Women as an identifiable group under attack?
November 16, 2009 - 1:02pm
Have not looked further afield in the world, but it would seem so in Canada and the USA at least, from both sides of the political spectrum and indeed appears to be starting now in society at large.
Perhaps this thread can document some of the ongoing actions against women's safety and established human rights that are occuring.
As a stand alone action, this may not have appeared to have been an attack against specifically women, but given the similar one of last evening, in the same city indicates clearly that it was.
In this the lead up to Dec 6th activities, it seems particularily ominous.
Has the the destruction of the Status of Women Ministry indicated to some, that women can be clear targets of oppression and hate again without society caring?
Fire at women’s shelter kills resident, 61The fire broke out in a second-floor apartment at 515 MacLaren St. at about 10 p.m. Firefighters freed the resident, but she was declared dead at the scene.
J.P. Trottier, spokesman with Ottawa paramedics, said the woman suffered burns to 80 per cent of her body. She died soon after paramedics began to treat her, he said.
The woman’s name has not been released.
About 33 firefighters responded to the blaze, which Platoon Chief Dennis Gobey said was confined to the apartment.
How is this specifically attacking women?
In the previous fire a 45 year old man died...
I think you're trying to create something that is not there.
Maybe it was just a fire, they happen. Especially where elderly and children are in the mix.
Now of course the article says they are trying to confirm, as because they too I am sure understand the implications of 2 blazes in Ottawa targeting women....but words like "molotov cocktail" do not get thrown around without some fire going on.
Indeed later reports on the BC news have stated it is obvious that an accelerant was used.
Fire officials said it was lucky no one was injured in the fire that engulfed the ground floor of the 19-room facility. Women ran from the building wearing nothing but pyjamas and bathrobes, some with nothing on their feet.
Investigators sifted through the ground floor to confirm reports that a Molotov cocktail had been thrown into the residence, home to 17 tenants, including many international students at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University.
Remind, I thought exactly what you did when I saw this news report yesterday. It's the second suspicious fire to affect a women's residence within a week. Maybe those "just happen" - but I don't think so:
Women's rooming house struck by suspicious fire
[...]
The building is a rooming house for around 20 women. Most of them are new to Canada and looking for short-term accommodations.
[...]
This is the second fire to affect a women’s residence in a week. Firefighters continue to investigate a fire at Cornerstone women’s shelter on MacLaren Street that killed a 61-year-old woman last Sunday.
"SparkyOne" sounds like an odd nickname in the context of these stories...
In the larger political context we have this recent action of Obama's, and the formerly reported here reality of the defunding of women's shelters and programs for victim's of violence, to consider as well...
Stalling over birth controlYou know what I don't want to hear right now about the Stupak-Pitts amendment banning abortion coverage from federally subsidised health insurance policies? That it's the price of reform, and pro-choice women should shut up and take one for the team.
"If you want to rebuild the American welfare state," Peter Beinart writes in the Daily Beast, "there is no alternative" than for Democrats to abandon "cultural" issues like gender and racial equality. Hey, Peter, Representative Stupak and your 64 Democratic supporters, Jim Wallis and other anti-choice "progressive" Christians, men: Why don't you take one for the team for a change and see how you like it?
For example, budget hawks in Congress say they'll vote against the bill because it's too expensive. Maybe you could win them over if you volunteered to cut out funding for male-exclusive stuff, like prostate cancer, Viagra, male infertility, vasectomies, growth-hormone shots for short little boys, long-term care for macho guys who won't wear motorcycle helmets and, I dunno, psychotherapy for pedophile priests. Men could always pay in advance for an insurance policy rider, as women are blithely told they can do if Stupak becomes part of the final bill.
Barak Obama, too, worries about the deficit. Maybe you could help him out by sacrificing your denomination's tax exemption. The Catholic church would be a good place to start, and it wouldn't even be unfair, since the blatant politicking of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on abortion violates the spirit of the ban on electoral meddling by tax-exempt religious institutions.
Why should anti-choicers be the only people who get to refuse to let their taxes support something they dislike? You don't want your tax dollars to pay, even in the most notional way, for women's abortion care, a legal medical procedure that one in three American women will have in her lifetime? I don't want to pay for your misogynist fairy tales and sour-old-man hierarchies.
Women Democrats have taken an awful lot of hits for the team lately. Many of us didn't vote for Hillary Clinton in the primary because the goal of electing a woman seemed less important than the goal of electing the best possible president. Only a self-hater or a featherhead didn't feel some pain about that. And although women are hardly alone in this, we've seen some pretty big hopes set aside in the first year of the Obama administration.
The Paycheque Fairness Act, which would expand women's protections against sexism in the workplace, is on the back burner. Meanwhile, the Office of Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships is not only alive and well. It's newly staffed with anti-choicers like Alexia Kelley of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, which, as Frances Kissling notes in Salon, has compared abortion to torture.
I know what you're thinking: conservative Democrats like Stupak took Republican districts to win us both houses of Congress. Thanks a lot, Howard Dean, whose bright idea it was to recruit them. But those majorities would not be there, and Obama would not be in the White House, if not for pro-choice women and men - their votes, talent, money, organisational capacity and shoe leather.
