Feb

4

Court Ignores Man’s Domestic Violence Prior to Murder-Suicide

Filed Under courts, misogyny, parenthood, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls | 10 Comments

Via SAFER comes a really awful story about a man named Stephen Garcia who murdered his 9-month-old son Wyatt before taking his own life. Obviously any kind of violence like this is always horrible, but what makes it even more appalling is that the man’s actions were easily predicted by his previous threats and behavior, and evidence of that was presented by the boy’s mother Katie Tagle in court. And while it’s possible that a similar outcome might have unfolded had the court acted, the fact is that it did absolutely nothing (all emphasis mine).

Her family said Garcia abused [Katie] Tagle throughout their two-year relationship, which ended in August 2009, when, her family said, he punched her in the face, knocking her unconscious

…

On Dec. 15, Tagle asked for an emergency restraining order against Garcia, telling Judge Debra Harris in a Joshua Tree courtroom that Garcia had threatened Wyatt. “He had sent me text messages before that if his son was around certain people … that he would kill him,” Tagle told the judge, according to transcripts of the hearing. “And that if I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, he’d find me and kill me.”

“What about the threat to shoot you, where did that occur, to hunt you down and shoot you with a gun?” the judge asked. “That was in a text message, Tagle replied. When Harris asked for copies of the text messages, Tagle said she had no way of printing them out and her phone was shut off. The judge denied the emergency order and set a hearing.

At that hearing, on Jan. 12, Tagle went before Judge David Mazurek in the Joshua Tree courthouse to show cause for a restraining order. “…On Dec. 31, we were doing our exchange, and he proposed to me, and I said no. He got angry and stole my phone and pushed me down. I made a police report about that,” Tagle told the judge, according to a transcript.

Garcia told the judge the report was “falsely made up.” Mazurek denied Tagle the restraining order. “If I grant the restraining order, how do you think that’s going to help with respect to you two being able to raise Wyatt together or work together to make sure Wyatt grows up happy and healthy?” the judge asked, according to the transcripts.

Asked about an e-mail in which he confessed to hitting Tagle, Garcia told the judge he had slapped her during a fight, but it was Tagle’s fault for “pushing and pushing and pushing until she could get something from me.” Tagle pointed out she was nine months pregnant when Garcia hit her.

“I kind of get an idea of what’s going on,” Mazurek said. He denied the restraining order, saying, “I don’t think that Mr. Garcia poses a threat to Ms. Tagle.” Mazurek went on to suggest Tagle might have ulterior motives for alleging domestic violence. “I get concerned when there’s a pending child custody and visitation issue and in between that, one party or the other claims that there’s some violence in between. It raises the court’s eyebrows because based on my experience, it’s a way for one party to try to gain an advantage over the other,” he said, according to the transcripts.

Unbelievably, the story gets even worse from here. The day after the hearing, Garcia sent Tagle a “story” about their relationship, which ended in him murdering their son and committing suicide. Tagle called the police and obtained an emergency restraining order, but a month later Judge Robert Lemkau not only refused to uphold it, but also ordered that Wyatt be handed over the Garcia for his scheduled visitation. A couple weeks later, Wyatt was dead.

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Jan

29

Reproductive Coercion is Sexual Violence

Filed Under misogyny, patriarchy, pregnancy, rape and sexual assault, reproductive justice, violence against women and girls | 5 Comments

There is a new study which discusses a horribly prevalent but rarely discussed form of intimate partner violence: reproductive coercion. From a press release by The Family Violence Prevention Fund:

“Pregnancy Coercion, Intimate Partner Violence and Unintended Pregnancy” is the first quantitative examination of the relationship between intimate partner violence, reproductive coercion and unintended pregnancy. It finds that young women and teenage girls often face efforts by male partners to sabotage their birth control or coerce or pressure them to become pregnant – including by damaging condoms and destroying contraceptives. These behaviors, defined as “reproductive coercion,” are often associated with physical or sexual violence. Conducted by researchers at the University of California Davis School of Medicine and the Harvard School of Pubic Health, the study also finds that among women who experienced both reproductive coercion and partner violence, the risk of unintended pregnancy doubled.

From August 2008 to March 2009, researchers worked at five reproductive health clinics in Northern California, querying some 1,300 English- and Spanish-speaking 16- to 29-year-old women who agreed to respond to a survey about their experiences. They were asked about birth-control sabotage, pregnancy coercion and intimate partner violence. Approximately one in five young women said they experienced pregnancy coercion and 15 percent said they experienced birth control sabotage.  Fifty-three percent of respondents said they had experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner.  Thirty-five percent of the women who reported partner violence also reported either pregnancy coercion or birth control sabotage.

