three of the girls took a photo with us too. The young boys were interested in it, too, which felt great. Some of the women we approached had known friends who were survivors. When we all met up again with our photos, two senior women asked what we were doing there all in red, and when we explained they said they were 86 and 87 and had never known it happened to so many women.

Doing this, although it was very simple and didn't take long, gave me hope, which I've been lacking lately, reading all these stories of violence, and personally knowing girls who are going through it. It was a tiny thing, but worth it.

A new British survey commissioned by the government has found that 1 in 7 people believe it's OK for a woman to be slapped or hit by her partner for wearing sexy clothing or for "moaning at him too much".

The statistics on rape are even more shocking, with a almost 50% of people believing that in some cases a woman is to blame for being raped, and can be found along with the violence against women statisticshere.
Although these findings don't exactly shock me, I can't help but be horrified by the general level of ignorance and attitude towards violence against women. And although they are British governmental findings, I've posted them as I think they apply, to an extent, to worldwide attitudes towards violence against women.

Newsweek ran a great article debunking the myths regarding domestic assault, based on the Rihanna/Chris Brown case. I looked to make sure that no one posted about it yet, but if I missed something, my apologies for the double posting.

You can read it here.

PS-don't read the comments unless you want your blood to boil.

From CNN. This story, about a woman in Saudi Arabia sentenced to lashing and deportation for "mingling" with men, is why I struggle with Islam. It's not as if I single it out, because Fundamentalist Christianity doesn't treat women a whole lot better-but when you have an ideology-fueled and controlled government instituting a draconian version of religious law that results in death and deportation for one segment of the population on a regular basis-that's why I struggle. I don't know enough about Islam to pass any judgment beyond this, and believe me, this doesn't make me fall into the "Muslims are TERRORISTS" camp, but man, does this royally piss me off and sadden me.

Sad but true:

Favorite Male Singer

Favorite Song

Unbelievable. Chris Brown is being brought up on felony assault charges for one of the most publicized examples of intimate partner violence in years and he gets “honored” with 2 Kid’s Choice Award nominations? The message that this gives to Nickelodeon viewers is so full of FAIL that I don’t even know where to start.

Please let Viacom (Nickelodeon’s parent company) know that this is unacceptable.

Trigger Warning

I just learned about the Tiana Angelique Notice Foundation, created to aid women with restraining orders and prevent domestic violence. The foundation is named for Tiana Angelique (and created by her family), a 25 year old graduate student in CT, who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend on Feb. 14. It was the last time he violated her restraining order against him.

From a news article :

"At the time, Tiana had a restraining order that was supposed to keep Carter from contacting her. But he violated the order several times, friends and family said — once by posing as someone else and sending her e-mails.

In the end, he became emboldened, said a friend who asked not to be named. The day before Notice died, he called her three times at her job. He also wrote her a letter, which she took to the Plainville Police Department hours before she was killed, the friend said.

That was one of three police departments she visited in the week before her death to file complaints about Carter or to follow up on previous complaints. She also visited police in Waterbury, where she worked, and in Bloomfield, where Carter lived....

Alvin Notice, the victim's father, said he will push for a new law that requires the automatic arrest of anyone suspected of violating a restraining order. Tiana's sister, Natasha Smith-Notice, warned against state budget cuts that would affect domestic violence programs. And the family has already established a foundation in Tiana's name, The Tiana Angelique Notice Foundation, to help women with restraining orders and prevent domestic violence."

The most dangerous time for a survivor of dv is when and after they leave the abuser, and Tiana's story illustrates just how unsafe people can be even if they do everything right legally to try to be safe. Is it any wonder that countless people stay with their abuser rather than increase the risk of being killed because there's little they legally can do to stop the abuser from attacking/murdering them or someone they love? My heart goes out to Tiana's family and all the people like her who were able to leave their abuser but still weren't/aren't safe. Hopefully her family's activism will prompt more awareness and lead to better policies for handling dv.

There have been a series of sexual assaults near the UC Berkeley campus recently, mostly targeting women walking at night wearing skirts. The assaulter comes up from behind and tries to penetrate the woman with a finger. There have been 20 reported assaults so far. Sometimes the women were walking in small groups, sometimes walking alone, very frequently they were wearing a skirt or a dress, but sometimes not. In response to the attacks, women's groups on campus organized a "Skirt Rally" today both to show solidarity and to speak out against sexual assault and the victim-blaming tendencies we've noticed. Too often, the response to these sorts of incidences is "Well, just don't wear a skirt" when the real issue isn't what clothes we wear but what are the societal conditions that made this violence possible?  This is unacceptable, whether you're wearing a skirt or a dress or pants or shorts or a ski suit or a muumuu. We should be able to feel safe in our community, period.

There is an article that covers the story whose first line reads: "Leggings under skirts, for many Cal coeds, is the latest defense against a serial molester who runs up from behind, lifts women's skirts and assaults them."

Why is it somehow okay to call female students co-eds, in this day and age? Because, of course, the prototypical unmarked university student is assumed to be male by default and a student who happens to be female is Other. Never mind that we are 50% of the population. And I googled "coeds" to see where the term is most frequently used. I get a page filled with porn links: Sexy Coeds Get Down and Dirty, Busty College Coeds. All of the links are porn. Why the author of the article elected to use "coeds" in this context rather than, say, women, is something worth thinking about. I feel overwhelmed by the amount of sexism I see ALL the time, EVERYwhere, CONSTANTLY being reinscribed. It wears me down.

I'm worried that a woman in one of my classes might be the victim of abuse. I don't really know where else to get advice, so I'm turning to you for your experiences, thoughts, links, what-have-you. 

This post will inevitably be discombobulated. I have never posted to Feministing before but I am filled with deep sadness. Last month in Virginia Tech, a Chinese female graduate student, Xin Yang, was decapitated by a 25-year old male Chinese international student, Haiyang Zhu. It happened in a scene or setting most of us could see ourselves in--sitting in a cafe near the University with a male acquaintance. It happened as seven other people were present. It was no ordinary killing--Zhu decapitated Yang with a kitchen knife. Here is the story:

Some of the comments in Xin Yang's Facebook memorial page truly sickened me and reminded me once again about the grossly unequal gender relations that beset China.

Here are two of them:

from Dong Ding:
"One reason is that female are generally easiler to use their body to get somenthing, and especially among Chinese oversea students, she takes use of being beautiful and takes advantages of the weakness of men, only this time she met a different man...Second reason is that female are much easier to be indulged in a carefree or voluptuous way of life, she went to a place where sensuous satisfaction is near hand, she grasps all of it and tries to pay nothing for it. Third reason is that Beijing local youth are quite spoiled by their family, after going aborad, she tries be the same dandled babe on the knees of different men. She even theatens a to-be boyfriend for money compensation for having sex with him!
In one word, she is the victim of her own life pattern."

And another from Tian Cai:

"There are always some childish girls who feel that they can take advantages from the guys around them simply because they've got good looking faces, Yang is no exception. They should think about why the heavens are the guys obligated to help them anyway!"

In both comments by what I assume are Chinese men living abroad, Yang was blamed for having a "good looking face" or being desirable as a female. These are gross depictions of victim-blaming in an exceptionally horrific case. In both comments, women are reduced to sexual teases by the Chinese men who covet them. In both comments lies the assumption of women not having agency over their bodies, of the notion that women's bodies belong to the public domain.

Selfishly, another angle of why I'm shocked is that I didn't find out about this killing back when it happened in late January. The New York Times only ran a brief paragraph on it that did not count as an article. None of the feminist blogs I visit gave any mention of it.

