#defending rape survivors

[fabulousprancingtrashstallion]

Why I despise Book!Mistle

I felt the need to write this based off this comment. "if she wanted Ciri could have stopped herself from being raped." Like, wow, way to victim blame, buddy. Honestly, I am shocked there is any question this was rape. I studied psychology so I could go into a big rant about it, but I will try to keep this short. Let's start here. People argue it's not Stockholm, but what IS Stockholm syndrome? "Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response that occurs when hostages or abuse victims' bond with their captors or abusers. This psychological connection develops over the course of the days, weeks, months, or even years of captivity or abuse."

People who have Stockholm syndrome have:

Positive feelings toward the captors or abusers.

Sympathy for their captors’ beliefs and behaviors.

Negative feelings toward authority figures.

Although Stockholm syndrome was named based on the location of a bank robbery-hostage situation, some of the same behaviors and feelings are seen in victims of other types of trauma, including:

Sexual, physical and emotional abuse.

Child abuse.

Coach-athlete abuse. One example might be athletes who agree to extreme, abusive workouts because they believe the coach knows what’s best for them.

Human sex trafficking.

Other symptoms are similar to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and include:

Flashbacks.

Feeling distrustful, irritated, jittery or anxious.

Can’t relax or enjoy things that you previously enjoyed.

Trouble concentrating.

I am confident in saying that Ciri's sympathetic behavior towards Mistle and the Rats was a survival skill. So, with that out of the way let's take a look at what happened.

Ciri was about to be raped by Kayleigh when Mistle saved her. Her aggressor just saved her. She is now trusted by Ciri. Ciri is grateful. She finally feels safe after having lost her parent figures, being lost in the desert, losing her powers, losing little horse, being kidnapped by trappers and nearly raped. Not only by the rats, but one of the trappers suggested they wanted to take her into the barn. Let us not forget. Ciri is emotionally and physically drained. So, what has Mistle done? She is pretending to save her. That she's only here to comfort her. That what she's doing is to make her feel nice. She's playing the game. That is part of the grooming and strategy of perpetrators. "Quiet, everything is fine." Mistle tells her. How many abuse victims have heard these words I wonder? Mistle proceeds to touch Ciri without her consent. This is rape, but now Ciri is trapped between a rock and a hard place. She has a choice. She could be raped by Kayleigh or she can be raped by Mistle... well... Kayleigh has a weapon between his thighs. Mistle doesn't. Which one is worse to be raped by? It is a shit choice, but she has to make a choice and she makes it. For Ciri it comes down to "This is the price of not being alone." "The price of protection" "The price of safety and security" To suggest that Mistle could not have raped Ciri because they form a bond is naive. Many people have bonds with a partner who is a narcissist, but does that mean they were not abused by said narcissist? No. It does not. It is clear from the shame and the disgust that this is something that she did not want. To suggest that "because it felt good, it was not rape" is naive. Pleasure during the act is not proof that Ciri wanted it to happen. Many, many rape victims struggle with shame over this very issue. It does NOT mean they wanted to be raped. What happens next to further prove this? It says she RAN to the river to try to wash away what had been done to her with TEARS. If it was someone you enjoyed being with you wouldn't want to wash that away. You would want it to linger on your skin. No matter what way you look at it this is NOT a healthy relationship. Mistle is a rapist. I think it really culminates with Hotspurn, but that is another post entirely. If Sapkowsk didn't mean for this to be a rape scene and instead some epic romance? He did a pretty shitty job.

[bigskydreaming]

Imagine if you were a gay or bi man who tried a certain firefighter show because of all the attention it was getting for one of its mains having a later in life bi awakening.....and between seasons you ventured into its fandom in search of material to tide you over til the next one. And you're greeted by a deluge of posts and fics that are just cheerfully homophobic towards one half of the newly out bi character's canon relationship on the basis of 'well he's not the RIGHT gay guy' and pushing the idea that actually its fine to cheat on him because Reasons and he's sexually predacious based on......behind the scenes implications people have divined like they're reading fucking tea leaves.

But don't get it twisted....this fandom, like all fandoms, really cares about representation!

Sorry not sorry, but we really need to kill this idea that fandoms are welcoming and inviting and inherently progressive when they're frequently insular and reductive as fuck. Every single fandom I've been in has had major trends of people doubling down on their own headcanons and fanon interpretations of the characters and willfully enacting trends aimed at running off people who like the 'wrong' characters (usually characters marginalized along one or multiple axes), like the characters in the 'wrong ways' or other bullshit.

Scott is a Bad Friend fics overtaking Teen Wolf fandom was not incidental, it was a FEATURE of the fandom, because the vast majority of that fandom did not want to share its space with anyone who had the nerve to like its main character. Survivors complaining about or criticizing the prevalance of rape fics in a certain fandom has in my experience always led to a reactionary UPTICK in those fics, with gems like 'this character can, will, must be raped' in the tags making it crystal clear that some of these fics exist because how fucking DARE anyone try and push forth a narrative not agreed upon by Fandom Main.

I could cite examples for so many other fandoms, with the commonalities always being that vast majorities in these fandoms are explicitly reacting defensively to being asked to be more mindful of fandom trends revolving around or exacerbating racism, homophobia, transphobia, rape or abuse apologia, ableism, etc....

With the most prolific fucking rallying cry across countless fandoms being "No the fuck we will NOT be doing that," because lolololol.....

Fandom is an inherently progressive space, didn't you hear?

[sybilspretexts]

i generally steer clear of this subject because god knows whatever you say about it as a lesbian will be twisted into something malicious but this just made me incredibly depressed ... the opposite of good and equal is not abusive, it is bad and unequal and separatists say “heterosexual relationships are unequivocally bad and unequal for women” because its a fact, not because its politically convenient and because they want to manipulate straight women in believing them

we can sit here splitting hairs because what is the threshold for “real abusive relationship”? the man who never hits his wife or yells at her but expects her to give up her identity her career and her autonomy for him? the man who only yells but never hits his wife? man who hits his wife once a month? 

this is how the average woman already minimizes the harms done to her by her male partner: she’s better off because her relationship is not a “real abusive relationship” and she could do so much worse. i’ve met so many of these "non-abusive” liberal heterosexual couples whose happiness is entirely sustained by the female partner’s compromises. heterosexual relationships are not catastrophized enough - women put up with so much within the context of them simply because its normalized.

we’re supposed to just let women walk into the meat grinder and only act when they come out the other side battered and broken 

[eivor-wolfkissed]

PJO fans can really be something else, the specific ways in which they are annoying are criminally underrated on this hellsite

[recoord]

Staying neutral until Neil Gaiman is convicted by the courts?

Second attempt to express my thoughts on the matter. The first time, my wording was not the best and it needed to be fact checked so here there is a summarized attempt. Thank you to everyone who pointed it out.

Using "neutrality" to remain sceptical to the allegations is not as good as an idea as it seems.

Many have shown scepticism because of the medium, The Tortoise podcast, used to publish most of the accusations. I've found many don't know there's a second podcast that published one of the women's allegations: Am I Broken: Survivor Stories Podcast. A podcast made by a non-binary licensed clinical mental health counselor specializing in sexual trauma. The link for the podcast is here and the link for the transcript here. [Credits for the transcript to Ersatz Haderach].

