Sunday January 27, 2013, 9:15 am
(Image Credit: bling cheese)


Here in the United States, where there is a reported rape every 6.2 minutes, and one in five women will be raped in her lifetime, the rape and gruesome murder of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi on December 16th was treated as an exceptional incident. The story of the alleged rape of an unconscious teenager by members of the Steubenville High School football team was still unfolding, and gang rapes aren’t that unusual here either. Take your pick: some of the 20 men who gang-raped an 11-year-old in Cleveland, Texas, were sentenced in November, while the instigator of the gang rape of a 16-year-old in Richmond, California, was sentenced in October, and four men who gang-raped a 15-year-old near New Orleans were sentenced in April, though the six men who gang-raped a 14-year-old in Chicago last fall are still at large. Not that I actually went out looking for incidents: they’re everywhere in the news, though no one adds them up and indicates that there might actually be a pattern.

There is, however, a pattern of violence against women that’s broad and deep and horrific and incessantly overlooked. Occasionally, a case involving a celebrity or lurid details in a particular case get a lot of attention in the media, but such cases are treated as anomalies, while the abundance of incidental news items about violence against women in this country, in other countries, on every continent including Antarctica, constitute a kind of background wallpaper for the news.

If you’d rather talk about bus rapes than gang rapes, there’s the rape of a developmentally disabled woman on a Los Angeles bus in November and the kidnapping of an autistic 16-year-old on the regional transit train system in Oakland, California -- she was raped repeatedly by her abductor over two days this winter -- and there was a gang rape of multiple women on a bus in Mexico City recently, too. While I was writing this, I read that another female bus-rider was kidnapped in India and gang-raped all night by the bus driver and five of his friends who must have thought what happened in New Delhi was awesome.

We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it’s almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern. Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender.

Here I want to say one thing: though virtually all the perpetrators of such crimes are men, that doesn’t mean all men are violent. Most are not. In addition, men obviously also suffer violence, largely at the hands of other men, and every violent death, every assault is terrible. But the subject here is the pandemic of violence by men against women, both intimate violence and stranger violence.

What We Don’t Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Gender

There’s so much of it. We could talk about the assault and rape of a 73-year-old in Manhattan’s Central Park last September, or the recent rape of a four-year-old and an 83-year-old in Louisiana, or the New York City policeman who was arrested in October for what appeared to be serious plans to kidnap, rape, cook, and eat a woman, any woman, because the hate wasn’t personal (though maybe it was for the San Diego man who actually killed and cooked his wife in November and the man from New Orleans who killed, dismembered, and cooked his girlfriend in 2005).

Those are all exceptional crimes, but we could also talk about quotidian assaults, because though a rape is reported only every 6.2 minutes in this country, the estimated total is perhaps five times as high. Which means that there may be very nearly a rape a minute in the U.S. It all adds up to tens of millions of rape victims.

We could talk about high-school- and college-athlete rapes, or campus rapes, to which university authorities have been appallingly uninterested in responding in many cases, including that high school in Steubenville, Notre Dame University, Amherst College, and many others. We could talk about the escalating pandemic of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment in the U.S. military, where Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta estimated that there were 19,000 sexual assaults on fellow soldiers in 2010 alone and that the great majority of assailants got away with it, though four-star general Jeffrey Sinclair was indicted in September for “a slew of sex crimes against women.”

Never mind workplace violence, let’s go home. So many men murder their partners and former partners that we have well over 1,000 homicides of that kind a year -- meaning that every three years the death toll tops 9/11’s casualties, though no one declares a war on this particular terror. (Another way to put it: the more than 11,766 corpses from domestic-violence homicides since 9/11 exceed the number of deaths of victims on that day and all American soldiers killed in the “war on terror.”) If we talked about crimes like these and why they are so common, we’d have to talk about what kinds of profound change this society, or this nation, or nearly every nation needs. If we talked about it, we’d be talking about masculinity, or male roles, or maybe patriarchy, and we don’t talk much about that.

Instead, we hear that American men commit murder-suicides -- at the rate of about 12 a week -- because the economy is bad, though they also do it when the economy is good; or that those men in India murdered the bus-rider because the poor resent the rich, while other rapes in India are explained by how the rich exploit the poor; and then there are those ever-popular explanations: mental problems and intoxicants -- and for jocks, head injuries. The latest spin is that lead exposure was responsible for a lot of our violence, except that both genders are exposed and one commits most of the violence. The pandemic of violence always gets explained as anything but gender, anything but what would seem to be the broadest explanatory pattern of all.

Someone wrote a piece about how white men seem to be the ones who commit mass murders in the U.S. and the (mostly hostile) commenters only seemed to notice the white part. It’s rare that anyone says what this medical study does, even if in the driest way possible: “Being male has been identified as a risk factor for violent criminal behavior in several studies, as have exposure to tobacco smoke before birth, having antisocial parents, and belonging to a poor family.”

Still, the pattern is plain as day. We could talk about this as a global problem, looking at the epidemic of assault, harassment, and rape of women in Cairo’s Tahrir Square that has taken away the freedom they celebrated during the Arab Spring -- and led some men there to form defense teams to help counter it -- or the persecution of women in public and private in India from “Eve-teasing” tobride-burning, or “honor killings” in South Asia and the Middle East, or the way that South Africa has become a global rape capital, with an estimated600,000 rapes last year, or how rape has been used as a tactic and “weapon” of war in Mali, Sudan, and the Congo, as it was in the former Yugoslavia, or the pervasiveness of rape and harassment in Mexico and the femicide in Juarez, or the denial of basic rights for women in Saudi Arabia and the myriad sexual assaults on immigrant domestic workers there, or the way that the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case in the United States revealed what impunity he and others had in France, and it’s only for lack of space I’m leaving out Britain and Canada and Italy (with its ex-prime minister known for his orgies with the underaged), Argentina and Australia and so many other countries.

