Native American/Native Alaska Women Suffer Epidemic Rapes

A Congressional subcommittee held a hearing earlier in the week featuring testimony by a leading expert on sexual violence against Indigenous women in the U.S. Charon Asetoyer, executive director of the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center addressed a disturbing epidemic of sexual violence affecting one out of three Native American and Alaska Native women and stressed the need to create Sexual assault Nurse Examiner programs in all Indian Health Service hospitals. According to the US Dept. of Justice’s own statistics, Native American and Alaska Native women are nearly three times more likely to be raped than women in the US in general. Too often Native American victims of rape have to go through a maze of federal, state, tribal and local laws to achieve any justice at all, while the agencies responsible for seeking justice on their behalf are severely underfunded and inadequate. Federal law limits the criminal sentences that tribal courts can impose and prohibits tribal courts from trying non-Indian suspects – even though data collected by the Department of Justice shows that up to 86% of perpetrators are non-Indian.

GUEST: Charon Asetoyer, Executive Director of the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center.

Read Amnesty International’s Report, Maze of Injustice here: http://www.amnestyusa.org/women/maze/report.pdf.

Email messages to Senator Dianne Feinstein can be sent here: http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.EmailMe. Or call Senator Feinstein at (202) 224-3841.

Listen to it here.

New Jersey 7

From Free Speech Radio News.

What happens when our country's preoccupations with race, gender, and sexuality combine in one legal case? This holiday, we bring you an in-depth look at the New Jersey Seven, a group of women who went out for a night on the town, and wound up spending months in jail.

On August 18, 2006, seven young, Black, queer women went to the Christopher Street pier, a place known for being queer-friendly. That may be why 20-year-old Patreese Johnson didn't blink when a male stranger asked her, "Can I get some of that?"

Patreese handed him her coffee cup. Then she realized he was pointing at her crotch.

The man, Dwayne Buckle, shouted homophobic remarks. He made violent threats. And then he followed the women as they walked away.

Then there was a scuffle.

The women say that Buckle punched three of them in the face, threw a lit cigarette, and yanked out one woman's hair extension. During the fray, Buckle also got stabbed.

Initially, Buckle claimed that he was stabbed by two men – onlookers who got involved in the fight. But Patreece Johnson had a small steak knife on her, and police didn't investigate Buckle's claim.

The media reports that followed said "savage lesbian gangs" were "attacking men" on the street. Buckle himself was never charged with any crime, but Patreece Johnson is serving an 8-year prison sentence, and her companions have all spent at least six months in jail. Today, Puck Lo brings us the story of the New Jersey 7.

Listen to the audio by clicking this link.

Lesbian's brutal gang rape investigated in Calif.

From Yahoo News.

SAN FRANCISCO – A woman in the San Francisco Bay area was jumped by four men, taunted for being a lesbian, repeatedly raped and left naked outside an abandoned apartment building, authorities said Monday.

Detectives say the 28-year-old victim was attacked Dec. 13 after she got out of her car, which bore a rainbow gay pride sticker. The men, who ranged from their late teens to their 30s, made comments indicating they knew her sexual orientation, said Richmond police Lt. Mark Gagan.

"It just pushes it beyond fathomable," he said. "The level of trauma — physical and emotional — this victim has suffered is extreme."

Authorities are characterizing the attack as a hate crime but declined to reveal why they think the woman was singled out because of her sexual orientation. Gagan would say only that the victim lived openly with a female partner and had a rainbow flag sticker on her car.

The 45-minute attack began when one of the men approached the woman as she crossed the street, struck her with a blunt object, ordered her to disrobe and sexually assaulted her with the help of the other men.

When the group saw another person approaching, they forced the victim back into her car and took her to a burned-out apartment building, where she was raped again inside and outside the vehicle. The assailants took her wallet and drove off in her car. Officers found the car abandoned two days later.

The woman sought help from a nearby resident, and she was examined at a hospital. Although the victim said she did not know her attackers, detectives hope someone in the community knows them. One of the men went by the nickname "Blue" and another was called "Pato," according to authorities.

Richmond police are offering a $10,000 award for information leading to the arrest of the attackers.

Gay rights advocates note that hate crimes based on sexual orientation have increased nationwide as of late. There were 1,415 such crimes in 2006 and 1,460 in 2007, both times making up about 16 percent of the total, according to the FBI.

Avy Skolnik, a coordinator with the New York-based National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, noted that gay, lesbian and transgender crime victims may be more reluctant than heterosexual victims to contact police.

