ff

cosby is in my province. i am generally really happy to hear how many people have opted not to go to the shows, or to go and protest.

this morning i listened to a cbc news podcast while getting dressed for work, and i had to laugh a dry-mouthed, sick sad laugh, listening to a recording from last night's london ontario show in which, responding to a heckler who was calling him a rapist, cosby is heard saying 'no, no stop...'...

you know. like maybe a woman having her body assaulted might say to her attacker. like maybe any one of the 26+ women who have come forward about being assaulted by cosby.

you know.

a little on the nose. a little vomit-inducing. apparently he was talking to the audience, telling them not to respond to the heckler, and was not talking to the heckler herself. but. you know. still... those words... that context. ugh.

also there is this absolute gem:

"A few minutes earlier, a woman who got up from one of the front rows and walked past the stage was asked by Cosby where she was going.
When she answered that she was going to the lobby to grab a drink, Cosby responded with: "You have to be careful about drinking around me," which drew loud applause."

{from cbc news, as reported by jeff green}

 

 

HAHAHAHA RAPE JOKES! we especially love them from people who are rapists! that's when they're the most resonant and hiiiiilarious, am i right? like: meta. or whatever.

 

all y'all who attended the shows for, you know, the comedy and fun: i could've sworn we were believing women now... remember? remember after ghomeshi? remember when everyone said we were believing women now? oh right, yup, but not when you have to give something up, not when you have to lose an idol, oh right, now i remember. colour me not surprised. colour me fucking tired of it.

 

happy friday, enjoy the jokes.

ff emergency edition

 alrighty, canada. this ghomeshi sitch is looking to get really ugly.

where i stand is pretty clear, i think, after a long history of railing against the man... but not everyone knows what i know, or can get up in my heart and see the full conviction of my knowledge, and that's fine.

but if you are thinking about believing his statement, if you are skeptical of the claims against him, i'm gonna need you to be really up to date of information surrounding sexual assault and reporting and so on. so i'm giving you a zillion bits of info. super fun, right? here we go:

* the statistics

if you don't know a survivor of sexual assault it is almost certainly because no one has told you, not because they don't exist in your circles.

* rate of sexual assault tends to remain fairly consistent, but reports to police have declined steadily since 1993

so why aren't women reporting?

* fear and shame, concern about the attitude of both police and the courts

* fear of revictimization in the legal process

and why on earth might ladies not feel like the police or other powers-that-be or the world are on their side?

* "One of the safety tips was for women not to dress like ‘sluts.’" says a police man to a group of university students in toronto

* "“Nobody comes out of the Ched Evans rape case with any credit – not the victim who’d drunk so much she could barely stand, nor the two footballers who had sex with her in the most sordid of circumstances.”" says a bbc host

* "...a judge ruled that what the defendant did was technically rape, but it wasn't rape-rape because the fact that woman was all gussied up in heels and fancy clothes meant that "sex was in the air.""

* there is video of a woman beaten to unconsciousness by her partner, and she still gets blamed and shamed

* "...these are the harms we persistently lack the (legal) language to describe, the experiences to which our laws, our campus policies, our media and our Title IX activism are ceaselessly unresponsive." on dating violence.

* "It appears a growing number of young girls are not only being sexually assaulted on campus, but have come to think of it as a normal part of their educational experience." said in 2008    
         
* "The trauma of the rape and ongoing bullying caused depression and suicidal thoughts."

quick break. how 'bout some puppies?

{thanks, that helps, cutest paws!}

on we go.

* people think 'survivor privilege' is a thing

* people think 'rape culture' is NOT a thing

* talking about anything that is well loved (like a radio icon, say, or video games, perhaps) can cause an outpouring of hate and abuse that is not only appalling, but also terrifying and damaging

* like, say, you speak up about being afraid of an aggressive anti-woman movement, and immediately are targeted by that movement

* like, say, if your attacker plays football

* and again, with the football

* rape apologia is especially present when Famous Men are involved

break.
here's a pile of kittens.