Who Has the Right to Kill You?

But maybe you’re tired of statistics, so let’s just talk about a single incident that happened in my city a couple of weeks ago, one of many local incidents in which men assaulted women that made the local papers this month:

“A woman was stabbed after she rebuffed a man's sexual advances while she walked in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood late Monday night, a police spokesman said today. The 33-year-old victim was walking down the street when a stranger approached her and propositioned her, police spokesman Officer Albie Esparza said. When she rejected him, the man became very upset and slashed the victim in the face and stabbed her in the arm, Esparza said.”

The man, in other words, framed the situation as one in which his chosen victim had no rights and liberties, while he had the right to control and punish her. This should remind us that violence is first of all authoritarian. It begins with this premise: I have the right to control you.

Murder is the extreme version of that authoritarianism, where the murderer asserts he has the right to decide whether you live or die, the ultimate means of controlling someone. This may be true even if you are “obedient,” because the desire to control comes out of a rage that obedience can’t assuage. Whatever fears, whatever sense of vulnerability may underlie such behavior, it also comes out of entitlement, the entitlement to inflict suffering and even death on other people. It breeds misery in the perpetrator and the victims.

As for that incident in my city, similar things happen all the time. Many versions of it happened to me when I was younger, sometimes involving death threats and often involving torrents of obscenities: a man approaches a woman with both desire and the furious expectation that the desire will likely be rebuffed. The fury and desire come in a package, all twisted together into something that always threatens to turn eros into thanatos, love into death, sometimes literally.

It’s a system of control. It’s why so many intimate-partner murders are of women who dared to break up with those partners. As a result, it imprisons a lot of women, and though you could say that the attacker on January 7th, or a brutal would-be-rapist near my own neighborhood on January 5th, or another rapist here on January 12th, or the San Franciscan who on January 6th set his girlfriend on fire for refusing to do his laundry, or the guy who was just sentenced to 370 years for some particularly violent rapes in San Francisco in late 2011, were marginal characters, rich, famous, and privileged guys do it, too.

The Japanese vice-consul in San Francisco was charged with 12 felony counts of spousal abuse and assault with a deadly weapon last September, the same month that, in the same town, the ex-girlfriend of Mason Mayer (brother of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer) testified in court: "He ripped out my earrings, tore my eyelashes off, while spitting in my face and telling me how unlovable I am… I was on the ground in the fetal position, and when I tried to move, he squeezed both knees tighter into my sides to restrain me and slapped me." According to the newspaper, she also testified that “Mayer slammed her head onto the floor repeatedly and pulled out clumps of her hair, telling her that the only way she was leaving the apartment alive was if he drove her to theGolden Gate Bridge ‘where you can jump off or I will push you off.’" Mason Mayer got probation.

This summer, an estranged husband violated his wife’s restraining order against him, shooting her -- and six other women -- at her spa job in suburban Milwaukee, but since there were only four corpses the crime was largely overlooked in the media in a year with so many more spectacular mass murders in this country (and we still haven’t really talked about the fact that, of 62 mass shootings in the U.S. in three decades, only one was by a woman, because when you say lone gunman, everyone talks about loners and guns but not about men -- and by the way, nearly two thirds of all women killed by guns are killed by their partner or ex-partner).

What’s love got to do with it, asked Tina Turner, whose ex-husband Ike once said, “Yeah I hit her, but I didn't hit her more than the average guy beats his wife.” A woman is beaten every nine seconds in this country. Just to be clear: not nine minutes, but nine seconds. It’s the number-one cause of injury to American women; of the two million injured annually, more than half a millionof those injuries require medical attention while about 145,000 require overnight hospitalizations, according to the Center for Disease Control, and you don’t want to know about the dentistry needed afterwards. Spouses are also the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the U.S.

“Women worldwide ages 15 through 44 are more likely to die or be maimed because of male violence than because of cancer, malaria, war and traffic accidents combined,” writes Nicholas D. Kristof, one of the few prominent figures to address the issue regularly.

The Chasm Between Our Worlds

Rape and other acts of violence, up to and including murder, as well as threats of violence, constitute the barrage some men lay down as they attempt to control some women, and fear of that violence limits most women in ways they’ve gotten so used to they hardly notice -- and we hardly address. There are exceptions: last summer someone wrote to me to describe a college class in which the students were asked what they do to stay safe from rape. The young women described the intricate ways they stayed alert, limited their access to the world, took precautions, and essentially thought about rape all the time (while the young men in the class, he added, gaped in astonishment). The chasm between their worlds had briefly and suddenly become visible.

Mostly, however, we don’t talk about it -- though a graphic has been circulating on the Internet called Ten Top Tips to End Rape, the kind of thing young women get often enough, but this one had a subversive twist. It offered advice like this: “Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone ‘by accident’ you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can call for help.” While funny, the piece points out something terrible: the usual guidelines in such situations put the full burden of prevention on potential victims, treating the violence as a given. You explain to me why colleges spend more time telling women how to survive predators than telling the other half of their students not to be predators.

