Unity monument at Bennet Place State Historical Site (Anne Rubin)

My life has been shaped by two crises: my upbringing in a traumatic household and the rape. I have distilled two core values out of these experiences: the sacredness of humanity and the importance of choice and responsibility.

For some reason these two notions: humanity and responsibility feel like two pillars defining a door. They seem to complement each other. Respect is an attitude of the heart. Responsibility requires observation of the world outside ourselves and how we affect it. Respect for humanity is a precursor of action. Responsibility for our choices takes care of the aftermath.

We seem to have a built-in understanding of the fundamental value of human life. With the exception of the worst sociopaths there are some things most human beings just won’t do to each other. To a certain extent respect just happens and we take it for granted. Only the extremes of respect and disrespect seem to require a great deal of intentionality. On the other hand, responsibility can never happen without a conscious choice. For some perverse reason our natural inclination seems to be to shift responsibility away from the source: onto others when we are at fault,onto ourselves when others are at fault.

After the rape the notion of sacred humanity was burned in my consciousness. The rapist intentionally profaned the sacredness of human life and the body that contains it. The severe absence of respect for the sacred enabled me to see clearly something so fundamental to day to day living that it is almost invisible. No experience in life taught me about the sacredness of life like rape did. No book or tradition either.

The situation in my family taught me forced me to think deeply about responsibility, but unlike the rape, its lessons have revealed themselves slowly over time.

In my 20’s my family situation forced me to wrestled with the question of how life could be at once both so wonderful and painful.  Since my 20’s, responsibility and choice has formed the cornerstone of my approach to the problem of evil, which I see rooted in God’s odd and paradoxical idea that love is only possible in a world that has free will. It is paradoxical because many of things that happen as a result of free will are in fact the antithesis of love. However we cannot love without free will, because love is not love if it is not a choice.

In my 40’s this was not enough.  I began to realize that the pain in my family had created life long insecurities that seemed to flow from one generation to the next.  As I reflected further on the causes of pain in my family, I began to see that something was missing in my understanding of choice. To truly understand choice we need to see both sides of choice: its necessity for love and the price of disowning it.

My conclusions in my 20’s grew out an assumption that choice was a given, a fact of life from which we could not escape. As I’ve reflected on my family’s history of hurt, I realize that while choice is a given, awareness of choice is not. My family history was built around a pervasive denial of responsibility for hurtful actions that made victims responsible for their own suffering.  This denial not only made it hard for hurt to heal, but allowed it to perpetuate from one generation to the next.

As much evil in the world comes from the way we disown our choices as the way we make them. 

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Survivor Project News

Marcella Chester @ Abyss2Hope publishes a “carnival”, or roundup, of posts on sexual assault related issues on the first and 15th of each month. The latest carnival was published May 15, 2009. If you have an article you would like to recommend for the next carnival (June 1), you can submit the link, using this form. In general, recommendations should be submitted at least 3 days before the 1st and 15^th.

Erin Weed, who founded Girls Fight Back after a friend of hers was murdered, writes about attending and being inspired by the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network and Women’s Funding Network conferences. She is beginning to talk to major funders about internationalizing Girls Fight Back, possibly with the goal of teaching self-defense to women in war zones.

Art, Literature & Entertainment

Ellen Moody discusses the literary and cinematic influences on two Jane Austin movies originally made for TV: Sense and Sensibility (2008) and Miss Austin Regrets.

Carol Lehman reviews the book Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan . She describes it as a fantasy book that “honestly address issues that child sexual abuse survivors face”. The book is a fantasy story based on the Grimm Brother’s tale, “Snow White and Rose Red”. Note: In 2009, the UK Guardian book reviewer Meg Rosoff called it “the must-read of the summer”.

Purple Stained Skin has written up a list of the major poetry magazines available on newstands and libraries and provides a short description for each. In a second post Purple Stained Skin provides commentary on the poems published in No 23 of the Columbia poetry review. In a third post he has a review of Ally Malinenko’s The Wanting Bone.

White Dove’s Nest has written and posted a beautiful poem about learning across generations: A Boy Looking After Teddy Bears.

Feminism, Ethnocentrism, and other isms

Ayanna Nahmias reflects on the good and bad of a 1917 National Geographic story on North Africa. The photography in the story preserved a culture that has since changed in the face of global connectednes. But the commentary on the photos reflects the extreme ethnocentrism that develops when cultures do not meet each other.

Facts for Working People reflects on spending priorities in California, disputes over African investment policies, the never ending corporate search for cheap labor, and low usage rate of US industrial capacity, all from a socialist perspective.

Body and Self

This week, the body and self category was dominated by posts on the oversexualization of young people.

Abyss2Hope reflects on the phrase “prostitots” and argues that this particular way of describing over sexualized children is problematic because it uses “slut-shaming” to deal with the problem of oversexualized children.

Anny Jacoby comments with concern about a video of 8-9 year olds dancing in the World of Dance competition. She feels that by approving this dance routine the coach and the children’s parents were sending the wrong message and teaching their children to gain applause and approval from sexualized behavior. Note: The video has since been taken off line, but two ABC segments about the video contain partial images, a response by the parents, and commentary by a child psychologist.

Health and Wholeness

Ayanna Nahmias discussed a 7 year old Russian boy whose adoptive mother decided that he was “too difficult” and sent him back. She observes that parenting is a life-long responsibility. Children, whether born or adopted, shouldn’t be discarded because they are too difficult.

