Thursday, May 24. 2007

Life during War-time

Photo: Azundris at War
"Heard of some gravesites, out by the highway
a place where nobody knows
The sound of gunfire, off in the distance
I'm getting used to it now
Lived in a brownstone, lived in the ghetto
I've lived all over this town"

Briliant summary of Melissa's posts. So next time some asswipe claims that men get the same kind of harassment online that women do, you know where to go for examples. But speaking of Melissa, and to get the obligatory modeling bit out of the way, see the brilliant rape's no compliment, a must-read treatise on wonky media-related sex phantasies:
Rape as a fetish is packaged and marketed to men and women as a steady stream of images which blur the lines between rape and the kind of passionate sex we’re all meant to want. Movies show us a man and woman fighting, then suddenly fucking. Two bodies slamming against a wall, or a wrought-iron fence, or a car hood, walking the line between sex and violence. Her head, pulled back by his hand pulling her hair. She tries to run, but he pulls her to him and she collides with him, sobbing yet horny (of course). … These scenes are decidedly different in tone from those that seek only to represent the desperate yearn and clamor of a passionate fuck, as fight-fucking is infused with a sense of both force and yielding, and suggestive that both are necessary components of any “real” fuck. It is within these scenes, where an attractive woman is overwhelmed either physically or pheromonally (or both) by a powerful man, that we begin to understand the unsettling association between ravishing (beautiful) and ravish (rape).
And while we're at it, let's earn this article a language tag as well, shall we?

If you're a man planning to read any of this, Ilyka may have a good introduction for you: Don't get all defensive; if you're not the problem, this isn't about you. This was not written with you as a primary audience in mind.

Also if you're a man, you may be under the assumption that I'm posting this because it was a particular shitstorm of a month in the girlzone and I've cracked. Nope. Sorry. Drop in any week of the year. When you're not looking, I blame the patriarchy. And dudes, that's the setup that disenfranchises you too.

Likewise, you may assume it's only in those silly Americas that people routinely make themselves look like woman-hating asswipes. Not so. Seriously, I commend you for not reading the Guardian on the grounds of being a zionist, but their assault-related articles really aren't so bad.

Photo: Azundris with pistol and helmetSo, you may wonder, if this isn't a particularly bad month, does that mean I'm upset all the time? Nope. Because I'm not upset now. I might have been ten years ago, but you learn to understand that none are as blind as those who will not see. You stop being surprised. But the beauty is, if something doesn't hurt you, you can defend those who would be with relatively little effort. It takes so little to say, Dude, we don't do that in this tribe. I'm not upset. I'm not hurt. But I'm wary. And it's not quite the same wary you may feel about the surveillance state. Semper paratus.
Posted by Azundris in English at 15:36 | Comments (18) | Trackback (1)
Defined tags for this entry: , , , , , ,
Related entries by tags:
20803 hits

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

Tatiana Azundris on : The Right to Rape

The [conviction rate of reported rapes] is just under 6%, down from 33% in 1977. Given that informed estimates suggest only a small proportion of victims report rape, should the conviction rate drop much lower, it really will be more than mere rhetoric to

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Azundris on :

*To clarify, this is a reaction to all sorts of gentle folk looking at the state of the union, seeing surveillance and the sky falling, awkwardly digging their toe into the dirt, and saying, "Goodness me, could it be that the patriarchy is evil?" Like, duh. Exploitation at eleven.

Azundris on :

*To further clarify, I'm not blaming anyone for being affected by the sex/violence mix of fight fucking -- we're conditioned to, after all, so it's hard not to, at least if it's done in moderation. I'm blaming people for not reflecting on it.

Azundris on :

*"moderation" as in, not "Mr + Mrs Smith" -- boy, was that some heavy-handed shit, or what?

Azundris on :

*"Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it?"
http://laurietobyedison.com/discuss/?p=389
Any old excuse to sneak in a Blade Runner quote, of course, but this is a good excuse at that.

Azundris on :

*As for the rape chic, I'm pretty sure I've linked the Dolce + Gabbana example before:
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/leben/artikel/432/104328/zoom_0_2/

Although I'm appalled at the thing, I'll admit that it's a minor relief it's from D+G, who I never liked anyway -- too much of their stuff is just too prole, or hooker-chic. And then, the RAZR. I wanted a new phone. Really did. I loved the RAZR but eventually everybody had one, so ... well, you get the picture. Now, a designer-version of the RAZR, that would be sweet -- upgrading to v3i, getting better tech, still the phone I love, but not the same everybody else had. I was desperate for something like that. It should have been perfect. But ... gold-plated? Like ... gold? That's the depth of your fashion genius? Dude, massive displays of that colour went out of style with Mr T! Like ... gold?? That's it? That's your entire idea? Damn you! And your little dog, too! So yeah. I get off cheap. Might have hurt me had it been Prada (or Miu Miu). Or Wolford, for that matter (although you could say they did get close by hiring Newton back when). But D+G? They had nothing for me, anyway.

