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If you think that the nice guy ranting only happens on the internet, you’ve never had to deal with your thoroughly drunken friend shouting about how no girls would go out with a nice guy like him, even though he’s surrounded by single women he ignores because they aren’t attractive enough for him.

If you think guys getting pissy and escalating matters because you told people to stop making sex jokes is a feature of the internet, well, you’ve never asked anyone to stop making jokes that make you uncomfortable.

If you think that inappropriate comments and requests for sex are an internet thing, you’ve never tried to stop a coworker or boss from hitting on you repeatedly, or a head of security, or the guy at the convenience store across the street.

If you think that being shouted at and asked to show people your tits just because you present as a woman only happens in chat rooms and online games, you’ve never walked past a frat house, or, unfortunately, through the main thoroughfares of either university I’ve attended.

If you think unasked for commentary on a woman’s looks only happens because girls post pictures on internet forums (which probably means they’re asking for it), you’ve never been at a bus stop, or the city square, or a mall, or… well, anywhere, really.

If you think insecure men trying to drive women out of activism only happens in online male-dominated communities, you’ve never paid attention politics. Or Fox. Or CNN, sadly.

If you think the reaction to rape victims is bad on twitter, try sharing that experience in person. Or try even standing up for a rape victim. Count how many minutes until someone points out “but men can be falsely accused! The woman just changed her mind! You just can’t believe those drunk *insert varying level of insulting reference to gender*!”

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An 8-year-old girl camper began swimming near the edge of the pool by me. She was a tiny girl with a bubbly personality, and she was very attached to me. Upon seeing us talking, the boy swam over and started chasing her around the water. It was clear from the way she was trying to get away from him and her screeching that she wanted to be left alone — her body language and tense demeanor should have showed that she was uncomfortable — but if that wasn’t enough of a clue, the “stop” she yelled in protest should have been enough for him to go away.

That’s when it really hit me how serious the situation was. I could immediately picture it escalating. I didn’t see an 8-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy anymore; I saw the two of them as fully grown and matured adults. The girl was still small and skinny, and the boy was large enough to overpower her with little effort. I could see her running away from him, trying to push off his advances in a more sexual situation, but him refusing to believe that she really wanted him to stop. I saw him ignoring her physical protests right along with the verbal ones, convinced she wanted him there. It horrified me.

I reprimanded him immediately, insisting that when someone asks you to stop, it’s important to listen. Almost seconds later, a male counselor standing by the same section of the pool told him not to listen to me and to continue his pursuit of this little girl, despite her obvious protests. Here were two boys, roughly 10 years apart in age, but with the same views on women: that consent doesn’t matter. It’s not a generational thing: this mindset has clearly been ingrained into the public psyche from an early age. How often are we told not to take no for an answer? How often do we see children pestering their parents about getting a new toy until they eventually give in? How often do we hear about a woman’s whims coming with her menstrual cycle? How often do we see on television shows and in movies a woman “changing her mind” about a man who is persistent enough or who just proves himself worthy? The idea that a woman will change her mind is so ingrained that we can’t always recognize it at first.

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trigger warning for mention of rape

fluttertree:

strikematchlightfiyah:

angryqueerfirebender:

makos-hipster-scarf:

justaguywitharrows:

homophobic-ace:

I’m sorry WHAT?

WHAT?

Is somebody here trying to say that rape is somehow more tolerable for sexual people? WHAT

 I don’t like reblogging stuff like this but I can’t…

this meme is bullshit. what the fuck is it doing on my dash. 

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU

It’s supposed to be mocking the people who would think and say such a thing (sadly, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it said somewhere).

