TW: rape
Another excellent piece by Jaclyn Friedman
Anonymous asked: Where do you get off saying that it's never OK to make a rape joke? I am sick of so-called feminists like you who spout this righteous bullshit about rape jokes perpetuating rape culture when you obviously have never been raped yourself. Excuse me for using rape jokes as a means of healing from my own horrible experience. Get off your high horse and shut up about things you know nothing about.
First off, I want to say that I am terribly sorry to hear about your rape. I’m assuming you have not actually read my blog because if you had, you would know that I have experienced sexual violence more than once in my lifetime. You may not be bothered by rape jokes, but the fact is, the majority of rape victims—men and women alike—are offended and worse, triggered by them. Obviously rape jokes don’t trigger you, but I’m sure you have your own set of triggers. Think about what you experience when you get triggered—the fear, the panic, the pain—that’s what you are inflicting on another survivor when you tell a rape joke in their presence. I don’t imagine that you would want to purposely inflict that kind of suffering on someone else who has gone through a similar experience as you. I hear that you find rape jokes cathartic, but may I suggest that you limit your use of them in public. Better yet, I would recommend turning to a different coping mechanism all together—one that’s not going to potentially hurt someone. After all, if you were robbed, you wouldn’t go around robbing other people as a means of dealing.
Here’s a few books you might want to check out:
Recovering from Rape by Linda E. Ledray R.N. PH.D
The Rape Recovery Handbook by Aphrodite Matsaskis PH.D
After Silence: Rape and My Journey Back by Nancy Venable Raine
A friend just sent this article to me. Introducing the “Skinny Jean Defense”—skinny jeans are now a rapist’s best friend.
"Being a victim of rape says nothing about you and everything about your attacker”."
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Lisa Jervis - An Old Enemy in a New Outfit: How Date Rape Became Grey Rape and Why it Matters in Yes Means Yes.
"…consenting to some sexual activity with a person, or having consented to sex with a person in the past, doesn’t mean you’ve consented to anything and everything with that person, or that you automatically consent to fuck that person again, and that a quiet “no”, even if it’s not accompanied by a knee to the groin or any other physical struggle, is still a valid “no”."
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Lisa Jervis - An Old Enemy in a New Outfit: How Date Rape Became Grey Rape and Why it Matters in Yes Means Yes.
"Let’s look a little closely at the correlation between rape and alcohol, for example. That’s not a correlation between female drinking and rape. It’s a correlation between ALL drinking and rape. In fact, studies have shown that it’s more likely that a male rapist has been drinking than that his female victim has. So if we want to raise awareness about the links between drinking and rape, we should start by getting the word out to men (who are, after all, the overwhelmingly majority of rapists) that alcohol is likely to impair their ability to respond appropriately if a sexual partner says no. (This would, not incidentally, be much easier to do if we taught both women and men to seek enthusiastic consent in their partners, not just the absence of “no”.) When was the last time you read about THAT anywhere? When we discuss drinking and rape and neglect to shine the light on men’s drinking, we play into the same victim blaming that makes it so easy for men to rape women in the first place”."
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Jaclyn Friedman, Defense of going wild or: How I stopped worrying and learned to love pleasure (and how you can too) in Yes Means Yes.
I have no words for this.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/05/11/kenya.children.beading/index.html?hpt=C1
