Um, No

[Trigger Warning for non-consensual touching] Normally I enjoy reading the Oatmeal, but this recent comic is full of problems. So, first of all the joke of the comic obviously relies on homophobia and assumed heterosexuality for it to be funny. We are supposed to realize that no heterosexual man would approach another man in this [...]

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Changing Places: Rape Culture and What it is Like to be a Victim

Today the blog, Feminist Philosophers, reported on an article from the Guardian, that describes how one police officer who specializes in sexual crimes became a victim of sexual assault and the ways in which his perspectives changed as a result of the experience. First I will quote some of his experience, with a few brief [...]

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In Praise of Penny Arcade on Rape Culture

[Trigger Warning: I am writing about rape again, and I will be snarky, sarcastic and otherwise more emotive in my writing than average] If there is one thing that could be said for Penny Arcade’s handling of the criticisms of “The 6th Slave” comic, it is that they did begin a serious discussion of rape [...]

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Rape Culture 5105: Responsibility and Rape Culture

I began my series of posts on meta-issues associate with discussions of rape culture here. I assume that discussion in what I write here. As a quick summary: in that post I suggested that there are two ways to understand rape: either as an individual crime committed by “rotten apples,” or as a systemic crime [...]

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Rape Culture 5105: Rape as a Systemic Institution

There are many excellent introductory descriptions of rape culture available on the internet. For example: Wikipedia, Shakesville, Yes Means Yes, and Finally, a Feminism 101 blog all have good descriptions (note: the Shakesville post begins with a quote that addresses what I intend to explain in this post, but does not go into detail). They [...]

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Killing: the Phallic and the Vulvic

I uploaded this video to my facebook page, and it started quite a discussion. Because the discussion began getting long for a facebook wall, I thought I would continue my thoughts here. The video (originally at Feminist Frequency): The video started a discussion about video games and gendered weaponry. I am “B” in the discussion, [...]

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