How to really avoid/stop rape

I noticed a lot of people joining the Facebook group "tips for all women... please join... and pass on." I have some tips of my own for avoiding rape and assault.

Top two places sexual assault occurs, YOU could be AT RISK, AVOID THESE TWO PLACES:

1) Indoors
2) Outdoors

Other tips for avoiding rape:

- be male (most rape victims are female)
- if you can't avoid being female, at least don't form a romantic relationship with a man (many female rape victims are raped by their intimate partners)
- don't ever smile at or say hello to a man (he might think you want him to rape you, and who would question him, since you did after all smile and say hi)
- as well as not smiling and saying hello to men, also don't ignore them (they might get mad and attack you)
- Do not form relationships with other human beings. 75 percent of rapists know their victims. Don't have any fathers, step-fathers, uncles, brothers, clergy members, and neighbours.
- wear camouflage appropriate to whatever setting you're in (so rapists don't notice you)
- or at least cover yourself entirely (because if a rapist sees any part of your sexxay body he will be justified in appropriating it as his own)
- in addition to covering yourself entirely, also make sure that you don't cover yourself entirely because that too draws attention to yourself
- avoid parking lots, streets, especially the street you live on, and being in your own home
- live in a reinforced bunker on the side of a mountain with barred windows and several deadbolts on the door (sometimes rapists break into random houses to rape)
- shoot on sight anyone who approaches your property (rapists look just like everyone else)


In all honesty, the tips in the group (and in the e-mail forward it originated from) are, for the most part, BUNK. Please read the following articles from Snopes for details:
http://www.snopes.com/crime/prevent/ninetips.asp
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/rape.htm

Furthermore, these tips are awful because they place all responsibility for safety and security on women. How do you think a woman who has been sexually assaulted might feel if she reads all these things she didn't do and feels responsible? This is something called BLAMING THE VICTIM. It is inappropriate and wrong. Rape is NEVER the victim's fault. The blame should be placed where it belongs - on the shoulders of the men who rape, and on the systemic oppression of women known as the patriarchy. Tips like this only serve to further these kinds of misogynist, victim-blaming attitudes and don't do anything to address the real problem, which is that there are men out there who believe that women's bodies are their public property to do with as they please. Until they wake up and realise that this is not the case, women will always be in some kind of danger.

Here are some real tips to stop rape, for men and women, that you should all pass along:
1) Fight the oppression of women, wherever, whenever, and however you see it.
2) Tell men to stop raping women. If a woman is drunk, don't rape her. If a woman is walking alone at night, don't rape her. If a women is drugged and unconscious, don't rape her. If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don't rape her. If a woman is jogging in a park at 5AM, don't rape her. If a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you're still hung up on, don't rape her. If a woman is asleep in her bed, don't rape her. If a woman is asleep in your bed, don't rape her. If a woman is doing her laundry, don't rape her. If a woman is in a coma, don't rape her. If a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don't rape her. If a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don't rape her. If a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don't rape her. If your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don't rape her. If your step-daughter is watching TV, don't rape her.

If you break into a house and find a woman there, don't rape her. If your friend thinks it's okay to rape someone, tell him it's not, and that he's not your friend. If your "friend" tells you he raped someone, report him to the police. If your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there's an unconscious woman upstairs and it's your turn, don't rape her, call the police and report him as a rapist.

Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, and sons of friends that it's not okay to rape someone.

Don't just tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape. Don't imply that she could have avoided it if she'd only done/not done x, y, or z. Don't imply that it's in any way her fault. Don't let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he "got some" with the drunk girl. Don't perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions. You can too help yourself. Rape is not about sex, it's about control and power, and what kind of power comes from taking advantage of others? No power anyone should ever desire.

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Now playing: Something Corporate - Globes & Maps
via FoxyTunes

speak not its name!

*Note - sexual assault triggers

Well this is just plain ridiculous. A Nebraska judge bans the word "rape" from his courtroom, along with "sexual assault," "victim," "assailant" and "sexual assault kit."

The result is that the defense and the prosecution are both left to use the same word—sex—to describe either forcible sexual assault, or benign consensual intercourse. As for the jurors, they'll just have to read the witnesses' eyebrows to sort out the difference.

Um, right. How unbelievably awful is this? This judge is forcing the victim to lie, because rape and sex are not the same thing. Rape is not about sex - rape is about power and control. I call bullshit on the "jurors being too emotional" argument put forth here. It's horrible that Bowen had to go through this, on top of everything else.

Furthermore, how's about some more lying and coddling?

And there's another problem underlying Cheuvront's order: Jurors will not be told of it. Not only is the "dangerous" language to be hidden from them, but the fact that it's been hidden will be concealed from them as well. They are not merely too emotional to hear the phrase rape kit. They are also evidently too emotional to know it's been hidden from them in the first place.

In the words of the victim herself:

"This makes women sick, especially the women who have gone through this," Bowen said. "They know the difference between sex and rape. If it was sex, I wouldn't be speaking to you."