We knocked ourselves out, and it wasn't so that religious reactionaries like Stupak - who, as Jeff Sharlet writes in Salon, is a member of the Family, the secretive rightwing Christian-supremacist congressional coven - would control both parties. Elections have consequences, you say? Exactly: Obama, the pro-choice, pro-woman candidate, won. Stupak didn't put him in the White House, and neither did the Catholic bishops or the white anti-feminist welfare staters of Beinart's imagination.
We did. And we deserve better from Obama than sound bites like "this is a healthcare bill, not an abortion bill. " Abortion is healthcare. That's the whole point.
Though the following incidence could at first glance considered to be of a lesser note than the occurances above, but in truth it has very far reaching and strong social commentary on the status of women in society, it clearly indicates women as being less than men.
These young women, as like so many of my daughter's age and younger who erroneously believe that society is now equal, and all things have been achieved...and that nothing could be eroded, have indeed received a huge wake up call through this action by the courts and VANOC/IOC.
One wonders what the final result of this would will be, as opposed to what it should be....
In a one-sentence oral ruling in which they said written reasons would follow next week, Justices Anne Rowles, David Frankel and Harvey Groberman simply said they were dismissing the women's appeal of a lower-court ruling that found while the International Olympic Committee had discriminated against them, VANOC wasn't obligated to hold a competition for them.
Female ski jumpers lose Olympic appeal
OOps missed that.
....Initiatives such as Violence UnSilenced -- with its mission to shed light on the epidemic of domestic violence and sexual assault by providing online space for survivors and victims to connect, reach out and help one another as well as guidance for how to get help -- are important efforts to give women a voice, help them feel less alone, and get safe access to help and support.
Maggie, the founder and moderator of the Violence UnSilenced project, offered some insight and perspective in an interview about domestic violence and the awareness month.
Even environmentalists want to get in on the exploit women action that is so acceptable nowadays, it seems.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdz555JBIwY
http://mediawatch.com/welcome.html
exploit? for 6 years an annual fund raising event called dancers for cancer has donated money to the cause to end breast cancer...the exotic dancers donate their services and the club owners donate the money they would have normaly spent on wages for the dancers. why is it automatically exploitation is a sex industry related activity is taking place in support of a cause...
sex industry workers are socially and environmentally conscious, why would you assume they were being exploited?isn't it possible that they chose to take part and believe in the cause? your statement is like an attack against women, sex working women in that you assume exploitation instead of conceiving the possibilty that sex industry workers are politically aware contributers to society who actively take part in the causes they believe in.
i think this is in conflict with the title of the thread.
So you are now calling super models sex workers?
Unless I missed something, it seems the first fire, that claimed the life of a 61 year old woman was undetermined-- investigators were brought in because of a death, not because there were immediate suspicions of arson.
Be that as it may, it doesn't make the second fire any less disturbing in my mind.
London's had a bad year for fires. One fire official said on the news what I was thinking: Some buildings were being torched for insurance, due to the bad economy; some are accidental fires set by homeless people trying to stay warm in abandoned buildings; and it's likely that some have been set by a serial arsonist. But telling them apart is difficult, if not impossible.
But a molotov cocktail says something else entirely.
It's funny how sex industry worker finds it's way into so many threads lately.
So you are now calling super models sex workers?
yes....i guess so...in your reference they were "stripping" and you found that exploitative.
i guess the sex industry is everywhere and so will find it's way into all kinds of areas.
There is an informative diary on Daily Kos today with stats and graph:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/16/804876/-SheKos:-Death-by-in...
Here in Portland, Oregon, area residents have been rocked by a pair of grim tragedies. Last Tuesday, Rob Beiser of suburban Gladstone pulled up to the Tualatin office where his estranged wife Teresa worked and shot her numerous times. After killing her and wounding two of her co-workers, he turned the gun on himself.
Two days later, the bodies of a family of three in Bethany, another suburban-Portland community, were discovered inside their home. It was determined that the husband, Mukesh Suther had shot his wife Varsha and their nine-year-old son, Ronak.
As genuinely shocking as events like this are, there is also a certainly feeling of familiarity when one learns that the perpetrator was the husband, or the boyfriend, or the ex. In my workplace (very near where the first incident took place), before we had any details about who had been shot and who had done the shooting, we were all concerned and horrified. Once we found out that the person responsible was married to one of the shooting victims, our horror was partially replaced with a kind of sad but familiar resignation, as though it was something we probably should have guessed.
Even as I noticed this, however, I wondered - Is that feeling of "oh, no, not again" really justified? Are we perhaps perpetuating an unfair stereotype when we think in such terms? I mean, I know it seems like I hear about men killing their wives, girlfriends, and ex-wives far more often than the other way around, but is that perhaps media spin distorting reality, as with the obsession with the "missing white woman" to the exclusion of coverage other equally or more urgent cases involving women of color? Is the prominent coverage of men killing their female partners really an accurate presentation of reality?