Personally, I think you shouldn't discard the allegations just for the medium chosen, they're still valid. But, there’s a second podcast and Claire's allegations there help to amplify the other victims's voices. If you haven't read or listened to any of the allegations, that could be a good start.

Ignoring that information and testimonies exist is far from being neutral. Learn about the allegations before choosing "neutrality".

It's important to notice that in cases like the ones exposed by the women's allegations against Gaiman, "Neutrality" is already biased in favor of the accused.

Waiting for a formal sentence for Gaiman to start believing in the victims is choosing to blindly trust a corrupt system. It also sounds like if you weren't conscious enough of the many problems that rape victims face in the justice system.

I've found an interesting report on the matter with information about how justice fails victims . Here are some important points:

Why the legal justice fails rape survivors?

According to a report made by Centre for Women’s Justice, the End Violence Against Women Coalition, Imkaan and Rape Crisis England & Wales.(2020):

Obstacles to conviction

- "In the vast majority of (adult) rape cases, the defendant will accept that sexual intercourse took place, and it is only the element of ‘consent’ that is in dispute, or – put another way – whether a reasonable person would characterise what happened as consensual or non-consensual."

"Given the sexual nature of the offence, it will often take place in private, the complainant and defendant (or defendants) being the only persons present."

"There are very rarely any eye-witnesses to the offence itself, able to corroborate either the complainant or the defendant’s account as to what has unfolded. Indeed, there will more often be no independent evidence at all which corroborates the complainant’s account as to the circumstances of the sexual encounter. At best, there may be circumstantial evidence which supports what the complainant is saying: evidence which, for example, provides a picture of the complainant’s physical or mental state before and/or after the attack; or there may be evidence which is broadly supportive of her credibility, or undermines the suspect’s credibility."

- Even in ‘better’ periods, rape cases have always posed very significant challenges for prosecutors. While volumes of convictions have fluctuated over the years, the rate of convictions for rape has invariably been lower than in most other areas of crime."

-“it has been widely accepted by criminal justice bodies that many members of the public continue to believe in long-standing ‘myths and stereotypes’ relating to rape, which do not correspond with reality, result in disbelief of victims/survivors, and are now outdated in the eyes of the law.”

- “When a victim/survivor’s credibility is considered so fundamental to winning a rape or serious sexual offences trial, those who do not fit the ‘mould’ of a credible victim – because of their age, their outward presentation, their social skills, a disadvantaged background, or a learning mental health disability – are the least likely to see justice served.”

- “Whenever the profile of rape victims/survivors and their poor treatment by the criminal justice system begins to receive the attention it deserves, there comes a backlash and a rise in public concern regarding the fate of the ‘falsely’ accused.”

I recommend reading the whole report for further information.

Don't choose "neutrality" as an excuse to hide your bias, listen to the victims. There is a lot of information out there. Many patterns are repeated among victims who, before the allegations were made public, thought they were the only person who experienced the same thing, with Gaiman as the common denominator.

If you want to add something, feel free to do it.

[etz-ashashiyot]

Okay today in: Things I never thought I'd have to explain to alleged leftists

There is literally never an excuse for rape. There just isn't.

Like torture, it is a crime with absolutely no valid purpose whatsoever; it is simply a way to cause extreme suffering to another human being. Rape is effectively a type of torture, especially when paired with physical abuse or other sadistic acts.

With most other kinds of violence (not all) there are at least some circumstances that might (regrettably) call for them. Hitting someone? Injuring them? Even killing them? In a life or death scenario, you might have to defend yourself or someone else, even to the death.

But rape and torture require a lot more intentionality and are never necessary. Torture is known to produce bad information. And rape? Well, rape is specifically and only a way to humiliate and dominate someone. There are no circumstances under which rape is the correct answer.

No personal trauma, no collective trauma, no cause — nothing is a valid justification for rape.

Worse — rape is often not even intended as a punishment for the person (most commonly a woman or girl) being raped, but actually as a proxy to wound the men in their lives, the fathers, the husbands, the brothers, the sons who aren't able to protect "their" women.

Not only does this line of thinking reject the pain of the actual survivor in favor of her relatives, but it actually totally dehumanizes her and reduces her to an object that the rapist has damaged to get back at the man he actually wants to hurt.

Justifying rape as a tool for any reason whatsoever makes you a cesspool, I don't care what your internal justification is.

[ship-and-let-ship]

Not my normal kind of topic, but Jesus Christ, it is EMBARASSING how passionately outdoor cat owners will defend their right to neglect & endanger the animal they supposedly love.

I said "don't neglect your cat" on Instagram & immediately got 100+ butthurt cat owners in my replies bitching and whining and crying and SENDING ME DEATH THREATS???

Several people threatened not only me, but MY PETS???

More than one person compared blaming the owner for their free roaming cat getting hurt or killed to victim blaming RAPE SURVIVORS??? Which is an INSANE comparison to make.

Why are y'all THIS desperate to shirk all responsibility for your animals???

[heli-writes]

A dragon's heart

Pairing: Barbarian!Bakugou Katsuki x female!reader

Summary: The dragonblood tribe is known for being cruel, barbarian warriors that slaughter, loot and rape all places they pass through. They are feared among the villagers and even bigger cities. Having lost most of their women to a plague, they're trying to ensure their tribe's survival by kidnapping women from other places. However, they're not the only monsters in human form out there. When y/n experiences this first hand, she has no choice but to ask for help from no other but the barbarian leader Katsuki Bakugou himself.

Disclaimer: Heavy violence in the last part, throat cutting and gutting of human people, mentions of rape (no visual description!), swearing

[Please don't read if you are sensible to or triggered by the topics mentioned above.]

Part 1, Part 2

Series Masterlist

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

People don't dare to speak about them out loud. Afraid that it would manifest them. They would only speak about them only in whispers behind closed doors. Fathers would tell their sons that it's better to flee than to fight. Don't play the hero. You can't win a fight against them, no one can. Mothers tell their daughters about the horrors they commit. You'd rather be dead than be captured by them. The women they don't kill after they're done, don't last more than a week. Y/n heard all the stories growing up. Some are more horrifying than others. Y/n has never lived in one place for too long. Her people have always been wanderers, offering their services and wares to the villages they pass through. So, she's come to hear a great deal of stories in her lifetime.

In the past two years, life has been unfortunate for y/n. The wandering folk have always been victims of bandits waiting on the side of the road. They've found ways to defend themselves but bandit activity has risen in the past years due to the barbarians attacking and raiding places all over the kingdom. Like sharks smelling blood, other low-life criminals start to crawl out of their holes, sensing an opportunity to gain some coin and women for themselves. Y/n's group has been attacked quite a few times over the last two years, decimating their numbers bit by bit. Having lost people, coins and wares, the last winter was harsh. Those, who didn't starve to death, died due to the harsh cold or infection that followed soon after. After that winter, there weren't many left of them and the survivors started to question if their way of life was still liveable in the current condition. Eventually, the group dismembered. Not all at once, but one by one. People found other work or opportunities in the villages they passed through. A better prospect of life. Even y/n's elder brother, her only surviving family member, left this spring and enrolled in the military service of the king. He tried to convince her to come with her and settle down in the capital. But y/n can't imagine such a life. Being used to living in the open, in tents and wagons, she developed a distaste for sleeping in houses made of stone. It gives her nightmares. The thought that the house might crumble and its stones burying her alive, scares her to death.

