I VOTE for Women

Stop calling it a sex scandal

Stop calling it a sex scandal: "Dear media: Learn the difference between abuse and sex -- otherwise, you're sensationalizing violence and rape.

Let me fix this for you, headline writers. When you’re dealing with a story that involves rape or harassment or abuse or molestation or child porn or anything that falls under the rubric of criminal behavior, you should call those things rape and harassment and abuse and molestation and child pornography. You know what you shouldn’t call them? Sexy sexy sex scandals, that’s what...."

10 Top Tips to End Rape

'Invisible War': Rapes in the military

Project Unbreakable

You Didn't Rape God

Project Unbreakable

The March of Christian Dominionism 1: What Is Christian Dominionism?

The March of Christian Dominionism 1: What Is Christian Dominionism?: "Or “Welcome to the Theocratic States of America”

Thirty years from now, a protestor stands alone on a corner. She is visibly pregnant. Her sign, written in blood red marker, says “I’m carrying my rapist’s baby! Thanks a lot, Jesus!” She has only been there for five minutes but has been called “slut” and “whore” by several passersby. One elderly woman stops long enough to tell her she deserved to be raped for not loving Jesus enough. Others look at her with sad eyes but quickly avert their gaze lest one of their neighbors notice.

Finally the police arrive to take the woman into custody. She has not spoken a word. She has no bullhorn. She has not accosted a single person on the street. Yet she is still arrested by men who barely contain their contempt for her. She has broken no laws that we would recognize but still, she is roughly handcuffed and placed in the back of a police cruiser. Of course, they take great care not to harm the baby she is carrying; the bruises she’ll have later won’t be anywhere near life-threatening. In this, she is lucky to be pregnant; others do not fare as well...."

Reforming a Recalcitrant Military

Reforming a Recalcitrant Military: " At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they [the Armed Forces] exceed all expectations. They're not consumed with personal ambition. They don't obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together ... When you put on that uniform, it doesn't matter if you're black or white; Asian, Latino, Native American; conservative, liberal; rich, poor; gay, straight. When you're marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails ... you know that there's someone behind you, watching your back.
-President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, January 24, 2012.

During my first few months in Iraq, my sergeant assaulted and harassed me so much I couldn't take it any more. So I decided to report him. But when I turned him in, they said, "The one common factor in all these problems is you. Don't see this as a punishment, but we're going to have you transferred." Then that same sergeant was promoted right away. I didn't get my promotion for six months ... Everybody's supposed to have a battle buddy in the army, and females are supposed to have one to go to the latrines with, or to the showers - that's so you don't get raped by one of the men on your own side. But because I was the only female there, I didn't have a battle buddy. My battle buddy was my gun and my knife.
-Army Specialist Chantelle Henneberry, 172 Stryker Brigade

Rape Jokes are No Joke

Picking Up the Pieces From Military Sexual Assault

Picking Up the Pieces From Military Sexual Assault: "Nearly 90 percent of soldiers wounded in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - some 35,000 - survived battle injuries, thanks to breakthroughs in US state-of-the art military medicine, among them, surgical techniques, regenerative medicine and prosthetics. Neither the Department of Defense (DoD) nor the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), though, was prepared with the same cutting-edge treatment for the one in three women soldiers in those same wars - an estimated 70,000 - who were sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers.

The VHA is the agency within the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) responsible for picking up the pieces of lives injured and shattered by combat, war trauma and military sexual assault. It will be faced, over the next months and years, with a tsunami of severe injury and illness from the DoD's largely feckless sexual assault prevention programs...."

Catholic Priest Allegedly Told Child He Was Raping That ‘This Is What God’s Love Feels Like’

Catholic Priest Allegedly Told Child He Was Raping That ‘This Is What God’s Love Feels Like’: "The Catholic Church has thrown a temper tantrum over contraceptives, abortion, and homosexuality over the last few years. Catholic bishops and priests have gone on the offensive, crusading against what they call sin, immorality, and abomination of the word of God. But the Catholic Church can’t seem to clean up its own act. Over the years, child molestation and rape scandals have rocked the Catholic Church. But instead of dealing with the problem, many in the Catholic hierarchy have largely ignored the scandal and some priests have tried to use their religious affiliations to escape justice or use God to justify their actions. The horrendous scandal has now hit California, where 200 Catholic priests have been accused of sexually abusing children.

Ray Boucher is the attorney at the helm of this investigation and he says that not only have “many if not all” of the 200 priests admit to sexually abusing children, “they live within a mile of 1,500 playgrounds, schools and daycare centers” across California. You heard that right. 200 priests that are under investigation for sexually abusing children live near areas where children play and learn....."

The Military and the Church: Bedfellows in Sexual Assault

The Military and the Church: Bedfellows in Sexual Assault: ""When victims come forward, they are ostracized and isolated from their communities. Many of the perpetrators are officers who use their ranks to coerce women to sleep with them. It's a closely interwoven community, so they [perpetrators] are safe and move fearlessly amongst their victims."

