A while back, I wrote about the effects of the passive voice and agent deletion in media reporting of sexual violence, in Passive Aggression: Foregrounding the Object.
An article in the UK Telegraph hit me between the eyes today: Four out of 10 rape victims intoxicated.
Nearly four out of 10 female rape victims had been drinking before the assault, Home Office research revealed yesterday.
[...]
Alcohol appeared to be most significant in assaults by strangers.
[...]
The overall conviction rate for rape among a total of 676 cases across the eight areas was six per cent – the same as the figure for England and Wales.
Some police forces were more successful at reducing the likelihood that a victim would withdraw their complaint, the research found.
I thought I’d have a go at re-activising it:
“Forty percent of rapists target women and girls who have been drinking before they sexually assault them, Home Office research revealed yesterday.
[...]
Men who raped women and girls they didn’t know were particularly likely to rape drunk victims.
[...]
Some police forces were more successful at increasing the likelihood that a victim would withdraw her complaint, the research found.”
Does it have a different effect, to you?
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Filed under: language, obstreperation, peeves, sexual violence
Missed this while I was away, and some of you may have already seen the post linked at Alas, A Blog!, but the post is still open: Kim at Larvatus Prodeo is on a comments drive to raise money for NGOs working to educate communities away from the traditions of female genital cutting.
For every comment on this post which discusses the issue seriously without turning it into a political football, attributing motives to bloggers or indulging in disputation about religion, politics, culture wars, or clashes of or within civilisations, I will donate two dollars to The Foundation for Women’s Health, Research and Development up to a maximum of two hundred dollars.
My hope in doing so is that that money will make more difference to eradicating FGM in Egypt and other countries than two hundred loud denunciations in Australia would. The Foundation also works to eradicate forced child marriages and fistula.
The post is currently up to 90 comments, not all of which are substantive.
Filed under: activism/charity, sexual violence
We’ve posted a bit about the mangy asshats who think that certain women and girls deserve to be raped – fat women, for example, or preteen girls who wear particular types of underwear.
And we’ve posted about Nice Guy(tm) sexual entitlement, and the femiblogosphere has discussed and been subjected to comments from men who think they oughtta get a special cookie because they could have raped someone once, but chose not to.
Now, research out of the Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault, as reported in the Age, found that nearly all of their participants felt that the mitigating factors for rape include:
- a woman being drunk
- a woman wearing “revealing” clothing
- the woman and the rapist having had sex in the past
- the rapist being a “nice guy”
- the rapist being “sexually frustrated”
Other recent research by ACSSA has found, for example, that 44% of men agree that “Rape results from men not being able to control their need for sex”.
I really wish this was news, but sadly, it isn’t, not by a long chalk. Outrage fatigue? I don’t know. I still feel a burning anger. But it’s more of an “I’ve been smouldering for years” underground-coal-fire anger than a blazing-petrol-tanker anger. What do we do next? How do we fight this global woman-hate?
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Filed under: obstreperation, sexual violence
Via IBTP, buried in a long stoush about bigotry against children and whether under-18s are subhuman:
To passer-by, crying child’s ear-piercing rings of abuse.
Marilyn Johnson thought so when she heard a girl’s screams in a Wichita Wal-Mart on Sunday — and she reported it to police.
[...]
“This little girl was about 5 years old and was crying her eyes out,” Johnson said. “Her face was beet red, and she was screaming and coughing and saying things like, ‘I don’t want this! It hurts! Please stop!’ She was grabbing her ears so the adults couldn’t touch them.”
Johnson attempted to intervene verbally, and when she was rebuffed, she called 911. She was told by police to butt out, and banned from Wal-Mart. The article continues:
Ear piercing has long been the subject of controversy among parents. For some, piercing an infant or young child’s ears has deep-rooted cultural or religious meaning. Others pierce babies’ ears because of family traditions, or simply because they like the look or want to more easily identify the baby as a girl.
Because the worst possible fate for an infant or child in our society is to have random strangers mistake them for another gender, it is necessary to poke holes in screaming children and adorn them accordingly. Creepy.
