v1b3ch3ckl0s3r:

goodgirl81:

deadlymodern:

anonymousmothman:

im-actually-ok:

witcheshaven:

queerwitched:

guiltyidealist:

twilightt-fantasy:

uncleromeo:

gaylittlepieceofsh1t:

ghostspaceships:

bando–grand-scamyon:

drankinwatahmelin:

feministism:

4. If the car pulls up to you run in the opposite direction.

5. Walk with your keys in your hands and keep a key between each finger

6. If they put you in the trunk kick out the headlights

7. If you get lost find a woman with a child. Never ask a man for help (this one was drilled)

That scream fire piece of advice is literally life saving

8. Watch your shadows and reflections, especially if someone is walking behind you. A split second notice is better than none and will help you.

Yes this last one really saves lives y'all I do it all the time

girls have to learn to view the world like international intelligence agents just to be safe walking down the street. smh.

guys pls pls pls reblog and girls pls pls pls be safe out there. terrifying and so sad that we have to worry about this on a daily basis

(I’m an enby, but, frankly, this is helpful for anyone.)

- always tell someone where youre at and an approx time when youll be back

Add text replacement words in your phone if possible. Something short and memorable that you can send quickly to people in moments of emergencies.

E.g.

I f ing hate that we need to reblog this, people suck, but this will save lives.

DO NOT SCROLL PAST

Being female fucking sucks but yes this shit is important for everyone

Also, do not walk close to walls. It will be easier for someone so walk past you and push you against it or corner you.

If your gut is telling you to cross the street or change your path, do it. Don’t risk it. Your body knows.

If you can, buy a large umbrella and walk holding it. Studies say that predators are less likely to attempt an attack on someone that could fight back. Keys around your knuckles is fine but you’ll need to get very close to do damage. Umbrellas are more precise.

Avoid wearing headphones if you are alone on an empty street. Look aware.

Again: Stay. Away. From. Walls.

Entering an uber alone? Call your father (or anyone you trust) and say “hey dad! Yep, I’m almost there, I’m sending you the route.” outloud. Then proceed to send them the route so they can follow the uber drive. This will most likely intimidate the predator.

If you see someone in an uncomfortable or possibly dangerous situation, walk up to them and say “Betty, oh my god, I haven’t seen you in so long!”. If she gets slightly confused, you can whisper and let her know you’re trying to help and that she should follow along. Walk together to another station or away from where you are. The man will most likely not follow. I have done this one 2 times and can be very helpful.

If you are unsure she needs help, you can pass her a note saying something like “hey, I noticed this man beside you is making you uncomfortable. If you’d like help, fake a sneeze right now and I will come up to you and pretend we are friends.” This is a long note, but its an example. Be discrete. If she follows along, proceed with the previous tip. This is helpful when you’re in a crowded train and you notice harassment.

Help your sisters. Trust them. Trust yourself. Be safe.

If you ever feel unsafe or need help, anyone is welcome to run upto me and ask me for help! I’ll go all mama bear and keep you safe!!!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/166g6Vo8Fb9H3FIZF2H6faEBHtFQSf7nVn_QxcJ9NMi0/edit?usp=sharing

I made this google doc covering 14 different self defense tips and tricks. it was made on January 15th, 2020 so it was before I decided I’d come back to tumblr jhjshdbjfh.

there’s like two instances in all of X-Men comics that I can think of where sexual assault/sexual violence felt like they were handled sensitively and significant to the plot in a way other than shock value

one is when rogue is in genosha. she gets depowered and stripped of her clothes, and the genoshans touch her, grope her and taunt her and it’s like. she has wanted to touch another person for so long and fucking THIS is how it happens. the way she’s like justifying it, “all they did was touch her,” like it’s not that bad, not as bad as it could have been. and she’s so distraught that she needs carol to take over. like that scene is visceral and heartbreaking and purposeful

second is belasco and illyana, which is pretty much entirely metaphorical. he grooms her… to be a sorceress. the darkchylde. it’s very easy to draw parallels between belasco’s treatment of illyana and real-life victims of child abuse, but it’s always just implied. saying less is more. (funnily enough leah williams does an awesome job with this in her Magik oneshot. she can write sensitively when she’s writing about a white girl.)

fully understand the value of talking about rape and sexual assault in works of fiction. i think there are powerful, important stories to tell. i don’t think those kind of stories need to be told in X-Men comics.

