GYNOCRATICGRRL

"Cognitive Distortions of Stockholm Syndrome Victims: • Narrowed perceptions; perceptions are focused..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:20:11 -0400

“Cognitive Distortions of Stockholm Syndrome Victims:
• Narrowed perceptions; perceptions are focused on the immediate, that is, on surviving in the here and now.
• Denial of abuse: don’t see themselves as abused when they actually are.
• Minimization of abuse: minimize the extent of the abuse (“It’s not so bad. Other people have it worse”)
• Rationalize abusers’ abuse, seeing the cause of the abusers’ abuse as being outside the abuser, or externally motivated.
• Self-blame.
• See their abuser as good and themselves as bad, or switch back and forth between seeing abuser as either all good or all bad.
• See their abuser as more powerful than the abuser actually is.
• See their abuser as more powerful than the abuser actually is.
• Take on their abuser’s perspective as their own. This includes:
• Seeing themselves as the abuser sees them.
• Hating those parts of themselves that abuser criticizes or says is reason she or he is angry at them.
• Believing they have to be perfect or they are worthless and thus deserve abuse.
• Believing they do not deserve love and affection from others or even from themselves.
• Seeing their abuser’s needs, wants, and desires as their own.
• Seeing those trying to help them escape the abuser and his/her abuse as “the bad guys” and the abuser as “the good guy.”
• See small kindnesses by abuser as large kindnesses. Small kindnesses by abuser creates hope that abuser will stop being abusive in the future.
• See violence by abuser as a sign of [their] caring or love.
• Believe their relationship with their abuser would be perfect if the abuse were not occurring.
• See their abusers as victims rather than as perpetrators of abuse against them.
• Believe that if one is kind enough, and gives the abuser enough love, the abuser will let them live and possibly even stop abusing them.
• Believe that they love their abuser.
• Believe that to survive they must have their abusers’ love or caring.
• Are thankful and grateful to their abusers that the abusers have not killed them.
• Believe that if they even think a thought that is disloyal to their abuser, the abuser will know and retaliate.
• Believe that their abusers will come back to “get them” even when their abusers are dead or in prison.”

- Dee Graham, Edna Rawlings & Roberta Rigsby. Loving to Survive: sexual terror, men’s violence, and women’s lives. NYU Press. July 1 1994. (p. 64)

Night.

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:25:29 -0400

Night.

"Women who kill their batterers because they have tried every other means of escape (to no avail)..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:16:03 -0400

“Women who kill their batterers because they have tried every other means of escape (to no avail) frequently are given stiff prison sentences. The system that does not protect women’s rights to freedom from abuse zealously protects their abusers from the victims’ acts of self-defence (see Browne 1987; Ewing 1987).”

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Dee Graham, Edna Rawlings & Roberta Rigsby. Loving to Survive: sexual terror, men’s violence, and women’s lives. NYU Press. July 1 1994. (p. 21)

"A notable aspect of much of men's violence against women is that it is directed at [their] sexual organs."

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:46:00 -0400

[TW/advisory: Contains graphic, explicit material that is likely to disgust and disturb its readers. Proceed to read the following at your own discretion. Mention of torture, systematic rape, anti-semitism and racism is featured in the following excerpt].

A notable aspect of much of men’s violence against women is that it is directed at our sexual organs (see Barry 1979; Barry, Bunch and Castley 1984; Rich 1980). In this regard, violence against women differs from violence against male members of other groups such as Native Americans, Jews and blacks in that it is more likely to be directed at women’s than at men’s sexual organs. I use the term “female sexual terrorism” to refer to the fact that all females, because we are female , are potential targets of violence directed at our sexual organs by males. Examples of the way sexual violence is more likely to be directed at women can be seen in situations in which both men and women are held prisoners, and in which there is no obvious reason that the sexes should be treated differently. We will provide two such examples from different parts of the world that will show the pervasiveness of female sexual terrorism. Both examples concern violence inflicted upon male and female prisoners by governments, showing that this differential treatment operates at broad institutional levels and is not just the work of a few deranged individuals.

