From my blog: tenderhooligan.wordpress.com.

If you haven’t read this piece already, you should now: Gang-rape woman arrested during trial, following overdose.

The linked piece concerns a woman who was gang-raped by three men and who had to stand in front of them in court and identify them. She was later arrested for not turning up to court again. Unsurprisingly, she self-harmed because she couldn’t cope with what was happening to her. The three accused men have since been acquitted. After the victim’s arrest, Mr Justice Carney said: ‘If she has to spend a long time in prison herself waiting for a re-trial that’s her fault.’ Yes, really. A spokesperson for the Rape Crises Centre (Ellen O’Malley) criticised the trial process, ‘As making the complainants “feel they are the ones on trial and not the accused”.’ O’Malley went on to say, ‘This system in our opinion is very imbalanced and needs radical reform. As a result Ireland has one of the highest attrition rates for rape and sexual assault cases in Europe.’

But it’s not on its own. The clear up rates for rape and sexual assault cases in England and Wales are equally low. The attrition to which O’Malley refers starts right after the attack takes place when women are too frightened to report it, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone. If they do report it, it may not be recorded and pursued by the police as a offence that can be tried. And that’s before anything even. reaches a courthouse where the horrific tales of victim-blaming, brutal cross-examination, and even threats from the crowd and blatant intimidation, are numerous. O’Malley is right when she says that rape victims too often feel that they are the people on trial. Clear-up rates for rape cases in England and Wales hover around the 5% mark. That means that there is only a 5% chance of a rapist being convicted for his crime.

Anyone who has been on the feminist blogosphere this week has heard about uniLad. This is a site that is run by male students (“affectionately” known as “LADs”) and seems to be something of a “tip” site for getting laid. Except it’s not. Observe this little beauty:

‘If the girl you’ve taken for a drink… won’t “spread for your head”, think about this mathematical statistic: 85% of rape cases go unreported. That seems to be fairly good odds.’

Read more (link to source). 

From my blog:

[Trigger warning for violence.]

This piece from alternet.org really doesn’t require much additional comment. A report  (link to PDF) from a group called UN Women has revealed some frightening views on violence towards women,  and includes data on, for example, the massive gender pay gap (particularly between white men and women of colour) and sexual violence against women of colour.

On violence against women:

One of the most shocking statistics in the report? The public perception of gender violence as sometimes acceptable, within the context of marriage. This is from the report’s language: “In the USA, 16 percent of women and men agree that it is sometimes justifiable for a man to beat his wife.”

Sure, 16 percent is a fairly standard number for representing the lunatic fringe of American culture, but the fact that these respondents willingly admit they think it’s okay certainly sheds a disturbing light on why violence against women remains widespread: “Prevalence surveys in the USA show that 22 percent of women have experienced physical violence, and 8 percent have been targeted for sexual violence in their lifetimes.”

On the justice system and the justice system and rape cases:

One of the hindrances to women seeking a fair application of the legal system is a lack of women’s representation in that system’s hierarchy. While three female Supreme Court justices are certainly a step in the right direction, even that huge stride gives women disproportionately small representation. Women are under-represented as prosecutors, judges and police officers throughout North America. Statistics cited by UN Women indicate that “data from 40 countries where women are present in the police, reporting of sexual assault increases.”

…

“Evidence shows that jurors in the USA are especially likely to question the credibility of African American and Latina female witnesses in rape cases.”

On sexual violence towards Native American women:

One other element to these statistics that may be lesser-known is the issue of rape against Native American women, which is astoundingly high. Native American women are more than twice as likely as other women to be raped. One of the things compounding the problem was a confusion over judicial jurisdiction: “Crimes committed by non-Native Americans on reservations often went unpunished, due to uncertainty over which jurisdiction applied. This is thought to have contributed to the high levels of rape of Native American women, Progress shows.“ In other words, a culture of impunity existed.

On the gender pay gap:

We passed Lily Ledbetter, right? So why is this still an issue? Well, the gender pay gap remains at 23 percent in the USA, according to the new fact sheet from UN Women. If that number isn’t dismaying enough, for African American and Latina women, that gap swells to huge proportions: “On average 39 and 48 percent less than white men, respectively.”

It’s well worth reading the full report if you have time (it’s not long), not least because it includes a variety of other striking statistics (e.g., 127 countries do not explicitly criminalize rape within marriage, 61 countries severely restrict women’s rights to abortion), and it should be commended for including some very positive content on recent improvements in women’s rights worldwide.

I’m still reeling from the 16% statistic, mind you.

From my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress)

I didn’t hear about this case until this morning (trigger warning for image).

In a literal application of the sharia law of an eye for an eye, Iran is ready for the first time to blind a man with acid, after he was found guilty of doing the same to a woman who refused to marry him.

