Thoughts about Rape and Risks

Something I saw over at Youtube under the comments section:

This comment touches on something I've always wondered about.  Is how a woman dress really THAT MUCH of a factor in increasing the risk of a woman being raped?  Does it really play a role?

We all know that women and girls can wear anything from sweats to a cocktail dress and be raped.  So is there truly any validity to the belief that what a woman wears will increase her chances of being raped?

There are those that believe that rape is about power and those that believe it's more about sex, or more perhaps unhealthy sexual urges.  Because of the latter belief, people believe that if a woman dresses a certain way, whatever that may be, that a certain male sect of the population would target her for rape.  Or something like that.

Here's what I think.  If someone's planning on raping you, they're going to do it regardless of what you wear.  With that being said, unlike the belief that rape is only about power, I see it as being both about power and about warped/uncontrolled sexual desires.  So is it possible for a rapist to see someone wearing something sexy/flattering and be turned on to the point of wanting to rape them?  Yeah I think so...but a pair of skinny jeans and a nice shirt can be seen a sexy, so can a professional pencil skirt or a nice turtleneck.  Does this mean that women should not wear cute skinny jeans, a flattering top out in public, or heck wear workout outfits while jogging (or even jog outside), out of fear of attracting the wrong attention?

Absolutely not.  That's like saying that we shouldn't EVER carry around expensive purses or wear expensive jewelry out in public - AT ALL -, out of constant fear of being robbed.  

Something else I want to touch on.

All this talk of how women shouldn't go off with strange men...what makes a guy a "strange man"?  Many rapes and sexual assaults occur by someone the victim knows so I wouldn't think they would be considered "strange".  So what is a "strange man", one you don't know?  In that case any guy you don't know that well or just met is "strange", which is funny considering how much guys around the "man-o-sphere" hate how females (to them) throw around the word "creepy" when referring to guys they aren't attracted to, who tries to hit on them or stare at them a little too long (God forbid, guys are called creepy because they act, well...obviously creepy).

Look, I'm for taking precautions, but there's that and there's this ever ending list of reasons why you were raped or risks of being raped that's brought up time and time again.  You know, those discussions that happen whenever a girl is raped that focus on what she did wrong.  Even worse are those discussions that focus on what she was wearing.  Why even mention what the victim had on or not have on?  All it does is insinuate that the victim was partially to blame in inciting that rapist.  It's saying....he wasn't going to rape her if she was wearing something else.  As if it was solely because of what she was wearing.  It also insinuates that women and girls have to be careful in what we wear because all men have the potential to be rapists, which is a big lie, and it's something MRAs (men's right activists) accuse feminists of believing and teaching to the masses.    

The ONLY time I think it's OK to know what an alledged victim was or was not wearing is in cases of he said/she said.  Like, if the guy being charged claims the sex was consensual and it was found that the alledged victim did go into his bedroom voluntarily, wearing lingerie at the time.  But even then, one shouldn't automatically disbelieve the victim.

Hopefully this post didn't go all over the place.  Sorry if it did...just wanted to share my two cents, or three, or a dollar lol....

Tweets and Commentary from those in the Ferguson protests

From actor Jesse Williams tumblr site.  I didn't know how to embed the video.  You can see it in the link:

They have 3 [Black] eyewitnesses, which they completely disregard by framing a false equivalency with— and I’m not making this up, "an anonymous caller who did NOT witness the shooting BUT is a friend of the officers"

Whaaaaaat? You’re rebutting 3 eyewitnesses with  an anonymous caller who did NOT even see the events AND is a friend of the shooter? Really?

Where they do that at?

CNN continues, “"an anonymous caller who did NOT witness the shooting BUT is a friend of the officers says Michael Brown was the aggressor, which CNN has CONFIRMED matches the account officer Wilson gave authorities.”

Oh, you confirmed it did you? Of course it matches, she’s representing the guy who will literally say anything to stay out of jail. She already admitted that she could not possibly know if what she’s saying is true, and CNN broadcasts it around the world. Think about that. They use the word “confirmed” in an attempt to add validity to propoganda, while making it sound like they did some work.