"Assailants target LGBT people of all gender identities with sexual assault," he said. "Such targeting is one of the most cruel, dehumanizing and violent forms of hate violence that our communities experience."

Skolnik said the group plans to analyze hate crime data to see whether fluctuations may be related to the gay marriage bans that appeared on ballots this year in California, Arizona and Florida.

"Anytime there is an anti-LGBT initiative, we tend to see spikes both in the numbers and the severity of attacks," he said. "People feel this extra entitlement to act out their prejudice."

Against Backdrop of Sexual Violence, Ads, Too, Exploit Young Teens

From RH Reality.

The latest face of fashion in Jamaica is that of an innocent looking thirteen year old girl. Heavily made up and suggestively sporting a bikini, this pubescent girl was recently featured in local newspapers, touting her as the latest winner in the Pulse Jamaican fashion model contest. While it holds true that the fashion industry has long been centered on the bodies of under-aged girls, what is startling about this latest face of the Jamaican fashion industry is its'obvious youth. This youth, when combined with the not-so-subtle sexualization of the girl, paints a frightening picture of our society. No matter the justification, how does it become okay to feature a child, not even fully physically developed, in a bikini and wearing make-up?

As should be expected, the image of the girl has been met by some degree of public outrage. Interestingly enough, the moderate level of outrage seems to me to be in sharp contrast with the wide-scale public reaction, some months ago, to the proposed introduction of a school textbook that made passing mention of homosexual families. At that time, the collective national sentiment towards the text, which in defining family types made mention of those with same-sex parents, can be summed up as "Not in Jamaica!" The thinking and feeling seems to have been that condoning, even if implicitly, the normalcy of homosexuality would be a very un-Jamaican thing to do. Yet, this same level of nationalism does not surface when we see the body of a young girl being portrayed in such a manner.

The lack of collective outrage is an indictment on our society.

Against a wider backdrop of sexual violence being committed against, and perpetrated by, children and adolescents, the sexualization of an under-aged teenager is extremely problematic and potentially dangerous.

We live in a sexualized world. Companies use sex to sell the most random of products, from jump drives to cars. Rapid advancements in the media have made images and information accessible to almost everyone, easily bringing music and home videos, photos and advertisements directly into our homes, our phones, and our computers. The music we listen to; the movies we watch; the advertisements which inundate us; and the newspapers that we read are typically filled with references to, or explicit mention of sex.

Sex is not a bad thing; but by fostering societies in which it is encouraged to become a driving force, almost an entity of its own, we are engaging in a dangerous game of Russian roulette. We are paving the way for misplaced desire, in which desire becomes the be-all and end-all, and humanity in general, and the protection of our children in particular become secondary issues.

Calls have been made for local authorities to band together to tackle the growing wave of sexual violence that is threatening the lives of our children. While it cannot be stated that images such as that of the 13-year old model automatically trigger sexual violence against children, with burgeoning evidence of such abuse, it just seems like a risk we can no longer afford to take. As the saying goes, if we are not choosing to be a part of the solution, we must therefore be a part of the problem.

Any move, subtle or otherwise, which not only encourages us to look at under-aged girls as sexual objects; but by extension creates misplaced ideas amongst young girls of what it means to be sexy, is dangerous, and ultimately, our children are paying the price.

On Bullshit (by Dan Savage)

In case you don't know, Dan Savage is an amazing sex and relationship advice columnist. I particularly appreciated this response, so I'm reposting it here. Question is in italics, his response is the rest.

I feel ridiculous e-mailing you, but I figure that if anyone has heard of all manner of ass-hole behavior during sex, it would be you.

I'm a 17-year-old girl, and I've only had one boyfriend—who was, at the time, 21 and, I thought, perfect. The only thing that's still bothering me is the reason we broke up. After promising that he would never hurt me, and reassuring me that he was SO passionate about contraception, I agreed to have sex with him and lose my virginity. And in the middle of fucking me, he removed the condom without a word! He was hoping I wouldn't notice! I did notice—and I kicked his ass to the curb. He cried, he sent stupid gifts, and still calls. At least he didn't get me pregnant.

How upset should I be about this? Or is this something that horny males do? I'm not traumatized. I could nominate him for "Crappy Boyfriend of the Year," but surely someone else's boyfriend has done worse. I really just don't know how to feel about this.

[signed,] Just Confused

How upset should you be? Very. Did you do the right thing? Absofuckinlutely.