~~
Creepy number two comes via the Kate Harding comments section: American Apparel “Intimates” section. I was in two minds about linking this, so be warned – I don’t know whether these photos could trigger someone, but they might.
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Filed under: bigotry, obstreperation, sexual violence
In today’s “YayRape!”-judge news, a judge in the UK has offered up a very light sentence to a pedophile who raped a ten-year-old girl. Why? Because of what she was wearing.
In the latest case, Oxford Crown Court heard harrowing details of the assault on the 10-year-old. She was attacked in a park in South Oxfordshire by Fenn and his accomplice Darren Wright, 34, on October 14 last year.
Fenn removed all her clothes and raped her, then Wright took her to his home and sexually assaulted her.
Yet Judge Hall said the case was exceptional because the “young woman” had been wearing a frilly bra and thong.
The judge went on to elaborate:
“It is quite clear she is a very disturbed child and a very needy child and she is a sexually precocious child. She liked to dress provocatively.”
Apparently Judge Julian Hall has a history of child-rape apology.
Filed under: obstreperation, sexual violence
I said this in comments on a previous post regarding the NT Indigenous Emergency Plan, and I want to expand on the theme, as it feels like some electoral scales may have fallen from my eyes.
I really want all the political actors working against Howard to Not F*ck Their Response Up. He’s made the big bold public move, this is a chance for Labor, Greens and Democrats to loudly assert and credibly back up totally defensible claims that a Labor Government and a Senate where Dems/Greens hold the balance of power is the best way for the Federal Government to best implement and be held accountable for the actions required to effectively attack the need to protect these vulnerable children.
With the current composition of the Federal legislature, Howard’s 6 month plan is pretty much a done deal. The extra police and troops will be on the ground, the restrictions on grog and porn will be in place, the health checks will begin and the indigenous lands entry permit system will be at least partially dismantled. The question is, how do we make sure that it’s not the Liberals still calling the shots at the end of the 6 months, so that the necessary measures can be continued and the counterproductive measures can be curtailed?
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Filed under: Politics, authoritarianism, indigenous, racism, sexual violence
Andrew Bartlett has the best response I’ve read so far, with David Tiley’s a close second.
Bartlett is hopeful that despite understandable cynicism about the effectiveness of measures proposed with such an intersection of cynical politicising and inadequate planning or resourcing, that the PM’s initial draconian measures might provide a “circuit breaker” which will have some immediate alleviating effect on the child sexual abuse crisis, and leave a foundation upon which a more comprehensive plan of attack in line with the Wild/Anderson report can be implemented.
Bartlett does sound a note of warning about the current attacks accusing those of us questioning the efficacy of the plan as it stands of just not caring about the abused children: good motives do not necessarily make good policy. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Politics, authoritarianism, indigenous, sexual violence
Fancy driving a round trip of 700km for a forensic medical examination after being raped?
That’s what rape victims in central NSW are facing due to NSW Health’s refusal to pay the standard call-out rate for medical practitioners who are qualified to run “rape kit” tests on victims of sexual assault. The qualified sexual assault medicine practitioner resigned last year (after several months of providing the service for free with no response to complaints about inadequate payments) and thus patients now have to go to Canberra to have the forensic examination performed.
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Filed under: Politics, health, sexual violence
Or, as Kim has named it, Tampa 2007.
Prime Minister John Howard has announced a sweeping authoritarian plan of managing indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, with the stated purpose of combatting the horrifying rates of child sexual abuse amongst the indigenous population. Unlike the total beat-up of Tampa, there is a genuine problem to be addressed with respect to sexual abuse, but Howard’s announced plans reek of the Something Approach:
Something Must Be Done.
This is Something We Could Do.
Let’s Do That Thing Then.
Certainly, Mr Howard’s plan is Doing Something. But is it the most effective solution to the problem?
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Filed under: Politics, authoritarianism, indigenous, law, moral panics, racism, sexual violence
