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(Source: itsloudinsidemyhead, via cemmaisum)
All things vagina
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Defining Sexual Assault/ Myths and Facts
Sexual assault is any unwanted physical contact of a sexual nature that occurs without consent from both individuals or under threat or coercion. Whether by an acquaintance or by a stranger, sexual assault can occur either forcibly and/or against a person’s will, or when a person is incapable of giving consent.
By law, sexual assault includes but is not limited to rape, forcible sodomy, forcible oral copulation, sexual assault with an object, sexual battery, forcible fondling (e.g., unwanted touching or kissing for purposes of sexual gratification), or threat of sexual assault.
(Source: stanford.edu)
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Survivors Chat: What is Marital Rape? →
Marital rape occurs when your spouse forces you to take part in certain sex acts without your consent. It is a form of intimate partner violence, i.e., an abuse of power by which one spouse attempts to establish dominance and control over the other. Research shows that…
(via tremblingsecrets)
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"Rape is way, WAY more prevalent than you seem to think it is… Your job as a comedian is to take us through pain, transcend pain, transform pain. And if you don’t get that, you are a fucking bully, and I’ve got zero time for bullies."
comedian Curtis Luciani (in response to the Tosh rape joke incident)
(Source: ceedling, via )
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Trembling Secrets: Rape Statistics →
54% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police
97% of rapists will never spend a day in jail
54% of rapes/sexual assaults are not reported to the police, according to a statistical average of the past 5 years. Those rapists, of course, never spend a day in prison. Factoring in unreported…
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/21/savannah-dietrich-faces-charges_n_1692374.html
What the fuck…
From the article:
Dietrich told the paper she was assaulted in August 2011 by two boys she knew when she passed out after drinking at a gathering. She learned months later that pictures of the assault were taken and shared with others.
“For months, I cried myself to sleep. I couldn’t go out in public places,” she told the newspaper, as her father and attorneys sat nearby. “You just sit there and wonder, who saw (the pictures), who knows?”
So these pieces of shit can post images of this woman’s sexual assault online for the world to see, but identifying her “alleged” attackers sends her straight to jail.
They will find any excuse to make rape victims into the villain.
Heaven forbid that others be warned about the rapists in their midst while the trial is still ongoing… /sigh.
(via brazilianveganfeminist)
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“The monetary cost for a rape victim to receive treatment at a hospital in the United States.”
This should be fucking free.
(via brazilianveganfeminist)
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According to the data provided by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, there were an estimated 84,767 forcible rapes of females reported to law enforcement in the year 2010. That is 232 rapes every day of the year, or almost 10 rapes per hour. Along with this information comes the disturbing realization of the degree to which rape permeates our daily lives: ten times an hour, every hour of every day. Regardless of the severity of these statistics alone and the probability that these numbers are an underestimate considering only reported rapes and attempted rapes are included, there is a general refusal to acknowledge the degree to which we live in a rape culture.
The statistics mentioned above necessitate an examination of the elements of our existence, from the most basic needs to mental and emotional desires. If such an act of hatred and power occurs so frequently, there must be underlying concepts, myths, and dynamics conditioned into our society that perpetuate this heinous crime. All of these forces combine to form and maintain a rape culture, or “a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women … where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent” (Buchwald, Fletcher, and Roth XI). In a rape culture, women are viewed through a male gaze and are heavily objectified. They exist to fulfill man’s every need, with no regard for their own, and are subject to a “continuum of threated violence” that is “present[ed] as the norm” (Buchwald, Fletcher, and Roth XI). The problem with acknowledgement then, is that within its definition rape culture is quite an intangible force that lacks illustration and contains an overwhelming variety of manifestations. There are statistics, behaviors, parts of speech, and other media available as examples, but without a deep understanding of and background in feminist theory these examples may seem disjointed, unrelated, or merely exceptional examples of poor behavior that do not necessarily reflect systemic issues. This is understandable considering not every person living within this culture will swallow its myths whole, but we as individuals do not exist within a vacuum. As long as this society perpetuates the narratives of rape culture, so are we subject to them.
