The War on Women

[elfismiles]

Dead Girls Sell (trigger warning?)
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=36002

[Allegro]

College Students Cheer Sex Abuse
A freshman week chant shows how deep rape culture goes.
Salon, Mary Elizabeth Williams | September 10, 2013

Consider this your humorless, offended feminist scolding of the day. Student leaders at Halifax’s Saint Mary’s University are being disciplined after an Instagram video posted on Monday revealed them leading an orientation week chant extolling the joys of sexual assault. And disciplined they should be.

The brief clip shows a crowd of students, male and female, chanting, “SMU boys, we like them young. Y is for your sister. O is for oh so tight. U is for underage. N is for no consent. G is for grab that ass.” And W is for WTF? The CBC reports that students say the chant has been part of frosh week activities “for years.” But student union president Jared Perry has apologized for it and vowed, “It will not continue in the future.” University spokesman Steve Proctor adds that all 80 student leaders involved in orientation week and three student union executive members will now take sensitivity training classes. The executive group will also attend a conference on consent and violence.

Is the punishment too severe? Is the video, as the CBC News breathlessly described it, truly “shocking” and “unbelievable”? Most of us with functioning brain cells are capable of grasping that a bunch of kids standing around chanting something stupid is not equivalent to rape — and if you know anything about college students, it’s certainly not “unbelievable” that they’d taunt your sister. Yes, the chant is gross and offensive, but what makes it a big deal is that it’s part of a much wider, more demoralizing problem. And yes, this is the part where I deploy the phrase “rape culture.”

The disgust over stuff like this isn’t about trying to be a big buzzkill or being oversensitive or gee, can’t you take a joke? It’s about the little ways we as both men and women are chipped away at by exactly the kind of mob mentality that the video displays. It’s the unthinking acceptance, the reinforcement of the notion that women exist to be used sexually. It’s about signing off on male aggression and female passivity. It’s about making that the norm, so much the norm that you wind up with girls cheering along for it.

I seriously doubt that anybody’s ever become a rapist because he heard a college cheer. But I also know we have an undeniable and serious problem with sexual assault at the university level. Just last month, several Vanderbilt students were charged with raping an unconscious 21-year-old student in a dorm. As many as 20 percent of female college students say they’ve been “forced to submit to sexual intercourse against their will.” And when they speak out, the consequences can be dire – for the victims. Earlier this year, a University of North Carolina student was sent to her school’s Honor Court for speaking out about her rape, or as the school put it, “disruptive or intimidating behavior.” (The charges were later dismissed.)

If you really want to talk about “intimidating behavior,” you’ve got to look at these little aggressions, these dumb chants, these stupid wisecracks. They seem small but they add up. They pollute the air and make the unacceptable seem OK. And that is why we strident hysterical killjoys have a problem with them. Student Lewis Rendell, a board member of the Saint Mary’s University Women’s Centre, told the Star this week, “It’s not just a university problem, and I can’t stress that enough. It’s obviously a societal problem, that’s manifesting itself at St. Mary’s right now.”

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub.

[Project Willow]

8 Year Old Dies on Wedding Night
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/sep/11/yemen-child-bride-dies-wedding

Arwa Othman, head of Yemen's House of Folklore and a leading rights campaigner, said the girl, identified only as Rawan, was married to a 40-year-old late last week in the town of Meedi in Hajjah province, north-western Yemen.

"On the wedding night and after intercourse, she suffered from bleeding and uterine rupture which caused her death," Othman said. "They took her to a clinic but the medics couldn't save her life."

...........
Boyfriend brands his initials into woman's genitals
http://lasvegas.cbslocal.com/2013/09/13/man-allegedly-branded-his-initials-on-girlfriends-vaginal-area/

Court records show Jackson then used a branding tool and a butane torch to burn the initials “CJ” onto her vaginal area.

Police say she didn’t come forward with her story until last month because she was terrified. The victim explained to police that Jackson bragged about branding other women in the past and said he did it to her because she belonged to him.

..........
Decal for your pick-up truck

[LilyPatToo]

My senator, Barbara Boxer, spoke on ending gender-based violence:

Boxer Delivers Keynote Address on Ending Gender-Based Violence

Senator Highlights Ongoing Efforts to Combat Violence Against Women Internationally and in the Armed Forces
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today delivered the keynote address at “A Call to Action: Taking a Stand Against Gender-Based Violence,” a special event hosted by The New Republic and CARE, where she underscored the need to end violence against women at home and abroad.

One in three women worldwide will be a survivor of gender-based violence in her lifetime. Senator Boxer has been at the forefront of efforts to combat violence against women and girls, and chairs the first Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee that focuses specifically on global women’s issues.

