“20/20? keeps delaying the episode of their show dealing with the extensive, grassroots campaign to harass women, particularly feminists, online until they quit in terror and frustration. (Well, I assume that’s the imagined goal, though most anti-feminist harassers are men who get a lot of pleasure out of the direct act of berating and scaring women, so their campaign is really self-rewarding.) Luckily for us, Jaclyn Friedman decided to go ahead and publish a piece on so-called “men’s rights activists”—we really need to come up with a more accurate name, as they are neither concerned with men’s rights* nor with activism—at the American Prospect anyway. Read the whole thing. It kicks ass.

She made me consider a point in this that I had never really thought much about before. As anyone who has dealt with MRAs knows, the short list of “men’s issues” they have cobbled together to justify their existence is mostly shit they don’t give two fucks about. Men’s higher death rate in wars and from crime, men’s higher death rate on the job, sexual violence against men, and men’s higher suicide rate are all issues that are important, but represent to MRAs one thing and one thing only: A chance to deflect and derail discussions about feminist issues. They don’t do shit to actually address these issues. They often distort them deliberately, hiding some of the relevant contextual factors that would make it clear that what they call “men’s issues” are often labor issues, results of racial discrimination, and yes, feminist issues—particularly sexual violence, which affects both men and women but is nonetheless enacted primarily by men as an expression of masculine power.

Anyway, Jaclyn makes the point that because MRAs co-opt these very real issues but don’t actually care very much about them, they “are happy to abandon men and boys to real danger when it suits their hate campaign against women”. Because of this, the noise they make blaming all these issues on women means that it is now harder for people who actually give a fuck to find resources.


Every man who visits a men’s rights site concerned about male victims of rape is a man who’ll be told that women are the problem and will be offered no practical solutions, a man who won’t be connected with direct services for survivors if he needs them, a man who still doesn’t know about Just Detention International, which works to end prison rape, or Service Women’s Action Network, which is taking the lead to end sexual violence in the U.S. military for both men and women. Every man who comes to them concerned about the high rates of on-the-job fatalities for men is a man taught to blame women but who is never encouraged to support or join unions. Every man who comes to them concerned about the male suicide rate is a man who won’t be encouraged to help out with the life-saving work The Samaritans do every day.

The overanalysis of the first lady's expression speaks volumes about America's expectations of black women

Not even President Obama is above taking a selfie in the least appropriate selfie-taking venue possible. While attending a memorial service for Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Obama posed with British Prime Minister David Cameron and Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt. It is probably a bit tacky for these world leaders to pose and preen together, but they are only human. We are all helpless when we have such photographic power in the palms of our hands.

In the already widely circulated image, Michelle Obama is sitting to the president’s left, staring into the distance. In two other images, the first lady looks in the president’s direction as he speaks with the Danish prime minister and then looks straight ahead.

The media (and everyone else) have reacted, trying to frame Michelle Obama as “angry” or “disapproving” when maybe she wasn’t even paying attention to her husband being silly with his world leader friends.

At the Washington Post: “The first lady looks stern — dare we say disapproving? — throughout.”

In the New York Daily News Michelle Obama “sat at a distance, as if in disapproval of the digital display.”

Someone at Business Insider quipped, “That stare can kill.”

The headline at The Huffington Post boldly declares “Michelle Obama is having none of it.”

Over at D.C. political blog Wonkette, “Michelle Obama Pissed, Y’all.”

On and on the punditry goes, ascribing very specific, historically racialized narratives to what Michelle Obama is thinking and feeling in one candid moment.

Setting aside how sad it is that this story is even being reported as a “story,” we have no possible way of knowing why Michelle Obama isn’t grinning and posing and presenting herself the way people apparently expect her to at a memorial service for one of the most beloved world leaders of our time. Has it gone unnoticed that in these images, she’s the one person acting like she’s at a memorial service?

I have read the Galperin et al. study* (in evolutionary psychology) which argues that it has found evidence for evolved sex differences in sexual regret.

Read that again. The crucial word in both the title of this post and in the above sentence is "evolved." Keep that in mind.