Eventually, y/n ends up alone. Only her, her tent, and a wagon her parents left behind. She tried keeping up the life of a wanderer until her donkey died of old age and she had no coin to buy a new one. Having no opportunity to continue to pull her wagon, she was forced to settle closeby to a small settlement. Here's the thing. Villagers are usually nice to the wandering folk. They're happy to trade with them and the change of pace and stories they bring with them. However, they are not keen on having them in their life permanently. It's nice to have them around for a couple of days, but it's also good when they move on. Then there are the prejudices. Often people put y/n's kind into the same box as other people without a permanent residence like bandits, homeless people, or moving brothels. So, people weren't too happy when y/n put up her tent close to the village entrance.

You see, most people don't treat y/n unkindly as long as she keeps her distance and has the proper coin when she needs to buy something. They even trust her enough to buy her wares but they're not very inclusive. So y/n does not really find any friends or social connections and she is aware of the demeaning glances and sneers people give her when they think she's not looking. She's trying to save up coins for a new donkey and hopes to find her brother. Maybe convincing him to leave the military. Or at least to find a more inviting place than where she is now.

Today's the celebration of the long day. It's the longest day of the year and the people celebrate the daylight for blessing their fields and fruits. There's a festival in the village with dances, beverages and lots of music. It gives y/n some consolation that the village people are celebrating this day. It's a big festival for her people with different traditions and rituals that are held all day and night. This year y/n tried to do as many of them on her own, but it's just not the same without your family around. So, she's glad she can go into the village and take part in the buzzing celebration. Though 'take part' is probably a bit too much. She probably will buy a cup of fruit wine and watch the hustle and bustle of the villagers. It's not like anybody would want to dance with her. After all, she has no real prospect of marriage around here. Nobody would let their son court and marry a woman like her. Not that y/n is interested in any of the young men she's seen in the village. She finds most of them quite close-minded and not very driven.

Y/n wears a flower crown she's woven today and one of her mother's dresses. It actually might be the one she got married in. She wanders the town square and watches old men toast with full jugs of beer and young couples sneaking around, waiting for the music to start. She gets herself a cup of wine and a sugary piece of cake and settles on the ground next to the bakery stand. Cross-legged, she bites into her cake and takes notice of some middle-aged women looking in her direction and whispering behind raised hands. Y/n shrugs it off as the music starts to play and people start to dance. She watches the commotion and whips her feet to the music. She really would love to dance. At midnight, the villagers dim the lanterns and lit a fire in the middle of the square. Curiously, y/n blends into the mass that gathers around the fire. She bumps into a man her age. She apologizes and gives the man a small smile. The man looks at her in bewilderment and his friend gives her a mean look, pulling the man away from her. Slowly, silence befalls the square and the old storyteller of the village makes his way to the middle of the square, next to the fire. Y/n buzzes with excitement. She loves stories. Before starting his story, the man lets his gaze wander through the people and takes a deep breath.

Far away from here, behind the mountain range we call bear fangs, lays the territory of the dragonblood tribe. These beasts of men managed to tame the greatest monsters known to mankind: the dragons. Over 12 feet high, spewing raging fire, these creatures are nothing more than steel-hard scales and razor-sharp teeth. While normal people, like us, would fear for their lives encountering these monsters, the dragonblood tribe has lived together with them for centuries in what they call harmony. There's no doubt you have to be a special kind of person to survive an encounter with such a monster, let alone live with them. Tall, strong, cunning and unafraid of death. All characteristics the men of the tribe possess. Some say they even mixed their blood with their dragons and gained impenetrable skin and superhuman strength.

A strength that they still use today to bring terror and fear into our lands. However, a few winters ago, a horrible sickness befell the women of the dragonblood tribe. Most of them didn't survive the season. Having lost their women, the dragonblood men lust for female flesh. Flesh that they seek nowadays in our lands.

We've all heard stories. From an aunt or uncle living in other parts of the kingdom, from passing merchants or the wandering folk about them. They do not care for day or night, they attack whenever they feel like it. There's no plan or logic to their attack, just chaos and violence. They burn houses, skin men alive, put children on spikes and do unspeakable, terrible things to our women. We should fear every single one of them but... there's one we should fear the most. Their leader: Bakugou Katsuki. He's the cruelest, strongest, and meanest of them all. He managed to tame the biggest and most dangerous dragon of all kinds: A hellfire dragon. With scales red as blood and fire as hot as a hundred forges, no one can escape this beast. And no one can escape its master either. With an insatiable hunger for coin, gold and women, their leader and his men continue to invade this country and raid its villages and towns. Greedily acquiring riches and kidnapping and taking our women whenever they please. You never know when they strike, but when you see a sliver of burning red in the sky... Take your little siblings, put your old mother on your back and leave farm and home behind, and run as fast as you can. If you're lucky, and cunning yourself, you might just be able to escape the terror of the dragonblood tribe and live another day to tell the story.

As the storyteller finishes his story, the market square lies in eery silence. Nobody dares to even move. Only when the musicians start playing again and the lanterns are lit again, the tension eases and the gathering around the fire dissolves. Y/n gets up from the place she was seated in and rubs her arms. There are goosebumps all over her body. What a creepy story to tell during such delightful festivities, she thinks. She grabs her cup to return it to the vendor. In passing, she hears someone say: "Why on earth would he speak of this? Doesn't he know it's a bad omen to speak it out loud?". She returns her cup and lets her gaze wander over the square once more. Some couples picked up dancing again but it's obvious that the atmosphere has shifted. Y/n notices the man she bumped into earlier watching her from across the square. She gives him a nod and then turns around to leave.

Y/n set up camp not too far away from the village, but far away enough to have some peace and quiet. The wandering folk often set up camp in a forest or closeby a river, living off the land around them. So, y/n has a short walk by foot back to her tent. The moon stays high in the sky, illuminating her surroundings enough for her to comfortably find her way home. Deep in her own thoughts, y/n doesn't notice the dark shadows following her. She's been walking for a while when she finally hears the snickering of male voices behind her. She looks over her shoulder and sees three male silhouettes following her. "Hey, y/n, wait a second!", she hears one of them yell. The voice is familiar. One of the villagers. She stops for a second, a stupid mistake on her part. One of the men jog up to her, the others following closely. "I'm sorry, can I help you with anything?", y/n says calmly. "Actually, there's something huge you could help me with.", the man she bumped into earlier grins. Y/n pretends not to catch on the allusion. "If you need help with something, it's best to work on it tomorrow. Also, we probably should talk to your father first since he handles business in your family.", she states. She hopes the mention of his father will intimidate the guy. "Oh, I think it's best to work on it tonight.", the man answers and his friends snicker behind him. "Sorry, I'm tired. Let's talk about it tomorrow.", y/n tries to advert him once again. "It won't be any work for you at all. You'd just have to lay down. Or stand up, depending on how you like it.", the man says and leans close. "I'd like to go home. Alone.", she tells him and turns to leave. "C'mon don't be like that!", one of his friends grins behind him, as the other one grabs her arm. "You're drunk. You should all go home, too. It's best to sleep it off.", she tells them and pulls on her arm. "Why are you like that? You don't think we're worth your time?", the third one coos. Y/n pulls on her arm again. "I'm sure you're all great and we can talk about everything tomorrow. Right now, however, I'd prefer to go home alone.", she tries again. "Not even for some coin? I heard your kind does everything for a little bit of gold.", the man holding her arms sneers. Not for any gold in the world, y/n would like to say. She knows better than to offend them. It's already a dangerous situation she's in. No need to escalate it further. "C'mon, babe. At least let me feel you up a bit.", the guy says and tries to pull her closer. Y/n decides that she has had enough of this. She balls her fist and swings it right into the man's face. Not expecting the blow, he lets go of her arm and stumbles back. Y/n doesn't waste a second and makes a run for it. Immediately, she leaves the well-known path and darts into the woods. She hopes that the trees give her enough cover to keep out of their sight. She runs in a zigzag, changing her direction multiple times. She hears the man behind her, trying to keep up with her. Unfortunately for her, they are bigger and faster than her and it's hard to shake them off. Eventually, y/n loses them. She climbs up a tree and stays unmoving for a long time. She doesn't hear them anywhere close by and her heart slows down a bit. It's not the first time she had to run away from men with bad intentions. She knows it's not a smart idea to return to her tent immediately. So, she stays up on the tree for most of the night. Her eyes fall close a couple of times but after she almost loses balance one time, she stays awake for the remaining night listening closely into the woods.