Republicans in the Senate are not even pretending to give a shit about the sexual assault allegation against Kavanaugh. They do not care about women. They care about nothing but the acquisition of power.

recoverywithanasterisk:

Reading the news and seeing all the victim blaming talk is wearing me down and it feels like I’m slowly sinking into depression. I am trying really hard not to let it get to me, but it does. 

Here are some friendly reminders:

You are not alone. If you were assaulted: you are not alone. If the news makes you super depressed: you are not alone. 

You deserve to be believed. All victims/survivors deserve to be believed. 

Drinking does not justify assault. If you were drinking, it does not give people permission to assault you. Also, being drunk is not an excuse for assaulting people.

People who experience trauma have gaps in their memories! Experiencing trauma is an overwhelming thing for the brain. A lot of details get lost, but the ones that tend to stick with you are the moments of being in danger/fearing for your life. It is normal to have gaps in traumatic memories. It does not mean a person is making it up. 

You do not owe anyone your story. There is a lot of “Why didn’t they come forward sooner?” being talked about in the news lately. People do not come forward because of fear/shame/any other reason. But it is important to remember that you do not owe anyone your story. It is yours to tell if or when you are able to. 

There is no timeline for healing. It does not matter if something happened decades ago. If it still hurts it still hurts. I have heard so many people talk about their traumas. Some more recent traumas and some that happened over half a century before. I can tell you I have never heard someone not sound hurt when talking about their traumas. There is a lot of healing that can be done, but people do not “get over” their traumas in the way people might expect. 

Sexual assault/rape is about power. It is not about having a high sex drive and it is not about raging hormones. Those are not excuses for assaulting another person. 

It is okay to take a break and walk away from the news. It is hard when it is everywhere, but it is okay to actively avoid these stories if it is hurting you. 

Please remember you are loved. You didn’t deserve what happened to you. You deserve to be believed. 

anabundanceofstilinskis:

whatever-is-pxre:

When I was 13 years old and curious about sex and love, I asked my mom if she had had sex before marrying my father (of whom she is still married to, and has been since before I was born). She said that that wasn’t really a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. I said ‘sure it is, you’ve either had sex before him, or you haven’t’. She brought me onto the couch and sat me down and told me about the boy she liked when she was young and how one night she snuck into his house while his parents were gone and they were kissing and he said they should have sex and she said that she wanted to save sex for marriage and he laughed and basically took all her clothes off and he raped her and as my mom was telling the story she cried and this was the second time I had ever seen my mom cry. She was 12 when it happened.

In grade 8 I got a call from my friend in the middle of the night and she was drunk in the park crying and told me that she went out that night with some other friends and they drank a little and her guy “friend” starting flirting and yes she laughed at first but then he tried to pull her shirt over her head and she pulled away and he ripped her shirt and it was her favourite shirt and then he pushed her to her knees and HIS BEST FRIEND HELD HER JAW OPEN WHILE HE FACE FUCKED HER. And so I went to the park and picked her up and took her home and slept in her bed with her except we didn’t sleep because she just cried and her mouth bled and this was four years ago but I still have to be the one to bring her items to the till it the cashier is a man, and she still has anxiety attacks and she’ll get a rash all over her body and I just want to kill those boys but instead they are still walking around. And I’m in the bathroom with her, dabbing at her skin with a warm cloth until it returns to its regular colour.

And in grade 9 one of my closest friends was kinda seeing this boy and so they hung out one night and then she said that she really had to be getting back home and he said that she wasn’t going anywhere until she gave him what he wanted and he parked the car and took off her clothes and she said no and he ignored her and so she laid in the backseat totally limp and just cried and it wasn’t even sex, he just masterbated by using her body instead of his hand and she came to school the next day with vodka in her water bottle and she drank all day and I had to fight her to get the alcohol away from her and she just cried and threw up and I skipped class while I held her hair back and that same boy texted me a month later, asking if I ever wanted to hangout sometime.

And in that same year my very best friend who has never even kissed a boy, confessed to me that when she was 9 years old, her 12 year old cousin made her give him a hand job and he told her that was what cousins do and he gave her a chocolate bar afterwards and she told me that he probably doesn’t even remember it but that it’s something that she’ll never have the luxury of forgetting.