Azundris on :

*"In der neuen Version haben Sie nun noch mehr Kontrolle �ber die Frauen"
http://www.chip.de/downloads/c1_downloads_15908338.html

cos, you know, dem bitches need to be controlled.

Ain't it a drag?

When your status partially depends on getting laid, but the key to that is in the hands of these unknowable, uncontrollable creatures? (And yeah, blame them, not the mates you wanna save face with, cos, you know, easier.)

When not only aren't they as demure as in porn (or stupid games like this), they're also not as hawt as in movies or magazines! How dare they! If they're less hawt, they should be less uppity, right? However do they find the nerve? To talk about male entitlement?

Serious, the 2D ones in the mags or the screen are so much better. 'cept that there's no conquest and hence no status, and no touching, because, you know, screen's in the way.

So, seriously, why does it have to be so hard? You're better than Hitler, aren't you, and even Hitler had a girl-friend. And they're not as hot as the girls in the dreams you're sold. Can't they put out already?

Azundris on :

*Because being a witness means telling what the judge would like to hear, rather than what happened. Newspeak, much?

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007/06/20/naming-2/

I don't believe in superlatives like "This is the most preposterous thing I ever heard", because people are incredibly resourceful when it comes to asinine things, but I'll go out on a limb here and say that this had me dumbfounded. (Saying that I think that this "comes pretty close" or "will be hard to top", while true, seems to invite disaster.)

Azundris on :

*And of course, if they don't like the way you model your pain on the judiciary catwalk, they'll sentence the rape victim rather than the rapists. Chilling effect, much?

http://feministing.com/archives/004748.html

Azundris on :

*Oh, and isn't it interesting how the "War on Terror" never seems to include those terrorists that bomb abortion clinics and shoot doctors? Ooooooh, and it makes me wonder ...
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007/05/15/christian-terror-a-ok/

Azundris on :

*"All of the following have been taken from the BBC News site in the month of June 2007."

One. Bloody. Month.

One.

http://resisterance.wordpress.com/2007/06/29/hello-world/

And what do they make a big stink about? Some idiot driving a car into an airport. (Note that it's not real news if it's a clinic: http://tinyurl.com/2sba4j )

Azundris on :

*Good writing there. Good point, too.
http://kateharding.net/2007/04/14/on

Azundris on :

*More to earn that language tag:
http://viv.id.au/blog/?p=497

How the erasure of the aggressor that so often goes along with the passive voice is really inappropriate when it comes to sexual violence. "A woman was raped" -- certainly something to get angry about. Angry at who though? Given that the only person in that story is the woman, victim-blaming seems inevitable.
If a man raped a woman, say "*a man* raped a woman."

Azundris on :

*� Some women who report rape risk heavy penalties in the civil courts. Lucy Green is one of a number of women sued for slander in the past decade after the men they accused were either not charged or acquitted in court. [�] The jury was divided and gave a hung verdict. "If he had won I would have been forced to make a public apology and pay him money for raping me." �

� Although the top payout for rape at the time was �7,500, (recently raised to �11,000), far bigger sums have been awarded to men who said they were falsely accused. Being accused of rape is seen as more serious and damaging than being raped, and yet research shows that levels of post- traumatic stress disorder is higher amongst rape victims than war veterans. �

� 'I coped with being raped," says Jane Lewis, who was attacked by a man two years ago at the party where they met, "but I went mad when he was acquitted. That is when I started fantasising about killing him." She later discovered that he had been accused of rape four times previously: twice not charged, and twice acquitted by a jury. �

� Today, rape might as well be legal. [The] conviction rate for reported rapes is as high as the current figure of 5%. Rape is an everyday occurrence. Research published yesterday by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Home Office Inspectorates estimates that of the 50,000 rapes thought to occur each year, between 75% and 95% are never reported. And almost a third of reported cases recorded by police as "no crime" should have been properly investigated as rape. If a man commits a rape, then he has, on average, a less than 1% chance of being convicted. �

http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,,2003228,00.html

Azundris on :

*http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/10/postcode-lottery-rape-convictions

Azundris on :

*http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-congo-women.html

Azundris on :

*"There�s gotta be at least one guy on every goddamned rape thread who compares women�s bodies with $100 bills!!!"
http://shakesville.wordpress.com/2007/06/08/rape-is-hilarious-put-to-music-edition/
QFT

Azundris on :

*Read this. Please. No, really. Read this.
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2007/01/take-my-cunt-please.html

Azundris on :

*�Consumerism also perpetuates the feeling that one's personal wants are equally or more important than the well-being and needs of others. This is [�] how men can tolerate their own exploitation of women via porn and prostitution.
Bottom line: consumerism places wants above ethics.�
Charmeleon in http://easypersiflage.com/blameforum/index.php?topic=2356.msg35314#msg35314

Add Comment
HTML-Tags will be converted to Entities.
Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Gravatar, Pavatar, Favatar, MyBlogLog, Twitter author images supported.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA
©2003-2014 by Azundris