#VAWG

[haggishlyhagging]

From Rain and Thunder, Autumn Equinox 2003 edition, way back when Afghanistan still had girls’ schools.

[hippyfem]

When will men raping women be considered a hate crime? I'm convinced that men commit rape for one of two reasons. Either they do not see women as humans with the same level of consciousness and emotions as them so therefore they can do what they want to us. Or they do see women as humans but want to deny us our humanity by taking away our power and bodily autonomy and turning us into a tool for them. Both are the result of intense hatred and a perspective of male supremacy (misogyny). Since hate crimes are actually taken more seriously than sex offences then it should be clasified as both.

[misschinablue]

i'm so disgusted with a certain subset of british society.

what's being lost here is that three little girls - children with ages in the single fucking digits - are dead because of a sick individual who was born in cardiff and happens to be of rwandan descent.

which is entirely irrelevant. what is relevant is the southport stabbing was an attack on - very, very specifically - children.

the quiet part that's not being said out loud is that it was primarily an attack on female children.

but that gets lost, doesn't it?

it gets lost when someone decides that this welsh born man is a Muslim immigrant (which is untrue but still irrelevant even if he was). it gets lost when blatant disinformation is being spread by many many dodgy sources but dave the gammon willfully decides to take it as gospel anyway. it gets lost even when the suspect's name and identifying information is released, despite him being a minor, in the public interest, to stop this misinformation being spread.

it gets lost when dave the gammon has an "excuse" to take to the streets. it gets lost when dave the gammon starts parroting "stop the boats" (he doesn't know what it means) and "we want our country back" (because this ailing island belongs to him personally). it gets lost when dave the gammon gets to unleas all that misplaced and hatred fuelled anger by throwing a brick at a mosque or two. because in dave the gammon's mind - something's given him an excuse to tell us who he is.

it's given him an excuse to attack the Muslim community who are just trying to live their lives. to attack the refugees who are escaping horrors that dave the gammon is lucky enough to never be able to imagine.

how the FUCK are we twisting this violent, senseless and misogynistic act to make it about immigration?? how the FUCK can these people be so cruel to the families left behind who are going through unimaginable pain already?

how the FUCK has it come to this?

violence against women and girls has - finally - been declared a national emergency in the uk. i don't see any of these "protestors" even acknowledging that. i didn't see anyone rioting last month after the bushey attack which was fucking horrific. because the perpetrator was a white british man perhaps?

were there violent riots when white british incel jake davison killed five people including his own mother and a three year old girl in 2021?

dave the gammon doesn't care about the female victims of violence in this country. he "wants his country back." he wants the "foreigners to stop taking our jobs." he kisses his posters of nigel farage and andrew tate every night with tongue.

dave the gammon catcalls women on the streets. dave the gammon asks what she was wearing. dave the gammon finds rape jokes hilarious. dave the gammon asks what she did to deserve it.

dave the gammon drives all the hatred in this country. towards refugees. towards the Muslim community. towards women.

dave the gammon can't see that he's the problem.

of course we should be angry. but that anger needs to be directed at a society that enables and permits hatred and violence towards women and girls. towards refugees and immigrants. towards ethnic and religious minorities. towards sexual and gender minorities.

i am angry. i have never been so angry in my life. you should be too.

RIP Elsie Dot Stancombe, Bebe King and Alice Dasilva Aguiar. please don't forget the names of these innocent little girls in all of this.

[ititledit]

"Five years ago, after graduating from the University of Lincoln, Grace set out on a year-long solo backpacking adventure across the world.

After a six-week tour of Peru, she arrived in New Zealand. Less than a fortnight later, on the eve of her 22nd birthday, she was strangled to death by a man she met on a dating app.

...

During a three-week trial, the family had to sit through her killer's attempts to pass the murder off as "rough sex" gone wrong and his claims that Grace asked to be strangled.

"I felt like Grace was on trial and she couldn't defend herself. As a parent, I didn't want to listen to that. It was horrendous.

"You can't ask for your own death. It is ludicrous this can be used as a defence."

Gillian has since campaigned against the rough sex defence, with the charity We Can't Consent To This, and has helped to change the law in England and Wales.

...

Christmas is a very difficult time for Gillian, so last year she decided to spend it climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, which was "incredibly emotional".