Haven’t seen someone say this yet, but if I do that person got a shitstorm coming their way. Jfc how can you even think that way. /rage

(via fastestcatalive)

(TW: Rape, Suicide)a letter to the individual who changed my life forever,

jillyskille:

one year ago today my life changed in a way that i never thought it would, or could for that matter. i wasn’t aware of the change 365 days ago, it took eleven days for everything to happen and for the news to reach me.

one year ago tonight something happened in a dorm room and only two people will know the exact events that took place. one of them is dead and you, the other individual, is walking away untouched. 

i don’t know every detail of what you said and/or did, but what i do know was enough. the threatening texts you and your friend sent lizzy over the next ten days put her over the edge. that, in combination with the lack of care from the police station and her depression and anxiety disorders, took things too far and now she’s not here anymore.

i don’t care if she was in your dorm room, if she asked you to hang out, if she made it seem like she wanted a sexual relationship with you, if she was wearing a low cut tank top, or if she made the first move. the second she said “no” and pulled away from you meant she was done. the fact that you proceeded to put your lips on hers and grope her body despite her physical and verbal pleas to stop is not okay.

your “messing with notre dame football is a bad idea” text messages were threatening and uncalled for. your words and actions forever changed the lives of hundreds of people. her parents will never see their eldest daughter’s vibrant smile again. her younger sister will no longer have someone to go to for sisterly advice. her younger brother, who was just 13 years old at the time, will never truly know his oldest sister as the amazing friend she was. the rest of her family will have an empty space at the table for christmas, easter and thanksgiving dinners. her friends no longer have her to share exciting news with, get a hug from when we’re having an off day, sing country music or simply spend time with. she will never get married, have children of her own, or professionally help teens like her, as she had planned on doing. you shook a community to its core and changed our lives forever. 

i hope you can live with what you did and how you made so many feel. i can only hope you find a way to manage the guilt i hope you feel. i hope this teaches you that you are not invincible and are no better than anyone else just because of the activities you participate in. i hope you have learned that there are multiple ways to say “no” and they all need to be listened to. you have pained us forever, but you have not broken us or lizzy’s spirit. we will continue to love and honor her and fight for what she was fighting for just before she died.

and to the NDPD,

i hope you take this as a lesson that women who have the courage to come forward about being raped, sexually harassed and/or sexually abused are not to be ignored. it should not take 10+ days to interview the accused when you know exactly where he is. your actions speak louder than any shouts and yells i have ever heard. you have shown that sexual assault is a matter that is not to be taken seriously and there is nothing okay about that. it is our hope that in lizzy’s honor and in honor of every past, present and future victim that laws are passed and a change is made.

-jillian casey

(Source: bobbyflick, via scooterpiebanana)

McDonald’s strip-search hoax turned into movie without victim’s knowledge

Tw: Rape, victim blaming

Zobel changed the names for his movie and set it in a fictional “Chick-Wich” restaurant in Ohio. But he said in several interviews with online publications that it was based on the Bullitt County case and that the “weirder and yuckier the things in our movie, the more likely it is that they really happened.”

Ogborn, who won a $6.1 million jury verdict against McDonald’s that was later settled for an undisclosed sum, has since married and had a child. She didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Stewart’s lawyer, Steve Romines, said his client hadn’t known about the movie.

McDonald’s corporate spokesman, William Whitman, didn’t respond to a request for comment and neither did its Louisville lawyer, Margaret Keane.

Legal experts, including Bill Hollander, an intellectual property lawyer who is managing partner of the Louisville firm of Wyatt Tarrant & Combs, said filmmakers may fictionalize someone’s life story without their consent, although they could be sued for defamation or invasion of privacy if they knowingly or recklessly get the facts wrong.

Jennifer Rothman, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who has worked in the movie industry, said filmmakers customarily buy story rights from a subject to avoid subsequent litigation and criticism.

In an interview on New York Magazine’s entertainment website “Vulture,” Zobel admits that his movie, which isn’t rated, is challenging to watch, even for him. “It’s not for everybody.”

He said he didn’t make it just for controversy but knew it would bother some people.

“So beat me up,” he said. “I am not going to apologize.”

He has described the film as about “the danger of letting go of one’s own common-sense belief system and giving it over to authority. I think that happens all the time, and the consequences, like in this movie, are huge.”

Ogborn’s character is played by actress Dreama Walker, who has appeared in the teen TV drama “Gossip Girl” and played Clint Eastwood’s granddaughter in the movie “Gran Torino.”

The Courier-Journal was told that Walker wasn’t available for an interview. But she told a Los Angeles Times movie blogger that she studied transcripts and interviews from the McDonald’s case to get her part right.

“My whole thing for playing the character was that she wasn’t an idiot,” she said. “She was just really young, very naive and was in these high-stakes circumstances where she thought she was going to lose her job if she didn’t do as she was told.