Only when the sun starts to rise again and wafts of mist waver over the cold forest ground, y/n climbs down from her spot. Her joints are stiff and she's chilled to the bone. Cautiously, she starts her way back to her tent. Of course, she did not watch where she was going last night and it takes her multiple hours to find her way back. When she arrives at her campsite, chills run down her back. Apparently, these men were not only relentless but also petty. Her entire campsite is destroyed. They absolutely trashed the place and set fire to her tent and wagon. Y/n takes in the sight. She tries to stay calm but her blood is boiling. It's not like she cared much about the possessions. The wandering folk always packed lightly and only what they could carry. It's the disrespect for her. Also, the little things that she did own were necessities. It's still early in the morning, so y/n decides to salvage what she can and take her leave. She knows men like this. When they don't get what they want, they don't rest until they absolutely destroy everything.

Unfortunately for y/n, the devil works fast and these men work faster. She just started piling up things that were still usable when she hears clamoring just a mile away. "Let's go! She must be back by now! No way she leaves her witchcraft stuff behind!", she hears a man yell. Y/n debates for a few seconds whether or not to stand her ground but decides it's better to avoid confrontation. She quickly grabs a small bag and retreats to the forest. However, she doesn't make it far. Only a few meters into the woods, an arrow flies by her head. "There she is! I saw her just beyond the tree line!", she hears a yell behind her. Immediately, y/n breaks into a sprint. She tries to lose them by zigzagging again but the broad daylight makes it easier for them to spot her. Being used to walking all day, y/n has quite the stamina and hopes to tire them out. However, she didn't sleep all night and the men seemed to have prepared for a longer hunt. 'Hunt' is the appropriate term here. They keep shooting arrows at her and seem to track her trails.

The forest no longer looks familiar to y/n as she keeps pushing on. Her heart feels as if it's about to explode. In a bad way. She's sure the men on her tail can hear her heavy breathing from a mile away. She's also sure that they start to catch up to her. She can hear them closer and closer behind her. They are whooping and whistling as if they are making fun of her. So sure that they can catch up to her. Suddenly, an arrow flies close to her face again, cutting her ear. She can feel blood dripping down the side of her face. "Come out, come out, wherever you are! You can't hide forever, you little bitch!", she hears one of them call out behind her. She gathers all her strength and pushes her legs to run even faster than before. Panic sets in and she hears an arrow hit the ground behind her. Trying to look back in order to estimate how far they are behind her, she stumbles over the roots of a tree and falls to the ground. "Over there!", a voice yells closely behind her. She gets up as quickly as she can and a piercing pain jolts through her. She must've torn or broken something in her joint as she fell. She limbs on trying to use the trees for cover. Another arrow hits the bark of the tree right next to her. She pushes herself off the tree, trying to bring more distance between herself and the men hunting her. Suddenly she loses her footing and finds herself sliding down a slope. Thorny bushes cut her legs, arms and face. The impact leaves a ringing tone in her ears. Her entire body hurts now. For a moment, she's tempted to just lay there and accept her fate. But when she hears the howling men above her, she fights to get back onto her feet again. Her bones feel heavy as she staggers on. She can hear some of the men sliding down the slope as well. Suddenly, she smells smoke in the air. Somebody must be close by!, she thinks. This thought cost her a valuable second and suddenly a pointed force to her right shoulder knocks her down again. Next, she feels a soaring pain from the very same place. When she turns her head to her side, in terror she realizes that an arrow is stuck in her shoulder. She can barely lift her arm now. On her hands and knees, she frantically looks for smoke in the air. Y/n fixes her eyes on the dark clouds of smoke rising into the air just a yard or so from her. It's my only chance, y/n decides. These people might be able to help. They can't be worse than the men that are hunting her. Little did she know, it was quite the opposite. Having found new hope, y/n gets back onto her feet. She starts sprinting again. Ignoring the pain in her foot joint, she pushes her body to the limit. Avoiding arrows out of sheer luck, she manages to avoid getting killed. Finally, she stumbles onto the clearing where the smoke was coming from.

Her eyes fall onto the fireplace first, then at the man sitting next to it. The man only wears dark pants and a pair of boots. He's got blonde spiky hair that stands up in different directions. Necklaces of teeth hand from his neck. All things y/n doesn't register in her panic. That and the giant, red dragon sleeping at the other side of the clearing. The man gets up immediately and grabs a sword that laid across his lap just seconds ago. He looks at y/n angrily, ready to yell or behead her or both. However, he does not get a chance to speak. Y/n's body gives out and she falls onto her knees. "I'm begging you!", she yells out, tears streaming down her face. "Please help me! If you have just an inch of good in you, please find the mercy to help me! They are going to kill me!", she continues to yell. The man looks at her in bewilderment. Nearby, the village men yell in her direction. In horror, she pushes herself up once more and stumbles in the direction of the strange man in front of her. She falls straight into his chest, clinging onto his arm. For a moment, the man looks as if he wants to push her back to the ground again but he doesn't get a chance to do so. One of the men hunting y/n stumbles onto the clearing with a knife in his hand. "There you are, you little slut!", he yells. In fear, y/n clings to the man in front of her. Suddenly, the stranger grabs her right arm. Pain shots from the arrow wound into her fingertips. She looks up and sees the stranger look at the wound with narrowed eyes. Another villager reaches the clearing. This one carries a bow and arrow. The stranger quickly makes the connection between the arrow stuck in y/n's shoulder and the arrow in the man's hand.