Threats of sexual assault now seem to take place online regularly. In late 2011, British columnist Laurie Penny wrote, “An opinion, it seems, is the short skirt of the Internet. Having one and flaunting it is somehow asking an amorphous mass of almost-entirely male keyboard-bashers to tell you how they'd like to rape, kill, and urinate on you. This week, after a particularly ugly slew of threats, I decided to make just a few of those messages public on Twitter, and the response I received was overwhelming. Many could not believe the hate I received, and many more began to share their own stories of harassment, intimidation, and abuse.”

Women in the online gaming community have been harassed, threatened, and driven out. Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist media critic who documented such incidents, received support for her work, but also, in the words of a journalist, “another wave of really aggressive, you know, violent personal threats, her accounts attempted to be hacked. And one man in Ontario took the step of making an online video game where you could punch Anita's image on the screen. And if you punched it multiple times, bruises and cuts would appear on her image.” The difference between these online gamers and the Taliban men who, last October, tried to murder 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai for speaking out about the right of Pakistani women to education is one of degree. Both are trying to silence and punish women for claiming voice, power, and the right to participate. Welcome to Manistan.

The Party for the Protection of the Rights of Rapists

It’s not just public, or private, or online either. It’s also embedded in our political system, and our legal system, which before feminists fought for us didn’t recognize most domestic violence, or sexual harassment and stalking, or date rape, or acquaintance rape, or marital rape, and in cases of rape still often tries the victim rather than the rapist, as though only perfect maidens could be assaulted -- or believed.

As we learned in the 2012 election campaign, it’s also embedded in the minds and mouths of our politicians. Remember that spate of crazy pro-rape thingsRepublican men said last summer and fall, starting with Todd Akin's notorious claim that a woman has ways of preventing pregnancy in cases of rape, a statement he made in order to deny women control over their own bodies. After that, of course, Senate candidate Richard Mourdock claimed that rape pregnancies were “a gift from God,” and just this month, another Republican politician piped up to defend Akin’s comment.

Happily the five publicly pro-rape Republicans in the 2012 campaign all losttheir election bids. (Stephen Colbert tried to warn them that women had gotten the vote in 1920.) But it’s not just a matter of the garbage they say (and the price they now pay). Earlier this month, congressional Republicans refused to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, because they objected to the protection it gave immigrants, transgendered women, and Native American women. (Speaking of epidemics, one of three Native American women will be raped, and on the reservations 88% of those rapes are by non-Native men who know tribal governments can’t prosecute them.)

And they’re out to gut reproductive rights -- birth control as well as abortion, as they’ve pretty effectively done in many states over the last dozen years. What’s meant by “reproductive rights,” of course, is the right of women to control their own bodies. Didn’t I mention earlier that violence against women is a control issue?

And though rapes are often investigated lackadaisically -- there is a backlog of about 400,000 untested rape kits in this country-- rapists who impregnate their victims have parental rights in 31 states. Oh, and former vice-presidential candidate and current congressman Paul Ryan (R-Manistan) is reintroducing a bill that would give states the right to ban abortions and might even conceivably allow a rapist to sue his victim for having one.

All the Things That Aren’t to Blame

Of course, women are capable of all sorts of major unpleasantness, and there are violent crimes by women, but the so-called war of the sexes is extraordinarily lopsided when it comes to actual violence. Unlike the last (male) head of the International Monetary Fund, the current (female) head is not going to assault an employee at a luxury hotel; top-ranking female officers in the U.S. military, unlike their male counterparts, are not accused of any sexual assaults; and young female athletes, unlike those male football players in Steubenville, aren’t likely to urinate on unconscious boys, let alone violate them and boast about it in YouTube videos and Twitter feeds.

No female bus riders in India have ganged up to sexually assault a man so badly he dies of his injuries, nor are marauding packs of women terrorizing men in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and there’s just no maternal equivalent to the11% of rapes that are by fathers or stepfathers. Of the people in prison in the U.S., 93.5% are not women, and though quite a lot of them should not be there in the first place, maybe some of them should because of violence, until we think of a better way to deal with it, and them.

No major female pop star has blown the head off a young man she took home with her, as did Phil Spector. (He is now part of that 93.5% for the shotgun slaying of Lana Clarkson, apparently for refusing his advances.) No female action-movie star has been charged with domestic violence, because Angelina Jolie just isn’t doing what Mel Gibson and Steve McQueen did, and there aren’t any celebrated female movie directors who gave a 13-year-old drugs before sexually assaulting that child, while she kept saying “no,” as did Roman Polanski.

In Memory of Jyoti Singh Pandey

What’s the matter with manhood? There’s something about how masculinity is imagined, about what’s praised and encouraged, about the way violence is passed on to boys that needs to be addressed. There are lovely and wonderful men out there, and one of the things that’s encouraging in this round of the war against women is how many men I’ve seen who get it, who think it’s their issue too, who stand up for us and with us in everyday life, online and in the marches from New Delhi to San Francisco this winter.

Increasingly men are becoming good allies -- and there always have been some. Kindness and gentleness never had a gender, and neither did empathy. Domestic violence statistics are down significantly from earlier decades (even though they’re still shockingly high), and a lot of men are at work crafting new ideas and ideals about masculinity and power.