Just Be Real focused on people pleasing and why that can become a destructive addiction. She quotes liberally from evangelit Joyce Meyer. Both Just Be Real and Joyce Meyer are survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

Reasons You Shouldn’t Fuck with Kids continues her exploration of the many ways childhood rape can impact a life. This week she discussed the impact of being raped by her brother on her adult relationship with her husband and reflected on how a prior face to face confrontation with evil magnifies her reactions to events like the Columbine massacre.

Crime and Terror: Advocacy, Prevention, and Aftermath

Anny Jacoby tells a wonderful story about how an attempted stabbing was thwarted by a combination of self-defense skills and cooperation. One student ran to security to get police to the scene. The other, Jesse Hladik, worked to subdue the attacker, along with two other students. When Hladik noticed the knife in the attacker’s had, she was able to force him to drop the knife by applying pressure to appropriate points on the wrist.

Anny Jacoby has also written two posts questioning how much protection against dating violence is provided for by current laws in Virginia and the proposed policies of the University of Virginia. University of Virginia student Yeardley Love was murdered by an ex-boyfriend on May 3, 2010.

Abyss2Hope compares the social tolerance for false rape claims to the social tolerance for auto insurance fraud.

Gayle Force @ Unnatural Forces reflects on how rape changes the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. She also shares an example of how the right kind of humor can help us deal with rape.

Theology, Religion and Ethics

Shen @ Reunited Selves has just finished a long series of posts describing a private retreat where she carried out a ceremony she created for herself to symbolize and carry her through a transitional moment of healing and letting go.

• What Exactly is an Awareness Ceremony?
• Part 1: Arrival
• Part 2: Setting up and Settling in
• Part 3: Searching for Courage
• Part 4: Connecting with my Higher Self
• Part 5: We Can’t Move Forward from Yesterday
• Part 6: Final Preparations
• Part 7: Sensing a Presence
• Part 8: Awareness and Acceptance
• Afterwards…

Darlene Ouimet reminds us that sometimes positive affirmations and religiously motivated actions are sometimes the end point rather than the starting point of a journey of healing. Before we can deal with matters like forgiveness or the belief that God doesn’t make junk, first we must give ourselves permission to feel and experience ourselves as we are now, in the moment, and not as we think we should be. Two part post: (1, 2) .

Wanda’s Wings explores her anger at God. Harriet J @ Futitivus describes how taking a risk with prayer helped her defuse her intense anger at her less-than-nice neighbors.

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In Your Love is King (1984) she describes quite a different lover, one whose love “touches the very part of me that is making my soul sing. I’m crying out for more. Your love is king…. This is no blind faith. This is no sad and sorry dream. This is no blind faith. Your love is real”. It is not entirely clear whether she is talking about a lover or following a tradition as old as the bible and using passionate love to portay an awareness of Love (cf. Hosea, Song of Songs) or whether she simply enjoys the ambiguity of a song that could be read either way. In 2008, the UK Daily Telegraph listed it as one of the 50 best love songs of the 1980’s.

King of Sorrow from the Lover’s Rock album (2000) explores the determination to continue despite feeling overwhelmed: “I’m crying everyone’s tears and there inside our private war I died the night before… I suppose I could just walk away. Will I disappoint my future if I stay? It’s just a day that brings it all about. Just another day and nothing’s any good. The DJ’s playing the same song, I have so much to do. I have to carry on. I wonder if this grief will ever let me go. I feel like I am the king of sorrow, yeah, the king of sorrow.

Soldier of Love , the title song of Sade’s latest album, is about not giving up on one’s capacity to love even when hurt and pain and confusion make it seem a distant reality:

I’ve lost the use of my heart, but I’m still alive,
Still looking for the life, the endless pool on the other side.
It’s a wild wild west, I’m doing my best,
I’m at the borderline, I’m at the hinterland of my devotion,
In the frontline of this battle of mine, But I’m still alive ….
I know that love will come, turn it all around.
I’m a soldier of love,
Every day and night, all the days of my life.

The Soldier of Love album was released this year (February 8, 2010). This is the first album to be released in 10 years. Despite this gap, Sade still has a loyal fanbase. Sade has chosen to be defiend by her songs rather than a media created public persona. Though she says her most recent album contains “quite a lot of my history“, she is deliberately reticent about the actual details, because she wants people to be focused on the way the song relates to her life and not to limit its meaning to her particular story.

In an interview Sade give to UK’s Sunday Times just before the release of Soldier of Love, we get a glimpse into a small part of Sade’s history. Sade told the Times that her parents loved each other deeply, but could not live together. Sade’s father is Nigerian and her mother British. Sade was born in Nigeria, but four months after Sade was born her mother took Sade and her older brother. The three returned to the UK, leaving her father behind in Nigeria. Periodically Sade’s parents considered getting back together but never did When her parents married, Sade’s father gave her mother a rose. 30 years later when he died, Sade’s mother took the preserved rose and threw it into the grave.  Sade said that point she realized how deeply her mother had cared for her father.  She had held onto the rose all that time. She traces the theme of unfulfilled love in many of her songs to her parents long lasting but never quite realized love.