This week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved the Malala Yousafzai Scholarship Act, legislation Senator Boxer introduced to expand scholarship opportunities for disadvantaged women in Pakistan. The bill is named after Malala Yousafzai, a 16-year-old Pakistani girl who has been an outspoken advocate for girls’ education in Pakistan and who gained international attention for her blog documenting the Taliban’s crackdown on the rights of women and girls.

In May, Senator Boxer joined Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) in introducing the Military Justice Improvement Act to address the epidemic of sexual assault in the military by removing the decision to prosecute these crimes from the chain of command.

The following are her remarks as prepared for delivery:

In Okinawa, a 19-year-old Marine named Stacey Thompson was drugged and brutally raped by a male Sergeant from her own unit.

She told me how her rapist abandoned her at 4 a.m. the next morning in front of a local night club, forcefully pushing her out of the car and leaving her alone on the street.

Stacey made the courageous decision to report the rape to her superiors, but her allegations were swept under the rug. While her attacker was allowed to leave the Marine Corps without ever facing trial, Stacey became the target of a drug investigation stemming from the night of her rape, and was separated from the Marine Corps with an Other Than Honorable Discharge.

Fourteen years later, Stacey still has to sleep with the lights on. But she bravely joined me at a press conference to speak out about the injustice she faced – and to demand justice for other survivors of military sexual assault.

And she is not alone.

On the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, a 20-year-old Native American woman named Leslie Ironroad had just moved to town and went to a party nearby.

By the next morning, Leslie had been brutally raped and locked in a bathroom. At the hospital, she told the police the names of her attackers.

Leslie died a week later. No one investigated her rape. No one at the party was even questioned. And no one was held accountable for her death.

And she is not alone.

In Pakistan, 15 masked Taliban gunmen attacked a school bus of young girls, and shot a 15-year-old in the head and neck. She was rushed to the hospital with critical injuries to her brain and skull. She was unconscious and breathing with the help of a ventilator. Many feared she would not survive.

It wasn’t an accident. They targeted her because she had dared to speak out against the Taliban’s vicious crackdown on women’s rights and education in Pakistan. She had dared to dream of becoming a doctor and wanted to give a voice to the millions of women and girls like her in her country. But the Taliban couldn’t tolerate that.

They wanted to silence her voice permanently.

Of course, the world now knows her name—Malala. Incredibly—after many surgeries—she made a full recovery and intensified her fight for education for all.

But, tragically the Taliban has continued its reign of terror, bombing schools and slaughtering young schoolgirls on the streets.

And that is why this event is so important – because we must all call attention to gender- based violence wherever it occurs and raise up the voices of women who are too often ignored or silenced.

Sometimes it can feel too painful to hear their cries.

I’m going to be very honest. Even though I have championed women’s rights and women’s equality my entire career, there have been times in the past when I closed my eyes because what I saw was just too heartbreaking.

But no more. None of us can afford to look away any longer.

Not when 35 percent of women around the globe experience physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetimes.

Not when one in six women in the United States will be the victim of an attempted or completed rape.

Not when the Defense Department estimates that there were 26,000 sexual assaults in the U.S. military last year alone – and only 10 percent were even reported, let alone prosecuted.

And, no, we cannot afford to look away when one in three Native American women will be raped in her lifetime.

All too often, we remain silent – even when we know that there are changes that can be made to protect women like Stacey, like Leslie, and like Malala.

Recently, the United Nations released a study on men and violence in Asian and Pacific countries.

The results were staggering. Of those polled in China, 23 percent of men admitted to committing at least one rape. In Papua New Guinea, the figure was an incomprehensible 61 percent.

The most common reason given for why the men committed rape was that they believed they were entitled to sex, including from their wives or other romantic partners. The second most common reason was because they were bored or looking for some kind of entertainment. The third most common reason was out of anger or a desire to inflict punishment.

The overwhelming majority of these men did not face any legal consequences for their actions.

This clearly illustrates why it is so important that we work for change on a number of fronts. We must not only shine a light on these atrocities, but work to change attitudes, cultures, and laws.

This week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved a bill I wrote and named after Malala.

This bill pays tribute to Malala’s vision for her country by reinforcing the U.S. commitment to girl’s education in Pakistan.

Specifically, the bill ensures that 50 percent of scholarships the United States provides in Pakistan are awarded to women.

I hope you will help me ensure that Congress passes S.120 to send a message to the Taliban that we not only reject their vision for women, but that we plan to directly counter them by sending more girls to school.

In the coming weeks, I plan to re-introduce the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA). We are working hard to build a bipartisan coalition for this bill, because this should not be a partisan issue. I hope you will help me with this as well.

That legislation codifies in law the establishment of the United States Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues and the Global Women’s Issues Office at the State Department.

IVAWA would also require the State Department to identify countries with high levels of violence against women and to work to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to prevent and respond to violence.

