The April 10 Sophian reports on Smith College’s 14th annual Clothesline Project, honoring Sexual Abuse Awareness Week. The project began with 31 shirts displayed in Hyannis, Massachusetts in 1990. It has expanded to 500 projects worldwide.
More than one in six women in United States are victims of rape or sexual assault, according to a 2000 survey conducted by the National Violence Against Women Prevention Research Center (NVAWPRC). This ratio, however, reflects only the prevalence of reported violent crimes against women, which are estimated to be only one quarter of those that actually occur…
Most of the shirts are former garments worn by their creators, or belonged to the women they now memorialize. They have produced a powerfully stark presentation of uninhibited sentiment…
The project’s Web site [link] approximates that between 50,000 and 60,000 T-shirts have been created since its first display…
See also:
Gazette: “Lives of struggle: Hearing declares women in region suffer from inequality” (3/27/08)
‘I come here with both a sense of great hope and great sadness,’ said Toni Troop, director of development for Jane Doe Inc., an anti-domestic violence nonprofit…
Among these problems, Troop noted, is an increase in the number of women killed by domestic violence. According to Troop, 55 women died as a result of domestic violence in 2007. In 2003, there were 14 such deaths…
…Poole [Ann Poole, a health services manager for health-care clinic Tapestry Inc.] also talked about sexually transmitted disease. She lamented that 25 percent of teenage girls in America have an STD…
La Wanza Lett-Brewington, executive director of Safe Passage, an anti-domestic violence organization in Northampton, described how women can be treated poorly in the western Massachusetts probate courts where many domestic and family cases are heard. She said there are some judges and lawyers in western Massachusetts who don’t believe domestic violence has occurred even when presented with police and hospital records…
Juliana Morgan-Trostle, an Amherst Regional High School student and member of the school’s Women’s Rights Club, noted the lack of sexual education girls are receiving at high school.
Abusive Relationships and Porn: The Similarities (explicit language)
You may be in an emotionally abusive relationship if your partner:
* Calls you names, insults you or continually criticizes you…
* Punishes you by withholding affection…
* Expects you to ask permission…
* Humiliates you in any way…
You may be in a physically abusive relationship if your partner has ever:…
* Pushed, slapped, bitten, kicked or choked you…
* Used a weapon to threaten or hurt you…
* Used physical force in sexual situations…
Video Presentation: A Content Analysis of 50 of Today’s Top Selling Porn Films (explicit language)
Ana Bridges: “…I’m going to begin to talk about what it is that we
found after looking at these 304 scenes in these 50 top selling
pornographic films. In total in the 304 scenes we coded a total of
3,376 acts of aggression. That ends up averaging…to an aggressive act
every minute and a half. The scenes on average contained eleven and a
half acts of verbal or physical aggression…”
Bridges: “…condoms were present in 11 percent of the scenes… A
discussion of ‘Let’s be safe’ or ‘Put on a condom’ or something of that
happened in…one scene of the 304. Nice ‘education’…”
Bridges: “So how many scenes didn’t contain aggression? About 10%.”
Bridges: “For verbal aggression, by far namecalling and insulting were
the most common types. They were seen in almost half of scenes.”
Bridges: “Gagging and choking were much, much more common than any of us thought when we first walked into this project.”
Bridges: “Slapping happened 30% of the time… Most of the aggressors
in these films were men…73%. By far the most common recipient of
aggression was a woman. Even when women were aggressing, they were
generally aggressing other women.”
Bridges: “How did the person respond when they were aggressed?… In
95% of these 3,000 and some acts of aggression, the person was either
neutral, as in no change of facial expression or verbal expression, or
was sort of saying, ‘That feels great. Keep doing it. Right on.’ And in
only 3% did we see some overt expression of displeasure or pain. Again,
it seems to be very important to the people who are watching this to
believe that the recipient of aggression is fact enjoying it, is
choosing it at some level.”
