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: 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: 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: 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/

Today in Cis Privilege: ISIS fighters tell families “hand over your daughters for sex”

SIS fighters are ordering terrified families in Iraq to hand over their daughters for sex.

Leaflets in the captured cities of Mosul and Tikrit claim the women – virgins or not – must join jihad, or Holy war, and cleanse themselves by sleeping with militants.

Those that refuse to do so are violating God’s will, it is claimed, and will be beaten or killed.

ISIS fighters have been taking women captive in Syria since last year when a Saudi-based cleric issued a fatwa – religious order telling them to. Now the sick practise is happening to Iraq.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/isis-fighters-tells-families-hand-3745434

Today in Cis Privilege: Male who sexually assaulted & murdered teen lesbians was free for two years

Strickland is accused of sexually assaulting and shooting 19-year old Mollie Olgin and 18-year old Kristene Chapa in a public park June 23, 2012.

Nineteen-year-old Mollie Judith Olgin was found dead on the scene and 18-year-old Mary Christine Chapa was rushed to the hospital.

The two young women had been in a relationship for five months.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/21/u-s-marshals-arrest-suspect-in-2012-shooting-death-of-texas-teen-lesbian-couple/

Today in Cis Privilege: 28 girls in one class in Swedish school underwent female genital mutilation

The shocking scale of female genital mutilation (FGM) in a Swedish school, where every single girl in one class had been subjected to the procedure, has been revealed.

School health services in Norrköping, eastern Sweden, discovered 60 cases of FGM since March, according to the Norrköpings Tidningar newspaper.

In the class where all of the girls had FGM performed on them, 28 were subjected to infibulation – the most extreme kind where the clitoris and labia are complete cut away, and the genitals are sewn to leave a small vaginal opening.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/fgm-in-sweden-school-where-every-single-girl-in-one-class-underwent-procedure-exposed-9552854.html

Today in Cis Privilege: Three Suspects Arrested For Pimping And Trafficking 16-Year-Old Girl

Three Cotati residents were arrested Thursday on suspicion of pimping a 16-year-old girl in California, Arizona and Oregon over the past three months.

The investigation began on June 11 when the girl and her mother informed police about the alleged human trafficking, Cotati Police Chief Michael Parish said.

The girl said the suspects kept the money from the human trafficking and that she had sex multiple times with one of the suspects, 38-year-old Abdelaziz Jamal Thomas, Parish said.

http://news.kron4.com/news/three-suspects-arrested-for-pimping-and-trafficking-16-year-old-girl/