Rape culture saturates every level of our existence, from physiological needs to the desire for and process of self-actualization. In order to concretely demonstrate this it is necessary to include a template for human life in terms of individual needs and fulfillment. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is an arrangement of essential facets of individual experience required for “development of quality of life” (Hagerty 249). If each of the five levels of the hierarchy is met, one can achieve completion and satisfaction as an individual. According to Maslow, the “chief principle of organization in human motivational life is the arrangement of basic needs in a hierarchy of lesser or greater priority” (qtd. in Hagerty), and the fulfillment of these needs “follows a fixed sequence” (Hagerty 250). The completion of one level is contingent upon the completion of its predecessor. If one does not meet the conditions of the first level, it is difficult to move on to the second, third, and so forth. Rape culture manifests on every level of the hierarchy of needs, from the most basic physiological needs to the more advanced goal of self-actualization. One who is a member of an oppressed group cannot fulfill every level of the hierarchy and reach the top because the needs of the oppressors take precedent and obstruct the fulfillment of the oppressed group. In a rape culture, the oppression of females infects the hierarchy of needs at each level, which hinders progression from one level to the next and complicates the ability of females to reach the ultimate fulfillment of self-actualization.
"From the Introduction to “Examining the Manifestation of Rape Culture in Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,” a paper I wrote when I was 21. (via porcupunx)
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Let’s imagine a world in which women cut men’s dicks off. Like, frequently. To the extent that one in five men has had his dick cut off by a woman or had a woman attempt to cut his dick off.
(I apologize immediately if it sounds like I’m being flip. I am not being flip. Imagine the pain and shame and humiliation of someone cutting your dick off. Imagine it in earnest.)
Sometimes it’s a clear-cut case where a woman attacks you in the street, out of nowhere, and cuts your dick off. But more often it’s a situation where you actually know the woman, maybe you trust her, maybe you think everything’s okay, and then one day she cuts your dick off.
Still with me? This is going to take a while. I’ll tell you when I’m done. (And if you think I’m being insufferably self-righteous: Good news, you don’t have to read this!)
Okay, now let’s also say that the shame and guilt around having your dick cut off is so strong that many dick-cuttings go completely unreported. After all, someone is likely to raise the question of whether or not you were “asking for it” in one way or another. And if you do accuse a woman of cutting your dick off, you can expect to see people (quite naturally) rally to her defense and slander your character in response.
You can expect to see her friends… who are maybe also friends or yours… shrug their shoulders and say “Well, I don’t know, it’s complicated… it sounds like something was just happening between the two of them and maybe it got out of hand. I dunno. But I know that Sarah’s not a bad gal. I know she would never, like, MALICIOUSLY cut a dude’s dick off.”
So, a shitty state of affairs for the men-folk of our imaginary world, yes?
Now imagine that in this world, something like 90 percent of professional performing comedians are women. And they’ve accepted that there are certain codes of behavior when it comes to comedy. Most people who “like comedy” generally accept the premise that there are no subject areas that cannot be somehow given a comic treatment, but it is also accepted, as a practical rule, that as the subject gets more troubling, more intense, more painful, a more skilled approach is necessary to find the humor in it.
However, it is also accepted that people are people and they are going to have authentic responses to things. It is accepted, for example, that you probably should not go in front of an audience that contains several black people and start tossing around the n-word unless you have an EXCEPTIONALLY sophisticated and road-tested routine built around it, one that you are confident will overcome the very significant risk you are incurring. If a comedian did this and did NOT overcome the risk, no one would be shocked if the audience shouted her down and stormed her out of the club, nor would anyone be particularly eager to defend her.
HOWEVER, there’s this ONE thing. Many of the comediennes of this world have this ONE little sticking point. One little thing. It just IRKS the hell out of them that they can’t seem to make jokes about cutting dicks off without some whiny pussy male in the audience throwing a shit fit about it!
