So, I was upgrading my OS to Windows 7 because there's a kickin' student discount, but then I panicked because I thought I'd lost all my files on accident due to a tragic back-up error, but then I didn't, so I was happy.

Moving on, links.

Disclaimers:

1. Trigger Warning! Links deal with rape; click with care.

2. I don't always agree with everything contained in the links.

3. Sometimes there'll be comments on the linked articles. Read them if you get the chance.



Rape culture:

Yes Means Yes' Safe Like C-4 - 9/2010

"A worldview in which men can't control their responses is always one in which they are not responsible for their responses, and that always ends up the same place. I'm not for that. I'm for the other version, the one in which men are people. People can't be responsible for others, only to others. But people can be responsible for themselves. If I'm being teased and I don't want to be, I have options other than bitterness and frustration (and other than aggression). My other option is communication. I can say what I want. I can say, "please stop teasing me." I can say, "please stop teasing me unless you're interested." Those are two very different things. Or I can say, "tease all you want, but I'm not available." (Which, for me personally, is generally the case.)"

The Guardian's The Rise of Rape Talk - 9/2010

"An example of so-called rape talk? Coming out of an exercise class recently, a guy turned to one of my friends, sweating and breathless, and heaved a sigh of satisfied exhaustion. "Wow, that was just like being raped, wasn't it?" he said. My friend stood motionless, blinking back at him. Another? In the July issue of UK Elle, the Twilight star Kristen Stewart talked about being trailed by the paparazzi, saying that when she sees the resulting photographs: "I feel like I'm looking at someone being raped." (Stewart later apologised for the comparison). Online, there has been a lot of talk about "Facebook rape": a term used to describe a third party getting access to someone's Facebook account and changing their details. Almost 1.3 million people are fans of the Facebook page "Thanks wind, you have totally raped my hair", where photos of windswept women are posted. And the rightwing US shock jocks, always ahead of the crowd with vile, vicious language, have been using rape talk for years. In separate discussions of healthcare reform last year, Rush Limbaugh warned his listeners, "get ready to get gang-raped again", while Glenn Beck compared himself and his viewers to "the young girl saying, 'No, no, help me,'" while "the government is Roman Polanski"."

The Guardian's Rape Jokes in Comedy - 9/2010

"Some comics argue that rape jokes are justified as long as the joke's on them. Jeffries talked to me about his joke "about a girl who won't have sex with me . . . And the punchline is 'so I raped her'. But," he added, "I also have a joke later on about being in the toilet of a gay bar, and the punchline of that joke is 'so he raped me'. I throw it back and forth."

The counter-argument, expressed most forcibly by Jo Brand, is that today's comedians pose as plain-speakers and PC refuseniks in order to smuggle in the kind of misogynist comedy last seen in the 1970s. The likes of Carr, says Brand, "appeal to all the people out there who think, 'Where have all those delicious anti-women jokes gone? We miss them.'" Brand identifies "almost a desperation to make [comedy] more unpalatable than it was before"."

Alcohol:

The Curvature's Know Your Limit . . . For Rape? - 1/2008

"The Home Office isn't trying to prevent rape. They're trying to prevent drinking to excess. And using rape against women as a fear tactic is just one of their supposedly-but-not-really effective tools. Women aren't going to stop drinking because they're afraid of being raped. If women didn't do things because they were afraid of being raped, those of us who could afford to would live alone as hermits with state of the art security systems and get necessities delivered to us by a female delivery person, to whom we slide the money though the mail slot. Women are still going to drink. This lovely little campaign will just make them more likely to blame themselves if they happen to be raped while drinking."

Malaysia:

The Micah Mandate's What Is The Worth of a Penan Girl - 8/2009

"For more than ten years at least, Penan girls have been raped, violated and sexually abused. The Penan women in the community have been at dire risk of various forms of sexual assault and harassment. Young, young, school going girls have made the difficult step to come forward and say that they have been raped by members of the logging companies.

The life and dignity of a Penan woman, however, appears to be worth less than RM 3,600.

Investigations into the allegations of rape and abuse by loggers in Sarawak against the Penan girls have led nowhere. Today, the Sarawak police say they can only afford the RM 100,000 needed to pay for police personnel, and not the RM 3,600 proposed to pay for the much-needed Penan-Malay translators, if the 6-day investigation into these allegations were to be carried out.

The police can spend RM15 million on a by-election in Kuala Terengganu, but RM 3,600 to pay for an essential part of an investigation into rape of children is too much?"

Numbers:

Alas' Yet Another Koss Critic Can't Get His Facts Right - 9/2010

"If TDOM is correct to believe that Koss' question 8 created a significant "false yes" problem, then many fewer students would have answered "yes" to Schwartz and Leggett's rewritten version. So what actually happened? Rewriting the question made no difference at all. 17% percent of students surveyed by Schwartz and Leggett were found to have been raped, a number basically identical to Koss' 15%.

Finally, let's not forget that Koss' three most important findings — that around 10-15% of women have been victims of rape in their lifetime, that most rapes are never reported to police, and that rape is usually committed by someone known to the victim, not by a stranger — have been replicated again and again by other researchers."

The legal system:

The Gender Blender Blog's Rabbi accused of molesting his daughter represents himself in court - Relevant Source - 3/2009

"Comments such as this perpetuate survivor-blaming and a culture in which the survivor is not believed. The young woman's sexual or love life has nothing to do with the allegations. Attempting to draw in information about the woman's love life in order to discredit her is absurd and irrelevant. In one way, the comment is correct. "If it's an ‘untenable, horrific situation,' why doesn't the judge forbid it?" I agree. It is ridiculous that the man was even allowed to represent himself in the first place. By once again putting the accused perpetrator in a position of power over the survivor, the decision to allow Weingarten to represent himself is traumatic for the survivor. But, from the other angle, allowing him to represent himself (especially given his strange behavior) also creates bias against the defendant."

The Problem:

"Also, I think this illustrates well the both sides of the coin aspect of this classic feminist argument. If you wish to retain the power to manipulate members of the opposite sex into giving you attention (including money, career opportunity, fame, etc.) by wearing tantalisingly scanty dress, you must also take some responsibility for the reactions of the said section of public that are less able to control their ability to be thus manipulated than others." - (link)

The way I understand the case, it was a rape, but it was a statutory rape because a 13-year-old girl was involved. Her mother brought this girl to Polanski and left her there. He did not kidnap her in the street.

For a typical "Hollywood mother," anything goes to get a role in a movie. A normal mother would not leave her underage daughter with an adult male.

I am not defending Roman Polanski. A statutory rape is a rape, too. What I am saying is this:

The girl's mother should have been sued for purposely neglecting her child and endangering her.

But this is not the part of modern American culture: to be responsible for your actions. It is always somebody else's fault."" - (link)