Majid Movahedi, 30, is scheduled to be rendered unconscious in Tehran’s judiciary hospital at noon on Saturday while Ameneh Bahrami, his victim, drops acid in both his eyes, her lawyer said.

The first part of the story I heard was about the proposed punishment. I felt sickened upon hearing it – the barbarism of such a punishment (particularly as we know that it’s habitually used to punish Muslim women for their lack of “compliance”) could never be justified. When I heard about the rationale for the punishment a few seconds later, however, I felt conflicted. Movahedi is due to receive this punishment from his female victim, whom he blinded with acid. This decision is taking eye-for-an-eye to a whole new level.

But that’s the rub. I am vehemently opposed to the death penalty, which is arguably the most extreme eye-for-an-eye punishment that exists. Research tells us that the death penalty has neither a general nor a specific deterrent effect, and it offers little cathartic or healing effect to victims’ families. (Its system costs a fortune to run in the US but that issue is unimportant, in the scheme of things.) However, I can’t help but think that the punishment Movahedi is due to receive is warranted and deserved. Because this time, it’s personal. Women in too many places are living in fear of acid attacks for doing something as minor as being seen in public without a male chaperone. Movahedi’s victim, Ameneh Bahrami, suffered such an attack for refusing to marry him; for making a decision about her life and her future that women the world over make every day, without fear of repercussion. But not Ameneh Bahrami; she had to be punished for not doing as she was told.

I defy anyone to tell me that they’ve not had desire for retribution when they’ve been wronged – it’s as human an emotion as joy and sadness. This is retribution for a horrible, vicious, life-changing wrong, and I don’t think I’m going to bother apologising for feeling that it’s deserved. Are there lots of “what ifs”? Certainly. Will it achieve any deterrent effect? Unlikely. But will it help Ameneh Bahrami? Very probably.

That women in Iran might now be given a stronger voice, and that female victims there might be allowed a real say in the judicial process, is a whole other debate (heck, we still don’t know what we’re doing with victims in our “civilised” justice system in the west), but that’s something that won’t be clear for a while. For now, if one woman gets to throw acid in some patriarchal, violent fucker’s face, and in doing so achieves one tiny little bit of liberation for her sisters, then she can have at it as far as I’m concerned.  

There is new evidence that state governments are finally understanding what a tragic mistake they made during the 1990s when they began trying ever larger numbers of children as adults instead of sending them to the juvenile justice system.

Prosecutors argued that harsh sentencing would protect the public from violent, youthful predators. But it has since turned out that most young people who spend time in jails and prisons are charged with nonviolent offenses. As many as half are never convicted of anything at all. In addition, research has shown that these young people are vulnerable to battery and rape at the hands of adult inmates and more likely to become violent, lifelong criminals than those who are held in juvenile custody.

A new study by the Campaign for Youth Justice, a Washington advocacy group, shows that state legislatures across the country are getting the message. In the last five years, the authors say, 15 states have passed nearly 30 pieces of legislation aimed at reversing policies that funnel a quarter of a million children into the adult justice system each year.

Thanks to Illinois, we now have more proof: ending the death penalty saves money - a lot of money - and quickly.

So what is California waiting for?

It’s less than a month since Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed the death penalty repeal bill, replacing the death penalty with life without the possibility of parole and diverting the cost savings to victims’ services. Just two weeks later savings had already reached $4.7 million!

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

These first budgetary savings in Illinois came through the State Appellate Defender’s office, which is the office that provides attorneys for men and women on death row who otherwise can’t afford their own lawyer for appeals. With the end of the death penalty, that agency has been closed.  Now the entire budget of nearly $5 million can be directed to victims’ services. And some of the highly-trained and experienced attorneys from that office are elated at being out of work for such good reason.

The 37 jobs once held by these lawyers perfectly illustrate why the death penalty is so expensive. When a poor person is sentenced to life without parole, the state goes to reasonable lengths to make sure the conviction was valid and due process was met by providing the person with a lawyer and paths to one appeal.

But if the sentence is death, the state’s responsibility is drastically more important. In order to make sure the state doesn’t make the ultimate mistake and execute an innocent person, it provides poor people on death row with attorneys and investigators for habeas corpus, a whole other set of appeals. It’s only in this second appeals process that people are allowed to present evidence that they are actually innocent, or mentally retarded, or were represented at trial by an incompetent attorney. And, because someone’s life is at stake, capital appeals lawyers must be some of the best attorneys available and have more training and experience than their colleagues handling lower-stakes cases.

There are several broad critiques to be made of sex offender registry programs. In addition to the racial profiling and discriminatory enforcement noted in the Colorlines article, there are also further questions regarding whether sex offender registries actually keep communities safer and/or lower recidivism rates. Support for sex offender registry programs generally, however, should not be viewed as in any way incompatible with thinking that the Louisiana system is being used as a means of violence and oppression against sex workers and must immediately be overturned.