Ka-Tzetnik 135633’s (1981) account of her and her brother’s experience in the Nazi concentration camp of Kozentration Zenter provides one example. (The name given her at the camp, Ka-Tsetnik 135633, signifies both the particular camp and her inmate number. Her name prior to being sent to the camp was Daniella.) It is important to note that Daniella provides no indication that abuse was directed at the sexual organs of her brother

while prisoner. However, Daniella and all other female prisoners at the camp were continually threatened with sexual abuse of all types. One type was flogging, which was carried out when prisoners failed to satisfactorily meet the demands of prison officials, but which had an unusual character because the prisoners were female. A flogging for female prisoners involved the prisoner’s being led nude “into the square … Strung on barbed wire along both sides of the Execution Square – eyes [of prisoners forced to watch the executions]. Eyes beyond count … Each [woman to receive a flogging] is strapped over a separate stool – the feet to the forelegs of the stool, arms to the hindlegs, face down … The Master-Kalefactress cracks her knout down on the back of one of the kalefactresses …Bludgeons … swing down in unison on the naked bodies. Without pause, without letup. The shrieks split the heavens … The black van stands by. Kalefactresses hurl in the mangled bodies of the “purgated” [to be sent to the crematorium]” (p.138).

An additional type of sexual abuse was meted out to attractive, unmarried female prisoners who had no venereal diseases, such as Daniella: they were sent to “the Joy Division” to serve as “whores” for Nazi soldiers heading to the front. The German word for whore and a number were branded across their chests, and the women were forcibly sterilized. If Nazi soldiers, serviced daily by the women, “were not satisfied with the ‘enjoyment’, they had only to report it, … [giving] the girl’s breast number” (p.161). After three such reports, a woman was flogged and sent to the crematorium. A third type of sexual abuse involved forced experimental surgery on women’s sexual organs.

The sexual violence used by governments to torture women political prisoners in Latin America provides another example. Bunster (1984) makes clear that, while females are exposed to all the torture methods used on males, they are also treated to sexual torture, used only on females. When initially brought to a detention centre for interrogation, female prisoners, while blindfolded, are fingered and pawed particularly on their breasts, buttocks, and genitals. As the interrogation heightens, a group of men tears the clothes from the woman’s body while beating and slapping her. Their actions are accompanied by “crude verbal abuse and vile ridicule of her naked body” (p.99). Along with other forms of sexual torture, cigarettes are extinguished on her breasts and nipples. She is subjected to massive gang rape by males. Rape by trained dogs may also be used. Mice, which scratch and bite in their disorientation, are put in her vagina. Bunster notes that such sexual violence is seen by the governments as “the key” in controlling women, that is, in teaching them to “retreat into the home and fulfill the traditional role of wife and mother” (p.98) and not be political activists.
- Dee Graham, Edna Rawlings & Roberta Rigsby. Loving to Survive: sexual terror, men’s violence, and women’s lives. NYU Press. July 1 1994. (p. 18 - 19)

"The sexualization of men and women takes yet another form: the sexualization of male-female..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:34:47 -0400

“The sexualization of men and women takes yet another form: the sexualization of male-female interactions. Society’s use of sexual organs – to make group membership determinations – may account, then, for why males, much more than females, sexualize interactions. (For empirical evidence that males are more likely than females to sexualize interactions, see Abbey 1982, 1987, and Abbey and Melby 1986.) For example, females who are trying only to be friendly are viewed by males, much more than females, as being promiscuous and seductive (Abbey 1982). At work, it is common for co-workers and employers to remind female employees that we are first and foremost female, through actions so blatant as to be viewed as sexual harassment and through remarks so familiar and routine that they are not recognized as harassment. Street harassers remind women after work hours that we are simply “cunt” or “pussy”, and thus subordinate. By compulsively sexualizing their interactions with females, males remind both themselves and females that males are dominant.”

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Dee Graham, Edna Rawlings & Roberta Rigsby. Loving to Survive: sexual terror, men’s violence, and women’s lives. NYU Press. July 1 1994. (p. 19)

"Many battered women who try to leave their batterers are pursued by them. And this is when a..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:01:01 -0400

“Many battered women who try to leave their batterers are pursued by them. And this is when a battered woman is most likely to receive her severest beating or to be killed (Browne 1987; Ewing 1987; Serum 1979a, 1979b, cited by Okun 1986).”