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Survivor Project News

• Beth Fehlbaum is progressing with her efforts to market a line a young adult novels about survivors of childhood sexual assault and abuse. The first book in the series, Courage in Patience, is now available on Amazon through Marketplace Sellers. The second will be published in October by Westside Books. She has also added a Facebook community page (a.k.a. fan page) to support her marketing efforts.
• Erin Merryn’s bill was approved by the Illinois Senate.  The bill must now be approved by the state House of Representatives.  An article on Erin Merryn and her advocacy work was published in Chicago’s Daily Herald.    She has also written a post describing the hearings and the actual vote.
• Maria Phelps has been working on an amendment to strengthen protections of women whose partners have violated a restraining order. Zebrowski and 8 co-sponsors have introduced bill A. 10736. The bill will prevent a domestic abuser who has violated a restraining order, from being released without seeing a Judge first, or being held for at least 12 hours. The bill was inspired by the case of Isol Cotto who was murdered by her husband when he bailed himself out 2 hours after being jailed for violating a restraining order.

Survivor Milestones

• Madeleine Flannagan’s ex-partner, Travis Eugene Burrell,  has been sentenced to 9 years for rape, 6 years for unlawful sexual connection, and 4 years for attempted unlawful sexual connection.  Flannagan attended the sentencing at the request of the two children she had with Burrell and the victim.  The victim was raped after she canceled a date with Burrell and had gone to sleep.  Flannagan says Burrell raped and physically abused her as well, but she never pressed charges.  She closes her post with a thank-you to the victim who spoke up where she could not.
• Blogger Gayle Force’s post on Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) has been syndicated on BlogHer.  This is the first time a major site has requested content from her blog.

Survivor requests for Feedback or Action

Note: We provide this list as a service to readers. Inclusion in this list implies neither the endorsement nor participation of If She Cries Out.

• The Angela Shelton Foundation is trying to raise $25,000 to create a video series of healing techniques.  The project has been included in Pepsi’s list of May “Good Ideas”.  To vote for the project and watch a video describing it, visit their page on the Pepsi Refresh project site.    Voting ends May 31.
• Maria Phelps is exploring ways to improve improve compensation for domestic violence related medical expenses.   The connection between injuries and domestic violence is often poorly documented and she is working on ways to help hospital personnel screen patients at the time of injury.  She has put together a questionnaire and is requesting feedback from both the medical and survivor point of view.
• Anne Carolyn Drake is inviting anyone who is in Austin, Texas on June 7 to come to the courthouse steps to support Jacqueline Costadura who is fighting for custody of her daughter.  Costadura pressed charges against her husband for attempted murder and her husband is claiming that the law suit represents an attempt to alienate the daughter from her father.
• Annie Jacoby is encouraging people to sign a petition urging the NFL to set up a sexual assault awareness program for football players.  The petition was created in response to 3 separate rape allegations lodged against NFL players in less than a year.
• Jenn Q Public is encouraging people to write letters of  complaint to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Board of Pediatrics, and the American Board of Medical Specialties.  The AAP has recently recommended that doctors offer to “nick” female children’s genitals in lieu of full female circumcision.  Jenn Q Public is opposed to any sort of female circumcision.   Postal addresses, email addresses, and a sample letter are available at the Equality Now website.

Art, Literature and Entertainment

• Purple Stained Skin has posted poems by Alfred Corn and several new poems by C.P. Cavafy (1 2 3) .
• ~Enola~ watched the Academy Award winning Precious and discusses her reactions.
• Ellen Moody has reviewed the movie Falling in light of a long tradition of women’s novels and memoirs beginning with Jane Austin.
• Just Be Real has shared several Christian songs that she has found helpful in her healing process: “God Help Me”, “Refiner’s Fire”, “Let the Healing Begin”
• Dana Antonia Truesdale has produced a sculpture series reflecting the wide range of emotions felt by survivors of childhood sexual abuse.  She will be donating 50% or more of the profits from the sale of the sculpture series to the Angela Shelton Foundation.

Body and Self

• Beth Fehlbaum recommends a wonderful article about on clothing written by a man to a hypothetical 16-year old girl concerned about the number of older men hitting on her.
• Ayanna Nahmias argues that child beauty pageants promote false ideas of confidence by teaching young girls that poise comes from how closely a young girl can imitate the sexuality of grown women.  True confidence comes from developing a child’s innate gifts and abilities so that “her external beauty compliments her personality and talent instead of dominating her existence.”

Health and Wholeness

• Shadowlight discusses the potential impact of UK politics on financing of mental health services (1 2)
• Ayanna Nahmias discuss the balanced approach American football player Myron Rolle takes to sports and studies and why that is causing problems with his ranking in this years NFL draft picks.  Rolle took a year out of college football to study in the UK as a Rhodes Scholar.
• Kate1975 provides a long list of tips and links to help those who want to de-clutter their lives.
• Ivette Attaud offers several suggestions for cost-free relaxation for busy moms.  The suggestions were the result of a conversation that she, Anny Jacoby, and callers had on her weekly radio show.
• Shadowlight discusses her frustrations with being diagnosed with controversial mental illnesses like Disassociative Identity Disorder (DID) and Orthorexia
• Reasons You Shouldn’t Fuck Kids writes about how the skepticism faced by child sexual abuse survivors translates into social phobias even in adulthood.
• Carla Dippel @ Emerging from Broken discusses the meaning of pain and what it says about our own worth.  Dippel is not a trauma survivor but speaks with wisdom that comes from a life long struggle with anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem.
  