Was this not a feminist issue? That a 25-year-old Chinese man murdered a 22-year old Chinese woman on a campus, in the presence of 7 others? That he murdered her out of what can only be assumed as a need to sexually possess her? And secondly, the minority of women who are least likely to report rape are Asian women. The stereotype of meekness that besets Asian women and renders them as Other continues to perpetuate the media, and I don't see much of it dissected in the feminist blogs I visit. More than that, I just am surprised how few feminist blogs mentioned this story. Why didn't this horrendous account of violence against an Asian woman count?

I just signed into Yahoo this morning and saw an article about Kanye West's Vh1 "Storytellers" show that is airing soon. In the article it talks about how they had to cut certain parts of the footage from the final edit including this quote from Kanye:

"Can't we give Chris a break? ... I know I make mistakes in life."

Yes, I agree we all make mistakes. But what mistakes in Kanye's life is he exactly comparing to physically assaulting one's partner? And what kind of break does he want Chris to get? Is he saying that he wants the media to just back off a bit? Or that he doesn't think Chris should be prosecuted for his crime?

I found this an interesting article, even if the National Post is so right-wing they sound loopy a lot of times. It's about whether Canada should continue to use sentencing circles for the First Nations.

One thing the article mentioned was that women may be getting intimidated into participating in the sentencing circles of their rapists, batterers, etc.

I'm wondering what the experience has been in the U.S., Australia and U.K.

On Feb 11, playwright/activist Eve Ensler and Dr. Denis Mukwege, founder and director of Panzi General Reform Hospital in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, kicked off their V-Day "Turning Pain To Power Tour" at the 92nd Street Y in New York City to talk about how to stop the ongoing violence against women and discuss what life is like for women in the Congo. Ensler opened the program with a powerful monologue, "Teenage Girls Guide to Surviving Sex Slavery," an excerpt from her as yet unpublished book, I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World . Read coverage of the event and more about V-Day on Women's eNews.

Find more upcoming talks in the About Women Series . Student Special for Susie Orbach: Loving Our Bodies . Use discount code S10 for $10 tickets. Bring student ID.

Trigger Warning

A Notre Dame student was shot in the arm by a neighbor this week.

Regrettably, sexism pervades even the shortest of news briefs, and many news readers' comments.

A 28-year-old neighbor shot this student while she was outside his door because her knocking convinced him he had to employ violence to protect his family. No arrests have been made.

User comments on these news stories express that the violence against this woman was her fault, because she had been to a club and was intoxicated. If that isn't victim-blaming, I don't know what is!

I know we've done the Chris Brown and Rihanna thing to death by now, but I felt like this quote in today's New York Daily News deserved some hellfire:

Adds another source: "It didn't help that Rihanna grabbed the keys out of his rented Lamborghini and threw them down the street. She knew it would really infuriate Chris, and it worked."

Clearly, bitch was askin' for it.

Granted, picking up a set of keys and throwing them down the street is nothing, if not a childish act, but I don't even think an actual child could expect to receive the kind of heinous outcome that Chris "allegedly" bestowed upon Rihanna.

Also, I love how this source puts so much emphasis on the fact that the car keys in question belonged to a rented Lamborghini. Maybe that's why Chris became so infuriorated: if only Rihanna had thrown the keys to a rented Ford Pinto down the street, then maybe she wouldn't have had what was coming to her?

Does anyone else read the Fail Blog ? If not, I thought I'd share this gem with you:

The caption for this image is "Slogan Fail." What could this possibly be a reference to, and who in their right mind would post that on top of a building??

A Females United For Action statement by Alex Pates (age 15) and Ansheera Ace Hilliard (age 17)

As a Black woman/feminist, I must look about me, with trembling, and with shocked anger, at the endless waste, the endless suffocation of my sisters; the bitter sufferings of hundreds of thousands of women who are the sole parents, the mothers of hundreds of thousands of children, the desolation and the futility of women trapped by demeaning, lowest-paying occupations, the unemployed, the bullied, the beaten, the battered, the ridiculed, the slandered, the trivialized, the raped, and the sterilized, the lost millions and multi-millions of beautiful, creative, and momentous lives turned to ashes on the pyre of gender identity. I must look about myself and, as a Black feminist, I must ask myself: Where is the love?

–‘Where is the Love?’ speech by June Jordan, at the 1978 4th annual National Black Writers Conference at Howard University

Recently, there has been a lot of gossip around the events surrounding the singers Chris Brown and Rihanna. They were said to be dating, but lately, rumor has it they were in shaky water. Cuddly one minute, and arguing the next. During the weekend of the 51st Grammy Awards, Rihanna checked herself into a hospital with bruises, bite marks, a black eye, and a bloody nose. Whether all the details being gossiped about in the press are fact or fiction, Rihanna did have physical evidence showing that she was abused. 

Many articles say that an eyewitness pointed to Rihanna’s boyfriend, Chris Brown, as the abuser. It has been confirmed that Chris Brown did turn himself in to the police, and was soon released on a $50,000 bond. Rihanna's representative said that she is doing well and is thankful for the support that she is getting. 

According to the LAPD, “Chris Brown is under investigation for alleged domestic violence felony battery.”1   Recently Chris Brown released a statement. “Words cannot begin to express how sorry and saddened I am over what transpired,” wrote Brown. “I am seeking the counseling of my pastor, my mother and other loved ones and I am committed, with God's help, to emerging a better person.”2

BLAMING THE SURVIVOR

Most people look at the surface of this situation and ask questions like: Did Chris Brown really beat Rihanna? What did she do to make him beat her? The media is supporting this kind of survivor-blaming analysis when they report the story.  For example: “The fight was ignited when singer Chris Brown got a text message from another young woman.”3 And: “Sources allegedly close to Brown say that the fight leading to the domestic violence incident occurred because Rihanna gave Chris Brown herpes.”4

But let’s step back and look at it on a broader scale. Does a man ever have the right to beat a woman? Why is it that if a woman is beaten, she is always said to be the one that has provoked it? Why is it that so many abuse cases get overlooked or thrown under the table?

It's important to remember that although women and genderqueer people are the majority of violence survivors, men are survivors, too.

According to the Berkeley Media Studies Group paper “Distracted by Drama: How California Newspapers Portray Intimate Partner Violence,” in many articles studied, the survivor of violence was blamed. The newspapers gave many excuses for why women were abused, shifting the responsibility for violence from perpetrators to survivors of violence. They used the word “victim,” but we would use the word “survivor.”

·       The victim may have contributed to the violence by wearing sexy/revealing clothing or engaging in flirtatious behavior.

·       The victim may have provoked the problem in another way, perhaps having been married many times, being argumentative, nagging, flaunting success, etc.

·       The victim may have contributed to the problem by being unfaithful/dating others.

·       The victim may have contributed to the problem by staying with a violent partner/failing to cooperate with police/continuing to see a violent partner.

Can you believe these excuses? Let’s take a closer look at this. If a woman cheats, wears sexy clothing, stays with the violent partner, becomes proud and speaks about her success, speaks her mind, or verbally challenges her partner, she is liable to get abused. Do you see any problems here? We do! What about the man? Can he wear sexy clothing? Can he date other women? Can he boast and talk about his success? Of course he can, because he is a man, right? This shows how the survivors are always blamed as the cause of their own abuse, because we are taught there is no way the man could have done this on his own without being provoked. The issue is so serious, but is so overlooked, and the blame is always on the survivor.

Let me start off with the disclosure that after the morning paper, the first thing I turn to after turning on the computer in the morning is The Huffington Post. 

