2007-05-07 11:29 | Today's little pile of awesome.
* Poem about My Rights by June Jordan. Once I got past the formatting (I am restricted in my brain by preferring rhyme schemes and such), I found I adored the poem.
* If you read nothing else today, read about what happens when we switch from active to passive voice. From comments, tigtog says:
If it makes no sense to make objections that reports that "a man robbed a bank" are accusations that all men are potential robbers, then it simply doesn't logically make sense to make an objection that "a man attacked a woman" is an accusation against all men: it's such a simple and irrefutable example of the double standard.
* "It's not the empty street that causes rape." Goddamn, today is awesome for linkage.
Tags: poems, rape, source:hoydens
2 Responses to “Today's little pile of awesome.”
While statements like "a man robbed a woman" are not blanket statements, "men rape 25% of women" is a blanket statement to me for two reasons. (1) Some of those women could've been raped by other women. (2) (presuming all the rapes are perpetrated by men) The word "men" indicates a class of objects and therefore ALL men carry some of the blame. A statement like "a man rapes 25% of women" or "there exist individual men who rape 25% of all women" does not blame the whole class of men the same way the original (less wordy) sentence does, but because of that wordiness we will never say it.
I think the way to stop rape and other sexist/biased behavior is not to just talk to the victims, but talk to the perpetrators. Every single one of us is guilty when someone else perpetrates unacceptable behavior, from calling someone a faggot to drugging someone's drink, if we do not step in and tell the perpetrator that his or her behavior is wrong. The perpetrator is to blame primarily, but everyone who knows that person and knows his/her behaviors, we are ALL accomplices.
*checks*
According to the BJP, for 2005, 97.8% of rape/sexual assault crimes were performed by men, and the remainder by women. (Best I've found so far).
That's news.
I think the main problem is that we (as a general thing) talk about "women who are raped", as though the air is doing it. From what I see, a lot of discourse is focused on the women because (a) their actions can be controlled and (b) it's hard to talk about the men doing the raping without A Lot of men getting indignant or offended.
Clarification of (a): by which I mean to say, one part "I can control my actions, but not his, so better to focus on what I can control" and two parts "We can judge the woman's actions, because $reason!". Where $reason is stuff like "It's harder to get the message of don't-rape across to men" or "She was totally asking for it" or whatever.
I am jumbled on this. I'm spoiled by LJ's huuuge comment boxes, if nothing else.