{thanks for that, cat lovers only!}

okay, back at it. here's a fun little thread:

* "A police officer in Detroit is charged with sexually assaulting a woman who called 911 during a domestic violence incident."

* "A San Jose police officer is accused of raping a woman who called 911 following a domestic violence incident."

* "A police officer in Baltimore, Maryland is accused of raping a woman he was supposed to be helping after a traffic accident."

* "Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Ken Holtzclaw was released from jail Friday as he faces charges for allegedly sexually assaulting 7 different African American women while he was on duty. Among the claims against him are forcible rape, burglary, and felonious stalking."

* "Two Los Angeles Police Department officers are under investigation for allegedly preying on women over a period of five years, luring them into an unmarked car and forcing them to perform sex acts, according to court records."

* "The officers were found to have violated police procedure by returning to the apartment of a drunk woman they escorted home, and Moreno went so far as to admit he cuddled with her while she wore only a bra."

* "...a Manhattan jury made up of highly educated professionals refused to convict Officer Michael Pena of rape for a startling reason — the victim could not recall the color of a car parked by the courtyard where she was forced to her knees, sources told The Daily News Thursday.“If she doesn’t remember these details, how does she know she was penetrated,” one of the holdouts reportedly said, according to sources."

 i could do this all day. for many days. the examples are endless.

so i don't wanna hear 'why don't they just go to the police' re: ghomeshi's victims. okeedokes? until you have read through each and every one of these links in their entirety, and maybe followed some of the links IN the links, leading to even more examples and more examples and more.... until then? i will not tolerate even the smallest hint of victim-blaming from my friends and acquaintances.

now here's a slow loris.

{seriously, you're the greatest, thank you zoobourns!}

ff (galentines edition)

man oh man! what a week. the ups! the downs! both in my moods and in the OLYMPICS! but pretty great, mostly, except for not bringing my bathing suit to diving. that was not so good.

PALENTINES! GALENTINES! there's been a lot of pushback from my buds, this year, against the ick-valentinesness of today. for all kinds of great reasons like the whole 'your girlfriend is crazy and also you don't know her at all so: FLOWERS! then she won't hate you, you idiot.' or the classic 'i'm single and therefore i must be SO SAD, CRY CRY VALENTINES DAY!'. and so on.

last year i had a pretty great valentines because actually what i had was palentines. eug invited over a few choice buds, and we ate a fantastic dinner and enjoyed the wonderful thing that was our friendship. because friendship is love too, yo! of course it is! and this year a bunch of my rockingest lady-friends are celebrating galentines. similar to palentines, it celebrates the supremely amazingness that is your lady-friends! and if i may say so, i've got me some real real high caliber galentines who are worthy of all the flowers in all the toronto. remember when we were kids and valentines was about all your friends, and also about all the kids in the class? that was good times. because yes, YES, yes, romantic love and partnership is brilliant, wonderful, worthy of holding up proudly and saying 'I LOVE THIS!' but so are the other relationships. a few of these galentines? i cry just thinking a little about how much they do for me, how often they are there to catch me, how much i want to do right by them, how smart, kind, generous, fierce, hilarious, joyous they are. so a happiest gal-pal-val-entinesday to everyone. i put a whole explosion of pink and red on my tumblr. if you're in the spirit.

meeeaaaaanwhile. just cause it is a joyful pinkandred day doesn't mean you get away sans feminism. sorry. nope. but. i have a funny video for you! haha! ha... hmmm. hrrrmmmm.

great advice that you should always follow so to not be raped:



(i like this very much, this video. and it reminds me of this dieting article which is also super smart and full of wisdom on how to not be a fatty-fat-fat.)

i had more to post today, but you know what? i'm gonna save it. keep today on the up and up and not get into the heavy shiiiizzzzzz.

happy friday, pal-gal-val-entines!