I am very proud of the work of the Obama Administration—including Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry—on this front, but I think it is critical that we pass IVAWA to ensure ending violence against women internationally remains a priority.

We need to continue to push these issues.

We cannot fail to speak out about the many failures that cause 14 million girls to be forced into child marriage each and every year—including the 15-year-old in Afghanistan who was tortured and imprisoned by her 30-year-old husband and his family.

We cannot stay silent in the face of a violent gang rape of a 5-year-old girl in Pakistan, or against the continuing atrocities against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

That is why I am so pleased with the work that the UN is doing through UN Women and with the work of the United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict.

I proudly supported both the establishment of UN Women and the Special Representative position.

Because if we fail to shine a light on these atrocities and to push for meaningful reforms, we are complicit in allowing this violence to continue.

We must also work to address the epidemic of military sexual assault right here in the United States.

That is why I have partnered with Senators Gillibrand, Collins and a bipartisan coalition of my colleagues to write legislation that strikes at the very heart of this issue.

As some of you may know, 90 percent of all military sexual assaults go unreported.

And we know why—because victims of this heinous crime are afraid they will face retaliation or even threats to their safety, and they don’t trust that justice will be served.

Victims of sexual assault know the truth: the military justice system gives commanders with limited legal knowledge the power to decide whether these cases are tried in court.

Our legislation would put these complex legal decisions where they should be: in the hands of high-ranking, trained, independent military prosecutors so that the decision to go to trial is fair and objective and outside the chain of command.

Survivors of military sexual assault have told us that they have lost faith in the military justice system.

That is why we need real change—because our brave service men and women deserve more than empty promises, they deserve a system where justice is actually served.

In February, Congress passed bipartisan legislation reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)—recognizing that all women deserve protections from violence.

VAWA strengthens critical protections and services for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. It also includes important improvements in how our nation responds to violence against Native Americans, LGBT individuals, and college students – something we accomplished despite incomprehensible opposition from some in Congress.

Specifically, VAWA gives Tribal courts the authority to prosecute cases of domestic violence against Native American women on reservations by non-Native men—an authority that did not exist until now. This new law ensures that Native American women can no longer be raped with impunity.

Those of us who are so blessed with voices and the power to be heard must speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves.

As we gather at this event today, somewhere there is a little girl who worries whether she will be safe on her way to school. Somewhere there is a woman scared to leave her home because she fears that she will be raped or disfigured with acid. Somewhere there is a soldier who worries that she will be attacked in her barracks – not by the enemy, but by someone in her own unit.

Albert Einstein once said, “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”

Let us directly challenge these evils. Let us raise up the voices of the victims. Let us answer their calls for help. And, every day, in ways big and small, let us make their struggles our own.

[KUAN]

amen to that.

[Allegro]

Afghan Women Risk Lives to Write Poems
Truthdig, Natasha Hakimi | Sep 25, 2013

Although some female poets in Afghanistan have been killed by their male family members for penning poetry, many see it as an outlet to express their inner and outer worlds during a time of great national turmoil. Several organizations have formed to collect their work anonymously to keep them from danger, as well as teach several to read since 88 percent of Afghan women are illiterate.

The literary society Mirman Baheer operates covertly, allowing poets to meet in person and recite their work on a radio program created in conjunction with the Afghan Women’s Writing Project. AWWP was founded four years ago to promote poetry written by women, taking care to omit any information that could lead to their identification, as well as run creative writing workshops in various parts of the war-torn country.

Many female Afghan poets choose to write two-line poems called landays. These often rage-filled verses stem from a tradition of women who would recite them when gathered together. The news organization Dowser Media discusses how this age-old form is being used in modern day Afghanistan:


The tradition of landays provides some level of anonymity for women because they are collective. They are recited and shared rather than attributed to a single poet…They can explore rage, sarcasm, irony, loss, separation and desire. Many of the poems are humorous, filled with bawdy sexual imagery.

Whatever the subject, a landay lilts from word to word in a short lullaby with scathing, layered meaning. These poems come from a long legacy of Afghan women’s literature.

“The Afghan woman poet predates the American or European female poet,” says Zohra Saed, an Afghan-American poet living in New York City. “Consider the poet queen Rabia Balkhi.” Legend has it this 11th century Afghan used her last drop of blood to write poems.

“Afghan women’s poetry is unique because it must respond to create change,” says Saed. “Within our communities and also to change outside perceptions. It is the poetry of witness, of trauma, of memory and of struggle to be seen as individuals.”

...Today, Afghan literature is fragmented by linguistic, cultural and geographic divides. Some of the world’s most prominent Afghan writers live outside their fatherland and write in English. Many female writers in Afghanistan come from the urban elite, often educated in western universities. Poems by women in rural Afghanistan are rarely published. Groups like the Afghan Women’s Writing Project and the Poetry Foundation are working to bridge this divide.

