In the spirit of Andrea Dworkin: "It is incumbent upon each of us to be the woman that Marc Lépine wanted to kill. We must live with this honour, this courage. We must drive out fear. We must hold on. We must create. We must resist.“
Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), civil engineering student Hélène Colgan (born 1966), mechanical engineering student Nathalie Croteau (born 1966), mechanical engineering student Barbara Daigneault (born 1967), mechanical engineering student Anne-Marie Edward (born 1968), chemical engineering student Maud Haviernick (born 1960), materials engineering student Maryse Laganière (born 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique’s finance department Maryse Leclair (born 1966), materials engineering student Anne-Marie Lemay (born 1967), mechanical engineering student Sonia Pelletier (born 1961), mechanical engineering student Michèle Richard (born 1968), materials engineering student Annie St-Arneault (born 1966), mechanical engineering student Annie Turcotte (born 1969), materials engineering student Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (born 1958), nursing student
“Women are also rejected. Women also spend their teen years pining after dreamy boys who will never love them back. You don’t see us going around murdering people over it. You don’t see us setting up internet communities for the purpose of talking about how evil and shallow men are for not taking us to pound town. Women don’t go around killing men who don’t like them, because if you’re a woman in this society, a boy not liking you is the least of your problems. It is nowhere near the shittiest thing you’re going to be expected to “just deal with” in your life — one of those things being the fact that we are expected to “just deal with” how men are sometimes going to murder a bunch of people because they felt entitled to romantic attention from women. We are expected to “deal with” that, while never bringing up the terms “male privilege” or “male entitlement” or “toxic masculinity” and why those things so often lead to mass murder, on account of how that might really hurt the feelings of the men who have been gracious enough to not go on killing sprees.”
It’s also common for women to think “Oh, they don’t like me? There must be something wrong with me.” Whereas men are taught “She doesn’t like me? Something’s wrong with her/She’s a fucking bitch/Must be a lesbian.”
Oh and btw. When he entered the lecture hall and separated the women from the 50 or so men in the room and told them he was going to murder the women, the men walked out of the class room and left him to do what he wanted to the women.
Not a single man tried to stop him. They didn’t gang up on him and wrestle the gun from his hands.
Remember that when men tell you that men’s job is to protect women.
Most importantly remember the 14 women who were executed for daring to go to school.
Exhibit 335
its because the average man will still hold more class solidarity with violent criminals than their fellow average women. men have never protected us, either they actively take part in harming us or they passively let it slide.
I spend a fair amount of time teaching women to kick men in the balls, and I’ve learned that this activity tends to generate controversy. Here, according to actual adults who have actually said these things to me, are some reasons you should not kick a guy in the balls:
1. It will make him angry.
I should hope so. I’m not sending him a friend request. If I kick him hard enough, there’s a good chance I’ll render him unable to act upon his anger. That’s my goal. His feelings are his problem.
2. It will make him hurt you worse.
Statistics say otherwise. And anyway, he’s already demonstrated his desire to hurt me. Why should I give him carte blanche to decide how much he’s going to hurt me? I’d rather be an active participant in that decision-making process.
3. Groin kicks aren’t really that devastating; I’ve seen lots of guys get hit in the balls and it hardly fazed them.
This response (almost universally from men) is so common I’ve come to think of it as “groinsplaining”—you can see it many of the YouTube comments in the videos linked above. These people rarely volunteer to demonstrate their own iron balls in a real kicking situation, but they confidently assert that men in general can shrug off all kinds of damage to the groin. All I can say is, I’ve seen two-year-olds take down grown men via the groin, and toddlers don’t even have any training. I do. I like my odds.
4. We shouldn’t be teaching people how to kick men in the balls; we should be teaching men not to do anything that would make us have to kick them in the balls.
Hey, that’s a great idea! Do you have a detailed, research-based plan for teaching all men everywhere to behave themselves all the time? And do you have funding for your efforts, and buy-in from politicians and community leaders, and a network of trained, experienced instructors who can effect this change? If not, better get started on your grant proposal. In the meantime, I’ll just be over here teaching people how to kick guys in the balls. That’s what I do.
5. Telling people they should kick an assailant in the balls is the same as telling victims who didn’t kick their assailant in the balls that they did something wrong.
No, it isn’t. It’s a practical way to reduce the number of future victims by giving them more viable options to disrupt and survive an assault.
Fact: We have the power to damage the bodies of men who try to hurt us. You’re saying we shouldn’t let people use that power. I’m offering people more choices; you’re trying to take them away.
6. Kicking a guy in the balls just makes the world a more violent place.
Maybe, in the short term. But if it stops him from killing someone, or putting them in the hospital, isn’t that a net win for non-violence? The Dalai Lama thinks so.
One in four women will have good reason to kick a guy in the balls at some point in her life. Luckily, it’s not rocket science. Anyone can do it! And ball-kicking’s efficacy is beyond dispute, as the men of MMA so nobly helped us illustrate here. Gentlemen, if any of you are reading this, and conscious: Cheers, and get well soon (the non-wife-beaters among you, anyway).
AIA REPORTING FOR DUTY
okay, so!
There is a trick to it. You do NOT want to soccer kick the dude because that’s a little projectile aiming at a littler target.
It’ll do in a pinch, and it’ll hurt, but it won’t incapacitate, which is what you want. You don’t want “ouch!” Or even “FUCK!”
You want him puking on the floor, and this is how we do:
There’s two ranges where a groin kick works: close and mid-range.
Say someone grabs you face to face, or pins you to the wall, and your hands are blocked. Now you’re close-range. What do you do? You come in closer, as close as you can, and with every ounce of adrenaline and aggression in your body, you do a can-can kick.
You know the first step in the can-can, where you raise your knee up as high as it’ll go as strong as you can?
Do that, as hard as you can, repeatedly.
If that doesn’t work, here’s the alternative. You’re going to take your hand, grasp between the thighs underhand. Its going to feel like you’re “cradling” the testicles. Dig your fingertips into the fragile skin BEHIND the scrotum. Then, once you have a good grip, you turn your hand into a vise, with your fingers digging inwards to the material. If you do it right, you should feel the testes INSIDE the scrotum. You want, whenever possible, to hook your fingers under them.