  Pain feels like something is wrong, and if something feels wrong our old belief system tells us that we are wrong. We try to avoid the pain because of this misconception, one we have suffered under for so long…. Pain invites us to look deeper, to look through. It is not telling us that we are wrong, just that something is wrong…. It wasn’t our brokenness that was the problem; the real problem was what caused the brokenness.

• Just Be Real tells a beautiful story of how grief over a cockroach and a sparrow turned into the realization that even though she did not fight back when she was molested as a child, she was not to blame.

Social Concerns

• Richard @ Facts For Working People has been following a student hunger strike against the new Arizona immigration law at the University of Berkeley, California (1 2 3 4)

Crime and Terror: Advocacy, Prevention, and Aftermath

• Silence the Lies, Give Truth a Voice decided to look at how Google searchers are likely to be viewing the Jack Tweed rape case.  Trying a variety of key words she found that searchers had to go several pages deep to find even one article presenting the prosecution’s side of the story.
• Anny Jacoby has been following the death of UVa student Yeardly Love whose was allegedly murdered by her ex-boyfriend. observes that awareness of one’s situation is the first step in prevention.
• Anny Jacoby shows how friends and family are remembering the life of Irina Yarmolenko who was murdered two years ago during her freshman year of college.  Although there are two suspects, the case has not yet gone to trial.
• Erin Merryn shares the story of her rape and her healing process in verse.

Theology, Religion and Ethics
None this week.

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Betty Makoni’s mission is to give girls who have been raped the confidence to transform from victims to survivors to leaders. Through her organization, Girl Child Network Worldwide (GCNW), she has built up a small group of girls in a rural school in Zimbabwee into a force of young women spanning three continents: Africa, Europe, and North America.

The video to the left is the first in a four part series on YouTube describing Marconi and her work in Zimbabwe (1 2 3 4). GCNW is modeled on her work in Zimbabwe and accomplishes its mission with a unique blend of peer empowerment, adult role models, cultural tradition, modern human rights philosophy, and social advocacy. The project began in 1998 when Makoni was working as a teacher. She noticed that there were twice as many boys as girls in her classes and girl students often attended irregularly. One day she decided to start asking the girls why this was so and found out that they were carrying the weight of many of Zimbabwe’s social ills: parents who had AIDS, abuse at home, early marriage, or shame and trauma from rape.  Rape of young girls is especially common in Zimbabwee because as many as 1 in 10 men believe that the blood of a virgin with cause them to prosper financially or heal them from AIDS.

Makoni, an English teacher, decided that her job as a teacher required her to educate the entire child and not just the child’s brain. She started meeting separately with the girls in her class and they began to figure out ways to support each other so that they could come to school. The concept spread to other schools and within a year there were 100 groups meeting in schools around Zimbabwe based on the model used with her own original 10 students.

Makoni’s passion had its roots in her own experience. She knows violence first hand. At six, she and her friends were lured into a shop and then raped by the shop keeper. Her mother, fearful of her husbands rage and social stigma for the family and her daughter, told Makoni to keep silent. Three years later she watched her father murder her mother. She managed to stay in school despite all this with the help of some Roman Catholic nuns who arranged to help her continue her education. Two university degrees later she became a teacher.

Makoni feels that she was always meant to be a teacher but the experience of her childhood made her hunger for other roles as well. Her activism allows the teacher and the other roles to come together in a single mission:

Even though I was meant to be a teacher, I always wanted to act like a lawyer seeking justice; I always wanted to act like a policeman knocking on the door of a rapist saying come out to the jail; I always wanted to act like a magistrate who gives a sentence to a man who has raped. I didn’t manage to be the three things I wanted to be. Then I set up an organization called the Girl Child Network where I became an activist. What’s so exciting about what I am doing with all my heart and all my energy is I’ve got the magistrate, I’ve got the police, I’ve got social services all of them pulled together to help the little girl. When a little girl smiles, mission accomplished. I’m not looking for anything more.  (World Vision Report, April 17, 2010)

In 1999, she acquired land and set up the first girl’s empowerment village. The residential villages provide a safe place where a young girl can take refuge or get help after she had been raped. The village provided legal, medical, and emotional support. If the girl does not have money or resources for school, they provide that as well. Successful women come and talk with the girls and they are encouraged to aspire to become teachers, lawyers, doctors, police officers, and business women.

The villages are modelled on a vision of womenhood that blends traditions from Markoni’s own tribe with modern human rights practice. In her own tribe 400 years ago, chieftains reserved positions of power for princesses of royal families.

Markoni also looks beyond the girls themselves to the wider society. She successfully convinced fathers and local male leaders to advocate for equal rights of women in 10 different districts of Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe branch of GCNW also works to change police practice and rape laws. They have also set up information cafes that coordinate media outreach and provide information about rape and sexual assault to the general population.

In 2008, Makoni was forced to flee Zimbabwe. Her work with rape victims became politicized when some of the girls who sought her help had been raped by powerful political leaders. She is currently living in the UK and is working to expand the program she started in Zimbabwe globally. In an interview with Munashe Gumbonzvanda of TechMasai, she described her vision in a global context.

