letstalkaboutrape:

(tw: rape, victim blaming)

missgingerlee:

Melissa Harris-Perry’s open letter to Steubenville survivor

Yep, still end up bawling less than 10 seconds in.

Melissa Harris-Perry wins. Watch the whole thing.

“Old, white, powerful men know what rape is, much better, it seems, than rape victims. They are lining up to inform us that women – the discussion has centered around women and their lies even though 9 per cent of rape victims are men – do not need “to be asked prior to each insertion”. Thanks for that, George [Galloway], not that it’s just you.

As a culture, we still refuse collectively to accept that most rapes are committed by ordinary men, men who have friends and families, men who may even have done great or admirable things with their lives. We refuse to accept that nice guys rape, and they do it often. Part of the reason we haven’t accepted it is that it’s a painful thing to contemplate – far easier to keep on believing that only evil men rape, only violent, psychotic men lurking in alleyways with pantomime-villain mustaches and knives, than to consider that rape might be something that ordinary men do. Men who might be our friends or colleagues or people we look up to. We don’t want that to be the case. Hell, I don’t want that to be the case. So, we all pretend it isn’t. Justice, see?

Actually, rape is very common. Ninety thousand people reported rape in the United States in 2008 alone, and it is estimated that over half of rape victims never go to the police, making the true figure close to 200,000. Between 10 and 20 per cent of women have experienced rape or sexual assault. It’s so common that – sorry if this hurts to hear – there’s a good chance you know somebody who might have raped someone else. And there’s more than a small chance he doesn’t even think he did anything wrong, that he believes that what he did wasn’t rape, couldn’t be rape, because, after all, he’s not a bad guy.

” —

Laurie Penny, “It’s nice to think that only evil men are rapists - that it’s only pantomime villains with knives in alleyways. But reality is different.”

(via eibmorb)

YES. This is why I hate the “real men” argument. The idea that “real men treat women with respect” or whatever. Real men rape just as often as not. And if we continue to pretend that rapists are the outliers rather than a sizeable portion of a population bred to rape, we won’t level with ourselves about just how pervasive rape culture is.

OH HEY LOOK AT THAT WE HAVE ANOTHER RAPE CASE WITH FOOTBALL PLAYERS SEXUALLY ASSAULTING 13-YEAR OLD GIRLS AND NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT AND TRYING TO COVER IT UP

terribleclaw:

ilikestatuses:

HERE’S THE STORY! LET’S BLOW IT THE FUCK UP!

 this is MY HIGHSCHOOL jesus fucking christ

stfuconservatives:

shortformblog:

mauricecherry:

SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

Trigger Warning: Rape, Physical Assault

My heart and my support go out to Adria.

Also, my righteous anger.

Here’s the gist of what happened. Adria was at PyCon, a developer conference, and noticed that two men behind her were making lewd sexual jokes. She snapped a photo, tweeted it, brought up the behavior to PyCon officials (since they did have a code of conduct for their conference), and the situation was “handled”.

What’s happened after that is a prime example of why women and people of color (and women of color, of course) are few and far between in the world of tech.

One of the men making the jokes, who was there representing his employer, got fired for his actions. Adria’s website starts getting DDoS attacks, as does her employer’s website. People are leaving her nasty comments and she’s been getting death threats and rape threats tweeted to her since yesterday.

Today, SendGrid fired Adria. And they didn’t just fire her, but they announced it on Twitter and on Facebook so people could spread the word and comment on it. The Facebook comments are particularly vile, including one where a man details a particularly gruesome threat against Adria, concluded with the words “Make her pay. Make her obey.”

All of this for speaking up about something which made her uncomfortable.

Read More

To say that this is problematic would be an understatement, and it’s particularly troubling in a week when we’ve already seen two high-profile (and altogether disturbing) responses to sexual assault cases capture media headlines. We can’t figure out what possible justification SendGrid  thinks they have for terminating Adria — and don’t even get us started on how they handled it — but if you’re as curious as we are then here’s SendGrid’s contact information. 

Inexcusable.

Get angry. Make noise.

chroniclesofathugnerd:

energiesoftheuniverse:

super-villains:

Steubenville football players drug, kidnap, and gang rape unconscious girl, call themselves “Rape Crew”, tweet about it, take pictures of it, and video tape it. They are essentially sentenced to 1-2 years. The media bends over backwards to portray them sympathetically.

Marissa Alexander fires a warning gunshot to defend herself against abusive husband. No one is hurt. She is sentenced to 20 years. 

Disgusting

Fuck.

This is rape culture. This is misogyny.
Literally every day we are reminded: We are not safe. We cannot rest. 

“I said this a long time ago, and I’m saying it again – not only is rape about a rapist having control, but victim blaming is about controlling the female population: what better way to cajole women into standards of purity, decency, “learning how to behave” and sobriety than dangle the threat of “Well, if you don’t, you’ll surely invite rape upon yourselves?” What better way to get “these hoes” and “these broads” to understand that they don’t “know how to behave” than to help drive home the point that rape happens because women do bad things? Better yet, bad things happen to women who aren’t perfect, or at least striving to be. And who defines that “perfect?” Certainly not women.” — Excerpted from What A Victim-Blaming World Looks Like To A Victim — an absolute must read in its entirety. Thanks to @brokeymcpoverty for bringing this to my attention. Trigger warning for references to sexual assault (both male and female)

toomanystarstocount:

deardearcispeople:

toomanystarstocount:

Also tonight I learned that even though it makes me deeply uncomfortable when guys I don’t know comment on my appearance to me (hey dude who delivered my dinner tonight) my first reaction is still to say thank you and be happy that they’re being relatively unobnoxious about it.

: |

Tagged with #this is rape culture #right here.