Gay men have been good allies of mine for almost four decades. (Apparently same-sex marriage horrifies conservatives because it’s marriage between equals with no inevitable roles.) Women’s liberation has often been portrayed as a movement intent on encroaching upon or taking power and privilege away from men, as though in some dismal zero-sum game, only one gender at a time could be free and powerful. But we are free together or slaves together.

There are other things I’d rather write about, but this affects everything else. The lives of half of humanity are still dogged by, drained by, and sometimes ended by this pervasive variety of violence. Think of how much more time and energy we would have to focus on other things that matter if we weren’t so busy surviving. Look at it this way: one of the best journalists I know is afraid to walk home at night in our neighborhood. Should she stop working late? How many women have had to stop doing their work, or been stopped from doing it, for similar reasons?

One of the most exciting new political movements on Earth is the Native Canadian indigenous rights movement, with feminist and environmental overtones, called Idle No More. On December 27th, shortly after the movement took off, a Native woman was kidnapped, raped, beaten, and left for dead in Thunder Bay, Ontario, by men whose remarks framed the crime as retaliation against Idle No More. Afterward, she walked four hours through the bitter cold and survived to tell her tale. Her assailants, who have threatened to do it again, are still at large.

The New Delhi rape and murder of Jyoti Singh Pandey, the 23-year-old who was studying physiotherapy so that she could better herself while helping others, and the assault on her male companion (who survived) seem to have triggered the reaction that we have needed for 100, or 1,000, or 5,000 years. May she be to women -- and men -- worldwide what Emmett Till, murdered by white supremacists in 1955, was to African-Americans and the then-nascent U.S. civil rights movement.

We have far more than 87,000 rapes in this country every year, but each of them is invariably portrayed as an isolated incident. We have dots so close they’re splatters melting into a stain, but hardly anyone connects them, or names that stain. In India they did. They said that this is a civil rights issue, it’s a human rights issue, it’s everyone’s problem, it’s not isolated, and it’s never going to be acceptable again. It has to change. It’s your job to change it, and mine, and ours.
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*****Numerous links within body of article for further reading and information at VISIT SITE****


By: Rebecca Solnit | alternet |

Sunday January 27, 2013, 9:16 am

Yes, the article is a bit long - but it also is a good and important read.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 10:34 am
Standing ovations to Ms Rebeca ! she hit just about every point that came to my mind while even starting to read:
And she is right: In my view it IS the uprising of a furious, revenge seeking patriarchy trying to defeat by all means the forthcoming matriarchy, trying to stop it from the root.
If you take into consideration the right wing political war on women -glad she also addressed that!- , particularly the absurd views of abortion after rape, to me that means their agenda wants to create an even more vilolent society in the generations to come and to make sure patriarchy remains in power.
That just cannot be allowed!

Sunday January 27, 2013, 10:58 am

It is allowed and, today it seems we as a society favor the Rapist over the victim. Each time a rape is re-classified as some form of sexual assault we ignore the nature of the act. Each time a jury finds a reason to release a rapist, even with DNA, we redefine the meaning of violence. Should any politician feel the need to speak of "legitimate" rape, let him hear from the roar of the crowd a loud "NO". Women worked too hard for too many years to have Rape clearly defined as crime of violence, now in many states it is redefined, and the victims are held accountable.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 11:03 am
Time to take to the strees again, rise up and revolte! Urge your new female senators to DO something about this!

Sunday January 27, 2013, 12:00 pm
unfortunately I am not surprised....very very very sad.....and angering

Sunday January 27, 2013, 12:00 pm
While the author rightly points out the amount of violence committed against women, she is a typical hypocrite when she supports abortion and the brutal violence millions of women commit when they have their own children murdered.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 12:18 pm

That's one irrelevant opinion. It is not murder, though you and those who think that their ideas should be forced on everyone, it is still NOT murder. I do resent those who would force others to do and think just as they do. If you decide it is wrong for you than don't have an abortion and keep your nose out of others women's vaginas.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 12:44 pm
well said Kit! What hypocricy is all about we have seen more than enough during recent GOP campaign!

Sunday January 27, 2013, 12:49 pm
joM- I and I guess all others here as well, will not wish real brutal violence upon you, but you obviously have no idea what that is in reality.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 1:38 pm

Those who demand others live within their personal morality, are always a boil on the butt of society.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 1:39 pm
This all makes me so sad and even more angry! No one LIKES abortion ~ it is simply a matter of rights and choice! I agree with Kit ~ abortion is NOT murder and to say it is and to call those who have an abortion murders, is unjust, unkind. and just plain wrong!

Sunday January 27, 2013, 1:43 pm

Correct, Carrie. The crime of abuse by society is committed against victim, after the attack.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 2:28 pm
TY Kit for this article, it's really an important issue and subject.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 3:09 pm
I agree Carrie, thanks Kit

Sunday January 27, 2013, 3:35 pm
Through my tears I say enough is enough and it is indeed time to take back the streets and our homes (isn't that date for marching coming soon?)

Sunday January 27, 2013, 3:51 pm

Two day ago J L , but I have a hunch there will be more, many more.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 3:58 pm
Shame on you jo M. ! YOU are the REAL hypocrite!. How dare you equate personal pro choice with violence against women! These are 2 separate issues. It's disgusting when right wingers always have to push their political agendas! SHAME!!!!!!