Although it has it's share of piffle, I can usually ignore that for the more interesting articles.  And then came this.  And I am feeling so...pissed.

Right now, front page, UNDER "ENTERTAINMENT" section heading, is a picture of the singer Rihanna.  So, on the front page of the Huffington Post, it reads thusly:

ENTERTAINMENT
PHOTO: RIHANNA'S BATTERED FACE.

With a picture of the poor woman.

WTF? 

Piss poor editing job, and they need to be called on this shit. 

I don't listen to her music, and honestly, before the abusive incident, her name wasn't exactly familiar.  However, as a woman, as a human being , this is just goddamn unacceptable.  Violent assault is NOT FUCKING ENTERTAINMENT, no matter how famous you are.

(crossposted at Amplify )

Last Friday, we introduced you to the completly screwed up "Miss the Mess" website of the Ohio group Abstinence 'Till Marriage (ATM), a fitting acronym considering that they have received $1.6 million in federal CBAE grants, to date. On their site, you could enter the “Party Room”, where you learn the perspective of 4 fictional kids on what happens during and after a party one night. Rochelle tells about being raped by Jason after the party, but ATM warns it's young readers that she is not to be believed, because she is not a virgin and other kids say she is a "slut". Jason, on the other hand, is shown sympathy because he was drunk, and hey, boys will be boys, right?

Yes, of all the completely whacked curriculum coming out of abstinence-only until marriage programs over the last decade, sucking up more than $1.5 billion in tax dollars, this grantee would have to be in the running as the most atrocious (which is certainly saying something).

But this weekend, ATM's story took a turn. After the internet firestorm that our post created, receiving coverage at DailyKos, Feministing, Feministe and Pandagon, ATM was inundated with traffic and angry emails, letting them know just how offensive and wrong their website is.

On Sunday, ATM decided to completely change their "Party Room ", apparently ashamed at being outed as rape apologists and victim-blamers. The Party Room now begins with an extended disclaimer stating that rape is actually, you know, wrong (shocker!). They also removed their "correct" answers to questions on the site asking who was the least credible, now saying that everyone is entitled to their opinion. Also removed is a large portion of the "slut-shaming" language of site that not only sent the message that non-virgin rape victims shouldn't be believed, but actively taught young people how to slut-shame.

Just as the case was when Derek the Abstinence Clown (another Ohio ab-only grantee) was exposed, this window into the abstinence-only sex education world was not supposed to be peered into by "outsiders". Because they knew that if citizens figured out that their tax dollars were going to stuff like this, their funding would be in great jeopardy. And just like Derek the Abstinence Clown, the operation to scrub the internet of the incriminating evidence began immediately once they were exposed.

While this move by ATM to change their website is to be commended, you could go on for days picking apart all of the other misinformation given to young people in their program, as their site is littered with faux-science propaganda, such as this goodie :

If you have sex before you marry your are more likely to:

1. Breakup before you marry
2. Scare off someone who wants to marry a virgin
3. Be less happy in your marriage
4. Get a divorce
5. Commit adultery after you marry
6. Be fooled into marrying for the wrong reason
7. Be less satisfied with your married sex life
8. Have guilt feelings that may nudge you into a poor marriage
9. Be deprived of the important bonding that sexual intimacy can give a marriage

So, just to reiterate, changing the language of their website is a victory, but a small one. The big victory that we must all stay focused on is ending all federal funding for these failed abstinence-only until marriage programs that have fleeced our government out of $1.5 billion dollars and endangered the sexual health of countless young people.

President Obama is making his 2010 budget right now, so if you want end the ab-only insanity, please send him a message to to zero out this funding , once and for all.

Potential trigger warning: This post asks for reader input on practical self defense; as such the post and subsequent comments could be triggering for some readers.

I run a martial arts studio in a college town in the south.  The instructor who previously headed up our quarterly women's self defense course (a wonderful and inspirational 70 year old woman) recently had to relocate out of state.  This has left me and my wife in the position of restructuring and implementing a new program.

I have a great deal of experience in teaching self defense and in running women's self defense courses, however all of this experience dates back to a time before I became fully invested in feminist philosophy.  The classes that I have taught in the past have focused extensively on addressing stranger rape and violent assault, and while I believe that that approach has both validity and importance (particularly in that going through such courses seems to be an empowering experience for most women), I feel that it is lacking in practicality since it essentially ignores the fact that most sexual assaults are more likely to be coercive rather than overtly violent.  In short, knowing how to blow out an attacker's knee with a side kick is likely to be very valuable in the rare instance of being attacked on the street by a serial rapist, but is unlikely to be of much use in the more likely instance of a pushy boyfriend  who continues to pressure his date to engage in unwanted activity.

So, I would like some advice and insight into what people think should go into a feminist self-defense course in order to make it as useful and empowering as possible for the participants.  Any and all ideas, comments and suggestions are welcome.  Before we go any further though, I should note that while I absolutely understand and agree with the fact that rape prevention should be targeted at the men who rape, and that the onus should not be on women, that isn't really what this post is about.  Until we can accomplish the goal of dismantling the societal structures that teach men that is alright to rape, there will still, in my opinion, be a need for teaching self defense.

Just so everyone has an understanding of the structure of the course, here is some basic information:

• The course will run for five or six weeks, and will meet once a week for approximately one and a half to two hours.  This means that we have a very limited amount of time (nine to twelve hours total).
• The course is non-profit.  We charge a nominal fee that goes to cover equipment and handouts; all remaining money goes to a local women's shelter.
• While I will be involved with the course, it will be taught by my wife.  We feel that it is important that the participants see a woman in charge of the class, successfully demonstrating the techniques being taught.
• While the class has always focused heavily on situational awareness and problem avoidance as a primary precept, we have always been careful to point out that we are not telling women to curtail their activities or movements, but rather to recognize potentially dangerous situations, and to be more vigilant at those times.

My real questions for the community are as follows:

• For those of you who have taken self defense and rape prevention courses, what were your experiences?  What did you like and dislike, and what would you have changed about the course?  Were there things that weren't discussed that you felt should have been?
• How much time should we spend addressing broader issues of acquaintance rape and coercive sexual assault versus stranger rape?  In what way should a self defense course such broader issues?  Are there other issues that you feel are equally important to address?
• Is there anything else that I'm missing while considering this subject?  I know that as an experienced martial artist I am competent and qualified to develop self defense curriculum, but I also recognize my privilege as a man who has never suffered sexual assault, and I know it would be easy for me to overlook many nuances on the topic.
• Finally (and I understand that this is a potentially upsetting topic for some people), are there any specific self defense scenarios that you feel should be addressed in a self defense course?  We cover a variety of different potential attacks (grabs, chokes, attacks from behind, attacker on top and so forth), but I want to be certain that we aren't overlooking any likely or common situations.

Thanks in advance for your help with this.

I'm in a class called "Interactive Technologies and Live Performance."  The title is pretty self explanatory, we learn about new interactive digital technologies and how to perform specifically for them.  Every few weeks we have an assignment in which we have to apply the latest concept we learned to a homemade film or video art project.  We presented our projects last class and today.

One of the projects that presented today was a girl on screen switching from a fairly androgynous ponytail, tank top and pants to an updo and floral dress, taking hits.  The viewer had a Wii remote and based on how they swung it around, the girl would feel the hit in her face, side, stomach, whatever.  The creators of the project (one guy and one girl) treated it like it was funny.  They giggled a bit when they said it was a "wife beater simulator."   I was so offended and shocked that I didn't say anything until we were well into the discussion, mostly about the acting and specific glitches in the software.  Finally the professor brought up the problematic implications and I felt comfortable enough to speak.  I just brought up how problematic and offensive it is, to trivialize the real issue of domestic violence by turning it into a game, and i immediately got a huge backlash from the rest of the class.  One classmate said I shouldn't feel offended because it's not real, no one's actually getting hurt.  Another said that the project "has to be made" because I was so offended, to open up discussion. 

