Entries Tagged 'Victims & Dangers' ↓

I’ve noticed a trend in literature in the last few years: gratuitous rape scenes. Specifically gratuitous anal rape combined with demented torture.

I find this trend disturbing and I’ve boycotted the authors.

Not a sort of “I hate you now and I’ll never read you again,” boycott.

More of a “I don’t trust you now and I don’t want your demented images floating around in my head,” boycott.

The latest was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  I could have done without the very graphic descriptions of torture, the very demented mix of sexuality and violence.

It’s not only in the fiction of male authors. It seems female authors are going for the emotional jugular and shock value as well. Specifically I’ll mention Kira Silak’s The White Mary and one of Janet Evonovich’s numbered novels. Both had incredibly horrific imagery of vaginal mutilation and anal rape.

I’ve gotten to where I don’t read much of the thriller mystery genre anymore.

It’s particularly disturbing when the author feels it necessary to graphically describe the rape, anal rape and torture of his or her own protagonist. Often times by someone they love or have a relationship with. Then the protagonist will spend maybe a day or a few hours washing herself off and going about her business, as if this is just what women should expect of the world and the men they are involved with.

There is a disturbing underlying emotion of hatred of female sexuality, a hatred of females in and of themselves, an objectification that goes beyond a one-night-stand-use-them-for-pleasure into women-are-disposable ideology. It’s an absurd notion that the witnessing of such horrific deeds – fiction or otherwise – passes for harmless entertainment in the plots of the stories.

It makes me wonder several disturbing things like:

How many men are jacking off to these images and creating an attraction to the mingling of misogyny, a fear and loathing of normal female sexuality and taking an an erotic pleasure in climaxing at the moment of a woman’s mutilation and even her naked death?

It also makes me wonder about the female audience. Why are we passively consuming graphic descriptions of rape, violence and torture of women in mass quantities of mainstream literature, music, television, movies and online porn and not offended by it?

I think there’s something wrong with both the men and women who are not offended. Mass desensitization to sexually violent misogyny can’t bode well for us.

It’s a form of vicarious rape of the masses of femininity.  I don’t know whether its intent, in all cases, is to “keep women in their place” making sure that they’re aware of and just a little frightened about their physical vulnerability in this world – but I do think that’s the effect of it.

For more on this theory check out Misogynistic Violence for Breakfast where I discuss the sexuality violent graphic nature of commercials during family programming time.

My husband was just informed by a police officer that he would call child protective services on us. He gave us a warning, this time.

Our crime?

We let him ride his bike outside in front of our house. In a residential neighborhood with dead-end streets.

Is it actually illegal to let a kid ride their bike outside?

I doubt it.

In the meantime, we live in a town with 60% fat kids. It appears that endangering a child’s life by sitting them in front of the TV with a bag of Sonic everyday is not considered child endangerment, though exercise  and play is.

Never mind that this same officer likely rode his bike all freaking day long when he was growing up, and relished in the freedom and fun of it. Probably on this same street.

Back to the TV for you kid. It’s “safer.”

Visit Free Range Kids.

image from iamway2fat.

Mike Males and Chelsea Lynd have written a piece in The New York Times Op-Ed section, The Myth of Mean Girls which has brilliant news for parents of girls.

Girls are being bullied. But not by each other. Not by boys. Those numbers are down drastically. Those numbers are down, down, down to the lowest point since the 1960s. Girls are being bullied buy the 24 hour news cycle and middle-aged do-gooders (like myself) who focus on, and raise alarms, about isolated instances of cyber-bullying and mean girl behavior that randomly and rarely gets out of hand.

I would write more about this, but I haven’t figured out how to highlight an entire sentence on my new Macbook. So, if you’ll just go up there and click on the word “The” you can read the piece yourself.

OR you can just sit peacefully with the new and radically awesome idea that your girls is probably safe, probably not going to be raped, beaten, kidnapped, or robbed. And that it’s unlikely she will bully, beat, or emotionally torture others to death either.

That’s great news. Sit with it until it sinks into your cells and it dissolves the old, outdated, media-induced fear.

It’s a freaking great time to be a girl.

There’s an atrocious story in The Economist about how the worldwide gendercide rate is rising at an alarming rate.

I’ll give you one guess which gender suffers from mass-extermination.

In some areas there are 130 baby boys to 100 baby girls being born. The culprit? Utrasounds and abortions have given parents the technology to choose whether they have a valuable boy or an expensive girl. Culture and tradition still hold that boys are better. Some laws, as in China, prohibit large families (you can’t waste your one allotted child on a girl). Economic suppression of women around the world hold that men are more valuable as bread-winners (because women are restricted from the earning of bread) and as retirement security for their parents. Boys are valuable, girls are costly.

Why should you care?

China alone stands to have as many unmarried young men—“bare branches”, as they are known—as the entire population of young men in America. In any country rootless young males spell trouble; in Asian societies, where marriage and children are the recognized routes into society, single men are almost like outlaws. Crime rates, bride trafficking, sexual violence, even female suicide rates are all rising and will rise further as the lopsided generations reach their maturity,” the article states.

In 1990 it was estimated that over 100 million girls are dead. The toll is millions higher now.

Only one country has managed to change this pattern. In the 1990s South Korea had a sex ratio almost as skewed as China’s. Now, it is heading towards normality. It has achieved this not deliberately, but because the culture changed. Female education, anti-discrimination suits and equal-rights rulings made son preference seem old-fashioned and unnecessary. The forces of modernity first exacerbated prejudice—then overwhelmed it, states the article.

Think about the 100 million dead baby girls next time you hear Glenn Beck promise that equality and the pursuit of equal and economic justice will cost you your “freedom.”

Equality is a matter of International Security. Make no mistake about it. A world ruled by single men will self-destruct in a violent ball of testosterone-fueled fury, led by the same power-crazed idiots that were deluded enough to call discrimination “freedom.”

Go read the full story in The Economist.

Statistics from Respect RX:

• 1 in every 2 females worldwide has been abused during her lifetime.
• 50% of teens in serious relationships say they’ve gone against their beliefs to please their partner, including going further sexually than they wanted.
• 1 in 5 teens who’ve been in a serious relationship report being hit, slapped or pushed by a partner.
• 3 out of 10 teen girls become pregnant.
• 1 in 3 students drop out of high school.
• 4 in 10 teen boys have a criminal record.

Simply unacceptable. Don’t accept it. Change it.

Respect RX coaches teen girls and guys, adults and advocates to boost self-respect, relationship respect and respect for all.

Teen leaders, parents, church leaders, and schools can order a new Respect RX Kit for $225.

What you get is a fully design 6 to 18 week program (adjustable) which teaches teens to:

• use the Respect Basics to build self-respect and make healthy choices
• value themselves
• follow their passions
• set boundaries and speak up
• listen to their gut and compassionately listen to others
• create relationships based on mutual respect
• get help dealing with disrespect dilemmas, such as peer pressure, dating and domestic violence, bullying, negative body image, the “-isms” and other tough issues
• lead social change to create a better world where all people are respected

After completing just four sessions of our program, teens report notable outcomes:

• 98% of 500 teens surveyed understood the difference between respect and disrespect (up from 51% prior to the program)
• 90% of teens respected each other as equals (up from 65%)
• 82% felt equipped to make positive choices and act as role models (up from 42%)
• 94% said they feel more comfortable setting boundaries and speaking up (up from 70%)
• 81% said they will get help when they were disrespected or to achieve their goals (up from 42%)

Order your Respect RX Kit here.