For many who have been in abusive relationships, the findings here will come as little surprise. But they are incredibly important, in that they prove the simple fact, for those who still needed proof, that teaching about how to use contraception isn’t always enough to prevent unwanted pregnancy. When a partner is sabotaging one’s birth control — whether it be through secretive tampering or open destruction, threats or outright force — knowing how to use contraception is can mean exceedingly little. Information is nothing without access, and in an abusive relationship that involves reproductive coercion, access has been denied. Awareness and resources about what abuse actually is, how it works, and how to handle it once it has already begun — both for medical professionals who need to screen for it, and those at risk of being victims — are absolutely vital.

But what the study also unintentionally shows is just how ill-equipped our society is to deal with the kind of abuse that does not begin and end with a fist.

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Jan

15

Alleged Victim Slut-Shamed, Rape Case Thrown Out

Filed Under Europe, International, assholes, bigotry, courts, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, slut-shaming, violence against women and girls | 8 Comments

A particular rape case has been making the rounds lately, for its especially ludicrous and misogynistic outcome. In short, a U.K. woman made allegations of a gang rape by five perpetrators. The case made it to court. And then, the judge ordered the jury to return a not guilty verdict when “evidence” was presented — not by the defense, but the prosecution — showing that the alleged victim had made statements online about her fantasies involving group sex. The revelation that she had had group sex fantasies was, in fact, the entire reason presented for the dismissal of the case. Indeed, agreeing with the prosecutor, the judge remarked that with the admission of these fantasies, “her credibility was shot to pieces.”

Many have written about this case by now, ranging from the F-Word, to Penny Red, to Pandora Blake (Note: images on this site may be NSFW). These are all great posts that each touch on several important points — I particularly like Pandora’s concise statement that “Desire is not consent. Consent is consent.” — and I highly recommend that you go check them all out, right now, if you have not already. Especially since I’m going to avoid repeating those points very much here.

Because with all of the astute analysis I’ve seen, one thing I’m not seeing discussed a lot is the nature of the fantasy itself. I’m very, very glad, on the one hand, to see that a fantasy of group sex is not being treated as some sort of abnormal, shameful thing for a woman to fantasize about, and that women are not being treated as immoral for having sexual fantasies at all and particularly immoral for having a fantasy that involves multiple partners. This is very important, and good on everyone for it.

But I also think it’s important to acknowledge the cultural context in which the decision was made. And that cultural context is one of a world in which group sex is seen as being among the most debasing things that a woman could think about, let alone do. In a misogynistic world where sex is seen as inherently degrading to a woman’s sense of integrity, sex with multiple partners at the same time is seen to leave her with no integrity left at all.

And so while I’m willing to be entirely proven wrong, and while I put absolutely nothing past the courts at this point, I think it’s a lot less likely — possible, but less likely — that we’d be seeing this case exist if the woman had fantasized about “vanilla” intercourse with a single partner, and then was raped by a single man. I think this case is less about whether or not a woman has a right to refuse consent to something she has previously expressed interest in — though it certainly is about that as well, and this is an ongoing source of horrific rape trial outcomes — but more about whether or not a “slut” has a right to ever say no to anything. The victim in this case has been officially portrayed, by way of her fantasy and cultural attitude towards it, as a “slut.” And the answer to the question by the prosecutor and judge alike is “no, a slut does not have that right.”

Again, in our society some women are more vulnerable than others to both sexual assault and rape apologism. And though virtually any woman can be made to be seen as unrapeable, some women start out closer to that status already. Among the many factors that can make a woman unrapeable in the eyes of our society, including race, gender identity, and disability, is the willingness to behave sexually. “Sexual” women are automatically seen as less rapeable than “chaste” women — “bad girls” more unrapeable than “good” ones. And women who behave sexually in ways that are less culturally approved are more unrapeable still.

This inevitably influenced the decision here. Judges and prosecutors are not magically immune from thinking nasty things about “sluts” when most of the general public does the same, nor are they immune from thinking that a fantasy about group sex makes a woman a dirty, dirty slut when this misogynistic notion is culturally ingrained.

The very official reason behind this decision seems to be “she openly fantasized about doing it, and thus she likely consented when the opportunity was presented to her” — and that assumption is a problem of proportions so enormous it’s impossible to overstate. But the prejudice behind that reason is “look what as slut she is, thinking about group sex with several men — how could a slut like that have possibly said no?” And that? That is an epically huge problem, too.

