Today in Cis Privilege: America’s Campus Rape Policy: Boys Will Be Boys

Beyond the act of physical and sexual violence, post traumatic rape syndrome, as well as the refusal of many rape victims to report when they have been assaulted can be attributed to a prevailing rape culture on America’s college campuses. Rape culture is a term used to describe the way rape, sexual violence, and sexual abuse are linked to the culture of society. Essentially sexual violence and speech against women is normalized and excused in media and pop culture. Thus, male sexual aggression is in a number of ways encouraged and supported in society. Here, violence and sexuality are interchangeable. Violence is seen as sexy, and sexuality is seen as violent. Music fills the airwaves telling women that “I know you want it” and “I’ll BEAT the pussy up” and if you are familiar with soca music from the Caribbean, you may have heard the song “Kick In She Back Door”, which is literally about breaking into a woman’s home (and her body) through anal penetration if she refuses a man’s sexual advances.

This rape culture simply takes its cue from or is steeped in patriarchy; which is the general structure of privilege in society, where heterosexual men have more power and influence over other members of society.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/24787-boys-will-be-boys-americas-campus-rape-policy

Today in Cis Privilege: Facebook allows images of violence against women & “jokes” about rape, then lies about it

“It is very important to point out that what one person finds offensive another can find entertaining, just as telling a rude joke won’t get you thrown out of your local pub, it won’t get you thrown off Facebook,” Facebook told the BBC in a statement.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/facebook-still-doesnt-consider-rape-jokes-to-be-hate-speech

Today in Cis Privilege: Chinese Men Buying Brides From Vietnam Is Getting Out Of Control

When Kiab turned 16, her brother promised to take her to a party in a tourist town in northern Vietnam. Instead, he sold her to a Chinese family as a bride.

The ethnic Hmong teenager spent nearly a month in China until she was able to escape her new husband, seek help from local police and return to Vietnam.

“My brother is no longer a human being in my eyes — he sold his own sister to China,” Kiab, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, told AFP at a shelter for trafficking victims in the Vietnamese border town Lao Cai.

Vulnerable women in countries close to China — not only Vietnam but also North Korea, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar — are being forced into marriages in the land of the one-child policy, experts say.

China suffers from one of the worst gender imbalances in the world as families prefer male children.

As a result millions of men now cannot find Chinese brides — a key driver of trafficking, according to rights groups.

http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-men-buying-brides-from-vietnam-is-getting-out-of-control-2014-6?utm_content=buffer94237&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Today in Cis Privilege: Pakistan girl burned alive for rejecting marriage proposal

A teenage girl died in Pakistan after being doused in petrol and set alight by a man who wanted to marry her but whose proposal had been rejected, police said Sunday.

It was the second brutal killing in Pakistan’s Punjab province within days, after a 17-year-old girl and her husband were murdered by a group of relatives for marrying against their wishes.

The latest incident took place Saturday in a village which is part of Toba Tek Singh town.

Sidra Shaukat, 18, was at home without her parents when 22-year-old Fayyaz Aslam entered her house, doused her with petrol and set her alight, Mohammad Akram, a police official told AFP.

http://news.yahoo.com/pakistan-girl-burned-alive-rejecting-marriage-proposal-175732805.html

Today in Cis Privilege: Who Owns Your Womb? Women Can Get Murder Charge for Refusing C-Sections

When most women become pregnant, understandably they believe the choice of how they give birth will remain theirs; whether to deliver vaginally or through cesarean surgery or where to give birth, at home or at a hospital. Decades ago, those decisions were well within the domain of pregnant patients whose reproductive liberty and autonomy interests gained constitutional recognition in the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.

After all, whose body is it anyway? But what may have seemed clear-cut decades ago, is now put to the test by doctors and lower courts.

Decades ago, refusing to undergo cesarean surgery was not a crime. That’s another matter now in the wake of recent “fetal protection” enactments that make it a crime for a pregnant woman to engage in any conduct that might threaten harm to a fetus. Some doctors believe this applies to how a woman gives birth.

Melissa Rowland refused to undergo the cesarean surgery recommended by her doctor. She was later charged with murder after one of her fetuses was stillborn. Rowland accepted a plea deal, which made her criminally liable for child endangerment.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/who-owns-your-womb-women-can-get-murder-charge-refusing-c-sections

Today in Cis Privilege: Systematic undercounting of sexual assaults in the US disguises a hidden rape crisis

Earlier this month, a 911 dispatcher in Ohio was recorded telling a 20-year-old woman who had just been raped to “quit crying.” After she provided a description of her assailant, the caller went on to say, “They’re not going to be able to find him with the information that you’ve given.” This incident had its viral moment, sparking outrage at the dispatcher’s lack of empathy. But it also speaks to the larger issue of how we are counting rapes in the United States. Sixty-nine percent of police departments surveyed in 2012 said that dispatchers like this one, often with little training, are authorized to do the initial coding of sexual assault crimes.

