feminist blogs

VERY STRONG TRIGGER WARNING

The story of Romona Moore’s murder is horrific, not only because of the terrifying brutality involved, but because of the terrifying apathy that allowed it to occur. Moore is dead because she and those who tried to help her were ignored. It’s a really shitty consolation, but the very least we can do, to pay attention now. If you think your mental health can handle it, I urge you to please read the full story.

You know, I’m one of those feminists who thinks that racism is indeed a feminist issue, just like poverty, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and much more are feminist issues, simply because these are factors that oppress women on a daily basis and prevent them from living lives freely, safely and to their full potential. I’m sad that so many seem to disagree — but even if you do disagree on the basis outlined above, I don’t know how anyone could read Romona Moore’s story and not see how racism is a feminist issue, when racism is allowing and assisting the unspeakably violent rape, torture and murder of black women. As for the lawsuit, I hope like hell that her mother wins it.

The failure of authorities to care about the unexplained disappearance of a black woman is not an isolated incident. Not by a long shot. And neither is average people failing to do the right thing when given the chance.

All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.

There are many reasons that people do nothing, and sometimes they are justified. It may be believed (often very rightly) that doing the “right thing” will result in more violence or more severe consequences than turning a blind eye. Sometimes one’s own life is on the line. But I don’t see that this was the case here, either for the police officers that refused to even open an investigation, or for the man — probably numerous men — who saw Moore after she had been tortured raped and was probably about half-dead, and did nothing. Not even an anonymous phone call . . . that is, not before it was too late.

I read stories like these, and I find myself wondering where the hell the good people who do something are. And sometimes I wonder how “good” we can really call the people to do nothing. SAFER has an excellent post about bystander training and learning to be the person who does something. Despite our hunches and hopes for ourselves, I don’t think that any of us truly know if we are that person until put in the position. But at the very least, I want to believe that we can learn from the fatal mistakes of others.

Story via What About Our Daughters?

Several readers wrote in to tell us about this horrific "piece of flair" that you can send to friends on Facebook through this application. Now, users can create their own buttons so I'm going to assume that the creators of this application didn't make this - a user did. But that's not excuse. Contact the developers of Facebook's "Pieces of Flair" and let them know that rape isn't funny.

Woman fights back against rapist, mob sexually assaults her. UConn. Trigger warning.

Every man involved in the assault must be identified, and their names so publicized that they cannot apply for a job or an apartment without their role in this sexual violence coming up. UConn must hold them accountable. If the school does not condemn this, it condones it.

Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli, who is running for Rome mayor, put forward a proposal to help curb sexual assault: a "rape bracelet." Yes, seriously.

Rutelli suggested that women who were forced to cross risky areas of the city alone at night be given bracelets which would alert the police in the event of danger...The device would allow the wearer to transmit an alarm signal to the nearest police station and also contain a tracking signal allowing police to then find the wearer.

You know, I'm all for innovative ways to help stop rape, but something about this doesn't sit right with me...

Rutelli's aides explained that the device would be similar to the electronic ankle tags worn by some types of offenders in Britain.

And there it is. Once again, putting the onus on women to protect themselves from rape takes the rapist - remember him? - out of the equation. Not okay.

Thanks to Lachrista for the link.

I already posted about reading one sex worker’s blog; that’s not the only one that got my attention recently.

I’ve been reading College Call Girl. She has been on a bit of a break for the last three weeks, and I don’t know her personally, so I have no idea when or if she’s coming back, but I keep hoping.

Now, some folks may think that this is light reading, or one-handed reading. And sometimes it is. But she alternates between the glib and hot, soul-searching, and flat-out patriarchy-blaming; so that passages like this:

Even with all the admittedly sinful diddling and fingering and rubbing and stroking I had done before, I had never once done something as terrible, as sacrilegious as what I found myself doing now.

I was masturbating to the Bible.

I don’t remember what section in particular it was that got me so steamed up, although I think it was in the Old Testament.

rub shoulders with passages like this:

One of the cruelest tragedies of the sex industry is that it attracts girls like me who already have skewed ideas about sex and self-worth and then completely reinforces all our secret fears. The men you meet, the whole lifestyle, whispers to you that you were right all along, that all that really matters is being desired.

