Feminism Friday: Rape Jokes Aren't Funny

Late, I know, and not much from me: I'm just pointing you at these three posts below from Melissa McEwan at Shakesville.

Trauma-Trigger Alert: Melissa describes her own rape in harrowing detail in order to point out how rape is not funny, and although the discussion threads start out thoughtful and interesting, they end up invaded by shockjock fans who troll the thread with graphic threats of rape directed against Melissa and other commenters.

Aren't we feminists lucky, we get some cyberbullying to go with the defense of rape jokes as well!

Melissa has decided not to delete them in order to show just what sort of threats these jerks perceive as "jokes" that we "need to get a sense of humour" about.


Rape Is Hilarious
Rape Is Hilarious Part II
Rape Is Not Only Hilarious; It's No Big Deal

Cyberbullying:
Kate Harding has a great post in response to the cyberbullying. Let those folks read it who claim that men bloggers get flamed and threatened just as much and as creepily as women bloggers. Suuurrrre they do.

As usual for Feminism Friday, feel free to leave a link to recent Feminism Friday posts from other blogs in comments - your own or others.

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Feminism Friday: Safety vs. Patriarchal Overprotection

Reader Justin wrote and asked me for advice on an ethical balance problem, and with his permission I quote his email:

I have a question which has been bothering me for some time, and which may/may not be worth addressing on the site. In any case, its something I don't feel precisely comfortable asking my close friends, but it does bother me. Not that you have any obligation to spend time assuaging my liberal guilt, but worth a try.
. .
I'm a male college student from the Midwest and I've been self-identifying as feminist (or feminist ally) for quite awhile. Through activism and academia, I'm pretty familiar and comfortable with feminist thought. About a year ago, my best friend--who attends another Midwestern college--was raped at knifepoint by two strangers who attacked her as she walked to her dorm one night. As I've attempted to help her work through the fallout of that experience, I've grown very protective (read paranoid) of my female friends. Particularly, I feel like I should refuse to let them walk home by themselves at night, and do my best to convince them to let me
accompany them after parties, etc., which usually isn't a problem.

Still, sometimes I feel a bit patriarchal and condescending, and I recognize that discouraging women from walking at night is a sort of variation on the whole "asking for it" theme, shifting the blame from the victim to the victimizer. My question is, how do I find an ethical balance between protecting my friends from often underestimated dangers, and avoiding stereotype reinforcing paternalism. Obviously, in a sense my personal stake in this issue is minor compared to the actual threat of sexual violence, but I would still like to know how best to handle these situations. . .

Thanks for listening to my ramblings; any thoughts you have would be appreciated, though certainly not demanded. . .

Now, as I mailed back to Justin, I had two immediate responses come to mind.

1. although your protectiveness is noble, as I'm sure you're aware most sexual assaults are date/acquaintance/partner rape, and you can't be there for that. So the utility of your protectiveness is, through no fault of your own, limited.

2. the greater work to be done is challenging sexist attitudes in men around you when women aren't there. It's a long term effort, with no short term fanfares of triumph, but as more and more profeminist men undertake to challenge misogyny it's more likely to make a difference in the end.

Now, while I was waiting for Friday to roll around, Kate Harding posted her terrific essay that I quoted in the FAQ: What Can I Do For Feminism?, which addressed my #2 above.

As to #1, I certainly wouldn't want to minimise the fear, pain and distress of stranger rape, and I don't have the personal experience to back it up, but I'm sure from what I've read of others' experiences that the fear, pain and distress can only be multiplied when the rapist is someone known and trusted, and there's sadly little the Justins of our world can do about untrustworthy deceitful men.

EXCEPT: as said above, don't reinforce their casual misogyny about crazy bitches who are asking for it.

You might not know which of the men around you are untrustworthy deceitful misogynists, but guaranteed that some of them are, and if blokes who would never bully or harm a woman play along with the crazy-bitch jokes just for a laugh, some of those men laughing are getting their misogynistic violence fantasies reinforced by what they perceive as acceptance from other men.

