challenging institutional disbelief around domestic & sexual violence and abuse
I’m furious. I am angry for everyone who has been raped, sexually assaulted, bullied, drugged, harassed, exposed, shamed and vilified because someone with POWER decided they were an object to be taken advantage of, something less than human, something to be used and discarded. Far too often, I feel a stab of pain when a […]
A piece by Victoria Coren in today’s Guardian claims to be a call for balanced debate on the complexities surrounding Roman Polanski’s rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977. It is not: is, in fact, both rape apology and a further erasure of a victim who has spent much of her life asking to be […]
Dear Victoria, This morning an article written by yourself was published under the headline “Roman Polanski and the sin of simplification”. I am slightly confused as to the audience and purpose of your article. You see, as a teacher, I ask my students to identify the audience and purpose of a piece of writing in […]
Victoria Coren argues for nuance as if we don’t understand that rapists can be perfectly ordinary men. Rapists laugh with their children, create beautiful art, they’re philosophers, economists, binmen, in short they are people with nuance. We understand this. Victoria Coren argues that S takes responsibility for drinking and being in a situation where Polanski […]
Having followed @EVB_Now since their beginnings on twitter, I was so delighted that they were doing workshops at Nottingham’s women’s conference. The workshop leader – Jo – was clearly very knowledgeable and presented an overview of the campaign in a way that was both inspiring and informative. It was clear from the fact that there […]
Today I read a blog post by John Fleming – you can find it here. It’s titled Feminist female comedians agree there are different types of rape in Edinburgh and the interview, albeit an extract in this blog, was with; Kate Copstick, Laura Levites and Lynn Ruth Miller. I am writing in response to the post/interview because I […]
“Anyone making any sort of claim (need not be criminal) has the burden of proof. That’s Philosophy 101.” So went the crushing, irrefutable logic of some dude’s argument on the internet, that legitimate arbiter of things judicial, with regard to the demonstrable guilt of Michael Le Vell’s accuser. Her crime? Lying about rape. How do […]
We’ve had a comment which has failed moderation – however, it contains numerous myths that need to be addressed, so we are publishing it here. The name of the commenter has been withheld. There is nothing I hate more than the feminists who promote the idea that if a woman does anything to be proactive […]
On Thursday I spoke to Caroline Criado-Perez about the possibility that no-one would be prosecuted for abusing her on Twitter. It was tempting to blame that result on sheer police incompetence. Tempting. But reading between the lines of yet another chapter in the book of “You-couldn’t-make-it-up”, a colder harsher possibility began to emerge. That when […]
The other day I got caught up in this discussion with a man about rape and responsibility and it was very much like this and this so I won’t go into the specifics of our tedious conversation but I will say something about where we left off, which was around the time when he asked […]