Women's Views on News |
- Remarks on the rape porn ban questions
- Part-timers stuck in dead-end jobs
- Look good while giving birth?
- Oxford rape gang: Who will prosecute the police?
| Remarks on the rape porn ban questions Posted: 23 Jul 2013 08:41 AM PDT
Guest post by Heather Harvey of EAVES Pornography is meant to be material that is sexually stimulating. I think it's very simple and clear to say that simulated or real rape should not be promoted as "sexually stimulating" – that is like incitement to rape and certainly is a legitimisation, normalisation and glamorisation of it. Given that children are learning about sex from pornography and that women are already blamed for their own rape – do we really want to promote rape in this way? What about freedom of expression? Frankly I'm tired of this and the very idea is being devalued as it is used as a last refuge of scoundrels.. The libertarian response repeatedly fails because it does not account for pre-existing inequality, imbalance of power and discrimination in society. Consequently it just replicates and reinforces inequality and discrimination. Freedom of expression is not purely about men's "right" or rather desire to perpetually view women as objects and in situations of violence, humiliation and degradation. But what about the difference between fantasy and reality? Well firstly it's not equally applied. Men may be allowed to distinguish between fantasy and reality but women are not – not where sex is concerned. That is why we have myths like "a woman says no but means yes", or a woman says yes but then "cries rape" despite CPS research to show how rare is a false allegation, (Levitt Q.C. March 2013). A young woman on her facebook mentioned the fact that she had entertained the idea of group sex (note that is group sex not gang rape). She then arranged to meet a man with whom she says she was prepared to have sex but arriving found a group of men and claimed she suffered multiple rape from them. Judge Robert Brown ordered the jury to return a not guilty verdict as her "credibility was shot to pieces". Similarly, the Prosecutor, having read the facebook fantasy she had mentioned, dropped the case as this "put the whole incident in a different light" and they could not entertain the idea of obtaining a prosecution. Women have been taught that showing an interest or pleasure in sex will be seen as something to condemn in them – they will be viewed as sluts, easy, etc. Women are expected to "not like it or need it" as supposedly men do and certainly not to openly show pleasure in it. The exception to this is when they are in the act with their partner– then they are supposed to be screaming and writhing in delight to reassure him (usually) that he's the best thing since sliced bread. Consequently, women have a great deal of guilt and conflicting emotions about sex – a fantasy that can remove your sense of responsibility for sex is a useful way of navigating this discriminatory cultural legacy about women and sexuality. They are often therefore not being "turned on" by the rape but by the possibility to envisage having and enjoying sex without feeling guilty or responsible about it. On the other hand men are being turned on by the rape – and frankly that scares, enrages and horrifies me. Not from a moralising point of view you understand but from the point of view of healthy human relationships and women's rights. What I don't pretend to know, however, is enough about internet technology to be able to say if this is a workable proposal or not. I am not commenting on practicalities and logistics but I am supportive of the principle – I don't want men and boys, or women for that matter, thinking it's ok and normal to be turned on by watching a woman being raped.  |
| Part-timers stuck in dead-end jobs Posted: 23 Jul 2013 04:22 AM PDT
The Timewise Foundation, an organisation that helps jobseekers find quality flexible and part-time work, arranged for 1,000 part-time workers to be interviewed by an independent research agency. The results? They discovered that despite one in four British employees now working 30 hours a week or less, 41 per cent of part-time workers have a job that is beneath their skills and salary expectations. With just three per cent of advertised part-time work paying the full-time equivalent of £20,000 or more, the average cut in salary for someone moving to part-time work is £6,730. People who have children can expect to take home £436 less than those without children. Worse still, 73 per cent of respondents have not been promoted since they started working fewer hours and two thirds believe promotion would only be possible if they worked more hours. Karen Mattison, co-founder of the Timewise Foundation, said: "Work in the UK is undergoing a fundamental shift. "More than a quarter of UK workers are now part-time or flexible, with most needing to fit their careers with something else in life. "Yet millions are hitting a wall at key points in their careers, when they want to progress or move to a new role. "Doing so, without losing their flexibility, presents a real challenge: leaving many feeling trapped in their current jobs." Mothers in particular are facing this challenge as many work part-time to look after their children; 36 per cent of people surveyed by the Timewise Foundation worked part-time for this reason. One mother, a financial services worker, spoke to Timewise about her experience of working part-time after having her first child. "I was moved away from a client facing team, working on all the major deals, to a secondary role – essentially supporting the deal leaders. "I had inadvertently placed myself in a team that had a ceiling on it in terms of promotion," she said. And added: "I have been externally headhunted for a role – but with full-time hours. At what point in the process do I say that I want to work part-time? “There is no clarity and I know that my dilemma is that of people