What that little word means is the assumption that the different reactions men and women might have, on average, are not because societies, in general and certainly during most of recorded history, have punished women much more severely for casual sex than they have punished men. What that little word also means is the assumption that the different reactions men and women today might have, on average, are not because women and men are quite aware of the fact that the possible costs of casual sex, even today, are different for the two sexes. Women can get pregnant when pregnancy is not desired, women are more likely to be the victims of violence in a sexual encounter with a stranger than men and women are much more likely to be called sluts or whores if they engage in casual sex than men do.

Those are not the things the authors mean when they talk about "evolved" differences. What they mean is that in some sense women are "hard-wired" (pardon the term) to regret having had casual sex and that men are "hard-wired" to regret not having had casual sex.

If that is the case, then why have societies all over time and place punished women more for casual sex (both legally and in terms of ostracism) than they have punished men? Is it that our evolved differences concerning it are somehow not strong enough?

When the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia (CATWA) announced the release of our new report on the Nordic Model, supporters of the sex industry began targeting our Facebook page.

When I followed up with an opinion piece for The Conversation on the success of the Nordic Model, a handful of men, and one prominent Australian feminist , spent hours trading inaccuracies about the Nordic approach to prostitution policy and disparaging anyone stupid enough to think that a booming industry which trades in women’s bodies is anything but inevitable.

These falsities and fabrications will be familiar to anyone who has written or said anything that publicly criticizes the sex industry. The same claims, usually without reference to relevant evidence, are repeated so frequently in certain spheres that they have practically become mantras. If you say it often enough, it becomes true, right?

From George Orwell: Diaries (public library) comes an entry dated March 5, 1936, in which the celebrated writer recounts an incident while visiting the Searles — a poor family with whom he lodged during his quest to learn empathy by immersing himself in poverty and of whom he noted that he had “seldom met people with more natural decency.” Writing nearly a decade before his first big literary success with Animal Farm, a novella essentially about inequality, 33-year-old Orwell shares his unease with the gender inequality so deeply imprinted in the cultural fabric:

We had an argument one evening in the Searles’ house because I helped Mrs S. with the washing-up. Both of the men disapproved of this, of course. Mrs S. seemed doubtful. She said that in the North working-class men never offered any courtesies to women (women are allowed to do all the housework unaided, even when the man is unemployed, and it is always the man who sits in the comfortable chair), and she took this state of things for granted, but did not see why it should not be changed. She said that she thought the women now-a-days, especially the younger women, would like it if men opened doors for them etc. The position now-a-days is anomalous. The man is practically always out of work, whereas the woman occasionally is working. Yet the woman continues to do all the housework and the man not a handsturn, except carpentering and gardening. Yet I think it is instinctively felt by both sexes that the man would lose his manhood if, merely because he was out of work, he became a “Mary Ann.*”

Low estimate of the number of women , according to the Department of Justice, raped every year: 300,000

High estimate of the number of women raped, according to the CDC: 1.3 million

Percentage of rapes not reported: 54 percent

A woman's chance of being raped in the U.S.: 1 in 5

Chances that a raped woman conceives compared to one engaging in consensual sex: at least two times as likely

Number of women in the US impregnated against their will each year in the U.S. as a result of rape: 32,000

Number of states in which rapists can sue for custody and visitation: 31

Chances that a woman's body "shuts that whole thing down": 0 in 3.2 billion

Rank of U.S. in the world for rape: 13th

A woman's chance of being raped in college: 1 in 4 or 5

Chances that a Native American woman in the U.S. will be raped: 1 in 3

Percentage of women in Alaska who have suffered sexual assault: 37 percent


Number of rape kits untested by the Houston police force: 6,000-7,000 (Texas ranked second in nation for "forcible rape&quot

Number of adult men accused of repeatedly gang raping 11-year-old girl in Texas: 14

Quote in the New York Times regarding the rape: "They said she dressed older than her age."