Hell, JC, you did precisely what I would have urged you to do had I been in the room. Of course, the second-to-last thing a straight girl needs in the room with her when she's losing her virginity to some asshole straight boy is a gay man twice her age desperately trying to get out. But if I had been there, JC, and I realized what was going on, I would've stopped trying to break down your locked bedroom door long enough to give your boyfriend—aka the last thing you needed in the room that night—something to cry about for real.

You consented to intercourse with protection, and that asshole deceitfully initiated unprotected intercourse. When a fucker removes a condom during intercourse—gay or straight, vaginal or anal—it invalidates the fuckee's consent to the fucking. (And what is sex without consent, class?) So your "more experienced" boyfriend sexually assaulted you, JC, and placed you at risk of an unplanned pregnancy—and for what? An ever-so-slightly enhanced orgasm for him?

What.

An.

Asshole.

This isn't something that decent guys do at all, JC, much less "all the time." He's an abusive douchebag, and you're well rid of him. Here's hoping his next girlfriend takes proactive steps to make sure the condom stays securely on—I'd suggest staple-gunning the thing in place.

"To Every Man Who Never Called Himself A Feminist"

Progress! Alas, not for women.

From The Telegraph...

Sexual harassment okay as it ensures humans breed, Russian judge rules

The unnamed executive, a 22-year-old from St Petersburg, had been hoping to become only the third woman in Russia's history to bring a successful sexual harassment action against a male employer.

She alleged she had been locked out of her office after she refused to have intimate relations with her 47-year-old boss.

"He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word," she earlier told the court. "I didn't realise at first that he wasn't speaking metaphorically."

The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.

"If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children," the judge ruled.

Since Soviet times, sexual harassment in Russia has become an accepted part of life in the office, work place and university lecture room.

According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 per cent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven per cent claimed to have been raped.

Eighty per cent of those who participated in the survey said they did not believe it possible to win promotion without engaging in sexual relations with their male superiors.

Women also report that it is common to be browbeaten into sex during job interviews, while female students regularly complain that university professors trade high marks for sexual favours.

Only two women have won sexual harassment cases since the collapse of the Soviet Union, one in 1993 and the other in 1997.

Human rights activists say that Russian women remain second-class citizens and are subjected to some of the highest levels of domestic abuse in the world.

I'd be laughing if I wasn't so busy trying not to cry.

Remember people, the only way people have sex is through force. Nobody wants to have sex. Well, except for men, because, well... they're men. And women, because they have nerve endings. Oh, wait... does that mean you could find someone to engage in heterosexual sex with? You don't have to force them? Well, hot damn!

This essay (on Shakesville) was in response to a different article, but it's fucking awesome. It's about how, maybe, women aren't on Earth to please men. Maybe? And before you get any ideas- a MAN wrote it.

My sarcasm. It is subtle and witty, no?

"Preventing" Rape.

This is a modified version I made of a bulletin I got on myspace several years ago. I made it more gender neutral, added situations that I thought should be added... it's still a work in progress.

I'm getting tired of the well-meaning bulletins and emails about what to do to "prevent" rape that basically blame the victim (long hair, short skirts, walking in alleys) with no real solution mentioned (um... educate people who think that might makes right and who think they can legitimately have power over another human being?); comments like "if someone tried that with me, I'd (insert whatever here)"- effectively silencing people in the room who have experienced sexual assault; and sensationalized reports of rapists "roaming" the city. Most survivors know their assailants!

We must hold the people, especially the male-bodied and male-perceived, in our society accountable. This is the only way we can start making a change.

Please leave a comment to discuss it! More resources would be great, also...

p.s.- If this ends up printed out on sticker paper and added to the walls of your town, especially bathrooms, principally male bathrooms, it ain't my fault, yo.

-------------

A lot has been said about how to prevent rape.

Women should learn self-defense.
Women should lock themselves in their houses after dark.
Women shouldn't have long hair and women shouldn't wear short skirts.
Women shouldn't leave drinks unattended.
In fact, they shouldn't dare to get drunk at all.

But, if fact, rape is not just a female bodied concern. Men, male-bodied people, and other bodied/gender identified people should be concerned with rape. Most importantly, rape is not the responsibility of the survivor, it is the responsibility of the predator.

Instead of that sexist, victimizing idea, how about:

If a person is drunk, don't rape them.
If a person is walking alone at night, don't rape them.
If a person is drugged and unconscious, don't rape them.
If a person is wearing a short skirt or shorts, don't rape them.
If a person is jogging in a park at 5 am, don't rape them.
If a person looks like the ex you're still hung up on, don't rape them.
If a person is asleep in their bed, don't rape them.
If a person is asleep in your bed, don't rape them.
If a person is doing their laundry, don't rape them.
If a person is in a coma, don't rape them.
If a person changes their mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don't rape them.
If a person has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don't rape them.
If a person is not yet a adult, but a child, don't rape them.
If a person is "ugly" and you think they'll appreciate it in the long run, don't rape them.
If the person agrees to sex with a condom, but you want to take it off, don't rape them.
If your partner or significant other is not in the mood, don't rape them.
If your child or family member is watching tv, don't rape them.
If you break into a house and find a person there, don't rape them.