Jan

14

Swedish Court Decides Sexual Assault is Not a Crime

Filed Under Europe, International, bigotry, courts, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, sexual exploitation and harassment, violence against women and girls | 13 Comments

Trigger Warning for descriptions of sexual assault, apologism, and victim-blaming

At a New Year’s party in Sweden, a 17-year-old girl laid down to sleep on a sofa. The 49-year-old father of the boy hosting the party proceeded to lift up her skirt while she was unconscious and photograph her genitals. He then, in some unspecified manner, spread the photo to other people.

The victim pressed charges, once she learned of what had been done to her. Then, the court dismissed the charges — not because they found that there was insufficient evidence, or because the victim changed her mind about pursuing the case, but because they said that lifting an unconscious person’s skirt without her consent and photographing her genitals, also without her consent, is not against the law.

A court in Halmstad on the southwest coast of Sweden has dismissed charges against a man who reportedly took a photo of a 17-year-old girl’s genitals while she was sleeping. The court said that the incident was was not a punishable offense.

…

Citing several other cases, the Halmstad district court said that the man had not committed a crime. There is no general prohibition against photographing people without their consent. The same applies to people who are asleep.

The fact that other people have seen the photograph, as claimed by the prosecutor in this case, doesn’t make the incident a punishable offense either, according to the court.

What we’re looking at here is a legal system which has absolutely no respect for women’s bodily autonomy — a legal system that says “so long as she’s there, you can do whatever you want with her.”

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Jan

7

Iowa “Pro-Family” Group Protests Governor’s Support for the Transgender Day of Remembrance

Filed Under LGBTQ, assholes, bigotry, human rights, trans, transphobia and trans misogyny, violence against women and girls | 2 Comments

Trigger Warning for transphobia

In Iowa, a so-called “pro-family” group of hate-mongers have put out a statement admonishing the Governor for doing the absolute bare minimum in terms of acknowledging the state’s transgender residents, by signing a declaration recognizing the Transgender Day of Remembrance last November. Governor Culver was so lackluster about proclaiming it wrong to murder people even if they are trans, that he didn’t even put out a statement about the declaration. But that hasn’t stopped the Iowa Family Policy Center ACTION from protesting his stance, anyway:

A pro-family policy group today is taking issue with a proclamation Gov. Chet Culver signed that declared a “transgender day of remembrance” in Iowa last year.

The Iowa Family Policy Center ACTION released a copy of the proclamation that Culver signed last Nov. 20 which the Pleasant Hill-based group acquired from the governor’s office through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The organization’s president, Chuck Hurley, said he views the proclamation as an attempt by Culver to use the power of the governor’s office “to promote sexual confusion and deviant behavior.”

Hurley said the action follows Culver’s failure to keep his 2006 campaign promise to defend marriage as only between one man and one woman.

…

“Iowans know that Gov. Culver does not share their values,” the Iowa Family Policy Council ACTION leader said. “As if the governor’s unwillingness to exercise the influence of his office in the defense of marriage wasn’t evidence enough, we now know that he is spending his time creating special days celebrating sexual disorientation. The question that Iowans ought to be asking is why Gov. Culver wasn’t proud enough of his work to make his actions public?”

This is beyond appalling. Usually, I wouldn’t want to give publicity to this type of hate being propagated by a smaller scale group. But what it openly reveals, in this case, is astounding enough to make me see it as worth mention. It comes as little surprise that they refuse to acknowledge the gender identities of trans people, and instead portray them all as cis gay folks. And it comes as little surprise that they would somehow try to tie the “issue” of Culver’s small show of support for the TDOR back into their opposition to marriage equality.

But that they would take support for this day, the Transgender Day of Remembrance — a solemn and emotional day of mourning for the trans community, a day in which the violence committed against that community on such a wide scale is finally given just a tiny bit of mainstream attention, a day in which those who are so regularly forgotten are in fact remembered — and attack it is despicable. That they would connect it to what they call “deviant behavior” is even more so.

Because what it suggests, rather blatantly, is that they view the very act of trans people being alive as deviant. They view the suggestion of a world in which trans people are not under constant threatened and actual physical assault as an attack on their belief system. To say that the governor’s decision to sign this declaration goes against their values is to say in fact that their values involve trans people being dead.