The Werribee DVD: Group of Boys Sexually Assault Girl; Video Sold in Schools (explicit)
In Australia, a group of teenage boys recently made a DVD of their encounter with a 17-year-old girl by the Werribee River. As you read these excerpts from articles in The Age, ask yourself, where would teenagers get the idea to…
- Assault a girl sexually as a group, demanding oral sex
- Exploit a girl they might consider to be ‘dumb’
- Insult her
- Physically abuse her
- Urinate on her
- Force her to lick someone’s anus
- Video record the assault
- Sell the video to their peers
- Insist that the girl “wanted to do it” despite her protests…
Now Showing at Amazing.net: The War on Relationships (explicit)
Domination
There is a fine line between pain and
pleasure and that line has been more than blurred this time. Pain can
be our biggest pleasure tapping into our sixth and seventh
senses…taking our sexual experiences to a new realm and darker
dimension where the rules as we know them cease to exist.
Grudge Fuck #2
There is a fine line between love
and hate. We’ve all been there. But nothing cures the pains of passion
quite like sex fueled by spite. Six twisted scenarios set the stage for
eight prime pussy poundings as Grudgefuck #2 picks up where the
original left off. Pick a bone in ways she’ll never forget and drive
your point home with your prick. Why kiss and make up when you can f**k
her and forget about it? A solid Grudgefuck will send shock waves
through the standard sex scene and Guy Capo has master crafted six such
scenarios of stellar quality.
Pain In The Ass
The bitch has been naggin at you
all fuckin day. Take out the garnage. Do the dirty fuckin dishes. Dont
drink so much beer. Blah Blah Blah. Theres only so much a man can
fuckin take so when its bed time make it your turn to be the major pain
in her ass.
Herbert, Brooks and Osayande on Misogyny, Money and
Power; Amazing.net’s War on Women and Blacks (explicit)
Ass To Mouth #3
These tight ass whores love to be fucked up the ass..and let them clean that dick off in their nasty mouthes.
Mistress In Da’ Hood
If you can’t beat ’em whip ’em
good! And the fur is definitely flying as you watch the painful
climaxes these all black gash lashers love.
Now Showing at Amazing.net: The War on Privacy and Consent (explicit)
Blame It On Daddy #2
Hi daddy look what I’m doing! Look at what you made me do dad… I’m all fucked up and I can only cum from anal!
Casual Brutality #2
Red assed lasses trussed up and tormented!
Pain & Tolerance
4 hours of whippin’ good
fun! Non-stop spanking binding whipping and domination. This is filled
with perversion and mayhem! Subjugate those pathetic little pigs and
make them obey!!!
Childhood Spanking Linked to Coerced Sex and Risky Sex in Adulthood; Amazing.net Milks Pain for Profit (explicit)
Bad Girls Get Spanked
Misbehavin’ bitches get punished!
Amazing.net: Making Nazis Sexy (explicit)
Now on Sale at Amazing.net: The Swirlies (explicit)
Some Porn Hard to Distinguish from Training for Pedophiles (explicit language)
Testimony in Minneapolis: Role of Porn in Child Sexual Abuse; Pornographers Perpetuate, Profit from Dysfunction
Playboy ran one cartoon of a little girl getting dressed and saying derisively to an old man in a robe, “and you call that being molested!” The old man standing there looking very inept and foolish, INADEQUATE.
This cartoon
accuses the little girl of being the seducer, and gives her all the
power, and believe me, a 10-year-old girl who attempts suicide,
sometimes successfully, rather than sleep with Dad or Uncle again, has no power…
Effects of Prolonged Consumption of Pornography on Family Values; Women’s
Desire to Have Daughters Plummets
The most astonishing effect of prolonged pornography consumption on
family values, however, concerns the desire to have children…
[E]xposure to pornography reduced the desire to have children, and it
did so in a uniform fashion. Male and female respondents, students and
nonstudents alike, wanted fewer children on the average. The desire to
have male offspring dropped 31%. The desire for female offspring, being
lower overall, dropped by about twice that margin: 61%. This reduction
proved specific to gender. Male respondents expressed little desire for
female offspring altogether. It’s the desire of females for offspring
of their own kind that, after consumption of pornography, shrank to one
third of its normal strength…
Testimony in Minneapolis: Role of Porn in Child Sexual Abuse; Pornographers Perpetuate, Profit from Dysfunction
Whether or not pornography is causative of real abuse practices, it is fully and profoundly supportive of them… Pornography “de-sensitizes” men to the real and gross violation of a human being involved…
What is key to the issue is that permission, societal permission, is at the core of real paternal child molestation; and at the core of most marital and stranger rape…
Testimony
in Minneapolis: “Pornography in the home is insidious. Girls pick up
the message, they act it out, they don’t know why they feel suicidal
and crazy.”