Then, with your hands in a claw and your fingertips latched behind the testes, you turn your hand sharply, as though you were turning a doorknob. Simultaneously, haul your elbow back and up as hard as you can.
If done properly, this technique can tear the scrotal tissue, and done with enough force, can tear the testes out of your attacker’s body.
No matter HOW pissed he is, he’s gonna drop. I’ve tried this technique on guys wearing cups and even with protection, it is not a fun feeling.
If you’re mid-range and have enough room for a kick, the goal becomes to use your shin. The shin is actually called the tibia, which ounce for ounce is one of the strongest bones in your body. So, here’s what you do, my little bloodthirsty beaus:
You aim, you scream “DO NOT COME CLOSER I SAID NO!” (legal purposes, because now you’re officially exercising your right to self-defence). Maintain a 360 degree awareness, just in case he has friends, and then, when he’s close enough, connect your shin full on soccer kick with the delicate squish of his testicles.
What you want is as much upwards force as possible in combination with as much momentum as you can manage. When he collapses, which he will, then stomp on his groin again, and then run.
The latter has less of a trick to it. It’s primarily about momentum and force.
Remember, if you’re close enough to put your hands on him, use your knee. If he’s coming at you, use your shin.
If you can smell the nachos he had for dinner, rip his fucking balls off.
It’s easy to do, they’re tiny little squishiness wrapped in a delicate flap of skin about as thin as a toenail.
Remember: if he’s coming at you, he’s ALREADY out to hurt you. Might as well give the fucker a reason to be pissed.
Someone once told me that the way to train a proper knee in the groin (with appropriate aggression if you want to hurt him enough to let you go is to train and act as if you’re not aiming your knee at the groin, but aiming for somewhere much higher so that your mind knows to really ram your knee upward.
A male friend of a friend of the family once generously and kindly advised me that if anyone with nuts ever got up on me without me wanting him to do so, to “grab his balls as hard as you can, squeeze, and yank away from his body until they feel like marmalade. Then run.”
I have never forgotten this advice.
My self-defense trainer used to say: “Eyes are like grapes. Ears are like pull tabs. And if you’re going to grab some, girls - grab, pull, twist, and bring those balls home to Mama.”
“What would street fights between guys look like—or professional fights for that matter—if one could go below the belt? For one, there’d be a lot more collapsing. Two, a lot more writhing in pain. Three, a lot less getting up. All in all, it would add up to less time looking powerful and more time looking pitiful. And it would send a clear message that men’s bodies are vulnerable.“
…
“So, men generally agree to pretend that the balls just aren’t there. The effect is that we tend to forget just how vulnerable men are to the right attack and continue to think of women as naturally more fragile.”
“In 2015 I wrote an essay in which I speculated about why we don’t see men kicking each other in the balls more often. We leave no stones unturned here at SocImages, folks.I argued that men don’t kick each other in the balls because it would reveal to everyone an inherent and undeniable biological weakness in every man, not just the man getting kicked. In other words, it’s a secret pact to protect the myth of masculine superiority. I expected a reaction, but I was genuinely surprised at what transpired. In public — in the comments — men debated strategy, arguing that men don’t kick each other in the balls because it’s actually a difficult blow to land or would escalate the fight. But in private — in my email inbox — men sent me hushed messages of you-are-so-right-though.“
Just doing my regular real blog for y’all. Keep safe.
Just reading these notes gives me such a warm, comforting feeling. Love you all.
by the way, the man who drove his car into that wisconsin christmas parade was a domestic abuser :)))) it’s almost like there’s a stronger link between violence against women and mass killings than smoking and lung cancer…
just 6 days before this attack, he was freed on $1000 bail for running over his ex girlfriend in his car….they gave him fucking 1k bail for attempted murder….
if they had taken his domestic violence seriously, there would be 5 less dead people and dozens less seriously injured people, including a dozen kids. not to mention how his ex girlfriend must be feeling.
He also got busted for pimping his 16 year old baby mama.
“ive been to a lot of protests in my life and a thing that a lot of people dont understand is that a protest is a threat. its a large group of people saying “we are being nice now, but you must understand that if we stop being nice we have the power to cause you Problems”.”
If you haven’t seen the video, one of the Black Pampers physically attacked one of the feminists. And the police sided with him and removed her.
These people are going to push and push, getting increasingly violent, seeing what they can get away with. Why would people who are part of a movement that has the majority of the police, money and social support need to wear masks?
amber heard: -arrives at courthouse to a chorus of boos and jeers. smiles and says good morning to security on her way in.- johnny depp: -rocks up blasting bob marley while his adoring fans scream and cheer. spends multiple minutes waving and soaking up the love. smiles smugly at the camera and says ‘those are, uh… relatives. all relatives.’
tell me again how she destroyed his career and livelihood? he gets to bask in a wave of screaming women who love him while she has to pretty much fear for her life.
disgusting.
Society loves a rapist
actual abuse makes everyone uncomfortable. if depp were actually abused, do you think the reaction would be what it is? actual abuse is devastating to experience, witness, and recount. you wouldn’t respond to it by cheering the abuse victim. those are the cheers of fans for an abusive man putting his victim in her place.
even the most ardent depp supporter knows that what he experienced wasn’t abuse. the reaction proves that. that’s not how you react when a public figure you look up to experiences the pain and trauma of intimate abuse. that’s how you react when a public figure you like makes a fool out of a public figure you don’t like. that’s all this is to at least 90% of the people following this trial.
“Maya contacted me for advice and support after her five-year-old daughter, Emilia, spontaneously disclosed that her dad, Martin, had been sexually abusing her and taking photos of her genitals on his ‘special camera’. This would be a horrible, devastating shock to any mother, but it was made even more complicated and harrowing because several years earlier, Martin’s ex-girlfriend, Debbie, had frantically tried to warn Maya that he was a sex offender, and was abusing his then infant daughter.
Debbie had split from Martin and had tracked Maya down to tell her that he was a sex offender. Debbie was an experienced medical professional working in a hospital in the nearby city and had no reason to lie. However, Martin successfully convinced Maya that his ex was a ‘psycho’, a ‘bunny boiler’ and a ‘crazy ex’ who had remained obsessed with him since he broke it off with her. Debbie had a different story though, and tried to tell Maya that he was a violent and abusive man with a sexual interest in infant girls. She said she had tried to report him to the police but nothing had happened.