seeking part-time work across the country." The Timewise Foundation's findings, which were published on 8 July in a report entitled 'The Flexibility Trap', certainly show that this is a nationwide dilemma. Half of the respondents worry about the right time to discuss part-time work with a potential employer and 42 per cent fear that asking will damage their chances of getting the job. Nearly all, 99 per cent, said they would like job advertisements to say if the employer is open to employees working part-time or flexible hours. Elizabeth Gardiner, head of policy at the work-life balance organisation Working Families, agreed. She said: "It may be the easy option to offer a vacancy on the same basis as the last full-time job, but there is a business case for changing practice. "Failing to advertise jobs as available on a part-time or flexible basis means employers are recruiting from a limited talent pool and skilled part-time workers are less able to advance their careers." Gardiner has called for employers to adopt "happy to talk flexible working" as a strapline to feature in job advertisements. "Using the strapline would encourage employers to consider job design, signal their willingness to discuss outputs not hours and give more employees the confidence to ask for a pattern of work that suits them," she said. In a bid to help part-time workers, the Timewise Foundation is compiling their second Power Part-Time list, which will showcase 50 senior men and women who work less than five full days a week. Timewise hopes to dispel the myth that ‘meaningful roles cannot work on a part-time basis, even at the most senior levels’.  |
| Posted: 23 Jul 2013 02:39 AM PDT
Just like tennis players, it seems that women giving birth now have to be "lookers" and not ruin the effect with any of that sweaty groaning, moaning or screaming. Even if it’s a 10-hour labour, don’t spoil the picture of perfect motherhood by looking like you have gone ten rounds of wrestling a tiger in the jungle, whatever you do. It’s just not what anyone wants. With the Daily Mail increasingly scrutinising the pregnancy of celebs from curvy Kim Kardishan and the shock of her post pregnancy pants to Penelope "ready to pop" Cruz, women are now feeling the pressure to always look good, with a race to get back into shape as soon as the baby "pops" (ha, ha, ha) out, like a champagne cork from a bottle. The Sun had timely advice for Kate Middleton about how she could look great while giving birth. It also claimed that research suggested that more pregnant women are visiting beauty salons to ensure that they look like royalty on delivery day. Of the three women The Sun interviewed, one had spent up to £1,000 to look buff in the delivery suite, and that including having a bikini wax. As TV critic and journalist Grace Dent commented on Twitter "Yeah. Put a bit of lippy on you lazy cow. etc." However, addressing the balance is photographer Jade Beal of Tucson, Arizona. The BBC magazine reported how she took photos of her scars, stretch marks and loose skin after giving birth and posted them on her blog, A beautiful body project. Beal told the BBC: "I want people not to have to react as ‘You’re gross,’ but instead ‘Oh, that’s a woman who is incredibly human, or that’s a woman who has scars and lines with stories to tell. “My goal is to help these mothers feel worthy of being called beautiful.” So Kate, hope you remembered as you pushed for England, beauty comes in all shapes, it’s your pregnancy and you can cry if you want to.  |
| Oxford rape gang: Who will prosecute the police? Posted: 23 Jul 2013 12:45 AM PDT
By Black Women's Rape Action Project & Women Against Rape. [At the end of June] five men got life sentences for the vile sexual abuse of girls as young as 11. The men, and two others sentenced to seven years, were last month convicted of “sexual atrocities” against the children. Their 43 offences over eight years ranged from rape and conspiracy to rape to supplying Class A drugs to using an instrument to procure a miscarriage. But what about the police officers and social workers whose refusal to act enabled these rapes? Will they be prosecuted for aiding and abetting rape? Were some involved in other ways? Is that why they didn't act against rape? Or is it their bias against working class children and against rape victims generally? For 8 years police and social services allowed girls between the ages of 11 and 15 to be systematically raped. They even threatened to arrest some of the girls when they reported. As with Jimmy Savile, with the care homes in Jersey and Wales, with Rochdale and many other cases, those responsible for the children's protection refused to ensure their safety and welfare, and protected the children’s rapists instead. Professionals blamed the children, even labeling child victims 'trash' and the rapes they were suffering a 'lifestyle choice'. That is just what the rapists did. How are they different? Because the men in the Oxford and Rochdale cases are Muslim and the girls we know about so far are white, media racism has let the authorities off the hook, calling rape a ‘cultural problem’. Instead of pressing the authorities for an answer, much of the media is feeding the EDL and other racists looking for excuses to attack people of colour, women and men. Yet we know, and the Deputy Children's Commissioner Sue Berelowitz has emphasized, that teenagers all over the UK are being raped by adult men who are mostly white. Her 2012 report said: "The evidence is clear that perpetrators come from all ethnic groups and so do their victims – contrary to what some may wish to believe." The report also suggested that the proportion of Asian perpetrators in the official figures may be higher because the police were targeting non-whites. In other words, white rapists are even more likely to get away with it. Reported facts in the Oxford case – do they not amount to criminal neglect by the authorities? • Girl