hate crime at utsc.

This is cross-posted, with some edits, from my private journal, since I am not up to rewriting anything on it. It hurts too much.

So it's a Saturday, the day after spring formal, which was awesome, and I slept until three, and spent the afternoon and evening messing around on Facebook instead of doing homework, as usual. I'm scrolling through my friends' status updates when I notice someone's. It says something about arson and hate crime on campus. I'm concerned so I leave a post on her wall asking about it, and carry on.

A few hours later, still procrastinating, someone else has got a similar status up. One of his friends has written on his wall that they "saw the board" and someone else is asking what happened. Now I'm really concerned. Both of these friends are involved with the LGBTQ Lounge and I'm worried something happened to it. So I throw on my coat and take off to the B-wing, where the Lounge is and where they have a big bulletin board, in a glass case, between the AMACSS and SoSSA offices.

This is what I saw:



Someone set the bulletin board on fire. You can see that a whole pane of glass is missing and the scorch marks. There's residue, I presume from a fire extinguisher, on the frame and on the floor and on the two buttons placed on the ledge. When I got close to the board, I could smell the smoke. I went down to the Lounge itself to see if anything happened there, but it looked fine. I came back to the bulletin board and was almost too upset to take the picture, but I did.

Today I've heard a little more details. Apparently the glass casing was not smashed, it was removed from the frame. The administration should be releasing statements soon. There is now a Facebook group, which has a different picture posted:



Clearly from before it was all cleaned up, like when I saw it.

I am pissed off beyond belief. I'm angry and I'm worried and I'm scared for my friends. I hope the assholes who did this get caught and are swiftly punished.

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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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."

What. The. Fuck.

The opening of this article is disgusting. Short of coming out and saying, "It was Emily's fault," this is blatant, awful victim blaming.

Emily Hilscher was not responsible for the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Even if she was his ex-girlfriend, she was not responsible - the man who shot her was. He's the one who picked up the gun, he's the one who pulled the trigger. He was the one with such a sense of entitlement to this woman that he went out and killed her. But it doesn't seem like this paper realises that she's the one who was murdered.

So now every media source is going on about gun control, gun control, gun control; security, security, security. To be honest though, let's face it - if the guy was this disturbed, all the gun control and security in the world probably wouldn't have stopped him from harming others. As more details come out, I'll be interested to hear more about his story and his possible motives. Maybe it was the ex-girlfriend. Maybe it was his mental health. Maybe it was bullying (yes, it happens in universities). Maybe it was a campus culture he didn't fit into, didn't understand. We don't know. But I really don't think gun control should be made into the main issue. The backstory, what was going on in this young man's life, should be at the forefront of the discussions, so that if it was mental illness, in the future people in the same frame of mind can get the proper help sooner; so if it was a relationship gone sour, that we can get information out on handling those kinds of situations - and so that dead women don't get blamed for what they weren't responsible for.

Update: Making the article I wrote about even more ridiculous, it turns out that Emily Hilscher didn't even know the guy. Though he did seem to have a history of stalking, to the point where his roommates told their female friends not to come by their room. Apparently he "saw promiscuity" in one girl. *shudders*