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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in sexual assault

 END SEXUAL VIOLENCE – WE WILL NOT BE SILENT

 As we begin Pride Month...

 

Hey Smartwater™: your recent “stunt double” ad is seriously f*cked -up.

 

Dramatis Personae:

Actor, sitting next to

Stunt Double: Clothes and hair like actor's, but actor is plain and short; stunt double is tall and handsome.

Doctor

 

Set:

Medical Clinic, Waiting Room

 

Actor: I'm smart. I let my stunt double do the dangerous stuff.

(Actor and stunt double take simultaneous swigs of Smartwater.)

Doctor: (Approaches from behind.) Mr. ___?

(Doctor flourishes clamp of the type used to castrate male animals. Close-up of clamp.)

(Stunt double looks dubious, but gets up and follows doctor.)

Actor: (Calls out to doctor, not looking) Do we get a lollipop after?

 

Well, ha-dee ha ha.

I'll leave aside the numerous examples of stereotyping going on in this ad.

(The castrating doctor is a woman. She's also Asian. The good-looking guy is dumb....I could go on.)

Surely we can all agree that sexual violence against women is intolerable, not to mention unsuitable for an ad meant to sell a product. How, then, is sexual violence against men any different?

On top of which, we're supposed to find sexual violence against a man's body funny? He's cute and dumb; therefore, he deserves it?

As we all know, men never experience sexual violence. Therefore, it's OK to laugh about, right?

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Considering--as a friend and colleague recently pointed out to me--how much "recyclable" plastic never gets recycled (Gods help us
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I recently saw that add for the first time. Good to know I'm not the only one offended by it. Wasn't planning to buy Smartwater

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Snake Rots from the Head

My “crime” was walking while gay.

The car slowed as it drove past. Two guys leaned out of the windows, wolf-whistled, and shouted out sexual comments in my direction.

They were clearly not gay. This was not real desire, however swinishly expressed.

No, their intent was to humiliate.

Because, of course, the worst thing that you can possibly do to another man is to treat him like you would treat a woman.

Gods, I thought. So this is what women put up with.

That abuse of power and concomitant sexual harassment are societally endemic should surprise no one.

Media moguls, executives, and legislators are (finally) getting some well-earned comeuppance. Calls for the resignation of abusers are, at long last, being heard from every quarter.

I say, let's start from the top: with the Abuser-in-Chief and the Chief Justice Abuser.

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Recent comment in this post - Show all comments
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I was reading as much as I could of Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" and it seems that this sort of abuse h
Tarot and #MeToo: Healing with the Cards

Today I have a deep (and for some, triggering) message about tarot magick, inspired by the #MeToo conversation.

This hashtag points out the number of people, both female and male, who have been sexually assaulted, abused and harassed.

...
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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • The Cunning Wīfe
    The Cunning Wīfe says #
    Thank you for this! These are great ideas, and I've been looking for ways to use tarot for more than divination.
  • Christiana Gaudet
    Christiana Gaudet says #
    Thank you so much for reading and commenting. Yes, tarot has many uses - for inspiration, magick, healing and more! Very often, i
Pagan News Beagle: Fiery Tuesday, March 8

What does the government's order of Apple in the San Bernardino case entail? The authoritarian histories of East Asia are reviewed. And we discuss the importance of standing up to our culture's skepticism towards rape claims. It's Fiery Tuesday, our weekly segment on political and societal news from around the world. All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

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Pagan News Beagle: Fiery Tuesday, December 8

Feminists stand up for women's rights. Floods swamp India. And the issue of gun rights is tackled by a Pagan blogger. It's Fiery Tuesday, our weekly segment on societal and political news from around the globe. All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs

Continuing my story of my personal journey on my heathen path, when I was studying at the University of Kalinin (now Tver), USSR, I experienced the berserker trance during a street fight, although I had not yet begun studying the martial art of Bersarkrgangr. This was one of the events in my life that qualified me to study it. 

Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault

It was broad daylight, and I and another American were walking to the post office. Tale of the tape: I was 5'3" and weighed about 117 lbs. My opponent, whom I only saw briefly before going into a berserker trance but whom I will never forget, was about 5'10" and about 170 lbs. 

A quote from my memoir, Greater Than the Sum of My Parts:

     “The crowd pressed in on all sides, so I had no warning alarms go off in my mind when a man came very close.  He grabbed me by the left breast.

     Light.

     A flash of light, and nothing else.  No sound, no sensation.  Bright white light.

     I was inside the post office.  I was standing in the lobby, busy people flowing all around me.  I stood staring at a police officer sitting on his stool.”   

I still have a total blank where any memory of what I did would be, but I guessed that I had run away. I may or may not have punched or kicked him or did any other martial arts moves, but I had to have run off because I was out of breath and a block away when I came to awareness again, with a wave of berserker fury crashing over me. It bothered me that I had run. I had this self image as this badass kung fu fighter, and the berserker in me ran away.

I only considered reporting the incident to the policeman for about a second. This was a Soviet militiaman, there to guard the post office in the midst of the anarchy of what was obvious even then was about to be the fall of the Soviet Union.  This was a city where the black market traded openly in the daytime and street gangs ruled the night, zipping along on their motorcycles with AK-47s they had bought from corrupt soldiers who were trading them for food because the army’s pay was worthless in the middle of a currency collapse. I had already witnessed numerous assaults on the street and knew that street crime might as well be the weather for all the attention it was going to receive. Plus, I was an American, and was not someone they would automatically protect. So I just went about my business.

Later, this was one of the life experiences that the teacher of the martial art of the berserkers considered one of my qualifications to learn Bersarkrgangr. Bersarkrgangr was a traditional martial art of the heathen culture, and still is, although it has undoubtedly changed over time. Learning it was one of the major experiences of my life, and this street incident was one of the things that led to my learning it, so although I started having flashbacks to the childhood sexual abuse after that incident, on the whole I actually have to say it was a positive turning point, although it certainly didn’t feel like it at the time. From the perspective of 25 years later, I look back and think, four things happened after my dedication to Freya that felt very dark when I was going through them, but which I see now shaped me into the person she wanted me to be.

The first person I ever really talked about this incident with was the Bersarkrgangr teacher, several years later. I expressed my embarrassment at having run away, but he relieved my guilt about that. He said, "Erin, you won that fight. When I was in Vietnam, I sometimes went on scouting missions. We weren't supposed to engage the enemy, just go out, look, and report back. If they came too close, I hid. (He told a story about climbing a tree and pretending to be a bird while the enemy passed beneath him.) It's not cowardice. It's completing the mission. You weren't there to fight anybody. Your mission was to go mail a package at the post office. You used only the amount of force necessary to disengage, escaped unscathed, retreated, and accomplished your mission. That's what warriors do." 

I've written a paper about Bersarkrgangr, which is available free here: https://www.academia.edu/8013139/Bersarkrgangr_The_Viking_Martial_Art

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