Justin, thanks so much for writing.

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Feminism Friday

I haven't managed to come up with a particular Feminism Friday post myself this week. Luckily I came across a couple to recommend:

A specific Feminism Friday post from Erimentha on melding Western feminist theory with Indian feminist action: Here and Now

A serendipitous find - a thoughtful post and thread from an Anabaptist blog on "The Problem with Feminism"

Updated to Add: Feminism and Rape - two posts from Feministe that discuss why rape victims are subject to so much more scrutiny and skepticism than victims of other crimes, and why so many people are comfortable with failing to distinguish between accusations that cannot be proven in court and false accusations from lying women.

The first is a 2003 post from Lauren, written in response to the press about the Kobe Bryant case, relating how she was raped as a teenager and why she didn't tell anyone at the time, much less report it to police.

The second is a post from Jill, in response to the dropping of charges against the three charged men in the Duke rape case. Warning - the thread is already 200+ comments long, and the anti-feminists are out in force.

Blog Against Sexual Violence Day

was April 5, and I missed announcing it here. Hopefully lots of you already found links to it elsewhere, and I'm sure that if there's a post just hanging around inside you waiting to be written that it won't matter if it's a week late.

Click on the image below to go to abyss2hope's blog where she rounds up the posts.



(via)

Women online: coping with abuse, threats and cyberstalking

There's been a lot of discussion of the threats made against Kathy Sierra online over the last week.

Many other women online know how it feels to be objectified and have your arguments trivialised or mocked because of your gender, and a substantial number also know about graphic threats of sexualised violence and brutal death. So what to do about it? There is no one answer that is right for every woman who feels threatened, but there are some general guidelines.

BlogHer have a couple of excellent posts: Today is Stop Cyberbullying Day and a post from last year: What do you do when you're cyberstalked, taunted or abused online?.

The Kathy Sierra threat situation is one of the top stories on Technorati, so chances that your favourite blogger has written something about it are fairly high. I myself have written a long piece about Sierra's experience in the light of other cyberharassment incidents, and what it means for enforcing commenting standards in online forums, that I've posted at both my own blog Hoyden About Town and Aussie political group blog Larvatus Prodeo.

In general I agree with the advice from BlogHer that the best response is to ignore them online, deleting their comments from discussions, while saving all their comments and emails in case they are needed for demonstrating a pattern of escalating harassment to law enforcement at a later date. Ensuring that your own site has a clearly laid out comments policy that is strictly adhered to ensures that anarchic escalations at least don't dominate your own online space. What advice do others have?

FAQ: -What’s wrong with suggesting that women take precautions to prevent being raped?

Updated 04May07

Short answer: because it puts the onus on women not to get themselves raped, rather than on men not to do the raping; in short, it blames the victim.
(from Grendelkhan, in comments, emphasis added)

Introductory:

Blaming the Victim
Melissa McEwan (Shakespeare's Sister): Dear Ladies: Please Stop Getting Yourselves Raped

Key quote:

Left to my own devices, I never would have been raped. The rapist was really the key component to the whole thing. I was sober; hardly scantily clad (another phrase appearing once in the article), I was wearing sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt; I was at home; my sexual history was, literally, nonexistent—I was a virgin; I struggled; I said no. There have been times since when I have been walking home, alone, after a few drinks, wearing something that might have shown a bit of leg or cleavage, and I wasn't raped. The difference was not in what I was doing. The difference was the presence of a rapist.

JoAnne Schmitz (Jupiter9): It's not the empty street that causes rape

The question is, why do the warnings not help? Is the warning not strong enough? I don't think so. I don't know any women who don't consider rape a realistic threat to them, and I don't know any women who never alter their behavior because of a fear of rape.

Well, the obvious answer: Rape keeps happening because rapists keep doing what they're doing. Because it works. So how can what they're doing work if we have all these strong warnings about?