The stranger yells something non-understandable and pushes y/n to the side who falls to the ground like a sack of potatoes. The impact sends more pain through y/n body. "Who the fuck are you? That one belongs to us, find your own toy to play with!" the knife man says and raises his weapon. The stranger exclaims something loud and angry. Again y/n can't understand him. He must speak a different language than her. Suddenly a rumble pierces the air. Y/n's head whips around and the dragon rises to his feet. Y/n's mouth hangs open in disbelief. The man with the arrow yelps in surprise and lets go of his arrow sending it flying in an arbitrary direction. The stranger in front of her doesn't waste a second and uses the distraction to cut the knife guy's throat in a swift movement. In horror, y/n watches as blood gushes out of the horizontal wound and the man chokes on his own body fluids. The man with the bow stumbles backward onto his butt. His eyes are still fixated on the dragon to his right. The stranger harshly steps onto the man's foot. The disgusting sound of breaking bones rings through the air. The man yells in pain and throws his head back. The stranger grabs a fistful of his hair and yanks his head forward. Angrily, he yells at the villager and when the man only groans in pain, the stranger sticks his sword into his side. The villager lets out a bone-chilling scream. When the villager continues to not answer him, the stranger starts twisting his sword in the wound. The villager throws up on himself and his eyes roll into the back of his head. Y/n can't advert her eyes. She doesn't really comprehend what's happening in front of her. When more yelling is heard at the edge of the clearing, the stranger pulls his sword diagonally through the man's abdomen, creating a wound that makes squishy red things fall out of the man's body. Y/n feels like throwing up. The stranger drops the twitching man and makes its way to the edge of the clearing. What happens next is not registered by y/n who can't help but stare at the gutted man in front of her who keeps twitching until the light has left his eyes. She doesn't hear the screams of terror and death from the other side of the clearing. She doesn't even see the giant beast watching her every move.

Only when the stranger returns with blood dripping down his sword and chest, y/n's consciousness finds its way back into her body. The stranger looks as angry as he has since she entered his clearing. He sounds angry too. He's saying something to her. Looking at it backward, y/n is sure that she wouldn't have been able to understand him even if he spoke her language at this very moment. Only when he stomps closer to her with a raised sword, y/n springs to action and pushes herself backward with one leg, still sitting on the ground. This is it, she thinks, I'm going to die. The man grabs her uninjured shoulder and shakes her. She stares up at him with wide eyes. Suddenly, her vision starts spinning and her hearing starts to fade. Before she understands what is happening, her world fades to black.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

[Please comment if you'd like to be tagged in future chapters]

[madreemeritus]

Stella was depicted as an abuser since her first appearance in LooLoo Land. Stolas wakes up next to her, miserable. Defeated. The way she steals all of his blanket, leaving him vulnerable and cold, while denying to check on their child that was screaming for help, is VERY CLEARLY a sign of her disgusting behaviour.

In "You will be okay", Stolas melancholically sings about how his life is over and how he would never find love nor happiness, yet even still, he is able to find strenght and be with his daughter. Stolas is a SURVIVOR. He isn't whiny, he isn't dramatic, he isn't responsible for Stella's abuse. He was a teenage boy forced to be a father, a husband and a guardian of legions and powerful magics. He is a VICTIM and, most importantly, a SURVIVOR.

Later in the Episode, Octavia wakes up with her mother screaming, yelling and destroying Stolas's belongings. This is abuse. This isn't she being "reactive over his cheating", this is abuse. She is not a hysterical silly woman angry because her husband cheated on her, she is an abuser. Octavia, growing up in a dysfunctional house and unaware of the abuse her father was going through, doesnt understand the situation around her and thinks both her parents are to blame. She is a 17yo clueless child that grew up with a physically, emotionally and sexually abusive woman as her mother. OF COURSE she thinks her parents "used to love each other until Stolas cheated". But the audience KNOWS what is truly going on. Yes, Stolas's haters, Stella's defenders are also audience. They know Stolas is a victim. They just don't care, they pretend the show brought Stella's abuse "out of nowhere" when no. It was always there.

When Stolas offers to take Octavia out, he says "anything but staying in this house". Their house is hostile. Neither Via nor Stolas call it home. And the responsible for this hostality is NOT Stolas, it's Stella. When Stolas takes accountability for putting Via in an uncomfortable situation that she didn't consent to (what a good father would do), he tries to tell her about his and Stella's relationship.

"You have to understand. Your mother and I... we weren't in.. she hasn't been... I haven't been... I'm sorry, I don't have the words."

This is a victim. Stolas is unable to tell the truth, because he doesn't want Via to see her mother as a villain. Even though she is. Stolas is a victim, trying to protect his daugther from what he knows will hurt her. He was about to tell her that he and Stella were never in love, that she hasn't been a good person but a nasty abuser that ruined his life, but he couldn't let it go. This is trauma response. I know it's all obvious, but it's tragic that we still need to explain the obvious.

During season 1, Stella was shown emotionally abusing Stolas, neglecting their kid and abusing him in front of their kid, throwing objects and people at him, destroying his things and paying an assassin to kill him. All because she felt offended because he cheated on her with an IMP, a class that she ACTIVELY and PROPOSELY mistreats (no, it's not the same as Stolas's internalized bigotry, which is still bad, but Stella knows what she is doing and she enjoys doing it). She was always an abuser, it was NEVER a "mutually destructive" relationship. Her defenders chose to not see this.

After The Circus, we had the three reveals about Stella that made it impossible to defend her: 1, they were forced to marry, 2, she physically abused him as well, and 3, Via only exists because Stella raped Stolas multiple times. Neither of these are retcoms, neither of these "came out of nowhere". Stella was always depicted as an abuser, the show just added more context. THIS IS NOT BAD WRITING, this is a depiction of a type of abuse that society REFUSES to believe that happens.

Stolas is not responsible for anything. His "cheating" doesn't make him a bad person. As himself quoted, "cheating implies that there was betrayal. This woman never gave two fucks about me, nor our so called arranged marriage". There is no cheating. Stolas was forced to marry her, he was abused by her and he chose to move on with his life. He doesn't have to be forever stuck with his abuser and never meet anyone else in his life just because. IF they had a consensual, loving marriage and he suddenly decided to cheat, then yes, he would be the one to blame (YET EVEN STILL, KILLING THE PERSON THAT CHEATED ON YOU IS UNJUSTIFIABLE. CHEATING SUCKS. TAKING SOMEONE'S LIFE IS PURE EVIL), but this is not what happened. Stolas did nothing wrong regarding his relationship with Stella, he didn't "cheat", he didn't deserve to be abused nor having his life threatened by her.

Yes, Stella was also forced to marry him. Yes, she was also forced to be a mother in her teenage years. You know what she wasn't forced to do? She wasnt forced to hit Stolas, she wasn't forced to rape Stolas, she wasn't forced to host parties to humiliate him, she wasn't forced to pay an assassin to kill him. She chose to be an abuser. If she was a decent person, they could have been allies in a bad situation. But she isn't a decent person, she chose to make his life miserable.

As Stella's defenders are unable to understand that rape and abuse aren't ok just because they were done by a cishet rich racist woman, let's change the perspective: is Angel Dust cheating on Valentino? It's heavily implied that they had a consensual relationship, full of love on Angel's side, until Val became more and more abusive. Is Angel, by disobeying him, sleeping with other men (outside of work) and falling in love with Husk, cheating? Does he deserve to be raped, enslaved and trafficked because he's "also to blame"? No, he doesn't. Angel is a victim, Valentino is an abuser.