Sunday January 27, 2013, 4:04 pm
If politicians keep up this war on women, we may be forced to vigilante justice.. then they WILL be sorry!:(

Sunday January 27, 2013, 4:22 pm
Thanks Kit for this important article. I would send a Star to you and Angelika Roll, but can't. Would send a Star to the author also. She covers many details and facts, statistics about rape: control/rage/predator/prey and more. The complexities of social structures such as humans are immense. Rape is not just a physical violent act, it is, and can be mental as well. Example, joM's comment may be one. Also known as indoctrination or mind-washing. We all are vulnerable to that type of rape within our social and cultural structures.

Perhaps at one time as we evolved, sexual rape or indiscriminate reproduction by males was important for species survival , genetic health and unconsciously accepted. Although genetic need doesn't directly address the other types of sex that have appeared in our present social structures. Of course, unless there was a written or illustrated account of them several thousands of years ago and there are some, we truly don't know. One important aspect of most males is conclusive, sex and possibly violence, in many forms, is primary to the needs of their lives, right in line with food, water and shelter - not in that order. As for females, I can only speak for myself. The rest of you can come to your own conclusions in careful reviewing of our collective past, and your present.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 4:29 pm
There should be a course in self defense at high school, or middle school, in case there are situations that the kids need to defend themselves. Unfortunately, if there is a gang, it may be a bit more difficult to use force, unless Police arrive at the scene.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 4:43 pm
The number of rapes is hard to imagine. No woman takes abortion lightly, it is a tough decision she will remember for the rest of her life, same as rembering the rape.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 5:08 pm
thankyou for this post and for Carrie's earlier ones..............2 1/2 weeks ago, ..I was sexually assaulted (again)..I am 56 years old..I have no tolerance for lies & deceipt...i was not raped, this time..just groped,... my boobs....as I said, "NO!!!!!STOP IT!!!!!!!!!!!"(As it was a co-worker,..after hours..I was at the corner store, (I walk or take a bus, no car since I left Mike)..his son was visting from California, they had been across the street at the bar for hours, "drunk", Ray insisted and grabbed my 'purchases " out of my hands, insisting he was "buying"..he was so drunk..and after quietly saying no, thankyou" the clerk said, just let him and his son agreed and was apogolising every which way was possable,,which I reassured him, " I know!!..your Dad is this way..I will pay him the $$ on monday, at work, which he said , "he won't remember".." I said , I know, but I will give him the receipt anyway and the money and remind him..(drunk , blackout)......AAAAUUUURRRGGGHHH!!!!!!!! Ray, when sober, is an intreagal part of the business, as NO ONE, there has the knowledge or talents that he has....and is a huge part of the business..lives for free above the shop, and we are "all to shut-up, kiss butt,ignore, go with it"...because of the econo crash 2 years ago, THEY are damn lucky to have him (when he actually does the job!)..when he screws up...things are screwed, because none of us know how to "fix-it"...and right now it is 65% of the company income................
In order for me to get home, I had to walk by my work...I was invited upstairs to join both Ray & his son for a beer..okay! Dillion is here from California (Ray should behave!)..I have computer questions for Dillion, as this is his business social conversation and..I would be safe around Ray , when he is drunk (serious sexual problems , socially with women , across the street at the restaurant and here in the work place....NO! ..is a "challenge to him, to do what he attempted, you said NO!, and he flaunts, how he can anyway!!!...and the next day, he says he has no idea what you are talking about!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...blackout????or.."convienant" pretend blackout....I believe the latter, after discerning his personality profile...but I am not a "paid" professional in this field...just years of research.........and experience...I was and am a fellow employee..a woman of integrity..not interested in this particular Man as a boyfriend , in ANYWAY, SHAPE OR FORM!! (HE DISGUSTS ME, THE WAY HE TREATS AND THINKS OF ALL WOMEN)..and I treat him with common curtisay, only for the busines, NOW!!!!!....and I can't say anything....or I will lose my job!!!!!!!!!!!

Sunday January 27, 2013, 5:16 pm
Brilliant article Rebecca, Thank you Kit for posting!!!
This article should be presented to school's ( high school ), and other education departments and discussed in depth with staff and their students, and yes as a woman and mother of a teen and younger, self defense classes should be mandatory in the school system.
Angelika and Kit: WELL SAID!!!

Sunday January 27, 2013, 5:22 pm
You cannot currently send a star to Carrie because you have done so within the last week.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 5:32 pm
Excellent article and great comments except for Jo M
Who has given her the right to judge
Thanks for posting Kit

Sunday January 27, 2013, 5:37 pm
thanks

Sunday January 27, 2013, 6:00 pm
I am so glad you brought up the issue of self-defence...when Ray, reached over and grabbed my boobs,...I fought him off!! ....( making myself just do so without hurting HIM!!..as I could have, wanted too..but I didnot want to go to jail, for assault on him, if I hurt him while defending myself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)...welcome to Washington state, our cops..and their 'whatever day it is" interpretation of the law"..and whom they are and whom they actually work for.................and I used to date a Cop and he taught me self-defenance!!!......and I had to tell Ray 3 times..STOP IT...OR I WILL HURT YOU!!...he just laughed!!...said, " you hurt me, you're fired!!! ..no one can do what I can do!!!..so now what are you going to do???".....I said, "This!!!"...and did what Scottie told me to do, as far as grabbing the wrists and "thumb pressure", ..he dropped his hands, I told his Son, this was unacceptable and I have always told his Dad, that i am not interested in him as a girlfriend and hope you can get through to your dad.........Ray pretended to not remember, but his Son has reminded him, of this....Ray , has been VERY wary around me, at work , as HE SHOULD BE!!...AND he has 'pushed things"...which I have made sure!! EVERYONE!! ..hear's NO!!!..we work in such a small space, like a submarine, all..must be respectfull..and give each other walking space, not rubbing up on each other...so as he has 7 times, gotten into my "workspace", which I don't care who you are, your job says "you have NO business even being here", since his last "groping" my boobs, 2 1/2 weeks ago....some are takinng notice...not that it will help...but at lleast he, shows his deceipt, and others notice...I stand up, for myself, socially, subtley..point him!..say, "You are in my work space!..you need to move, so I can get back to work, and what are you doing back here, ANYWAY!?!"(THERE IS NO ROOM FOR 2 PEOPLE....CAN'T EVEN BE OVERWEIIGHT!!!..........NO ROOM!!!!!!!!!!!!)....4 TIMES NOW, SINCE THE LAST INCIDENCE, HE HAS SAID, " i DON'T KNOW...I WAS JUST HERE.................. what the....????????