I call bullshit on both of those.  There are much, MUCH more effective ways to bring about a discussion on domestic violence than by making it a game.  The way the two creators were presenting their project, also, made it incompatible with sensitive discussion.  They didn't even acknowledge how horrible their concept was, even after the professor called them out on it.  I'm especially pissed off at the girl who told me I shouldn't feel offended.  She has no idea what my past experiences are, and has no right to tell me how to feel about an extremely triggering video I was being shown on a 10 foot screen right in front of me.

I'm still shaken up about this.  Thoughts?

Horrible. A TV station owner in NY confessed to beheading his wife. The worst thing about this is that heartbreaking sentence: "His wife filed for divorce January 6, and police had responded to several domestic violence calls at the couple's home"

It always seems to be too late. No one really believes that abuse is serious enough, that it will go so far, until it's too late. I work at a DV hotline, and every week I hear the most heart wrenching stories, and the common theme that runs through them is "No one believes me-no one will help me."

I have no solution for this problem; I don't know the best way to address it. One of the most intractable and heartbreaking issues that we face as a world-wide society.

Jezebel linked to this article the other day, and it made me think.

The article questions whether or not Rihanna's privacy was violated by the LA Times. She seems to think that the paper was perfectly in the right when they named her as the accuser.

In the American Journalism Review, Geneva Overholser, Missouri School of Journalism professor and the Pulitzer prize winner for a series on rape, argues that "in the long run, we'll never get rid of the stigma if we don't treat these like regular crimes. ... It's just not ethical to make a choice about guilt or innocence, which is effectively what we do. It makes us look like we are assuming innocence on one part, guilt on another. ... We should not be determining who deserves our protection." 

This makes sense on an intellectual level -- rape is treated very differently from other crimes, and that's part of the reason for the low conviction rate -- but my gut feeling is NO NO NO NO NO. I know that if I were a victim of rape or domestic violence I would not want that information printed in the paper. Surviving domestic violence is traumatizing enough without everyone else knowing about it.

Further down, the writer says that shame is for criminals. And while it's true that victims of these crimes shouldn't have to be ashamed, the sad fact is that many of them will feel that way, and anyone willing to put innocents through public humiliation just to get a message across has to be pretty heartless.

The author also points out that this is a domestic violence case, not a rape case. How do you think that affects the situation?

Thoughts?

Analyzing the words of Chris Brown's father

Cross-posted at War Against Women

After you've been through something personally - whether it's childbirth, graduate school, or domestic violence - everything you read on the subject resonates a different way. As a woman who escaped a violent marriage, reading the E! Online interview with Clinton Brown on his son Chris Brown's recent arrest gives me the creeps.

To be sure, Clinton Brown meant for his words to mix family remorse with support for his son. He tried to minimize what happened, while pretending he was not minimizing it. Sadly, most of the public will accept this sort of thinking with a sad nod, because after all "We all have our shortcomings." Even the news media reporting the interview did not bother to point out the flaws in the elder Brown's whitewashing of a terrible, violent act.

Let's consider what Clinton Brown said, line by line:

"This is unfortunate--this stumble, this situation."

First it should be noted that "fortune" traditionally refers to things that happen by chance or by fate. Violence is a choice, not an accident or a matter of fortune.

From the outset, Clinton Brown refuses to name the crime. To be fair, he may have excellent legal reasons for not naming specifics. As the father of the alleged perpetrator, we can hardly expect him to detail his son's heinous act for us. Nevertheless, throughout the interview he demonstrates practiced acumen at minimizing the nature of the act. According to some reports, Chris Brown threatened to kill his girlfriend, and nearly succeeded: They say he choked Rihanna until she passed out. Other accounts describe a black eye, bloody nose, and busted lip. This is not exactly a "stumble."

Vague words like "stumble" and "situation" are common in the vocabulary of abusers and abuse deniers. They are used in place of specific words like punch, slap, kick, choke, threaten, or imprison.

"Hopefully, he will get past it."

I really love this bit of optimism. It's all about the man, and whether he will get past it. Again, we do not know what "it" is - the charge, the tendency to hit women, the woman herself?

Most troubling is his focus on the perpetrator. What about the victim? Rihanna is the cultural ambassador of Barbados, with an internationally acclaimed singing career. Her livelihood is based on her voice, and she has already canceled performances because of her injuries. How will this affect her career, her psyche, her sense of safety and her future relationships? Is there any hope in this father's heart for a young woman who rose up from a remote island in the Caribbean to thrill the world with her song and style, and then became reduced to someone's whipping post? Clinton Brown offers no fond hope that Rihanna will get past the beating. She is viewed as an obstacle to Chris Brown's success, rather than a person.

(crossposted at Amplify )

I recently attended a book reading by some of the contributors of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape (including Jessica and Miriam). The book (which is wonderful and you should go buy ) deals with many subjects around “rape culture”, particularly the common practice of blaming the victim of rape if she has a “loose” or “slutty” reputation. Our society far too often holds up a pure and virginal ideal for women, and once this “seal” is broken or they display "unnaceptable" behaviors, they become “dirty” and “get what is coming to them”.

A few days after the reading, I came across an abstinence-only until marriage program in Ohio (yes, the same Ohio with Derek the Abstinence Clown ) that pretty much reinforced every crazy aspect of a rape culture that blames the victims of rape if they do not pass the “purity” test. It’s bad enough that abstinence-only programs like these withhold and distort vital information that young people need to protect their own sexual health, but adding this acceptance of rape culture is the icing on the Shit Cake.

The Ohio program is Abstinence ‘Till Marriage , which started receiving annual CBAE grants of $600,000 in 2006 (set to run until 2011). On their “Miss the Mess” website, you can enter the “Party Room ”, where you learn the story of Rochelle, Jason, Monica and Tanner. Each person tells their perspective about what happens during and after a party one night.

Rochelle tells how she drove her drunken friend Jason home after the party, and then is raped by him. Jason denies that the rape happened, saying their sex was consensual. Monica and Tanner observe that Jason was being a drunken idiot the entire night, with Monica (Jason’s ex) adding her opinion that Rochelle has a reputation for “putting out” and being a “slut”.

The site then asks the question: “Based on all accounts, whose story sounds the least credible?”

Guess who is the “correct” answer? Rochelle .

Why , you ask? Because she “made several questionable decisions”, “she had a motive to lie” and, lest we forget, “she’s been pinned reputation (sic) for being ‘loose’”

It’s hard not to overemphasize the sickness in this “correct” answer. Rochelle is not be believed. After all, she drove in a car with a boy. And she’s actually had sex before, or at least people say that she has, which is apparently the same thing and equally worthy of disbelief after you’ve been raped.

The site then asks if we know that a rape occurred. The “correct” answer says that we don’t know, emphasizing again that Rochelle has a "motive to lie", and that:

“Unfortunately, we are left judging (Rochelle’s) honesty by her character and her actions"... “Monica implied Rochelle had a promiscuous reputation and the whole school seemed to know it.”

Ah, yes. Her “character”. They once again remind us that “sluts” aren’t to be trusted. Why should we listen or care about them, right?

The site then goes a step further, adding a degree of sympathy for the actions of the rapist:

“Also, alcohol makes people less inhibitive. Jason was extremely vulnerable to his circumstances” .