Maya was initially horrified and frightened, but Martin assured her that Debbie was delusional and obsessed. Debbie didn’t stop, though. “She turned up at my workplace, and Emilia’s school. She wrote letters and emails to me. Martin became more and more angry with her and encouraged me to report her to the police for harassment and stalking. After months of her not leaving me alone, she stopped and was warned by the police and given a restraining order.”
You can imagine Maya’s devastation when her daughter disclosed a couple of years later the exact thing Debbie had tried to tell her. By this point, Debbie’s testimony meant absolutely nothing – she was framed as a crazy, obsessed ex with a restraining order. Who was going to believe her? Maya couldn’t use her in criminal or family court because she herself had sought to prosecute her for her behaviour years earlier. Maya then found herself in the same shoes as Debbie, trying to report the abuse of her daughter whilst Martin left her for another woman and convinced her that Maya was his crazy, bitch, psycho ex who lied about him abusing his daughter for no reason. Suddenly, Maya was the crazy ex, and the new woman who quickly became pregnant with Martin’s second daughter was so scared of Maya that she would never speak to her, open the door to her or go anywhere physically near her (because she was so utterly crazy, who knew what she would do to the new woman in Martin’s life)
Keeping all of his exes apart by convincing them all that the others are crazy, obsessed psychos was a touch of genius – and worked wonders when the police came knocking. He easily turned the entire investigation on its head, to frame his exes as scheming, manipulative, calculated psychopaths who lie about him abusing his beloved daughter. In this particular case, Maya was subjected to months of psychiatric and psychological assessments which he demanded– and naturally, she was ‘found’ to be mentally ill, emotionally unstable, delusional, dangerous to her daughter; and Emilia was sadly removed from her custody and given to Martin and his new partner days before Christmas Day 2020.
“I told the police and social services because I thought I was supposed to. Now, they say these are all my own mental issues and issues from my childhood being projected onto Emilia and that I’m a perpetrator of ‘family violence’ because I am ‘projecting’ on to her. They even said I abused Emilia by letting her be interviewed by police and by the social worker. But I had no choice – I had to let them interview her.”
Maya, like many other women, found herself in the catch-22 where she would be pathologised and scrutinised if she didn’t report the abuse of her child, but would also be pathologised and scrutinised if she did. If she doesn’t report, she’s neglectful and dangerous. If she does report, she’s delusional and malicious. If she continues to report, she’s coaching her child. If she argues back, she’s mentally ill.
One of the most common stereotypes of a mentally ill woman is that of the crazy, obsessed ex-girlfriend (a story almost always told by men who claim to have done absolutely nothing wrong, but all of their exes are ‘psycho’). As an aside, I believe it is generally a huge red flag when men work hard to convince you that all of their exes are ‘psycho’ and you should not listen to anything they say. This is a common tactic used against women and girls who have tried to report or disclose abuse or harm. Framing a woman like this makes her instantly unreliable and discredited, which is deliberate, because whatever she might have to say is probably of great importance.”
It is only the rare misogynist who outright admits they don’t believe women. Their objection has always been just to this one bitch, who is lying.
#MeToo (the clue’s in the name) attempted to combat this by linking experiences – all those bitches who weren’t believed – so we could see the pattern. In fact, you could say the whole project of feminism is about taking bad things that happened to women, which they thought only happened to them, or were their fault, and calling them by one name. Divide us back into unlinked individuals who might be lying, and the movement is lost.
#MeToo is often framed as having uncovered truths about the world – its success was because women “explained really clearly” what was going on. No. People already knew what was going on. #MeToo worked for the reason any feminist movement works: strength in numbers.
Consciousness raising. Collective action.
I just got a PM about this very issue this week. The person accused me of “cynically using feminism to justify supporting toxic abusive femininity.” When it’s just one woman, no matter who she is, it’s very easy to dig holes, to use half truths to spin the worst possible conclusions, and to attack the person rather than the case itself.
Even the worst, the serial rapists, the serial abusers, who have a dozen, twenty, five dozen accusers … all started out saying the same thing. That one woman accusing them is crazy and a liar. Those two women accusing him are both crazy and liars. It got to the point that Bill Cosby had dozens of accusers before people started to think he did it, and even then it took a man’s stand up act for the public to actually listen. And even Hannibal Buress was called a jealous no-talent comedian at first. Harvey Weinstein could easily dismiss his victims by claiming there was only one accuser and she was just Rose McGowan. Or it’s just Courtney Love. Weinstein still, to this day, denies assaulting McGowan even as he was convicted of an almost identical crime against another actor and TV production assistant.
Amber Heard was forced to publicly testify about her own rape and abuse with zero protections from the court. The sentence “Lance Bass acts out Amber Heard’s testimony on tiktok” shouldn’t make sense but it’s something that happened. Of the people who heard the testimony, some refuse to believe it. Of the people who believe it, some refuse to believe it’s a problem (“but if a famous man sexually abused me I’d be into it because I’m a kinky kool girl not like that frigid bitch”). Of the people who believe it’s a problem, some refuse to acknowledge that Heard didn’t deserve to be raped because they feel a personal level of hatred for her (“we just don’t like you, Amber”). That’s leaves the rest of us, saying that no matter who a woman is, she doesn’t deserve to be raped and abused. And we’re accused of ‘cynically using feminism’ when we say this basic fact.
I have been abused by a few men in my life. I don’t have that level of evidence that Heard has. I don’t have a successful court case on record, let alone two cases in two different countries. And I see what’s really happening here. And my abusers, who walk around to this day thinking they did what they were entitled to do, also probably see what’s happening. And I’ll bet they approve of it.
Jamie Read, 31, attacked his girlfriend so ferociously, she thought she was going to die. He had followed her home after drinking in a pub. In court last year, Ramsay Quaife, prosecuting, said: “All of a sudden, he grabbed her throat and squeezed her hard. The victim was barely able to breathe… She saw him take six steps back before lunging at her and kicking her in the face with the sole of his trainer. He repeated this twice more.”