Stolas is not a flawless person. But pretending Stella "did nothing wrong" and is just "bad written" while hating Stolas for evils that he never did (x) (x) (x) (x) is just vile. A media is not "bad written" just because you don't like it, this is an accurate depiction of domestic violence where the victim is a gay, neurodivergent, socially isolated man and the abuser is a woman with every single social priviledge that a queerphobic, patriarchal society expects. This is not bad writting. You just have bad faith against the authors, ops I mean, agaisnt the only queer woman working on the writing procress.

[she-is-ovarit]

A Glance at Women's Oppression

Oppression may be measured by assessing socio-structural conditions. Males oppress female human beings on the axis of sex, and this pattern has been recognized across several disciplines of scientific research.

Violence Against Women

One in three women globally experience physical or sexual violence.

More than 1 in 4 women (26%) aged 15 years and older have suffered violence at the hands of their partners at least once since the age of 15.

The vast majority of substantial research on violence against women in the United States is now 20+ years old :)

As high as 64 - 84% of cases of sexual violence go unreported, so these estimates are low.

A male perpetrator was reported in 98% of cases of violence against both men and women.

58% of all women murdered in 2017 were killed by an intimate partner or a family member (source. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2018).

80% of women are victims or survivors of corrosive violence - aka "acid attacks". 60% of these attacks go unreported, most instigators of acid attacks are male, and there has been a 90% increase in these attacks in the last 10 years, with the UK being the country with the highest rate of acid attacks.

Worldwide 1 in 5 girls are married off usually to men twice their age or more.

Globally, as many as 38% of murders of women are committed by a male intimate partner.

200 million women have experienced female genital mutilation/cutting.

71% of all human trafficking involves women and girls – mainly for sexual exploitation (source. UNODC, 2016).

The killing of women accused of sorcery/witchcraft is reported as a significant phenomenon in countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands.

Many women are killed specifically in "honor killings" - to defend the honor of a man.

200 million girls experience female genital mutilation.

National studies indicate indicate that as many as 4 million women are battered each year, but only about 48 percent of these cases are reported to the police.

Violence against women meets the requirements of widely accepted definitions of hate crimes, but crimes motivated by hatred of women are not included in most antibias crime legislation.

Medical Misogyny

The disregard of pain and illness by medical professionals

This doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of this, but: women are seven times more likely to be misdiagnosed and discharged than men in the middle of having a heart attack. 70% of the people who experience chronic pain are female, but 80% of chronic pain studies have been conducted on males or male mice. Women also wait longer for a diagnosis and pain management than men.

Lack of research: the vast majority of scientific understanding and research on human beings conducted globally has been on males.

Period poverty and death due to misogynistic period shame (and I hope that this is obvious, but I am on Tumblr so I will emphasize that 100% of these deaths, illnesses, and disabilities are happening to female human beings.

Reproductive exploitation, discrimination, and control

Women across many countries have little to no access to abortions and other reproductive care, and are forced to carry their rapist's child.

Women are imprisoned for having abortions, and even people associated with helping them in any way to obtain an abortion experience legal consequences. Being impregnated through rape doesn't change this. In multiple states, rapists can sue their victims for parental custody. Women who are victims of stalkers and had children with them also are forced into allowing them visitation in the vast majority of cases.

Women also experience the brunt of forced sterilization and uniquely endure mortality rates from childbirth complications, in which often the infant's life is prioritized over the mother. Doctors may also refuse women and girls birth control, or subsequently deny women's requests to be sterilized.

Being forced to co-parent with their rapist.

Even if rape is proven, men can sue their victims for custody and may use children as a point of control over their victims and contact with their victims continuing psychological terror and causing trauma to children.

Over 3 million women experience pregnancies as a result of rape.

Men who donate sperm privately and through sperm banks experience no regulations and enforcement of how often they donate, resulting in some men producing thousands of offspring and others deceiving women on whose sperm they were impregnated with. Mothers of these children endure severe psychological trauma from this rape by deception in addition to themselves and their children navigating the psychological effects of avoiding potential incestuous relationships with the donor's other children.

Job Discrimination

In 38 countries, women can be fired for being pregnant.

From January 2017 through December 2019, 2.7 million workers age 20 and older were displaced from jobs they had held for at least 3 years; women accounted for 45 percent of those displaced.

While on leave, substantially fewer women than men

receive full pay (32 percent versus 55 percent), and more

receive no pay (41 percent versus 25 percent).

Women continue to experience occupational segregation in nontraditional jobs. In 2013, women composed 7.3 percent of all Craft Workers, while the participation rate for women in the Office and Clerical Worker category was considerably higher at 75.6 percent.

Despite the gains in employment made by women in the last 50 years, the annual median earnings of women working full time in 2013 was $39,157, compared with men at $50,033.

In 86 countries, women face some form of job restriction and 95 countries do not guarantee equal pay for equal work. 59 nations have no laws on the books addressing sexual harassment in the workplace, and 18 nations around the world allow husbands to legally prevent their wives from working.

Influence and resources:

Less than 15% of landholders worldwide are women, despite most women in the global south working in agriculture (source. Food and Agriculture Organization, 2015; World Bank, 2019).

Women make up just 25% of parliamentarians worldwide (source. Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2019).

Between 1990 and 2019 women made up 2% of mediators, 5% of witnesses and signatories, and 8% of negotiators in major peace processes worldwide (source. Council of Foreign Relations, 2019).

Only 1% of aid supporting gender equality went to women’s rights organisations in 2016-2017, despite governments around the world committing an extra $1bn to gender equality initiatives globally (sources. Guardian, 2019, OECD, 2019).

130 million girls are denied the right to an education.

According to the largest study on the portrayal, participation and representation of women in the news media spanning 20 years and 114 countries, only 24 per cent of the persons heard, read about or seen in newspaper, television and radio news are women.

A glass ceiling also exists for women news reporters in newspaper bylines and newscast reports, with 37 per cent of stories reported by women as of 2015, showing no change over the course of a decade.

An analysis of popular films across 11 countries found, for example, that 31 per cent of all speaking characters were women and that only 23 per cent featured a female protagonist—a number that closely mirrored the percentage of women filmmakers (21 per cent)

[someone-will-remember-us]

Pornhub is a crime scene. You read that right. The site was purchased by a hastily concocted private equity firm, ironically called Ethical Capital Partners, last year. But its owners are continuing the monetization and global distribution of scores of homemade, user-generated sex videos that were never reliably verified to ensure the individuals in them are not children, rape victims, trafficking victims, or revenge porn victims. Even under new management, the site is still infested with illegal content.

Over the past few years, Pornhub has had a dramatic downfall after being exposed and held accountable for profiting from mass sexual crime. The fallout included the site taking down 80 percent of its videos, totaling 10 million unverified videos and over 30 million images; being completely cut off by Visa, Mastercard, Discover and PayPal; and losing all mainstream advertisers. The CEO and COO of its parent company resigned in disgrace, and the distressed company was sold.

However, it appears the new owners aren't much better than the old ones.

The new owners of Pornhub renamed the site's parent company from "MindGeek" to "Aylo" in an attempt to distance it from its toxic reputation as a peddler of sexual crime. But behind the scenes at its Montreal headquarters, men who have been with the company well before it was exposed—men who enabled the global distribution and monetization of victims' trauma—still occupy executive offices.

