Rape culture in action. Massive Trigger Warning

[scallopsrgreat]

Warning: There is a brutal rape described in the opening paragraphs. So please self-care.

The article is from RollingStone and is about the systematic erasure and cover-up of womens rape and sexual assault experiences at the University of Virginia. It is quite long but also very detailed.

From 'friends' to officials these women are encouraged to forget. They are paralysed by lack of information, informed choices and support even from those who are seemingly trying to help.

The article really doesn't pull any punches and describes really well how women's experiences are minimised. It also shows how rapists aren't monsters. They live and function (sometimes even heroically) in the community. It shows how they do plan their rapes (sometimes quite chillingly). How they feel entitled to rape these women and how they don't see it as a big deal. They don't expect to get caught. They may not even see it as rape or simply just don't care.

Just in case anyone thinks women aren't oppressed. Or feminism has gone too far. Or rape culture doesn't exist.

It's so frightening.

I also think it should be highlighted and the University of Virginia named. Because they have gone to great lengths to silence the voices of these women over decades.

Ah, no eggs left, I finished them
For tea!

Ahem

I do like smoked salmon and scrambled eggs.

Yum!

And Jackie didn't go to RS, they found her. She also asked for the story not to be published. Potentially because she'd seen what rape apologists do. By the bye, ol Chuckie still hasn't apologised properly for outing the wrong woman. But yeah, it's feminists who are all mean and shit.

So it would appear.

Night!

I feel like I'm going to puke.

Looking at my daughter. My son.

Why so many deleted posts, do mumsnet delete every opinion that isn't a feminist one?

What the hell is going on with this thread? Why are there all these jokes about food on a thread about rape? I have been following the UVA situation closely, especially since I have associations there. It is hard for me to describe just how much the events in Charlottesville have upset and worried me.

It seems that there was a troll here, but why did the thread have to descend into these jokey comments?

Hi Liberal

There were several pages of serious discussion and then the first troll,who appeared at around the same time on several FWR threads, got into some very unpleasant victim blaming and personal attacks. No disrespect was intended to the UVA victim and I'm very sorry it came across that way.

Again, apologies, but it was in no way meant to be disrespectful to anyone affected by the rape culture on US Campus's. A large number of trolls were about last evening on this board, and one of the ways we have found works well when dealing with trolls as revolting as these is to start discussing something unrelated.

Another troll, I see.

I don't particularly want to discuss men's problems on a feminist forum, Justic. We invariably end up doing so anyway because obviously we forget that the world revolves around men and their needs and we need to be reminded.

There you go. You can go and tell your mates what meanies we are.

You can tell it's the school holidays.

To those responding to my post, thank you.

I did find the food discussion, and especially its jokey tone, very jarring. Even though I spend a lot of my MN time reading FWR threads and have thus seen some horrible trolling, including the posting of images of violence against women, I had not encountered this particular technique for dealing with trolls. It really did come across to me as trivializing a very serious matter. When the subject matter is violence against women, reporting and getting deletions might be a better way to go.

Liberal, another thing is that the troll bumped this after a two week gap - most of the food discussion was between posters who had already read the thread previously so weren't jumping from one to the other like you did

I did not suggest ignoring anything, ostentatious or otherwise.

Sorry, I misunderstood you.

But now that I think more about it, actually the ostentatiousness of it was a large part of the problem for me. I do understand your reasons for dealing with the troll that way. But I think that it is inappropriate to move a thread about rape into a jocular vein.

I think it's the CE news re Hartlepool. Seems to be the current subject that causes a resurgence in our friendly visitors - any development gets their little Google alerts spidey senses tingling and they come and see what MN threads they can drag up

Awful awful story. It does happen here though, and go unreported.
For me, it was squaddies. Stick a group of men together in a 'manly' environment, and its almost inevitable.