I'm still alive, I swear

Summer is upon us. I've left the SCSU (my term ended almost a month ago) and have drifted into the wonderful world of waiting tables, and when I'm not doing that, sitting on my ass.

Those of you who remember the disaster that was my boyfriend attempting to get new identification, all is well and he has been in Canada since the start of May. Got here while I was away on a retreat and I had a pleasant surprise when I called my mom's house and he answered the phone. Good times.

Some linkage of good reads and things to keep an eye on:

- I'm keeping my eye on this story. The girl's father really freaked me out when I saw him on the news - if you've seen it, you know he was dancing and grinning and waving as he was arrested. I'm waiting to hear more about it before I come up with commentary.

- Jill at Feministe has a good post on reaction to Paris Hilton's jail time. Sexualised insults and attacking women for being sexual, for enjoying sex, presuming that they do and that that's a bad thing, etc., are things that bother me very very much, so when Jill says,

I’ve found a lot of the conversation around the Paris Hilton jailing to be very troubling — people don’t want to see her incarcerated because she broke the law, but because she’s a “stupid bimbo,” a “skanky little whore,” a “stupid bitch,” a “ho,” a “piece of white trash,” a “ignorant cum hole on a stick,” a “fucking whorebag,” a “whinning pussystretched crab infested skank,” a “spoiled cunt,” etc etc.

I'm well inclined to agree.

- Speaking of Feministe, Zuzu has left the blog. I got to meet Zuzu recently and she is pretty darn awesome; believe me, she will be missed.

- Oh my god, ew. Ew ew ew ew ew ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

- Andy and I went to see the new Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum on Friday. I have to say I was pretty darn underwhelmed. From the first time I saw the plans for the thing, I was horrified by it. And people were going on and on and on about it once it opened with glorious reviews and beautiful photos and the like, and I knew I was going to give it a chance anyway but... yeah. We went on Friday because that's the cheap night and despite the fact that it took like, five years to build the damn thing, it already looks cheap and beat up inside. Just in the entrance hall there was a bit of masking tape left on a wall, elsewhere I already saw dents in the walls (not to mention footprints on some of the slopes, since people can't seem to READ THE FUCKING SIGNS THAT SAY DON'T CLIMB ON THE WALLS), and in general it just seemed to be... meh. It wasn't brilliant, it wasn't inspiring, it wasn't beautiful, it was pretty darn meh. I am curious to see what it will be like when there's actually stuff in there (on the fifth floor there are already two small exhibits) but it seems like way too much money spent on something that has turned out to be really not that special. Anyway, I did take some pictures of my own, and in the end I stand by my initial proclamation of five years ago, that it's a blight on a beautiful old building. As Andy put it, in a somewhat appalled tone, when looking at it from the angle of that last picture, "It looks like a growth."

- From the Saturday Star, a series of profiles on women presidents, principals and deans at Canada's universities. It's really fascinating, and Mayo Moran, dean of law at U of T, hits the nail on the head when it comes to motherhood and career:

"You look at women in senior levels in the university and most have children that are grown or no children. That's not something that is true of men." Moran, 46, who has a 10-year-old son, adds: "I'm the only one (female dean) who had a son that was little. However, the last dean had four young kids when he became dean and no one mentioned that. It is one of the hurdles that we have to cross."

. Make sure you check out all the links on the sidebar to read these women's stories.

- From TheGoodReverend, a photo quiz: Exercise Equipment or Sex Toy?. I don't remember where I found this but it made me giggle.

- A very good read about the crime half of all humans commit, and the punishment doled out for, Living While Female, at a cat and twenty.

- And finally, one of my favourite bloggers, Jessica Valenti of Feministing.com, was on the Colbert Report last week, and kicked some ass.


I might add more to this later, but right now I am hungry.

TBTB

Aw fuck, I've got 15 minutes left to get my Take Back The Blog post in.


I'd been thinking about what to write all day, and realised that I didn't really have much more to say, other than to re-tell what I wrote for Blog Against Sexism Day:

This summer, I was harassed because of decisions I made while serving on the student union. These decisions offended a small group of people (one person, really, two or three max) who are generally the disgusting type. And instead of being criticised with rational reasons as to why they disagreed, I was (to be expected given their history) instead berated as a woman. I was called a bitch and a whore. I was made fun of for my weight (which is actually pretty average). Pornographic pictures were posted with labels indicating that I and the SCSU were double-penetrating the students. This person drove by my house in the middle of the night screaming at me. I had to get the Administration and the Community Safety Office involved. That was six months ago. I don't even want to know what they're saying about me now. My office-mate and fellow female executive, Lisa, faced similar insults when it came to some of her decisions.

My male colleagues? When they made a decision or said something people didn't like, their characters were gone after as well. But the names they were called didn't have anything to do with their sexuality. They didn't have anything to do with their body. No, they were called "power hungry" and "corrupt." Their actions were criticised more, they were "not accountable," they were playing political games and being manipulative.

