When women in sport report sexual abuse....

[QuentinSummers]

Larry Nassar case - I am horrified. Women reported his "treatment technique" involved his fingers in their vaginas - they were disbelieve and told they were confused about medical techniques vs abuse. Leaving him free to abuse hundreds of females.
www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/01/larry-nassar-and-the-impulse-to-doubt-female-pain/551198/

Yet this has really not been reported as I would expect for this kind of crime.

It sickens me that we have these recurrent cases of men having jobs specifically to abuse large numbers of women and girls, yet it's all hushed up and we can't talk about it, NAMALT.

At least the female judge on the case isn't taking that shit. She is a total shero
mobile.twitter.com/ellievhall/status/956222097612791809

It's not only a feature of serial sex offenders against children. Adult women are also disbelieved. Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, John Worboys ...
Yes quite pilar
Yet we aren't meant to join the dots, we are encouraged to see each of these events as unlinked. Despite the huge similarities in how the offenders acted.

The whole paragraph says There is no other sport in which this could have happened but gymnastics,” says Joan Ryan, whose 1995 book, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, about the physical and psychological toll gymnastics takes on girls and young women, is still regarded as one of the seminal books about the sport. “These girls are groomed from an incredibly young age to deny their own experience. Your knee hurts? You’re being lazy. You’re hungry? No, you’re fat and greedy. They are trained to doubt their own feelings, and that’s why this could happen to over 150 of them.”
I think this encouraging people to deny their experience is routine for females ("of course he isn't creepy, he'd be upset if he knew you thought that") and for people doing high levels of sport.
Maybe there is an argument to be made that there's an intersection of these two things in gym. But I think that discounts the bigger problem - that girls and women who are abused are routinely ignored, accused of lying or have their experience minimised.

Yes, what happened about Bill Cosby? That all went very quiet and he doesn't seem to have paid the price for his crimes.

Predators often aim to work around sports precisely because it's one of the best ways of getting access to kids, but I think that any sport that combines being trained to ignore as much pain as is the case in gymnastics with an emphasis on performative femininity is going to be particularly bad. Figure skating has a lot of the same issues. Doesn't mean you should never let your child do either, but watching them like a hawk is a good idea.

The fact that the university was apparently using this asshole as part of their recruiting, ie you should send your kid here because look at the superstar doctor we have, is particularly nauseating.

The silence around Bill Cosby is deafening. Zero accountability and it's disgusting he is getting away with it. Speaking to my friend in the music industry here in the US, it was a shock that Keisha didn't win vocal of the year for pray.

This case is so horrifying, it's hard to process. So glad that the survivors got their chance to speak.

Girls know, even at a young age, when men are trying to push boundaries, hence the concerted effort men have made to make women doubt themselves - and they've been very successful at it.

When my abuser offered to bathe me while he was bathing his daughter when I was about 6 I knew it was weird and creepy, and I objected. And yet my mother insisted - it was more important to her not to upset her nice male friend than it was not to upset me. And of course my abuser then knew that I wouldn't be protected, that my mother didn't have a clue - it was the green light for him.

That's what really fucks me off about the men whining about how the #metoo campaign and others are causing men to be afraid to approach women in case they clumsily say or do the wrong thing. The implication is that women not only should but must put up with creepy, boundary-crossing behaviour on the assumption that men mean well. FUCK THAT. It is not necessary for a man every to get in my space or say something weird and inappropriate to me - I never do that to men and I don't find it hard not to do it. It is so utterly pathetic for men to claim that they somehow can't help making women feel scared and uncomfortable while trying innocently to woo them. The fact that men, without an ounce of embarrassment or shame use it as an excuse, or even as a justification for creepy behaviour shows just how entitled they are - the message is essentially 'You have to allow me to hit on you no matter how awful it is for you, because the most important thing in the world is ME and your discomfort is just an inconvenience.'

Once again FUCK THAT.

There is another sentencing hearing next week. More victims have come forward to give victim impact statements.

There is a move to restrict victim impact statements only coming from those who are named as victims. For a case like this I'm very against victim statements being limited. I think it's very important the victims are all heard if they want to speak.