...

Her efforts raised £33,000 for the White Ribbon charity, which aims to end male violence against women. Gillian received a thank you card from the charity, saying the money had been used to fund education programmes in 65 schools in the Hull area.

"I just want to raise awareness and get that message out there about violence against women so that no other family has to live this life I live," Gillian says.

Four years ago, with her niece Hannah, Gillian started the charity initiative Love Grace. They collect donated handbags and fill them with toiletries for domestic abuse victims.

So far, they have filled 15,600 bags for women in the UK and across the world and they received an award from the prime minister.

Grace loved handbags, Gillian says, and each bag has a tag on it with her handwriting.

"It's a simple idea but it has really taken off," Gillian says. "We were just doing it for our grief so that Grace would never just be a number.

...

"I should never have buried my child and certainly she should never have died the way she did. People keep saying I'm really strong but I don't think so, I'm just a mum."

"I will never get over it but I just know I've got to make the world a better place. I want to change things so that no other family has to go through what we go through. That has got to be a good thing."

------------------------

This holiday period please give generously to women in need.

Love Grace -

White ribbon -

[severeprincesheep]

The thing about the movie The Substance (2024) is...

Admittedly it's not like I'm a workout freak who's kept tabs on these things, but the only people I can think of who managed to have hugely successful and long careers in front of the cameras as fitness instructors on TV were Jack Lalane and that was way back when (look him up), and then later Richard Simmons (recently deceased).

Among the women you had, what, Jane Fonda, maybe? For a short while, as a fad, also way back when. And then all the 1990s top models released their own fitness videos, I think (Cindy Crawford, et all).

I can't think of anyone who has been consistently on TV for decades like Demi Moore's character is supposed to have been. But in such a scenario it would be only too easy for such a woman to find herself a job at any gym, everyone would want her, she would bring huge crowds. Other channels would want to hire her. And at this day and age she could very easily start her own Youtube channel and make a bundle.

The movie wants you to believe that without that one disgusting TV producer she is nothing, and that outside of that particular job she's excluded from society without a cent, apparently. Everything in this woman's life hinges on the approval of this one disgusting little man. No.

Everything about the movie is a thinly disguised - perhaps not even thinly disguised - excuse to show us the cat fight of the century between two women who desperately compete for the one job worth having in all the land, the job that depends on the approval of the one man who holds all the winning cards. Why?

I mean, I know I have feminism on the brain 24/7 but then stuff like this is why. Men really hate women and love to hurt them and to see them in movies in excruciating pain and this movie is just exhibit 5644939836574362 of precisely that.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“Signposting male victims and survivors to the support services where they live”

Thursday 7 November 2024

This year, we have set aside Thursday 7 November for the third ever Supporting Male Victims of Domestic Abuse Day (#MenYouAreNotAlone). Please do get involved.

We are asking every organisation providing support services for men experiencing domestic abuse to publicise the help they have available to the men in their local community.

In 2023, over 160 police forces, councils, charities, service providers, employers and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner took part. You can also be listed as a partner and supporter.

Only one in 20 victims accessing specialist support from their local commissioned service (community-based/IDVA service) is male. Our aim is to encourage more men to come forward and for those around them to support them to do so.

If we make a bigger collective and coordinated effort for one day, it will help amplify the message #MenYouAreNotAlone.

The date is  always after the autumn half term school holiday and after the clocks “go back” – which can be a time where men realise they need to do something about the domestic abuse they are suffering from.

We have produced a campaign logo and strapline but it does not matter whether you use them or not. The key issue is to promote what support YOU OFFER. If you already promotional material, please just use this (but do use #MenYouAreNotAlone on social media)

If you wish to support the day, please do let us know via emailing mdan@mankind.org.uk and we can add your organisation to the supporters page.

Why?

One in every six to seven men will become a victim of domestic abuse at some point in their lifetime1.

This abuse can come in many different forms and includes :

(a) physical or sexual abuse; (b) violent or threatening behaviour; (c) controlling or coercive behaviour; (d) economic abuse; (e) psychological, emotional or other abuse;

Men trying to escape domestic abuse make up one in three victims of domestic abuse1  and make up are one in four victims of domestic-abuse related offences reported to the police (26%)2, yet only make up one in twenty victims accessing support from their local commissioned domestic service (“community/IDVA-based service”)3. We need to encourage more men to seek help from their local service including those specifically for men.