Then, as if that wasn’t crazy enough, they immediately play the ANONYMOUS person’s call/version of events on TV!! (With captioning to make sure the narrative really burns into your consciousness.) Her version has literally zero merit. They did not play any of the eyewitness accounts and went straight to a play-by-play from someone who WASN’T EVEN THERE??!!

That is a gross violation of journalistic responsibility and public trust.

The question is not “if” but why; why have news networks chosen a side?

(Granted, none of these accounts are given under oath; none are automatically true. But at least ask people who could possibly be of value.)
------------------------------

If you really want to understand the fear that blacks have toward the police and the anger and claims of racism, visit Jesse's page.  You'll find first hand tweets and accounts of those actually in the Ferguson protests, among other things.  Some examples:

Officer threatens to kill Ferguson livestreamers
Ferguson advance on protestors with guns drawn...
An interesting report from a protestor
People trying to go home, get detained
Police forced Amnesty International to leave
Officers wouldn't display identification...
90-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein arrested for peacefully protesting...in Ferguson
Autopsy report
"Tonight cops have...."
It's perfectly legal to film cops...
When the media treat white suspects and killers better than black victims

Like I said, these are only some examples.  His tumblr page is awesome.   

And....just in case you don't know who Jesse Williams is:

Yes, he's the one that plays Dr. Jackson Avery on the ABC Television series Grey's Anatomy.

Something else that's pretty cool.  This month he joined in the latest protests in Ferguson.

And I'll end with a link this video of him on CNN

Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly Discuss White Privilege

If you want an explanation of white privilege, here it is.

Thoughts on Ferguson

I know the whole Ferguson incident has been out of the media for awhile, but I wanted to get this off my chest.

In discussions and arguments I've read online about the Michael Brown shooting and Ferguson protests, common responses from mostly white people are along the lines of "what about black on black crime" or how no one makes a big deal about black on white crime.

For one thing, the blacks HAVE expressed concerns over issues like violence that goes on within the community.  There have been marches, meetings, etc., they just weren't nationally televised. 

Second point - when it comes to black on black crime, more often than not there's no question of guilt and the guilty party is rightfully put away.  On top of that:

On average, blacks receive almost 10% longer sentences than comparable whites arrested for the same crimes

And while we're at it:

From the Huffington Post

• Drugs. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, among youths aged 12 to 17, the rate of current illicit drug use was 11.1 % among whites, and 9.3% among African Americans. [5] In a previous year, the same survey found that white youth aged 12 to17 are more than a third more likely to have sold drugs than African American youth. [6] The Monitoring the Future Survey of high school seniors shows that white students annually use cocaine at 4.6 times the rate of African Americans students, use crack cocaine at 1.5 times the rate of African Americans students, and use heroin at the same rate of African Americans students, and that white youth report annual use of marijuana at a rate 46% higher than African American youth. [7] However African American youth are arrested for drug offenses at about twice the rate (African American 314 per 100,000, white 175 per 100,000) times that of whites, [8] and African American youth represent nearly half (48%) of all the youth incarcerated for a drug offense in the juvenile justice system. [9]
• Weapons. According to the Center on Disease Control's annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey, in 2001 whites and African Americans reported similar rates of carrying a weapon (whites 17.9%, African Americans 15.2%), and similar rates of carrying a gun (whites 5.5%, and African Americans, 6.5%). [10] African American youth represent 32% of all weapons arrests, and were arrested for weapons offenses at a rate twice that of whites (69 per 100,000, versus 30 per 100,000). [11]
• Assault. According to the Center on Disease Control's annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey, African Americans report being in a physical fight at a similar rate (36.5%, versus 32.5% for whites), but were arrested for aggravated assault at a rate nearly three times that of whites (137 per 100,000, versus 48 per 100,000)

And I'll leave this here for the heck of it.

More about black on black crime.  From the Daily Beast:  The Trayvon Martin Killing and the Myth of Black-on-Black Crime.