So I did a little research and found that it indeed is accurate. Very definitely, and quite sadly, accurate.
interesting read, thanks for posting wage zombie!
So, basically, it's the exotic dancers making the contribution to charity. All the (presumably male) club owners are doing is getting free publicity. Sounds exploitative to me.
Well if its exploitative, its commonplace since mainstream companies do the same for charity like CIBC for the cancer walk.
Yes, it is, and they are being all silent about it today, as they understand the implications too....
CIBC scoops their workers' salaries and donates the money to charity?
Well the bar owners only do it for the girls that agree. And the CIBC does have a thing where their employees contribute overtime to set things up and do not get paid so yeah
Well, that's mighty big of those business owners, I must say.
I agree, anything that gets money to a desperate charity is good
I should point out theres quite a bit of pressure to contribute and work for free at the CIBC. There was no such pressure at the bar I was helping with. My CIBC employee friend was a bit bitter about the pressure
2 points in another thread indicate that this action by the Canadian government should be in this thread too.
We need to keep this registry, we need to keep tools in the hands of our police so that more women are not killed. As we come upon the 20th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, we reflect upon what that taught us, what preventative lessons we could learn. This registry was one of those lessons, one of the steps taken to protect women. Between 1991 and 2006, the use of shotguns and rifles in homicides declined by 65% because of stricter controls (Statistics Canada 2008).
This registry isn't about farmers and red tape, it's about women's safety
And now, on the 20th anniversary, the government wants to celebrate by revoking the very law that was brought in on account of these women, a law that helps keep women safe.
Thanks remind :)
Some stats from the Sisterhood is Global institute (they're at http://www.sigi.org/):
• Everyday, 6000 girls are genitally mutilated - more than 200 000 per year
(2000).
• Every year in India, 5000 brides are murdered or commit suicide because
their marriage dowries are considered inadequate. (2000)
• In the US, one in five women will be victims of rape in their lifetime. A
woman is raped every 3 minutes. 55 percent of American women report
having experienced rape and/or physical assault in their life-time. 10
women are killed by their batterers each day (1998).
• In Russia, half of all murder victims are women killed by their male
partners. (1995)
• Israel, Japan, Trinidad & Tobago, Brazil, Pakistan, Peru, Argentina, Costa
Rica, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Ecuador and Tunisia each have less than 10
shelters for battered women (1995).
dancers for cancers is organized by DANCERS not club owners......it's in a different club every time....the women are the organizers...oh right ...they couldn't possibly organize somethig and donate money of their own free will. you people have to make everything we do exploitative....it is a worker created event. clear now?
Here's what you said, Susan:
It was the "and the club owners donate the money" bit that caught my eye.
Clear now?
Hostile much G.Pie?
Interesting that my exact duplication of Susan's phrasing "Clear now?" leads you to believe that I (but not Susan, of course) was being hostile.
the donation of dancers wages was negotiated- as a term of a club being priveledged enough to host the event- by the dancers. it is a prerequisite, the dancers are in full control of the event and in spite of your "opinion" or perseption it is extremely empowering for them and they love the event it brings them together as a community, it respects a member of their community who died from breat cancer and it is completely run by, designed by, directed by, promoted by, controlled by the dancers themselves.
negotiated by the dancers......club owners are not involved in decisions around the event but instead go out of their way to meet requirements in order to be awarded the hosting of this prestigous and most successful event.
Susan, I said nothing whatever negative about the dancers. Their charitable program is a wonderful thing to do and I applaud them. You are inventing negative opinions and perceptions out of whole cloth.
My point was: The club owners are actually doing fuck all to help cancer research. Why are they getting praised?
whatever......?i wasn't praising them as much as i was trying make a point that sex industry workers are socially conscious and what is the difference is super models get naked for charity? wy is it automatically deemed exploitative for women to get naked for charity? why can't these women decide for them selves if they feel exploited rather thhat us assuming so just because nudity and women are involved......
it's always nice when you try to make it about something it wasn't- ie club owners....who cares...the point is the choices of women....
Susan, you were the one who praised the club owners, not me.
exploit? for 6 years an annual fund raising event called dancers for cancer has donated money to the cause to end breast cancer...the exotic dancers donate their services and the club owners donate the money they would have normaly spent on wages for the dancers. why is it automatically exploitation is a sex industry related activity is taking place in support of a cause...
sex industry workers are socially and environmentally conscious, why would you assume they were being exploited?isn't it possible that they chose to take part and believe in the cause? your statement is like an attack against women, sex working women in that you assume exploitation instead of conceiving the possibilty that sex industry workers are politically aware contributers to society who actively take part in the causes they believe in.
So, basically, it's the exotic dancers making the contribution to charity. All the (presumably male) club owners are doing is getting free publicity. Sounds exploitative to me.
Susan, I said nothing whatever negative about the dancers. Their charitable program is a wonderful thing to do and I applaud them. You are inventing negative opinions and perceptions out of whole cloth.
My point was: The club owners are actually doing fuck all to help cancer research. Why are they getting praised?
