Month: June 2019

Academic mobbing needs to be challenged, both inside and outside the institution

Academics should be standing together in defence of universities’ fundamental values: the pursuit of truth, evidence-based research, and academic freedom. They should not be joining in when identity groups mob their colleagues.

The activists who are currently participating in this mobbing will regret it when they find themselves outside the circle of acceptable views. There is a question about how trans rights and women’s rights interact, given the legal changes to the understanding of sex proposed in multiple countries. Women in universities (and women everywhere) must be able to work on and speak about these issues without fearing for their safety or their careers.

Source: Academic mobbing needs to be challenged, both inside and outside the institution

Trauma of Australia’s Indigenous ‘Stolen Generations’ is still affecting children today

In the latest report, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, a government-funded statistics agency, used existing data from surveys of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to conduct the first national study of how the forced separations have affected children in subsequent generations. Previous reports looked at the impacts of these policies on the Stolen Generations themselves, and on their adult descendants.

“What all of this work around Stolen Generations is showing is that compared to other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the Stolen Generations and their descendants are far worse off,” says Richard Weston, a descendant of the Meriam people from the Torres Strait, and chief executive of the Healing Foundation in Canberra, a government-funded organization that is working towards healing for the Stolen Generations and their descendants, and which commissioned the report. “Trauma stays with people, and its impacts are far-reaching and they’re profound,” says Weston.

Source: Trauma of Australia’s Indigenous ‘Stolen Generations’ is still affecting children today

How Porn Is Affecting Choking During Sex

In a recent study, Debby Herbenick, a professor and sex researcher at the Indiana University School of Public Health, found that nearly a quarter of adult women in the United States have felt scared during sex. Among 347 respondents, 23 described feeling scared because their partner had tried to choke them unexpectedly.

Many sexual-assault cases among students at her university now center around nonconsensual choking. According to her research, 13 percent of sexually active girls ages 14 to 17 have already been choked.

The reason such young kids know about such a violent sexual act is likely porn, said Dan Savage, a sex columnist and the host of Savage Lovecast, who was also on the panel. And that’s not the only disturbing change that might be attributable to porn, added Kate Julian, a senior editor at The Atlantic and the author of a recent magazine cover story on sexual behavior among young people. For her story, she talked with many women who said their male partners seemed to be taking a cue from what they had seen in porn, pounding away or penetrating then anally when they weren’t ready.

Source: How Porn Is Affecting Choking During Sex – The Atlantic

Vatican cancels football match with Vienna over anti-abortion protests

The Vatican canceled a friendly football match between its new women’s team and a club in Vienna, after a number of Austrian players protested against the Catholic Church’s stance on abortion.

The match, which was scheduled to take place Saturday at the Mariahilf football club in the Austrian capital, was called off after several Austrians lifted up their shirts to reveal pro-choice messages painted on their stomachs and backs while the countries’ anthems were playing before kick-off.
One player wrote the slogan “my body my rules” on her back, according to images circulating on social media.

Source: Vatican cancels football match with Vienna over anti-abortion protests – CNN

Violence that leaves no visible mark is a real threat to women

We know that police analysis of Setka’s phone activity reveals he called a woman 25 times on one night and sent her 45 text messages, calling her everything from a “treacherous Aussie f—en c—”, a “f—en dog” to a “weak f—en piece of shit”.

But there is other terrible correspondence. Of the 45 text messages, around half were photographs, some of which obliterated the woman’s face, others which showed her property being discarded.

Online abuse is still abuse. And maybe the case of John Setka will be a moment for the legal system to understand its extent and impact.

Source: Violence that leaves no visible mark is a real threat to women

Pakistan to create 1,000 courts to tackle violence against women

Chief justice says in televised speech that abuse survivors will be able to ‘speak their heart without any fear’

Source: Pakistan to create 1,000 courts to tackle violence against women | World news | The Guardian

Trouble in Paradise: the rise and fall of Germany’s ‘brothel king’

Jürgen Rudloff’s chain of ‘wellness spas’ sold sex as a health service for men. But his business model was fatally flawed – as his trial for abetting trafficking revealed.

Source: Trouble in Paradise: the rise and fall of Germany’s ‘brothel king’ | Hilke Lorenz | Global development | The Guardian

‘It’s like you go to abuse school’: how domestic violence always follows the same script

In this extract from her book, See What You Made Me Do, Jess Hill traces the psychology of abusers and how they use the same techniques of oppression

Domestic abuse may be as old as intimacy, but we only really started to understand it after the first women’s refuges opened in the 1970s. When women in their thousands fled to these makeshift shelters, they weren’t just complaining about black eyes and raging tempers. They told stories of unfathomable cruelty and violence, and what sounded like orchestrated campaigns of control. It became clear that, although each woman’s story was individual, the overarching narratives were uncannily alike. As one shelter worker said at the time, “It got so I could finish a woman’s story halfway through it. There was this absolutely eerie feeling that these guys were sitting together and deciding what to say and do.”

Today, we know that that the techniques common to domestic abuse match those used by practically anyone who trades in captivity: kidnappers, hostage-takers, pimps, cult leaders. What this reveals is that there is nothing uniquely weak, helpless or masochistic about victims of domestic abuse. Faced with the universal methods of coercive control, their responses are no different from those of trained soldiers.

Source: ‘It’s like you go to abuse school’: how domestic violence always follows the same script | Society | The Guardian

Trump is accused of rape by E. Jean Carroll & it barely registers

In her new book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal E. Jean Carroll describes the night Donald Trump attacked her at Bergdorf Goodman.

It’s the fact that a woman penning a powerful and shocking essay detailing how she alleges the man who is now the President of the United States raped her 25 years ago, almost seems normal that is most disturbing.

It is so ‘normal’ that it doesn’t make front page news.

Source: Trump is accused of rape by E. Jean Carroll & it barely registers