March 2013
26 posts
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.
“Misogyny doesn’t exist anymore”
Steubenville: Silence is NOT Consent →
sparksummit.com
A lot of people seem to be up in arms about the Steubenville case, but many for the wrong reasons.
Why should guys, no matter how good they are at football, be allowed to treat any girl in such a despicable way? Where the hell were their moral compasses during the night in question? We’re not talking about one event - it was a series of assaults. At no point did they think they might be doing something wrong?
What about the following day when one of them got a text from a friend saying “you’re a felon”? What about when their coach said he’d clear it up for them? Did any of this make them think they might’ve done something wrong? Apparently not.
Well hopefully the rest of the world can learn something from them:
Silence is not consent.
You want something to happen, get enthusiastic consent: yes means yes. The absence of ‘no’ just won’t cut it.
It’s about bloody time we shifted our attitude from making the (potential) rape victim responsible from what happens to them, to making the (potential) rapist responsible and accountable for their own actions. The Don’t Be That Guy campaign in Canada worked more effectively than any victim-blaming campaign ever has done, so surely it makes sense to spread it?
The issue of drunkenness comes up as an important factor in this case: about whether the girl really did give consent but was too drunk to remember; about everyone joking about at the expense of the drunkest person at the party. Probably even about the boys being too drunk to understand what they were doing.
But the following from the NY Times is also important:
“The thing I found most disturbing about this is that there were other people around when this was going on,” William McCafferty, the Steubenville police chief, said of the events that unfolded. “Nobody had the morals to say, ‘Hey, stop it, that isn’t right’.”
While I don’t agree that it’s the most disturbing thing (that would surely be the rape itself?) I am astounded at the way witnesses have attempted to cover it up or pretend they knew nothing about it. I don’t know how those people can carry on their daily lives ignoring the fact that they did nothing to help this girl before she was raped, while it was happening, or in the aftermath.
Wales v England U20 Rugby
15 - 28
Sucky final scoreline, but great to see a lot of talent soon ready to come through to the senior team.
The U20 team need to learn the same lesson as the senior team though: keep the ball in hand. I fully believe they could’ve scored a try in the last 10 minutes if they were patient and kept driving forward.
“This is the first time I have had to buy a Mother’s Day gift since her anorexia. Not easy when one of the things she got a lot of enjoyment from was cooking. In fact she still does, but if I buy anything food related, I feel like I’m saying “just bloody eat something and put on some weight!”
—
I realise the anorexia is something she’s going through and I’m not trying to turn it into my problem. I just worry about her a lot and have no idea how to help, or if I even can.
I settled on perfume. Completely unrelated to food and one size fits all.
Play
I'm trying to make a point to a friend. Reblog this if you'd be okay with your child coming up to you and saying "I think I was born as the wrong gender."
Remind men of rape; remind Muslims of 9/11
If women ought to remind men of rape all the time, then should white people constantly remind Muslims of 9/11? Rape is a horrible crime, and we remind men of it all the time, because after all, every man is a potential rapist. Likewise, terrorism is a horrible crime, so shouldn’t we be reminding Muslims of 9/11? Every Muslim is a potential terrorist when you think about it! If we encourage Muslims to talk about terrorism more openly, then perhaps they’ll understand our view, and stop carrying out terrorism?
As a bonus we could remind Muslim men of 9/11 AND rape in the same sitting. This would kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.
Before anyone accuses me of being racist, I’d just like to say that I follow this blog http://mehreenkasana.tumblr.com/post/42459100070
Mehreen is Punjabi and OMFG she’s HAAAAWT. She’s also intelligent and frequently hilarious!
Here’s another photo just ‘cos
By that logic we should also remind all Americans that they could potentially be the next Timothy McVeigh, all Northern Irish people that they could potentially be ILNA terrorists, all Basque people that they could potentially be ETA terrorists, etc.
I disagree with the statement that men should be reminded of rape all the time. Some men understand rape and they’re just fine (as long as they’re not also committing rape). Some don’t, and they need to be educated.
And it isn’t limited to men: some women don’t properly understand rape.
And why should it only be women reminding men about rape?
And men get raped too. And women rape.
Returning to the ‘I’m not a racist’ point of the post, Muslim is a religious identity not a race. Muslims can also be white, so what to do about them is a bit of a problem. Some white people have a tendency to view all people with a Middle-Eastern skin tone as Muslims, despite the fact they could be Jewish, or even Christian. White people might not even be able to tell the difference between a Middle-Eastern skin tone, a Mediterranean European skin tone, and an Indian subcontinent skin tone.
