Never The Best Decisions

We are outraged when an Indian police officer tells a rape victim she should marry her attacker but not when a California judge says a woman wasn’t really raped because she didn’t put up enough of a fight. We are outraged at 24,000 rapes in India but not 188,380 in America.

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Hoopstatic - First World Problems

I really recommend reading the entire article. Trigger warning for discussion of rape and rape culture - it’s a tough article but very important. 

(Thanks to byunbbi for submitting)

I think this quote also really captures what is happening when one is reported so much more than the other in American media:

“24,000 rapes in one year. That’s an epidemic. Brutal gang rape. Police doing nothing to protect or prosecute. Culture of rape. But something like that would never happen here in America, right? India is dirty and dangerous and overcrowded and backwards and misogynistic and this is just a third world problem, right? A really sad problem, but it would never happen here, right?”

It creates another false dichotomy where “we” feel bad for “them” that they have to live in those “conditions.”     Definitely both situations are in need of address, but it’s worth examining why media leaps on framing India and its sexual assault issues as if they are a world different from ours- as if “our people” /culture really act better or respect women and victims more (they don’t.)

24,000 in a population of a billion vs 188,000 out of 300 million?

(via dotcomslashpost)

it’s way easier to dehumanize poc culture and portray it as being primitive and backwards than to analyze the structure of misogyny and rape culture in the so called “developed world”.

(via sonidenakhre)

(Source: stfusexists, via fuckyeahangryfatgrrrls)

When I was in college, a teacher once said that all women live by a ‘rape schedule.’ I was baffled by the term, but as she went on to explain, I got really freaked out. Because I realized that I knew exactly what she was talking about. And you do too. Because of their constant fear of rape (conscious or not), women do things throughout the day to protect themselves. Whether it’s carrying our keys in our hands as we walk home, locking our car doors as soon as we get in, or not walking down certain streets, we take precautions. While taking precautions is certainly not a bad idea, the fact that certain things women do are so ingrained into our daily routines is truly disturbing. It’s essentially like living in a prison - all the time. We can’t assume that we’re safe anywhere: not on the streets, not in our homes. And we’re so used to feeling unsafe that we don’t even see that there’s something seriously fucked up about it.

—Jessica Valenti (via whatevernerd)

(Source: harleyqueef, via viomatic)