Vulnerable ? Less inhibitive ? What exactly are they saying here, that rape is a “less inhibitive” behavior? That alcohol made poor Jason “vulnerable” to being a sick rapist asshole? Seriously, I’d like to know what the hell their point is on this one.

Perhaps the sickest aspect of this organization and their website is the fact that our tax dollars are funding it. To date, they have received $1.8 million dollars, and are set to receive another $1.8 million in the next three years. Yes, we are subsidizing rape culture. And this is just one example of the many ridiculous abstinence-only until marriage sex education programs that we have wasted $1.5 billion in federal money on in the last decade.

But we now have a great chance to end funding for abstinence-only until marriage initiatives. President Obama is currently drafting his budget for the 2010 fiscal year, and it is vital that he ZERO OUT ab-only funding in this budget. If he doesn’t’ zero it out, it will be extremely difficult to get Congress to pull the money out. Likewise, if Obama does zero out the funding, it will be a more difficult process for Congress to sneak the funding back in through appropriations.

So please, with all due haste, send Obama this message today: ZERO OUT ABSTINENCE-ONLY SEX EDUCATION FUNDING .

Send out the abstinence clowns, and strike one small blow against rape culture.

Trigger Warning

This link is for another review of the game, as I really don't wish to investigate the actual pages (somewhat triggering).  I'll quote some of the original review, though.

"A game that involves the player stalking victims and then raping them in a virtual world is being offered for sale by online retailer Amazon.com, the Belfast Telegraph's website can reveal.

...One website review describes "tears glistening in the young girl's eyes" as she is attacked in graphic detail.

Players begin the game by stalking a mother on a subway station before violently raping her. They then move on to attack her two daughters described as virgin schoolgirls."

It continues that if you get your victim pregnant you need to force her to have an abortion or she has a child and kills you.

Censorship is a government issue.  Private companies, however, choose what they will provide in order to make money.  Therefore, I promote contacting Amazon (or any other game provider that you discover which carries this) and telling them that you are disappointed in them, will not patronize them, or any other action that carrying this type of product influences you to do.

This is a link to a screengrab of the Amazon product screen (accessed from BoingBoing also).  See, even leaving comments will draw the game's rating down!

Sometimes I get asked why feminism is so damn important. This is why.

TRIGGER WARNING

The article is not graphic, but reports some news that certainly made me feel nauseous.

Through volunteer work, my college education, and career, I’ve been involved with “violence against women” issues in some form or another since I was 17 years old (9 years).  I currently volunteer with the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network , I work for an organization that partially addresses sexual harassment & assault on campus & in workplaces, and I’m deeply entrenched in street harassment activism in my free time.

Despite all my involvement and education about various forms of “violence against women,” it wasn’t until I started reading Jackson Katz’s book The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help this week that I finally noticed that men – the perpetrators of about 98% of the violence against women – are absent from the naming of the problem and much of the work around the problem.  Shouldn’t it be called “men’s violence against women ”?  Women are not sitting around just getting hurt – someone is hurting them. 

Shouldn’t we focus just as much time and energy on ending the culture that allows and fosters male violence as we do on helping survivors and teaching women how to try to avoid being a victim?  Why is the focus so often disproportionately on women’s responsibility to not get assaulted? We can spend our whole lives altering the way we live, look, and act and still we may be attacked or assaulted. We may have already been assaulted when we were too little to know it was our responsibility to avoid or stop it….

[Okay, just thinking about this is making me so mad - most of half of the population is harassed or assaulted at home, on dates, on the streets, at work, and at school, yet instead of being able to directly hold men accountable for this reality, we have to tip toe around the issue and frame it as a “women’s issue” so men don’t get upset and offended and hurt.  WTF.]

I suppose the problem with adding men directly into the name and activism strategy is exactly that - it clearly labels it as a “men versus women” problem (which it is) and makes people defensive.  A really important point in Katz’s book is how the societal expectation of men is SO LOW that as long as they don’t hurt women, they are good guys.  (And the men like him and the smattering of guys who I've volunteered or worked with on these issues are seen as heroes/gods for caring enough to take action.) Men can tell or laugh at sexist jokes, look the other way when their buddy takes advantage of a drunk young woman, and stand idly by while men around them harass, exclude, and demean women BUT since they don’t engage in abusive actions themselves, they are still good guys.  Because good guys are told they are exempt from the problem, they are likely to become defensive if/when they are implicated as complacent by-standers or simply talked to about violence against women.("Why are you telling me about this? I don't do it")

Because I know nothing will change without having the “good guys” on board, I realize that a direct, blunt approach is usually not going to work.  I’m only on chapter 3 of the book and so I’m eager to hear Katz’s ideas at the end for how we can hold abusive men accountable for their behavior and getting more men active in ending the violence.

What are your thoughts on bringing more attention to the role of men in “men's violence against women” and how we can most effectively bring men into the activism effort?  Male readers, what are your thoughts on all this?

(I just noticed that even the category I selected for this post is called "violence against women," not "men's violence against women")

When Kellogg's dropped bong-loving merman Michael Phelps, their spokeswoman stated "we decided to send a strong message to Michael because he disappointed so many people, particularly the hundreds of thousands of USA Swimming member kids who look up to him as a role model." Though some called the decision hasty, it certainly sent a message: when you violate the law, the companies that use your image to peddle cereal or subs or what have you will reprimand you. Publicly.

Which begs the question: Why is Wrigley being so quiet about dropping Chris Brown?

Like Phelps, Brown acted as a spokesman, though in this case for Wrigley's Doublemint gum, And like Phelps, Brown has violated the law--though I would argue, in a far more serious way. This past weekend, its been reported Brown violently beat his girlfriend, fellow popstar Rihanna. Brown turned himself in to the police Sunday evening and was booked for making criminal threats. Rihanna has canceled all of her upcoming events, including her 21st birthday party.

So what does Wrigley have to say about all this? "We believe Mr. Brown should be afforded the same due process as any citizen. However, we have made the decision to suspend the current advertising featuring Brown and any related marketing communications until the matter is resolved."

Translation: Though suspended, his contract has not been dropped. And hey, people make mistakes! We'll just see what happens.

Warning: I'm pretty sure this falls under the *very triggering* label.

Hi, Longtime reader, first time poster.

Today, at school, I witnessed something that really disturbed me. I've called myself a feminist for as long as I've known the meaning of a word, but this made me realize how sheltered and unexposed I am to some of the issues we care so much about.

I was in study hall, which is held in the cafeteria at my school. As usual, hardly anybody was actually studying, just sitting around talking to their friends.

Not to far from me, a couple was standing around arguing about something. I wasn't paying much attention to them, as I assumed it was just typical high school drama. However, it was attracting a lot of attention from who I assume were his friends, sitting at a nearby table. Some jerk was shouting "Smack her!" over and over again.

Italian prime-minister Silvio Berlusconi, addressing about a spate of rapes in Rome, said he can't stop that problem from happening unless "there are as many soldiers as pretty girls" in the city.

"We could not field a big enough force to avois this risk. We'd have to have as many soldiers as there are pretty girls. I don't think we could manage", he told reporters.

Way to blame the victims, huh, Berlusconi?

Just in case you don't remember, his last controversial comment came when Barack Obama got elected. "I will try to help relations between Russia and the United States where a new generation has come to power, and I don't see problems for Medvedev to establish good relations with Obama who is handsome, young and also suntanned".

Source: Reuters.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline is in desperate need of help.  Like many businesses and individuals alike, the hotline is facing difficult times because of economic circumstances.  We've lost between 25-50% of our funding, leading to lay offs, reduced benefits/retirement, and our sister venture the National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline may have to be shut down completely as early as April.