I don't see anyone praising the owners anywhere in this thread. You said nothing positive about the dancers leaving a deliberately negative impression of the event as exploitive of women. You wove the cloth with your negative opinions and perceptions.
No, what I think is exploitative is that the dancers are making this generous donation but they're sharing accolades with the club owners who do nothing. I'd thank you not to presume to know my opinions or perceptions.
You have again stated your opinion and perception that this was an exploitive event because of "accolades" for club owners. I presumed nothing.
Neither Susan nor anyone else gave any accolades to the club owner. She described the events dynamics and you said it was exploitive because the club owners "get all the praise." I have heard of the event and I have never heard the club owners being praised and I looked carefully through this thread and have seen nothing that praised the owners so IMO we are left with you calling this event exploitive with no foundation for that claim.
Susan gave them equal billing when she first mentioned them in this thread.
I hereby withdraw from this ridiculous argument over such a picayune matter.
Two recent studies carried out in Ontario schools, one conducted by Toronto’s School Community Safety Advisory Panel and the other by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), found that sexual harassment and sexual assault of girls are occurring at alarming rates. The Panel stressed that the problem requires immediate attention.
Following up on the Panel’s report, the Toronto Star ran an article on discussions with girls from five Toronto high schools. They reported being subjected to a barrage of hateful comments – girls are routinely called skank, ho (whore) and slut -- as well as being grabbed on the breast or backside “at any time in the halls”. One 14-year-old student said, “You hear stuff like ‘What’s up, bitch?’ and ‘Hey, ho’ every other second”. Dr. David Wolfe of the CAMH warns that, “All these behaviours, from physical violence to verbal harassment, can be harmful and have serious effects on their well-being.”
We haven't come a long way, baby: exclusion of women from Canada's Criminal Code hate propaganda law
http://www.thefreeradical.ca/
that's terrible. there should be classes about respectful behaiour in schools.
(Thank you for the link, remind. Have been looking for sites like this)
So where do our boys get these attitudes ?
Here is one source.
Much Music, owned by CTVglobemedia.
I am looking for their complaint department.
A Video I am watching right now !
Not an exact quote ,but the last word is clear.
"like a girl you've never seen before...nothin like the neighbourhood whore"
Ladies and Gents this is prime time pop culture.
http://www.thefreeradical.ca/MUSIC1.htm
http://www.thefreeradical.ca/Gangsta_rap_feeds_sexual_violence_in_Toronto_schools.htm
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/parents/music/inappropriate/negative_effects_music.cfm
Edit to add this link. http://www.cbsc.ca/english/complaint/
Here's a quote Slumberjack posted in this thread:
http://www.rabble.ca/babble/anti-racism-news-and-initiatives/hatred-and-ignorance-hip-hop
http://www.tolerance.org/?id=911
Your welcome thank you for your links, am going to look through them
I love the blues but there are certainly many misogynists in the genre. But then Spike TV is considered part of the MSM. How detrimental to respect for women are most of their programs. Unfortunately I see many young women who accept this cultural misogyny as normal, maybe even more so in the last ten years than in the past.
Let's see, what's on today.
(Much More) Wild'N Out (comedy ???) 5 pm
Content warning, "not suitable for younger audiences"
Interesting that the censors chose to blur the, jumper cable to crotch, moment.
Why ? no kids watching right ?
Acceptable joke sample "what does the women do that just got out of the battered womens shelter....the dishes"
Of course its all in good fun.
Well it's not all bad at MM. Need to hear more from the likes of
Beyonce "If I was a boy" aired at 8:50
Am I on a anti MM crusade.....maybe Yes, until they stop airing "not suitable for younger audiences" after the kiddies come home from school !
AND their censors read the following:
Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ Equitable Portrayal Code
"Equality of the sexes must be recognized and reinforced through the proper use of language and terminology. Broadcasters shall employ language of a non-sexist nature in their programming, by avoiding, whenever possible, expressions which relate to only one gender."
http://www.cbsc.ca/english/codes/epc.php
Yeah, I haven't had cable for years and stuff like this just confirms my decision. That's awful, rework.
They are under attack because I believe women can make this world work. Pie in the sky but eehhh?
Yes, women can make the world work, but we aren't doing a very good job, are we. The mostly white North American and Western European women who, comparatively, occupy positions of relative freedom and and enormous privilege, are too busy hair-pulling and name-calling to address the most important issues at hand.
Sineed brought out some very important stats about women's experience in Eastern Europe, South Asia and Africa. These were ignored in favour of yet another derailment to sex trade work. Enough already. If we can't see the broader picture because we're too busy eating our young, it's no wonder we're floundering.
I'm not suggesting that we, the privileged, shouldn't stand vigilant and be outspoken about violence against women in our own backyards - quite the contrary. But if we don't analyse the divide-and-conquer strategies set forth by the male-dominant mainstream corporate culture, the bombardment of self-hating propaganda that has us at each others' throats from childhood onward, we'll continue to flounder, to be cramped by our experience of personal pain and fail to gain strength through solidarity.
We can't deal with attacks against women until we stop attacking each other.
Woo hoo!!
