Thursday Thoughts - And what's the future, who will choose it? Politics of love and music

Basking in the sun when it's out. Looking good this week, Philly.

Sharing as I always do that April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The statistics are shocking. If you have been sexually assaulted,  you can call 1-800-656-HOPE to be connected with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area. It is confidential and free, they don't even get your complete phone number when you are routed in. Visit RAINN to learn more. I believe you, I support you, I respect your privacy, and it is not your fault.

Winning shit. I won a produce box from Mischief Markets (thanks Kelly for sharing about them) and a $50 gift card to Saxby's in an Instagram giveaway. Holler.

Making shore chore lists. I'm hoping to finish redoing the bathroom vanity this weekend and get some spray painting done as well. A lot of what I'm doing this year is cosmetic upgrades. For a vacation rental, you have to keep it fresh and then update your photos or people get bored and continue to pass by your listing.

Applauding the first black woman mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot. Lightfoot is a lesbian, as is Madison, WI’s new mayor Satya Rodews-Conway, that city’s second female mayor and first openly LGBTQ mayor. It’s nice to see all the first female/native/black/gay/transgender/Muslim/etc getting elected over the past few years. It’s about damn time and thank you, I will keep mentioning the firsts because it’s been mostly white men in positions like these for so long the change is exciting and overdue. Representation matters. 

Cooking air fryer stuff. Chicken tenderloins seasoned with Penzey's Northwoods seasoning. 10 minutes and they're perfect. I have yet to make anything with any breading on it to imitate actual fried things, but all in due time. I also found this handy time sheet.

Laughing at this, spotted in South Philly. 

Keeping up with the 40/40: 40 minutes of exercise a day for 40 days during lent, which basically comes to a day off a week. Most of mine is walking with light weights. I am not a person who loves dedicated exercise. Let me run around with the dogs on the beach for an hour and I'm happy. If I'm moving consistently, feeling strong, have energy, and am doing enough arm weights so I can lift myself off the toilet at 80, I'm good with it. 

Marveling at the destruction of Bruce and Bender, and also at how cute they are together.

Listening to Are You Out There by Dar Williams - what comes after the hyphen in the Thursday Thoughts title is always a lyric from a song that was on when I started the post

Reading: library books and ignoring my Netgalley advance copies. Show Us Your Books is Tuesday. Philly friends, new spaces are opening in the main branch of the library soon.

Reminding you:

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Ecards

What's new with you?

Linking up with Kristen

Rape Culture: Know what it is and end your contributions to it

Since April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I kicked it off with some upsettling infographics and facts and I'm ending it with a post on rape culture. I'd rather talk about something else too, believe me, because I am sick to fucking death of banging this drum, but I will keep going until the rape culture is smashed. We've got to stop this shit and unfortunately it will take every single one of us to do it. 

To start, we can stop acting like rape culture is a popular new buzz phrase bitchy feminists have come up with in the past few years because they have no sense of humor. 

It's not. 

It's when sexual assault, rape, and general violence are ignored, trivialized, normalized, or made into jokes. If you think those things are a rarity or anything outrageous you hear about (Brock Turner) is a one-off or isolated situation, you're mistaken. And also fully immersed in rape culture. Because this shit happens every day and it has forever. Rape culture exists because we don't believe it does. 

And it's a very hard cycle to break from, even for women and feminists. We were raised in this culture. We've heard victim blaming on the news, read it in the papers and online. It's been around us since the beginning of time. We've said the things you should never say as an automatic reply to stories we hear. It's ingrained in us to not make a big deal out of things, to let it go, to look over our shoulders, to shrink in situations where we might be vulnerable, to think well why was she walking alone? 

On a very, very basic level:

What can you personally do to end rape culture? 

-Stop blaming the victim. It doesn't matter what she wore or how much she had to drink or where she chose to walk alone. She wasn't asking for it and she didn't deserve it. If the thought comes to mind, eradicate it. 

-Never, ever say well it wouldn't have happened if...

-Do not insult this issue with but what about women who cry rape. Seriously. Don't. For no other crime do we attempt to give the accused the benefit of the doubt. Imagine hearing well there are those kids who just say they were molested ...or I'm sure they didn't mean to break into your car, it was just a misunderstanding. Etc. 

-Cast off outdated ideas about sexuality. She wasn't asking for it because she's a person who's had sex. Stop calling women who have sex sluts and whores because they do it and like it when it's consensual. 

-Know women are full human beings with the right to bodily autonomy. 

-Recognize that most rape talk centers around female victims but that there are male and LGBTQIA victims as well and that if women are afraid to step forward as victims, those groups are even more so. 

-Don't laugh at rape jokes. 

-Teach your daughter to take up more room, not less, and that if anything ever happens she should come to you because you will believe her and fight for her. Find a self defense class but at the same time try not to be so heavy on the protect yourself message even though that goes against everything we as women know. It is every individual's job to protect themselves but girls should not have to be MORE careful than boys. 

