Bits and bobs from a British glasses-wearing, sweary, fat, disabled, atheist ex-Catholic, anti-capitalist, pacifist feminist lesbian with eclectic tastes.
I normally blog at incurable-hippie.blogspot.com.
Sometimes I have the time and patience to get from an idea to a fully fleshed-out, penciled, inked and coloured comic.
Sometimes I don’t.
If you healing from sexual assault and you get out of bed in the morning,
You are doing well.
If you healing from sexual assault and you hold down a job,
You are amazing.
If you are healing from sexual assault and and you are still remotely pleasant to others,
You are a lot nicer than me.
If you are healing from sexual assault and you cannot always be there for a friend,
You are still a good friend and a strong enough person to know what is best for you.If you are healing from sexual assault, and find it difficult to care for yourself, but still find the strength to care and love your family than you are strong as well.
If you are healing from sexual assault and you decide to tell your story,
You are brave.
If you are healing from sexual assault and you decide that you are not ready to tell your story,
You are also brave.
If you are healing from sexual assault and you cry daily or have nightmares,
You are normal.
If you are healing from sexual assault and seeing happy, healthy people makes you sad, angry, jealous and worse,
Join the club.
If you are healing from sexual assault and you decide to press charges against your perpetrator,
You have incredible courage.
If you are healing from sexual assault and you cannot or choose not to press charges against your perpetrator,
Your perpetrator is still the one to blame, and you are smart for knowing what you can handle.
If you are healing from sexual assault and think that what happened was your fault,
You are wrong, but you are not alone.If you are healing from sexual assault and are jealous that some survivors put their abuser in jail,
You are one of many.
If you are healing from sexual assault and feel like your significant other truly understands and is 100% supportive,
He or she is rare and a keeper.
If you are healing from sexual assault and you have a good support system,
It will help A LOT.
If you are healing from sexual assault and you don’t have enough people who understand what you are going through,I strongly recommend joining a support group.
If you are healing from sexual assault and were not believed or supported when you found the courage to tell,
You still deserve to be heard, no matter how long ago it was.
If you are healing from sexual assault and you feel like you hate your body,
Remember your spirit is held within your body.
If you are healing from sexual assault and feel painfully alone and isolated,
Please know that there are thousands of people healing with you in spirit.If you are healing from sexual assault and there are days where the only thing you are able to do is exist,
Remember, we are existing with you till you can live again.
If you are healing from sexual assault but still looking to the future,
You are a survivor.
(Source: pandys.org)
Word.
Also with ‘men whose feelings are hurt by the suggestion that they possess male privilege’ are ‘people who think their jokes or so-called slang words are more important’.
To all those men who don’t think the rape jokes are a problem:
I get it—you’re a decent guy. I can even believe it. You’ve never raped anybody. You would NEVER rape anybody. You’re upset that all these feminists are trying to accuse you of doing something, or connect you to doing something, that, as far as you’re concerned, you’ve never done and would never condone.
And they’ve told you about triggers, and PTSD, and how one in six women is a survivor, and you get it. You do. But you can’t let every time someone gets all upset get in the way of you having a good time, right? Especially when it doesn’t mean anything. Rape jokes have never made YOU go out and rape someone. They never would; they never could. You just don’t see how it matters.
I’m going to tell you how it does matter. And I tell you this because I genuinely believe you mean it when you say you don’t want to hurt anybody, and that it’s important to you to do your best to be a decent and good person, and that you don’t see the harm. And I genuinely believe you when you say you would never associate with a rapist and you think rape really is a very bad thing.
Here is why I refuse to take rape jokes sitting down…
Because 6% of college-aged men, slightly over 1 in 20, will admit to raping someone in anonymous surveys, as long as the word “rape” isn’t used in the description of the act—and that’s the conservative estimate. Other sources double that number (pdf).
A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That’s not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?
Rapists do.
They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again.
Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.
If one in twenty guys (or more) is a real and true rapist, and you have any amount of social activity with other guys like yourself, then it is almost a statistical certainty that one time hanging out with friends and their friends, playing Halo with a bunch of guys online, in a WoW guild, in a pick-up game of basketball, at a bar, or elsewhere, you were talking to a rapist. Not your fault. You can’t tell a rapist apart any better than anyone else can. It’s not like they announce themselves.
But, here’s the thing. It’s very likely that in some of these interactions with these guys, at some point or another, someone told a rape joke. You, decent guy that you are, understood that they didn’t mean it, and it was just a joke. And so you laughed.
Or maybe you didn’t laugh. Maybe it just wasn’t a very funny joke. So maybe you just didn’t say anything at all.
And, decent guy who would never condone rape, who would step in and stop rape if he saw it, who understands that rape is awful and wrong and bad, when you laughed? When you were silent?
That rapist who was in the group with you, that rapist thought that you were on his side. That rapistknew that you were a rapist like him. And he felt validated, and he felt he was among his comrades.
You. The rapist’s comrade.
And if that doesn’t make you feel sick to your stomach, if that doesn’t make you want to throw up, if that doesn’t disturb you or bother you or make you feel like maybe you should at least consider not participating in that kind of humor anymore, not abiding it in your presence, not greeting it with silence…
Well, maybe you aren’t as opposed to rapists as you claim.
<link>
Police in Toronto are telling girls at the Greenwood College private school that in order to avoid a pervert (who harassed two female students by looking up their skirts), they shouldn’t wear their school uniforms on public transit.
Apparently, the officer doesn’t think it’s wise for female students to wear skirts on the TTC, since the pervert looks up their skirts. In terms of the two girls who were harassed, he says, “if they had, for example, jeans or sweatpants on, it wouldn’t be an issue.”
Law enforcement officials advising young girls not to wear skirts because there are perverts out there are sending the message that in wearing the skirts the girls are to blame for the harassment. Whether they intend to or not, they are reinforcing the belief that women are responsible for the behavior that their clothing provokes in other people.
![sexxxisbeautiful:
[A white femme-presenting person holds a pink sign with black lettering. It reads: The only thing I’m asking for is a revolution”]
FUCK. YES.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lpxxp1RD951qej88fo1_500.jpg)
[A white femme-presenting person holds a pink sign with black lettering. It reads: The only thing I’m asking for is a revolution”]
FUCK. YES.
(Source: femmefury)
When talking about rape culture, (TW for rape culture)
Don’t ever tell a victim of sexual assault/abuse that their experiences aren’t awful or important. Don’t even do the bullshit “I feel bad for what you’ve been through, BUT…” because it’s just bullshit. I don’t need your sorrow. I don’t need your pity.
If you’re actually interested in combating rape culture, shut up. Shut up and listen. Even if you have ridiculous notions that rape culture doesn’t exist in the West — and just to clue you in, denying its existence upholds it because the culture we live in isn’t as bad as other places SO IT CAN’T POSSIBLY EXIST HERE TOO — shut up and listen.
Because what you do by saying that rape culture doesn’t exist in the West is taking context from what I’ve been through. Rape culture is the fact that I’m the “one” in the 1 in 4 girls who are sexually assaulted by the time they’re sixteen. Rape culture is the fact that I could very easily be part of the 25% of college women who are sexually assaulted.
If you take away the context, then what happened to me was merely an individual experience, and that doesn’t speak to my whole life. Yes, I was sexually abused, but I also live in an environment that blames me for what happened and would blame me for any future assault I may be the victim of, not to mention the rest of it.
tl;dr When you’re talking to someone who lives with what you claim doesn’t exist, shut the fuck up and listen. Your half-assed conjecture is nothing compared to what people have actually lived.