And while organizations try their best to disseminate these women’s powerful poems, the dangers they face for their art are relentless. Just this year, a member of Mirman Baheer was abused by her brothers for writing poetry and chose self-immolation as a protest to their brutality. Here’s a landay she used to recite:

“You sold me to an old man, Father.
May God destroy your home, I was your daughter.”

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/10 ... -comments/

Rick Perry Dismisses His Wife’s Abortion Comments, Tries To Explain What She Really Believes

Rick Perry Dismisses His Wife’s Abortion Comments, Tries To Explain What She Really Believes

On Saturday, Anita Perry, the wife of longtime Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), raised some eyebrows after she appeared to voice her support for a woman’s right to choose — a position at odds with her husband’s staunch opposition to abortion even in cases of rape, incest or where childbirth threatens the life of the mother.

But rather than Mrs. Perry clarifying her opinion or explaining that she misspoke, the Governor took it upon himself to dismiss his wife’s statements and explain to a crowd of reporters what she really thinks about abortion.

“From time to time we’ll stick the wrong word in the wrong place, and you pounce upon it,” said Perry during an appearance in New Jersey alongside Republican senate candidate Steve Lonegan, who is running against Newark’s Democratic Mayor Cory Booker.

But Anita Perry did not offer up a simple, one-word answer when asked about her views on a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. During a televised interview at the Texas Tribune Festival, Perry responded to a question about the ongoing war on women by explaining that while she herself opposes abortion, she recognizes the right that other women have to pursue one as well.

“I see it as a woman’s right,” she said. “If they want to do that, that is their decision, they have to live with that decision. It is not mine, it is not something that I would say for them.” Moderator Evan Smith, the editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune, was quick to offer Perry an opportunity to clarify her remarks, but instead she expressed some hesitation about the restrictive anti-abortion laws signed by her husband and again explained that abortion was a woman’s right, “just like it’s a man’s right if he wants to have some kind of procedure.”

Anita Perry’s comments align her more closely with fellow Texan and State Sen. Wendy Davis (D) than with her husband when it comes to abortion. Davis famously launched a late-night filibuster in an attempt to block the Republican legislature from passing a bill that would outlaw all abortions for women who are more than 20 weeks pregnant. The bill was delayed, but ultimately passed and was signed into law by Gov. Perry in July. When asked by Smith if her husband was right to sign the law, Anita explained that it was “really difficult” for her.

[Allegro]

[seemslikeadream]

Walt Disney The Story Of Menstruation

[Sounder]

I am finding that authors, who get deeply into (almost) any given ‘belief’ set and yet come through the other side, becoming cogent critics of their former belief set, are some of the most valuable assets to the critical thinking community.

This fellow, an ex or former skeptic by the name of Stephen Bond, featured in a previous RI thread titled: why I am no longer a skeptic, does a sharp analysis of objectification of women and its reinforcement through advertising.

He’s doing good work, although I don’t yet know what a MRA troll is.

http://plover.net/~bonds/objectification.html

When people complain about sexually objectified images of women in advertising and other media, a typical MRA troll move is to counter that men are also sexually objectified. Male models are sex objects too, says the troll: impossibly ripped and handsome studs, sexy and sexualised, a masculine ideal we can never hope to match. They should intimidate us every bit as much as female models intimidate women — but you don't see us complaining.

The trolls are talking shite, of course, but it always helps to illustrate why. I witnessed a particularly striking illustration just yesterday, while shopping for discount undies. My favourite high-end sock emporium has two large images on display, one of a man, one of a woman, both advertising the same product: woollen hosiery. The two images face each other across the store. The models in both images are sexualised, but one is sexually objectified, and the other is not. Let's look at the objectified image first.

The rest is at the link

[stillrobertpaulsen]

He’s doing good work, although I don’t yet know what a MRA troll is.

I believe that would be Men's Rights Activist Troll.

[Sounder]

Oops, I guess I been out livin in the woods too long.

[JackRiddler]

Oops, I guess I been out livin in the woods too long.

The stereotypical MRA lives in the woods too.

[Allegro]

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://www.1800politics.com/republican- ... ts-rights/

You know who just doesn’t have enough rights in this country? You guessed it, rapists. Thank goodness House Republicans are here to look after these put-upon American citizens.

As much of the nation focuses on the Steubenville gang rape story, your failed Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan (R-WI) was busy protecting rapists’ rights. Buried deep in the latest Fetus Rights Bill (aka, Sanctity of Human Life Act , H.R. 23: To provide that human life shall be deemed to begin with fertilization), wherein feti are given more rights than the women carrying them, is a section that will allow a rapist to sue his victim in order to stop her from getting an abortion, specifically if she were trying to get an abortion in a state that allows them while she lives in a state that does not.

I would be hard pressed to feel sorry if Ted Cruz was killed in his sleep.