Perhaps even more concerning is that the public face of Pornhub's new ownership, a Canadian criminal defense attorney named Solomon Friedman, advertises his firm's experience defending men accused of possessing and distributing filmed child sexual abuse and has spoken on his work defending possessors of child sexual abuse material. He even twice congratulated another attorney who got a man off on a technicality who had been in possession of 7,730 images of child sexual abuse, including images of infants being raped by grown men. Does he intend to try and get Pornhub off the hook in the same way? I can assure you the victims of Pornhub won't allow it.

The consequences for victims of this abuse are severe. Victims of Pornhub often describe the widespread dissemination of their rape and abuse as the "immortalization" of their trauma. Once the abuse is uploaded, these survivors are perpetually tormented by the fact that they could be fighting to remove their abuse from the internet for the rest of their lives.

Even when they can get crime scene videos down, they face a continual game of whack-a-mole as the abuse is uploaded again and again online. It's not surprising that many survivors become suicidal. Academic studies have cited that victims of the nonconsensual distribution of sexual images have a very high suicide risk, with almost half of the victims contemplating suicide. Some tragically end up dying by suicide.

Since 2020, nearly 300 victims have sued Pornhub in 25 lawsuits for its knowing distribution and monetization of rape and trafficking. These lawsuits include multiple class actions representing tens of thousands of child victims, and the U.S. federal government has criminally charged Pornhub for knowingly profiting from sex trafficking. Just last month, 13 child victims sued Pornhub as well as its owners and financial enablers.

The legal discovery process continues to uncover explosive evidence. It found emails from Pornhub's CEO debating whether to remove or leave up a specific child sexual abuse video, admitting that the site didn't verify age or consent and tried to hide it from the credit card companies. It found executives admitting they only employed one person to review flagged videos five days per week and had a backlog of 706,000 flagged videos and much more. Depositions confirmed that Pornhub purposefully hid child sexual abuse videos from authorities for over 13 years and didn't report a single instance of abuse even where the law required mandatory reporting.

No amount of whitewashing, renaming, and rebranding can hide the truth. As one attorney defending over 100 victims who were trafficked on the site said about the attempted rebrand, "If you swim in a sea of s**t, it's hard to lose the smell."

The Canadian government conducted a multi-year investigation of Pornhub, culminating in a damning report that found it had violated Canadian privacy law. Pornhub's new owners sued the government in an attempt to hide the report from the public, but lost the fight, and the report was released earlier this year.

After all of this, the site recently began to claim it would start verifying the age and consent of those featured in new videos uploaded to the site. However, it refused to remove all of the unverified content uploaded before the new policy change.

A quick search on Pornhub today turns up highly monetized, unverified, shaky, low-quality, homemade videos that show vulnerable, drug-addicted, homeless women being coerced with a place to sleep, some food, a few dollars, or drugs to engage in sex acts in jurisdictions where it is illegal even to purchase sex. The definition of sex trafficking in the U.S. and internationally makes it clear that coercing a commercial sex act from a vulnerable individual constitutes trafficking. In minutes, I was able to find unverified homemade videos that have been on the site for years of women yelling at their abusers to stop, crying out "it hurts!" and "turn the camera off." There is no doubt that Pornhub is still a trafficking hub. It's time to force it, at a minimum, to delete every unverified video on the site.

But that isn't nearly enough. Victims deserve the full weight of justice to be brought to bear on this predatory company. They need to see criminal convictions, and they deserve significant restitution for how their lives have been shattered. Preventative policies also urgently need to be adopted. Specifically, we need laws mandating reliable, third-party age and consent verification for every individual in every video that exists on every website distributing user-generated porn.

It's time to finally hold Pornhub and its owners accountable to the full extent of the law and to enact policies to prevent this kind of abuse in the future. We can do it. We must do it, because serious harm demands serious consequences in order to bring true justice to victims and deter future abusers.

Laila Mickelwait is the Founder and CEO of the Justice Defense Fund, Founder of the Traffickinghub movement, and the author of Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape and Sex Trafficking (Penguin Random House/Thesis, July 23, 2024).

[thealogie]

Not really defending neilman or saying he didn’t do all that but an interesting piece of context - the journalist who did that podcast is Boris Johnson’s sister and has lately been using her platform to praise jk Rowling, attack trans people, complain about Muslims in the uk and defend israel

Yes that doesn’t surprise me. The podcast is actively bad. Like this is bad journalism and actively reported like it’s a hit piece and trying to sensationalize these women’s trauma. And it’s actually heartbreaking that the way this story is breaking is via reporters who have conservative agenda and the comments are filled with like “yeah this is why trans supporters don’t want women only spaces.”

At the bottom of all of this is two women who are survivors of sexual assault/rape and who were brave enough to speak out and file reports. I believe them, I just wish for their sakes this was coming out via a Ronan Farrow piece and via not conservative trash

[winns-stuff]

LO RANT:

TRIGGER WARNING: SA

Okay I’m back again and it’s only to say this.. The comments on the new fastpass are genuinely disgusting. I don’t care how you put it or feel about both characters it’s absolutely deranged to ship or want a redemption arc for a rapist, maybe I’m being too harsh but I can’t find soft words to use for this. The fact that there’s so many people girlbossing this entire situation as a “I got the entire lineage on my shoulders!!! I slept with the brothers and the father!!!!” thing is weird to me because these fans are all missing the point of Hera’s entire story and it makes no sense that as I’m ALWAYS saying these fans are quite literally shipping rapists with their victims when the entire point of Lore Olympus was to shed light and bring awareness to Sexual Assault that is not violent or gruesome in physical action.

And we all know why this is happening, Rachel doesn’t know how to properly handle this situation and it’s clear that that’s how this is coming across to her fans. They don’t see this as a rape survivor story they see this as another dark romance since she doesn’t bother on actually addressing the assault in a respectful and dignified way, every single time she adds another sexual assault in her story she’s always glamorizing it or diminishing it whenever she gets tired of writing about it and it’s infuriating. Your fans should know better than to ship victims with their abusers and you wanna know why? Because you pride your comic on healthy relationships and mental health talks, you use the sexual assault as some kind of badge to show everyone that you know what you’re talking about when it’s clear that you will abandon all real representation of a situation that affects millions of people around the world just for crappy fan service.

Lore Olympus fans are groomed to dismiss these arcs since they’re not even treated like they’re serious and it doesn’t seem like Rachel takes it serious as well, she’s never taken any advice from survivors who aren’t pleased with how she portrays SA and she completely ignores the feelings of those truly affected by the traumatic events that she shoves into her webcomic just so it’ll stay “interesting”. I’m tired of Rachel getting away with drawing absolute trauma porn and I’m sick of her sexualizing every single woman we come across, how many times do we have to continue this long and excruciating pattern of giving the women of your comic terrible consequences and make them suffer just for drama and nothing else. How many other situations are you willing to completely spit on just to look self aware?

This is honestly the last straw because there’s been so many people genuinely shipping Hera and Kronos and also saying borderline disgusting things just to defend stuff like that. Rachel needs to say something, you cannot just sit back and be quiet while your fans openly admit to wanting to see a rapist and his victim together for the sake of your own comic and “beloved” main character hell even for a lot of your fans you need to speak up about this and address it letting a mindset like that fester in a fandom probably filled with survivors of assault is a disservice to them and it’s a slap in the face to the comfort that your webtoon gave them.