Sunday January 27, 2013, 6:14 pm
Well, Kit....this made me cry'!

I hope it makes OTHERS cry, too!

Thanks....

Sunday January 27, 2013, 6:50 pm

It made me cry too. I really don't know how we can tolerate any more of this. In my life out of every 10 women I have known, 9 have been sexually assaulted or raped. Some that are here today, have lived through this horror. Shelly is speaking from this personal situation. Others have also spoken out in the past. We still allow these men that dare to speak to us about the legitimacy of rape or a "right" to decide about our bodies are in public forums. Most of us here have lived through the battles of making Rape a crime of violence, and making abortion a personal and private decision. Yet, here we are again.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 7:10 pm
Thanks Kit, read this article with great interest - went on to Google a few more Stats - all very depressing - soooo glad I don't live in America. Not saying that similar things don't happen here in Australia they do but the difference is how they get handled by our elected leaders. Changing the culture is the only way. All good comments (bar one) but nothing about changing the mindset of the Nation. Teaching self-defense in schools only makes them aware that this is going to happen to you one day and only you can stop it - so be prepared - what if they can't - will they be blamed for that as well. Fight violence with violence a bit like the debate about more guns in schools. Stop the violence against boys/men and you go a long way in stopping the voilence against women.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 7:39 pm
We have a bullying problem in this country.
And the "weaker sex"has endured the brunt of it.
Thanks Kit

Sunday January 27, 2013, 7:43 pm
I wondered what kind of person would spew anti abortion propaganda and right wing ideology.
We have one in our midst. Proving once again that the argument is ridiculous.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 7:50 pm
Keep in mind there are MANY so called 'members' of Care2 who are PAID to be here...look at how many of 'them' 'joined' in September but once President Obama won THEY were never to be heard from again...

Sunday January 27, 2013, 7:52 pm

In America we still have too many men that are taught that being tough and mean is superior to being intellectual or sensitive, even understanding. Violence begets more violence.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 7:53 pm

Paid or not, it's rude and most certainly does not belong in this forum.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 8:06 pm
I agree Kit...


I could say MUCH here but not at this time

Sunday January 27, 2013, 8:12 pm
I shared the lastest part of my life..for 2 reasons:
#1.) Please sign every petition that is logical, on this subject!
#2.) those of you that can , please create them!!!..get a hold of every law student and Professor, and ask them, " show us what YOU can do for US!!"..it has to be logical and lawful, to make anything a sane law! 2013!!!...let's do this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
#3). the rapist and the sexual assaulter, are the criminals..............and I should, YOU should, ANYONE should have the right to defend themselves against sexual assault, ...without fear of going to jail for protecting one's own body, against rape and/ or any kind of assault....it is 2013...and I DID NOT VOTE FOR THE KOCH BROTHERS!!!

Sunday January 27, 2013, 8:41 pm
"I wondered what kind of person" I can answer that for you Tasunka m.
A stool pigeon and a hypocrite as well. I agree with you Kit, there are more suitable forums she could be on...The good little numbat is just following orders - all be it misguided.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 9:29 pm
The man, in other words, framed the situation as one in which his chosen victim had no rights and liberties, while he had the right to control and punish her. This should remind us that violence is first of all authoritarian. It begins with this premise: I have the right to control you.

This one paragraph summed it up for me......

Sounds like the GOP....control....and what you can't control.....get a gun and shoot it.

Bravo to Angelika R. for her comment of Sunday January 27, 2013, 10:34 am

Sunday January 27, 2013, 9:49 pm
Bloody hell this must STOP

Sunday January 27, 2013, 10:02 pm
hi..great article as always Kit ..and sorry for the abuse issues, victims are victims... be it women, children, animals, elders, or what-ever.. all sorts... and there is opinions... I have been a victim in many ways and I also sometimes think i have been a giver of tragic things...feel like i could have done things so much better for my kids...maybe if i was different, they might have been better off.. feel like they are victims of my bad choices...put them through pain and hurt because i led them into a life of activism and shown them all these hurtful things and abuses and now they have seen many many evil things all their lives...so? when exposed to things like this..does it bring more empathy? or does it make you less sensitive?

Sunday January 27, 2013, 10:19 pm
i vote for Kit at the next elections!

Sunday January 27, 2013, 10:19 pm
It is in the "TRUTH" AND SHARING of such...even just voicing it once!!!......the heart, soul and miind, is set free..healling and compassion, are the basis..for kick your butt in gear!!!...ACTION, BABY!!! and do it right!!!....or choke on the "soap-operas"....oh!!!soap-operas = vote repub!!!..2013!!!..not your Daddy's generation!!!...YOURS!!!!!....where are you!?!