Age of woman raped in Central Park in September, 2012: 73

Number of rape kits left untested in Detroit, listed by Forbes as one of two the most dangerous places for woman to live in the US: 11,303

U.S. state in which, in September 2012, mentally disabled rape victim was required to provide evidence of her "kicking, biting, scratching" in objection to her rape: Connecticut

State seeking to reduce childcare welfare benefits to women cannot provide proof of their
pregnancy-causing rapes: Pennsylvania

Percentage of sexual assault and rape victims under the age of 12: 15 percent

Percentage of men who have been raped: 3 percent

Percentage of rapists who are never incarcerated: 97 percent

Percentage of rapes that college students think are false claims: 50 percent

Percentage of rapes that studies find are false claims: 2-8 percent

Number of rapes reported in the military last year: 16,500

Pentagon's estimated percentage of military assuaults not reported: 80-90 percent

Percentage of military rape victims who were gang raped/raped more than once: 14%/20%

Percentage of military rape victims that are men: 8-37 percent

Percentage of military victims who get an "involuntarily" discharge compared to percentage of charged and accused who are discharged with honor: 90 percent involuntary to 80 percent with honor

Chances an incarcerated person is raped in the U.S.: 1 in 10

Increase in chance that LGTB prisoner is raped: 15x greater chance

Number of men raped that could be counted as legally raped before the FBI changed its definition in December of 2011: 0

Number of rapes noted in commonly used World War II statistics: 0

Number of rapes of WWII concentration camp inmates: Untallied millions


Number of rapes of German women by Russian soldiers at the end of WWII: between 1m and 2m

Number of women raped in 1990s Bosnian conflict: 60,000+

Number of women raped per hour in Congo during war: 48

Country where 12 year old was forced to participate in the rape of his mother: U.S.

Country where women are imprisoned for being raped: Afghanistan

Age of Moroccan rape victim who committed suicide after being forced to marry her rapist: 16

Worldwide number of "child brides" under the age of 18 forced to marry every day: 25,000

Ages of girls forced to marry a 59-year-old at the Tony Alamo Christian Ministry in Arkansas: 8, 14, 15

Estimated number of people, primarily children, sexually abused by priests in the U.S. versus the number of senior Catholic officials found guilty of sexual abuse related crimes in the U.S.: 10,667 to 1

Chances that a woman in the U.S. is raped versus gets breast cancer: 2 to 1

Chances that a victim is "Emergency Raped" by a stranger versus percentage of victims who consider their rapes emergencies: 7 percent versus 100 percent

Percentage of victims of rape who report the use of a weapon: 11 percent

Prison sentences for four men found guilty of participating in gang rapes of two teenage girls in France over two years: one year, six months, suspended sentence

State where in 2012 a doctor is facing the loss of her medical license for providing an abortion to a pregnant10-year old incest rape victim: Kansas

Country where doctors (but not the rapist) were excommunicated for performing a life-saving abortion to nine-year-old incest rape victim: Brazil

Country where major party's vice-presidential candidate wants to criminalize all abortions including rape-related ones, because rape is just "another method of conception": U.S.

Sudan: 'Sexual Violence a Crisis in Sudan' - Victims of Rape Speak Out

Ottawa — Women who report being raped in Sudan are threatened and often accused of adultery. Victims of sexual violence are denied access to medical treatment, while they face many legal disadvantages.

"The women of Sudan are facing a crisis of sexual violence with no end in sight," according to the report 'Survivors Speak Out: Sexual Violence in Sudan', released on 6 December. It has documented the pervasiveness of sexual violence against women in Sudanese regions. The research team consists of Nobel Peace laureates, in the International Campaign to Stop Rape & Gender Violence in Conflict.

In an equivalent report from 2011, the Nobel Women's Initiative stated that in Darfur, rape is used by armies and Janjaweed to terrorise and displace mostly non-Arab tribes. Also other parties have committed sexual violence during the war that arose in Darfur in 2003.

