RE: Objectifying women
July 10, 2010 at 11:11 pm
(This post was last modified: July 10, 2010 at 11:17 pm by In This Mind.)
Ah, the men of rape culture. Blame the woman, then laugh about how funny rape is.
Fortunately, you are losing.
More and more rape victims are refusing to withdraw into a silent scream. They no longer readily accept any portion of blame in a society that has traditionally been ambivalent about siding with them. In the past decade, as women have gained greater equality, women's groups have coalesced across the country to work to bring rape out of a miasma of shame, insensitivity and injustice. In many ways, the crusade has paid off. There has been widespread improvement in the way rape victims are treated by the police, courts and hospitals. There are now more than 700 rape crisis centers nationwide. Laws in most states have been toughened, conviction rates are going up, and judges are likely to give more stringent sentences to offenders.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articl...z0tL7kX1Mw
Nonetheless, rape remains one of the most misunderstood and underreported crimes. Only 3.5% to 10% of rapes are reported, according to an aggregate of surveys done by the U.S. Census Bureau, the FBI and the National Opinion Research Center. Using conservative estimates, experts calculate that a woman's chance of being raped at some point during her life is an appalling 1 in 10. But as the social stigma on rape victims begins to lessen, they are fighting back through the legal system, reporting their cases and seeing them through to prosecution. The number of reported rapes has steadily risen, jumping 35% to 99,146 in 1981, the latest year for which the Justice Department has figures. (Justice calculated its number on a 56% rate for reported rapes, a percentage the experts agree is much too high.) Although most authorities feel there is some increase in the actual number of rapes, including gang rapes and rapes of children and men, most of the rise is attributed to more women reporting the attacks on them.
One of the key factors in making the system more responsive to victims is a better understanding of why people rape. The old image of a man's succumbing to uncontrollable (and, to many, understandable) lust, enticed by a provocative woman wearing sexy clothes, is fading, as is the notion that women falsely cry rape.
Rape is now regarded as a crime of violence, not passion. Sex is not the chief thing that motivates rapists, says A. Nicholas Groth, director of an innovative sex-offender program at the state prison in Somers, Conn. "Rape is the sexual expression of aggression."
Groth says that most rapists have wives or girlfriends and are not sexually deprived. They rape for power. "They are insecure, inadequate people who don't feel in control of their own lives or themselves." One rapist told Groth:
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articl...z0tL7sZDW7
The fucked up part is, some women will die because they followed your advice.
There are no standard responses to an attack. Many self-defense specialists advise acting aggressively early in the assault, yelling or bending his pinkie finger back. But there is no way of knowing how a given attacker will respond. In Groth's group, one rapist said he "would let them go as soon as they started to cry." Another said he stabbed a woman who became assertive.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articl...z0tL8JhHAz
Fortunately, you are losing.
More and more rape victims are refusing to withdraw into a silent scream. They no longer readily accept any portion of blame in a society that has traditionally been ambivalent about siding with them. In the past decade, as women have gained greater equality, women's groups have coalesced across the country to work to bring rape out of a miasma of shame, insensitivity and injustice. In many ways, the crusade has paid off. There has been widespread improvement in the way rape victims are treated by the police, courts and hospitals. There are now more than 700 rape crisis centers nationwide. Laws in most states have been toughened, conviction rates are going up, and judges are likely to give more stringent sentences to offenders.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articl...z0tL7kX1Mw
Nonetheless, rape remains one of the most misunderstood and underreported crimes. Only 3.5% to 10% of rapes are reported, according to an aggregate of surveys done by the U.S. Census Bureau, the FBI and the National Opinion Research Center. Using conservative estimates, experts calculate that a woman's chance of being raped at some point during her life is an appalling 1 in 10. But as the social stigma on rape victims begins to lessen, they are fighting back through the legal system, reporting their cases and seeing them through to prosecution. The number of reported rapes has steadily risen, jumping 35% to 99,146 in 1981, the latest year for which the Justice Department has figures. (Justice calculated its number on a 56% rate for reported rapes, a percentage the experts agree is much too high.) Although most authorities feel there is some increase in the actual number of rapes, including gang rapes and rapes of children and men, most of the rise is attributed to more women reporting the attacks on them.
One of the key factors in making the system more responsive to victims is a better understanding of why people rape. The old image of a man's succumbing to uncontrollable (and, to many, understandable) lust, enticed by a provocative woman wearing sexy clothes, is fading, as is the notion that women falsely cry rape.
Rape is now regarded as a crime of violence, not passion. Sex is not the chief thing that motivates rapists, says A. Nicholas Groth, director of an innovative sex-offender program at the state prison in Somers, Conn. "Rape is the sexual expression of aggression."
Groth says that most rapists have wives or girlfriends and are not sexually deprived. They rape for power. "They are insecure, inadequate people who don't feel in control of their own lives or themselves." One rapist told Groth:
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articl...z0tL7sZDW7
The fucked up part is, some women will die because they followed your advice.
There are no standard responses to an attack. Many self-defense specialists advise acting aggressively early in the assault, yelling or bending his pinkie finger back. But there is no way of knowing how a given attacker will respond. In Groth's group, one rapist said he "would let them go as soon as they started to cry." Another said he stabbed a woman who became assertive.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articl...z0tL8JhHAz