Sunday January 27, 2013, 11:51 pm
The only hypocrisy here is that of all those who believe rape is somehow worse than killing another human being. Rape is a brutal act, but not any more so than killing someone who has done nothing to warrant such a selfish and barbaric action. Murder may be a term that doesn't hold up to legal standards when applied to abortion in those countries which have unfortunately legalized it, but I'm guessing that it wasn't murder to kill Indians and slaves in this country, either, nor can one ever murder an animal. That legalism doesn't stop people from understanding the truth behind those killings. And it clearly makes women at least equals with men when it comes to violence against others.

Sunday January 27, 2013, 11:52 pm
I feel that the ever increasing number of sexual attacks on women and children is linked to the hardcore pornography we are being bombarded with. You cannot do an internet search without inappropriate sites coming up and many of those who have grown up with modern technology seem to think that porn, 'sexting' and the likes are a normal way to behave. How many teenagers are not addicted to porn? Yet, whenever I see a petition against porn here, it gets very few signatures. Then there are 'porn is an expression of free speech' comments. As long as harcore, violent, abusive porn is freely and widely available, the number of attacks on women will continue to rise. If you want, you can sign Educate teenages: porn is not real life! here on care2 but as the amount of signatures collected is risible, I can't see much result. Sadly,

Monday January 28, 2013, 12:48 am
War isn't considered as murder either, joM. A Government can order our sons/daughters to go into foreign countries to kill an enemy/s. But if soldiers violates the Human Rights of others that is illegal. Rape is a Human Rights violation in Peace and War. Confusing to some but reality to others.

Monday January 28, 2013, 1:12 am
Thanks so much for this, Kit. I'm proud to be a part of Care2, and particularly so when I see so many intelligent, thoughtful and compassionate comments on a human rights article.

Monday January 28, 2013, 2:34 am
Thanks for this very sad and anger producing article Kit.How can an article on this subject ever be too long? Anyway, having been a victim of sexual assault as a child and an adult,having been a program director of a D.V. shelter, having worked in drug treatment in a max 5 women's prison, having been a counselor for far too long and then I have worked in a Rape Crisis Center....I have known what an epidemic this has been for as long as I can remember. I have a "button" on my coat and a bumper sticker on my car that states "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people"......do I need say more? But you folks know I will.....We have to do whatever we can, whenever we can to be agents of change.We need to raise our young men differently.Maya Angelou wrote an awesome poem about what we need to encourage in their development.Violence against others just has to be "not OK"..there are other ways to solve things.Entitlement to take what one wants needs to end.When I was beaten up(by a family member) and put into the hospital..a woman asked me why he did it? My answer....because he could. It has got to be unacceptable among all of us to condone violence.Sometimes, I am amazed that there are any women left after all we have been through just to prove we are equal?????????

Monday January 28, 2013, 4:34 am
Noted/thanks Kit

Monday January 28, 2013, 5:38 am
Thank-you Kit...!!!

Monday January 28, 2013, 5:43 am
Try Again...comment disappeared.

Catherine G. mentions a petition in her comment. This is the hotlink to it.
Educate Teenagers Porn is not Real Life PETITION

jo M I refer you to this article
40 Years since Roe vs Wade
Take a good long hard look at the photo and learn about this womans life. We are never in someone else's shoes. It should of not been her only solution. Is more tragic when a woman can't understand the concept.

Monday January 28, 2013, 7:44 am
Sometimes there are articles on Care2 that are just too painful, too heartbreaking, too anger-inducing, too sad to comment on - this is one of those. Women (and animals) take the brunt of that terrible need for power, that craving for domination. Why? Woman nurture, love, make the world softer - what is it that makes men unable to deal with that?

Monday January 28, 2013, 8:58 am
" This should remind us that violence is first of all authoritarian. It begins with this premise: I have the right to control you." "You explain to me why colleges spend more time telling women how to survive predators than telling the other half of their students not to be predators." "But we are free together or slaves together."

Well. First, I can't send you another green star yet, Kit, apparently I squandered it on something of less import than this, I'm sorry. We've known for a very long time that rape is a crime of power not sex. And I'd go back a lot further than 5000 years as I am quite sure the first rape took place long before our species had language, or maybe even fire.

Those statistics are appalling. As are the arguments and evidence presented overwhelming. It isn't as if we don't know these things but I am at a loss as to how to prevent them. What is so broken in so many men that causes them to think violence against anyone is the proper response to a rebuff or an expression of personal power? It isn't new, this part has always been broken. Oh, I've seen sociological treatises explaining rape in war as a way to truly conquer a people, you make their women bear your children, ridiculous premise, but still pervasive. How does that explain the 19,000 assaults in our own armed forces by "men of honor" who should be laying down their lives for their comrades in arms, not raping them.

It is so pervasive as the article points out that it isn't even "news" anymore, most of the time. Not unless there is some other lurid detail to attract the attention of the bottom feeders that control our media. It is overwhelmingly a male problem. How is it that those who are counseling women about how to avoid being raped not also hammering home the point to boys and men that rape is NEVER acceptable? Is this something not in the parental curriculum? How young do boys need be when they start being given this message? It is never okay to brutalize another human being. Zero Dark Thirty (which I will NEVER see) notwithstanding. The end NEVER justifies the means. Brutality is sub human. Penalties for violent rapes, indeed for all rapes, are not nearly severe enough. Probation? The Yahoo CEO's brother got probation for what he did? Astounding. His victim is scarred in her soul for life and he gets probation? That's insane. It has always been insane.

