Day 46: Sincerely, Real Men

“Girls are like apples on trees. Their fathers are the farmers, whose job is to care for them. He must protect his apples from pests and disease. He must guard them against thieves who may pick his apples prematurely. Neither those at the top nor those at the bottom can help their location. But, when each reaches peak ripeness, it is the farmer’s job to harvest that fruit and give it to whom he will, to those in need. So there is nothing wrong with the apples still on the tree and nothing wrong with the boys who seek them. But it is the farmer’s duty to provide for both, in due season.” A christian conservative group talking about child marriage using an analogy of apples.

"On more than one occasion, a former sexual partner of mine held my head in a locked position while I was going down on him, so that even when I was literally choking on him, and repeatedly smacking his thigh to try to get him to loose his grip on me, he still wouldn't immediately let me go. At the time, I thought since I actually really enjoy the experience of deepthroating (at my own friggin' pace, thank you) that this didn't qualify as rape; but again, this is technically a case where I withdrew my consent and was not only ignored, but overpowered into doing something I didn't want to do." 

"A while back, I asked a man I was having sex with if we could switch positions. We were in a position I normally liked, but on this day, it was just too painful. I told him the position we were in was causing me pain, but when I asked if we could switch he said "no," and kept having sex with me in that position. I waited a few minutes to see if the position would become less painful for me. When it didn't, I asked him again if we could switch. Again, he said no. Defeated, I allowed him to pin my arms behind my back. I cried, because it hurt and because I wasn't OK with what was happening. But he kept going until he'd finished. Afterwards, I knew what had happened wasn't OK, but I didn't realize I had technically experienced nonconsensual sex until months later" 

A woman talks about her experience: "yesterday I made a comment on a prank video where a chick would lay and pretended to be unconscious next to someone, the first person was a dude who wanted to take her to his hotel and take advantage of her, the other was a couple, the chick laid on the guys lap and the girlfriend started slapping him for it. I then made a comment where I said " attempted rape and domestic violence is not something I find funny" I got called a feminist, which I admitted to such allegation. I got told I need some dick and that I see everything so bitter in life. Both of which are untrue. "

"The outspoken women are painted as angry and bitter spirits. The outspoken men are praised as revolutionaries and heroes." - Solange Knowles

Tweet: "I think the concept of virginity was created by men who thought their penises were so important it changes who a woman is."

"Capt. Kim Flowers heads Oklahoma City's domestic violence unit, which has been using the checklist for three years.

"He wants you to know that he's in control, and he can snap your neck in half whenever he feels like it," Flowers said of the question about choking.

The more times a victim answers "Yes" to the questions, the more likely domestic violence may lead to a victim's death, Werner reports."

"Ex-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, knocked out of office during a prostitution scandal in 2008, is reportedly being investigated for choking a 25-year-old woman during an argument at the Plaza Hotel. The woman, Svetlana Travis, is said to have told police the two had been together for the past two years. He was also dating Democratic strategist Lis Smith for the past two years."

More on student loans and being a woman. "Black women started life after college in the worst financial situation of any group. They took out a lot of debt to attend school—an average of $26,535—and took home the smallest paychecks of any group. In 2009 they earned $34,102 on average, meaning that, upon graduation, student loans took up a whopping 78 percent of their income."

An article on how women pay back student debts slower. "On average, women who graduated college in 2008 paid back 33 percent of their student loans by 2012, according to AAUW’s analysis of Department of Education data. Men repaid 44 percent of their debt in that period. Black and Hispanic women fared the worst of any group four years out of college. Black women had reduced their debt by only 9 percent in 2012, and Hispanic women had erased a mere 3 percent of their total loan bill."

Image of Meryl Streep: "No one ever asked an actor 'You're playing a strong-minded man.' We assume that men are strong minded, or have opinions. But a strong-minded woman is a different animal."

"Women are called brave for all sorts of things: showing confidence, asking people out, wearing bikinis when they're fat. But if we believe only brave women do these things, what does that say about your average woman? It reflects a default view of women as passive and scared to try new things. Regardless of gender, following your dreams takes a bit of bravery, but it shouldn't. It should be something we're all encouraged to do."‪ Article on backhanded sexist compliments.