That’s important, because miscoding of such crimes is masking the high incidence of rape in the United States. We don’t have an overestimation of rape; we have a gross underestimation. A thorough analysis of federal data published earlier this year by Corey Rayburn Yung, associate professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, concludes that between 1995 and 2012, police departments across the country systematically undercounted and underreported sexual assaults.

Yung used murder rates—the statistic with the most reliable measure of accuracy and one that is historically highly correlated with the incidence of rape—as a baseline for his analysis. After nearly two years of work, he estimates conservatively that between 796,213 and 1,145,309 sexual assault cases never made it into national FBI counts during the studied period.

http://www.thenation.com/article/180441/how-did-fbi-miss-over-1-million-rapes

Today in Cis Privilege: Iranian lesbian: Authorities tried to ‘fix’ my sexuality by forcing me to have gender reassignment surgery

An Iranian lesbian has said the country’s authorities tried to force her into having gender reassignment surgery to “fix” her sexuality.

The woman, known as Sara, said she was ordered to undergo the “treatment” by a psychologist, after coming out to her family, aged 20.

Sara told Reuters: “At first it was difficult. They tried to convince me that I was wrong and made an appointment with a psychologist.”

“She said I was really a man in a woman’s body and I had to change my body to suit my personality.

“My sister had brought a photo along, (taken when) I was maybe 5 years old. I was wearing boy’s clothes and had a toy gun in my hand and the psychologist emphasised that this photo showed that I was a man.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/06/27/iranian-lesbian-authorities-tried-to-fix-my-sexuality-by-forcing-me-to-have-gender-reassignment-surgery/

Today in Cis Privilege: Supreme Court decides that assaulting women who are trying to get abortions is free speech

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Massachusetts buffer zone law violates the First Amendment; the justices were unanimous in the ruling. In case you weren’t up to speed on the case, here are the basics: Fourteen years ago, the high court upheld a Colorado law that created an 8-foot “bubble zone” around patients entering or exiting clinics. But Massachusetts’ buffer zone law prohibited demonstrators from standing within 35 feet of the facility, a length the justices seemed dubious of from the start. Walking that length — the size of a school bus — takes approximately seven seconds.

A lot can happen in those seven seconds. A lot can happen when protesters are allowed to enter clinics, physically confront patients or block doors. Massachusetts passed its law in response to aggressive and dangerous conduct from protesters stationed directly outside clinics, including an incident in 1994 where a gunman opened fire at two abortion clinics, killing two people and injuring five others. In its defense of the measure, the state argued before the justices that the buffer law is not a prohibition on speech, but a practical measure to keep access to these facilities “open and clear of all but essential foot traffic, in light of more than two decades of compromised facility access and public safety.”

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/26/do_what_we_tell_you_to_do_or_we_will_kill_you/

Today in Cis Privilege: Nigeria Officially Ended Its Kidnapping Investigation, More Than 200 Girls Are Still Missing

Nigeria wrapped up its inquiry into the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls by militants on Friday with little progress to show, reporting almost none had been freed after the initial kidnapping some girls escaped from.

Submitting the final report, Brigadier General Ibrahim Sabo said 219 girls remained at large, a total virtually unchanged since Boko Haram militants stormed their secondary school in northeast Borno state on April 14 to kidnap them.

A total of 57 girls, almost all of whom escaped shortly after the abduction, have been reunited with their families, he added. The kidnapping of the teenage girls taking exams in Chibok village sparked global outrage for its sheer barbarity.

http://www.businessinsider.com/nigeria-ends-boko-haram-investigation-2014-6

Today in Cis Privilege: More than 60 women & girls abducted in Nigeria by Boko Haram militants

Suspected Boko Haram militants have abducted more than 60 women and young girls in restive northeast Nigeria, a local official and a vigilante leader said on Tuesday.

The group was kidnapped in the last week during a Boko Haram attack on Kummabza village in the Damboa district of Borno state, which left at least 30 dead, according to residents who escaped the violence.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/24/more-than-60-women-and-girls-abducted-in-nigeria-by-boko-haram-militants/