-Teach your sons not to rape. Boys will be boys does not apply here. 

-Teach all kids about enthusiastic consent - it's not just about a no. It's about a conscious, enthusiastic yes. Flirting is not consent. 

-Speak up. Rape culture grows in silence. I've been on the end of you're too sensitive/it's a fucking joke when I've spoken up about rape jokes and that feeling sucks, for sure. But not saying anything and giving something pervasive, damaging, and ugly room to grow feels even worse. 

Reductress viciously satirizing rape culture to show how fucking insane it is:

Man Who Sexually Assaulted You Likes Your Facebook Post About Assault

'Most Women Lie About Rape,' Says Man Lying About Rape

Fun Summer Cocktails When They Ask You 'Well, What Were You Drinking?'

Which is what we all need to do: turn rape culture on its head and kick it in the ass on its way out the door. It's way past time. 

National Sexual Assault Hotline, accessible 24/7 via 1-800-656-HOPE or online.rainn.org. 

Sexual Assault Awareness - Do we need a month for this?

I guess we do since scum sucking hell dwelling rapists linger among us. 

The awareness month is April. It's now.

But I'd argue every month is the month to be aware. 

Living in the United States, it seems like violence against women and girls should be something we only hear about in third world countries that exist under oppressive anti-women regimes. But it's not. It's here. In our schools and offices, in our churches and community centers, on our streets and in our parking lots. In our homes. It's been proven again and again that there is no place that's safe for all women and girls. 

I find it so weird that people were all up in arms about people who identify as women using women's rooms, saying it opened the door for men to just dress as women and prey on us in there. Now, why would they do that? They don't need to dress as women to prey on us in the bathroom. They dress as themselves and prey on us in mall parking lots, along streets on the way home from work, in church basements, in college party houses, behind dumpsters, under trees in our own backyard. You want the bathroom to be safe but you're not concerned about our safety anywhere else? I call fucking bullshit on that. Rapists wear their daily uniform when they attack wherever they want and no one gives a good fuck about that. Not to mention, the majority of rapists are not strangers. Leave the goddamn trans people alone. Not only are trans people not interested in assaulting women and little girls, they are victims too: 21% of TGQN (transgender, genderqueer, nonconforming) college students have been sexually assaulted, compared to 18% of non-TGQN females, and 4% of non-TGQN males. 

Then there's this. We have people sitting in jail for having an ounce of weed while rapists walk among us and sit in class next to us and ride our trains. 

Sometimes they're sitting even closer than that. 

All infographics from RAINN, our largest anti-sexual violence organization. They work to help survivors, educate the public, and improve public policy. 

They also operate the National Sexual Assault Hotline, accessible 24/7 via 1-800-656-HOPE or online.rainn.org. 

These graphics are not comfortable for me to look at. I think they're important to share. We'd like to think we've come so far, but we haven't. Brock Turner the rapist is free, and famous for it. We need a culture shift, and that is everyone's responsibility, regardless of what private parts you have. 

Thursday Thoughts: Burn it Down

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This week I've been consumed by liquid hot magma rage running through my vital organs, destroying everything in its path. Hearing that convicted rapist Brock Allen Turner was sentenced to six months in county jail for raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster is something I still have not come to terms with, and I'm someone on the other side of the country not involved. I cannot imagine how his victim feels about that sentence. If you guys are not familiar with this, I'm going to need you to click the links throughout.

In between building a towering inferno of rage inside of me so solid I could practically touch it, I cried reading his 23 year old victim's letter that she read directly to her rapist in open court. I got chills reading her last paragraph:
And finally, to girls everywhere, I am with you. On nights when you feel alone, I am with you. When people doubt you or dismiss you, I am with you. I fought everyday for you. So never stop fighting, I believe you. As the author Anne Lamott once wrote, “Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.” Although I can’t save every boat, I hope that by speaking today, you absorbed a small amount of light, a small knowing that you can’t be silenced, a small satisfaction that justice was served, a small assurance that we are getting somewhere, and a big, big knowing that you are important, unquestionably, you are untouchable, you are beautiful, you are to be valued, respected, undeniably, every minute of every day, you are powerful and nobody can take that away from you. To girls everywhere, I am with you. Thank you.

Fierce. Warrior.

It is some motherfucking bullshit that a woman has to jump through 2309480239840 hoops to get a rapist convicted, enduring questions on the stand about what she ate that night, what she drank, what she wore, if she flirted, as if ANY of those things were the cause of her being raped. BULLSHIT!

Via Buzzfeed

You know what caused her to be raped? Her rapist. That's it. Him and HIS actions and HIS choices. Nothing she did or didn't do.