ff

this week emily yoffe, aka dear prudie, wrote an exceptionally idiotic and irresponsible piece of victim-blaming drivel about girls and drink culture and rape.

i'm not linking to it cause, ew, dude, you don't deserve the traffic. i found it because they had her on to talk about it on double x, the slate so-called feminist podcast. i can't even begin to express my 'ugh' after listening to that bullshit episode.

i'm not surprised that people continue to write stupid ass pieces about rape being, really, kinda sorta, ohi'msorrytohavetosayit, alittlebit THE VICTIM'S FAULT... (but she's not 'victim blaming', she continues to shout at the internets.)

what surprised and sickened me is that double x talked about the piece as if it was: something new. like. OMG has anyone ever noticed that sometimes ALCOHOL is involved in the sexual violence perpetuated against women and girls?! and, WORSE YET, has anyone ever noticed that high school and university experiences often involve IRRESPONSIBLE DRINKING?!

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that shit. sorry, but seriously. i'm not a journalist. i don't have research standards to meet. i don't have an editor reviewing my work... and yet i have been able to locate hundreds of hundreds of facts and statistics on rape in the US and canada. i've linked to a whoooole pile of them throughout my time feminist-fridaying. i'm also a baby-feminist. but in these few years of being concerned about the cause, i've managed to get a solid education about rape culture. so if you're going to get paid to write about rape culture, put in some goddamn time, do some fucking research, or shut the hell up and stop spewing your toxic pearl-clutching babble. what do you think you are doing to the girl who was raped when drunk? or the girl who was raped even though she did 'everything right'? what is the value of your 'advice'?

i've never been raped. yay me.
i have been completely and totally irresponsibly intoxicated. maybe even more than once!!! i went to unchaperoned parties in high school and university. i met strangers at parties or bars and i made friends with them or flirted with them or ignored them. one time when i was, like, 16 or 17 i went to a boy's house in the middle of the night with a few friends and we hid in his basement goofing off and flirting and our parents didn't know. i made mistakes and stupid choices and took risks.
but i never got raped.
because i was lucky enough that there was never a rapist around. when i was doing those things.
or when i gave rides home to people. when i lived alone. when i had new friends over for parties. or old friends... or stumbled home drunk and alone at night after a gallery opening in edinburgh. or not drunk and not alone, but still, you know, a women with my oh-so-rapeable bits just being right out there in the world.
i didn't get raped cause i wasn't with rapists.

so fuck you for implying that i somehow did something right that some other girl did wrong. or that i'm *lucky* to have made it through those experiences safely. just. fuck. you.

*just a reminder of a really GREAT campaign talking about rape that i'm so proud came out of my home town... just a reminder that talking to the ones who are making the rapes happen are the ones who we should talk to.

and once more for emphasis, fuck you emily yoffe. and shame on you.

ff

what up, rape culture!? whatcha been up to lately? cool, cool.

* how's about you give this a read?

okay, jokes aside (HAHA RAPE!) this is a solid piece. all academic in nature. thanks thomas!
it is longish, but well worth the time. there are statistics and percentages, guys! NUMBERS! and, too, some very good advice. i just want to cut-and-paste it all, but i'll try to limit myself to:

something that i'm finding terrifying and shocking as i learn more and more about rape culture is how many people i actually know who have been sexually assaulted. i always thought the list was too long when i was looking at the 'society-confirmed-rapes', but now as i think back on stories i have been told over the years... there are so many i never classified correctly. never truly appreciated the extent of damage and violence. so so many. and i shudder to think about what my reactions were when i was told about these assaults. did i listen openly or did i try to excuse the acts - try to empathize with the bad guy because, you know, he was a 'nice guy'? did i build one more tiny wall against a victim classifying her assault as just that? god i hope i didn't. but i probably did. even though there was always a banging in my gut i didn't understand. all i can do is know what i know now and never ever ever put up such a wall again. let's all be that way, okay?

