This is what a REAL rape prevention campaign looks like
All the awards.
DO ME A HUGE FAVOR AND REBLOG THIS!
This is perfection in a campaign
I love how they included a situation where a guy could’ve gotten raped. People don’t seem to realize that males get raped too. It’s less common, but it happens. That is what sets this campaign apart from others.
“I was diagnosed with a personality disorder for failing to adjust adequately to being raped.” —Jenny McClendon
The Enemy Within | National Journal
What happened is this: One instructor has been convicted of rape and multiple cases of aggravated sexual assault of female trainees, and 16 other trainers have been charged or are under investigations for crimes ranging from aggravated sexual assault to improper sexual relationships with 42 female trainees.
That places Lackland atop an infamous list of military sexual-abuse scandals, including the Navy’s Tailhook convention in Las Vegas in 1991 (83 female and seven male victims of sexual assault by more than 100 Navy and Marine Corps aviation officers); the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in 1996 (12 Army officers charged with sexually assaulting female trainees); the Air Force Academy in 2003 (12 percent of female graduates reported having been victims of rape or attempted rape, and 70 percent said they had been sexually harassed); and the Marine Barracks in Washington in recent years, where the documentary The Invisible Warinterviewed five female Marines who reported having been raped (the Corps investigated and disciplined four of the women after they reported the rapes but punished none of the accused officers).
Two days after seeing The Invisible War, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta directed commanders to elevate all sexual-assault investigations to a reviewing authority headed by a higher-ranking colonel. He also began creating “special-victim units” in each branch. It was a start.
But the most alarming aspect of the Lackland story is its predictability, because the very values Pendleton is trying to inculcate (obedience, self-sacrifice, stoicism in the face of deprivation) are the ones that predators exploit in these scandals. The Defense Department’s own data suggest that, far from representing an isolated incident, Lackland is just the latest outbreak of what Panetta has called a “silent epidemic” of sexual assault in the ranks. Based on the Pentagon’s most recent survey on the issue in 2010, the epidemic affects more than 19,000 victims each year.
Meanwhile, according to annual Veterans Affairs Department surveys, 20 percent of female veterans screen positive for “military sexual trauma,” as do 1 percent of male veterans—many of them victims of male-on-male rape. Cumulatively, the data suggest that hundreds of thousands of current and former members of the military have been raped, sexually assaulted, or subjected to “unwanted” sexual contact. In 2010 alone, the VA conducted nearly 700,000 free outpatient counseling sessions to veterans suffering from military sexual trauma.
My first lesson came when I was reading my student evaluations after a particularly rough semester. It felt like nothing I did worked. The students complained about every lesson, every assignment. I surveyed the class to try to find out what was wrong and adjust, but it seemed like nothing helped. Even though I was mentally preparing for the worst, I never could have properly prepared myself for what I read in my evaluations. After filling out the multiple choice questions, students are invited to leave positive and negative comments on the back. I received many negative comments grumbling about the “ultra-harsh” grading policy (to be expected from classes made up of mostly college freshman), but I was shocked to read this review: “I don’t understand what her deal is. Just because she’s a teacher doesn’t mean she has all this POWER. She needs to chill.” And under positive comments? “Nice body.”
It had been an exhausting and disastrous semester, and all I got out of it was a comment about my body. I read these evaluations at the start of the summer session and began to panic about history repeating. The feeling got worse after I talked to some of the other instructors, particularly my male colleagues. The teacher who uses what he calls “public humiliation” (unprepared students must read poetry aloud until he is satisfied) to keep his students in check received no comments like mine. A male faculty member received, under positive comments, “You’re such an asshole – I love it!”
Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan says that he personally believes that rape is just another “method of conception” and not an excuse to allow abortions.
During an interview with WJHL this week, Ryan was asked his view about Rep. Todd Akin, who recently asserted that women could not get pregnant from “legitimate rape.”
“Specifically where you stand when it comes to rape, and when it comes to the issue of should it be legal for a woman to be able to get an abortion if she’s raped?” WJHL Josh Smith wondered.
“I’m very proud of my pro-life record, and I’ve always adopted the idea that, the position that the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life,” Ryan explained. “But let’s remember, I’m joining the Romney-Ryan ticket. And the president makes policy.”
“And the president, in this case the future President Mitt Romney, has exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother, which is a vast improvement of where we are right now.”
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Homophobia: The fear that another man will treat you like you treat women. Andrew Sullivan. (via babanees) This, this, 100 times this. (via elytra) |
Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass. takes to the Senate floor to implore his fellow GOP colleagues to re-authorize the Violence Against Women Act, briefly sharing his own story of how his life was affected by domestic violence.
Though I support his opponent, Elizabeth Warren, it’s great to see him standing up to this opposition from his own party. Why won’t the GOP reauthorize it? Because it has protections for GLBTQ people and undocumented immigrants. Seriously.
And they also oppose it because it allows Native American tribes to legally pursue non-Indians who come on reservations and assault residents without fear of prosecution - because currently, tribes only have jurisdiction over their own members.
Conservative media figures, led by Rush Limbaugh, have continually distorted and exaggerated the content of Sandra Fluke’stestimony before Democratic members of Congress.
They have gone so far afield of Fluke’s actual testimony that it often appears as if they never actually watched or read it.
Here are some of the conservative claims about Fluke’s testimony, along with what she actually said.
Conservative media claimed Fluke’s activism was hidden
Conservative media figures have suggested that Fluke’s history of activism was hidden and that Fluke portrayed herself as a concerned college student unconnected with any cause. In fact, Fluke’s testimony discusses her activism.
- Warner Todd Huston wrote on Breitbart.com: “The media is presenting this Fluke character as if she is just a fresh-faced, wide-eyed, 23-year-old coed that has been accidentally swept up in this story. But the fact is, this Fluke woman is hardly the simple Georgetown coed that she’s being portrayed as.”
- Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit wrote, “The Democrat’s token abused college coed is actually a 30 year-old hardcore women’s rights activist.”
- “Just a Grunt” of Jammie Wearing Fools wrote, ”For me the interesting part of the story is the ever-evolving ‘coed’. I put that in quotes because in the beginning she was described as a Georgetown law student. It was then revealed that prior to attending Georgetown she was an active women’s right advocate.”
From the very first paragraph of Fluke’s testimony:
My name is Sandra Fluke, and I’m a third year student at Georgetown Law, a Jesuit school. I’m also a past president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice or LSRJ. I’d like to acknowledge my fellow LSRJ members and allies and all of the student activists with us and thank them for being here today.
Conservative media claimed Fluke’s testimony was about her sex life
Conservatives have claimed that Fluke’s testimony was about her personal sexual behavior, and her purported desire to have the government subsidize it.
- Rush Limbaugh: “What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke [sic], who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.”
- CNN contributor Erick Erickson writing at RedState: ”Sandra Fluke, who spends over $50,000.00 on law school per year really believes that American tax payers should, because of her expensive law school, pay for her birth control pills so she can have sex.”
- Writing in National Review, Mark Steyn referred to Fluke as “the brave middle-aged schoolgirl” who “had the courage to stand up in public and demand that someone else pay for her sex life.”
- On her radio show, CNN contributor Dana Loesch said, “She’s doing it more than she’s studying in law school. Is that why our — is that why law sucks lately? Is that why we’re having such a problem in our courts?” Loesch went on to say, “They act like they’re nymphos. That’s what they act like.”
- On Breitbart.com, Loesch described Fluke as “a 30 year-old woman embarrassing herself before congress by testifying that she simply cannot stop getting it on and her inability to control her urges constitutes infringing upon everyone else for a bailout.”
In her testimony, Fluke explained that she was “testify[ing] on behalf of the women who will benefit from the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage regulation” and that her testimony was on behalf of women “from Georgetown or other schools or who works for a religiously affiliated employer who has suffered financial, emotional, and medical burdens because of this lack of contraceptive coverage.”
In her testimony, Fluke explained that she was “testify[ing] on behalf of the women who will benefit from the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage regulation” and that her testimony was on behalf of women “from Georgetown or other schools or who works for a religiously affiliated employer who has suffered financial, emotional, and medical burdens because of this lack of contraceptive coverage.”
Fluke testified about a student who needed contraceptive medicine to treat polycystic ovarian syndrome.
In sixty-five percent of cases, our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they needed these prescriptions and whether they were lying about their symptoms. For my friend, and 20% of women in her situation, she never got the insurance company to cover her prescription, despite verification of her illness from her doctor. Her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted the birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay, so clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy.
She also testified about the need for access to contraceptive medicine after a woman was raped.
One student told us that she knew birth control wasn’t covered, and she assumed that’s how Geor getown’s insurance handled all of women’s sexual healthcare, so when she was raped, she didn’t go to the doctor even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections because she thought insurance wasn’t going to cover something like that, something that was related to a woman’s reproductive health. As one student put it, “this policy communicates to female students that our school doesn’t understand our needs.” These are not feelings that male fellow students experience. And they’re not burdens that male students must shoulder.
Conservative media figures could have debated the issues Fluke actually discussed and the situations she presented in her testimony. Instead they chose to invent testimony and rebut premises that never existed.
From ThinkProgress:
Radio-Info.com reports that Premiere Networks, which syndicates the Rush Limbaugh show, told its affiliate radio stations that they are suspending national advertising for two weeks. Rush Limbaugh is normally provided to afflilates for free in return for running several minutes of national advertisements provided by Premiere each hour. These ads called “barter spots.” These spots are how Premiere makes its money off of Rush Limbaugh and other shows it syndicates.
But without explanation, Premiere has supended these national advertisements for two weeks. Radio-Info.com calls the move “unusual.” The development suggests that Rush Limbaughs incessant sexist attacks on Sandra Fluke have caused severe damage to the show.
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
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-Banksy, Make Art, Not Ads (via practicalunbreakablehearts) God this makes me want to incite a riot rather than sit here trying to finish a paper and procrastinating on tumblr. (via ftmfeminist) |
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What a judgmental asshole. |
(via Judd Legum at Think Progress: Billo The Clown Attacks Sandra Fluke: Claims She Wants Government To Pay For Her ‘Social Life’)
Bill O’Reilly has joined Rush Limbaugh’s sexist assault on 30-year-old law student Sandra Fluke. On tonight’s broadcast, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly attacked and mocked Sandra Fluke, claiming that Fluke was insisting the government pay for her “social life.” O’Reilly’s attack mirrors Limbaugh, who has insisted on that Fluke’s advocacy for contraception coverage is motivated by sexual promiscuity.
Bill O’Reilly’s attack is not only sexist and mean spirited, he has his facts completely wrong.
Rush Limbaugh devoted much of his three-hour radio show today and yesterday to sexist ad hominin attacks on Sanda Fluke, the Georgetown Law student whom House Republicans didn’t let testify at last week’s contraception hearing. Limbaugh unleashed a thesaurus of sexist slurs at Fluke to his 15 million listeners, and now Fluke is speaking up. She released this statement:
We are fortunate to live in a democracy where everyone is entitled to their own opinions regarding legitimate policy differences. Unfortunately, numerous commentators have gone far beyond the acceptable bounds of civil discourse.
No woman deserves to be disrespected in this manner. This language is an attack on all women, and has been used throughout history to silence our voices.
The millions of American women who have and will continue to speak out in support of women’s health care and access to contraception prove that we will not be silenced.