The US military's response to reports of sexual abuse echoes that of another closed, rigidly hierarchal male institution, the Catholic Church: first silence and cover-up; then blame the victim and reassign the perpetrator; and, finally, lay the fault on a "few bad apples." Like the church's historic, internal handling of sexual abuse by priests, military commanders determine whether or not their soldiers face criminal proceedings....."

Military Sexual Abuse: A Greater Menace Than Combat

Military Sexual Abuse: A Greater Menace Than Combat: ""A woman who signs up to protect her country is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire," stated former California Democratic Rep. Jane Harman in testimony before a July 2008 House panel investigating the military's handling of sexual assault reports. The Congresswoman added that her "jaw dropped" when she learned from military doctors that four of ten women in a local veterans hospital had been raped by fellow soldiers. What's equally startling, though, is that Harman - a reputed national security insider and a strong supporter of women in the military - was in the dark about rampant military sexual assault...."

Why Do Soldiers Rape?

Why Do Soldiers Rape?: "Why do some men assume they are entitled to sex in any way they can get it - incest, date rape, marriage trafficking, buying it in prostitution, extorting it in exchange for food in refugee camps or sexually assaulting their fellow soldiers? For more than 100 years, activists worldwide have fought against the victimization of women through sexual violence.

More recently, advocates have turned a floodlight on the perpetrators through programs and public policy focused on exposing, prosecuting and challenging the male demand for sex....."

Women in the Battlefield and the Barracks: A Five-Part Series on Two War Fronts for Women Soldiers

Women in the Battlefield and the Barracks: A Five-Part Series on Two War Fronts for Women Soldiers: "The first decade of the 21st century was a record one for women serving in the US military: Women constituted 14 percent of all active duty military (over 200,000), with one in ten serving in the Middle East and 17 percent in the National Guard. Women soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, though barred from ground combat, have worked in as dangerous situations as men. These same women have found themselves, concurrently, the target of sexual assault by “brothers in arms” at nearly twice the rate of US society. Military sexual trauma is so severe that it is more likely to cause post-traumatic stress disorder in women than combat trauma and civilian sexual trauma - because of military culture....."

The Battlefield and the Barracks: Two War Fronts for Women Soldiers

The Battlefield and the Barracks: Two War Fronts for Women Soldiers: ""The crisis is so severe that I'm telling women to simply not join the military because it's completely unsafe and puts them at risk. Until something changes at the top, no woman should join the military."
~Veteran April Fitzsimmons, victim of sexual assault

The distinction between military support and combat roles vanished in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars of occupation. With this blurring of boundaries, military women serving in these wars, though barred from ground combat, have worked in situations as dangerous as those faced by men.

They have patrolled streets with machine guns, served as gunners on vehicles, dismantled explosives, driven trucks down bomb-ridden streets, and rescued the dead and injured in battle zones....."

Rick Santorum thinks pregnancy through rape is God's gift? Seriously?

Rick Santorum thinks pregnancy through rape is God's gift? Seriously?: "Invoking God's will as a supporting argument to his position on abortion hardly fits with the constitution he claims to uphold

As a lapsed Catholic turned atheist, a staunch feminist and someone who has a strong general aversion to sleazy, disingenuous men, I was shocked yesterday to find myself feeling something like respect for Rick Santorum, Pope Benedict XVI and Piers Morgan all in the space of three minutes.

The three minutes in question are a clip from Morgan's interview with Santorum on the former's CNN talk show. In it, Santorum declares that even if his own daughter were raped – a hypothetical scenario both men manage to discuss with remarkable calm – the Roman Catholic presidential candidate would maintain his adamantly pro-life position regarding abortion.

I sincerely feel a tiny, grudging mote of respect for that degree of consistency. As anti-choice zealots go, those who will take the "baby killer" argument to its extreme appeal to me slightly more than those who can say with a straight face that abortion is murder, except when the woman didn't want to have sex...."

Slut Shaming and Why it's Wrong

Schizoid Sexual Society: Focused on the Petty Sex Scandals, Ignoring the Ones That Really Matter

Schizoid Sexual Society: Focused on the Petty Sex Scandals, Ignoring the Ones That Really Matter: "Why isn't it a bigger scandal when politicians chip away at our rights to control our bodies and our sexuality?

In a year when America has been otherwise austerity-obsessed, we are still sex-scandal rich. But while we certainly flock like moths to the scandal flame when that flame is a photo of a Congressman's penis, isn't it just as much of a scandal when Congressmen (and women) want to redefine rape, criminalize abortion and sex work, and chip away at our rights to control our bodies and our sexuality? Why is the media so easily obsessed when casting aspersions on the real or imagined sex lives of the already powerful, but not when the powerful target the rest of us? Before we get all misty-eyed with nostalgia – or tear gas – let's look back on some of 2011's sex scandals, with attention to the ones that should have scandalized us all...."

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