 ....in Chicago, 16-year-old Darryl Green was found dead in the yard of an abandoned home. He was killed, relatives reported, because he refused to join a gang. Unlike most tragedies, however—which remain local news—this one caught the attention of conservative activist Ben Shapiro, an editor for Breitbart News. Using the hashtag “#justicefordarryl,” Shaprio tweeted and publicized the details of Green’s murder. But this wasn’t a call for help and assistance for Green’s family, rather, it was his response to wide outrage over Saturday’s decision in the case of George Zimmerman, where a Florida jury judged him “not guilty” of second-degree murder or manslaughter in the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Shapiro, echoing many other conservatives, is angry over the perceived politicization of the Zimmerman trial, and believes that activists have ”injected” race into the discussion, as if there’s nothing racial already within the criminal-justice system. Indeed, he echoes many conservatives when he complains that media attention had everything to do with Zimmerman’s race. If he were black, the argument goes, no one would care. And so, Shapiro found the sad story of Darryl Green, and promoted it as an example of the “black-on-black” crime that, he believes, goes ignored. Or, as he tweets, “49% of murder victims are black men. 93% of those are killed by other blacks. Media don’t care. Obama doesn’t care. #JusticeForDarryl.”

......But there’s a huge problem with attempt to shift the conversation: There’s no such thing as “black-on-black” crime. Yes, from 1976 to 2005, 94 percent of black victims were killed by black offenders, but that racial exclusivity was also true for white victims of violent crime—86 percent were killed by white offenders. Indeed, for the large majority of crimes, you’ll find that victims and offenders share a racial identity, or have some prior relationship to each other.

What Shapiro and others miss about crime, in general, is that it’s driven by opportunism and proximity; If African-Americans are more likely to be robbed, or injured, or killed by other African-Americans, it’s because they tend to live in the same neighborhoods as each other. Residential statistics bear this out (PDF); blacks are still more likely to live near each other or other minority groups than they are to whites. And of course, the reverse holds as well—whites are much more likely to live near other whites than they are to minorities and African-Americans in particular.

.....“Black-on-black crime” has been part of the American lexicon for decades, but as a specific phenomenon, it’s no more real than “white-on-white crime.” Unlike the latter, however, the idea of “black-on-black crime” taps into specific fears around black masculinity and black criminality—the same fears that, in Florida, led George Zimmerman to focus his attention on Trayvon Martin, and in New York, continue to justify Michael Bloomberg’s campaign of police harassment against young black men in New York City.

Now about black on white crime.

It turns out that "most death sentences are handed out for killing white people, even though African-Americans make up 50% of murder victims (they are only 12% of the population)".

In other words,

....if an African-American male had fired ten shots into the SUV of some white suburban kids playing their music too loud, killing one of them, I think we all know there would have been a murder conviction and almost certainly a death penalty imposed.
In case of conviction for murder, African-Americans are 38% more likely to be handed the death penalty than members of other racial groupings.

So basically, when it comes to black on white crime, the conviction of blacks is pretty much guaranteed.  Again, there's not really a questions of guilt.

Then there's this article.

Lastly, one thing that bothered me was the news and media take on the protests.  They basically combined the rioters and the protesters into one group and gave the impression that the protesters were the ones violent.  That was not true; there was no differentiation between the rioters and the protesters.  To make matters worse, the police treated the protesters as if they were the violent ones.  In a continuation post, I plan on posting tweets and pictures recounting the protests and violence from the ones there.

A MUST READ if you're SICK of the lack of diversity in comic book movies!

Here is an EXCELLENT piece I first read on Oh No They Didn't. 

Original source here: On Marvel, Mandarin, and Marginalization by Marrisa Lee - from Racebending.com:

At ComicCon 2012, Marvel Studios announced that Sir Ben Kingsley will be playing a version of The Mandarin, Tony Stark’s traditional yellow peril arch-nemesis, in Iron Man 3. The announcement was a sudden about-turn from previous statements the Iron Man directors have made about the Fu Manchu-inspired villain.....