If your "friend" thinks it's okay to rape someone, tell them it's not, and that they're not your friend.
If your "friend" tells you they raped someone and got away with it, report them.
If your peer or another person at the party tells you there's an unconscious person upstairs and it's your turn, don't rape them, call the police and tell the peer they're a rapist.

If they moaned and got hot, you're still a rapist.
If they came, you're still a rapist.
If they were on top, but forced, you're still a rapist.
If you used a condom, you're still a rapist.
If there were no weapons involved, you're still a rapist.
If they were someone you had sex with before, you're still a rapist.

Tell family, friends, co-workers, neighbors it's not okay to rape someone.
Don't tell your friends how to be safe and avoid rape, or what they "should" have done.
Don't imply that they could have avoided it if they'd only done/not done x.
Don't imply that it's in any way their fault.
Don't let silence imply agreement when someone tells you they "got some" with the drunk person.
Don't perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions. You can, too, help yourself.

Some great resources:
Can I Kiss You?
Scarleteen
Sexual Health

Price of Admission: Along the border, sexual assault has become routine

Part 1 of 2, from the Tucson Weekly.

The darkness lifts, and daybreak nudges into the desert. For northbound migrants, this sunrise may signal a time to find shade and dodge the Border Patrol. Or it could mark the start of a white-knuckle dash to catch rides bound for the interior. From there, god willing, the migrants may disappear into a world offering more hope than the one they left behind.

But for other border-crossers, daybreak brings only the flat hardness of reality--a time for noting what's already been lost in the desperate trek north. For women in particular, that loss can be brutal, because even if they reach some safe house in Tucson or Phoenix or points afar, some of them certainly don't arrive whole. According to experts, rape is now considered "the price of admission" for women crossing the border illegally.

But this scourge goes largely ignored, and is suspected to be vastly underreported. Not surprisingly, few women care to describe their ordeals to authorities in stark government detention facilities. And if they do, it's often as they're already being deported back across the border--sometimes back into the very situations where the assaults occurred.

This grim scenario played out in early May, when three women--ages 16, 17 and 20--reported having been raped by masked men. A few days later, two more women were found alive but badly beaten near Arivaca, south of Tucson. That same week, yet two more women reported having been raped. The reports didn't slow deportation proceedings against them.

Further complicating matters, it's often difficult to determine whether the assaults occurred on U.S. soil or in Mexico. But such details probably matter little to the victims. Civilian border-watchers tell of hearing these women's cries.

"I thought the wailings we heard at night were the coyotes barking at the moon," one volunteer told The Washington Times. "I didn't know until later that those sounds were the cries of women being raped in the Mexican desert, some less than 100 yards away from the border. There was absolutely nothing anyone could do about it."

The rapists are known to hang women's bras and panties from tree limbs as trophies.

Beyond such haunting anecdotes, hard numbers are tough to come by. According to the United Nations, up to 70 percent of women crossing the border without husbands or families are abused in some way. But the flood of stories leads humanitarian aid workers such as Michelle Brané to consider these crimes even more pervasive. Brané directs detention and asylum programs with the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, based in Washington, D.C.

"Nonprofit groups and even the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement--which has custody of unaccompanied children--estimate that the vast majority of women and female children encounter some sort of sexual assault en route to the United States," she says. "It's become the norm, and in many cases with female children, they just assume that there's been some sort of incident."

In this situation, survival often requires extreme steps, she says. "A lot of times, women, because they know what's coming, will align themselves with one man in the group" of smugglers or coyotes. "Whether you consider that assault or not, I guess it's a blurry line."

This speaks to the fact that women are routinely assaulted by the very smugglers they've paid to bring them across. Immigrants have told of preparing for the inevitable by taking birth-control pills before attempting to cross the border, says Dr. Sylvanna Falcón, an assistant professor of sociology at Connecticut College, in New London, Conn. Falcón has conducted extensive research into rapes and other human-rights abuses along the U.S.-Mexico border.

She notes that this saga of exploitation isn't limited to the desert, and points to well-documented incidents of U.S. Border Patrol agents or other officials pressuring migrants into having sex in exchange for their freedom. Other times, the women are raped by those with the power to deport them.