I believe a lot of battering of young girls has to
do with sexual feelings, much of what comes every time in families
where there was pornography. The father feels sexual towards his
daughter, wants to repress that, and instead of taking responsibility
for his addiction, which is out of control, beats his daughter. It is
connected many times. I have had fathers open up to this when they come
to family therapy and talk about it…
Testimony in Massachusetts: Porn Confuses Young Men about How to Behave
Porn Use Correlates with Infidelity, Prostitution,
Aggression, Rape-Supportive Beliefs
Smith Sophian: “Definition of ‘no’ should not be debated in cases of rape”
Victim’s “Precocious Knowledge of Sexuality” Blocks Child Rape Conviction (2/7/07)
Northampton’s Daily Hampshire Gazette reports
today that a Hampshire Superior Court jury has acquitted Hubert
Jaundoo, a local man accused of raping his then-girlfriend’s
seven-year-old daughter in 2001, after Jaundoo’s lawyer attacked the
child’s credibility on the grounds that she was too sexually
experienced:
His defense lawyer, David Hoose, argued the girl’s
precocious knowledge of sexuality created a reasonable doubt as to
whether her accusations against Jaundoo were accurate.“The
child was exposed to a lot of information about sex at an
inappropriately early age,” Hoose said in a telephone interview
Tuesday. How or by whom she was exposed to this information is unclear,
he said.
Jaundoo was originally convicted of the charges in
2003 and sentenced to 18-20 years, but the Appeals Court overturned
that verdict in 2005 on the grounds that the jury should not have been
allowed to hear about the large collection of pornography found in
Jaundoo’s home.
The appellate ruling is hard to square with evidence such as this testimony
before the Minneapolis Government Operations Committee during the 1983
civil rights hearings on pornography. Bill Neiman of the Hennepin
County Attorney’s Office found that not only was it common to discover
pornography in the homes of sexual abusers, it was more
common when the victim was a child. Jaundoo’s possession of porn was
absolutely relevant to the case. According to the Springfield Republican:
When the victim testified four years ago, she said Jaundoo
would sometimes give her a dollar after making her engage in sex acts
with him, and showed her a pornographic video and magazines. She also
testified Jaundoo said her mother would beat her if she told anyone
about the sexual abuse.
The implications of yesterday’s
verdict could further stigmatize and silence victims of child sexual
abuse and deter them from seeking justice in court. In the days before
feminism, a woman who was “tainted” by past sexual activity was deemed
not credible in a rape trial. Whether or not Jaundoo raped this girl,
someone clearly abused her (or was grossly negligent) by exposing her
to inappropriate sexual materials. Now the court system is telling her
that her victimization makes her “tainted”, that her assertions of
abuse have no value.
In her study of porn and child sexual abuse, Professor Diana Russell relates how mere exposure to porn can make children reluctant to seek protection from abuse:
When
child molesters expose targeted children to pornography, the children
often feel guilty and complicit, particularly if they found the
material sexually exciting or masturbated to it. According to Scotland
Yard, one of the five major ways that pedophiles use
pornography is to “ensure the secrecy of any sexual activity with a
child who has already been seduced” (Tate, 1990, p. 24). Child
molesters can often silence their victims by telling them that their
parents would be very upset to learn that they had watched pornography.
Even without such warnings, children often fear that their parents will
blame and punish them for having looked at this material. Children who
are sexually abused following the exposure may feel complicit in the
abuse and thus become even more motivated to remain silent. Ultimately,
this reduces the likelihood that abused children will disclose the
sexual abuse to their parents or others.
In
the Jaundoo case, the court astonishingly appears to have reinforced
the value to sexual predators of silencing children or neutralizing
their testimony by exposing them to porn…
Now on Sale at Amazing.net (explicit language)
Wonderland
This
DVD features a story-driven title that mixes drama with hardcore sex.
Wonderland tells the story of a man obsessed with his stepdaughter’s
friend when she visits during Christmas break. Gary sacrifices
everything in his traditional suburban existence for a single moment of
ecstasy with a femme fatale…