happy friday, my lovely internets.

ff (fs)

uuuuggggggghhhhh guys. sorry. i put off writing this week's feminist friday post cause ugh. right? remember last week's rape-culture-fatigue link?

well this week i was gonna write about men explaining things. (after friends who i love dearly refused to learn from conversations we'd had to either a) NOT TALK ABOUT IT with me or b) adjust their attitudes on rape culture...)

and i was gonna write about the series of sexual assaults in one of my fav toronto neighbourhoods. and the heavy-sighs-for-reals? response from our shitty mayor's niece (and the very-awesome response of one of the victims).

i was gonna write about one of my very favourite humans getting chased right to her front door off the bus by two douchebags in my sweet scary hometown. and the fact that some people felt that 'not taking the bus' anymore was the solution to avoiding such situations. thanks, yo. practical shit.

but yeah. pooped. i've been dancing lots of ballet this week and i just don't feel like getting into and getting angry this week. see back to that fatigue piece.

SO INSTEAD!

i want you to take a look at the man i've decided is theeeee sexiest man. this week. his style is so unconventional and anti-heteronormative! (and daaaaamn them tattoos.) and even though he is gay i am in love with him and hoping maybe he will marry me. after he is done winning project runway... ladies and gentleman. fabio costa. love of my life!

{all photos of sweet beautiful fabio from the project runway site} 

happy long weekend.

ff

in an epic case of 'hahahaha ooooops!' todd akin said the worst ever thing this week. and of course the internets. is. talkin. bout. it. (and republicans in general.)

* this one is particularly good so i'm setting it on its own...

i could post 18 bazillions more links, but i'll spare you all that underlined text.

i didn't reeeeally want to talk about this. because it is insane and so rage-inducing and beyond comprehension that i'm all 'nooooooooooo!' about blorging on the subject. but. then again.people who refuse to call themselves feminists, even, are posting alllll about it in a mad fervor.

this is one of a million and ten things that being a feminist means to me: believing that people in power positions should be educated about the things that are asserting power over. being outraged that there are people in 2012 who do not know the most basic details of how the female reproductive system works who are attempting to assert any level of power or control over those female reproductive systems. i don't think that is a radical point of view.

oh! and also a point for BETTER SEX EDUCATION IN THE US. (and we ain't sooo wise here either, canada. i do have a friend who believed that a headstand after intercourse was functional birth control. a sexually active friend. and a pile o' other crazy ideas about how our baby-makers work. that is to say that this whole thing, sadly sadly, did not surprise me. heaviest sigh.)

ff

heeeey guys! the internet exploded this week!

back story. if you've been living in a hole. (or are not on twitter all the time, which is like, totes the same thing, am i right?!)

daniel tosh was making rape jokes, a female audience member shouted that 'rape jokes are never funny' and then daniel tosh said what would be funny is if that female audience member got raped by other members of the audience, like 5 of them, right?! tada!

there are 18 zillion articles - good and bad - about this. and even more tweets forever unto infinite. but i picked just this one article for you to read on the topic!

* how to make a rape joke

i chose it for many reasons, but truly the main reason is that it made me laugh a lot. like. this whole passage:

{lindy west from jezebel}

bahaha! that's great! thrashers... good one! and it is good to have a good laugh here and now because this whole fight just reminds me that rape apologists are everywhere, and they're my friends who don't know that that is what they're doing, and it breaks my heart all the time forever because I KNOW TOO MANY PEOPLE, GUYS! I KNOW TOO MANY GIRLS WHO HAVE BEEN RAPED! and it is a raw and hard subject for me. so. i'm glad that this piece was written with humour and with intelligence and so on and so forth.

read it if you love me. i mean it. more than ever. please. pleasepleaseplease. (and there are some great links in there. too. click 'em!)