Kingsley’s casting has made some waves; he is a British actor of partial South Asian descent while the Mandarin was originally of Chinese descent in the comics. It’s complicated by the fact that the Chinese government is virtually co-financing and co-producing Iron 3 through DMG film group; China likely had a say in the depiction of The Mandarin in Iron Man 3. [A stamp of approval from the Chinese government doesn't mean much given Asian Americans who live in the United States as a minority group are arguably more strongly affected by sinophobia and stereotypes than the people of China or the Chinese government. (eg. Han Chinese people living in China have access to unlimited representation of themselves in their domestic entertainment industries; Asian Americans do not.)]

Does the casting of Kingsley serve to perpetuate the stereotype that all Asian ethnic groups are interchangeable? Or does it simply cement Marvel Studios’ decision to shift the stereotypical bad guys of the comics from “yellow peril” to “Middle Eastern/South Asian terrorism”? (The first Iron Man film had the Ten Rings bad guy Raza, played by South Asian American actor Faran Tahir.) Rather than debating among ourselves about which Asian American or Asian actor should have the sad privilege to continue the legacy of the reviled Fu Manchu-esque Mandarin, or hand wringing about how Asian Americans don’t have much say in how to reinvent or salvage unforgivable stereotypes that have caused great harm to our communities, there are more pertinent questions we need to lob at Marvel. 

Questions like: How did we end up with The Mandarin in a Marvel Studios movie before any Asian American lead heroes?

Or even just: Why isn’t Marvel really utilizing it’s pantheon of women heroes or characters of color?

Racial Microaggression (plus 2 links under the cut)

A few thoughts on stuff I've been reading about SMP and such

Before you begin reading this, you may want to look up terms such as "Sexual Market Place", "alpha", "beta".  These terms are used to deal with the dating scene, sexual matters between males and females, and general interactions between the sexes.  A good place to start is Hooking Up Smart created by Susan Walsh.  There are a whole lot of other sites that discuss this subject but personally Walsh's site is more well-rounded.  But that's just my personal opinion.

There are a few things I've been noticing a while when visiting blogs focusing on the SMP (Sexual Market Place) as it's called in circles and blogs focusing on men's issues.  Guys who identify themselves as "beta's" express how upset they are about how eager and how quickly females have sex with "alphas" while with betas, females are less eager and less willing to have sex with them. 

My thing is this though.  Anytime a woman complains about not being noticed by by guys, other men are quick to say "Oh well, you were (or are) just focusing on the alphas/studs/etc., etc.", basically disregarding her experience.  They say that if she, I guess, expand her focus or whatever, that she'll notice more men interested in her.  To them, if you are modestly attractive, then it's almost a guarantee that there are guys attracted to you.  Simply put, chicks have it easy to them.

But wait a minute...couldn't the same be said for these betas who are upset at the lack of attention they they receive?  If they are focusing on only the really attractive girls, I'm sure that the less attractive girls or modestly attractive ones are ignored....girls who may be interested in them, if they would only pay them any attention.  It's like a guy who focuses on the "cheerleader" and pays no attention to the "band geek", "the good girl", or "nerd".

There's another way of looking at this too.

Are males and females obligated to consider EVERYONE, absolutely not.  If you're not attracted to someone, then you're not attracted to someone.  The whole issue seems to be the lack of people you find attractive being attracted to you.  Sure there are people out there who are attracted to me...OK.  But if I don't find them attractive myself, then most likely it won't go anywhere, especially considering the fact that I am VERY visually oriented when it comes to attractiveness in men (something that's apparently rare in females).  So while I think it'd be nice for people to expand their horizons when it comes to attractiveness, people have preferences.  But we should realize that when we go strictly with our preferences, we ignore those who may find us attractive who aren't attractive to us. 

Well in the end, I think both males and females struggle with being ignored when it comes to the opposite sex.  I'm sure guys will say that they have it worse, but I wouldn't be so quick to think that females have it so easy.       



In other news....I need to stop taking these big breaks in between posting lol :P