Most of this happened on the Internet, because the decisions were in relation to an online forum that the SCSU was running at the time. The Executives were moderating it. At one point I was the forum admin, and the person who drove by my house was someone who I had banned.

There's a whole lot of stories behind this forum - when I was helping to run it, it was its third incarnation. It was taken down the previous two times (and ultimately, a third) because people couldn't play nice in the sandbox. And as I said, Lisa and I got a lot of shit on that forum whenever we said something, in ways that our male colleagues did not, and that was part of why we took the thing down. I was losing sleep over the harassment I was getting and it fucking sucked.

I really can't explain it, other than to rehash what is a given already: it's a lot of hatred for women, and fear of women in positions of power, and an inability to accept that we could possibly be right and they could possibly be wrong. According to people who know the guy behind all this, he was never a physical threat to me, just talk. They told me this months later. But how was I to know this while I'm lying awake in bed at 3 AM unable to sleep because I've just been screamed at for no good reason by a cowardly asshole who can't accept that he broke the rules? Way to discredit my feelings.

The other awful part was how hardly anyone stood up for me publicly. I got supportive e-mails and phone calls and talks over tea, but no one ever came out and said, STOP to his guy. And I don't know what to say about that, either. Maybe they were afraid of being targeted themselves. Maybe they didn't know what to do. I don't know.

But, I do know that I haven't let it stop me. Thankfully it was also never as bad for me as it was for people like Kathy Sierra, and hopefully it never will be. We deserve to be here just as much as anyone else.

Of Note

June Callwood died yesterday. A real hero and an amazing woman. I really admired her.
Toronto Star: one, two, three.

How not to be an asshole: a guide for men by Chris Clarke over at Pandagon. Cue wild applause, alongside a sigh that probably the only reason some of the men this is directed at will take a hint is because it was written by a dude.

What's with the sexualized threats against women? by E.J. Graff at TPM Cafe. As someone who has been the target of sexualised threats, this means a lot to me.

Take Back the Tech. Much love for this campaign.

And finally, just for fun: Bedjump.com. Awesome.

misogyny in action at UWO

I'm disgusted to hear about the recent article in the University of Western Ontario's student newspaper, the Gazette, that was part of their "spoof" issue for April Fool's day. Someone thought an article, entitled "Labia majora carnage," that took direct shots at members of a campus women's group, WIN, and alluded to rape (in the form of taking a WIN member into a dark alley to "teach her a lesson"), characterising it as humourous, would be a hilarious addition to the issue.

Yeah. Hil-fucking-arious, "Xavier," whoever the hell you might be.

Apparently, and sadly, I hear that this is not altogether surprising for this newspaper. I'm told that the Gazette has a history of being sexist, racist, and generally bigoted, and that WIN has been trying to make them more accountable. Well, the names used in the article are either very close to the names of actual WIN members, or reference specific WIN members. These women are recognizable as themselves in the article. Read it, and you can see that the article suggests that one of these women should be raped.

Talk about backlash.

This is fucking disgusting. You can help take some action. Join the Facebook group Rapist Culture at The University of Western Ontario. Write to the Gazette Editor-in-Chief, Ian Van Den Hurk at gazette.editor@uwo.ca. Email the equity services at Western at equity@uwo.ca to complain and to draw their attention to this article. Repost this on your blog or website. Spread the word about the things being written in this paper.

ETA: There's no online version of the article in question yet, but someone did scan it, so you can read it here. A warning - it may be triggering for some people.

I don't even know where to start with this one.

The first thing I wanted to see this morning was definitely NOT the dead model gallery (view at your own risk, may be triggering) from the latest episode of America's Next Top Model. Alas, they came up.

I've never been a 'fashion' person. I've only ever watched this show when my housemates are watching it and I happen to be around. I don't see the appeal of watching stick-thin woman-shaped coathangers parading around a catwalk, I don't see how anonymous individuals with vacant stares are supposed to make me want to buy things, and I've never understood the need to be in 'style' or 'trendy.' I have a couple of friends who actively follow this stuff, but I've never seen the appeal. It's just not something I'm interested in, and I hate the way the industry treats women. That has nothing on this.

When I saw the pictures, immediately I felt sick. The women are splayed in painfully awkward positions, made up with blood and bruises, and in some of them the poses and arrangement of their clothing suggests sexual assault. Each seems to portray a different kind of death in a different location. The expressions on their faces are hauntingly familiar - probably because even when they're supposed to be alive in pictures, to me, models always seem to stare vacantly. I'm amazed I even finished looking at all of them. I don't even want to imagine how someone who has been a victim or a family member of a victim of murder, assault, or even accidental death, might feel after seeing these images. Couple the violence with the inherent nature of the industry to sexualise everything, you can see how this becomes even more problematic. Violence and death are being made sexy. I shouldn't have to explain why this is bad, bad, bad.

Don't get me wrong. By no means am I surprised at the show and the fashion industry in general dehumanising women, I'm just appalled and disgusted that they would stoop this low.

See also: WIMN's Voices and Feministe.us.