pornography

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"the industry-standard of pop-video crotch shots of girls in bikinis make it very, very clear: there should be nothing there. it must be smooth. empty. whilst some use the euphemism 'Brazillian' to describe this state of affairs, i prefer to call it what it is- 'a ruinously high-maintenance itchy, cold-looking child's fanny.' they're making us pay for maintenance and upkeep of our lulus, like they're a communal garden. it's a stealth tax. fanny VAT. this money we should be spending on the electricity bill and cheese and berets. instead, we're wasting it on making our chihuahuas look like a skanky Lidl chicken breast. watch any porn made after, say, 1988, and close-ups are like watching one of the Mitchell brothers, with no eyes, eating a very large, fidgety sausage.
hardcore pornography is now the primary form of sex education in the western world. this is where teenage boys and girls are 'learning' what to do to eachother, and what to expect when they take eachother's clothes off. as a result, we are at risk of a situation in which every boy expects to undress a girl to find a thorough wax job, and every girl - terrified by the idea of being rejected, or thought abnormal - waxes for them. my beautician told me she has had girls of 12 and 13 coming in for Brazillians - removing the first signs of adulthood as they appear, in a combination that - with overtones of infantilisation, and impetus in hardcore pornography - is pretty creepy, whichever way you look at it."

caitlin moran

“In spite of hopes to the contrary, pornography and mass culture are working to collapse sexuality with rape, reinforcing the patterns of male dominance and female submission so that many young people believe this is simply the way sex is. This means that many of the rapists of the future will believe they are behaving within socially accepted norms.”

susan g. cole

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germaine greer on the etymology of the word 'cunt'..  

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The Stranger Rape Myth is the idea that most rape is random and that rapists don't know their victims. The image that follows is of a crazy rapist waiting in the bushes or lurking in dark alleys. Stranger does happen and it absolutely real. Statistically, most victims and survivors are raped by people that they know. The Stranger Rape Myth is based on our societal need to distance ourselves from rapists. By calling them strangers, we can place perpetrators in the “other” category. This is much more comfortable than the darker truth of sexual violence: that the people who are raping our friends and abusing our children are our own friends, neighborhoods, coaches, and even family members. Perpetrators of sexual violence are not “other.” They are within our communities and are people that we know.

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'Women are told they are not supposed to do a lot of things, lest they will get raped and/or murdered. Most women have heard these messages. Don't wear provocative clothing. Don't leave your house at night. Don't walk alone. Don't travel alone in unfamiliar places. Don't go running in the park alone. Don't go camping alone. Don't do anything alone. As someone who has traveled alone by bike, backpacking and hitchhiking, I cannot count how many times people have told me that I am “lucky” that I wasn't raped.

If women follow all of these “avoid being raped” messages, they severely limit the ways in which they can move through the world. The question is, does this practice actually protect women from violence? Just like the myth of stranger rape, these warnings are not based on the violence that is being perpetrated or experienced. 64% of women who reported being raped, physically assaulted, and/or stalked were victimized by a current or former husband, cohabiting partner, boyfriend, or date. (Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women, Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, November, 2000). The most dangerous place for a woman, statistically and ironically, is the same place women are told to stay to protect themselves. If we were basing our violence prevention messages in reality, we would be telling women to carry mace in the kitchen and into the bedroom. Because the “don't walk through the woods alone” message is so divorced from reality, it does nothing to protect people from actual violence. So, what purpose does it serve? The fear of rape is used to control women and limit their lives. The threat of rape is used as an excuse to narrow what women ought to do and limit women's personal freedom.

The narrative of rape that we hear in the media is the story of a man overpowering a woman: with a knife, gun or sheer physical force, a man aggressively violates a woman as she tries to stop it, but cannot. The problem with the pervasiveness of this narrative is that, although it is one of the ways in which rape happens, it is not the only way. The experiences of survivors of rape and unwanted sexual experiences that fall outside of the paradigm of “forcible rape” are left with their experience unrecognized and delegitimized. If the sexual assault did not involve penetration, if the victim was drunk, if they said no but didn't really mean it or didn't say it enough-- then it’s not really rape. This inaccurate and narrow definition of rape creates the dramatic under-reporting and prosecution of rape in the United States. The US Justice Department estimates that only 26% of rapes and attempted rapes are ever reported to the police. And only 5% of perpetrators will ever spend a day in jail (US Dept of Justice, 2001)

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This “all or nothing” definition of rape hurts survivors. Most survivors of sexual violence experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). One of the first steps of healing from PTSD is naming and labeling the trauma. Survivors who don't meet the narrow definition of rape struggle to name what has happened to them. To even begin the process of healing, “imperfect” rape victims must overcome a culture that says what they have experienced does not meet the definition of rape; that what they have experienced has no name.

To adequately support survivors of sexual violence, we need to embrace fact that rape is not clear nor obvious. It is complicated. It can be ambiguous. It is often infinitely subtle. For example: you are my date and I have consented to having sex with you, but not consented to having sex with you without a condom. As we are both excitedly getting ready to have sex, you slip it in. I ask you to get a condom and you ignore me. I ask you to get a condom again and you hold me down. Is that rape? I would say yes. What would the police report say?

The problem with defining rape based on the victims words and actions is that everyone's sexual boundaries are different and any standard will leave some survivors in the “maybe it isn't” category. By this kind of measure, the experience of survivors can easily be determined to be invalid, their rape not traumatic enough.

But (people will say) if we abandon having a clear standard for rape how can we prevent it from happening? Instead of emphasizing whether or not a situation is technically or legally rape, let’s emphasize that all sexual encounters should clearly and obviously be consensual. The standard for measuring the health and integrity of sex should not be whether one of the parties acted in a criminal manner- but rather, the standard should be that the sex was pleasurable and empowering for all parties (however those parties experience pleasure and empowerment). We must shift the responsibility from the “perfect” rape victim who does everything in their power to fight off a rapist, to the responsible sexual partner who always obtains clear consent.'