Pizza Diavola

Marcella has the 53rd Carnival Against Sexual Violence up at Abyss2Hope. Go check it out, there’s a lot of good stuff there. Here are some of the posts I found interesting:

Mortality’s Thoughts – Who Are They:

Who are they? All those rape and assault survivors… Cos there are a lot of us out there. More than you want to know about and probably in your closest circle of friends. Most of them are female, but not all.

Sexual assault is extremely widespread, yet many people persist in thinking that it happens to someone else, not to anyone they know. That is one (of many) factors in why sexual assault is rarely taken seriously by law enforcement, the media, authority structures, acquaintances, friends, and family – as long as they think it happens to someone else, the problem is easy to ignore and unimportant because they feel it’s not relevant to them. This is why it’s imperative to break through the silence.

Questioning Transphobia – Another Woman Dead, The Blogosphere Largely Doesn’t Notice: On the sexual assault and premeditated murder of Angie Zapata, which 9NEWS legal analyst and moron Scott Robinson declared was “not a classic hate crime”:

It’s also true that men will have sex with trans women and come back later to kill them, or even live with those women for months before killing them. These men are not unaware that they are having sex with trans women. But they know that they can get away with killing these women with a slap on the wrist.

The Crone Speaks – Pre-Trial Diversion or Rapists Go Free: Analysis of a case where a sheriff raped a minor, when she was 15 and again when she was 17, and the charges were dismissed (partly due to victim-blaming – claiming she couldn’t have been a victim in this specific instance because of her past sexual history).

Abyss2Hope – What Lack Of DNA Evidence Proves:

One frequent claim I get from anonymous commenters is that if no sperm is detected when a rape kit is processed that this is proof that no sexual assault occurred.

This claim is false.

Ashley at SAFER Campus – If You Love Date Rape, You’re A Mitchum Man: Analysis of how Mitchum’s advertising promotes sexual violence:

When I was doing sexual assault prevention programming with men, I used to use Mitchum ads as examples of rape culture. They so perfectly meld extreme pressure to be “masculine” with total disdain for women and pressure to have sex as a means of “proving” ones “masculinity” in one bright shiny package. …

These ads don’t just condone the idea that “real men” collude with each other to “trick” women into sex, and that nonconsensual sex and sexual exploitation are acceptable. They actually glorify such behavior, and tell men that acting this way will secure their masculinity.

Here’s the Thing – To Channel 13: Rape Is Not a “Sex Scandal: On the use of euphemisms for rape. These euphemisms (e.g. sex, forced to have sex) support the idea that rape is sex and rhetorically hide the prevalence of rape and sexual assault by couching it as sex or intercourse, which are consensual acts. Rape is not.

Jennifer Kesler at the Hathor Legacy – The myth of the woman who craves abuse: A thought-provoking answer to the question, “But why doesn’t she just leave [her abusive parent/spouse/significant other]?” and its implication, “Well, she didn’t leave, so she’s responsible for the abuse she suffered.”

There are no women who think, “Gee, I like being treated like shit” just as there are no real life bad people who think, “I’m evil! I love being evil! Let us revel in my evilness!” Both of these are fictional caricatures, oversimplified so everyone’s crystal clear on who’s who in the drama. In real life, bad people think they’re doing what’s right or at least acceptable and women who get into and/or stay in relationships where they’re being mistreated imagine their situations to be something other than they are. There are four major reasons why women stay in abusive relationships, but before I talk about any of them, I must point out:

Men stay in abusive relationships, too, but nobody talks about that.