Read admitted assault occasioning actual bodily harm. The judge, Recorder John Trevaskis, said Read wouldn’t receive rehabilitative help in prison and gave him a 16-month jail term suspended for two years. Read walked free from court.
Next month, on 7 June, as part of the Domestic Abuse Act (2021), non-fatal strangulation (NFS) and suffocation becomes a free-standing offence, punishable by up to five years in prison in England and Wales. Campaigners including the Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ) and We Can’t Consent To This – who challenged the defence where the perpetrator claims it happened as part of “rough sex gone wrong” – have long argued that NFS, if prosecuted at all, was frequently charged as common assault, receiving a sentence of a few months.
An estimated 20,000 strangulations a year are reported to women’s charities. “The vast majority are a way of exerting power, fear and control – but not fatal,” says CWJ’s Nogah Ofer. Prosecution is also impeded because it is often treated as a private matter, normalised by the increasing use of pornography. Yet NFS increases the odds of a woman being killed by a staggering seven times.
According to the Femicide Census, established by Karen Ingala Smith and Clarrie O’Callaghan, with whom the Observer has collaborated in a year-long campaign to better tackle femicide and violence against women and girls (VAWG), a woman is killed by strangulation every two weeks.
“The Femicide Census has consistently found that strangulation is the second most common method after stabbing that men use to kill women,” says O’Callaghan. “It’s long overdue that the criminal justice system catches up.”
In 2021, Anthony Williams, 70, “choked the living daylights” out of his wife, Ruth, 67. He received a five-year sentence after pleading guilty to manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. The new NFS offence is a vital opportunity to put a brake on coercion, control, intimidation, violence and killing – all of which statistically impact on women far more than men.
However, while senior judges and the judicial colleges are in discussions with the Ministry of Justice, nationwide training for police, health workers and all those engaged in bringing a perpetrator to trial, so far, appears non-existent. “Women’s lives are at stake. The government should be seizing the initiative and ensuring that everyone involved is trained,” says Julia Drown, patron of the charity Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse (AAFDA), and a member of small group of experts who have been lobbying for accelerated action.
Last year, Sam Pybus, 32, pleaded guilty to manslaughter after strangling Sophie Moss, 33, during what he alleged was consensual sex. He was jailed for four years and eight months – a sentence that triggered a public outcry but was upheld by the appeal court. A pathologist’s report found Moss’s injuries “do not suggest a very prolonged or very forceful strangulation”. Strangulation does not need to be prolonged or forceful to cause serious long-term damage.
Dr Catherine White is the foremost expert and researcher in strangulation in the UK. She is scathing about the lack of progress. The voluntary expert group of which she and Drown are a part has struggled for months to raise £7,000 to pay for two excellent half days of free training in NFS. Finally, NHS England provided the funds.
“Hopefully, we can ignite a fire in the belly for more training. But why are we volunteers doing this?” White says. “The Ministry of Justice should be knocking on my door, asking for training. The government says it is spending millions on VAWG but, when you look at the scale of the challenge, it’s peanuts.
“No one seems to be in overall control, driving forward a co-ordinated response. It feels like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The impact of strangulation, control and sexual violence is huge, yet the societal and government response is so lacking.”
Last year, White and colleagues published I Thought He Was Going to Kill Me, a three-year study of 204 adult cases of NFS as part of a sexual assault. Some 96.6% of the victims were female. In 27% of the cases, the woman had been strangled before by the same perpetrator. Over one in six had been strangled to the point where they lost consciousness.
It takes skill and training, often not found in GPs’ surgeries to detect the signs. One American study reported that “NFS might well be the equivalent of waterboarding – both leave few marks; both can be used repeatedly with impunity”.
White’s study reported that a male handshake has 80-100lbs per square inch (psi) of pressure. It takes 20psi to open a fizzy drink can. It takes only 4psi to occlude a jugular vein.
Strangulation is external pressure to the neck that cuts off air, or the flow of blood to the brain (choking is different, caused by an internal obstruction to the airwaves). For those who survive, symptoms include strokes, depression, memory loss, seizures, motor and speech disorders and paralysis. The connection of these symptoms to NFS is often not recognised.
White’s commitment to properly tackling NFS was triggered by taking a course at the Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention, Texas, co-founded in 2011 by lawyers Gael Strack and Casey Gwinn. The institute now trains thousands of frontline workers every year across the US.
A medical assessment, vitally, has to include imaging (MRI and CT scan) and forensic documentation of internal and external injuries. This approach has helped the San Diego domestic violence homicide rate to drop by 90% since the 1980s.“Strangulation is much more common than we realised – but also so much more serious then we ever gave it credit for,” says trainer Cat Otway.
Forensic physician Dr Helena Thornton has worked at St Mary’s Sexual Assault and Referral Centre, Manchester, with White for 27 years and is registrar of the faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine. The General Medical Council refuses to allow forensic and legal medicine to become a specialisation so, incredibly, there are no national guidelines on training, qualifications and exams. In addition, senior forensic clinicians are retiring and not being replaced – so who will give evidence in court?
“St Mary’s is commissioned by police and the NHS but, in a lot of areas, the service has been outsourced for the lowest price, as cheap as possible,” Thornton says. “In some parts of the country, you might see someone who has received only three days’ forensic training. The faculty sets out what to expect from good treatment.
“When I see a patient, questions have to be asked, such as did you black out? When you came round, had you wet or pooed yourself? If you lose control of your bowel, that isn’t fear. It means you are seconds away from death.
“It’s embarrassing so a woman is unlikely to volunteer that information. If you haven’t been properly trained, you’re not capturing the evidence.”
Alarmingly, if you have been strangled but not sexually assaulted, it will be extremely difficult to find the level of examination required. White would like to see a branch of Strack’s institute in the UK, but that, too, has proved a struggle. “Everyone thinks it’s a good idea but, like training, no one seems to have a budget. I’ve seen statements where it’s just said, ‘red mark on neck’. What the heck is that – a felt-tip pen? A bruise?
“That lack of information influences whether the police and the Crown Prosecution Service decide to continue with the case. When you see the unfairness of the system for patients, that’s what gives me the energy to keep on fighting.”