So what do we do to fix, no, eliminate this issue completely? There is no real life Justice League doling out punishments outside the law. Does the desire for punishing people severely for these heinous crimes make me less than I wish to be? I don't think so. I think the evolution of our species is only complete when we arrive at a place where personal violence is unthinkable, where we all KNOW deep within our hearts and are taught from birth that none of us free until all of us are. We are all slaves until none of us are. What we have been doing is obviously NOT working. We need a different approach. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young sang of it. Teach your children well. That's where we start to treat this horror. Children are NEVER too young to learn that interpersonal violence except in defense of self or another is ALWAYS wrong. We need model this behavior, we need teach it at every opportunity and it sure wouldn't hurt if countries took on the responsibility for modeling and teaching this truth as well in their relations with each other.

We have miles to go before we sleep. Many, many miles.

Monday January 28, 2013, 9:00 am

I have known a number of women that each because of personal circumstance had to chose abortion. They are not vile murdering humans, they were women raped, or in wretched situations - many personal issues. I do not believe that I have a right to sit in judgement of others. No one has that right, and no one should ever try and force their personal, private belief system on anyone. That is direct subjugation of all others to be forced to belief exactly as you do, that is completely wrong. It's also Anti-American, and Anti- any form of democratic governance.

You joM believe that abortion is murder, for you and the few that believe they have a right to force that on others, I say you are wrong. Believe whatever makes you happy, do not get an abortion, but stop pretending that you KNOW what is right for others.

Monday January 28, 2013, 10:22 am
I honestly have to say my dear one...this was one of the best threads to read... thank you for the insight everyone...very nice :)

Monday January 28, 2013, 10:55 am
I just signed a petition about women being denied an abortion if they were raped because it destroyed evidence, it was in one of the American states. This makes it a joint issue and even worse.

If a woman goes to court then she is raped all over again and made to look like an easy prostitute even if she was a virgin nun! There needs to be a change in male attitude, greater punishments for rapists and, most importantly, more and better support for women. Encourage female taxi drivers to pick up women, women doing more construction work, women only carriages or buses especially late at night, and more refuges.

Monday January 28, 2013, 12:50 pm
Ah, Gene - if all men could see how we women admire your quiet strength, your courage, your compassion - perhaps then, they would change. Roxy, being sensitive is never easy - but I personally would rather feel that pain and sadness than be a thick block of nothing or worse a cruel, miserable block of nothing. I applaud you for teaching your kids what really matters. There is so much pain and suffering in the world - I applaud you all here for being awake and aware and trying to make a difference.

Monday January 28, 2013, 2:37 pm
Shelly, my heart breaks for you. No one should have to endure that kind of humiliation. Bless you my sweet friend. Please take care.

Monday January 28, 2013, 3:08 pm
Thanks

Monday January 28, 2013, 3:41 pm
why

Monday January 28, 2013, 4:25 pm
Thanks.

Monday January 28, 2013, 4:38 pm
Kit deserves a green star for each comment she has made on this thread

Monday January 28, 2013, 8:14 pm
Miss Kit, thank you so much for sharing this and spreading the word. I know that some men are so scared of women and the potential power they hold they try to keep us down with threats, violence, intimidation and rape.

If women could unite and rise up, we could throw off all of the BS that gets shoved on us. But when we have race traitors like Phyllis Schlafly, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, and the rest of the their ilk who pander to male power, I despair of ever making progress in my life time.

We are entering an era of arch conservatism of the worst kind. and women are surrendering their power. It will swing back. I hope I live long enough to see it.

Monday January 28, 2013, 9:57 pm
My belief, Kit, is no different from the beliefs of those who think that we should not slaughter horses, cats or dogs for food, that we should not kill wolves, whales, or elephants, that hunting is wrong, that killing schoolchildren is wrong, that slavery and the Holocaust were wrong, that war is wrong. All deal with morality in some form and the attempt to impress that morality on others. I make no apologies for it. Acceptance and promotion of abortion is based on the same premise that allowed for slavery, for the Holocaust, for the genocide of Native Americans. Abortion is legal in this country and one may obtain one if they wish, but try not to pretend you are not responsible for the killing of another human being. Forgiveness is possible for everyone.

PS> How much are they paying YOU Laura? Just want to know if I should ask for a raise.

Tuesday January 29, 2013, 3:59 am
The article was insightful and heartbreaking. Most of the comments added to the conversation and were also insightful. Of course there are nuts in every group unfortunately. I've discovered the best was tobtell with ignorance and intolerance is to IGNORE them. They will eventually tire of their own yakking and fade away

Tuesday January 29, 2013, 5:04 am
ty

Tuesday January 29, 2013, 8:51 am

Wow, conceived in a vacuum of misunderstanding and attempting to associated together very different beliefs into one political entity. That just may be one of the worst attempts at justification for taking rights of personal and health issues away from women. Thanks joM now I do understand completely, you have no idea what you are talking about, just stringing together some causes to gain some attention.

Tuesday January 29, 2013, 3:29 pm
Guess that is in the same line of thinking of that Georgia State Rep. Terry England who compared women to livestock.

Tuesday January 29, 2013, 5:36 pm
The mind just boggles. Is it time yet for a culling of the species?