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Category: Rape Culture

Quick hit: New York magazine, Bill Cosby, and #TheEmptyChair

[Content note: sexual assault]

The current cover of New York magazine is significant not just for who’s there — 35 of the women who have accused Bill Cosby of rape — but for who isn’t there — victims of sexual assault who are afraid or ashamed to come forward. Those individuals are represented by an empty chair, including those unspeaking individuals in the “unwelcome sisterhood” of Cosby’s alleged* victims.

Kids, consent, and hugging Grandma whether you want to or not

When it comes to kids and hugs, I fall strongly, strongly on the side of “only if they want to.” I’m a hugger under many circumstances, and the U.S. Deep South certainly encourages it. That said, I’m not an indiscriminate hugger, and even as an adult woman I resent being expected to submit to hugs when I don’t want to as a condition of friendliness, or because the hugger is old/”harmless”/etc.

Debunking trolls during Sexual Assault Awareness Month…

If you live in the States and believe rape is a serious issue, you likely know April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which has been around since the eighties – albeit ignored by most politicians, until filthy liberal Obama became the first president to treat rape as a serious issue. And whilst plenty of aspiring sociopaths think women deserve rape, the majority of civilised folks believe preventing rape is a good thing. But what happens when pro-rape trolls make the jump from spewing misogyny online, to harassing advocates and survivors at campus events?

The report is out on Rolling Stone‘s handling of the UVA rape story, and it’s understandably awful

On November 19, 2014, Rolling Stone published a lengthy and damning piece on the handling of sexual assault on college campuses, centering around a University of Virginia student, pseudonymously identified as “Jackie,” and her alleged gang-rape by members of one of the school’s fraternities. It was striking and stomach-turning — the attack, the response from fellow students, the response (or, more accurately, lack thereof) by university administration depicted in that story. It was also, the world would later learn, almost entirely unsubstantiated. A new report by the Columbia School of Journalism, commissioned by Rolling Stone back in December, meticulously outlines those mistakes.

EXCLUSIVE – Full transcript of “India’s Daughter”

Today is International Women’s Day, and whilst Feministe has historically received flak for sometimes myopic, U.S.-centric feminism, today’s post is at the globetrotting end of the spectrum. Were you disappointed by recent news that India’s misogynists have succeeded in intimidating England’s BBC into actively pulling Leslee Udwin’s rape culture documentary from YouTube’s servers in California? Long story short, India’s Daughter is now considered contraband, much like vibrators in Alabama. So we sat and laboriously typed up a transcript of Udwin’s film, in all its damning glory…

Q&A: Crowdfunding feminism into media…

Women’s representation in media is actually growing worse, not better, and women still comprise a fraction of directors off-screen. Unsurprisingly, some of the more feminist media we’ve seen in recent years – Tropes vs. Women, Veronica Mars and Hunting Ground – have been funded through alternative means or produced independently, to avoid creative interference by misogynistic studio suits. In this post, I interview one woman who’s ended up using the crowdfunding model to work on her upcoming Slut: A Documentary Film…