I still struggle every day to change my thinking. It makes me almost sick to my stomach to meet new people whether in a personal or professional capacity, because I worry they will not think I am pretty. Most of my friends are men with whom I have had former dalliances because I just do not feel comfortable around people who I don’t know with certainty find me sexually attractive. In my head, my worth is completely tied up in my appearance and sex. As a result of being abused at a young age, my thinking is fucked. There is something wrong with my brain. No matter how logically I know that who I am is more important than how sexy I look, I have internalized the lesson that it is my sexuality that makes me lovable.

Of course, this is a trap that will keep me perpetually insecure because not everyone is always going to be attracted to me. When you feel that perfectly normal fact as a deep blow to your self-esteem, it’s impossible to ever really feel confident.

She’s not a representative sample; she’s one woman from a particular social position (white, class-privileged, etc.). She doesn’t represent all sex workers — nobody could, or should, or should be expected to. She represents her own experience; which is ambiguous and nuanced. She both loves and hates sex work; she’s honest about keeping it light to keep her audience entertained, and honest that she knows this glamorizes and whitewashes her own experiences:

But there’s another side to this deal that I’m afraid I haven’t shown you. It’s not easy to write about prostitution in a totally honest way because it is painful… I am a tangle of contradictions. I am not ashamed of my choices and I will fully defend mine or anyone else’s right to make them. But when you ask me if you should do this? My immediate instinct is a loud, desperate no.

Along her road of self-reflective posts, CCG put up one that I’ll probably never forget, [Trigger Warning] the sort of speaking out that one woman can do to make thousands of other women feel less alone:

The Number is Eight

I have been sexually assaulted more than once. Each time that it happened to me, I felt that extenuating circumstances kept it from truly being rape. I was working as a prostitute, he was my boyfriend, I was drunk, I got in the car. I never believed that I had fought hard enough. I made excuses for the men who hurt me; I told myself “he didn’t know what he was doing.” When I spoke about my experiences with sexual assault (which I did very rarely), I would say only that “a lot of bad things have happened to me.”

And she lists them. And she tells the story. And every one will resonate with some woman out there who reads it, who will know that it wasn’t just her; that it wasn’t her fault; that what happened to her was wrong.

Nothing I ever write will matter that much.

English comedian Johnny Vegas sexually assaulted a woman on stage last week, and not-so-shockingly, people are saying it was just a "joke."

The woman he focused on was about 18 or 19 and was very obviously unnerved by his attention...Vegas insisted that she allow herself to be carried on to the stage by six members of the audience - he called them "pall bearers". She must pretend to be dead, he said, and he would bring her back to life with an onstage kiss...As she was carried on stage, Vegas repeatedly goaded one of the pallbearers to "finger" the girl.

Once she was on stage, Vegas told her to lie very still. She couldn't stop her nervous giggling; he threatened to kick her in the ribs. It didn't come across to me as a joke - and near to where I was sitting, no one was laughing. Eventually Vegas crouched down beside the nervous girl and started stroking her breasts while repeatedly saying, "don't fucking move". Then he ran his hand up her leg and began pulling her skirt up. Every time he looked up to address the audience, she would reach down and pull her skirt back down, but he kept pulling it back up. According to [James] Williams, who had a different view of the stage from me, Vegas ended up "fingering her through her clothes for a second or two". What I heard was an audible sharp intake of breath from the audience as they realised that the woman was getting much more than the kiss Vegas had told her to expect.

Half of the audience apparently thought it was hilarious. I have yet to see a quote from the young woman who was assaulted (not that she's obligated to say anything). I'm just appalled.

Jezebel has more.

Some of you know me from the comments, and from my past guest spots here. I’ll be around to fill in for a couple of weeks. I’m not big on introductions.

Back when the Spitzer story broke, there were posts (notably this one) here and a lot of discussion about sex work. Whenever that happens, someone reminds us (err … I mean “me”) that, whatever the rest of us have to say about sex work, sex workers can and do speak for themselves. Renegade Evolution, the last link and no stranger to Feministe’s comment threads, is one, and her blog links more. Lately, I have been reading another.

Those of you who read certain blogs by women of color, Sudy’s for example or BlackAmazon’s, may have run across Joan Kelly in the comments or even visited her blog. She does the kind of writing that there isn’t space for anywhere else but blogs; she lays out long-form personal ruminations and self-exploration. Lots of people do that, and not all of them well.