While she has to endure this fucking bullshit of a personal attack on the stand after she has actually been attacked and assaulted in ways she will never recover from, all we hear about this fine upstanding young man is that he's a good athlete who's never raped anyone before. Guess what?  It doesn't matter how promising of a future he had. It doesn't matter how fast his swim times are. It doesn't matter that he's never done this before. What matters is that he raped this woman. This woman, this circumstance. He is a rapist.

After his victim had the courage to read a 12 page letter directly to him in court, Judge Aaron Persky, who is apparently a soulless bastard who maybe wasn't listening to this woman, gave Turner six months in county jail so the punishment doesn't have too severe of an impact on him. He gives a slap on the wrist to a guy who was found raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, tackled off of her by two passerby (who cried over what they saw), and unanimously convicted by a jury of his peers. Really? Really. This is straight up privileged patriarchal bullshit and I'm fucking done. Fuck the patriarchy. The judge is an old boy from Stanford, and he's up for re-election, unopposed. Click here to sign a petition to have his ass recalled.

But Judge P wasn't the only one stumping for poor wittle Bwock. Daddy wrote a letter too, in which he wah wah'ed about his golden son no longer eating his favorite snick snacks and how "20 minutes of action" (that is actually what he called the rape, no shit) ruined 20 years of his son being awesome. It sounds to me like Daddy had some take what he wants without regard for the personal autonomy or safety of others and then engage in victim-blaming of his own back in the day. These animals are trying to make this about binge drinking and promiscuity. It's not about anything other than rape, you entitled pricks.

Which, by the way, media...you...you are also complicit in this anti-victim anti-woman stage show. At the end of every article about this rapist you list his swim stats and mention his Olympic aspirations and show pictures of him smiling from the yearbook and not his rapist mugshot (well, they did...many have been updated with the mugshot after too many war cries). I'm looking at you, Washington Post. The way we talk about rape and perpetrators of it has long-lasting, rippling effects. People are still raping women because they think they can get away with it...which, apparently, they can.

Do I sound angry? Good. I am angry. I am so angry I can't even find a way to describe it. There have been a lot of eloquent writings on the internet about this situation this week, tempered and calm and well written - see here and here for just two of them, as well as the one that resonated the most with me a few paragraphs below. I'm sorry this isn't one of them. I'm too angry.

You should be angry too. This is not just a problem for women. This is a problem for all of us.

Because in addition to Daddy and Judge Pecker, there are pages in support of this rapist. Pages I can't bring myself to read because I'm afraid that I'll spontaneously combust with rage. Pages out there supporting a convicted rapist. It could have been any of us and the outcome would have been the same.

It's sentencings like this and support for this type of criminal behavior that make vigilante justice a thing. This here is a phenomenal blog post on Abadoning Pretense entitled We with the Pitchforks. The major takeaway for me is this:
Let us gather, as a community, on behalf of this woman for whom justice was not served, with our torches and pitchforks, ready to put Brock in his place.Because the justice system failed not only her, but all of us. And goddammit, if the justice system is not going to protect us, I guess we are just going to have to fucking protect ourselves.

We are not protected now. And there are people who are okay with that. I'm not okay with it. And I don't want to know anyone who is okay with it. I will cut you out of my life in a second. 

This sentencing, and the ignorant victim blaming fucks it has exposed, has made my blood roar, my throat burn, and my skin run hot. Rape is never, ever, EVER the victim's fault, regardless of what she did or didn't do, what she wore, how she acted. Her life is never less important than her attacker's regardless of what station in life either of them occupies. 

This sentencing, and the way it exposes the rape culture that is so prevalent in this country that so many people deny exists, has made me clench my fists so hard I leave nail marks in my palms. 

This sentencing, and what it means for all women - yes, you, and your daughters and nieces and wives and girlfriends and mothers and aunts and grandmothers and neighbors and teachers and every woman here - ensures that I will bang my fucking feminist drum as long and as loud as I need to. I don't care who is tired of hearing it. I will do everything I can to affect change on this topic. I'll go to my deathbed doing it. 

In this current climate, women's bodies can be violated without punishment. When assaulted, women have to practically provide video to be believed and all the man has to say is, "I didn't do it." And before someone trots out of the woodwork saying but women falsely accuse men of rape too, stop. I don't want to hear it. That's the exception and for you to bring it up after this sentencing is honestly fucking insane and you're part of the problem. This bullshit is the rule and this is not anywhere close to equality. 

It will keep happening until the majority of society makes it unacceptable. Until we're vocal about it. Until we change how we talk about rape, the words we use, how we treat victims. This sort of societal change requires men and women. 

In this dark tunnel, I see the light of many males just as enraged about this as females. Good. It takes all of us - that means you, too, people who were worried about us getting raped in bathrooms by people who have no interest in raping us but only in peeing. Let's be productive in our anger. Let's take this repugnant and disgusting and inhuman and unacceptable rape culture and burn it down.