The warnings women get are misleading. They leave out the acts of the rapist himself. They focus on the situation. They also may focus on the "kind of man" the potential rapist is. If he's a friend of a friend, or your uncle, he's "safe." It's the stranger who's the threat.

And we know that's not true.

Men against rapists:
ross (The Talent Show): I am not my cock

Clarifying Concepts:

Rapists are rarely Strangers
ifritah (GROWL): Facts and Figures - a 2005 post citing studies several years older then, however patterns have not changed much.

Stranger rape and sexual assault is only one of several possible types of sexual violence. Here's the reported percentages according to National Health and Social Life Survey:

- Someone with whom the respondent was in love: 46%
- Someone that the respondent knew well: 22%
- Acquaintance: 19%
- Spouse: 9%
- Stranger: 4%

(Rathus, Nevid and Fichner-Rathus, 565)

Consent:
Amanda Marcotte (Pandagon): Real Consent Manifesto

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FAQ: Isn't feminism just "victim" politics?

updated 01May07

No. Women as a class are subjected to real hardship and oppression just because they are women. This is unjust. Pointing out that women are disproportionately victimised is accurate analysis, not "playing victim".

Witchy-Woo on the "will you women just stop whining" subtext:

I think that those who would rather avoid acknowledging the global injustices that women face, those who deem themselves successful in the struggle, those who find it easier to accuse us of ‘whining’ rather than critically examining their own role in those injustices when we speak about them, are further enabled in their deliberate ignorance by the “you can help yourself” school of thought. Individual solutions for collective problems don’t work.

Not everyone can help themselves. Should we stop speaking about that because it’s percieved as ‘whining’? Many, many women actually are victims - and many more still are survivors - should we, as feminists, really be saying “shit happens, get over it - I have” when, globally, the making of women as victims (and survivors) is systemic and political? I’m thinking, not.

I’m thinking the “stop whining” response is one that comes from those who’d like to close us down, shut us up, make us be quiet.

Read the whole thing.

Kevin T. Keith posted the following list from the UN about the worldwide traditions of impunity for violence committed against women:

• Violence against women is the most common but least punished crime in the world.

• It is estimated that between 113 million and 200 million women are demographically “missing.” They have been the victims of infanticide (boys are preferred to girls) or have not received the same amount of food and medical attention as their brothers and fathers.

• The number of women forced or sold into prostitution is estimated worldwide at anywhere between 700,000 and 4,000,000 per year. Profits from sex slavery are estimated at seven to twelve billion US dollars per year.

• Globally, women between the age of fifteen and forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die as a result of male violence than through cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war combined.

• At least one out of every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Usually, the abuser is a member of her own family or someone known to her. Domestic violence is the largest form of abuse of women worldwide, irrespective of region, culture, ethnicity, education, class and religion.

• It is estimated that more than two million girls are genitally mutilated per year, a rate of one girl every fifteen seconds.

• Systematic rape is used as a weapon of terror in many of the world’s conflicts. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000 women in Rwanda were raped during the 1994 genocide.

• Studies show the increasing links between violence against women and HIV and demonstrate that HIV-infected women are more likely to have experienced violence, and that victims of violence are at higher risk of HIV infection.

KTK (Sufficent Scruples) then analysed how sexism leads to inequities in healthcare provision for women.

Ginmar (A View From A Broad) wraps the whole issue up in a gloriously clarified rant: One Simple Thing

Society is based on the notion that women are things to be used up and discarded. Therefore, while it is possible to work within a framework of society, one has to be very careful as to how one goes about it. Feminism is nothing less than an insurgency in society, disturbing the very framework of our lives. You have to brace yourself for hostility and hatred when you're an avowed feminist. You're disturbing people who've never much thought about women except when those damned women didn't do what they were supposed to.

There's a lot more to read on women's oppression. It really exists.