At the risk of being boring, more stats:
Read more here:
http://www.unifem.org/gender_issues/violence_against_women/facts_figures.php
According to Unifem, violence against women is the most pervasive human rights' violation in the world; that studies show 1 in 3 women worldwide have been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused. The problem is we haven't enough power - we are under-represented in governments, comprising 18.4% of seats in national parliaments.
Any women here thinking of running for office? I wouldn't personally; my diplomatic skills are nascent at best. But some politer babbler women may have political aspirations they haven't exercised.
Anybody?
We need you. All of you. Unite. Fuck the sausage fest @ babble.
sausage fest.......?
it would be great to see better representation for women in gov't., but sadly having women in power isn't a recipe for change if those women aren't progressive, resiliant, and able to avoid the quagmires and pitfalls of participating in an inherently corrupt and self-serving system. There aren't many people - men or women - who can accomplish that and still maintain their integrity.
it would be great to see better representation for women in gov't., but sadly having women in power isn't a recipe for change if those women aren't progressive, resiliant, and able to avoid the quagmires and pitfalls of participating in an inherently corrupt and self-serving system.
True; Maggie Thatcher taught all of us that being female doesn't automatically = progressive. I think more women in power, however, is an important 1st step because it means that we can call the shots instead of having to go cap in hand to the guys running things.
A 15-year-old girl was dragged into bushes and raped in Port Coquitlam early Saturday.
RCMP Sgt. Peter Thiessen called the attack "cowardly" and said at least a dozen officers are working on the case.
The girl was walking along Kingsway Avenue from the Port Coquitlam bus loop when she was approached by a man, pushed into the bushes and assaulted in the bushes off Tyner Street.
Following the attack, the male fled and the girl walked back toward the Port Coquitlam bus loop, where she found a transit security officer who assisted by calling police and an ambulance.
She was treated in a local area hospital and released.
"There were significant physical injuries, along with the emotional trauma," said Thiessen. "I can't think of a more cowardly act."
Cowardly act?
How about a sick fuck act?
Not only that, she was walking to get away from an other middle aged man in a car that had approached her just prior to her being attacked....right after she got off the bus.
So, the response of course is women staying in and not going anywhere, which encourages other women to feel that is the solution too, so we are punished, while men continue to reep the benefits.....
I have political aspirations I haven't exercised. Working on it.
A Riverview monument built to remember victims of violence has been covered in swastikas and racist slogans.
A city crew from Moncton was in Riverview on Tuesday helping their counterparts clean up the vandalized monument.
The vandalism comes at a symbolic time for the monument as it also commemorates the 14 women who died in the Dec. 6, 1989, massacre at Montreal's École Polytechnique.
There was so much graffiti in industrial-strength paint on the monument that the lettering had to be repainted.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2009/11/25/nb-monument-vand...The media is not doing women and girls any favours either, as I just read a Canadian news report that actually said:
Men do not have "sex" with 13 year old girls, Canadian Press, they are pedophiles raping a child.
Maybe that article was written by Whoopi Goldberg.
Last week there was a brief little story about the women on The View being all scandalized when a guest made a joke about being raped at age 13, and I couldn't help wondering whether Whoopi remembered to ask whether she was referring to "rape" or "rape-rape", but at any rate, getting anyone — starting with Polanski — to take Polanski's crime seriously seems tough.
"they are pedophiles raping a child."
uh no. A pedophile is one that goes for pre-pubescent children, not ones who have attained puberty.
Doesnt make him any less wrong (regardless of the gender of the perpertator so lets not bring out that strawman people) but the term is not correct here
I don't know what the correct term is however.
You're correct Bacchus. The correct term is ephebophilia and no, it doesn't make it less wrong.
.
Sorry if you dont like being correct Remind, but it is important to use the right terms so you don't accidentally misdirect people or cause them to misunderstand what is what *rolls eyes* OFFS indeed
Thanks Stargazer
.
..
remind, I'm unsure why you're having a hard time with this. It doesn't make the crime less to call it what it is. Any criminologist will tell you the same thing.
It was still rape, it is just not pedophilia (now whether or not he has those tendencies? that's another topic of which I have no information on).
.
Rarely Stargazer. a Pedophile only really responds sexually to pre-pubescent and the other the innocence of youth but the more adult features of someone in puberty. In other words, anyone could be attracted to a teenager (depending on a variety of factors like type, maturity, body development etc) but it just would not interest a pedophile
Very very rare for it to be anything goes kind of mental aberation
Are you having issues with typing Remind or is this some childish game?
Those seem like very technical lines especially when one is dealing with men who like children who are just on the cusp of adolescence at 13 or so. They certainly are not looking for a mature adult to have a relationship with they are looking for a child. We can all agree that they are child rapists the only dispute is when does a child cease to be a child for the purposes of calling the rapist a pedophile. I have some nits over here to pick if anyone is interested in providing a little personal grooming help.
Instead of bickering about what to call it, let's just call it "wrong" and be done with it.
