A Black Man’s View of Schroedinger’s Rapist
Crommunist writes at the Freethought Blogs:
This morning I made a reference to the fact that men are often assumed to be potential rapists as an example of how sexism negatively affects men as well as women. The argument, commonly referred to as “Schroedinger’s Rapist”, goes something like this: because you can’t know for sure if the stranger approaching you in a dark alley or other unsafe place is a rapist or not, it is generally a good idea to be on your guard. Men can enhance their interactions with women by being aware of this mindset, and adjusting their own behaviour accordingly.
I have often heard from people making an anti-feminist argument that Schroedinger’s Rapist is profoundly sexist and unfair. After all, most men do not rape – why should every man be treated like a rapist? Isn’t that discrimination? How can you claim to be opposed to sexism, yet promote a fundamentally…
FBI Definition Of Rape To Include Male Victims
The Associated Press reports (via the Washington Post):
The Obama administration on Friday expanded the FBI’s more than eight-decade-old definition of rape to count men as victims for the first time and to drop the requirement that victims must have physically resisted their attackers.
The new definition will increase the number of people counted as rape victims in FBI statistics, but it will not change federal or state laws or alter charges or prosecutions. It’s an important shift because lawmakers and policymakers use crime statistics to allocate money and other resources for prevention and victim assistance.
The White House said the change was not motivated by the recent Penn State child sex-abuse scandal. Indeed, the expanded definition has been long awaited as many states and research groups made similar changes in their definitions of rape over recent decades.
Senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett called the change a “very, very important step.” The issue got…
Are These Evolution’s Future Sluts?
SlutWalk protest in Toronto, 3 April 2011. Photo: Anton Bielousov (CC).
Violet Blue explains why the new SlutWalk protests are “a significant tipping point in cultural evolution” — and she’s serious. “Yes: I think scantily clad girls marching in the streets around the world are agents of change for our species.”
It started in April when a Toronto cop said that to stay safe from rape, women “should avoid dressing like sluts”. Soon “my clothes are not my consent” protests erupted, and the event “had an international identity within a few months,” representing “a huge reclamation and restatement about boundaries and women’s bodies.”
Now sex workers, young exhibitionists, high-heel feminists and random pissed-off women are marching “for the right to dress as they like while having their boundaries respected,” and Violet calls them the true punk rockers — the disruptors. “They’re the ones with the brass ovaries enough to dress like sluts and…
Iranian Activists Accuse Government of Handing Out Condoms So Political Prisoners Can Be Raped
Photo: Ehsan Iran (CC)
“If the inmate is not powerful enough or guards would not take care of him, he will be certainly raped. Prison guards ignore those who are seen with condoms simply because they were given out to them by the guards at first place” … Saeed Kamali Dehghan reports in the Guardian:
Prison guards in Iran are giving condoms to criminals and encouraging them to systematically rape young opposition activists locked up with them, according to accounts from inside the country’s jail system.
A series of dramatic letters written by prisoners and families of imprisoned activists allege that authorities are intentionally facilitating mass rape and using it as a form of punishment.
Mehdi Mahmoudian, an outspoken member of Iran’s Participation Front, a reformist political party, is among those prisoners who have succeeded in smuggling out letters revealing the extent of rape inside some of the most notorious prisons.
Mahmoudian was arrested in…
Peace Corps Failed Volunteers When They Became Rape Victims
Peace Corps is in the business to help “countless individuals who want to build a better life for themselves, their children, and their communities.” But do they help their volunteers? Numerous cases have come forward about women who have been raped and threatened after being positioned in another country. In many cases, the organization knew about the assaults but ignored them stating that “those types of things happen.” The Raw Story reports:
A group of former volunteers who were raped while working with the Peace Corps told Congress Wednesday that serious changes need to be made to the organization.
The victims explained that in many cases, the way they were treated by the Peace Corps after reporting the assault was more traumatic than the rape itself.
“These women are alone in many cases, and they’re in rough parts of the world,” Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) told The New York Times prior to the hearing.
Jessica Smochek told…
British Newspaper Claims Gaddafi’s ‘Viagra-Fueled’ Troops Raping Children
A representative Daily Mail headline.
Britain’s Daily Mail tabloid newspaper has long been known for pushing stories of dubious provenance to appeal to the conservative outrage of its largely middle class readership. It has really outdone itself today, however, with this story about Libyan soldiers taking Viagra and raping small children (not that I doubt some atrocities are taking place – but the ‘Viagra-Fueled’ part?):
Children as young as eight are being raped in front of their families by Gaddafi’s forces in Libya, according to a leading charity.