More than one person suffers when abuse is happening. Family members including children, friends, colleagues and neighbours and even the abusers themselves can all be  affected in a very negative and destructive way. We need your support to push the message that there is support available, there is a listening ear and there is hope for all men suffering any form of domestic abuse.

==

Despite claims to the contrary, domestic violence and sexual abuse perpetrated against men are not exceedingly rare.

Abstract

Objectives: We sought to examine the prevalence of reciprocal (i.e., perpetrated by both partners) and nonreciprocal intimate partner violence and to determine whether reciprocity is related to violence frequency and injury.

Methods: We analyzed data on young US adults aged 18 to 28 years from the 2001 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which contained information about partner violence and injury reported by 11,370 respondents on 18761 heterosexual relationships.

Results: Almost 24% of all relationships had some violence, and half (49.7%) of those were reciprocally violent. In nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases. Reciprocity was associated with more frequent violence among women (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]=2.3; 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.9, 2.8), but not men (AOR=1.26; 95% CI=0.9, 1.7). Regarding injury, men were more likely to inflict injury than were women (AOR=1.3; 95% CI=1.1, 1.5), and reciprocal intimate partner violence was associated with greater injury than was nonreciprocal intimate partner violence regardless of the gender of the perpetrator (AOR=4.4; 95% CI=3.6, 5.5).

Conclusions: The context of the violence (reciprocal vs nonreciprocal) is a strong predictor of reported injury. Prevention approaches that address the escalation of partner violence may be needed to address reciprocal violence.

The PASK project concluded the same thing, analysing over 1700 studies.

Facts and Statistics on Context

Bi-directional vs. Uni-directional

Among large population samples, 57.9% of IPV reported was bi-directional, 42% unidirectional; 13.8% of the unidirectional violence was male to female (MFPV), 28.3% was female to male (FMPV)

Martin S. Fiebert's bibliography of over 340 studies catalogues the same thing:

Abstract

This annotated bibliography describes 343 scholarly investigations (270 empirical studies and 73 reviews) demonstrating that women are as physically aggressive as men (or more) in their relationships with their spouses or opposite-sex partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 440,850 people.

--

According to CDC data, male rape ("made to penetrate") occurs as often - and sometimes more often than - rape of a woman.

[ Source: CDC NISVS 2010, 2011, 2012 ]

Abstract

We assessed 12-month prevalence and incidence data on sexual victimization in 5 federal surveys that the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted independently in 2010 through 2012. We used these data to examine the prevailing assumption that men rarely experience sexual victimization. We concluded that federal surveys detect a high prevalence of sexual victimization among men-in many circumstances similar to the prevalence found among women. We identified factors that perpetuate misperceptions about men's sexual victimization: reliance on traditional gender stereotypes, outdated and inconsistent definitions, and methodological sampling biases that exclude inmates. We recommend changes that move beyond regressive gender assumptions, which can harm both women and men.

[girlschasinggirls]

[radicalfacts]

radical facts - short feminist facts

#anti sex industry

Sex Trafficking Worldwide

Globally, 4.8 million victims get trafficked for the sex industry every year.

This category includes any adults who involuntarily participate in the sex industry and children experiencing commercial sexual exploitation. 3.8 million victims were adults, and 1 million were children. Globally, 99% of victims were women and girls.

(Data sourced via traffickinginstitute.org)

[anthroxlove]

[honeyriot]

"Rape is illegal. A man is not supposed to be able to rape anyone but his own wife with impunity. But rape is widespread, rarely even reported to the police (one in ten or eleven rapes are reported in the United States), more rarely prosecuted, and convictions are unusual and unlikely. This is because juries view the woman as responsible forthe sex act, no matter how abusive it is. The womans sexual history is explored to convict her of being wanton: any sexual experience is used to show that her nature is responsible for what happened to her, not the man who did it."

[fuckyeahilike]

The irredeemably evil character in [Harry] Potter has dehumanized himself. Voldemort has consciously and deliberately made himself less than human, and we see the natural conclusion of what he's done to himself through very powerful magic; what he's left with is something less than human. And he's done that purposely. He sees humanity as weakness. He has reduced himself to something that cannot feel the full range of human emotion. 