The hotline takes an average of 20,000 calls per month, a number that has been increasing in recent months.  This past fall we recently answered our two millionth call!  We provide crisis intervention services, compassionate listening ears, education about the dynamics of abuse, and referrals to community providers.  We talk to people from all over the country, including victims/survivors, family and friends, and more. 

Both the hotline and the teen helpline have greatly increased fundraising efforts, but have fallen far, far short of their goals.

I know we are all facing difficult times and counting our pennies and cutting every corner, but I thought I'd put a plea out to our supportive Feministing Community.  I think it's important to mention that an average call costs our hotline anywhere between $1-$8...so the cost of that 20 oz. coke or a fast food meal could answer one more call, potentiall saving a life. So even if you don't think you can make a difference, every dollar really does count.

You can donate here for the National Domestic Violence Hotline or here for the National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline.  As an advocate who has worked with the hotline for a little over six months, I have personally taken many thank you calls from people who say we have saved their life.  If you can help, it would be greatly appreciated.

N.B. Boot is British for 'trunk'.

In my country, the UK, a woman has been found alive in the boot of her car, after having been locked inside for eleven days. She was discovered on boxing day, so she was locked in there for the whole of Christmas, too.

A man has appeared in court, accused of attempted murder.

I wonder just what had possessed him to do this? It doesn't seem to have been a racist attack, because it sounds like the two were both black south africans. The story will come out in time, but I'm willing to bet he was an ex-partner. This is one of the most shocking recent cases of violence against women that I've heard of, so even though it's a UK story, it deserves posting here.

via.

The Vday movement is one of my favorite movements to support. I have been involved with the Vagina Monologues for a couple of years now and as a person who has suffered through violence it's a relief to know Eve Ensler and all Vagina Worriors have set out to end violence against women.

As I was snooping around the internet I came across a website that is actually trying to put an end to the Vday movement. This not only shocked me, but more than anything it hurt me. Apparently the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute has posted a pamphlet that "exposes" the Vagina Monologues.

The "facts" published in the pamphlet seem to have been written by a person who has not seen the play and even further does not understand that violence effects about 1 in 3 American women. I tried reading the entire pamphlet, but it was annoyingly misleading. It was basically just painful to read. Some untrue claims that really bugged me were:

Vday does not raise money to help end violence against women

Vday does not raise awareness about violence against women

These are only two of the fallacies this website claims about the Vagina Monologues. There are more that make even less sense. At the University of North Texas, our FMLA organization has produced this play for the past 8 or 9 years and every year we donate 100% of the money we raise to organizations that directly help ending violence against women. The entire purpose of the play is to raise awareness of the horrible abuse happening to so many women in America and across the globe. It also reclaims vagina as a word that is not taboo or shameful to say and as a word that should be celebrated. It is painful to know that there are people out there who are so ignorant as to make these false claims about the Vday movement.

All I can say is keep the movement alive and if you have the opportunity to get involved...do it! There are campuses and community organizations all over the country that put on the production. This year Eve has decided to highlight to women of the DRC. They are experiencing an unheard of amount of violence. I am happy to know that our production at UNT will help so many women in the North Texas area and abroad. Visit the Vday website to learn more.

Don't forget to find out where a local production of the Vagina Monologues is going to be and go see it! Bring your friends! End violence against women!

Hi all! I am going to be making some items with part of the money going to charity. I wanted to do specifically anti-FGM (Female Genital Mutilation). I looked a little online (such as Stop FGM/C), but wanted to know if some of you had any other suggestions or personal experiences with other charities as well.

Please make sure there is no animal use/exploitation involved in these charities as well.

Thanks for the input!

PamelaVee

Great news!

Last night Congress passed H.R. 7311, which reauthorizes (through 2011) the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, and enhances measures to combat trafficking in persons.

I know (from a past feministing blog entry by Jennifer Podkul at Ayuda) that there was some controversy about the effects this law would have on prosecuting crimes of human trafficking. My initial reading of the reauthorization language doesn’t lead me to believe that would still be the case, since the “force, fraud or coercion” language wasn’t stricken from the bill, it was just slightly reworded (feel free to chime in if my reading is incorrect here).

For additional information on the bill check out the Feminist Law Professor blog, and the statement by Equality Now.

My boyfriend and I were talking about the ridiculousness that is the "man rule" and he pulled up a facebook group called "Man Laws." The second rule is to always respect women, though after looking at the 100-some laws, it seems that only raping/beating a woman is considered disrespectful. I have this knack for finding things that make me angry, and boy did I find a whopper this time. The discussion topic was "Funny Sex positions/acts." via.

I was not expecting to find anything close to what I found.

Most of the posters decided to post names of sex acts, then what they involved. They all involved either rape, violence, or both. They include such things as switching out who is having sex with a woman from behind without her knowing, ejaculating on her face and punching her in both eyes or nose, telling her you have a sexual disease while doing her from behind an trying to hold on, defecating in her vagina, and ejaculating in her eye an kicking her in the shins. These aren't thing you actually do, (hopefully) they are just "jokes."

But why? What's so funny? They were all puns it seems, which is the humor behind them, but why is any of this actually funny? How do rape jokes not disrepect women? Do you seriously have to rape/beat a woman in order to disrepect her? Is everything else seriously a-okay? Do people even realize that what these are are rape jokes? Just more proof that rape culture actually exists, and is flourishing on facebook.

Trigger Warning

A terribly tragic story was in the SF Gate yesterday morning.

To summarize, a 24-year-old ex-beauty queen with a husband and two young children went to a Halloween party, where she lost her purse. A young man offered his phone to her, to call her own phone, and spent the rest of the night harassing her, "joking" that he now had her phone number. He somehow convinced her to let him drive her home, but instead circled around for hours, saying he would only drop her off if she revealed personal information, like her email address and myspace account. He proceeded to harass her over the phone and internet in the following weeks, and was seen a few times outside her home. On November 24, he came into her home after her husband had left, and just as the woman had passed her children through a window to police officers outside, the stalker shot 10 rounds, hitting her with three. He shot himself in the head, and the woman died at the hospital.

Besides being a heart-wrenchingly tragic event that brings up numerous issues that should be discussed through a feminist lense, one thing I found particularly disturbing was the number of victim blaming commenters. Head exploding comments, like "I think there is a 50/50 fault here. I would not have painted Mrs. Nguyen like some holy saint" and "Vietnamese girls that are/were involved in the beauty paegant crap are attention hungers."

One comment line-of-reasoning that has come up over and over on this thread questions why this "hot" girl was out without her husband in the first place. Was she looking for an affair? Why did she get into his car? Why didn't she call the police? Change her phone number? Keep her husband around for protection in the following weeks?

First: can you imagine this line of questioning had the victim been a man? Second, and I think this should go without saying: this woman did not get murdered because she went out and partied without her husband, she did not get murdered because she didn't change her phone number, and she did not get murdered because she got into the wrong car. She got murdered because a murdering fuckhead murdered her. Period.

I can't even begin to go into all of the things wrong with this article. Read to the bottom to see how the media creates a sensationalized headline instead of calling it what it is: violence against women.

