Almost every man we spoke to felt the remarks made to women in the streets were “harmless” and were an attempt at being neighborly. When we asked whether they were similarly neighborly to other men, their defense fell apart. They pointed out the absurdity of infringing on someone’s personal space in public in that way. Yet when we pointed out that these gender-based unsolicited remarks are street harassment by definition, they adamantly disagreed.
[TRIGGER WARNING for rape]
Rachid Zoghlami was convicted of rape and sentenced to two years and eight months in jail in December, after he penetrated his girlfriend with his fingers to determine whether she had been unfaithful.
But a court of appeal in Stockholm ruled that the 28-year-old’s actions were to be viewed as coercion rather than rape since they weren’t driven by “sexual intent”, then reduced his sentence to 18 months behind bars.
Rape is not sex. Rape has no “sexual intent”. It is power and domination exerted over somebody.
Zoghlami, who holds dual Finnish-Tunisian citizenship, admitted to being jealous but said he used no violence against girlfriend Carina Johansson, 30, when using two fingers to “search for sperm.”
Johansson argued otherwise, claiming he ripped off her sweat pants and her underwear after allegedly threatening to perform an “infidelity check.”
The use of violence does not determine rape. The lack of consent does. Rapes with no violence are still rapes.
As Heather Corinna pointed out last night, GMP doesn’t just think men=rapists, they think men=bad. Or, ya know, good, if Royse has labeled them as good – and then clearly still good even if they’re unrepentant rapists. Because men are apparently confused by the concept of consent, which again, super insulting. And wrong, since most men aren’t rapists and aren’t confused by consent. But GMP is arguing that there are good and bad men, and that good men also rape, because consent is hard. Which brings us right back to classic rape apology – I didn’t know it was rape because consent is so confusing! When it’s really not. Actually, GMP doesn’t really believe in bad men and good men, they believe in bad men and men who can’t tell the difference between yes and no. What a shitty view of men.
Rape is really confusing. I mean, how do you know if you’re raping someone? If they’re unconscious and you decide to have sex with them, is that rape? It is? Well, you could have fooled me. It’s just weird, you know — who even knows if the word “no” means “no,” or if the person you’re raping — er, just having consensual sex with — is observing Opposite Day?
Thankfully, someone is looking out for the poor, misunderstood rapists of the world. The Good Men Project, which describes itself as “a community of 21st Century thought leaders around the issue of men’s roles in modern life,” has decided to take a close look at rape. What they’ve found will shock you, if you’re unfamiliar with the site’s general Men’s Rights Advocate Lite bent. Alas, even if you’re familiar with The Good Men Project, you’ll probably be shocked; the posts are generally shocking. Indeed, this is the point where I offer a trigger warning for rape apology, victim-blaming and general awfulness.
Halarnkar then offered as proofa survey that caused indignation in Indialast month: a poll of 370genderspecialists around the world that voted India the worst place to be a woman out of all the G20 countries. It stung – especially as Saudi Arabia was at the second-worst. But the experts were resolute in their choice. “In India, women and girls continue to be sold as chattels, married off as young as 10, burned alive as a result of dowry-related disputes and young girls exploited and abused as domestic slave labour,” said Gulshun Rehman, health programme development adviser at Save the Children UK, who was one of those polled.
[…]
A glance at the Indian media reveals the range of abuse suffered by the nation’s women on a daily basis.
[…]
In June, a father beheaded his 20-year-old daughter with a sword in a village in Rajasthan, western India, parading her bleeding head around as a warning to other young women who might fall in love with a lower-caste boy.
Language is not innocent; it is in part because of this language that we live in a culture where “college football is more important than children not being sexually abused.” Our language should reflect how serious and harmful a crime rape is, not treat it like tabloid fodder.
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The story of Project Unbreakable.
Trigger Warning: This article contains discussion of rape, sexual assault and abuse.
After putting “raped on live TV” between quotation marks in the title, writing that Echaniz had been filmed “appearing to have sex with her under the covers” and “Throughout the incident the female contestant appeared unconscious” too close together was not the best thing. But what did I expect? The Daily Mail, right?
(Source: lati-negros)
There is a fundamental concern that the content of such magazines normalises the treatment of women as sexual objects. We are not killjoys or prudes who think that there should be no sexual information and media for young people. But are teenage boys and young men best prepared for fulfilling love and sex when they normalise views about women that are disturbingly close to those mirrored in the language of sexual offenders?
It only took two long months, over 186,000 signatures on a petition to Mark Zuckerberg, and finally a furious Twitter campaign to get Facebook to remove Pages that graphically celebrated and encouraged rape and sexual violence.
With zero tolerance for porn and a refusal to define it, Facebook has deleted breast cancer survivor communities (labeling one breast cancer survivor page as “pornography”), retail business pages, individual profiles of human sexuality teachers, pages for authors and actors, photos of LGBT couples kissing (for which Facebook just apologized), and even the occasional hapless user’s profile who has the misfortune of having someone else post porn on their Wall.
With no comprehensible or clear methodology around sexual speech, we see pages deleted that discuss female sexuality, while pages that joke about and encourage raping women and girls rack up the likes.
While I don’t condone violence, I sympathize with her actions. When man after man gets away with sexually harassing, stalking, groping, and assaulting women on the streets, subway platforms, buses, and stores of our country, and when bystanders stand by and let it happen, there comes a breaking point. Maybe after getting kicked and yelled at by a person he thought he could easily grope, this perpetrator won’t be so quick to grope someone else. Especially if the police catch him. Good for DeJesus.
DeJesus is not the only New York City woman to have this type of reaction to groping. In the past year, we’ve heard from Nicola Briggs who was videotaped yelling down the man who rubbed against her and flashed her on the subway (he was later arrested and deported), Kate Spencer who hit the man who groped her on a subway platform, and Robyn Shepherd who chased down a man who smacked her butt as she walked down the street.
