Posts by Emma Hart
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Speaker: Not even a statistic, in reply to Daniel Wilton,
I will be honest; I don’t fully understand the definition of rape culture. From little I understand is that it isn’t just a culture perpetuated by men.
One of the most useful phrases I’ve run across to describe it is “You’re soaking in it.” It’s such a pervasive and omnipresent thing that it’s very easy to not see it until people start pointing it out. And women are soaking in it just as much as men are.
These myths about what “real” rape looks like, and how “real” rape victims would behave also get inside the heads of women. Women will deny their own rapes, if they sufficiently deviate from that picture.
There’s also an element of buying into magic thinking: if I don’t dress like that, if I don’t walk down dark streets by myself, if I hold my car keys a certain way, that will somehow ensure that I don’t get raped. And if that other woman didn’t do that, if she didn’t perform the right rituals, then it must be partially her fault. To admit that it’s not her fault, that there’s nothing you can do, is to admit that you can’t protect yourself, and that’s terrifying.
-
Speaker: Not even a statistic, in reply to BenWilson,
I understand. What would you advise?
Things that are entirely focused on her. Counselling, absolutely. Her home being a safe place, where she could talk about it, or not talk about it and watch a bajillion episodes of Castle instead.
If, for her recovery, it was important to her to lay a complaint, we'd do that, but with a firm grasp of the realities that most complaints don't go to trial, and of those that do, the conviction rate is 13%. And absolutely not "If you don't lay a complaint, he'll do it again," which is "If he rapes somebody else, and he probably will, it's your fault." I have seen people do this with the absolute best of intentions, and Please Stop.
-
What I see reassures me that letting a rapist escape charges was the best thing for me.
This. This was also the decision I made, again on multiple occasions, that I would be putting myself through hell for absolutely nothing. And would I advise my daughter to lay a rape complaint with police, no matter what the circumstances? No. I would not, and it breaks my heart to say that.
(I will happily cover moderation on this thread for Russell while he's out, and I will have a very low Bullshit Threshold for it.)
-
Hard News: Hope and Wire, in reply to ,
That sort of clears that up. But wow, I did not realize you had that world view.
Think of the greatest trauma you have experienced. Think of people who have experienced similar things, and people who haven’t. The common experience binds us together in a way, and sets us apart from people who haven’t, no matter how good their intentions or how strong their empathy and their attempts to understand. It’s not something we chose, or something we cling to, it’s just the way things are.
-
Hard News: Hope and Wire, in reply to Sacha,
both the writers are from Wellington.
I was extending the existing metaphor. From outside, for outside.
-
I expected Hope and Wire to be a tough watch, but the reason I turned it off after 45 minutes wasn't any of the things I'd expected. I quit out because it was bad. Charicatures, cliches, terrible stilted dialogue. The precise moment I switched off was the use of the phrase "mega munted". Wrong, just so wrong.
I'm hearing now that when they got on to the February quake it got better, but also that people have really struggled with seeing themselves in the stock footage, which I think really highlights to inevitable problems with co-option when you bring in someone from the outside to tell our stories. And if people from Chch are saying, as some were last night, "this is not our experience", then what story is being told?
I'm not blaming Preston for any of that, and I'm aware of the battles she had to fight to get the city as much involved as it was, but I still don't think it was enough. It felt, to me, like a postcard to Auckland from Auckland.
I could have put up with the odd little jarring things - like the woman from Bexley having a go at the assessor for being from "out West" after the September quake when that split in the city didn't happen until February - if the writing and the characterisation had been better.
-
The last person to call me a neo-liberal - Gail Dines - has publicly stated that she's okay with some women being "thrown under the bus" for the Greater Good. Sex workers, trans women, kinky women, etc. I am absolutely not okay with that. You can call me a libertarian for that, but you might want to check that some of these big words mean what you think they mean first.
-
Up Front: Dropping the A-Bomb, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Oh and as for drumming up comments – I strongly suspect your more fun focussed postings generate vastly more comments :P.
Heh, I deliberately framed the argument so it focused on people, which eliminates people's favourite bullshit debate points, like arguing about whether it's Life or not, and what you're allowed to call it.
I haven't even had any hate mail. It's most peculiar.
-
Up Front: Dropping the A-Bomb, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
without anyone else getting audit privileges over her motives and character
We’ve been re-watching The West Wing over the last year or so. (It’s depressing how little has changed in everything but LGBT rights.) Abortion is a big issue in the last series. Santos has an argument with a Pro-Choice woman in which he says, “Do you support abortion to choose the sex of a child? Then you support limits on abortion.”
And this time around, I thought about it for a while. Whatever a woman’s reason for wanting a termination, if you refuse her access, you are forcing her to continue a pregnancy she doesn’t want. That’s a pretty terrible thing to do to someone, and then what does the future for that child look like?
In the end, for me, it has to come down to practicality. Back in 77, legislators deliberately chose to not include a rape exception, because they believed that if they did, women would lie about having been raped. Now they just lie about being crazy, which is actually better. If you have a list of proscribed reasons for abortion, women will lie to access it.
So yeah, let’s deal with these things with education, with changing social attitudes, outside of our abortion laws.
-
Up Front: Dropping the A-Bomb, in reply to B Jones,
Can we be a bit careful of language here?
With the proviso that a woman who has had a pregnancy terminate for whatever reason, gets to refer to that pregnancy using whatever fucking language she wants.