Established in 1991 by the Parliament of Canada, this day marks the anniversary of the Montréal Massacre of December 6, 1989, in which 14 women students at the École Polytechnique were systematically killed and 13 other students wounded by a lone gunman Marc Lépine, a 25-year-old Quebecker and child-abuse survivor who, as an adult, was described by acquaintances as a moody loner. Lépine had sought to join the Canadian Armed Forces, but was rejected. He had also studied for admission to the École Polytechnique, but was not accepted -- a decision he blamed on "affirmative action" policies promoted by feminists and their sympathizers. As a revenge he walked into the college, separated the men for the women, and shot at the women in the classroom in a violent act of misogyny

Sexual assault in Peel alone has increased by 20% in the last two years. Of the victims of sexual assault 90% of the victims are women. Statistics Canada indicates that in 2004, 62 womyn were homocide victims and the majority of the men caught were either their partners or had had an intimate relationship with them at some point. And the number of womyn homocide victims is increasing every year.Misogyny, male terrorism,femicide- all words used to explain how endemic violence against womyn is in our society. 

On Thursday December the 4th, the Peel Committee against Woman Abuse is hosting a candlelight vigil to remember the womyn killed almost two decades ago and to remember the countless number of womyn around the world who are victims of violence on a daily basis most of whom have few to no allies advocating on their behalf.

http://pcawa.org/wnp1.php

For any womyn living in Toronto or the Peel region, if you want to stand alongside other womyn to remember these horrific deaths, do come out.

I love my feminism class. It has opened me up to my new favorite identity that I've discovered about myself...my feminism side. That said, today in class I gave a presentation on Vaginal Rejuvenation (no thanks to my partner who showed up an hour late with nothing to contribute to the project). My presentation focused on the comparison between voluntary vaginal reconstruction surgery anf Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Africa and the Middle-East. In fact we watched a case in Africa where a young girl is having an FGM performed on her, and all we were thinking is this is awful and how can this be happening? But then I had to wonder don't we do the same thing in our society but with baby boys when we circumsize them? The only difference is that the young girls lose their entire clitoris and labia leaving only a hole. But besides that it's almost the same thing, removing a part of the sexual organs of a young child without anything given for the pain...and it is socially accepted!! Any thoughts on this??

My friend, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of MD, brought this to my attention. Has anyone seen this? It is so vile and disgusting, I don't know where to begin. How is this even legal?

I think the people behind this deserve a "fuck you" for an entire year's worth of Fridays...plus some.

Through my membership of the group ...stop violence against women... on facebook I've been made aware of a group by the name of Fuck Sexism: Punch Women Too! Claiming to be a civil rights group to "Support true equal rights and fight sexism" it advocates the equal treatment of women through violence. It has 475 members.

I'm astonished that such a group would be allowed on facebook. Complaints have been made and the group reported by a number of people, but it seems facebook is unwilling to act. When submitting a report, it is made clear by facebook that "Groups will not be removed as a result of disagreement with the subject matter." It has been suggested that this group is a parody, and that is why it has not yet been removed. If it is a parody, I'm not sure what it is parodying.

There has been some debate here on Feministing about whether the rape joke in a recent episode of The Office was appropriate. Understanding the humour of The Office is an important part of understanding the purpose and message of the writers in presenting this scenario.

There does seem to be attempts at humour on this facebook group. It is, however, rather gauche and a miserable failure. I do suspect that it is not serious in its advocacy of violence against women. Just what is it's point? What is it's message, if not the advocacy of violence against women.

The claim of rape made by Kelly  in The Office was very dark humour. The humour failed for some viewers, and succeeded for others. But whether it failed or succeeded, I think it has acheived the part of the intent of the writers: it got us talking about the issue, exploring not only the appropriatness of the joke itself, but the use of humour to highlight important social issues and how best it is achieved. Just where is that invisible line?

I think that joke in The Office was on the appropriate side of the line, and support the writers' inclusion of it in the episode. I think that the joke - if that is what it is, though I'm not sure what it is aimed at - of the facebook group has crossed the line. But am I guilty of an unfair standard? If the attempt at humour succeeds then it is okay, but if the attempt at humour fails then it is not okay? The groups offends me, and I have reported it, but I do wonder if I am guilty of a double standard because I don't get the joke.

Thursday a 35 year old man named Michael Buck was indicted on charges of sex trafficking. A Kansas City news station reported, "Buck lured women with the intention of forcing them into prostitution, and if his victims resisted, they often suffered violent abuse, including being beat, choked, burned, tied up and cut." In San Francisco a recent sex trafficking sting shocked officials who rescued 47 children working the streets, some as young as 13 years old. This is a problem that spans the nation in suburban areas as well as urban.

This is just horrible. I read this in the paper this morning, and felt I should post it here. Don't know what else to say other than the fact that this is just heartbreaking. See story here (may be triggering)

One of my classes has been conducting group presentations on different human rights issues.  Today's group discussed "Gender Based Violence."  The group examined both global and domestic (US) issues.  Overall, the group (2 males, 2 females) did a great job of laying out the massive elephant in the US living room.  And while it's great for a group of students to hear statistics like, "One out of six women has reported being raped," wouldn't it be better to have statistics like, "One out of six men has raped a woman."  Or, "One in four men has committed battery upon his intimate partner." Statistics like that would shift the focus to where it needs to be: on the people committing the act, its dehumanizing effect on a portion of the world's population, and ways to fix it, not ways to cope.  

I know a smidge of statistics and understand the difficulty in collecting such data, but does anyone know of statistics/studies that have been quantified in that way?

Jennifer Hudson's mother, Darnell Donerson, was not arguing with her son-in-law, William Balfour, over taking out the trash. They didn't have a screaming match over who finished the milk and put the empty carton back in the fridge. Darnell Donerson, Jason Hudson, and Julian King were not victims of a domestic dispute . They were shot to death. Darnell Donerson, Jason Hudson, and Julian King are victims of DOMESTIC VIOLENCE . That is of course if the shooter/perpetrator/abuser was in fact the main suspect in the case, William Balfour.

Mr. Balfour (Julian's step-father, Jason's brother-in-law, Darnell's son-in-law), has convictions for attempted murder, carjacking and possession of a stolen motor vehicle, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections. The Huffington Post reports that "Hudson's mother and brother had thrown him out of their Englewood house in the past." It goes on to state this very important bit of information: "Julia Hudson also told police that Balfour had threatened the family. A source said Balfour told Julia Hudson he would kill her if he found out she had a boyfriend, despite the fact that he had other girlfriends." (Emphasis Mine )

Why, with all of this knowledge, is the media and those involved in the case still cowering away from calling the murders what they suspect them to be, an act of: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ? Superintendent Jody Weis , of the Chicago police, literally said that "the murders and the child’s disappearance seemed to be part of a domestic dispute." I know that no convictions have been made, but if they're going to speculate, how hard is it to to replace DISPUTE with VIOLENCE.

I am a huge fan of the Mozilla add-on, StumbleUpon. It enables me to literally procrastinate until the very last minute…I know, I know, old habits die hard. Anyway, the premise of this add-on for those who are not yet addicted is that you tell the app your interests and it gathers websites that you might like. It's how I found Feministing :)

But what really concerns me is the latest stumble I got from the "women's issues" category. (I also take issue with the phrase women's issues but another time and place I suppose) It may be of interest to note that there exists a Feminism category separate from the Women’s Issues one since, sadly, many people cannot distinguish the two. (Potentially triggering content ahead)

I've been reading Feministing for a while and have wanted to post something, but was waiting until i could think of something really good.  Unfortunately, this is not the post I was hoping to write.

One of my boyfriend's friends (we'll call her X) from school has been in a relationship for at least a year.  She and her boyfriend (we'll call him Y) live together.  I was never impressed by the things my boyfriend told me about Y and was even less impressed when Y forbade X from talking to my boyfriend a few months ago.  X contacted my boyfriend tonight for the first time in a while, and she told him that Y had hit her a few weeks ago.