Over the past two years, a national conversation about VAWG has been prompted by lockdowns, rising rates of domestic abuse, the exposed criminality of some police, and the shocking deaths of Sarah Everard, Bibaa Henry, Nicole Smallman and Sabina Nessa, among many others. Still, as O’Callaghan and Ingala Smith have argued for years, little attention is paid to the misogyny that is VAWG’s root cause – and to prevention.
The three aims of the Observer’s End Femicide campaign, now concluding, are: name it (government is reluctant to use the gendered word “femicide”, a killing of a woman by a man). Secondly, know it, for example, by improving data on racially minoritised women; and thirdly, stop it.
The government has a number of initiatives, including a domestic abuse plan and a VAWG strategy, while investing small pots of money, for instance, in police training (£3.3m). However, weighed against the estimated cost of domestic abuse alone, £66bn a year, and the plummeting rates of conviction – 90% of cases of domestic abuse brought to the police in 2020 did not end in a charge or summons – so much more is required.
“It feels as if government is only scratching the surface of the transformation we need,” says Andrea Simon, director of the End Violence Against Women (EVAW) Coalition, representing over 120 women’s specialist services, activists and survivors. “Who is holding all these strains of work together? Who is accountable when policies fail?
“The hypocrisy of the government is that in the Queen’s speech there was a raft of alarming legislation that directly attacks women’s and survivors’ rights, such as scrapping the Human Rights Act, an essential tool in challenging failures by the state to protect women and girls.”
On 8 June, it’s the 10th anniversary of the government’s signing of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, known as the Istanbul Convention (IC). The IC’s articles cover issues such as high-quality holistic services and appropriate funding and support for victims, overseen by a monitoring group. Once ratified, a government is legally bound to comply with the review process. The government has announced it will ratify in July but not yet include women with insecure immigrant status who have no recourse to public funds. (A pilot study is examining the experiences of migrant women.)
Hannana Siddiqui of Southall Black Sisters says she is “extremely concerned” about this two-tier system. “All women have a human right to protection from abuse.”
“While this reservation stands,” says Lisa Gormley who helped to draw up the IC, “women’s rights’ advocates will continue to call for justice and safety for all women and girls without discrimination, without limitations.”
“The convention is the gold standard in how you prevent and tackle VAWG,” Simon says. “It’s vital that there aren’t gaps in support. It’s a fundamental human right for all women to feel safe and free.”
Whenever women protest the inclusion of trans-identified males in our spaces, we’re shouted down and dismissed as transphobes and hysterics. No ‘transwoman’ would ever do us harm; this never happens, we’re told. When we produce evidence to the contrary, we’re accused of bigotry and of demonising trans people. We cannot win.
But the truth is that men, as a class, pose a threat to women, as a class. That is an unequivocal fact and male offending patterns are not altered by ‘gender identity’.
Men can be a risk to women and children however they ‘identify’ and it’s impossible to tell which males are harmless and which are not. So basic safeguarding means we exclude all males from women’s spaces. The list below demonstrates that we are right to do so.
It is far from an exhaustive list - these are just some examples of which I’m aware - but there are almost 100 names on it. I’d like to ask all those shouting at us to be ‘inclusive’, how many victims do you deem acceptable collateral damage for prioritising male feelings over women’s safety?
With each case described in more detail below, here are 98 examples of trans-identified males who have raped, assaulted, abused and/or murdered women and/or children. The thing that never happens…
“For far too long, this city’s answer to every societal problem was to throw people in jail.” In an impassioned speech in 2019, the Mayor of New York City announced comprehensive reforms to the criminal justice system (CJS). “We lost generations to mass incarceration”, continued Bill de Blasio, “mostly young men of colour”.
An investment of $391 million would address root causes of incarceration by funding mental health services, housing and rehabilitation, along with a programme named “Community Based Violence Reduction”. So far, so good. But the reforms would also redefine how victims and offenders should be dealt with, with increased funding to “restorative justice” in “serious felony level cases that would otherwise result in detention and incarceration”.
Restorative justice (RJ) is described as an alternative to prison; it is a non-punitive response to criminal behaviour. The idea is to bring together the person who inflicted the harm (the “responsible person”, in RJ terminology) and the victim, often in the presence of community representatives. The perpetrator is supposed to accept responsibility for the harm inflicted and reach an agreement with the victim about how to make amends.
De Blasio’s reforms were welcomed by prison reform campaigners, as well as pretty much every liberal in the State. Alissa Ackerman, a sex crimes policy researcher at California State University and one of the few facilitators of restorative justice sessions for rape victims, has said that RJ, “allows survivors to have their pain heard and stories acknowledged, and is an opportunity for the person who caused the harm to be accountable for their actions”.
I spoke to one proponent of RJ, who asked not to be named “in case I am seen as colluding with carceral white women”. White himself, he is a newly trained lawyer in Washington DC, specialising in “replacing the racist system with a true healing process for both parties”. “Anti-rape feminists are probably responsible for more black men being incarcerated than anyone else in modern-day America”, he says. “Locking up African Americans is a product of slavery.” Ben went on to suggest “community resolution” and “non-violent strategies” to address sexual assault.
But for feminist activists campaigning against male violence, who have seen the consequences of the reforms up-close over the last three years, RJ constitutes the very opposite of justice.
Sarah, whose name I’ve changed, runs a support service for victims of male violence in NYC and is “appalled” that RJ is becoming a substitute for criminal justice sanctions. “What we are seeing is what we have seen forever”, she tells me, “which is the under-policing and under-protection for women, including women of colour. But some BLM activists are claiming that feminists calling for CJS sanctions for rape and domestic abuse is flat-out racist, because black men are overrepresented in the prison population.” As a result, she told me that “black and brown women, indigenous women … are the ones who are bearing the consequences of us not holding men accountable for their violence. They are the ones who are being murdered and raped and their abusers are walking free.”
According to the ideals of RJ, after a crime is committed the offender and the victim should meet face-to-face. The victim is not to blame or judge the perpetrator, but rather describe the impact of the offence, in order to “heal” and become “empowered”. RJ sees victim and perpetrator as equal, both in need of support and understanding. Supposedly modelled on the conflict resolution practices of certain indigenous cultures, there is much talk of circles. Healing circles are held for the perpetrator, before a sentencing circle takes place; later, there are follow up circles. The outcomes may include an apology or financial compensation. Some participants, including the victim, sign a confidentiality agreement.
