When reading and writing about what was arguably a rape scene in this season of Girls, I’ve been struck by how many of the comments from readers fixate on the debate over what does and what does not qualify as consent. This is a debate worth having, and I stand by my use of the word “rape” [...]
Like many of us who have been following the show, I’ve had lukewarm feelings about Girls’ contribution to feminism. Though many commentators have raised valid criticisms about the show’s handling of race and class, it’s been refreshing to see a female lead with an “imperfect” body, and I’ve praised the show for focusing on young [...]
Update 4/17/12: After more than three weeks in juvenile detention, the victim has been released with a GPS ankle bracelet. She is scheduled to appear in court on April 23. In Sacramento, a county judge has taken “victim-blaming” to a whole new level, ordering that a rape victim be jailed while awaiting the trial of [...]
Several new rape-humor pages have already popped up on Facebook in the days since the original pages were removed. Several more were never taken down in the first place, reports the Huffington Post. The newly created pages include such “jokes” as “you know she is playing hard to get when she resists the chloroform” and [...]
After more than three months of complaints from users, a grand total of over 200,000 petition signatures (186,000 of them on a single Change.org petition), a Twitter campaign, the withdrawal of several major advertisers and an outpouring of harsh criticism from a multitude of feminist activists and writers, Facebook has finally removed rape-humor pages from the [...]
About six weeks ago now, I blogged here about the proliferation of rape-joke pages on Facebook and the company’s refusal to remove them. Though Facebook has policies against hate-speech and threats of violence, a statement issued by Facebook to the BBC compared the rape humor to lewd pub jokes, stating: “Just as telling a rude [...]
As most people know by now, something big is happening on the streets of New York City. It began on September 17, where a growing number of protestors began occupying Wall Street, many of them camping out in Liberty Plaza. Though first largely ignored by the media, Occupy Wall Street has gained steadily increasing attention—especially [...]
According to Facebook’s terms of service, users are not permitted to post content that is hateful, threatening or incites violence. But it appears that, in the minds of the Facebook powers-that-be, pages that encourage rape don’t violate that rule. For two months now, Facebook users have been campaigning for the site to take down several [...]
The latest in a long line of recently proposed anti-choice legislation in Michigan, HB 4799 takes yet another new approach in attacking abortion: the bill, if passed, would specifically prohibit coercing a woman into an abortion. In addition to prohibiting any threats of violence, HB 4799 would impose fines on husbands who threaten their wives [...]
