feimineach.com

Excerpts from a sex worker’s letter to her rapist

Letter to My Rapist, Jailed for Raping Women Who Are More Respectable Than I Am This letter is most of all impossibly generous and forgiving. It also describes, harrowingly, the disjuncture between...

“… when we find that perfect case, we’ll be more than willing to rally behind a survivor”

Nowhere in this country do we have an apparatus that is set up to believe those among us who are sexually harassed, abused, raped, when we tell our stories. Instead, we nitpick and hand-wring and w...

More on sex trafficking in Sweden, from the Swedish police

I haven't time to say much about this but Feminist Ire does a good job of breaking down Swedish sex worker laws. Just over a year ago I wrote this post, analysing the Swedish police’s annual human tr...

Today in misogyny: a bride burnt every hour: the horror of dowry deaths

One of my favourite columnists, Kalpana Sharma, produced a disturbing piece yesterday – on dowry deaths. Kalpana was appalled to read a headline, ‘One bride burnt every hour’. Not 50 years ago, but la...

Gender, Social Science, and Black Lives Matter (Feminist Reflections)

“Black men are stereotyped as violent, while black women are rendered invisible. Here’s why the gendering of black lives matters." Good Monday read on PSmag: On thesocietypages: The systematic opp...

Why do we love bystander intervention and fear community consequences for rape?

Or perhaps there’s something else at play. White men seem particularly hostile to calls for non-law enforcement responses to gender-based violence, which is ironic, given 1) earlier mainstream resista...

Today in misogyny: study finds a third of college men would rape if they could get away with it

I put this in the round-up on Sunday but I thought it deserved an airing of its own. A study of 73* US college men has found that nearly one-third of them would rape if (1) they thought they could get...

Visualizing punishment and the US prison population

Absolutely tonnes of useful analysis and critique here. Main headlines: - The rise in prison population is due to changes in sentencing policies and politics (mainly, the "war on drugs" and the ...

Domestic Violence does not go ‘awry’ (by @LeStewpot)

​Here is Louise Pennington's reponse to Warrington Police's implication that the responsibility to stop domestic violence is the victim's and that, once reported, the police will ensure that it ends. ...

Women in prison: the cycle of violence

Some important facts and figures here on women in prison in Britain and the system which has not been adjusted for their needs. "Helen Grant MP, Secretary of State for Justice, Women and Equalities, a...

More Needs to Be Done to Help Male Rape Survivors

Important piece on vice: Cases like Paul's are more common than you might think. According to  ​official figures, around 9,000 British men and boys—​roughly 12 percent of all rape and sexual abuse su...

GTA5 – online messages to activists who campaigned for its removal from shops

Here are some of the messages activists received on social media for campaigning to have the latest Grand Theft Auto (GTA), which is frighteningly violent towards women, removed from shops. On ...

What White People *Really* Mean When They Talk About Ferguson

Every 28 hours a black person is killed by a police officer. Yet another unarmed black person, 18 year old Mike Brown, was killed by officer Darren Wilson on August 9th in Ferguson, Missouri. People...

No nation, worldwide, without barriers to reporting rape (womanstats.org)

Look at these data (from the WomanStats project) on the strength of cultural barriers to reporting rape worldwide. (Click for larger.) For instance, in Britain, Ireland and the US there are "cu...

Gender and the Meaning of Prison

This is fascinating. It's striking that so many women (small sample though it is) felt "saved" by prison because it got them away from their abusive partners. Male offenders who have desisted often re...

One-Third of the World’s Women in Prison Have One Striking Thing in Common

Surprising (perhaps) data from the US on the numbers of women in prison. (Aside: the title of the infographic above is misleading - numerically, yes, the USA seems to incarcerate more women than a...

Sexual abuse in prisons

From the Howard League, on email. Several links to reports and briefing papers are below. There could be hundreds. There could be thousands. No one can say with certainty how many prisoners in Eng...

Sunday feminist roundup (28th September 2014)

I missed last Sunday's round-up because I was busy in that never-rains-but-it-pours way. But here's this week's: Where Are the Plays Written By and Starring Women? (newrepublic): "Mel Heslop is st...

How Many Women are in Prison for Defending Themselves Against Domestic Violence? (US)

More than you'd think. Maybe. We know Marissa Alexander's name, but there are countless other abuse survivors behind prison walls whose names and stories we do not know. We actually do not know...