RJ is considered a suitable remedy for domestic violence, childhood sexual abuse and sex trafficking, among other violent crimes predominantly committed by men. Most of these crimes are committed against women by men known to them: male family members, partners and colleagues. “The perpetrators have worked very hard, often for years, to condition the person they are abusing to not disclose, to minimise, to protect his emotions: to protect his character publicly”, says Sarah. “They’ve been using manipulative tactics to inspire self-doubt, blame and fear, in the person they are abusing.”
And victims of this kind of abuse may feel coerced by RJ practices, which are conducted, as Sarah said, “without any understanding of the dynamics of power and control, the impact of a trauma-coerced bond, and also the amount of time and commitment that it actually takes to elicit genuine behaviour change in abusers”.
I meet with Diane, whose name I’ve changed, at a café in Harlem, NYC. She was introduced to me by her rape counsellor. Diane was seriously sexually assaulted by a senior member of her church, having been targeted and sexually harassed by him for months. “I decided to report him to the police, despite the fact that my community is rarely well served by the cops.” Diane and the perpetrator are African American. “There are too many vulnerable young people in the church, and I didn’t see why he should poison the congregation.”
The perpetrator, considered to be a man of “good character”, with no criminal convictions, admitted to the lesser charge of inappropriate sexual touching, denied committing serious sexual assault, and agreed to partake in RJ.
“I was contacted by the local service that runs these things,” says Diane. “They told me it was important that we reach an agreement and rebuild trust. I was told nothing could be gained from taking him on a route where he could end up in jail. It felt like I had no choice.”
But having read up on RJ, Diane decided not to participate in it. “I was judged and blamed by the service”, says Diane, “as though I should have accepted the scraps from the table and have him say ‘sorry’ or whatever. He got away with what he did to me, and a man like that pretending to regret what he did would just be lies.”
Onereport, published in 2016, is often used to justify replacing criminal sanctions with RJ. It is entitled “Restorative Practices in cases of Intimate Partner Violence, Sexual Assault and Dating Violence: A Roundtable Discussion”. While it claims that RJ focuses on victims of violence and their needs, the report also ironically reveals who is actually centred in the process. One attendee is quoted as saying about perpetrators of male violence: “Do we actually blame them as a perpetrator when they were violated at a young age?”
To be taken out of the criminal justice system and put in a situation where everybody is required to empathise with him — including his victim, who is forbidden from blaming or shaming him — is a violent man’s dream come true.
Like most on the Left, I believe that only the most dangerous criminals should be locked up. I have criticised the fact that the most vulnerable and disenfranchised are most likely to be in jail. But the campaign to end male violence is my life’s work. Victims have to come first. One service provider working with sexual assault victims describes reports from young survivors in California that they are “sick of going to rape circles”. She has also heard from women and girls of colour being pressured to engage in RJ instead of making police reports.
While RJ is not yet widely practiced throughout the US, it is growing in popularity in several states — and threatens to become federal policy. In its 2022 budget, the Office on Violence against Women requested $25 million, “to support restorative justice responses to domestic/dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking, and research, evaluation, and technical assistance related to such responses”.
The media consistently reports that research shows RJ is very successful. One paper, by Mary P Koss, is often cited. Koss asked victims to complete a survey about their PTSD symptoms before and after they engaged in RJ, and concluded that victims who complete an RJ process exhibit a marked decrease in those symptoms. But PTSD symptoms almost inevitably decrease as time passes after the traumatic event. Asking the victims and perpetrators of serious crimes to “hug it out and move on”, as Sarah describes it, was simply not shown by the research to be effective.
I asked several experts on violence towards women if there is any reliable data about the efficacy of RJ and was met with a resounding “no”. When I spoke to Marcia, a veteran advocate for victims of male violence, she pointed out that in cases of domestic violence, putting the perpetrator and the victim in a room together is “outright dangerous”. Perpetrators of domestic abuse, and of sexual assault, are more likely than any other offenders to repeat their crimes — often against the same victim. But the well-publicised evaluations of RJ don’t include follow-ups that measure the recurrence of violence within domestic abuse scenarios.
Marcia asked for anonymity because “right now there is so much intolerance on the Left that even those of us who are part of the Left fear retaliation if we don’t conform.” She emphasised that rape victims want their rapists prosecuted, but with the Left advocating for RJ, victims “feel that there is no movement standing behind them. They feel utterly alone.”
The idea that serious, sexual and violent crimes should be dealt with by “community leaders”, outside the criminal justice system, is shockingly naïve at best. At worst, it is re-victimising women, and giving perpetrators a free pass. Liberal cities like New York are conducting an experiment with women’s safety and lives — and ignoring whatever they have to say about it.
Women are being failed by the criminal justice system because it is too focused on transgender rights, a report claims.
The work for the Policy Exchange think tank found that police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts were too readily treating people on the basis of their “gender identity” rather than their biological sex.
Maureen O’Hara, senior law lecturer at Coventry University, wrote that it was having a “detrimental effect” on female victims, witnesses and prisoners. She said that while gender self-declaration had not been incorporated into law in England and Wales, it had been “adopted by all key criminal justice institutions”.
She said: “These institutions now all effectively subscribe to the belief that individuals’ subjective sense of ‘gender identity’ should take precedence over their biological sex. The adoption by criminal justice institutions of this belief appears to have come about largely as the result of policy capture, as it is a widely contested belief and has been adopted without public scrutiny.”
Her report highlighted recent disclosures that many police forces record suspected and convicted offenders by their self-declared gender. A survey of 24 forces found 13 recorded people’s gender by self-identification.
The report said that this could lead to the police describing rapists as women in interviews with victims.
“Someone who is questioned by the police about an allegation of rape, for example, is likely to be very distressed and possibly disorientated if officers refer to the suspect as a woman,” it said.
The report also raised concerns about guidelines from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) on searches. The guidance states that once officers have transitioned they can “search persons of the same gender as their own lived gender”.
While each case is dealt with individually, the guidance says if a detainee’s refusal to be searched “is based on discriminatory views” police should consider filing a non-crime hate incident.