(As an aside, BA’s blog is now apparently friendlocked in the wake of the dual Marcotte controversies and dual Seal Press controversies; a sad loss for those of us who had a lot to learn from her. Sudy’s is still up and her Saturday post in particular requires readers to employ real intellectual chops. I recommend reading it and ruminating.)

I first saw Joan comment on Feministing, a year or more ago, and I thought, “it can’t be that Joan Kelly.” But it was: the former professional submissive Marnie, already a published memoirist. The book focuses on her work in the pro BSDM scene and skews heavily positive. On her blog, she deals with class issues and and race and racism and with white privilege a lot, and links WOC blogs heavily. She also deals both with sex work and with BDSM, but she is much more critical. Including sometimes pretty self-critical.

(That’s an endorsement of her writing ability, her intelligence and her willingness to dig into issues, though certainly not agreement with everything she says.)

I’m always impressed with bloggers who are willing to dig both hands into deeply personal stuff; as Jill posted about recently, it’s hard to do. Carol Hanisch recently reminded all of us, 38 years after the original was published, what she meant by “the personal is political.” And reading Hanisch’s new intro has reminded me that women’s stories about their lives, about the “personal” misogyny and indignities of patriarchy, should not be dismissed as “personal,” that in sharing them the pattern emerges and the structural nature of these dynamics is laid bare — to quote Hanisch, “women are messed over, not messed up.” Women who share their deeply personal stories do a service of inestimable value to other women and to male allies. Joan did that this month, posting frankly about her past experience being raped by a coworker and sometime lover. It was one of those posts that I expect lots of folks would write and erase instead of posting. But she didn’t. She put it up.

Jeff Goldstein may have outdone himself with this one. He describes black men assaulting and gang-banging a hot white chick in order to get everyone riled up about how stupid feminists who discuss “white privilege” are — as in, stupid white chicks feel so guilty about their white privilege, they’ll get wasted and pass out so that animalistic black men can rape them. It’s a great way to show that lefties are overly-sensitive about this stuff, it really is. And remember, kids: Rape is always funny! Especially when you can use it to simultaneously tap into peoples’ fears about over-sexed black guys who are going to violate pretty white things.

Yes, I am a humorless feminist about this one. Fuck you, Jeff. But thanks for proving the point that the people who resist concepts like racism and privilege are often the ones with the most fucked-up racial issues.

Prediction: Next, I’m going to be described as “the racist one” for pointing out that Jeff played on long-established racist stereotypes of black men. Because surely, Jeff and his commentariat are colorblind, and it’s those of us who notice these things who are the people who must really think black men are the over-sexed animals.

It looks like the University of Portland not only is denying justice to an alleged rape victim, but is ignoring the existence of sexual assault on their campus altogether, reports the Willamette Week.

The private Catholic university and police have not yet taken action since Amy Kerns reported it a year ago, and when she contacted the school to inquire why there were no charges, she was basically told she was lucky she wasn't reprimanded for underage drinking. UP judicial coordinator Natalie Shank responded to Kerns:

“Based upon my findings in my investigation, I am unable to determine if a sexual assault occurred. . . I have reason to believe that intercourse occurred, but both parties admit to drinking and therefore, consent—or lack of consent—is difficult to determine. Given these facts, there are possible violations for which you could be charged.” (Emphasis mine)

Yeah, threats of penalties when a woman is seeking help for sexual assault is a really fucking responsible thing to do. Not to mention that UP's policies say that premarital sex is “considered antithetical to the community of the University of Portland.” Premarital sex? Absolutely not! Rape? Well, it depends on the case...

In fact, the university reported not one case of sexual assault to federal authorities in 2006. Kerns, who is currently taking time off from school, said:

“[Shank] decided since we were both drinking, rape couldn’t have occurred. . . It was like she was the one deciding consent—not me.”

Email Natalie Shank and demand that the University of Portland take action on Amy Kern's case and change their sexual assault policies.

Thanks to Malori and Devon for the heads up.

A few great pieces. First, Mark Goldberg speaks with filmmaker Lisa Jackson, who recently released the documentary The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo:

Stephen Lewis, the co-director of AIDS-Free World, has another must-read piece up in The Nation — it’s the transcript of the remarks he gave on V-Day in New Orleans. (Also at AlterNet).

Women in the Congo are also speaking out. Rural women have started radio shows to tell their stories, disseminate information and connect with others.

And a reminder that this is not a new issue: A Ms. Magazine article about rape in the Congo from 2005.