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Dee Graham, Edna Rawlings & Roberta Rigsby. Loving to Survive: sexual terror, men’s violence, and women’s lives. NYU Press. July 1 1994. (p. 21)

"Scheppele and Bart (1983) found that all but 4 percent of the women in their sample who had been..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:50:24 -0400

“Scheppele and Bart (1983) found that all but 4 percent of the women in their sample who had been forced to have non-phallic sex (including digital penetration of the vagina) considered themselves rape avoiders, whereas 93 percent of those forced to have phallic sex defined the experience as rape. As Scheppele and Bart note, “Rape, therefore, is what is done with a penis, not what is done to a vagina” (p.75). The importance people attach to the penis as compared to the vagina – in, for example, defining biological sex and rape versus rape avoidance – suggests men have been effective in convincing men and women alike that the penis is superior.”

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Dee Graham, Edna Rawlings & Roberta Rigsby. Loving to Survive: sexual terror, men’s violence, and women’s lives. NYU Press. July 1 1994. (p. 20)

"If women as a group were able to escape male violence, we would not be men’s victims. Women as..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:32:24 -0400

“If women as a group were able to escape male violence, we would not be men’s victims. Women as a group obviously have not yet found a way to stop or escape rape, wife abuse, incest, sexual harassment, or other forms of male tyranny. Individual acts against women are publicly credited to women’s masochism, failure as wives, inappropriate dress, or seductiveness. However, viewed collectively, these acts make it clear that the purpose of male violence against women is male domination. Naturally, a system designed to enforce male domination is not going to provide women with real protection or escape from male violence.”

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Dee Graham, Edna Rawlings & Roberta Rigsby. Loving to Survive: sexual terror, men’s violence, and women’s lives. NYU Press. July 1 1994. (p. 21)

Starting yesterday I begun Cinemax’s tv series Femme...

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:12:00 -0400

Starting yesterday I begun Cinemax’s tv series Femme Fatales and despite it being awash in cliches, full of explicit, practically pornographic sex scenes, carried by mediocre writing and acting usually equally as lackluster, I’m marathon-ing my way through multiple episodes a day without any sign in sight of letting up (to my embarrassment). I would not recommend it for anybody. In fact, it is far beneath my standards and reservations when it comes to the media I expose myself too.

With the amount of sexualization and predictable storylines, a part of me wondered how this show possibly was budgeted for two full seasons. Then, I realized that those are probably the exact reasons why it was renewed for a second season.

Anyways, one perk (or potential motivation?) for watching this mind-numbing show is getting to see starlet Vivica A. Fox bring her talent on screen and saving the episode she’s in from being a complete catastrophe.

"Only one percent of rapists are arrested, and only one percent of those arrested are convicted..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:35:26 -0400

“Only one percent of rapists are arrested, and only one percent of those arrested are convicted (Russell 1984). Those who are convicted serve little time before being put back on the streets. Some are freed because the prisons are overcrowded. Women are encouraged to walk in groups, to not go out at night, or to go out only in the company of a male. Rather than effectively stopping rape by locking up rapists, our system “locks up” women. Probably because women do stay off the streets, “more rapes take place in or near the home than any other single place” (Gordon and Riger 1989 p.14). Despite women’s best precautions, we are not safe from rape in this culture.”

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Dee Graham, Edna Rawlings & Roberta Rigsby. Loving to Survive: sexual terror, men’s violence, and women’s lives. NYU Press. July 1 1994. (p. 21)

nanobutts: you can go on and on about how fetishes and harassment are separate but it doesn’t erase...

Thu, 23 May 2013 18:14:21 -0400

nanobutts:

you can go on and on about how fetishes and harassment are separate but it doesn’t erase the fact that for example many (or most) lesbians have been harassed by straight male lesbian fetishists and virtually every lesbian thinks it’s gross and disgusting

maybe you should think about the people who get fetishized instead of fetishists’ feelings for once

Photo

Thu, 23 May 2013 17:30:35 -0400

"It is to men that women turn for protection from male violence. A man who protects women is seen as..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 17:30:25 -0400

“It is to men that women turn for protection from male violence. A man who protects women is seen as kind, no matter what else he may do. Because the possibility of violence is ever present, women seek out the company of kind men for virtually continual companionship. This need for protection (and for other kindnesses which only men can provide under patriarchy) stimulates many, if not most, women to marry. In a sense, women, like Patricia Hearst (1982), marry our bodyguards and avoid or break off relations with men we feel do not protect us. In our gratitude for men’s protection, women forget that it is men’s violence against us that creates the need for such protection. We overlook the fact that our coupling with “kind” men strengthens our dependence on men, sets the stage for men’s one-on-one oppression of us, and furthers our isolation from other women.”