“There is no consideration in this policy of the potentially traumatic effects on a female detainee of being intimately searched by a male officer,” the report said. “No mention is made of the rights to safety, privacy or dignity of an individual involved.” The NPCC has said that all cases are conducted on their own circumstances and in line with officers’ “training and legal authority”.
The report also criticised the Crown Prosecution Service for recording defendants’ “affirmed gender” rather than their sex. It said that 1.8 per cent of rape defendants were classed as women. The report raised particular concerns about prisons, and the fact that transgender inmates — including sex offenders — could be placed in women’s jails. Last year there were 146 transgender women in prisons in England and Wales, with up to four in women’s prisons. A total of 87 transgender women had a conviction for a sexual offence. It said the policy was putting female prisoners at risk.
Prisoners can be disciplined for using “incorrect pronouns” for another inmate. “The policy amounts to the imposition of criminal penalties for ‘misgendering’, which is not a criminal offence,” the report said.
A spokeswoman for the prison service said: “Transgender prisoners make up just 0.2 per cent of the prison population and 94 per cent of transgender women in prison are managed in the men’s estate.
“Will women always die? Let some men die too,” Dogan told police. “I killed him for my honor.”
Since it was not included in the article, I thought I would provide a rough translation of her historical defense on court;
“When men wear suits and look down they get their sentences lowered; I dont have a suit, my mom barely managed to find this shirt for me. I won’t lie, there is also the joy of being able to survive that i can’t conceal. I’ve walked the corridors of these courthouses countless times, my face covered in bruises, for a restraining order. I didn’t have any other choice. If he hadn’t died, I was going to. He wasn’t going to tell you he had decided to pimp me out, he wasn’t going to talk about his plans of putting me in the arms of other men, he wasn’t going to tell you about the beatings I endured just because the eggplants were slightly overcooked, because the curtains were dirty, because there were leftover crumbs on the table. He wasn’t going to mention how many times I was hospitalized. There is a picture of me taken in the teahouse. I’ve smiled a bit lopsidedly. Maybe he was going to show you that picture and tell you I looked like a dishonorable woman. He was going to tell you he ‘cleansed my honor’ as if he wasn’t planning to pimp me out. You were going to sentence him to 3-5 years and pardon him because i had dishonored him and see my lopsided smile as provocation and feel sad for him. However, honor is mine Mr. Judge, I won’t leave it to anyone else just because I signed a paper.”
her name is Çilem Doğan and she was sentenced to 15 years for this. the court initially wanted to give her life imprisonment. she was released on bail in june 2016 and has since become a symbol for the movement against femicide and violence against women in Turkey.
A collective of Indonesian radical feminists contacted me to spread the word about Anindya Shabrina, who has been repeatedly harassed by authorities. She is going to court and faces a prison sentence for her feminist, anti-racist, and anti-poverty activism.
“In December 2017, Anindya and her company of friends began advocating against urban poor eviction by the officials, and their fight still continues today.
On July 6 2018, Anindya was attending a discussion and movie screening in a Papua students’ boarding house. The event discussed the human rights violations by the Indonesian government toward the Papuans. As a context, there’s still a high level of racism against Papuans or Melanesian groups in Indonesia; therefore, Papua-affiliated events are always seen as separatism.
During the discussion, hundreds of the government’s apparatus along with military officers barged in without any warrant and terminated the discussion. While confronting an official and asking for the warrant, Anindya was sexually harassed by one of the police members. Another woman in the location, Isabella, was dragged by them. After being dragged and harassed they were bullied by the police officers.”
“Anindya is an active Indonesian feminist-activist who is being persecuted for speaking up, not only about the sexual harassment she experienced done by a state apparatus, but also against injustice done to women and poor people in Indonesia. The government is trying to silence her by using multiple accusations.“
*****Please share using the form:******
"My name is (name) from (country) and I am here condemning the criminalization of Anindya Shabrina by Indonesian government. I am writing in support of feminists and the survivors of sexual violence of Indonesia to speak up and end all forms of persecution. Stop trying to silence women!”
The only forms of rebellion the system allows are those which create the illusion of choice while benefitting the status quo.
Black rights activists are still murdered. Indigenous activists are still murdered. Environmentalists are still murdered. Women are still murdered.
Transgenderism is a false, sanctioned form of rebellion that falls within a framework of the oppressive, capitalist system. It benefits pharmaceutical industries and relies on patriarchy’s lie that gender stereotypes are innate.
The system creates the problem and sells a solution. Gender dysphoria is real, as any woman can attest. Gender, however, is not.
All forms of rebellion can be absorbed into the capitalist framework, especially through the sale of selfhood as an external marker. Under such defense, nothing is sacred and any idea or identity may be bought; there are no limits to what can become a commodity.
This is why activists who pursue changing the system are killed, why transgenderism as an ideology is being embraced worldwide by governments who understand that it benefits men and legally erases patriarchy.
Those who oppose this way of thinking are murdered; those who adopt it as a person choice become lauded mascots.
How do you immediately understand that transgenderism is a false flag?
By how quickly it has been embraced by celebrities and politicians, and how very quickly laws are being changed globally.
Reminder: the US never passed the ERA granting women equal rights.
We have so much work to do. We are on the brink of mass extinctions. What better way to divert from global ecological crises than to label biology itself as socially constructed by men, and who better fit to encourage bio-denial than corporations and celebrities?
It makes complete sense that the death throes of an obsolete system collectively resort to violent gnashings against nature and biology itself, at a time when our very survival as a species depends on healing biological systems.
Anyone who cares about the survival of the planet, or even of humanity itself, ought to shun outright the concept of becoming a true “self” through toxic chemicals. Instead we ought to re-establish a concept of selfhood through actions as opposed to perceptions.
Indeed, human self-identity is also at odds with the survival of the planet, as long as we shape it as dependent on external means.
You can never buy an identity, or medicate yourself into existence; in truth, your existence is nothing but part of an ecological system.
It’s my view that transgenderism goes hand in hand with climate change; that it diverts us from our own extinction by feeding an appetite for validation, to fill a hole created by a destructive system.
So we turn inward, rather than facing our shared reality.