Aid workers described horrific stories of widespread sexual abuse, including one incident in which a group of girls was abducted and held hostage for four days. When they were finally released, they were too traumatised to speak.
Other children have described being forced to watch as their fathers were murdered and their mothers raped. They told Save The Children that they themselves were then brually beaten before…
Libyan Woman Who Was ‘Gang-Raped By Gaddafi’s Troops’ Gets Charged With Slander
Photo: Ted (CC)
The Daily Mail reports:
The Libyan woman who was arrested after telling foreign journalists she had been gang-raped by Gaddafi’s troops has been charged, a government spokesman said today.
In a chaotic press conference, the official said Iman Al-Obeidi was being questioned by police – despite a promise that she had been returned to her family.
‘The accuser has now become the accused,’ he added, accusing her of a ‘grave offence’.
The spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, said the men accused by Iman al-Obeidi are now suing her. A son of a high ranking Libyan official was among those she claimed had raped her, he said.
‘The boys she accused are bringing a case against her because it’s a very grave offence to accuse someone of a sexual crime,’ he told reporters in the Libyan capital.
Miss Al-Obeidi was taken into custody after bursting into the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli in a dishevelled and desperate state.
[Continues at The…
Rape is Rampant in the U.S. Military
Sexual assault within the ranks of the military is not a new problem. It is a systemic problem that has necessitated that the military conduct its own annual reporting on the crisis.
A 2003 Air Force Academy sexual assault scandal prompted the department of defense to include a provision in the 2004 National Defense Authorization Act that required investigations and reports of sexual harassment and assaults within US military academies to be filed. The personal toll is, nevertheless, devastating.
Military sexual trauma (MST) survivor Susan Avila-Smith is director of the veteran’s advocacy group Women Organizing Women. She has been serving female and scores of male clients in various stages of recovery from MST for 15 years and knows of its devastating effects up close.
“People cannot conceive how badly wounded these people are,” she told Al Jazeera, “Of the 3,000 I’ve worked with, only one is employed. Combat trauma is bad…
Non-Surprise: Assange’s Accuser Linked To CIA
Anna Ardin
An interesting ‘coincidence’ in the still unfolding honey pot trap that has ensnared Julian Assange. From Kirk Murphy at Firedoglake.com:
Yesterday Alexander Cockburn reminded us of the news Israel Shamir and Paul Bennett broke at Counterpunch in September. Julian Assange’s chief accuser in Sweden has a significant history of work with anti-Castro groups, at least one of which is US funded and openly supported by a former CIA agent convicted in the mass murder of seventy three Cubans on an airliner he was involved in blowing up.
Anna Ardin (the official complainant) is often described by the media as a “leftist”. She has ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She published her anti-Castro diatribes (see here and here) in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba. From Oslo, Professor Michael Seltzer points out that this periodical is the product of a well-financed anti-Castro organization in Sweden. He further notes…
The Anomalisation of Male Rape
From Feminist Critics:
Feminists, do not focus upon male rape generally, or male prison rape in particular. This is unsurprising, and not, in itself, particularly problematic.
What is problematic with feminist discourse about male rape is not that they don’t discuss it at all – clearly they do – or that they don’t discuss it enough. The problem is that they anomalise it, that is to say, they treat it as some kind of anomalous variant of rape which, according to them, is something which normally happens to women. The latter is simply “rape”. Rape that happens to men in prison is “prison rape”. Rape that happens to men outside of prison is “male rape”. The word “female” is sometimes used as an adjective with “rape” to contrast it with male rape, but “female rape” is not used by feminists as a category designation in and of itself. It’s just “rape”. “Male rape” and “prison…
Survey Says: Over One Third of South African Men Admit to Having Committed Rape
Nastasya Yay reports on the AP via Yahoo News:
JOHANNESBURG— A new survey says more than one in three South African men admit to having committed rape.
A 2010 study led by the government-funded Medical Research Foundation says that in Gauteng province, home to South Africa’s most populous city of Johannesburg, more than 37 percent of men said they had raped a woman. Nearly 7 percent of the 487 men surveyed said they had participated in a gang rape.
More than 51 percent of the 511 women interviewed said they’d experienced violence from men, and 78 percent of men said they’d committed violence against women.
A quarter of the women interviewed said they’d been raped, but the study says only one in 25 rapes are reported to police.