“We all think we would react in a certain way, react boldly,” Walker said. “Sometimes that’s not really the case at all.”

Oldfather said Ogborn is trying to put her ordeal behind her and most likely will never see “Compliance.”

“My feeling is the last thing she would ever want to do is watch a movie about something that was hell for her,” Oldfather said.

The perverse tale of blind obedience to authority first unfolded eight years ago in a McDonald’s restaurant in Mount Washington, Ky., just south of Louisville, when an 18-year-old employee was subjected to a humiliating strip search orchestrated by a prank caller pretending to be a cop.

Now it may be coming to a theater near you.

“Compliance,” a movie based on the McDonald’s strip-search hoax case, premiered last month at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah and has been acquired by a major distributor, which expects to release it this summer.

Dozens of film-goers walked out of the debut and hecklers later screamed at director Craig Zobel that his 90-minute film was exploitative and misogynistic.

“Rape is not entertainment,” one of them yelled at a question-and-answer session with the director.

But critics generally have raved about the movie, which includes scenes with nudity and degradation.

Hollywood Reporter called it “a suspenseful psychological drama for viewers prepared to tolerate its extremes,” while bestmoviesevernews.com said it “works wonderfully as a horror suspense film without any gore or blood.”

“So beat me up,” he said. “I am not going to apologize.” 

You sir are a huge asshole. He doesn’t care about what really happened, he’s just exploiting the situation and making money out of it.
Seriously fuck whoever thought this was a good idea, fuck the person who didn’t ask for the victim her consent to make this movie and not getting the facts right, fuck anyone who supports this fucking asshole and this movie.

(Source: ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com)

Sailor treated rape victim like prop(TW: Rape in the Navy)

thefremen:

dyke-recovery:

Article here

A navy sailor jailed for raping a sleeping female colleague while filming the assault on his mobile phone treated her like a prop, a judge says.

RAN sailor Keith Eric Calvert, 24, turned the camera on himself and gave the thumbs-up signal after digitally raping the woman, who was lying face down and unconscious on a bed after a night out drinking.

Victorian County Court Judge Michael Tinney said the footage, played during the navy trainee’s trial, was disturbing.

He said the victim “lay inert, silent and motionless, out to the world … she was entirely unconscious”, either from alcohol or sleep.

“You did as you pleased with her,” Judge Tinney said.

He said Calvert held his phone in one hand while penetrating the 18-year-old with the other, treating her “as no more than an object or a prop”.

“This was disgraceful conduct by you, both in penetrating her in those circumstances and filming it, and became more disgraceful still when you showed this material to other men,” Judge Tinney said.

“You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Calvert’s lawyer David Sexton had argued during his client’s pre-sentence hearing that bragging about sexual exploits and capturing them on video was part of the culture at the HMAS Cerberus training base south of Melbourne, where Calvert was stationed.

Judge Tinney said Calvert, who had been a loner growing up, was attracted to the camaraderie promoted by the defence forces and had joined the navy to make friends.

Calvert was found guilty last month of digitally raping the woman in a Melbourne home after a drunken night out at Crown Casino with five male colleagues in January 2009.

The trial was told the woman stripped to her underwear during a game of truth or dare before the assaults.

When Calvert tried to film her in this state of undress, she attempted to cover up and told him to stop. Judge Tinney said this should have alerted Calvert to her attitude towards being filmed.

The woman was unaware she had been raped until three months later, when another HMAS Cerberus colleague revealed he had seen sexually explicit images of her with Calvert.

In a victim impact statement, the victim said she felt angry and violated.

“I will never forgive and forget,” she said.

Calvert, who was suspended with pay following the charges, was sacked by the navy three days after the jury’s guilty verdict.

Judge Tinney said in sentencing he took into account Calvert’s youth, lack of prior convictions and the fact he would be behind bars when his first child is born, his partner being four months’ pregnant.

Calvert, of Thomastown, pleaded not guilty to one count of indecent assault and four counts of rape.

The jury found Calvert guilty of two counts of digital rape but not guilty of the other charges.

Judge Tinney ordered Calvert to serve three-and-a-half years’ jail before being eligible for parole.

Nice to see a judge who gets it. 

(via scooterpiebanana)