24: What Is Justice?

When I was seeking topics for the first half of this very blogathon, Sarah — who blogs over at the SAFER blog, the blog of the organization that I’m sponsoring! — posed an interesting question in the comments:
something i personally have been thinking a lot about—that i would love to read some of your comments [...]

23: Same-Sex Partner Violence

One of the most under-discussed areas of sexual violence is sexual violence in the LGBTQ community. I’ve already written a couple of posts about sexual violence against transgender people, and a bit about sexual violence targeted at gay and bisexual men.* Lesbian and bisexual women can also be targeted for sexual violence as a form [...]

22: Rape and Immigrant Women

Another population that is particularly vulnerable to sexual violence is immigrant women, particularly (but not exclusively) undocumented immigrant women.
It’s a topic much too big for me to cover in one little post that I have 20 minutes to write. But the fact is that when we treat a certain group of people as though they [...]

21: The Intersection of Rape and Race

In America, most recent statistics show that women of most races are raped at roughly the same rates (pdf). There is one exception, and it’s a major one — Native American women are raped at more than twice the rate of other women. The shocking figure is believed to be, in large part, due to [...]

20: Adolescent Sexual Abuse

As someone who was an adolescent when she was raped, the subject of adolescent sexual abuse is close to my heart. But sadly, I’m far from alone in my experiences — studies have shown over and over again that adolescence is the time when women are at their highest risk of sexual assault. Most of [...]

19: “Giving Real Victims a Bad Name”

Yesterday, Amandaw asked me on Twitter what I think of the notion that “women should really be mad at those false accusers out there, because they’re the ones giving real rape victims a bad name.” I decided that I’d answer that here.
First of all, I’ll come clean. I once used to think something like this. [...]

18: Rape and Disability

One of the populations most vulnerable to sexual assault is women with disabilities. Some statistics show that up to 83% of women with disabilities will be assaulted in their lifetimes. Others say that women with disabilities are twice as likely to be raped and sexually assaulted as the general population. Whatever the numbers are, they’re [...]

17: Victim-Blaming Knows No Borders

You’ve quite likely heard of this horrific story, of an 8-year-old girl in Phoenix, Arizona who was raped by 4 boys — aged 9, 10, 13 and 14.
The reason it seems to be getting a large amount of media attention, however, is the news that her family has apparently rejected her and blamed her for [...]

16: Re-Victimization at Its Extreme

So. Here’s one of the most appalling things I’ve seen in a long time.
On the regular blog, I spend a lot of time writing about how people will find any excuse, any excuse at all, even if there isn’t one, to dismiss rape, to pretend as though it wasn’t really rape, and most especially to [...]

15: 59% of Transgender Inmates Report Sexual Assault While In Prison

One place where transgender individuals are particularly vulnerable to rape and sexual assault is prison. In fact, a 2006 study (note: reading the comments is highly unrecommended) showed that an utterly staggering 59% of incarcerated transgender respondents reported being sexually assaulted in prison.
There are a couple major reasons for the astounding and devastating figures. The [...]

14: Transgender Victims of Rape

There are very few statistics available for the rate of rape among transgender individuals. One small study showed that 13.7% of transgender respondents had experienced rape or attempted rape. Another study shows that 50% of transgender respondents had been raped or assaulted by a romantic partner — and among all groups of people sexual violence [...]

13: Rape and Sex Work

It’s pretty much impossible to find accurate statistics on the rate of rape among sex workers. That’s both because sex workers are a hugely diverse group and not particularly easy to survey, but also because many people doing the surveys have an anti-sex work ideology that cause many sex workers to question the methodology [...]

12: 40 Days and 40 Nights

Speaking of apologism for women who rape men, I remember the first time I saw this scene from the film 40 Days and 40 Nights. I was just completely and utterly appalled that they would put this scene in here as not only a plot point, but as something other than rape. I [...]

11: Yes, Women Can Rape Men

It’s sadly still not uncommon to hear the assertion that “it’s not possible for a woman to rape a man.”
Yes, it is. And it happens.
How is quite simple. Just like with any form of rape, it need not involve a penis, and it also need not a vagina being penetrated.
A woman who non-consensually penetrates a [...]

10: FML Fail

By now, most people around the interwebs have likely heard of the website FML. FML stands for Fuck My Life, and is filled with short, humorous anecdotes that make the writer say . . . fuck my life.
But sometimes, the FML submissions (and comments) aren’t so funny. Sometimes they’re instead sad, or upsetting — or [...]

9: Canadian Anti-Sexual Violence Program Focuses on Girls’ Clothing

I’ve recently learned about a new program in Canada that’s allotting over $350,000 to adolescent rape prevention in Quebec. Sounds awesome, right?
Er, maybe.
The latest grant announced by Helena Guergis, minister of state for the status of women, is for a $144,361, three-year project in the Matane region “targeting the hypersexualization of girls as a root [...]

8: California Officer Rapes Woman While on Duty

Recently, a (now former) California police officer named Feliciano Sanchez admitted to forcing a woman who he pulled over during a traffic stop to perform oral sex on him at gunpoint.
Feliciano Sanchez, 34, admitted in court Thursday that while on duty on May 16, 2007, he pulled over a female driver in a traffic stop [...]

7: Male Rape in Prisons

While there’s evidence suggesting that the assumption that most rape of men occurs in prison is false, there’s absolutely no denying that there is an epidemic of rape taking place in America’s prisons. Research shows that around 22% of men are raped while in prison. It’s an utterly whopping figure.
The rape can come in many [...]

6: Male Rape Victims

We talk about it less often due to its less common occurrence (and also because many of us who talk about sexual violence are feminists, and therefore focus on specifically women’s issues), but men can be and are raped, too. RAINN estimates that 1 in 33 men will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, and [...]

5: New Orleans Police Department Downgrading Rape Reports

News has emerged that the New Orleans police department has been classifying reports of rape as noncriminal:
More than half the time New Orleans police receive reports of rape or other sexual assaults against women, officers classify the matter as a noncriminal “complaint.”
Police, who have been touting a decline in rapes, say the share of noncriminal [...]

4: Rape Jokes

A month ago, Harriet over at Fugitivus wrote an excellent post that just came to my attention. It’s about rape “jokes,” and it’s while it’s a long post, it’s also one of the best explanations I’ve ever seen for why you just shouldn’t make them, because they’re just not funny.
I suggest going over to read [...]

3: 10% of Young Women’s First Intercourse Was Involuntary

A brand new study on sex education (or a current lack of it) out of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals an incredibly disturbing but not particularly surprising new number. Almost 10% of young women aged 18 to 24 reported that their first intercourse was involuntary.
This number matters a great deal, for [...]

2: Rape on College Campuses

The work that SAFER does is particularly important because, while rape can be committed against anyone, anywhere, at anytime, college women are particularly likely to be assaulted (pdf). Estimates say that 1 in 4 women have been raped since the age of 14, and rapists assault women aged 16 to 24, years which encompass those [...]

1: Why SAFER?

It seems most appropriate to begin this long journey by asking the question of why I’m doing it. Why spend my usually lazy Saturday blogging in enormous quantities and denying myself sleep instead of going through my blog reader and posting Beatles pictures on Tumblr? I’m doing it for SAFER.
As you likely know by now, [...]

The Curvature

2009 BLOGATHON