The fact that they feel this way doesn’t shock me. The fact that they’d so casually admit it does, however, come as something of a surprise. Even the organizations most dedicated to vitriolic hatred of LGBT people will profess to believe that the people whose rights they so vehemently fight deserve life and safety. It’s not that they want people dead, they will claim, so much as they want them invisible. This statement here belies that common assertion. Here, they let us know that they believe folks who don’t fit into their rigid gender and sex norms not only don’t deserve to have their safety defended by the government in even the most passive, hidden, and symbolic ways, but also don’t even deserve to have their lives mourned once they have been taken.

Dec

10

New Report About Sexual Violence on College Campuses

Filed Under assholes, courts, discrimination, education and schools, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls | 11 Comments

The Center for Public Integrity has released a three-part report on sexual violence on college campuses, and the response of administrators to such allegations. Part one talks about the culture of secrecy surrounding sexual assault proceedings. Part two talks about the barriers to reporting sexual assault on campus, and how such reports are actively discouraged. And part three discusses how colleges are under-reporting the number of sexual assaults that are committed on their campuses.

Thankfully, the information is presented in a highly digestible form — and I recommend you go read it all for yourselves. But it’s also a huge amount of information, and there are more things to write about it than I can count — from the student told that she would face disciplinary action if she shared the outcome of the sexual assault hearing she had initiated, to the fact that “mediation” (mediation!) is regularly offered as a resolution to allegations of sexual violence, to the administrator who actually told a student that one of her options was to have that administrator call the perpetrator into her office and tell him that what he did was wrong. Schools are actively sweeping allegations under the rug, and since the victim leaving the school is an incredibly common outcome, seemingly also just trying to get rid of the accuser, period.

But in all of this information — and again, there is a lot — one thing in particular stood out at me. And it was the repeated allegation, from many, many sources, that the administrators were motivated by a desire to save the reputation of their schools. Of course, administrators all act appalled at the suggestion. But I can only presume that with so many victims, so many victims advocates, so many victims’ parents, and finally an impartial outside source, concluding independently that this is a main motivating factor, there has to be some truth to it.

This strikes me not because it’s some big surprise, but because it’s a damn travesty. And it’s a travesty not just because the rights and needs of a victim of violence should come before any other such trivial consideration, but also because they’re quite frankly handling their own comparably petty concern absurdly.

Only in a misogynistic rape culture is it possible for an institution to go about avoiding the appearance of sexual assault taking place on their campuses by telling the victim to shut the fuck up rather than by rooting out the offenders and getting them off the campus. It’s a bizarre reaction. For most people, if you want to avoid being seen as a liar, you try not to lie. If you don’t want to be seen as a thief, you don’t steal things. If you don’t want people to think you’re a jerk, you try to be a considerate, nice person. And if you don’t want your campus being perceived as unsafe, you try to make it safer.

Unless, of course, you want to take the easy way out, and making your campus safer involves refusing to partake in a misogynistic culture.

Yet again, we run up against the diametric perceptions of rape as theoretically even worse than murder, and as practically on par with accidentally bumping into someone on the sidewalk. Because rape is, in practice, seen as negligible, no big deal, a molehill turned into a mountain, administrators can dismiss the woman standing in front of them, speaking of being raped the night before. Because rape is, abstractly, treated as the greatest horror one can commit, and one that only a subhuman monster could even consider, those administrators have an even bigger reason to dismiss that woman, lest their institution be seen as a home to those kinds of monsters. They’d rather it be the habitat of actual rapists than perceived as the habitat of mythical ones.

That’s a big problem to unpack, because it’s rooted in so many different aspects of rape culture — from victim-blaming to rape denialism, from the idea that rape is not a common occurrence to the idea that rape is an unstoppable, unpreventable force not worth fighting. But we do know from repeated demonstration that student activism can go a long way towards changing individual school policies. And so if you’re a college student, despite the enormity of the problem, you shouldn’t feel helpless — rather, you should be getting to work. I recommend SAFER’s newly launched initiative, the Campus Accountability Project as a great place to start.

Dec

2

13-Year-Old Girl Commits Suicide After Classmates Spread Nude Photos

Filed Under education and schools, media, misogyny, objectification, patriarchy, sex and sexuality, sexual exploitation and harassment, slut-shaming, violence against women and girls | 58 Comments

Trigger Warning for discussions of suicide, descriptions of non-consensual sexual conduct, victim-blaming and slut-shaming

The Tampa Bay St. Petersburg Times has printed the truly gut-wrenching, tragic story of a 13-year-old girl named Hope Witsell, who committed suicide after a photograph of her breasts, which she sent to a boy’s cell phone, was forwarded all over the school.

