It would be nice if labelling yourself as a progressive wasn't a lily potter love shield type protection against being a perp of some sort, but history proves it's not.

eccentricyoruba

The full text of the letter in K*'s own handwriting is attached and is written in Haitian Creole. It says:

You have no right to speak of my story.
You have no right to publish my story in the press
Because I did not give you authorization.
You have no right. I did not speak to you.
You have said things you should not have said.
Thank you

I have K*'s permission to publish this letter and to talk about K* because she is angry at the way Ms. McClelland has portrayed her in the tweets, has ignored the wishes of her letter and continues to make K* part of her story.

This week, K* wrote me an e-mail from Port-au-Prince saying, “I want victims in Haiti to know that they can be strong and stand up for their rights and have a voice. Our choices about when and how our story is told must be respected."

Yesterday, I received a comment (which was not approved), which snottily asked what exactly the victim in this case had to fear in being interrogated by her alleged rapist, if she was telling the truth. Here I was thinking that I outlined what exactly those fears might be rather explicitly, and in a way that was in fact rather triggering for me to do.

Trigger Warning for very graphic and disturbing descriptions of rape, as well as descriptions of death from alcohol poisoning.

ithiliana

Now even if I wanted to think that way and only stick to say sexually transmitted infections or abortion rights, I really can’t. Why? Because I’m Native, and as such the existence of violence in our communities, especially against our women, exists at rates that are extremely abhorrent and exceedingly high. We HAVE to talk about it all because to not talk about is to ignore some 80% of the population of our women who, for example, have experienced intimate partner violence, or the over 90% of our people who are deeply feeling the effects of residential/mission/boarding school which can sometimes result in different types of violence against oneself and others.

[...] First of all – isn’t the fact that Native American women experience violence almost 3 times more than any other group of women in the United States, 86% of the time by non-Native men – an inherently cross-sectional feminist issue? I don’t mean one that gets the occasional blog post every now and then, or gets centre mainstream feminist stage when it’s convenient, especially with statements like “Oh wow, Iook at these numbers – we didn’t even know about this!” HOW is it that you don’t know? Sure the Native American/American Indian/Alaska Native population is just over 1% of the population in the United States, and in Canada the Aboriginal population is roughly 3%, but with rates like these, say in Canada where there are over 500 missing and murdered Aboriginal women, that’s equivalent to some 18 000 white women. WHY don’t the women in our Native communities measure up in priority? I would think that the occurrence of violence against this many Native women would have every single feminist group up in arms and refusing to shut up until something is done about it – I certainly see that kind of coverage when abortion rights are threatened. WHAT are YOU going to do with this information now that you know about it?

Now some of the mainstream media have been paying attention – a little – albeit in a very sensationalist and sucker-punching way. Yet I’ve been reflecting a lot on why it is that violence against Aboriginal women is all of a sudden receiving more mainstream media attention. Ask anybody from an Indigenous community or nation and you will hear that this has been going on for 500+ years. I certainly don’t feel like the violence is subsiding or going away, but I’m acutely aware of how long it’s been going on for and how deeply entrenched it is in many of our communities, to the point of lateral and internalized violence and oppression.

But as the Kimberly Nixon case showed, even woman-positive organizations can be no haven for trans women, since those groups can, in Canada at least, refuse to hire a qualified rape counselor simply because she looked like a man in their eyes. Presumably they would do the same thing to a trans woman who had been the victim of rape or sexual assault (or domestic violence, as Nixon herself had been.) Even though a trans woman, like many other women who have been assaulted, might long for an all-female environment to aid her recovery, there is no guarantee that she’ll be accepted there. And often no guarantee that anyone else will have her. Even in large cities, finding a trans-positive or even trans-accepting victim center is likely to be impossible. There is nowhere to turn for many trans victims of rape or assault, which is why the sexual assault numbers for trans women–high though they may be–are almost certainly drastically underreported.

Then, he called the Sexual Assault Unit, where he was patched into Spriggs. Minor told Spriggs he had a victim complaining of sexual assault and needed a rape kit authorized. Though D.C. police policy requires detectives to report to the scene to interview the victim in person, Spriggs decided to do this one by phone. Spriggs told Minor to put Hannah on the line. Spriggs, sitting in the SAU office, determined that Hannah hadn’t been the victim of a crime. “She told me that she was at a party. And she remembered kissing a guy,” Spriggs testified. “I repeated back to her what she said to me. And there was a pause,” he said. Back on the phone with Minor, “I said, this young lady, she’s not reporting anything, she’s not reporting a crime to me. I’m not bringing a sex kit up here.” Spriggs then testified as to why he didn’t press Hannah to explain why she needed a kit: “I’m not going to feed you any information to give you an opportunity to embellish you story,” Spriggs testified. “If you are reporting something to me, then you should be able to tell me what that is. And she did not report any crime to me.”