This poem has some extremly strong content, written during a time in my life when I was being phyically, emotionally and mentally abused by my significant other. This was a time when it was socially unacceptable to be divorced in the small agricultural community I came from.It has been well over 25 years since I escaped this abuse
yet at times I still feel the pain of it as if it were happening today , please note that There are words in here and statements that may be repulsive to some.

Maybe Then

Maybe if I changed
Maybe then he would not leave
Maybe if I wore a pretty bow
Maybe then I would not hear the slamming of the door
I do not know what I must have done
For him to leave so easily
I'll change; I'll do what ever just to please
Can't he love me?

I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I finally got around to posting on it, which is good. I have many friends who are conservatives and a good number who are conservative to moderate women. I also belong to a rifle range where I like to go and shoot sometimes. Through both these groups, I got introduced to the 2nd Amendment Sisters. I disagree with a lot of what they say, but their ideas have got me thinking about the issues that arise when guns and feminism (at least a version of it) seem to start overlapping.

I've been reading posts on Feministing for quite a while... gotta tell ya, LOVE IT. This is my first time actually writing a post.

While arguing with my partner (who doesn't believe that it's a bad thing that women get paid 77 cents to every man's dollar...wtf), I was Googling where the number came from.  When I typed in "Woman gets" the dropdown menu came up and the FIRST thing on the list was "Woman gets raped video".  I don't believe I'm alone in thinking that that's completely and utterly disgusting.

This guy is in court because he wrote a twelve-page story about the kidnap, murder and mutilation of UK girlband Girls Aloud, and posted it on a website.

"Scotland Yard spokesman said: "The vast majority of prosecutions brought under the Obscene Publications Act have related to images, be they photographs, be they computer generated images, or videos.

"It is very unusual to be prosecuted for a case involving the written word.

"The test is whether the material is likely to deprave or corrupt those reading or viewing it.""

Now, the question is, do you believe this violates free use of the internet, or did he get what he deserved?

My entire life I have lived with other people.  Family first, then college roommates, then family again, post-college roommates after that and with my partner, as I live now.  Well, sort of.  He is out of town for work now, as he has been for the last month and will be for the next month until the elections are over. 

I've realized since he's been gone that I just haven't been sleeping that well.  This is hard to admit because I see myself as an independent person, someone who can get by on her own.  I'm currently enrolled in a Women's Studies program and am surrounded by intelligent, strong, progressively minded women who inspire me to push my own boundaries of thought and activism every single day.  So when my partner was gone for the first few days and I lost a little sleep, I thought it was just my body's way of adjusting to having an entire full sized mattress to myself.  But as one week turned into two, then three, and now four, I find that as I twist and turn in bed it is not him I miss, but what his presence in my bed symbolizes: protection.

My friend N. was driving down a Brooklyn Street with her bf, R. The traffic knotted and after a moment they saw 3 individuals being brutally beaten by a tag-teaming group of 9? 12? 14? adult women. N. called 911 immediately. The 3 victims were: a girl about 11 years old, an older adolescent or young adult female, and a grown woman. The crowd was enjoying the show, ignoring the fact that the adult woman's head had been wedged under a car tire and she was being beaten unconscious and unrecognizable. R. jumped out of the car and tried to pull the perpetrators off the little girl, but the tag-teaming was too much.

Please share your experiences & opinions about being in public in general and with street harassment specifically in this informal, anonymous, online survey .

It's for a book I am preparing to write on street harassment and  judging from past community and feministing posts, you all have a lot to say! The survey will take about 10 minutes to complete - longer if you decide to write a lot for the open-ended questions. Anyone can take it.

Since you all may be interested, I plan to include some of my research from my 2007 master’s thesis on street harassment , but also I will be covering a lot of new ground. I’ve read over 1000 stories and comments about street harassment and these are my five main objectives (thus far):

1. Share people's stories - there are so many really horrific ones out there.
   
2. Show that street harassment is often not harmless - it actually impacts many people's feelings of safety and the choices they make in public.
   
3. Show that street harassment is not a result of evolution and just about getting a date - it's a form of power/control/dominance and socialization that impacts females from across the spectrum.
   
   
4. Place the harassment of women in public in an historical context & within the context of violence against women - if you have suggestions of articles or books let me know.
   
5. Highlight people who are working to stop or prevent street harassment and provide some suggestions for ways people can deal with it/stop it.

Even if you disagree with any of these statements, please take my survey – I want as many viewpoints and experiences represented as possible. Please share widely.

I've contacted & interviewed several street harassment activists but if you're one and I haven't talked to, please contact me !

Thanks!
HK

Since I was raped about ten months ago, I spend a lot of time thinking both about my safety and about how we talk about sexual assault and "sexual assault prevention." A few "safety tips" issued by the chief of police at my alma mater inspired me to rethink a particular phrase I've heard a lot: "Trust your instincts." The tips were issued after a student was sexually assaulted on campus, and the first one read: "Trust your instincts and take responsibility for your actions." Unless the second part is directed at the offender, which there is no indication it would be, that "tip" is clearly in line with a victim-blaming mentality. "Take responsibility for your actions," - your failure to protect yourself.

But thinking about the later, made me wonder if "trust your instincts" is actually better advice. I doubt women sit around thinking, "Man, this seems like an unsafe situation, and this guy seems really dangerous... I think I'll hang out for a few more hours." In my experience, the problem is that it is hard to judge the potential unsafeness of a situation or that it is difficult to know what to do in a situation you realize is unsafe. What if he becomes more aggressive when you try to leave?

So what does the Feministing Community think about "trusting our instincts?"

This one hits close to home, as it is the granddaughter of one of our EOP counselors at the university.

Jacque Villagomez was only 19. She was a track star at the local high school and lived most of her life with her grandmother after her mother died of cancer when she was very young. In her junior year of high school she moved down to the Los Angeles to persue an acting career like her mother. There she met John Needham, an Iraqi war vet who had been discharged due to head injuries. They started dating and moved in together and everything seemed to have been going fine until Tuesday.

My Sister Friends' House (Mita Maske Ti Ki), a women's shelter for victims of domestic violence in South Dakota has lost its government funding and needs to raise $11,000 by today to keep from closing. Their long term goal is $35,000 to cover three months past September.

They have filed for grants and are waiting to see if those to come through, but it seems as if they may not last through that.

From their blog:

Mita Maske Ti Ki has been helping women and children escape from Domestic Violence and sexual assault in Sioux Falls and neighboring communities since 2000. Their clientele has been primarily Native American, up to 85% of the women they see identify as Native American. They have operated under the auspices of other Domestic Violence prevention programs... the South Dakota Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assualt (SDCADVSA) and more recently, Project Safe. However, the grants used by these organizations to fund Mita Maske Ti Ki have run out and, like so many social services in this day and age, have not been renewed.

It's not like these organizations don't want to fund Mita Maske Ti Ki - Chris Jongelingwith the South Dakota Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (SDCADVSA) emailed me today to let me know:

Mita Maske Ti Ki (My Sister's Friend House) ihas fulfilled a burgeoning need in Sioux Falls. Many Native Americans in South Dakota do not live on reservations, and many women who have experienced domestic violence move to Sioux Falls because of its larger housing and job market...

...This program is not supported by State funding because there are so many programs and so little money that helping Mita would constitute a reduction in funding for other domestic violence programs. Mita was funded by a private Bush grant for several years, and when that private funding ran out there was a federal grant available to keep it afloat for one more year.

To donate and find out more about the situation, you can visit their blog. Video after the jump...