"A lawmaker in Helena, Montana is trying to make the state’s “indecent exposure law” include yoga pants.
Representative David Moore introduced House Bill 365 on Tuesday in the House Judiciary Committee. He said the bill is in response to a group of nude bicyclists who participated in a group bicycle ride through the city of Missoula back in August.
The proposed bill would drastically expand the existing indecent exposure law to include any sort of expose of nipples – including men’s – or any clothing that “gives the appearance or simulates” buttocks, genitals, pelvic area or female nipple."

"But most importantly, not a single report describes Giblin’s acts as domestic violence. Only one story interviewed an advocate for battered women, and even then did not provide this most critical analytic frame for Giblin’s crime. And this was clearly and classically a “domestic violence” homicide — intimate femicide to be specific. Murder followed by suicide is almost exclusively committed by men against their female partners, as is “overkill”, where multiple homicidal acts are committed against the victim.

Perpetrators of domestic violence count on their victims’ silence, and they count on the silence of the rest of us. News media have a critical role to play in ensuring that the victims of intimate femicide do not disappear from view — as has Charbonneau in most media accounts. News media must also accurately convey these terrible events, not allowing us to avert our eyes and block our ears, and must alert us to the risk factors that predict lethal violence."

"Yet the analysis in news media is focused almost exclusively on how we fail our soldiers, with promises of new resources forthcoming for their support. Nothing about how we fail our women. Especially our racialized women. And nothing about this woman — who was she? Where did she work? How did she come to be married to this man? Where is her family, her people? No photos of them at the wedding. Not even a mention of them. No follow up on the comments made by neighbours in interviews who spoke about his frequent screaming at the building’s female superintendent and yelling at Charbonneau. No exploration of witness statements that described her as quiet and very shy." An article on how femicide is predictable yet we ignore it.

"“They both went over the railing,” CTV reported on December 20th, describing the deaths of Robert Giblin, 43, and Precious Charbonneau, 33, days before Christmas.

No they didn’t.

Giblin first stabbed his pregnant partner seven times. Then he threw her 21 flights to the ground, ensuring her death. After that, like many men who cannot — will not — live without her, Giblin committed suicide.

Other news reports said she “was stabbed several times before being thrown off the balcony,” that she fell or “plunged” from the balcony, that “stab wounds were found on her body,” tagging the story as “highrise deaths.”"

"Looking more broadly at the general topics covered in sexual assault articles, the report found that the coverage is skewed yet again. 41 percent of these articles focused on rape proceedings — civil suits, discipline, legislation, etc. 25 percent focused on rape and sports culture — fraternities and sororities. A measly 13 percent covered the circumstances of the event, and an even smaller 12 percent focused on the impact of the event on the people involved. As I said earlier, we have a problem: Where are the victims? Where are the women? This isn't to say that the other topics aren't important, because they absolutely are; but does everything need to be so flagrantly out of balance?"

"Not only are men dominating the coverage of sexual assault, but they're also less likely to cover the alleged victims and more likely to report on the alleged attacker. Women are the opposite, writing about the alleged victims more and the alleged attackers less, as compared to men. And while, again, women are victims of sexual assault more frequently than men according to RAINN, the WMC report found that 28 percent of quotes in male-written articles were from women, while 54 percent were from men. Women, once again, were the opposite, quoting women 42 percent of the time and men 38 percent of the time." 

"We already know that women are victims of sexual assault far more frequently than men. Why, then, are more than half of sexual assault stories in the press written by men? A new report from the Women's Media Center detailing how the U.S. media covers campus rape and sexual assault analyzed 940 articles from 12 print outlets and found that 55 percent of news articles on sexual assault in 2014 were written by men, while only 31 percent were written by women. (The remaining 14 percent had no byline.)"

