Rape culture snaps
This op/ed is one of the most ridiculous I’ve read in a long, long time (and that’s pretty impressive). Heather MacDonald argues that high rates of sexual assault on campus don’t exist because women don’t always define their experiences as rape; she then goes on to say that women who say they were raped are lying sluts who exaggerate the truth and were probably asking for it.
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Some excellent reporting has revealed that rape survivors in North Carolina have had to pay for their own forensic evidence exams. As a longtime advocate for survivors of rape, I am encouraged that this coverage has increased awareness among legislators, who now recognize that they have an obligation to deal with covering costs for hospital tests done on patients examined for sexual assault….
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On Wednesday, February 27th, from 8 to 9 p.m. ET I’ll be interviewing live another female Halliburton employee who was subjected to an environment of constant sexual harassment in Iraq. Tracy Barker was sexually assaulted by Halliburton employees and - in one instance - by a U.S. State Department employee in Basra, Iraq. The State Department employee has confessed to part of what Barker alleges, but remains at the State Department, and has never been charged with any crime. …
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We live in a world where women are facing an epidemic of rape in conflicts from Nepal to Chiapas to the Democratic Republic of Congo, yet neither Clinton nor Obama has seen fit to mention it. Recent reports of the widespread murder of educated women in Iraq by religious extremists are adding new horror to an already horrifying situation but are going almost unreported. Women and children today form the bulk of the world’s refugees and make up the majority of the world’s poor. Despite doing more than two-thirds of the world’s labor, women own only 1 percent of the world’s assets. Yet not one presidential candidate has chosen to highlight the profound threat that gender inequality is posing to the development, economic stability and future peace of our world…
DeAnander:
Yet not one presidential candidate has chosen to highlight the profound threat that gender inequality is posing to the development, economic stability
I suspect this is because they know very well that gender inequality does not pose any thread to “development” and so-called “economic stability”, but are quite aware that “development” and “economic stability” (i.e. the extension of the global capitalist system into every last human community on earth) are firmly based in gender inequality and would crumble without it.
28 February 2008, 11:27 pmeoinmonkey:
“I suspect this is because they know very well that gender inequality does not pose any thread to “development” and so-called “economic stability”, but are quite aware that “development” and “economic stability” (i.e. the extension of the global capitalist system into every last human community on earth) are firmly based in gender inequality and would crumble without it.”
It may also be because they know that most people in America could not really care less, so why waste their breath and time bringing up another issue when they have enough to bullshit about in TV debates anyway?
29 February 2008, 9:19 amDeAnander:
DRC NGO suggests link between porn and widespread rape-as-war-tactic in DRC
1 March 2008, 1:11 am