At the end of the school year at Beth Shields Middle School, the taunting became so bad that Hope Witsell’s friends surrounded her between classes. They escorted her down hallways like human shields, fending off insults such as “whore” and “slut.” A few days before, Hope had forwarded a nude photo of herself to a boy she liked — a practice widely known as “sexting.” The image found its way to other students, who forwarded it to their friends. Soon the nude photo was circulating through cell phones at Shields Middle and Lennard High School, according to multiple students at both schools. …  School authorities learned of the nude photo around the end of the school year and suspended Hope for the first week of eighth grade, which started in August. About two weeks after she returned to school, a counselor observed cuts on Hope’s legs and had her sign a “no-harm” contract, in which Hope agreed to tell an adult if she felt inclined to hurt herself, her family says. The next day, Hope hanged herself in her bedroom. She was 13.

Her death is the second in the nation in which a connection between sexting and teen suicide can clearly be drawn.

I recommend that you go read the full article, because despite the many problems with it, there is a lot of information there, some of which I will not have the time to discuss here.

As Veronica Arreola said on her Twitter, while the media insists on calling this a “sexting-related suicide,” it’s much more accurately referred to as a “slut-shaming suicide.” Because the photograph she sent is not what drove this poor girl to kill herself — the non-consensual spreading of the photograph, and the subsequent reaction that her classmates and all adults in positions of authority had to it seems to absolutely have been what drove her to despair. And that is a truly vital distinction to make if we actually care about the fact that a 13-year-old girl is dead, and why.

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Nov

24

U.S. Sailor Acquitted of Rape, Despite Admission of Physical Force

Filed Under Australia, International, courts, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, sex work, violence against women and girls | 21 Comments

Trigger Warning for rape apologism and graphic descriptions of sexual violence

In Sydney, a U.S. sailor has been acquitted on charges of raping a sex worker who told him to stop — even though he admitted, in court, to using a “lock down maneuver” to pin her to the bed.

A New South Wales District Court jury cleared Petty Officer Timothy Davis, 25, of a charge of sexual intercourse without consent, with the aggravating factor of causing the woman actual bodily harm. The charge carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

Davis was one of 3,000 Marines and Navy personnel on shore leave in Sydney after the amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu and guided missile destroyer USS Halsey arrived in the port in October, 2008.

The woman told the court she had protected, consensual sex with Davis at the brothel where she worked, but said he became aggressive when she told him his time was up and forced her to have unprotected sex. The jury was shown police photographs of scratches on the woman.

Davis denied forcing the woman to have sex, but admitted in court that he used a “lock down maneuver” to pin her to the bed when she said she wanted to stop. He told the court he backed off when she kicked him, though he said he muffled her mouth with his hand when she began to scream after he demanded his money back.

Could we possibly be reading this correctly? Let’s try another source:

She said he “ripped” off his condom, telling her he had paid for sex and he was going to finish it off “like a real man”.

The slight woman said he pushed her head into the pillow, started suffocating her, and had unprotected sex for 30 seconds.

The jury was shown police photos depicting scratches on the woman, who described Petty Officer Davis as an “animal” during an angry outburst at the trial.

In his evidence, the sailor – who agreed his weight was more than double the woman’s – admitted using a “lock down manoeuvre” to pin her down to the bed when she said she wanted to stop.

He said he told her he was going to “finish”, but when she kicked him away, he backed off with his hands in the air.

So, she told him to stop. And even only as far as he admits, instead of stopping as he was told, he pinned her to the bed and told her he was going to continue anyway. I repeat: against her wishes. After she told him to stop.

Which means that as far as any reasonable definition goes — hell, even working off an antiquated and misogynistic definition of rape that requires physical violence to be present — he confessed to raping her.

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Nov

20

Transgender Day of Remembrance 2009

Filed Under International, bigotry, human rights, trans, transphobia and trans misogyny, violence against women and girls | 5 Comments

Image of a tombstone, overlaid with the transgender symbol and text reading 'Eleventh International Transgender Day of Remembrance November 20, 2009'Today is the Eleventh Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. Today is a day to remember the transgender people (or people perceived by their killers to be trans) who have died as a result of hatred and violence, and as a result of the hateful and violent cultures that support the perpetrators. Today is a day to remember those whose deaths authorities and media attempt to sweep under the rug, whose identities are devalued and erased once they are gone, whose murders usually go unsolved. Today is a day to read their names, and not forget.