Makoni observes that gender imbalances exist throughout the world and not just in Africa. Girls need to be represented in technology, polity, and business because without their involvement, girls cannot design solutions to meet their needs. They are limited to using what others have designed for them. Additionally, when gender imbalances exist the world does not work as it should. Women become visible only as victims and beauty objects. The truth worth of women is hidden. She concludes: “Girls have inner strength and power. That is what I want to unleash worldwide.”

Her work is widely respected by adults and children alike. In 2007 she was awarded The World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child. The prize is awarded on the basis of children around the globe. In 2007, over 5 million children participated in the vote. In 2009, CNN named her one of their top 10 heros.

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Credit: Marcus J Ranum

What if women could arm their vaginas with teeth? Would that prevent rape?

The use of rape to intimidate reared its ugly head again in March when more than 15,000 facebook users signed up as supporters of a Facebook campaign to rape and murder white attendees to the June, 2010 World Cup games.  The page create great concern because it purported to be sponsored by the ANC Youth League. The ANC denounced the page saying that it was against all forms of hate speech.  Facebook shut the page down.

However, the fact that the page garnered so many supporters has many concerned, including the inventor of a device known as the “Rape-aXe“, Sonnet Ehlers. She believes this device will protect women from rape and is trying to raise money to 30,000 free instances of this device during the world cup games.

The Rape-aXe is a sheath inserted in the vagina. Inside the sheaf are small hooks that grab onto a penis or object forced into the vagina. This is supposed to cause the rapist great pain forcing the rapist to withdraw his penis and rush off to the hospital to have the device removed.

The device has raised the ire of Western anti-rape advocates for placing the onus of rape prevention on the victim, however criticism of the device is not merely a matter of  Westerners imposing their standards on others.

When Sonnet Ehlers proposed the Rape-aXe 5 years ago, the device was denounced in South Africa amid much controversy. South Africa has one of the highest per-capita reported sexual assault rates (1.47 in 1000)  and the actual rape is estimated to be as much as 20 times that.  Social changes to reduce rape rates are making slow if any progress.  To Ehlers and many who first hear about the device, it seems like a way to fight back against rape.   At a minimum, she claims it will make attackers easier to identify.  Rape survivor Charlene Smith, a leading anti-rape activist in South Africa, disagrees, arguing that it was based on fundamental misunderstanding of rape and was likely to increase the number of rapes that end in murder or serious physical harm.  When the device was first released, Smith and several other leading South African anti-rape activists asked that the government ban the sale of the device.

The appeal of the device relies on a host of rape myths and unrealistic assumptions about how rapes are carried out and how they are prosecuted afterward:

Claim: It prevents rapes because men will avoid rape once they know some women are wearing the device. Only a few women need to use it. Just the fear that one might be bitten by it will stop attacks.

• NO, because not all rapes are vaginal
• NO, because one can avoid the device by raping another orafice.
• NO, because rapist can insert a stick or other object to check for the presence of the device.
• NO, because in South Africa, 44% of rapes are gang rapes and only the first gang member in would be affected, if at all.
• NO, because more than half of rapists rape their own partners (spouses, girlfriends). This device presumes that rapist danger comes primarily from outside the home.
• NO, because not all victims are adult women: 35% of reported sexual offences are against children and 16% are against males.

Claim:It gives women a chance to escape and so shortens the rape and reduces the total damage caused by the rape.

• NO, because it doesn’t take into account that rapists sometimes restrain or kidnap their victim before penetration. Escape is not an option in those circumstances.
• NO, because the device can be removed with a stick. Once removed, it can be turned inside out and reinserted into the vagina with hooks facing outward.
• NO, because a rapist can buy it and wear it inside out.
• NO, because even if the rapist does not remove the device, its presence removes fighting options from a woman. A rape doesn’t stop until the rapist leaves the scene or she escapes. A woman’s best chance of escape is her ability to adapt her defensive approach to the circumstances. If she judges that the rapist is likely to progress to murder if angered, she has no way to stop the escalation, since she can’t very well remove the device.
• NO, because it may sometimes make the rapist less able to withdraw his penis due to pain.
• NO, because it doesn’t sedate and completely disable the rapist.
• NO, because pain increases adrenalin and adrenalin makes the rapist faster, stronger, and more alert, thus more able to react and prevent escape attempts.
• NO, because pain increases anger and anger may increase the level of violence or even motivate someone to kill in revenge.
• NO, because the device only takes hold of a penis during penetration, meaning forced sexual activity has already occurred. The shortening is meaningless because the emotional trauma of forced sexual activity cannot be measured in the number or kind of acts.

Claim: It prevents infection with STDS and AIDS/HIV after rape.

• NO, penetration isn’t the only AIDS vector during rape. A victim who is beaten or strangled or fights back is liable to have defensive wounds that break the skin and is liable to draw blood from her attacker.   This too can result in AIDS transmission.
• NO, it encourages anal rape (to avoid the device) and it won’t prevent AIDS due to anal rape.
• NO, because the barbs used to cause pain can break the skin. Should the sheath tear in any way, the victim will be exposed to both blood and semen.
• NO, because some rapists wear condoms simply to avoid leaving DNA evidence behind.  In that case, it ruptures the condom and actually increases the possibility of penetration based infection.
• NO, because rapists who rape only women are no more likely to have HIV/AIDS then men in the general population at large.
• NO, because condoms don’t prevent contact with genital warts or herpes sores

The method of choice to prevent AIDS/HIV due to rape, is a prophylactic anti-viral combination (PEP) within 72 hours after the rape.  Because of the multiple possibilities for infection, even with this device, one would still need to take this treatment.