As much as transgenderism is biophobia, extreme societal denial of physical reality, it can’t exist without the very real phenomenon of womb envy, which is to say the acknowledgement that women reproduce life and men play a less significant role in continuing humanity.
Women have emphasized repeatedly that the female ability to reproduce is what men seek to control when they oppress us.
Now, they demand our silence regarding our physical differences.
We are allowed a body, or a mind; never both at the same time.
When and if society at large realizes that this has been but a stepping stone towards transhumanism, the human merging and dependence on technology for survival, it will be too late; and undoubtedly, a man will receive credit for pointing out what is quite obvious to us as women.
Men use patriarchy as a tool to remove women’s right to natural selection, so that men do not have to be judged by the same standards they apply to women; the end result is that even the most physically mediocre male may have access to a woman if he displays personal characteristics which uphold male dominance.
Kanno Sugako (1881–1911), was a Japanese radical anarcho-feminist.
She was the first woman to be executed in modern Japan for political reasons, at the age of 29, for having led a plot to overthrow the government - which was building a new economy on the backs of girls sold in slavery to textile factories during the Meiji period.
Later, when the judge asked Kanno if she wished to make a final statement, she stated her only regret was that the plot failed.
I learned about her from a book called “Flowers in Salt” by Sharon Sievers about the modern beginnings of feminism in Japan.
It’s a heartbreaking book.
Japan wanted to modernize after seeing the threat of US technology in the late 1800s. The government was able to create a trade economy due to the literal enslavement of women and girls in textile factories.
Companies visited rural towns promising a better life for young women. Farming parents believed their daughters would have more opportunities if they could support themselves, and the government created propaganda to this aim.
Girls as young as 6 walked through the mountains to the factories with no shoes, so it was eventually called a trail of blood.
Later, towns caught on, and when a company came to collect girls, they protested, and were met with violence.
(Resistance to company collection of girls actually sparked one of the first modern labor protests in Japan.)
Female workers were locked in, and the dorms were a prison. The invention of lamps meant that working hours extended to as much as 36 hours at a time. Their handwoven textiles were exported for company profit, and male overseers raped them.
There are anecdotes of men finding women’s bodies near the factories, where they had escaped just long enough to kill themselves.
Kanno lived at a time when this was happening, and had been raped herself when she was fifteen. She wanted to stop the government expansion which was coming at the expense of human rights.
The modern economy of Japan was created through enslaving and selling women and girls.
And as radical feminists know, that hasn’t ended. All economies are built on women’s slavery in one way or another.
Men and women are not “equally oppressed” under patriarchy.
Such statements are nonsensical as oppression predicates inequality.
Male domination treats women and girls as commodities to be abused and discarded by men.
“A new U.N. report warns ‘the number of human trafficking victims is on the rise’ as criminal gangs and terror groups prey increasingly on women and children to make money and bolster their numbers. The 90-page Global Trafficking in Persons report says that children, who account for 30 percent of all trafficking victims, include 'far more’ girls than boys.”
The pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries transform women-made bodies into man-made bodies.
The rise of trans ideology shows us that there are men who associate womanhood with the facsimile imposed by patriarchy, but even more so, that men believe themselves equally capable of creating males or females, and see themselves as heroes correcting the errors of those made insufficiently by women, when it is a man-made patriarchal system that is at fault.
It exposes patriarchy’s deeply entrenched envy of the female ability to create life, and his desire for complete domination over nature.
She served 15 years for protecting herself from a man who paid to rape her when she was only 16 years old.
A month ago, the Tennessee Supreme Court was unanimous when it ruled against Brown saying she would have to serve at least 51 years of her prison sentenced before she would be eligible for parole.
The ruling by the courts came in response to a lawsuit in which Brown argued her sentenced was unconstitutional, citing a 2012 opinion by the US Supreme Court that said mandatory life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders violate the US Constitution.
Eighty male students at Notre Dame University wrote an open letter in the school newspaper asking for a porn filter on the school’s Wi-Fi.
“This filter would send the unequivocal message that pornography is an affront to human rights and catastrophic to individuals and relationships. We are calling for this action in order to stand up for the dignity of all people, especially women,” the letter read. “The overwhelming majority of contemporary pornography is literally filmed violence against women — violence somehow rendered invisible by the context.”
“Pornography is prostitution through the lens of a camera, but more abusive. It exploits the men and women involved, advances a twisted narrative about human sexuality and harms those who consume it.”
“From the beginning, Cyntoia Brown’s life story has been heartbreaking. She was put up for adoption at the age of 2, and her life after that was a traumatic spiral of verbal abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and substance abuse.
At the age of 16, she was sold as a sex-slave to a 43-year-old Nashville realtor—Johnny Mitchell Allan. She was subjected to more abuse by Allan, and in a documentary about her life, she described the abuse and how it made her paranoid.
In 2004, she was tried as an adult for killing Allen. She said she shot him because she feared he was going to kill her. During the trial, she said there was always a gun pointed on her during her captivity. She said she was hit, choked and dragged. She feared for her own life, and she acted out of that fear.
It didn’t matter. A jury convicted the then-16-year-old to life in prison. Under the then-Tennessee law, she would only be eligible for release after serving 51 years of her sentence.
The law in Tennessee has since changed. Now anyone 18 or younger cannot even be charged with prostitution, and that change in law came about because of Brown’s case. Still, it has done little to help Brown.”
“As in all war-torn societies, women suffer disproportionately. Afghanistan is still ranked the worst place in the world to be a woman. Despite Afghan government and international donor efforts since 2001 to educate girls, an estimated two-thirds of Afghan girls do not attend school. Eighty-seven percent of Afghan women are illiterate, while 70-80 percent face forced marriage, many before the age of 16. A September watchdog report called the USAID’s $280 million Promote program – billed the largest single investment that the U.S. government has ever made to advance women’s rights globally – a flop and a waste of taxpayer’s money.
Government statistics from 2014 show that 80 percent of all suicides are committed by women, making Afghanistan one of the few places in the world where rates are higher among women. Psychologists attribute this anomaly to an endless cycle of domestic violence and poverty. The 2008 Global Rights survey found that nearly 90 percent of Afghan women have experienced domestic abuse.”