In what is still a largely heterosexual male-dominated culture and power structure, one whose values haven't significantly changed in millenia, where currently girls are sexualized at a very young age, before they are even able to understand sexuality, where little girls are encouraged to mimic older women through girls' toys, fashion, etc., it's no wonder that sexual relations between an adult male and a pubescent girl are seen as "normal".
Any way you look at it, it's wrong. Okay, so maybe there was some kind of social necessity a thousand years ago in Europe, where 13 year old girls were married off to middle aged men. But that had to do with economics, power alliances, etc. And girls died very young because they had to bear children when their bodies weren't developed.
Also, people didn't live so long - sexual maturity equaled adulthood when your life expectancy was 35 or 40 at best.
These old ideas have long lived out their usefulness. Too bad they're so entrenched in mainstream sexual society that we can't easily change the concepts that support such wrongness.
/end of rant
His comments were embedded in a press release. Vellacott used his press release to counter the Executive Director of Sexual Health Centre Saskatoon, Evelyn Reisner. Reisner had recently expressed criticism of Saskatchewan's cut-off date for abortions of 12 weeks, the earliest in Canada. The Star Phoenix reported
"Reisner said the problem is that women who pass the 12-week cutoff date are sent out of the province and must pay their transportation and accommodation costs ... Reisner said reducing access to safe, legal abortions for women in the city increases the risks to their health, causing a "higher rate of infections, complications and deaths.""http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/282704
"... Pro-life feminists have also come to see abortion as part of a male agenda to have women more sexually available."
Thats totally fucked up
Instead of bickering about what to call it, let's just call it "wrong" and be done with it.
In what is still a largely heterosexual male-dominated culture and power structure, one whose values haven't significantly changed in millenia, where currently girls are sexualized at a very young age, before they are even able to understand sexuality, where little girls are encouraged to mimic older women through girls' toys, fashion, etc., it's no wonder that sexual relations between an adult male and a pubescent girl are seen as "normal".
Any way you look at it, it's wrong. Okay, so maybe there was some kind of social necessity a thousand years ago in Europe, where 13 year old girls were married off to middle aged men. But that had to do with economics, power alliances, etc. And girls died very young because they had to bear children when their bodies weren't developed.
Also, people didn't live so long - sexual maturity equaled adulthood when your life expectancy was 35 or 40 at best.
These old ideas have long lived out their usefulness. Too bad they're so entrenched in mainstream sexual society that we can't easily change the concepts that support such wrongness.
/end of rant
Excellent post. I just want to point out that nowhere did I say it was okay. Nor did anyone else who posted here. No one was bickering with the exception of remind's strange posts.
Clearly there is a huge problem with the hypersexualization of children. Look at Miley Cyrus (sp?). She's a kid performing in tiny shorts for a mainly all girl audience. Parents have to take some of the blame as well. We buy into it. We need to teach our sons to respect women and girls and teach them how to take care of themselves - cook, clean, do laundry...all of it. We need to teach our girls self-respect, to love who they are as they are.
I don't seriously care how young these girls are. If they look like they are teens or may be teens - don't look. It creeps us out when older men look. It gives us a feeling of being potential diner. It makes us uncomfortable and self-conscious and yes, sometimes scared.
For the life of me I will never understand how it is that the vast majority of women manage to not look or fantasize about teen or pre-teen boys, yet a lot of men feel and think this behaviour is "natural". I don't think it is. You guys are adults, most with kids, some with girls. Would you want much older men leering at them?
Recognizing beauty is one thing - translating that into an invitation to leer, grope, or otherwise creep girls out is not.
Yes it is fucked up, but it says more about the "pro-life feminists" agenda than it does anything else. And since when are pregnant women
non-sexual? What a load of bullshit.
Is it not interesting that everyone wants to call themselves a "feminist" these days?
Apparently it is going from the "fword" status, to the word that everyone wants to apply to themselves, no matter how tenuous the connection is.
That has gotta be a good thing for women, right?
Women should have the choice of what to do with thier own bodies. Full stop. That includes abortion and sex work.
MacLeans reported the findings of a survey on attitudes towards prostitution (their word) in this week's issue. I was reading it at the breakfast table but can't remember all of the precise questions and numbers.
Really that has no point in this thread Caissa, which is specifically to detail attacks against women and women rights, unless you are stating that this drive to decriminalize john's, pimps and procurers is an attack against women?
I was responding to Stargazer's comments in #76, Remind. I'm sorry you were confused by my comments.
Wasn't confused at all, figured you were....but I did find your article on line and will start a thread about it....so as the derailing here will stop.
I'm glad to see the derail police are alive and well. This site is so active lately that it can afford to employ them.
shall we bump this puppy up to 100 posts, by other trivial baiting inanities, so it can be closed so we don't have realize women are under attack as never before.
only 17 more posts to go....now......
BTW your Maclean's article is in the gender divide thread
Maybe if you stopped being disingenuous like you were clearly being in post #79 this won't happen in 16 posts.
Post #56, I think shows an interest in the topic, but I'm sure you will be the arbitrator of that as well. Forget it!