This is not in any way about keeping communities safer. It is about further punishing and portraying as deviant those who have failed to comply with societal rules regarding sexuality, class, and womanhood. It’s not about making communities safer, it’s about specifically ensuring that these particular community members are as unsafe as possible. And in that sense, it’s certainly working.

(Source: thecurvature)

When we’re talking about race or religion or politics it is often said we need to speak carefully. These are difficult topics where we need to be vigilant not only in what we say but how we express ourselves. That same care, I would suggest, has to be extended to how we write about violence and sexual violence in particular.

In the Times article, the phrase “sexual assault” is used, as is the phrase “the girl had been forced to have sex with several men.” The word “rape” is only used twice and not really in connection with the victim. That is not the careful use of language. Language, in this instance, and far more often than makes sense, is used to buffer our sensibilities from the brutality of rape, from the extraordinary nature of such a crime. Feminist scholars have long called for a rereading of rape. Higgins and Silver note that “the act of rereading rape involves more than listening to silences; it requires restoring rape to the literal, to the body: restoring, that is, the violence—the physical, sexual violation.” I would suggest we need to find new ways, whether in fiction or creative nonfiction or journalism, for not only rereading rape but rewriting rape as well, ways of rewriting that restore the actual violence to these crimes and that make it impossible for men to be excused for committing atrocities and that make it impossible for articles like McKinley’s to be written, to be published, to be considered acceptable.

—Roxane Gay

I talk about this a lot, particularly with my students. Where rape is described as “having sex” in the media or the criminal justice system because all of those agencies seem to be terrified to call rape rape. It is disingenuous and minimising to describe the act of rape as “sex” because it is not. In very basic terms, one is a violent, non-consensual act and the other is not. Language matters.

(Source: citysleep)

thecurvature:

Trigger Warning on posts and links for very explicit descriptions of gang rape against an intoxicated person, severe victim-blaming and rape apologism, and ableism.

Four years ago, a 17-year-old girl was allegedly gang raped at an alcohol fueled party by 9 young men, almost all De Anza College baseball players. The girl was found by three female soccer team players, who are said to have forced their way into the room to break up the ongoing assault, finding the victim semi-conscious and covered in vomit while men performed various sexual acts on her.  The victim went to police; the three women were all very clear in their statements about how the encounter was not and could not have been consensual. A huge media frenzy ensued. And then, no charges were ever filed against the accused players.

Back in spring 2007, very soon after I first began blogging, the De Anza rape case was one of the very first instance of sexual violence I ever wrote about, so long ago that it was before I had come to terms with the fact that I was a rape survivor myself. For that reason among many others, it is a case that I have written about very extensively and that has always remained very strongly with me. Almost four years later, the case is still not over, justice has not been done, and the victim is still actively seeking accountability for what was done to her that night.

Three years after the DA decided to not pursue the case for “insufficient evidence” — despite the three witnesses to the rape never having been sought for grand jury testimony, and despite much forensic evidence never being tested — the victim has taken her case to civil court in a final attempt at legal recognition of the crimes against her.

This post is largely just a round-up of all the shit that’s been going on in this case since it first began a couple weeks back. It’s kind of hodgepodge, I must confess. And the nature of the information itself is horrible. Please take the trigger warning seriously.

Aw man, this fool again! I can’t believe he’s allowed to write anywhere. I mean, psychologytoday.com is by no means a credible source, all things considered, but some people actually think it is and lap this stuff up.

Lombroso developed a theory about the links between atavism and criminality which focused, largely, on the discernible physical characterises of offenders. This theory has been discredited in practically all of the studies which have attempted to replicate his findings. Studies which have replicated Lombroso’s findings have been very flawed.

You cannot tell to look at someone if they are a “criminal” or not. Let’s not even get into a discussion about the social construction of crime. Does the idiot who writes these pieces ever read anything?!

As it turns out, humans possess the ability to tell who’s a criminal and who’s not simply by looking at them because criminals look different from noncriminals.

In this blog, I have repeatedly emphasized the fact that virtually all “stereotypes” are empirically true.  If they weren’t true, they would not be stereotypes in the first place.  To my knowledge, all of the very, very few stereotypes that are not empirically true, for some reason, have to do with people’s appearance.  Hence, it is not true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it is not true that beauty is only skin-deep.

stfuconservatives:

Submitted by ironchefbatali: “I wish that headline was from The Onion, but it’s not. Apparently the gallant defenders of fetuses everywhere have decided that policing thoughts is the next best way to trample on women’s rights protect life.”

(Source: stfuconservatives, via rightsandhumanity)