[ukrfeminism]

2 minute read

JK Rowling is founding and personally funding a new service for women survivors of sexual violence. Launched days before Nicola Sturgeon’s controversial Gender Recognition Reform Bill is expected to pass through the Scottish parliament, the Edinburgh-based centre, Beira’s Place, will be female-only.

The author, who has written about the sexual and domestic abuse she suffered in her twenties, believes there is an “unmet need” for Scottish women who want “women-centred and women-delivered care at such a vulnerable time”. She hopes Beira’s Place, which will employ professional staff to provide free one-to-one and group counselling, “will enable more women to process and recover from their trauma”.

Rowling’s board of directors are all vocal opponents of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which will permit anyone to change the legal sex on their birth certificate by making a simple statutory declaration, a process known as self-identification. Feminists, including Reem Alsalem, UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, have raised grave concerns it will open up women’s services and private spaces to abuse by male predators.

Beira’s board comprises Rhona Hotchkiss, a former prison governor, who has opposed the Scottish government’s policy of moving trans-identified male sex offenders to women’s jails; Johann Lamont, a former leader of the Scottish Labour Party and a lawyer; Dr Margaret McCartney, an academic, broadcaster and Glasgow GP; and Susan Smith, director of For Women Scotland, a grassroots feminist group founded to fight the gender reform bill. Beira’s chief executive is Isabelle Kerr, a former manager of Glasgow Rape Crisis who received an MBE in 2020 for her work supporting British citizens who had been raped overseas.

The provision of single-sex services has been a key battleground of the gender reform bill. Already in Scotland, most domestic violence refuges and rape support services are “trans inclusive” and accept referrals from both sexes. In recent years councils have removed grants from women-only refuges in favour of generic organisations. Monklands Women’s Aid in North Lanarkshire, which was set up more than 40 years ago, had its council funding withdrawn in favour of a social justice charity which also helps men.

Most controversial is Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre whose chief executive, Mridul Wadhwa, a trans woman, told the Guilty Feminist podcast that women sexual assault victims who request female-only care will be “challenged on your prejudices” and told to “reframe your trauma”.

Yet in her recent book Defending Women’s Spaces, veteran campaigner Karen Ingala Smith, the chief executive of Nia, a domestic abuse charity in London, describes how women traumatised by male violence fare better and feel safer in female therapeutic spaces.

Beira’s Place is legally permitted to exclude males under the exemptions of the 2010 Equality Act, which allows single-sex services if they are “a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate end”.

It is named after Beira, the Scottish goddess of winter. JK Rowling said: “Beira rules over the dark part of the year, handing over to her sister, Bride, when summer comes again. Beira represents female wisdom, power, and regeneration. Hers is a strength that endures during the difficult times, but her myth contains the promise that they will not last for ever.”

The service is not a charity, but privately funded by Rowling, a noted philanthropist. The amount she will donate to set up and run Beira’s Place has not been disclosed.

[chaifootsteps]

Remember, any Viv Stans who may be reading this, we do not hate Vivienne Medrano for being a Queer POC Woman. We hate her because she has a history of:

1. Being transphobic towards trans men

2. Ditching her less famous friends when they start rivaling her popularity or does something that she deems a personal attack, in that case she refers to them as abusive the second they leave her life

3. Her company, Spindldhorse, being imfamous for having dozens of workplace mistreatment scandals, and is generally unprofessional with a hierarchy of Viv and her friends, the star power she gets to voice her characters, and then everyone else

4. Pigeonholing her mostly freelance staff into only working for her, vastly limiting their income

5. Not paying her animators livable wages even when she has the funds to do so while she keeps them from perusing other clients

6. Being an overall immature and petty mess on Twitter when it comes to any form of criticism or playful ribbing (“My name is Caine, I am your bitch”)

7. Having a proud rape fetishist storyboard a scene where a character is being raped repeatedly

8. Lying about said rape fetishist being an SA Survivor to excuse having them storyboard a rape scene

9. Telling a 15 year old that the rape fetishist sexually harassed that they’re overreacting and need to get over the rape fetishist sexually harassing them

10. Not crediting the people who helped boost up her projects

11. Writing her female characters to more so be accessories to her favorite male ones and then telling her audience that they’re idiots for not tilting their heads and squinting at the most minute character details

12. Festering one of the most toxic, immature, and cult like fandoms in recent memory and actively stokes their fire by supporting to fans that defend and agree with her.

13. Presenting herself as this sweet, inclusive, and benevolent victim while she does all of this

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

An Israeli law draft that would prohobit UNRWA's activity in Israel passed a very primal stage of legislation. It still has a long way until it will become law (it would still have to pass 3 readings, as well as the Knesset committees), but if before Oct 7 it probably would not stand a chance, after the mounting evidence of the symbiotic nature between Hamas and UNRWA, it has a better chance than ever.

Speaking of the UN being despicable, and in cahoots with antisemitic, genocidal terrorists, we now have Martin Griffiths, the UN Relief Chief, saying that he does not consider Hamas a terrorist organization. Just wondering, if an organization targeting civilians, raping women, maiming children, beheading babies, burning entiree families together, shooting and kidnapping elderly Holocaust survivors, isn't a terrorist organization, what in the world does Hamas need to do to be recognized as such!?

You might have heard that Israel is operating in the Nasser hospital in Gaza. There's a reason for that, which was addressed by the IDF spokesperson: Israel has intel, including from released hostages, that Hamas kept kidnapped Israelis (and possibly kidnapped bodies) in that hospital. I've actually found one testimony from a released hostage, Sharon Cunyo, talking about this to CNN's Anderson Cooper. The vid is here (page in Spanish, but the vid is in English).

I cannot stress enough how much our hearts hurt for our Jewish brothers and sisters around the world, suffering from this current rise in antisemitism. We've now heard that in the UK, a doctor who has described Jewish colleagues as having a "big nose," and who said that a London borough would be better off "Jew free" was found to be not racist, and could continue to practice medicine. This ties in with a new report that shows the number of antisemitic incidents in the UK is the highest it's been in 40 years, with 67% of these taking place after Oct 7, and maybe most importantly, the initial peak in antisemitic acts was a celebration of Hamas' massacre, rather than any sort of reaction to the war in Gaza.

Meanwhile, in the US congress, a bipartisan resolution passed, condemning Hamas' use of rape and sexual violence on Oct 7 (and since, when it comes to the hostages). Which is incredible and needed, even if it only has a symbolic meaning. Still, guess who couldn't stomach defending the human rights of Israelis, even when it comes to rape, even when it had no practical meaning? Rashida Tlaib, once more doing the US proud.

These are (left to right) Yair Cohen, Ziv Chen, and Netanel Alkobi.

On Oct 7, they were among the soldiers who got to kibbutz Nir Yitzchak, and saved the majority of its people from being slaughtered. They stayed to guard the kibbutz since (as the border fence has not yet been completely fixed), and only recently entered Gaza. The other day, they were killed in a building booby trapped by Hamas in Khan Younis. As heartbreaking is it was to hear their families talk about them, it was also painful to hear interviews with kibbutz members, who had lost so much, who have had loved ones in captivity for over 4 months, and who were just as devastated as the families, when they recognized the three as their savior heroes.

May their memories be a blessing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)