Agreed post #56 was, which is why I figured you were either being disingenuous in post # 78, or indicating that this drive to decriminalize pimps and procurers was an attack on women...I choose the latter, but was apparently wrong....
only 15 to go.......
I truly appreciated posts #61, 63, 66. I assumed you didn't care about the topic, but apparently I was wrong...
only 14 to go....
.
Having thought more about it, I think perhaps caissa was onto something posting about prostitution in this thread given the report over here in this thread, where pedophilia/ephebophilia, was given a pass and even tried to normalize it....
adolescents do not become "sex workers" they become sexually exploited adolescents, her "clients" were not clients, (add puking emoticon) they were pedophiles/ephebophiles, as per, at least on honest male's commentary of "Most guys, the older they get, the younger women they want," and his follow up to that, afterall can't have pushy feminists stopping them in their pursuit of adolescent girls, nor stopping those who want to exploit those adolescent girls and aging men.
typical, ignore the actual data and focus on one man in the audiences "opinion"....
Not only that, but look at the way the man was referring to prostitutes. It was clear he thinks they are subhuman. Don't even bother with the MacLeans comments - typical of right wing nutbars and almost all show a complete and utter distain for women. Why anyone would use that article as proof of anything is beyond me. What's next? Fraiser Institute reports?
ummmmm, the Maclean's article is not linked here, the Vancouver Courier article is.......
Mark Hasiuk is a joke. For a supposedly unbiased "reporter" he has done some rather dubious things, like showing up to a university forum on a similar topic and heckling the speakers from his seat. I think the whole thing had to be shut down to kick him out, and his report on this "story" heavily slanted because of this. I thought reporters were supposed to be observers, not trolls lol. In this article he takes the time to start it with an unrelated comment about what the anti-decrim groups want. A deliberate attempt to slant and sway the reader before they have a chance to they find out what happens at the forum. Then he selects a very small # (2%) and waves it around like some sort of see-I-told-ya-so, when that 2% is soooo much smaller than what probably would come up if the general male population was asked have they ever physically assaulted any woman (as opposed to the john-prostitute scenario). I would hazard a guess, based on general stats and information that is out there, that a great deal more than 2% of men have done any of the following to women:
robbed a woman, physically attacked a woman, or raped a woman.
Yet those stats of men who buy sex show #s that are far lower than average, imo.
Instead of bickering about what to call it, let's just call it "wrong" and be done with it.
In what is still a largely heterosexual male-dominated culture and power structure, one whose values haven't significantly changed in millenia, where currently girls are sexualized at a very young age, before they are even able to understand sexuality, where little girls are encouraged to mimic older women through girls' toys, fashion, etc., it's no wonder that sexual relations between an adult male and a pubescent girl are seen as "normal".
Any way you look at it, it's wrong. Okay, so maybe there was some kind of social necessity a thousand years ago in Europe, where 13 year old girls were married off to middle aged men. But that had to do with economics, power alliances, etc. And girls died very young because they had to bear children when their bodies weren't developed.
Also, people didn't live so long - sexual maturity equaled adulthood when your life expectancy was 35 or 40 at best.
These old ideas have long lived out their usefulness. Too bad they're so entrenched in mainstream sexual society that we can't easily change the concepts that support such wrongness.
/end of rant
This "tradition" continues at Bountiful and similar enclaves. The girls are generally "married" off to much older men when 13-14, though I think it is pretty clear that this would be done because they can get pregnant, rather than because they are young looking. In those societies, I doubt if either girls or boys ever achieve any real emotional maturity, fwiw. I do think there is a huge difference between a pedophile looking at sexualizing an 8 year old, and a mysogynist looking to impregnate and control a 14 year old girl --- but both are disgusting. If the Bountiful people can't be charged with polygamy, who cares. They can be charged with statuatory rape EASILY at any time. That they are not is reprehensible.
This "tradition" continues at Bountiful and similar enclaves. The girls are generally "married" off to much older men when 13-14, though I think it is pretty clear that this would be done because they can get pregnant, rather than because they are young looking. In those societies, I doubt if either girls or boys ever achieve any real emotional maturity, fwiw. I do think there is a huge difference between a pedophile looking at sexualizing an 8 year old, and a mysogynist looking to impregnate and control a 14 year old girl --- but both are disgusting. If the Bountiful people can't be charged with polygamy, who cares. They can be charged with statuatory rape EASILY at any time. That they are not is reprehensible.
If the Crown prosecutor could find actual evidence then there should be charges laid. I don't think that what you describe is a proven allegation for any specific person. So what age would you propose as the age of consent for marriage. 16, 18, 21 or maybe 30. Personally I think that 16 has to be the age since we made it the age of consent for sex. Prior to last year the age was 14 so I think your use of the 13 year old being marriage off is likely not the facts. I would love to see the evidence that would convict abusers of children at Bountiful but despite three prosecutors looking at the circumstances they chose not to prosecute on any other grounds except polygamy. I find that both odd and disturbing since we all "know" that the abuse is rampant, right?
If it is so rampant why can't we just charge the perpetrators with the real crimes?
Which throws the study into complete question...from the get go.