C's adoptive mother begged Oxford social services for help in 2004. She contacted them a further 80 times. • Victims contacted Thames Valley Police at least six times but investigations were halted when they withdrew. One was even threatened with arrest for wasting police time over her repeated absences from a children's home. • Girl A reported to police in 2006 being held against her will and forced to snort cocaine, leaving her unconscious. No charges followed. • Later in 2006, Girl B called police to report rape. When they attended she was in a house with 11 men, having run away from a children's home. No charges followed. • A few months later, Girl A's rape report was investigated. A man was questioned but denied it. No charges followed. He abused girls for another five years. • Police were called by a guest at the Nanford Guest House who heard crying and responses to pain in a nearby room. No charges followed. • Girl D reported Karrar twice, in 2005 and 2007. No charges followed. • Karrar and the two Dogar brothers were arrested in 2006. No charges followed. • One of the girls in care went missing 126 times, and it was the "general consensus" among staff at the home that she was being sexually groomed by older men in 2007-2008. They reported this to police. No charges followed. • In 2011 a determined police investigation into sexual abuse of children finally began, and a number of men were eventually charged and some of them prosecuted. • Two of the children's homes were closed down. Three successive Ofsted inspections in the year ending May 2008 had found them lacking a safety strategy. • When Girls A and B returned to the home in a taxi, a care home manager refused to pay the fare and the driver took Girl A, aged 14, back to Oxford where she was raped again the next day. The carer was later sacked and the privately run home where girls were placed by Oxford County Council was closed down. • Girl C was resuscitated by an ambulance man who told her she had had a massive overdose of heroine. • The mother of one victim said the authorities had treated her daughter like ‘white trash’. • The six girls were further tortured in court during the trial. One girl was aggressively cross-examined by seven barristers over three weeks. The children were called liars, had their integrity and lifestyle questioned, and were branded "naughty girls" and unreliable witnesses. In Rochdale and in Oxford, girls from working class backgrounds were raped for years despite repeatedly reporting to police and social services. Police claimed they didn't arrest the men because they were worried they would be accused of racism. Yet they have no qualms carrying out thousands of stop and search on men of colour who haven't been accused of anything. Police are 28 times more likely to stop men of colour than white people: 10 times more likely to stop Asian Britons then white people. (Equality & Human Rights Commission.) The chief constable of Thames Valley Police, Sara Thornton, and the chief executive of Oxfordshire county council, Joanna Simons, said they would stay in their posts despite criticism over the scandal. The head of Rochdale Council resigned without facing charges. A damning independent report found that the council’s former chief executive Roger Ellis “did not appear to be interested in children’s social care issues” and said there was no evidence that he had any intention of investigating the events that led to the jailing of nine men in May last year for offences including trafficking, rape and sexual assault. Karin Ward, one of Jimmy Savile's victims and a former resident at Duncroft school for girls, where Savile was allowed to roam, said that she sensed, "That's what we were for." (BBC Panorama 22 October 2012) Duncroft's retired head Margaret Jones dismissed the claims of her former pupils as "wild allegations by well-known delinquents". Years of ignoring reports of child abuse from Jersey to North Wales prove that the priority was not to stop rape, but to shield the criminal and in some cases their connections in high places so as not to disturb the status quo. None of the wealthy chauffeur-driven regular visitors to North Wales children's homes or other big shots have been prosecuted. A whistleblower has revealed that police spied on Stephen Lawrence's family to get “dirt” on them so they could undermine their campaign for justice. Rape victims are routinely undermined by police who seem more anxious to discredit us than to arrest the men who have raped us. In the Oxford case child victims were blamed for what violent adults did to them. Other rape victims have even been prosecuted: Gail Sherwood, a mother of three, and Layla Ibrahim, a pregnant young woman, were both jailed while their rapists are still at large. We now know that working class children with the least social power are treated by police and social services as sexually available and disposable. The government shows no interest that their cuts undermine women's and children's ability to escape rape. Is that part of the austerity policy's attraction? With the welfare cap and cuts limiting child benefits, and thousands of families being moved out of London, many more women and children are already experiencing destitution, lack of food for their children, loss of safety and support networks making it impossible to leave violent relationships. More children will be taken into care or foster homes and become rape victims. Legal aid cuts are limiting even further our access to justice and protection. We are glad these men have been imprisoned. But nothing we have heard so far suggests that children like the Oxford girls are any safer. Some police say they are 'passionate' about stopping rape. We should make way for them by sacking and prosecuting those police who aid and abet rapists. Then 'lessons will be learnt'. This article was originally published at Open Democracy.  |
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