"As Lady GaGa said in her acceptance speech for 2015's Woman Of The Year award at Billboard Women in Music awards in December, "...it is really hard sometimes for women in music. It’s like a f***in’ boys' club that we just can’t get into." Gaga claims that women have to work that much harder in order to get an ounce of the recognition that men are privileged with, and the real issue is that even when they do, their work can still go relatively unnoticed. As Björk explained in a 2015 Pitchfork interview, she spent three years producing 80 percent of the beats on her phenomenal album Vulnicura, yet she claimed that her male co-producer Arca received more credit in the media as the producer"

"Reducing Adele to a gendered role and presenting said role as an obstacle is something no male musician at her level has ever had to deal with. Has Kanye ever been described as just a 38-year-old-father? Male musicians who have fathered children, including Justin Timberlake, Dave Grohl, and Jay-Z, are almost never described as such; their musical abilities aren't propped up as near-miracles in the face of fatherhood. These men are referred by their names and their statuses as artist — not artists with an asterisk for their gendered role outside of the studio. Questions and observations about parenthood, work-life balance, and gender experiences coming in opposition to the artistic process seem to exclusively plague women in music."

A man says the gaming industry is sexist because not enough girls are in it. And because girls are not interested in and think nerds are lame.

A commenter asks a question on how girl gamers are treated as not real gamers. "Yea but are you a gamer who plays Candy Crush or are you a gamer who plays EVE Online?" ‪

A woman talks about gender equality: "Did you know that Germany is telling schoolgirls not to wear skirts, and the mayor of Cologne told women to avoid smiling and to keep an arms length distance between strangers in order to avoid being raped by migrants? Wonderful for women."

"Red Carpet host Ryan Seacrest shamed Selena Gomez for being single. When Seacrest asked Gomez how she spent her Valentine's Day, she said that she hung out with her single girlfriends, to which Seacrest responded with the daddiest dad joke of all time: "I call that Single Awareness Day, S-A-D. Singles Awareness Day." Gomez was visibly unamused"

Women use an article on naming their rapist to name their rapists. "I was five-years-old: I knew they were coworkers of my father's, but I never knew their names."

Another woman talks about her rape: "Andrew. 
I went back because I thought it was what I deserved. 
A few years later I told my "best friends" 
They didn't believe me. They believed him."

"I’m working on an essay about the time I was raped my freshman year of college. For the very first time, I’m naming my perpetrator. Even if it’s only his first name, there’s still so much power in it.

His name is Bill.

I hit “post.” What I expected would happen next was an assortment of heart emoticons and people sending support and love. What I did not see coming was what actually happened.

The comments started rolling in, starting with a friend who said, To stand with you in this moment: Julius. I was 20.

And then they just kept coming.

Senior year, his name was James

Shawn. I was 16 and dated him for three years after that.

Joey, two weeks ago.

Tom. I’ve never told anyone before.

Susan. She was my first girlfriend, I was 18."

A woman writes about her rape. "Today was not the first time I’ve written about being raped — nor, I’m sure, will it be the last. But something felt different about this day; about this essay. For the first time, I stopped talking around his name and I actually typed it into the piece — Bill. There it was, in black and white.

I reread the paragraph, with his name in the sentence instead of the vague descriptor of “the guy who raped me” — because, to be honest, that could be one of several different men. This time, there was no doubt who I was talking about."

A woman comic book writer talks about her experience: "Being a woman or person of color in a space dominated by white men is like wearing a Klingon cloaking shield: as long as you don’t need to open fire, no one is going to notice whether you’re there or not."

"One of the things that upsets me about modern society is the coarseness of manners. You can’t go to a movie—or watch a television show for that matter—without hearing the constant use of the F-word—including, you know, *ladies* using it. People that I know don’t talk like that! But if you portray it a lot, the society’s going to become that way. It’s very sad."

blue background ecard. "Dear Girls, Dressing immodestly is like rolling around in manure. Yes you'll get attention, but mostly from pigs. Sincerely, Real Men"

The 104-page report, “‘I Just Sit and Wait to Die’: Reparations for Survivors of Kenya’s 2007-2008 Post-Election Sexual Violence,” is based on interviews with 163 women and girls, nine male survivors, and witnesses of rape or other sexual violence in the post-election period. Human Rights Watch found that most of the survivors interviewed were still in dire need of medical attention, leaving them unable to work or pursue education, adding to their poverty and hunger. The government has recently promised reparations, which should be designed in consultation with survivors of sexual violence to ensure their full inclusion in all programs.
“We were shocked to find how many survivors are sick, living in poverty and stigmatized, ignored, and often rejected instead of helped by the government,” said Agnes Odhiambo, senior Africa women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Recent commitments by President Uhuru Kenyatta provide a critical opportunity to address the needs of survivors of Kenya’s post-election sexual violence.”