...the reality is many men who have raped, and who have been found guilty of rape, still believe they did not rape anyone....
Then there is the reality that people do not like to self-report on their own misdeeds....
I never really bought into the argument that men who buy sex are less likely to rape. The men who buy sex are as different as the women offering sex. That thinking often leads to the assumption that women "holding out" are the cause of rape (men who can't get it from a sex worker are more likely to rape because they can't get it anywhere else). It paints men as not responsible for their actions, and pretty much absolves them of responsibility. Men are just little boys unable to control themselves - which we know is not true). All the responsibility fallks back onto women (if only you women would loosen up more, have more sex partners, learn to please your man, there would be less rape).
Ditto what remind said - what are the chances of self-reporting? Then there are those who rape street walkers and don't think it is rape.
Fortunate, do you have the stats for that study? I'd be interested in seeing the study myself, see what methodology they used, etc.
the study was done by chris atchison-sfu criminology, with research ethics review board scrutiny, providing confidentiality to participants so they could feel safe in answering honestly. the research is not officialy released yet but we got a sneek peek at the forum.
chris did not sugar coat anything. he stated 9 men confessed to sexually assualting sex workers. the entire point of the tri council policy for ethical research involving human beings is to provide safe space so participants share freely.
as soon as the research is availible on line i will post a link.
the sample group was 950 sex consumers, no research in this field has ever come close.
www.johnsvoice.ca
This "tradition" continues at Bountiful and similar enclaves. The girls are generally "married" off to much older men when 13-14, though I think it is pretty clear that this would be done because they can get pregnant, rather than because they are young looking. In those societies, I doubt if either girls or boys ever achieve any real emotional maturity, fwiw. I do think there is a huge difference between a pedophile looking at sexualizing an 8 year old, and a mysogynist looking to impregnate and control a 14 year old girl --- but both are disgusting. If the Bountiful people can't be charged with polygamy, who cares. They can be charged with statuatory rape EASILY at any time. That they are not is reprehensible.
If the Crown prosecutor could find actual evidence then there should be charges laid. I don't think that what you describe is a proven allegation for any specific person. So what age would you propose as the age of consent for marriage. 16, 18, 21 or maybe 30. Personally I think that 16 has to be the age since we made it the age of consent for sex. Prior to last year the age was 14 so I think your use of the 13 year old being marriage off is likely not the facts. I would love to see the evidence that would convict abusers of children at Bountiful but despite three prosecutors looking at the circumstances they chose not to prosecute on any other grounds except polygamy. I find that both odd and disturbing since we all "know" that the abuse is rampant, right?
If it is so rampant why can't we just charge the perpetrators with the real crimes?
Statutory rape is simply sex (consensual included) between a teenager and anyone who is more than 5 years older than they are. That is why I said it was easy. Multiple marriages are not legal, so the polygamy angle cannot be proven since no actual license can be issued. But it is fairly easy to prove a 14 year old who has been taken into a 40 year old man's household along with 2-3 other women, and she is now pregnant, is having sex with him. Stat rape has been charged on young men with girls who are technically too young for them, even tho their ages are much much closer than these in Bountiful and similar areas.
Canadian laws:
In looking at Canada, all but one Province requires that a couple be 18 in order to marry without parental permission. British Columbia sets the age of majority at 19. Although a few areas will waive this requirement if there is a pregnancy, the couple may still have to have court approval. Even with parental approval, many Provinces will require court approval when a person is 16 years of age or less.
Basically a court consent is required for anyone under 16 to marry.
For sexual activity:
It is now illegal for adults in Canada to have sex with a partner under the age of 16, one of the new provisions of the Tories' violent crime law that came into effect on Thursday. The Tackling Violent Crime Act raises the legal age of sexual consent in Canada to 16 from 14, the first time it has been raised since 1892. But the law includes a "close-in-age exception," meaning 14- and 15-year-olds can have sex with someone who is less than five years older.
It seems very simple to apply the laws that already exist. The girls would have to be 17, and this is not happening. These guys would be easy to prosecute. So again it begs the question why not.
Between 1998 and 2004, the B.C. Vital Statistics Agency says, 69 Bountiful girls 18 or younger had babies.
A third of those girls were impregnated by men 10 or more years older than they were. Three-quarters of the men in the fundamentalist Mormon sect who fathered children with teens 18 and younger were at least five years older.
http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/features/polygamy/story.html?id=64080dd7-ed78-4446-a795-b1b9e674fb3c
BETWEEN 1998 AND 2004 69 BOUNTIFUL GIRLS 18 OR YOUNGER HAD BABIES
46% of the fathers are 5 or more years older than the teenage mother
28% of the fathers are 10 or more years older than the teenage mother
Not sure I get your post, fortunate. Doesn't the age difference only come into play under the age of consent? Once someone's of legal age, the age difference is irrelevant.
ETA: Just speaking about the law here. In general, I think if you're 30ish (or older) and dating a teenager, there's probably something wrong with you.
I agree. I don't quite get these older men who go after much younger women. Makes no sense to me and it always seems creepy.
Continued over here
Monitoring again?