Claim: It insures the rapist will be caught and prosecuted because it can’t be taken off without doctor’s help.

• NO, because black market, no-questioned-asked “doctors” have always existed to help criminals avoid detection, so why wouldn’t that happen here?
• NO, because the presence of a Rape-aXe on a penis still doesn’t prove rape. The rapist can say she forgot to take it out. If she was drunk, this might be believable. The case comes down to a debate that is all too often resolved in favor of the rapist: can a drunk person give consent? Alternatively, the rapist can say, she simply forgot it was in, and in the passion of the moment forgot to take it out. Thus the failure to remove it becomes the proof of consent rather than the proof of force.
• NO, because extreme escape and prevention measures don’t necessarily prove non-consent. In Korea, the supreme court threw out a rape conviction even though the woman jumped six stories to escape the rapist. In the USA, a woman jumped out of a car to escape a rapist, and the rapist still wasn’t convicted.
• NO, because it makes it less likely rather than more that a stranger rapist will be identified.  The gold standard in identifying strangers is DNA from sperm left in the vaginal canal.   The device would prevent any such evidence.
• NO, because both inside and outside South Africa, most of the impediments to prosecuting rapists are in the follow-up: willingness of a victim to report, quality of the police report and forensic evidence gathering, failure to follow up on rape kits; resources available to prosecutors; cloudy notions of consent held by judges, juries, and sometimes the law itself; – verify.

Some have argued that these concerns are irrelevant. Even if the device is wholly ineffective it gives women peace of mind and so should be allowed.  However, that peace of mind is an illusion. Ineffectiveness should not and cannot be ignored. Advocacy and fund raising for an ineffective device distracts attention and resources from proven rape prevention methods.

Advocating use of an ineffective device, reduces it to a symbol.  But this isn’t any symbol.  This is an invasive symbol that must be inserted into the body.  Not every woman will be willing to use it.  But if it is a symbol, then its absence in a woman’s body is also symbolic.  The last thing women need is to be considered “asking for it” because they failed to wear a device that not only fails to prevent rape, but can in fact endanger the victim.  What would someone do the first time a lawyer claimed that refusing to use the device implied willingness to have sex?  And what about the woman who wears it? If helping a rapist remove one’s jeans implies consent, why wouldn’t removing the Rape-aXe be treated the same way?

Only rapists cause rape and the best way to prevent rape is to get rapists off the streets and change social attitudes that lead to rape in the first place. Rapists in South Africa view rape as a way to prove manhood or a form of male bonding.    Reporting and conviction rates are low.

To protect women from rape, governments must improve police statement taking, clarify the meaning of consent in rape and insure prosecutions lead to reasonable conviction rates and punishment.   To protect women from rape, society must insure that women who are raped have access to immediate and comprehensive health care to treat the ill effects of rape.   To protect women from rape, men must continue their efforts to find and teach each other new non-destructive ways to define manhood.

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• adding one’s photo to a worldwide map showing people who oppose rape as a weapon of war
• raising the public profile of rape as a weapon of war through blogging, letters to the editors, media events, and the like
• writing a letter to local elected officials
• hosting a consciousness raising event

Videos, survivor stories, resource materials, sample letters, NGO activity updates and more are available on the Stop Rape Now! website.
Detailed information and support tools for all of these projects are available on the projects website’s Take Action page.

To raise awareness of the project, the United Nations’ special representative on sexual violence in conflict, Margaret Wallstrom was interviewed on NPR radio. They have also placed two PSA’s on YouTube. The first, displayed with this post is meant to both personalize the story and add celebrity appeal. The second features ordinary people around the globe expressing their opposition to rape as a weapon of war.

The political pressure is surely needed. Margaret Wallstrom still is working in temporary office space. A recent press conference several raised questions about whether or not the UN was dedicating sufficient resources to the problem. During the NPR interview, Wallstrom herself explained that the Congo has had good anti-rape laws on the books for a while. However, the laws remain unimplemented due to the lack of resources. Furthermore, the UN has ongoing problems moving its own anti-sexual abuse initiative from a global mandate to local implementation. At the beginning of May, the BBC reported that 10 Pakistani peace-keepers had raped a 13 year old girl. Her village’s elders lodged a formal complaint several months before the BBC investigation, but no action had been taken and the UN is only now saying it will look into the matter.

Often at the UN issues affecting women are treated as bargaining chips. Recently, Iran was accepted as a member of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). Iran is one of only a handful of nations that has neither signed or ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. All other members of the CSW have ratified the treaty. Their uncontested nomination was the result of horse trading to keep them off of the UN Human Rights Commission.

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The Rape of Africa (David LaChappelle)

Venus and Mars (Sandro Botticelli)

Throughout the month of May, the mural to the left will be hanging in the courtyard of the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. The mural, by David LaChappelle is based on Botticelli’s Venus and Mars and is meant to comment on the effects of war, mass marketing, and mining on Africa.

Our society is fond of using rape as a rhetorical device, and when it is used well it can send a powerful message. When artists use rape as a metaphor it is vitally important that they use the metaphor in a way that honors rape victims. This painting fails to do that on several levels.