Apparently rape culture is a guy in food service trying to compliment a customer, probably to get a good tip. Either that, or this girl just wants to feel victimized.

Seriously, get over yourself and have some common decency. This guy did nothing wrong, and yet you feel the need to crucify him on the internet as an agent of the patriarchy. You might as well get mad every time a guy sneezes in your presence. Fucking patriarchy, man.

Fucking chronic victimhood.

I get it if a guy is making clearly sexual remarks and harassing you, but if, in passing, he just tells you that you look good, it’s a compliment. He’s not saying he’s going to rape you. He’s not saying you’re beneath him. He’s saying you look good and he wants you to have that little extra bit of happiness for it. And yet you can’t let the smallest good deed go unpunished.

This is like some kind of parody of feminism.

No rape culture is thinking that my body is for you to comment on. It isn’t. Seriously. This guy is, in all likelihood, a  nice normal guy. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that being a woman means I have first hand experience with guys commenting on my appearance and then reacting poorly - and in some cases threatening/attempting to hurt me - because I didn’t react how they wanted. That is rape culture. A culture that says I have to be thankful you deigned to comment on my appearance in order to be relatively certain of my safety around you.

So yeah, it annoys me that when guys make unwanted comments about how I look, my instinct is to smile and say thanks even when I don’t want to because otherwise I could be in physical danger.

“have some common decency” You’re acting like I told him to fuck off, called his job, and then posted his full name on the internet.

I made a post on my own personal blog saying that I am uncomfortable when dudes I don’t know make comments about my body and appearance. 

Take your “chronic victimhood” and kindly gtfo my blog.

wow, all the shitdicks are coming out to play today, aren’t they?

so hey there, deardearcispeople. imma guess based on your url to begin with that you are a shitdick. because what that screams to me is “I like my privilege so I’m gonna whine about oppressed communities having their own spaces where they can talk about their oppression without my input.” boohoo.

there are many problems with your argument, one of which was mentioned above. another is that this is not behavior that I have ever, EVER seen performed towards men. EVER. 

if a male friend is being waited on, or is picking something up from a drycleaners, or is having someone pump their gas, chances are like a zillion to one against that they will ever have another man comment on their appearance in order to get a tip. ever. it does. not. happen. and the reason is in part because people are assholes and in all probability the sheer homophobia rampant in our society would make it more likely that they get no tip at all.

but more significant is this: men are not regarded as objects of the male gaze that can be commented on and approved or disapproved of at their leisure. so the chances of a man calling another man’s body appealing in the hopes of getting a larger tip are just astronomically low. and if you can’t see how there is a problem here (namely in perpetuating the expectation that WOMEN will just smile and take what is tantamount to harassment gracefully while men just get to keep eating their sammiches in peace) then you need to jump back.

now you may say “but women in the service industry say things about me all the time~” (if they do, trust me honey, they do not mean it. we totally troll for tips too) the difference (in general) is that women in the service industry have learned to use their bodies as a part of their job in order to encourage men to tip us more. seriously. if you have never spoken to women in the service industry as actual humans rather than as the robots doing your bidding, ask one sometime. you are encouraged to wear makeup to work. you are encouraged (depending on the place of business) to wear tight fitting clothing to work. you are encouraged to touch male customers more, to PLAY UP YOUR ABILITY TO BE VIEWED AS A SEXUAL OBJECT FOR THE SAKE OF MAKING MONEY.

and here’s the thing. when a male server does this, he is not playing up his viability as a sexual object. this server was in a car, invisible to the customer. from her perspective, he is essentially a voyeur. so what he is doing is using HER body as a means of potentially making money (not his). and in so doing, he is reinforcing her place as an object of desire in his brain. and here’s a fucking secret for y’all, lean in real close: that shit’s fucked up.

justplainsomething:

secretcallgirl:

kokilax:

randomizeyourmind:

Rape has become endemic in South Africa, so a medical technician named Sonette Ehlers developed a product that immediately gathered national attention there. Ehlers had never forgotten a rape victim telling her forlornly, “If only I had teeth down there.”

Some time afterward, a man came into the hospital where Ehlers works in excruciating pain because his penis was stuck in his pants zipper.

Ehlers merged those images and came up with a product she called Rapex. It resembles a tube, with barbs inside. The woman inserts it like a tampon, with an applicator, and any man who tries to rape the woman impales himself on the barbs and must go to an emergency room to have the Rapex removed.

When critics complained that it was a medieval punishment, Ehlers replied tersely, “A medieval device for a medieval deed.” 

- Half the Sky, Nicholas Kristof

REBLOGGING THIS. x1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

A medieval device for a medieval deed - yes.

This is the best idea. What my boyfriend said: “Something that totally shouldn’t be necessary, but is.”

Ugh. No. Stop.

I have made really long and eloquent posts about shit like this before, but I’m feeling lazy so here is the Cliff Notes version:

Shit like this does not stop rape. Shit like this only adds another dimension of responsibility for women/men/people with vaginas, another thing they are forced to think about before they leave their house late at night or go out drinking or even just sit on their fucking couch with their significant other. 

I should never have to think to myself “welp, better put in my penis flytrap before I go out tonight” because THAT SHIT IS SO FUCKED UP. Shit like this perpetuates the belief that there is a specific time and place that rape happens and that I should be ~prepared~ for it and if I’m not shame on me. I should be able to tapdance drunk and bare ass naked on a streetcorner and still have no one fucking think that they get a free pass to rape me. 

This is not “necessary,” and damn right it shouldn’t be. What is fucking necessary is dismantling the misogyny and victim blaming that perpetuates rape culture on a daily fucking basis.

I’m so done with this shit I can’t even.

thisisrapeculture:

Made rebloggable by request