And in grade 10 I knew a girl who invited her best friend over to watch Disney movies and then he started to put his hands down her pants and she said no but she is 130lbs and he is 220lbs and he called her a tease while she tried to fight him but he used one hand to hold her down, and the other to put inside of her and i was the one to push her inside of a classroom and stand in front of her while calling the police when he showed up at our school looking for her and she was so damn scared.

And a few months later I skipped class and was in the car with a guy who i had had unprotected sex with in the past while under the influence of cocaine but this time I was sober and I insisted we use a condom but he told me he couldn’t feel anything while the condom was on so he ripped it off and I said I refused to have unprotected sex again and so he just grabbed me and forced himself into my mouth and I was crying and he pulled me onto him and I just came saying “stop” over and over like a broken record but he must’ve heard something different because he went until he came and I just sat naked in the backseat while he drove me back to the school and said “we should do this again sometime”. And I had five showers that night and I scratched at my skin so hard to try and rip his fingerprints off of me, I still have the scars.

And I found out soon afterwards that that same guy had raped a classmate of mine, 5 months earlier and she told me about how he brought her McDonald’s first, and how he said they could take things slow and she told me about how he didn’t listen to her either. And he goes to our school and so after she told me about her incident and I told her about mine, we decided to report it to the police and the trial is currently still going on and he told people about it, except in his version we are just “asking for attention” and all his friends talk about how bad they feel for him. As if HE is the one that still wakes up screaming. As if HE felt like his skin no longer was beautiful, no longer belonged to him.
And I held her in my arms as she bawled after giving the police her statement. And she did the same for me.

And I met a woman a year ago in a paint store and she had a service dog and I asked what the dog was for and it turns out that she had been so brutally raped and abused in her life, that the dog is literally trained to keep men away from her.

And I’m so FUCKING SICK AND TIRED OF THIS WORLD WE ARE LIVING IN. How many rape victims eyes have I already looked into? How many more will I? And how many more friends will I hold while they shake? Because I don’t know how many more I can take. And who the fuck still has the nerve to make rape jokes? And… Something just has to change. Please, someone just start being that change.

-16 year old girl

.

phoenixonwheels:

gruntledbananafish:

thundergrace:

Will Smith Barred From Attending Any Academy Events for 10 Years

Welp, so much for the prediction that he and Chris could host within a few years as the ultimate Oscars gimmick.

Two genuine apologies and he resigned from the academy. But it’s just not enough for these people.

All his projects are on hold. Deals are on hold. Now he can’t attend the Oscars for ten years.

I’ve never witnessed anyone in Hollywood actually be punished by Hollywood until now.

Just so we’re clear: Jim Carey forcibly kissed a teenage Alicia Silverstone without her consent at an awards show. Was not punished. Adrien Brody forcibly kissed Halle Berry at an award show without her consent. Also was not punished. John Wayne had to be physically held back from attacking Sacheen Littlefeather at the Oscars. Was not punished. Roman Polanski was given an Oscar in abstention because if he came to collect the award in person, he would have been arrested due to his conviction for statutory rape. Was not removed from the academy until 2018. Casey Affleck was given an Oscar shortly after he was accused to sexual harassment. Woody Allen has been nominated and awarded several times by the academy despite allegations of molestation being public since the 1990s.

Will Smith smacks a comedian for publicly humiliating his wife about her disability - the world comes down on his head. Gee, I wonder what the difference is?

Anyway the Oscars and allllll the racist and ableist (and clearly A-okay with pedophilia) assholes involved with this can kiss my entire ass. The only movies I’ll be watching will be 100% pirated because I won’t be paying a dime into that reeking pile of shit.

by Emily Joveski

Sandra Diaz of the Canadian Women’s Foundation speaks on a panel at Ryerson, Mar. 4. (Photo courtesy Emily Joveski)

Stephanie Guthrie is well aware that the pen is oft mightier than the sword.

“I’m going to tell you something you may not know,” the bespectacled feminist advocate said to a room of mostly Ryerson University journalism students in Toronto, Canada. “Words are political. Your job as journalists is a political one.”

Guthrie was one of five speakers at a panel called Media Coverage of Sexual Violence on Campus, held at Ryerson last week. The panel discussed ways journalists can responsibly report on sexual violence. Much of the discussion was centred on driving home the fact that rape culture exists everywhere, including Canadian university campuses.