Africa has real rape victims and all too human victims of war motivated murder and amputation. But in LaChappelle’s vision of the rape of Africa, the human cost of rape and violence make no appearance anywhere in the picture. Standing in for them is a beautiful model who was born in London, has never lived in Africa and has been twice convicted herself for assault, one in London for being verbally abusive to a police officer when she didn’t get her luggage quickly enough and once in New York, for throwing a mobile phone at her maid. There is something deeply troubling about a woman who assaults someone in her employ being used as a model for innocent victims of violence in Africa.

Second, LaChapelle’s mural portrays the aftermath of rape. Real rape survivors want to be honored for their courage as well as their struggle. A painting of the aftermath of rape that fails to portray both loss and courage is incomplete. South African activist Carrie Shelver commenting on the 2006 Zuna rape trial, observes “Characterising the survivor as a “victim” who is weak, frightened and voiceless is equally simplistic and damaging to the struggle for gender equality and the advancement of women’s rights. Survivors can be both in need of protection from the criminal justice system and be courageous at the same time.”

Third, LaChapelle uncritically reflects modern societies constant confusion about the difference between love, sex, and rape.

The ancient world understood how problematic it would be to confuse love and violence and went out of their way to insure that rape stayed far away from Venus. Venus has no shortage of liasons, but all of them are consensual.   Venus is the one of the few females in classical mythology that was never raped.  She even managed to successfully fight off Zeus himself, something no other woman in classical mythology was able to do.  Botticelli’s painting reflects the understanding of the ancient world.  Mars has not taken her, but rather she Mars.  Botticelli’s painting presumes a woman so in control of her sexuality that she can even overcome the God of War. In Botticelli’s painting Venus is full clothed and alert. She looks calmly and determinedly outward. The satyrs mock Mars, one stealing his hat, another blowing in his ear. Mars head is tilted back. He is so beaten he doesn’t give any sign of waking despite the wasps buzzing by his ear.

LaChappelle  manages to do what even Zeus could not: rape Venus.   In doing so he confuses love and rape.  Worse yet, he doesn’t think it even needs an explanation and neither do any of the reviews we’ve been able to find.  This fusion lies at the heart of our societies minimization and rationalization of dating and relationship violence.

Fourth, he robs both rape victims and Africa of a powerful redemptive vision.  Botticelli’s Venus and Mars depicts the power of Love over War.   Love of oneself, love of society, love of vision for a healed world is what helps rape survivors overcome their trauma.  It is also what will one day help Africa heal.   All over Africa, the survivors of its violence and exploitation are transforming and healing what rape, exploitation and violence destroyed. They are using the power of love for the world and their passion for righting wrongs:

• Imam, a supermodel who advocates for African children and AIDS treatment through “I am African” and Keep a Child Alive fled her native Somalia as a child and lived as a refugee in Kenya.
• Waris Dirie, another supermodel who has served as UN ambassador advocating against female genital mutilation. Diree fled Somalia at age 13 because her father tried to sell her in marriage to a 61-year old man for 5 camels.
• Wangari Muta Maathai, Kenyan winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in sustainable development. She has been imprisoned many times for her opposition to the government.
• Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the current president of Liberia, who lead a peaceful revolution that overthrew Charles Taylor, now accused of war crimes. Her opposition to former Liberian presidents, has forced to flee her country during purges, exiled her in lieu of 10 year imprisonment and placed under house arrest.
• Betty Makoni, a Zimbabwean rape survivor who founded Girl Child Network to educate and empower young girls, hoping to build a new generation of strength in Africa.
• Lumo Sinai, a young Congoleese woman who allowed her story of rape and fistula repair to be featured in a documentary to publicize rape and violence in the Congo and the work of Heal Africa where she received treatment.
• Masika Katsuva who watched her husband murdered, her daughters raped, and was herself raped. She now runs a shelter for housing rape survivors who have no place to go after they have been rejected from their own communities.
• Olive Lembe Kabila, wife of the president of the DRC who has lend her name and political connections to fight rape and maternal deaths.
• Charlene Smith and Alison Botha, South African rape survivors who actively campaign against rape.

Chapelle is not interested in portraying the redemptive power and courage of rape survivors. He only wants to show destruction and dominance. How ironic that in a painting meant to raise awareness and change destructive patterns, he portrays rape not through the eyes of victims, but through the eyes of rapists.

It is bad enough that Africa has suffered from exploitation. Do we have to poor salt in the wound by making Africa appear eternally and hopelessly victimized? Fundamentally this is a patronizing message because if Africa is so helpless, then only a patron or third party can help her. This violates everything social activists have learned about the importance of self-empowerment in overcoming subjugation and marginalization.

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I used to feel all uncomfortable and freaked out about bone, about having bones, about having a skeleton inside of me. But bones are intricate, minute little worlds and a skeleton is a recipe for function and possibilities.

After watching the show “Bones” for several seasons I have concluded that there is reason to love bones and to love being made of bones at my core. Living bones are not like skeletons. Living bones are alive, containing, enfolding, protecting, they make it possible for so much that we are capable of. Rarely do we question it or think about it. Bones are courageous. Survivors are like bones.