'Raped while doing daily jobs'

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has treated almost 500 raped women and girls during a five-month period in 2012. In August 2006, Human Rights Watch reported 200 sexual assaults in South Darfur's Kalma camp in five weeks. MSF also found that 82 per cent of the interviewed Darfuri rape survivors is assaulted while "undertaking daily activities", and less is abused when fleeing from an attack on their community.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201312080104.html?viewall=1

A national survey involving hundreds of thousands of inmates of jails, prisons, and detention centers throughout the U.S. has brought researchers to one undeniable conclusion: Sexual assault in prisons is a shockingly widespread problem.

New editions of the National Inmate Survey and the National Survey of Youth in Custody were released this year by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and analyzed by David Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow in an essay, “The Shame of Our Prisons: New Evidence,” for the current issue of The New York Review of Books. The Review may seem a slightly unusual venue for such a topic, but Kaiser and Stannow, who are both affiliated with the non-profit organization Just Detention International, have been covering the surveys' findings for the magazine for the past three years.

“As recently as five years ago, American corrections officials almost uniformly denied that rape in prison was a widespread problem,” write Kaiser and Stannow. “But all this has changed. What we have now that we didn’t then is good data.”

That good data points to a dark reality for thousands of inmates -- especially those in juvenile detention facilities. Sixteen- and 17-year-old inmates are often held in separate sections within adult prisons, but younger inmates are typically kept in different facilities altogether, dedicated to juveniles. The have found that corruption, unprofessionalism, and abuse is more widespread in the juvenile facilities than it is in adult jails and prisons. Specifically, Kaiser and Stannow said, “the new National Survey of Youth in Custody found that minors held in juvenile detention suffered sexual abuse at twice the rate of their peers in adult facilities.”

Men’s Rights Redditor remembers the victims of Marc Lepine by complaining “we’re all supposed to cry about how hard it is to be female. “



A vigil to honor the victims of the massacre at the Ecole Polytechnique.

Today is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada, an annual event to honor the victims of mass murderer Marc Lépine, who gunned down fourteen women at the École Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989. Lepine, driven by a poisonous misogynist ideology, specifically targeted women, yelling “I hate feminists” before opening fire on one classroom of female students.

Reading over his suicide-note-cum-manifesto today, I was struck again by how, well, familiar it all sounded. While only a few MRAs have explicitly celebrated Lepine as a hero, his views on women and feminism would not be out of place on most Men’s Rights forums. Here’s Lepine, in his own words. (I’ve broken the wall of text into shorter paragraphs.)

[T]he feminists always have a talent for enraging me.

They want to retain the advantages of being women (e.g. cheaper insurance, extended maternity leave preceded by a preventive leave) while trying to grab those of the men. … They are so opportunistic that they neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men throughout the ages. …

Thus, the other day, people were honoring the Canadian men and women who fought at the frontlines during the world wars. How does this sit with the fact that women were not authorized to go to the frontline at the time??? Will we hear of Caesar’s female legions and female galley slaves who of course took up 50 per cent of history’s ranks, although they never existed?

Mount Holyoke student Ali Safran said she came up with the idea for the Tumblr in October 2012, the three-year anniversary of her own assault. She said the name is a play on the phrase “strength in numbers.”

“The blog has grown to be about removing stigma and shame from sharing your story as a survivor, and is also a place for survivors to read others’ stories and be able to have their own experience validated,” the 21-year-old Safran said.


She added, “A lot of people have written to me to say how thankful they are to have a space to share; that they’d never told anyone about being assaulted before, or had told people and had gotten really hurtful or blaming reactions.”


She added, “A lot of people have written to me to say how thankful they are to have a space to share; that they’d never told anyone about being assaulted before, or had told people and had gotten really hurtful or blaming reactions.”

A Texas school district is apparently teaching sexual education in the worst way possible: by trying to shame students into staying virgins until marriage.

Sexual health advocate Katie Gustainis Vela recently obtained what appears to be an instructional worksheet meant for teachers who lecture on sex ed. Vela tweeted a photo of the worksheet -- which likens people who have premarital sex to pieces of chewed gum or used toothbrushes -- and indicated that it is used in the Canyon Independent School District. (According to ThinkProgress, Vela currently lives in Boston but used to reside in Canyon.)