Daily Read: 29MAR2013 - Girl Rising Edition

During my morning coffee routine I was treated to one of those special moments where it feels as if a grander force is guiding my actions.  I never know what makes me decide to visit one website over another on any particular day.  Today I decided to visit Public Radio International (PRI) because it had been a while since I had checked in there.  Oh happy days that I did!

Back in my previous life as a blogger, I wrote about the book Three Cups of Tea and how it impacted me at the time.  PRI has a news piece today about the documentary "Girl Rising".

Richard Robbins, director of "Girl Rising," says the crew set out to create a traditional documentary, but once they began filming, the girls were so inspiring that they didn't want to focus on their grim circumstances. 

"What we really wanted to capture in the film was their strength and their power. So, trying to make a film that's really about character and not about the circumstances ... was the big challenge," he said. 

Each girl was paired with a writer from her own country and as the writers spent time with each girl, the writers attempted to inhabit their world so they could write something based off their experiences, Robbins said.

From there I ended up at the Girl Rising website (yay), which in turn sent me to the 10x10 website (double yay).  As the site says in response the age old question of "why girls" when it comes to truly changing the world:

Educated girls dramatically improve the well-being of their families, their communities, and their countries--multiplying the impact on society.

Educating girls will.. 

• reduce poverty 

• reduce child mortality

• reduce population growth

• reduce HIV infection rates

• change the conditions that lead to terrorism

• reduce corruption

Screenings of "Girl Rising" have started already; track one down or captain a screening.  Take action.

ESPN...You Kinda Suck

Finally, a post that is not simply a daily read suggestion for my non-existent readers.  No, this one is all me at all full on rant.  I have my moments.

Yes, you heard me...ESPN, you suck.

Have a look at the photo below of the current home page (I know...it is small, but you will soon get the point).  Kudos to the person who notices what is lacking.

No takers?  I will tell you.  Of all the major sporting events going on right now, what is not?  Fine.  I will tell you.  No NFL.  No MLB (no, spring training does not count...sue me).  No NCAA football.  

What is going on right now, in addition to the Men's March Madness, is the Women's March Madness.  Do you see that as an option for me to select.  Um...no...not so much.  In fact, I have to go to the "More Sports" tab to even locate the tournament.  

Really, ESPN?  That is how you plan to be the preeminent sports news site?  The one that will give equal measure to women athletes?  The one that will address the antiquated notion that women cannot compete in sports and, if they do (shocker), no one really wants to read about it...without some extreme effort?

Sigh.  I guess I simply ask too much.

Daily Read: 22MAR2013

Yes...I'm stuck in a reading rut.  Or at the very least what I am deciding to post this week is myopic.  I am trying to convince myself that the right things are being said when it comes to trying to draw everyone's attention to our rape culture.

This is what I am talking about...these are the kind of articles that, when we stumble across them, we need to share with everyone, everywhere: Male Privilege and Power Equal Rape

Part of raising boys to be men should be about teaching them from an early age about male privilege and actively talking about the importance of respecting women. These conversations should increase and become far more serious as they age.  Sitting by passively and allowing them to naturalise the messages the media sends about violence against women and sexual assault, is abdicating parental responsibility.  You cannot assume that they will grow up to think that it is wrong to hit a woman, or rape at will when the media, society and video games glorify these acts and treat it as a right of manhood.
What scares me about these incidents of rape, is not only that they occurred at all, but the degree of communal support these young men are receiving. It has not occurred to their communities to address the degree of violence or the cause behind it, but there has been plenty of questioning of the level of the victims responsibility in their own assault, as though any woman through her actions can protect against rape. It has been absolutely horrific to hear about the young girls enraged at the victims for causing their friends to go jail.  To be clear, no one accidentally rapes a person.  Rape is always a conscious act of will and no amount of apology or punishment can ever erase the harm that has been done.

And thank you Henry Rollins for your Steubenville edition.  It's easy to find woman speaking up, but sometimes it is a bit harder to find the vocal men.

I think to a great degree, we humans still divide ourselves into two species, even though we are monotypic. There are males and females. We see them as different and not equal. Things get better when women get more equality. That is a bit obvious but I think it leads to better results up the road. If it’s a man’s world as they say, then men, your world is a poorly run carnage fest. 