Now, sure, there’s a few comediennes at the top of their game who can pull it off. Their approach is skillful, and they somehow make the joke without minimalizing or trivializing the actual pain involved. But then the rest of them think, “Well, geez, if they can do it, why can’t I? It’s not fair, darn it! I should be able to work with the same material as someone much better than me and get the same result and not make anyone hate me or say mean things about me on the Internet! Waaaaahhh!
“I mean, after all, do that many men REALLY get their dicks cut off? I’ve heard the statistic, but that’s probably overblown. And I bet a lot of them were asking for it. I mean, in any case, there’s a lot of grey area. I know one thing for sure: none of the men I KNOW has ever had his dick cut off. If they had, they would tell me, right? I mean, right? And besides, there’s a principle at stake here. I AM AN ARTIST. I should be able to say whatever shitty thing I want, and people should be able to suppress their authentic response to it!
“And if they DON’T suppress their authentic response to it: why, that’s censorship or something! Besides, I know this and that example of a time where a comedienne I know made a joke that wasn’t even ABOUT dick-cutting, and some whiny pussy dude got upset about it anyway! It’s just these humorless masculinists! They can’t take a joke about anything anyway. So, since I can think of examples where a comedienne was unfairly criticized by someone without a sense of humor, this must be what happens in all cases.”
Okay, I think we see what I’m getting at here.
Fine, yes, WHAT-THE-FUCK-EVER. I will concede the following points that every comedian wants us all so badly to concede:
1) Theoretically, there is no subject that should be considered off-limits for humor.
2) There will always be some example where a performer of extremely high skill can take something very painful and make it work.
But…
Here’s what YOU need to understand:
1) Rape is way, WAY more prevalent than you seem to think it is. Are there more than five women in your audience? You do the math, and then you run the little fantasy scenario that I just put together in your head, and you tell me how it feels.
2) I ain’t buying any of that “If I can make jokes about genocide, why can’t I make jokes about rape?” Horseshit, unless you made those genocide jokes during a gig at the Srebrenica Funny Bone. You got away with making a joke about genocide because your odds of having a holocaust survivor’s kid in the audience were pretty fucking low.
And if you did happen to have one in the audience, and he heckled you, walked out, and wrote something nasty on the internet… would you be more likely to be a human being and say “Wow. I can understand why that person’s authentic response to what I was doing was so emotional and negative. Maybe my genocide material just isn’t good enough to justify the pain that it inflicts. Maybe I need more skill in order to pull this off.” Or are you gonna be a lousy piece of shit and say, “Yeah, I apologize, I guess, IF YOU WERE OFFENDED.”
Offended hasn’t got anything to do with it, moron.
People have wounds, and those wounds are painful. That doesn’t have shit to do with the weak concept of “taking offense.” If someone talks about Texas being a shitty state, I might “take offense” at that. Fine, whatever. All of us who like comedy are generally in agreement with the idea that “taking offense” is lame, and a comedian should be willing to “offend” whenever he or she wants to.
But causing pain is quite a different fucking matter. Your job as a comedian is to take us through pain, transcend pain, transform pain. And if you don’t get that, you are a fucking bully, and I’ve got zero time for bullies.
"Curtis Luciani (via anthophila)
(Source: austin.culturemap.com, via anthophila)
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TRIGGER WARNING rape, gang rape, cops doing shitty things, racism
Recy Taylor’s Brother: Rape Apology to Give ‘Closure’
Recy Taylor hadn’t asked for much. More than six decades after she was raped by six white men in her hometown of Abbeville, Alabama – a horrific crime that the sheriff’s department covered up, never to speak of again – she wasn’t interested in reopening the case or pressing charges. Taylor, now 91 years old, just thought an apology was in order.
full article in the click through - interesting/depressing/slightly hopeful
(via reali-teaparty)
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Why do the Fireflies die so Soon?: People need to understand something: rape is not just sex by... →
People need to understand something: rape is not just sex by force.
Drive a girl up to the woods off of a highway, a secluded place where there are no people around for a few miles. Tell her you are close to members of the local law enforcement. Then tell her to take her clothes off. Does she…
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