Safe Passage announces its 7th annual Hot Chocolate Run in Northampton:
The Hot Chocolate Run raises funds for Safe Passage, the Hampshire County organization providing shelter, counseling, and advocacy services to women and children who have experienced domestic violence. This event is Safe Passage’s largest fundraising event. We are so fortunate to have the support of thousands of participants and dozens of business sponsors and donors.
This year’s event will be held on Sunday, December 5. The event has always been on the first Saturday in December. As the event has grown bigger, it’s been difficult to accommodate the level of traffic our event brings into downtown Northampton on a busy Saturday morning. We’re trying Sunday this year in the hopes that the event will run more smoothly for our participants and anyone else who needs to access downtown during the event.
Registration is limited to 5,000 people this year. We encourage you to register early to ensure that you can participate. Day-of registration may not be available this year.
After you’ve registered, you can get more involved in helping Safe Passage through your participation in the Hot Chocolate Run. Click here to get started!
Click for details and registration instructions
See also:
Testimony from Northampton Shelter for Battered Women: Half of Abusers Use Pornography as a Part of the Abuse (explicit)
We have recently begun to formally ask the battered women who call us whether the abuser uses pornography and from this we conservatively estimate that at least 1/2 of the abusers use pornography as a part of the abuse. Battering is based on an issue of power and control, with the abuser using all kinds of methods to continually assert his power and control over the woman. Throughout, he is persistently working to deny her of her ability to make informed decisions about her life and through threats, coercion, and continual terror succeeds at clearly establishing himself as “in control”. We frequently hear a woman say that she feels like a prisoner in her own home, and in fact, she is.
The use of pornography is but one means that an abuser uses to degrade and humiliate the woman. The stories that I hear are horrific and just when I think I’ve heard it all, I hear another horrifying story that sends me reeling…
Everywoman Center Coordinator: Porn Damages Women; Porn Addiction
Stacey Roth, coordinator of an educational outreach program at Everywoman Center, a women’s advocacy group at the University of Massachusetts, said that, based on accounts of area women speaking about their experiences with domestic abuse, she agrees with recent arguments that pornography damages women.
“Typically, a woman will say that her boyfriend is into very violent forms of pornography and likes to act out specific aspects of that, and she doesn’t know how to stop it,” Roth said, “or a battered woman might perceive a connection between the pornography in her household and the bouts of violence…
“In no other case [of media communications] are people so quick to discount the argument about the human cost, which I think reflects how low protection of women ranks in our priorities. We’re quicker to protest media (material) that depicts the mistreatment of animals than of women,” Roth said. “A society does need to make choices about what attitudes it wants to condone.”
Northampton Shelter Coordinators: Porn a Factor in Many Cases of Domestic Abuse
“People say pornography doesn’t hurt anyone. Real women are being tied up to produce this. Men seeing it think it’s all right,” [Roz] Cuomo said…
Testimony in Massachusetts: The Lasting Impact of Growing Up in a Porn-Filled Home
Submission of Kathleen O’Neill Alexander, March 16, 1992, Boston, Massachusetts:
I have been a rape crisis coordinator and counselor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst… I am the author of Reclaiming Our Lives: A Handbook for Rape Crisis Counselors and Educators in Massachusetts. Over the last ten years I have committed myself to working on behalf of victims of violence…
I have worked with women who have had pornography used while they were being beaten by their husbands. I have heard from women that while they were being raped a perpetrator referred to pornography. Sometimes women have told me they were forced to imitate whatever was in the picture. One woman told me that her entire incest victimization, by her older brother always included pornography. Collectively, women have suffered humiliation, degradation and violence at the hands of pornography. It has taken years to deal with the turmoil of my own experience. One of my most painful struggles even now at 43 years old is having a sense of my body size and physical appearance. I have suffered eating disorders and had to overcome a great deal of pain that I directly attribute to the barrage of sexually explicit images and the activities that took place in my home.
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.
Smith College Sophian: “Clothesline Project Hangs Abuse Out to Dry”
Testimony in Minneapolis: “Pornography is probably the most extreme example of anti-women socialization that men receive in this society”
If you look at a lot of pornography, it shows women being beaten, humiliated, tied up. It shows women tied and stabbed, poked, prodded and abused by devices, assaulted by several men or animals, and many ugly and degrading things. When you see a woman being battered, you see a lot of the same ugliness and violence at the same time. Not only do they portray women as liking and deserving this sexual abuse, it shows them as enjoying it, deserving it. And that is what one of the great myths of battery is, is that women deserve to be battered and that they enjoy it. If they didn’t like it, they wouldn’t stay…
Abusive Relationships and Porn: The Similarities (explicit language)
Porn Use Correlates with Infidelity, Prostitution, Aggression, Rape-Supportive Beliefs
Evidence Assessment: The Role of Pornography in the Physical Abuse of Women
Sommers and Check (1987) conducted a survey of 21 ‘battered women drawn from a shelter’ and 21 women in a comparison group drawn from the university to investigate the role of pornography in the verbal and physical abuse of women (pp 189-209). The study found that:
- the partners of the battered women read or viewed significantly greater amounts of pornographic materials than the partners of the comparison group;
- thirty-nine per cent of the battered women in contrast to three per cent of the comparison group had been asked to do what was portrayed in the pornography; and
- the ‘battered women experienced significantly more sexual aggression at the hands of their partners than did women in the comparison group’ (p 189)…
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.”
Now Showing at Amazing.net: The War on Relationships (explicit)
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)
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)
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!
Capital Video’s Magazine Rack: Bondage, Racism and More
“A bed is still one of the most convenient bondage platforms invented by man. If the headboard is of the metal type, rather than solid wood, so much the better. A girl’s wrists can readily be tied to it, imprisoning her.”
Now on Sale at Amazing.net: The Swirlies (explicit)
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…
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…