A series of t-shirts have been withdrawn from sale online at Amazon.com after consumer outrage over their apparent glorification and support of sexual and physical assault. The t-shirts featured statements like ‘Keep Calm and Knife Her ’, ‘Keep Calm and Rape Them’, and ‘Keep Calm and Hit Her’, to name a few. The t-shirts were…
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Like most young women, Gemma Beale has had her fair share of harassment and unwanted attention, and at midnight one night she decided she’d had enough. Rape culture is an undeniable aspect of our society, and now through the use of social media and tumblr, Gemma is shining a light on the all too common…
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As the trial of five men accused of raping and murdering a 24-year-old woman on a bus in India continues, the headlines turn to South Africa. A 17-year-old girl was found mutilated earlier this month. She had been raped. The Associated Press reports injuries so severe that nurses and doctors who worked to save her…
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‘Don’t wear revealing clothing, don’t get drunk, don’t wander around at night, and don’t walk alone’ – I’ve heard this advice repeated often, ever since the Delhi gang-rape. Most women have heard these warnings before, but now, suggestions on being constantly and vigilantly cautious have been increasingly doled out by almost everyone – politicians, celebrities,…
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In the days after Jill Meagher’s body was found, police were inundated with calls from women who reported having been the victims of sexual harassment on Sydney Road, not far from where Meagher was last seen. They were all overwhelming similar in that they had not reported the incident when it happened, for a various…
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It was a sad night for rape apologists and overt misogynists in the United States Tuesday night, as 67 per cent of unmarried American women voted to re-elect President Barack Obama. One of the Republican losers in the Senate was Tea Partyer John Koster who last week called aborting a rapist’s child ‘more violence on…
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On October 25th Dr Mukwege of the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu was attacked at his home, a few blocks from the headquarters of MONUSCO, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo. While motive is uncertain— there was nothing stolen or damaged at the site of the attack—Dr Mukwege was repeatedly shot…
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**Trigger Warning: Rape, assault and child abuse** I cannot stop the film reel in my head churning out story after story in a dark narrative of abuses. I want to share them, after the murder of Jill Meagher and the PM’s obviously impassioned speech against misogyny, because I feel the tides turning, ever so slowly…
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US Senator Todd Akin, who last month enlightened US citizens with his definitions of illegitimate rape, has been trying to recapture the affection of female voters in the state of Missouri. Akin has remained in the race for Missouri Senator despite the global fall out from his assertion that women raped ‘legitimately’ have a biological response…
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When US Senator Todd Akin was asked about abortion in cases of rape, he said, ‘From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there…
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Murder, as a cinematic experience, is something to which the film watching collective no longer particularly objects to. Snuff films aside, today on-screen murder orchestrated to varying degrees of gore and sadism is tolerated, even enjoyed. It excites, thrills and grants access to an activity that the majority of society will hopefully never engage with,…
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The last ten years have seen a 261% increase in domestic and sexual violence in Australia. In 2009, the total cost to the Australian economy was $13.6 billion. More often than not, domestic and sexual violence sits under the ‘women’s issues’ umbrella, but men have a huge role to play in turning these statistics around….
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Trigger Warning: Talk of rape. Yesterday, my father went out to a doctor’s appointment and I was home alone. Like most people when they’re home alone, I locked the door. Just the screen door, I left the back door open. When he arrived home after his appointment, he tried to open the door and found…
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TRIGGER WARNING! The catch-cry of this column is ‘finding the fun in fail’, but there’s one kind of film-fail (and life-fail) which is never fun. Rape. Not funny when people misappropriate the term to say their facebook was ‘fraped’, not funny when it’s the (bizarrely) critically acclaimed American remake of The Girl With the Dragon…
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