It is obvious that the two offenders saw the victim as some one that could be treated as a thing. This is not about sex, it is about power and control. I guess that is what I am getting at. Sex was probably not the hardest thing for the two to get, so that wasn’t the objective. When you hear the jokes being made during the crime, it is the purest contempt.

So, how do you fix that? I’m just shooting rubber bands at the night sky but here are a few ideas: Put women’s studies in high school the curriculum from war heroes to politicians, writers, speakers, activists, revolutionaries and let young people understand that women have been kicking ass in high threat conditions for ages and they are worthy of respect.

Total sex ed in school. Learn how it all works. Learn what the definition of statutory rape is and that it is rape, that date rape is rape, that rape is rape. 

In the spirit of equal time, sites like Huffington Post should have sections for male anatomy hanging out instead of just the idiotic celebrity “side boob” and “nip slip” camera ops. I have no idea what that would be like to have a camera in my face at every turn, looking for “the” shot. I know what some of you are saying. “Then why do they wear clothes like that unless they want those photos taken?” I don’t know what to tell ya. Perhaps just don’t take the fuckin picture? Evolve? I don’t know. 

Education, truth, respect, equality—these are the things that can get you from a to b very efficiently.

Daily Read: 20MAR2013

OMG...*people*...you are killing me!  What did I just say about rape culture in the United States?  In case we didn't get enough of a jolt the first time around, another rape perpetrated by high school football players.  And the tweets being directed at this newest victim?  Lovely...lovely voice of humanity.

I cannot take much more.

Daily Read: 19MAR2013 - Steubenville Edition

There are days where it can be difficult to believe in humanity...and then there are days when it is damn near impossible to either believe in it or even come close to understanding just how dysfunctional it is.

Rape culture world-wide is appalling.  To have it perpetuated in the United States so blatantly...I am embarrassed, outraged, shattered.

CNN I didn't think it possible for you to get me to a point where I would turn off your news station as quickly as I do Fox News, but you have managed to succeed on that front.  Shame on you for perpetuating the rape culture notion that it is always, always still the victim's fault.

On a day when the victim in the Steubenville, Ohio rape case might have and should have received some measure of justice, CNN took to the air to report the breaking news of the guilty verdicts in a report that was suffused with sympathy for the convicted football players and offered no concern for what the young woman has been through. CNN anchor Candy Crowley and reporter Poppy Harlow just couldn't imagine how "incredibly emotional" and "incredibly difficult" it was to hear the verdicts "as these two young men who had "such promising futures, star football players, literally watched as their lives fell apart." 

The Guardian piece, Steubenville and the misplaced sympathy for Jane Doe's rapists: Rape is unique in US society as a crime where the blighted future of the perpetrators counts for more than the victim's, is exactly the kind of news article that shouldn't have to be printed in our "enlightened" society.  And yet...thank goodness it is being printed and I hope to high heaven that it can start to elicit some sort of shift in our collective perception of rape.

But rape isn't any other crime in America, or elsewhere...It's the only crime in which the level of intoxication of the victim is considered by some, like the convicted rapists' lawyers and some in the media, to be mitigating evidence. It's the only crime in which the perceived attractiveness of the perpetrators to other people or the victim is considered relevant information. It's the only one in which we're encouraged to sympathize with why perpetrators picked their victims – their supposed drunkenness, their clothes, their reputations – and then blame the victims for making themselves attractive targets

If you have managed to run across this daily read, it was probably accidental.  I'm pretty sure I have no grand following.  The good news is, if you ran across this and now want to do something proactive to address rape culture please consider going to change.org and signing the petition requesting CNN step up to the plate and apologize for news coverage that sympathized with the rapists.

Daily Read: 13MAR2013

I know that our justice system requires defense attorneys, but I swear I often simply do not know how they can sleep at night knowing that the blame the victim for "consenting" defense was the best they could come up with.

But attorney Walter Madison, who will defend one of the accused boys, says Jane was super down to drink and go party with a group of kids that included the two charged football players. That's irrelevant — we don't care if she consented to pre-partying with her peers, we care if they raped her when she was wasted — yet Madison claims the 16-year-old knew what she was getting herself into, because who wouldn't expect to be repeatedly sexually assaulted by multiple people without her consent after some shots.

Daily Read: 02MAR2013

Sigh.  And here I thought that the wee little tykes coming up through the ranks weren't being brainwashed by the stereotypes of what a woman can and cannot be/do/appear as.