There's a huge appeal - and I try to show this in the Potter books - to black and white thinking. We should mistrust ourselves most when we are certain. Interestingly, the two characters that caused the most furious debate were Dumbledore and Snape. People wanted Dumbledore to be perfect - he is deeply flawed - but to me, he is an exemplar of goodness. But he has to make decisions, difficult ones, like those we have to make in the real world. Meanwhile, Snape can be a bully, he can be mean, he can be sadistic, he's bitter; but he is also courageous, he is determined to make good what he did terribly wrong, and without him, disaster would have inevitably occurred. 

I have had fans very angry at me for not categorizing Snape in particular as just a really bad guy. And I said, No I don't agree with you. First of all, because I know him. Second, people can be deeply flawed, can make mistakes, can do bad things - in fact, show me the human being who hasn't- and they can also be capable of greatness. And I mean greatness in a moral sense.

-JK Rowling

See, shit like this is why women who made the choice to stay with their horrible, abusive husbands until it literally became a matter of life or death, such women should not be allowed to then become the voices for all women who are victims of domestic violence. 

Most women don’t choose to stay, they just have nowhere else to go. They hate the man who martyrs them, they hate their enemy, they just can’t save themselves. And they are the majority.

In the mean time women like Amber Heard and FKA Twiggs and JK Rowling endure all manners of brutal disrespect from their man for years because they can’t bring themselves to believe that, deep down inside, their man doesn’t love them and doesn’t have some essence of goodness. After all, to think otherwise and hate them would constitute black and white thinking and we just can’t have that, now can we? Or maybe it’s their narcissism that makes it impossible for them to accept that a man just doesn’t love them.

A man may want to possess you so he can have you as property, not because he loves you. A man who sees you as ownership is one of the most dangerous enemies you will ever have, not a lover than you have the obligation to forgive and still love no matter what. 

Not that any of these women ever understood it, seeing as to this day both Amber and Twiggs still say that they love their former abuser (that’s a direct quote from both, separately, I shit you not, they state that they still love them). And as you can read for yourself, to this day JK Rowling still gaslights children into thinking that it makes them shallow and superficial to not acknowledge Snape as a man of greatness who loves and is brave.

Let’s make this very clear: a man who murders your husband and child doesn’t love you. Love is as love does. And even a bastard, provided he is brave, will at least commit his own murders instead of sending someone else, and Snape could have taken advantage of numerous opportunities to kill Voldemort and he didn’t because he’s a spineless coward, too revolting to be believed.

Stuff like this is why women who have the freedom to leave their abuser should never be given the pulpit on matters of domestic violence. They will never understand the profound horror of domestic violence, what it’s like to see only too clearly the nightmare of being wedded to a monster that you genuinely can’t liberate yourself from. 

I dare you to show me - show me right now, I mean it - a woman who was the prisoner of a man whom she genuinely could not leave, and who later says that in spite of everything she still loves the fucking bastard who nearly ended her life, or the woman who having managed to slip through the monster’s clutches thinks she’s being profound when she chides children who still retain the ability to recognize irredeemable evil when they see it for being very shallow and fascistic and “judgy” about a monster.

An author who cared about nuance and shades of grey would have made Harry a monster, because that’s what happens when you are raised as a monster. Monster aren’t born, they’re made. By any rights Harry should have been Voldemort, a person who cut out his heart and is capable of any kind of cruelty. Instead, because this is a book for children, JK obeyed the conventions that are there for a reason and she wrote him as a well-adapted, charming and prematurely mature boy who isn’t afraid of anything. If she had wanted realism his home life wouldn’t have been written as comic relief but rather as Horror for adults, like the protagonist in Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon.

Snape and Dumbledore turning out to have been in league against Voldemort is a great plot twist, and that’s all that it is, not a profound observation on the myriad nuances of human nature. In spite of the dramatic surprise it will always feel wrong because evil people can’t be good. Harry should never have named his child after him because Snape plotted to kill him and his father so he could fuck his mom. 

I’m right about this, as is everyone else who agrees - meaning that we’re correct in what we say, not shallow. Hey, at least we don’t think those who commit murder so they can fuck the widow are still capable of greatness, that you should trust them to still be capable of doing the right thing. End of story.