Here is a list of the 162 known trans people who were killed from November 20, 2008 to November 12, 2009. Most were women. Most were black or Latina. A disproportionate number were sex workers. Several were still only teenagers.

Many of the people listed have had their names, ages, and/or locations recorded; for others, we only know the details of their murders. More still are not listed here at all, because their deaths and the reasons behind them are still unknown to anyone outside of their closest friends and family.

Whoever they were, wherever they were from, and whatever we know or do not know about them, they all need to be remembered, and they need to be remembered equally — along with the reasons why they aren’t here anymore.

Further Reading:

What Does Transgender Day of Remembrance Mean to You? by Monica at Transgriot

International Transgender Day of Remembrance 2009 by kaninchenzero at FWD/Forward

International Transgender Day of Remembrance, 20th November 2009 by Helen G at bird of paradox

the drowned and the saved by Queen Emily at Questioning Transphobia

TDOR 2009 by Chally at Zero at the Bone

Events are being held today in many nations and cities all over the world. Find out if there is one near you.

cross-posted at Feministe

Nov

17

Meet The Predators: But Which Ones?

Filed Under misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls | 15 Comments

Trigger Warning for discussions of sexual violence

Last week, Thomas wrote a post at Yes Means Yes, called Meet The Predators, about recent studies which found that many rapists will admit to rape so long as the word “rape” is not actually used. It’s a great post, and important information to have — I’m particularly interested because I’ve seen similar statistics from the ’80s quoted numerous times, and was literally thinking a day or two prior to Thomas’ post that someone should do a new study and provide anti-rape activists with updated and reliable data. I’m also far from the only one who is interested, as I’ve read at least half a dozen posts about it all over the feminist blogosphere.

But in all those posts, I’ve noticed a concerning silence. Admittedly, it’s entirely possible that I’ve missed the post(s) where someone else said what I’ve been thinking, but I also feel that I’ve read a fairly good sample. And not once have I personally seen anyone explicitly mention that we’re only talking about a certain kind of rapist here.

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Nov

16

Man Allegedly Murdered Albanian Woman Because She Was Trans

Filed Under Europe, International, bigotry, courts, misogyny, patriarchy, trans, transphobia and trans misogyny, violence against women and girls | 1 Comment

Trigger Warning for transmisogyny and discussions of violence against women

In September, Kristina Muça was brutally murdered in Tirana, Albania. Her neck was slit, allegedly by a man she had only just met. The alleged motives for the crime were, according to prosecutors and to defendant Sefedin Hoxha’s now recanted confession, transphobic hatred towards the victim.

I’ve learned of this story through reader Kim Burton, who translated the local media reports into English and forwarded them to me, among others. She has verified the translations with a colleague and friend. All links in this post are to google documents of Kim’s translations, with the links to the original articles at the bottom of each. Please note that she has translated them faithfully, including the extremely disrespectful and ungendering language that so regularly accompanies reports on violence against trans people, and use caution when clicking through. The reports generally refer to Kristina as a “man,” “homosexual” or “transvestite,” complete with use of an incorrect name, though her boyfriend has strongly indicated that Kirstina identified as a woman, and prosecutors seem to be referring to her correctly. In the sections I have copied into the post, I have redacted Kristina’s male name, changed the pronouns, and altered or deleted some other disrespectful language when not used in direct quotes or noted otherwise by me. The original documents, however, are unchanged.

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Nov

11

Rape Kits: Yes, Still Going Untested

Filed Under courts, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls | 6 Comments

Via CBS News:

A government report released Tuesday found that essential DNA evidence in rape cases is often never sent to crime labs for testing. But what our investigation also found is that even when police departments do send rape kits to crime labs, they can go untested for months — even years — while rapists go free.

…

Now, a five-month CBS News investigation of 24 cities and states has found more than 6,000 rape kits from active investigations waiting months, even years to be tested.

On average, six months in Rhode Island, Alabama and Illinois. It can take nearly a year in Missouri. Up to three years in Anchorage, Alaska. One state, Louisiana, has rape kits dating as far back as 2001 waiting to be tested.

“It’s absolutely astounding,” said Sarah Tofte, Research Director at Human Rights Watch. “What’s the point of sending a rape kit to a crime lab for testing if you can’t get to it for say, eight years?”

Better yet, what is the point of subjecting yourself to a rape kit collection if no one is going to give a shit enough to test it?

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