"We know this kind of thing is happening, and it gets reported every once in awhile," she says. "The degree to which it happens is not well-known, but women are particularly vulnerable when they come into contact with agents." That vulnerability is compounded by the remoteness of border areas where agents and immigrants often come in contact.

Attempts to obtain comment from Border Patrol officials were not successful as of the Weekly's press time. But some cases have been sensational, such as the Border Patrol agent in Texas who was convicted of detaining a 23-year-old woman and driving her to a motel, where he sexually assaulted her. Or the ongoing investigation of a sprawling detention center in South Texas, operated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where a culture of rape, sexual coercion and cover-ups has reportedly existed for years.

"Congress did an investigation, and found thousands of cases of misconduct, and that getting green cards for sex was a very common form of bribery," Falcón says. "You have women who are very vulnerable in every sense of the word. They may have young children with them; maybe they're trying to reunite with family members on this side of the border. (Officials) doing this bribery know that they're in a complete position of power."

Women face risks on all sides, she says. "Anyone from coyotes to U.S. officials, they all have the upper hand here."

Meanwhile, the rest of America simply ignores this horrific violence on its doorstep, she says.

"Our society takes rape seriously, but it doesn't take this type of rape seriously. In all of our national discourse around securing our borders, rarely, if ever, do you hear about any kind of protection for people who might be crossing. Largely, that's because the discussion has been framed around protecting us--protecting the U.S.--and once you get into that framework, what happens to the other person is not even on the radar."

But the cost of our denial may include flaunting international legal standards. "When we look at human-rights laws," Falcón says, "and at the different international human-rights treaties and conventions, clearly, any systemic violation of women in this way is a human-rights violation."

Owning Women's Bodies, Owning Women's Cunts

I’ll admit it. I read anti-choice blogs. And listen to anti-choice podcasts. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t adding to their hits, but I figure they probably do the same to our stuff.

Anyway. I was listening to some old podcasts that I’ve been waiting for some time to get to listen to (we’ve been traveling a lot here at CAF). And while completely on another topic, one of the commentators mentioned when she was in college, “there was a rapist near our college.” Suddenly, I had a rising tide of outrage in myself.

This was coming from the woman on the show who had had an abortion and worked as a counselor for women suffering after an abortion (from an anti-choice perspective, unlike agencies such as Backline and Exhale and independent feminist clinic post-abortion counseling groups). Coming from a woman who was supposed to be anti-choice because she’s pro-woman, I expected more. She mentioned the campus cops escorting women to and from classes and parties, and went back to the topic at hand. The naivete of this woman who counsels other women made me pity her clients.


Let’s put rape into some perspective:

-Rape is sex you don’t agree to, including forcing a body part or object into your vagina, rectum (bottom), or mouth {or a certain sex act that you did not agree to, if you consented to sex- ed.}. Date rape {sometimes called/used interchangeably with acquittance rape, sometimes marital rape depending on the situation; often used interchangeably with “sexual violence”- ed.} is when you are raped by someone you know. Both are crimes. Rape is not about sex – it is an act of power by the rapist and it is always wrong. (from girls.gov)

-Incest is the type of sexual contact that occurs between persons who are so closely related that their marriage is illegal (e.g., parents and children, uncles/aunts and nieces/nephews, etc.). (from RAINN)

-One in three girls and one in six boys are sexually abused before the age of 18.
-14% of women are victims of rape committed by their husband.
-As many as 80% of all assaults involve acquaintances.
(from Rape Victim Advocates)


My activism is framed in a social justice framework, including knowledge from the anti-rape movement. The statement this woman obviously lacked any knowledge of- or perhaps even a dismissal of- the anti-rape movement’s advances. Possibly, there was a serial rapist on or near the campus. Mostly likely, however, there were many males on her campus that felt they had the right to the female’s bodies and to show their control over them (sound familiar?). Stranger Danger may be a good thing to have in the back of your head, but Date Rape, Marital Rape and Incest are unfortunately far, far more common. Stranger Danger serves misogynistic* males in control by keeping women afraid (to be alone, among other things), dependent on familiar males, in a state of constant victimization. And while the other prospects can seem even more terrifying, being in a Stranger Danger mindset stops us from keeping those males (and females) around us from being held accountable, informed, and active in engaging for an anti-sexist culture.

Enforcing a rape culture, even in a simple conversation- an especially in a podcast available for worldwide download-, is not pro-woman. And neither is making women feel bad for the choices they’ve made around pregnancies.