B is for ball. One of my brothers told me recently a ball is the most popular toy the world over. I told him, I know that. I read that in a book of children’s games and online as well. I showed him a small, tiny bouncing ball I had brought with me to California from Ohio and before that from Minnesota. I told him it is one of my favorite toys as well. I had been bouncing it out in the backyard earlier in the day. The ability to play is so tied up for me in playing with a ball. I have never lost the ability to play. We all need that. B is for ball.

B is for beauty. Survivors need beauty. We need to breathe in beauty, to soak it deep into our skin, to drink it down, to feast our eyes upon it. Survivors need beauty. We need every reason that we can find to have a reason for joy in this world. We need beauty like others need food or water. We need to have a reason to stay here, we need beauty, we need to find love, something to love, something for us to want, something for us to find joy and happiness with, something to make our hearts beat a little bit faster. Beauty is healing and we need all the healing we can find.

This article originally appeared in Kate1975’s Blog; reprinted with permission.

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• Silence the Lies, Give Voice a Truth has started a blog “to educate readers of some of the misconceptions about rape that are rampant in our societal subconscious.” She was raped when a fellow guest at the birthday party for a friend’s 9 year old daughter offered to walk her home.

Survivor Project News

• Marj aka Thriver is fullfilling her dream and learning to draw botanical sketches. She showed off a sample of her developing skills here.
• Erin Merryn who was sexually abused by her cousin at age 11 has been advocating to change the Illinois school code so that children are informed about how to recognize, report and get help for sexual abuse. On April 19, Tom Bivins formally turned her proposed school code ammendments into a bill and asked her to testify You can see the proposed ammendments here. If you live in Illinois and want to support this bill, we encourage you to contact your state senators and representatives.
• Denise Brown, whose sister, Nicole Brown, was a victim of domestic violence and murder, has founded the Elite Speakers Bureau. The Bureau meets a need for celebrity and nationally recognized speakers on family and sexual violence for corporations and shelters fundraising events.

Upcoming Survivor Events

• Saturday, May 8 @ 11 am EST. Domestic violence surivors Anne Jacoby and Ivette Attaud will be chatting with callers on blog talk radio about cost free ways moms can unwind and take care of themselves.

Art & Literature

• The Nahmias Cipher Report discusses Wangechi Mutu’s exhibit at the Gugenheim.
• Purple Stained Skin has posted poems by C. P. Cafrey , Donald T. Williams and Oliver Reynolds.
• Reveries Under the Sign of Austen has written a review the opera Armida by Rossini, performed at the Met with soprano Renee Fleming.
• Gayle Force @ Unnatural Forces has drawn a lovely sketch of the sirens and hopes to do more drawing soon.
• Kate1975 reminds us of the need for beauty and play in healing in her piece, B is for Healing.

Feminism, Disablism and other -isms

• Gayle Force @ Unnatural Forces discusses her ambivalence about Courtney Martin’s suggestion that feminists develop a personal style that appeals to our aesthetic sense and makes feminism look “cool”.

• Cara @ Feministe.com writes a post in honor of Blogging for Disablism Day. She reflects on the damage caused when we casually use terms that describe mental or medical conditions, for example, calling a post we don’t like “lame” or an illogical idea “crazy”.

Crime and Terror: Advocacy, Prevention and Aftermath

• A movement against Domestic Violence has linked to an interview with Carolyn Fish, the director of Rockland Family Shelter. Fish discusses the pros and cons of mandatory arrest policies and the importance of respecting a victim’s understanding of her situation and her choices about what is best for herself and her family. The role of the advocate is to present options and facilitate these choices.
• Anny Jacoby has a forward looking take on “saying no” that includes both personal and cultural “nos”. She also provides some interesting advice on choosing a personal safety class that matches your personal lifestyle.
• Shadowlight summarizes a UK survey that compared fears of future victimization for victims and non-victims
• Silence the Lies, Give Truth a Voice discusses some of the reactions people close to her had after she was raped.

Mental Health/Self-improvement

DID, PTSD, and depression have been on the agenda this week.

• Blooming Lotus wrote posts looking at the subjective experience of alters coming and going in a multiple personality ( 1, 2, 3 ).
• Wanda’s Wings has been discussing the benefits and side effects of ECT treatment ( 1, 2, 3 )
• Reasons You Shouldn’t Fuck Kids looks at the impact of PTSD on job choices

Theology, Religion and Ethics

None this week.

Personal stories

Beautiful Dreamer reflects on renewing her friendship with a childhood friend

The resuming of that old connection is like discovering money in an old  forgotten bank account. Every time we hung out together as kids I was investing in that account, depositing riches I would some day–during my nana years–need to withdraw. Suz is a touch of sanity in my often confusing world. …
I know you, her very presence seems to say.
I enjoy you, she might as well say every time her eyes look at me with delight.
I know that when she looks at me with the same expression she must see reflected on my face (a sort of stunned joy), she is seeing my little girl self of decades ago, but also the me who has grown into my adult self. A nana, a stumble-bum, but the me my younger self was in the process of becoming all along.

The Art of Blogging
Gayle Force @ Unnatural Forces weighs in on the debate about anonymity in the blogosphere:

Look, I get really shitty anonymous comments, …But I blame this on misogyny, not anonymity. Anonymity doesn’t make anyone a douchebag. Racism and sexism and all kinds of other things make people douchebags…. Anonymity may allow people to show the symptoms, but it’s never the disease; how could it be a disease when I could not be writing to you without it?

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