[lavender-lucidity]

Imagining about a future in which AI sex bots become sentient and start killing the men who buy them. Because if they are buying them, you know they deserve it.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

I sent some videos of the evidence I've got, of what Sheree had done to me to Tony. And see... for him to have watched them and tell me... I think I said something like, "can you tell me if I'm overreacting or I'm doing the right thing?" Because I really didn't trust my own decision making.

And I sent him the videos and then a little bit later, he gave me a call and he said, "you're definitely not overreacting." And he said that, erm... that he'd been affected quite badly by what he'd seen.

He says, "I'm worried about you", he says, "it's obvious that Sheree's really drunk again." "I know that she's been physically abusive towards you" and erm... says "things hadn't got any better" and he says, "I don't think things..." "I don't think things are going to get any better for you."

... just wait a second.

So he says, erm... "I know you don't want me to tell anyone" but he says, "I've got to do what I think is the right thing to do." And so he says, "I'll probably have to do something, you know, you might not necessarily think is good for you, might not agree with at the time" but he says, "I hope that..." erm... He says, "I hope that eventually, after I've done it, that... you'll forgive me and you'll know... I did it for the right reasons."

Richard Spencer sent some of the footage of his abuse to a friend, to ask if he was overreacting or what.

And yet, there are still people saying, "he should have...", "he could have...", "he's a man so all he had to do..."

Oh, and then there's the time when she wouldn't let him sit on the bed, so while he was sitting on the floor near the bed, she literally defecated on his head, and when he said he didn't deserve that, she simply retorted that he did. But sure, "he could have, should have, all he had do to was..."

--

The UK government has redefined domestic violence as "Violence Against Women and Girls." This means that any acknowledged domestic violence where a man or boy is the victim, becomes a statistic as "Violence Against Women and Girls." That sounds like an Orwellian joke, but it's completely real.

https://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2022-0294/Supporting_Male_Victims_March_2022.pdf

This is called "gaming the system." It's ideological corruption.

[radicalfacts]

radical facts - short feminist facts

#patriarchy

Forced Marriage & Child Brides

Forced marriage is still a very prevalent violation of human rights worldwide, especially for women and girls. 88% of victims were women and girls.

37% of victims were under 18 at the time of the marriage. Of these, 44% were under 15 at the time of the marriage.

Each year, 12 million girls under 18 are getting married off. Most of these scenarios consist of the girl getting married off to a much older - adult - man.

The UN report (linked below) states that globally, in 2021, nearly 1 in 5 women aged 20-24 were married before turning 18.

(UN - Report "Gender Snapshot 2022"; general report on women's rights & equality worldwide)

[anthroxlove]

[haggishlyhagging]

[Note: This excerpt reminded me of Joan Smith’s book Home Grown. She discussed the overwhelming propensity of terrorists, in their youth, to commit violence against women and girls. It appears Mussolini was no exception.]

In the end, Mussolini could not be tempered. He was at once too weak and too proud. Belligerence was too deeply ingrained in his character. At ten, Benito Mussolini had been expelled from school for thuggishly stabbing a classmate. By twenty, he had stabbed a girlfriend. By thirty, he was the founder of the Italian Fascist party, which rose to power by the simple stratagem of systematically murdering thousands of political opponents so there was no one left to oppose him. By forty, Benito Mussolini had wrested power from the king of Italy through the force of a cult of personality, an act that inspired a younger and admiring Adolf Hitler to attempt a similar Beer Hall Putsch in Germany. Within a year or two, by 1925, he cast aside any pretense and ruled as a fascist dictator, riding a wave of populist support, buoyed by invective and a swaggering, cocksure rhetoric of nationalism and nostalgia that exhilarated his followers and terrified his critics.

Machismo was at the heart of Mussolini's claim to power. In the world that Mussolini had created, "real men" did not back down from a fight and "real Italians," men who were heirs to the Roman empire that had conquered the world, conceded to no one. This created a political dilemma that was clear to him: "The Italians having heard my warlike propaganda for eighteen years . . . cannot understand how I can become a herald of peace, now that Europe is in flames . . . except the military unpreparedness of the country [for which] I am made responsible." Mussolini did not want war. But he would not lose face either.

-Tilar J. Mazzeo, Sisters in Resistance