Last year, both Saint Mary’s University in Nova Scotia and the University of British Columbia(UBC) made headlines for having freshmen sing pro-rape chants during orientation activities. Meanwhile, UBC’s Sauder School of Business performed a sexualized and racist “Pocahontas” chant at their frosh week. The chant went something like this: “Pocah, Pocah, Pocah, Pocahontas – white man took our land, Pocahontas, ass, ass, ass.”

This isn’t just happening during frosh week. You may have heard about the University of Ottawa student union leader, Anne-Marie Roy, who was recently the subject of a sexually violent Facebook conversation between male members of the student leadership. They said, “Someone needs to punish her with their shaft.” You may not have heard that the same week Anne-Marie Roy went public about the graphic Facebook conversation, the U of O’s men’s hockey team was suspended amid a sexual assault investigation involving several of the players. An assistant coach said the incident has been blown out of proportion.

In 2012, there was a string of sexual assaults across several Toronto neighborhoods, including an incident around Ryerson. In the span of two weeks, six incidents of sexual assault were reported on Ryerson campus. Toronto Police and Ryerson’s emergency and security services encouraged women to be vigilant about their surroundings. This attitude, that places the responsibility on women to avoid sexual assault, is what prompted Stephanie Guthrie to organize block parties where women and men could come together to reclaim our neighbourhoods as safe spaces. Guthrie says, however, that the same night she hosted a party in Ryerson’s Pitman Quad, a woman was assaulted at another party on campus.

Cindy Baskin, a professor at Ryerson’s School of Social Work points to the over-sexualized Pocahontas—or “Pocahottie”—Halloween costume as further evidence of persistent sexist and racist stereotypes on campus. Last year, “Eskimo cutie” and “sexy Indian” costumes were for sale at the campus bookstore of McMaster University. Aboriginal women in particular are vastly overrepresented in terms of racialized and sexualized violence, and shamefully underrepresented in the media. “Aboriginal women are seen as disposable, often stereotyped in the media as prostitutes, welfare recipients, and sluts,” says Baskin, who is of Mi’kmaq and Irish descent. She calls for Ryerson’s Journalism School to take the lead in developing a course that focuses on reporting Aboriginal issues.

The media is a crucial player in how sexual violence is perceived. News stories may over-report what the victim was wearing or how they were behaving, or how the perpetrator was such an upstanding member of the community. This perpetuates victim blaming. Sandra Diaz of the Canadian Women’s Foundation cites a recent poll that says 19 per cent of Canadians—both men and women—believe that a woman encourages sexual assault when she is drunk. Eleven per cent of Canadians believe that a woman who wears a short skirt is provoking assault. “Rape predates miniskirts,” says Diaz.  “Everyday, women are raped at home, sober, wearing a baggy tracksuit.”

Yet even when reporters take pains to accurately and respectfully report on sexual assault cases, on the next page we have journalists like Barbara Kay and Margaret Wente insisting that rape culture doesn’t exist, that feminists are delusional and that college girls just need to stop drinking so much.  Excuse me, Ms. Wente, but this is rape culture. And that type of word vomit needs to end.

When sexual assault happens on campus, it’s not because of student drinking or girls wearing short skirts. It’s because we live in a culture that encourages male sexual aggression and the use of physical and emotional violence against women. Rape culture says that sexual violence is a fact of life and that the best women can do is try not to encourage men to rape them. The fact is that men are almost always the perpetrators of sexual violence, and men need to be part of the solution. “At the core of rape culture on campus is how we raise men and boys,” says Ron Couchman, a spokesman for the White Ribbon Campaign, which is aimed at engaging men and boys in conversations about stopping violence against women. “It’s important to include and engage men,” says Couchman, “but also for men not to dominate the conversation, and to provide space for women’s voices.”

It’s important for everyone to be engaging their friends, family, classmates and coworkers in conversations about rape culture. But it’s up to journalists to provide space for the stories of women—especially stories that often go unheard, like those of trans people and First Nations women.

When journalists report responsibly on sexual violence, we’ll talk less about preventing rape, and more about stopping it.

For more information, visit the Toronto-based Femifesto for a toolkit for journalists writing about sexual assault. And if you’re still unsure about what rape culture is, check out this great post by feminist blogger Melissa McEwan titled “Rape Culture 101.”

This post was originally published by RyersonFolio.