“We’ve constructed seemingly infinite incentives for victims to keep silent (you drank too much, you wore too little, you’ll destroy the family, you’ll ruin the fun, your entire sexual history will be dredged and questioned and vivisected … in front of your grandma) and pretty much no compelling reasons to report, nor functional support systems in the aftermath.”
Todd Akin, US congressman and senatorial nominee claimed in an interview that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy.
This particular nugget comes from Pharyngula, where a post from PZ addressing rape culture led to a predictable influx of the usual victim-blaming rape myths as if they were commensense truths, leading to a predictably forceful pushback from the Pharyngulites, who do not let that crap stand. If readers would like to add their own favourite links addressing rape myths/culture in comments, I’d really like to see them.
…when they see skimpily covered attractive flesh? Then why do we never hear of summer sun-seekers being attacked by rapists in the middle of large sunlit crowds at public squares and parks and beaches? The skimpily covered attractive flesh is there in maximum abundance, but somehow the attacks just don’t happen when there are plenty of surrounding eyewitnesses and CC-TV?
“As a scientist I always judge things on empirical evidence and [Epstein] always has women ages 19 to 23 around him, but I’ve never seen anything else, so as a scientist, my presumption is that whatever the problems were I would believe him over other people.”
1. DADT repeal bill signed. 2. UN resolution condemning extrajudicial killings reinstates sexual orientation clause. 3. Sady Doyle gets a good night’s sleep.
Harriet J: “Dear Second and Third Wave Feminists With Publicly Recognizable Names …Please give us somebody else to point to when we are told that we can be raped in the ways Naomi Wolf has decreed are acceptable…Please do not let Naomi Wolf become the voice of what is rape, because rapists were listening when she spoke, and judges, and juries, and future victims who will spend their lives believing it was their fault, and they are always saying “yes” if they are not shouting “no.” “
Only just catching up on the current online activism taking place using the #MooreandMe hashtag on Twitter? Not quite sure what it’s all about? Hoyden commentor Meg Thornton has put together a huge #MooreandMe link collection: Source Materials, Sady Doyle’s activism, Rape Apologism 101 Stuff, Comment & Opinion, Places to Send Donations and more.
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