Considering local challenges and harmful international interference in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the past 400 years, it takes the greatest courage to overcome fear of oppression and to act for change. The courage demonstrated by grassroots Congolese women to resist and overcome fear of their local and international oppressors is extraordinary in the history of Africa. At this moment, many Congolese women are rising and sacrificing themselves to rewrite history and to liberate themselves completely from the bondage of those who continue to oppress them, in order to give themselves and their children a chance of survival as well as a better future for new generations.

[...]Sexual violence is not cultural or traditional in the D.R. Congo but has been used as a tool of war, humiliation, destabilization and displacement of communities. Congolese women want the international community to know that that sexual violence will only end by the restoration of peace and the application of the rule of law in the DRC.

The international community, particularly the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, are invited to demonstrate a political will to end the conflict in the Great Lakes region of Africa. They are invited to demonstrate their commitment to peace by delegitimizing armed violence and ending the militarization and the support of oppressive regimes in the Great Lakes region of Africa.

anti racism is a white supremacist movement. because the big names/experts/the ones who make the money and prestige of it. are majority white.[...]

what i mean is. that the ones who are the most ’successful’ in anti racism are white. they are the authors, bloggers, consultants, workshop trainers, speakers etc. yes there are lots of poc who do anti racism work. or better said there are a decent number of poc who work in the anti racism industry.

and i have to differentiate between anti racism the theory (almost completely developed by poc under the designation of critical race theory) and anti racism the industry.

so when i speak of the current anti racist movement, i am speaking of the public face of that movement which is presented by those who work in the anti racism industry.

Rape culture is 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is not even talking about the reality that many women are sexually assaulted multiple times in their lives. Rape culture is the way in which the constant threat of sexual assault affects women's daily movements. Rape culture is telling girls and women to be careful about what you wear, how you wear it, how you carry yourself, where you walk, when you walk there, with whom you walk, whom you trust, what you do, where you do it, with whom you do it, what you drink, how much you drink, whether you make eye contact, if you're alone, if you're with a stranger, if you're in a group, if you're in a group of strangers, if it's dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if you're carrying something, how you carry it, what kind of shoes you're wearing in case you have to run, what kind of purse you carry, what jewelry you wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people you sleep with, what kind of people you sleep with, who your friends are, to whom you give your number, who's around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment where you can see who's at the door before they can see you, to check before you open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch your back always be aware of your surroundings and never let your guard down for a moment lest you be sexually assaulted and if you are and didn't follow all the rules it's your fault.

Rape culture is victim-blaming. Rape culture is a judge blaming a child for her own rape. Rape culture is a minister blaming his child victims. Rape culture is accusing a child of enjoying being held hostage, raped, and tortured. Rape culture is spending enormous amounts of time finding any reason at all that a victim can be blamed for hir own rape.

Rape culture is judges banning the use of the word rape in the courtroom. Rape culture is the media using euphemisms for sexual assault.

ew_younerd

It was at the age of 30, when she became pregnant with her own daughter, that Sharon finally summoned the courage to speak to her GP for the first time about what had happened to her. Her fear was that if she didn't seek help to overcome her issues, they could in turn have a damaging effect on her unborn child. But her doctor's response was: "Don't be silly, mothers don't sexually abuse children. You're understandably worried about becoming a parent yourself, but don't let your imagination run away with you."

[...]Sharon says that she might have learnt to cope better if she had been given the help she so desperately needed when she approached her doctor before her child was born. "You can't imagine how deflating it is after all those years of keeping your disgusting secret to finally get the courage to tell someone and then be told that you're making it up," she recalls.[...]

[...]In a large percentage of these cases, the abuse took place within the family home, which is one of the reasons why cases of female sexual abuse are so incredibly hard to spot. Yet, sadly, this doesn't mean that the abuse isn't happening. As Elliott points out: "Considering that I am just one woman working for one relatively small charity, and this many people have managed to get in touch with me, I dread to think of the true scale of the problem."

Extraordinarily, in the vast majority of cases involving female sexual abuse (of both boys and girls), the child's mother turns out to be involved in that abuse, whether offending alone or with another woman or a man. Almost all of the victims who have contacted Elliott to share their stories have mentioned being "brainwashed", and many have spoken of being made to believe that their abuse was what constituted parental love.

Very few have ever before felt able to talk about the abuse because they feared they would not be believed – and those who have already come forward, to a doctor or therapist, have usually had their worst fears realised. One man, now 60 years old, recalls: "When I tried to tell my therapist of my abuse when I was 35, I was told: 'You are having fantasies about your mother and you need more therapy to deal with that.' [...]