A survey by the same organization in 2008 found that 28 percent of men in Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces said they had raped a woman or girl.…
Rape Culture 101
Melissa McEwan writes on shakesville:
Frequently, I receive requests to provide a definition of the term “rape culture”…
Rape culture is rape being used as a weapon, a tool of war and genocide and oppression. Rape culture is rape being used as a corrective to “cure” queer women. Rape culture is a militarized culture and “the natural product of all wars, everywhere, at all times, in all forms.”
Rape culture is 1 in 33 men being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is encouraging men to use the language of rape to establish dominance over one another (”I’ll make you my bitch”). Rape culture is making rape a ubiquitous part of male-exclusive bonding. Rape culture is ignoring the cavernous need for men’s prison reform in part because the threat of being raped in prison is considered an acceptable deterrent to committing crime, and the threat only works if actual men are actually being raped.
Rape culture is 1…
Is It Misogynist to Believe That a Woman Is Unable to Do Much Harm to a Man By Raping Him?
Yahoo! Answers is not the font of all wisdom, as I think even most of its members know, but two years ago at least one interesting question was asked which proved controversial. The question was, “Is it MISOGYNIST to believe that women are unable to do much harm to a man by ‘raping’ him?”
Note the scare quotes.
Two members apparently got into an argument–the page has only two posts by the members, but they contain multiple edits and refer to each others’ arguments. This is how I think it went down:
Lol sup:
If a man claims to have been raped by a women, he’s trivializing rape. End of story.
Alpha Scorpii:
It is misandristic in that you are trivializing the feelings of men. I was watching a CNN show about a robbery/rape/multiple murder committed by 2 black men in Kansas. Five friends were at one of their condos when the men held them at gunpoint…
Beepers to Protect Children From Sexual Predators
South Korea has taken steps toward keeping their children safe from sexual predators. Each child was given a beeper with a GPS device installed. After atrocious attacks on minors, the government has decided to equip children with these beepers in order to warn police of any danger. The beepers will also activate surveillance cameras. An interesting use of technology as police protection, but how do you remind your child to remember his/her rape beeper every morning? The Himalayan Times reports:
Some 1,200 elementary school children in Anyang City, south of Seoul, will receive the beepers in a test run from October.
Authorities will then consider adopting the system nationwide, the Ministry of Public Administration and Security said.
Each child will be able to use their matchbox-sized beeper, fitted with GPS (global positioning device) technology, to activate any nearby cameras and alert parents and police via mobile phone.
The government has strengthened monitoring of elementary schools…
Why Are Beck, Limbaugh, And Co. Obsessed With Rape?
Media Matters points out the most popular conservative pundits’ weird love of rape metaphors. (Gays are raping us! Obama is raping us! So are illegal immigrants!) I’ll leave it to psychologists to figure out what this all means.
Swine & Dandy: What if we did as much to prevent rape as we do to prevent H1N1?
Science and Politics by Meg Stone:
I spent most of this past spring and summer rolling my eyes every time I heard a news story about the swine flu. Almost every day local reporters got hysterical about 5 or 10 or 20 confirmed cases. Entire schools closed in response to a handful of kids with fevers, and as if there were no war in Afghanistan, no economic crisis, and no other epidemics claiming ten times as many lives, newscasters talked about H1N1 (the proper name for swine flu) for hours.
I have a degree in public health and my work focuses on preventing rape and other acts of violence and supporting survivors in healing from abuse. When I see all the attention swine flu is getting, I’m jealous. Other than intermittent news stories about sex offenders on the loose or why women who accuse professional athletes of rape are lying, sexual violence rarely…
The Audacity of ‘Precious’
Is America ready for a movie about an obese Harlem girl raped and impregnated by her abusive father? Lynn Hirschberg tells us in the cover story of this week’s New York Times Magazine:
At the Cannes International Film Festival in May, in the loud, chaotic bar at the Martinez Hotel, Lee Daniels seemed, as he often does, both ecstatic and nervous. He jumped, he slumped, his mood changing from giddy to anxious. He was the only black man in the crowded bar, a fact that he mentioned and then brushed away. He was dressed unremarkably in a loose, untucked shirt and slouchy khaki pants, but his hair, an electric corona of six-inch fusilli-like spirals, demanded notice. Although Daniels will be 50 this year, he has the bouncy, mercurial energy of a child. The previous night, at the gala screening of his movie “Precious,” which he directed and helped produce, he greeted…
