Gail Dines on hypersexualization, Polanski and child sexual abuse

The article appears to be by Gail Dines, not Robert Jensen, but it's kinda hard to tell...

I think you are right. They work together and Jensen apparently lent her his blog for that comment. I wrote the web site to protest the ambiguity.

Could a mod change the thread title to Gail Dines on..., please?

It seems to me Gail Dines is saying that the early sexualization of girls is a consequence of the hypersexualization of our society, and that hypersexualization is a factor contributing to sexual assault.

This was the proposition put forward by the Centre d'aide et de lutte contre les agressions à caractère sexuel (CALACS) de Rimouski that a whole bunch of babblers in this thread denounced as blaming women for the violence done to them.

Reading Dines' essay convinces me even more that she - and the Rimouski women - interpret hypersexualization not as any female behaviour we could blame women for but as an active social process whereby advertisers and other cultural producers create and impose an ethos through images, songs, fashions, etc. This is laden onto consumers of these products, some of them being the men that sexually assault women on the basis of culturally-induced expectations. I thought this was clear after reading the Rimouski project definition - which I translated for that purpose - and that we had a consensus to that effect by the end of the thread of reference.

I didn't see any consensus in that thread.

Well, I just reread it in full and I didn't see any "whole bunch of babblers" arguing that the Rimouski project proposition was blaming women so why not call it even; good enough?

There were certainly enough to keep you busy fending them off. One of them even ended up refusing to speak to you any more. And another was a moderator.

Let's just let this thread go where it will, without dredging up fights from past threads.  I just re-read the one linked to, and I can't imagine what purpose it serves to rehash a polarized, angry fight now.

Think this is a mischaracterization of the thread in question, and what the issue was, that prompted the not speaking.

All the men participating in that thread made it quite icky though, and the attacks upon women by men were even worse. That was the feminist forum and yet the men in there had the audacity to  nitpick at women,  and outright dismiss their observations, if not personally attack them.

It is a fine example of why many women refuse to post at babble and have left. And of course also as a building block of bad feelings and resentments that later play out in other areas.

Oh cross posted with Michelle, I was reading while she was posting, and I concur with her statements.

Gore Vidal proves he is a complete asshole:

And this was a 13 year old girl who was raped vaginally and anally while she begged to be released. It is not just how shocking the statement is, but rather how free he feels to express the thought openly, even after the widespread public condemnation of Polanski and supporters.  There is a culture of entitlement men with power hold fast to. Imagine if this little girl had been an adult. What protection would she have had to say "no"?  Would she maintain the right to say "no" to vaginal intercourse? Would she maintain the right to say "no" to sodomy?  I say this wouldn't even be a whisper in the news if the victim had been an adult woman.

Once a man labels a woman "hooker" she enters into a state of being that once entered deprives women of the right to consent or decline.

Imagine if this young girl had actually been a "hooker". In the mind of the buyer, the woman has given up her agency. In the eyes of the law, the onus falls on the woman to prove she did not consent. Rape is hard enough to prove without having sold access to one's vagina.

Has there ever been a case worldwide where a prostitute has managed to get a man convicted of rape?

See how our culture's luminaries maintain unaccountability for their violence against common folks (a model enthroned into its values by DAF de Sade, who also drugged, tortured, raped and killed peasant women): dismiss a 13-yr old drugged rape victim as a "hooker" (cold comfort for those who count on civil libertarians' respect for "sex workers"), and exploit anti-racist and anti-homophobia sentiments when it is convenient to play those cards to protect themselves. Like most North American writers, Vidal is deeply compromised by its alliances with the pornography publishing industry (He received millions for scripting Bob Guccione's Caligula) and can never be expected to say an unkind word against rapists.

 I hope that people are starting to take note of which "civil libertarians" and "artists" are choosing to side with pimps and rapists.

Debating the use of the term hypersexualization and the federal government policy for funding anti-rape activity is fine with me.  Trashing the name and work of a frontline women's group where workers may or may not speak your language, probably were unaware of your flip judgements and have a need to protect their public reputation and work to make a better world is pathetic arguement

This is a member group of the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centers and you are out of line.  Progressive? Not much

martin: I did not know that Vidal helped write Caligula. I have never been able to finish that movie. It was seriously one of the weirdest and most f*cked up things I have ever seen (of what I did see).

I agree with the power thing. The attitude seems to be "just who do these girls and women are to think that they should not be sexually available when we want them to be?"

Swiss Court Grants Polanski Bail