extremely-clever:

You know what I haven’t written about in at least twelve hours?

RAPE CULTURE.

This kind of bullshit is absolutely ESSENTIAL to rape culture.

According to this kind of thinking, women are incapable of speaking honestly or coherently about their own feelings, wishes, and desires. You, man, should interpret everything she says. She says ‘leave me alone’? She means, ‘Please don’t go.’ You are a good man for violating her personal space and request for you to leave, because she is a woman, and therefore her no means yes. (Of course, her yes means yes, too. Just take the sex, it’s yours.)

But men. Oh, men. Look at how logical you are. Look at your clear, strong, statements. You never say one thing and mean another. You are honest, and forthright, and everyone understands you. You are the smart ones. You are the reasonable ones. You deserve the voice in our society. Please, write our rape laws. Judge our rape cases. Be on both sides of the courtroom - prosecution and defense. Write the curricula for our sex ed classes. Us womenfolk don’t need our own voice or opinion heard. We’ll just slow things down, because everyone will have to switch our words from WOMANSPEAK to REALSPEAK.

It’s revolting.

Asking For It: 6%

It is estimated that only 6% of rapes and sexual assaults are actually reported, which is a frightfully low number. I have started a new project aiming to explore the reasons behind this, which started from the #ididnotreport hashtag on twitter - where survivors or rape/sexual abuse tell of their numerous reasons why they didn’t report it to anyone. This is the first series of images - numerous things that victims are told time and time again whenever they do actually report their abuse to someone - be it a friend, parent, family member, stranger or the authorities. We live in a society of rape culture where the victim is almost constantly blamed - told that they drank too much, wore too little, were out too late by themselves, flirted too much, are too “slutty”, are too “frigid”, are making a big deal out of “nothing”, the rapist was their partner so it obviously wasn’t rape because you can’t be raped by someone you’re in a relationship with. The things that victims constantly get told by the media, the people they know, rape “jokes”, songs, the authorities…they are painted on them so that they can never forget. To remind them that it is all “their fault” - if they hadn’t gone there/drank alcohol/wore that skirt/flirted etc, it wouldn’t have happened. Obviously.
 

I intend to expand on this series of photographs in the near future, and there is a lot more to come from this project, this is only the very starting point. My aim is to bring the idea of rape culture, slut-shaming, and victim-blaming to the attention of more people. To try and examine why 94% of rapes/assaults/abuse are never reported to the police, and to try and make that number decrease.

Linzi Clark

lacigreen:

katydidnot:

dear internet, let me tell you some things about my public-school-in-georgia sex education.

pictured above is my abstinence til marriage card, given to me in my eighth grade health class. as you can see, i did not sign it, so it is non-binding. they were “optional” but the teacher placed the basket at the front of the class and stared us down. my 13-year-old self had a very brief dilemma between 1. making a stand and not getting one or 2. getting one because it’s fucking hilarious. i am very glad i chose the latter, because as i predicted, this is now something hilarious to show everyone.

that year in health we also learned “how to spot the identifying features of a crack baby” which is literally nothing but lies. we had a system of anonymous questions, and once someone asked “how do i know if i’m a lesbian?” our teacher looked disgusted and she replied “how would i know? i’m not a lesbian!”

EDIT i forgot to mention when she gave these to us she suggested we “cut up our cards together with our husbands on our wedding day” and i remember thinking, fuck if i marry someone from my middle school

the next time i had sex ed in high school it was taught by a dude gym coach who spent the whole time talking about his daughters. the book we were learning from listed “low self-esteem” “stunted social growth” and “depression,” among others, as consequences of premarital sex. at one point, it asked us to fill in the disadvantages of having an abortion. our teacher went, “well, i’m personally against abortion, so we’re just going to skip this section,” which confused me, because it was explicitly asking for an argument against abortion.

the last time i had sex ed it was pretty good and there were free condoms and we got little bottles of lube every time we answered questions, but i don’t think that counts cause it was in an intro to women’s studies class.