OH! and. p.s. remember when we had good-news-feminist-friday? well. nevermind.
*saudi arabia takes it back. no olympics for ladies

ff

* hey girl! you're a moron for getting raped!

sigh.

way back, when i was in munich, natalya and i went out (with a pile o' peeps from the hostel) to the hofbrauhaus. temple of beer and lederhosen. an incredibly tourist-in-munich thing to do. i had two of their giant-pints. probably somewhere around equivalent to 3.5 pints? maybe 4? a lot for me, but nothing too bonkers... especially considering the stomach-full of rich rich german food i was putting those beers into. sure, i was drunk. but i still had my wits about me. we had a nice time, and stumbled back to the hostel with one other hostel-er while the others continued to party into the night. we got a little lost, but made it home just fine. natalya went to sleep.

i went to the bathroom and cried for about 2 hours. i was sick with guilt and shame. because i'd been so irresponsible! because i had let loose a little, and therefore put myself and (much more importantly) natalya in danger. think of the horrible things that could've happened! how could i have been so stupid?!

it was not a good night.

and we all know i am a 'sensitive soul' and that i maybe feel things a little more deeply than most. but. what that night was was the product of years and years of being taught that it would for sure be my fault if i or natalya had been attacked.

anyways... the article above covers the topic of maybe blaming rapists from raping rather than blaming girls/women for being 'stupid/careless/slutty/naive'... it maybe isn't a 100% perfectly written piece, but it (and others like it recently) have made me think a lot about my own deep sense of guilt and fear, and how maybe i should start to redirect them... just sayin.

but... MEANWHILE!!!

here's something rather beautiful for you to read! about love and acceptance and gender-identity and growth and change and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters... there's some sadness in there, for sure. but if you zoom right in on the family? one of the best stories ever. wow. yes.

* i maybe cried a little at the end...

ff.

guuuuuuuuuuuuuyyyyyyyys! guys. really. guys.

twice in the last few weeks i have gotten myself pretty worked up and shouting at friends. i'm not normally one for shouting at friends. unless it's about food. cause i do feel strongly about food. BUT. yes. the yelling.

first time was because i was having dinner with three friends - two ladies and a man - and the man was the only one who would allow himself to be classified as even a little feminist-sympathetic. um. wha? these girls. they are smart. fierce. funny. bold. sweet. passionate. driven. open. FANTASTIC WOMEN! and they, apparently, are anti-feminist. i tried to explain that, actually, i don't think they are. i think they just have an ill-advised notion of feminism. but nay. there was shouting and i got so mad and sad. sigh. LADIES!

second time i was shouting at a feminist man who said that any reasonable intelligent human would willingly classify themselves as feminist. right? NAY! i say! i mean, i WISH! but. see shouting-one! they don't. they don't because we are told that feminism is scary and gross and means having bad sex and being whiny and annoying and hateful and angry and blah blah. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

sooooooooooooo. the moral is. a) give your heads a shake, people! and b) friday is now feminism day. 

you had better read these articles, blog-readers. i will be one mega-pissed blogger if you don't. THEY. ARE. IMPORTANT! so seriously. read them. READ THEM OR ELSE I WILL SHOUT AT YOU! (read them because these people are maybe better at writing about feminism without using so many CAP LOCKS! and being articulate is good. too.)


* why boys should be taught about feminism!


* hey penn state... what gives? 


* secondary education... in sexism!


also, just, you know... to say. i have been getting cat-called and whistled at from cars since the age of 14 at least. probably earlier. and. in highschool there was a guy (who was one of the sweetest guys in school) who thought it was totes hilarious to slap me on the ass. one time he did it so hard that i was slammed forward onto a desk, bruising the crap out of my hipbones. he laughed, looking at his red palm, and said 'shit, that hurt!'. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! these are just a few examples of the CONSTANT displays of sexism that i have barely registered as being things because there are so so many of them being things all the time, and really they're nothing compared to the terrors of abuse that so many women experience. so. HOOOOORAY!