Organicasm – Beyond Blood Diamonds: 5 Other Products That Are Soaked in Violence: A discussion of five conflict resources (gold, wood, oil, cocoa, tech toys – cassiterite and coltan): why they matter and what you can do about them. It’s a reminder that every choice we make has a real impact for better or for worse, whether or not we think about it. It’s important to be a responsible consumer (or as katecontinued at make-a-(green)plan would suggest, as minimalist a consumer as possible) and at least acknowledge that our choices have consequences, whether or not we want to take them into consideration (ideally, that acknowledgment would lead to responsible consumption). The section on cassiterate and coltan were particularly striking for me:

Miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo work extremely hard in dangerous situations, just to get the cassiterite that goes in your cell phone, laptop, and other high tech devices. When they come out of the tiny holes in which they have to dig for the mineral, they’re greeted by soldiers at gunpoint that will take it. Other miners work on sites that are directly operated by the military and other armed groups. Even when they’re not working directly for these groups, they’re heavily taxed by them, or just robbed outright. Often, these mines collapse, leaving many miners and their rescuers dead.

The war over coltan has caused the death of more than 4 million people in central Africa, mostly civilians who have died from starvation, disease, or displacement. In addition to human life, the Eastern lowland gorilla is being driven to extinction through poaching and habitat loss tied to mineral mines.

Even worse, as phones become “greener,” the demand for cassiterite, coltan, and other high-tech minerals like them has risen, and violence along with it. Although the amount of these minerals in each individual electronics device is small, it all adds up.

What can I do? The problems are vast and dire and on the one hand, I’m tempted to say that nothing I can do will solve even a minuscule part of the problem. However, apathy is complicity and change comes from small beginnings. So I’m trying to live according to these ideas:

* Recycle your devices. By donating your cell phone or laptop to services that know how to properly disassemble them, you’ll help reduce mining for the minerals it contains.
* Buy used or refurbished. With technology growing at an ever-increasing rate, the turnover for devices is high enough that you can purchase a used or refurbished cell phone, laptop, or other device that is perfectly able to stand up to your demands.
* You can cut down on this turnover yourself by avoiding full upgrades as long as possible. This can be achieved with proper maintenance, repairs, and upgrading specific parts rather than your entire device.
* Buy for quality. If you’re going to buy a new device, make sure that you’re purchasing one that will be functional for years to come, rather than one that will be discarded within a few years or months.

Baby steps add up (NYT Magazine, The Afterlife of Cell phones, 2008/01/13).

Une Belle Vie – Sexual Crimes and the Gender Struggle:

Rape and gender inequality… Which do you condone? Well here’s the solid truth- when you condone one, you condone the other. Simple as that. If you tell me a woman does not deserve equality to men than you are tacitly approving of the monsters in prison who rape their daughters, granddaughters, mothers and grandmothers, the creatures who capture young girls and torture and kill them.

The Curvature – KBR Bans Cell Phones and Silences Rape Victims:

So. KBR employee is raped by her coworkers and then kidnapped and held prisoner. Employee secures her release through use of a personal cell phone. KBR doesn’t really give a shit about any of it. Employee makes a lot of noise about the incident, making KBR look really bad, even if not actually impacting the company financially. KBR bans personal cell phone use.

Contact your senators and representatives and urge them to investigate the rape coverups at KBR and other contractors in Iraq.

Polimicks – Rape Myth #1: Women make false rape accusations all the time: A takedown of the claim that women make false rape accusations all the time. First of all, that’s misogynist; second,

Given how I’ve seen actual rape victims treated, pretty much with all the tact and sensitivity of raw liver, very, very few women would ever willingly put themselves through that to “get back at” anyone. Seriously.

Think about it.

Ashley at SAFER Campus – Teen Pregnancy and Sexual Violence:

The Center for American Progress gives us a much fuller picture of the problem, noting that teen pregnancy is often a reflection of the high rates of sexual violence toward young women, and that these rates of violence are much higher for young women of color.

Ruminations – Lutte contre l’injustice – Moral Courage: a somewhat rambling but thought-provoking discussion of moral courage prompted by

a scandal at the school where a boy made a sex tape of him and a girl, without her knowledge, and later showed it to his Lacrosse team mates. None of his team mates objected or tried to stop the video, they just watched. Now this team was rated to be #1 and it would have been easy to give the kids a slap on the wrist and go on with the season.

The response of the school’s administration is particularly remarkable given how schools and sports teams cover up rape for the sake of the W.

And my guest post at Shakesville on the use of the phrase “alleged rape” is also in the carnival.