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Dee Graham, Edna Rawlings & Roberta Rigsby. Loving to Survive: sexual terror, men’s violence, and women’s lives. NYU Press. July 1 1994. (p. 28)

"Why is much of men’s aggression against women sexual in nature?ii Why wouldn’t men use..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:25:53 -0400

“Why is much of men’s aggression against women sexual in nature?ii Why wouldn’t men use the same kind of violence against women as they use against men? The answers may lie in patriarchy’s use of anatomical sex differences for determining individuals’ membership in oppressor and oppressed groups. That is, because we use individuals’ sex organs as the basis for discriminating membership in the oppressor group (male) and the oppressed group (female), males may direct violence and threats of violence against females’ sexual organs. (Jane Elliot, in The Eye of the Storm, demonstrates with third graders that virtually any dimension along which people can make discriminations, such as eye colour, is easily turned into grounds for creating oppressor and oppressed groups.) The purpose of such directed violence is to help ensure that female sexual organs are seen as subordinate and male sexual organs are seen as dominant. (Consider in this regard the fact that Sigmund Freud so strongly believed that the penis was superior that he based his whole psychology of women on this belief, arguing that women’s envy of the penis produced their heterosexuality. In addition, the label “castrating”, assigned to women whom men perceive as assuming too much power in their relationships with men, reveals a publicly recognized relationship between the penis and dominance.)”

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Dee Graham, Edna Rawlings & Roberta Rigsby. Loving to Survive: sexual terror, men’s violence, and women’s lives. NYU Press. July 1 1994. (p. 19)

"As Kelly (1987 p.59) points out, an implication of the construct of a continuum of male violence is..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 14:51:52 -0400

“As Kelly (1987 p.59) points out, an implication of the construct of a continuum of male violence is that “a clear distinction cannot be made between ‘victims’ and other women. The fact that some women only experience violence at the more common, everyday end of the continuum is a difference in degree and not in kind. The use of the term ‘victim’ in order to separate one group of women from other women’s lives and experiences must be questioned. The same logic applies to the definition of ‘offenders’”.”

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Dee Graham, Edna Rawlings & Roberta Rigsby. Loving to Survive: sexual terror, men’s violence, and women’s lives. NYU Press. July 1 1994. (p. 16)

"At MacKinnon’s (1987) request, and based on a random selection of 930 San Francisco..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 14:17:23 -0400

“At MacKinnon’s (1987) request, and based on a random selection of 930 San Francisco households, Russell calculated the likelihood of a woman not being sexually assaulted or harassed in her lifetime. It was only 7.8 percent.”

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Dee Graham, Edna Rawlings & Roberta Rigsby. Loving to Survive: sexual terror, men’s violence, and women’s lives. NYU Press. July 1 1994. (p. 16)

"The most representative study of sexual violence and victimization among college students, and..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:43:24 -0400

“The most representative study of sexual violence and victimization among college students, and clearly the most extensive, was carried out by Koss, Gidycz and Wisniewski (1987). Their sample was comprised of 6159 students (3187 of which were women). Using questions that assess male sexual aggression and female victimization along a continuum of sexual violence, Koss et al found that 54 percent of the women students reported having experienced some form of sexual victimization. Koss et al interpreted these findings as lending support to A. Johnson’s (1980) observation, “That sexual violence is so pervasive supports the view that the locus of violence against women rests squarely in the middle of what our culture defines as ‘normal’ interaction between men and women” (p.146).”

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Dee Graham, Edna Rawlings & Roberta Rigsby. Loving to Survive: sexual terror, men’s violence, and women’s lives. NYU Press. July 1 1994. (p. 16)

"Bart, Efron (1985) found that three fourths of the women in her sample (solicited through a variety..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:08:52 -0400

“Bart, Efron (1985) found that three fourths of the women in her sample (solicited through a variety of women’s groups affiliated with churches, feminist organizations, etc) reported being sexual on occasions when they did not want to be. Thirty percent reported some sort of sexual trauma, and in 44 percent of these cases, the trauma was rape. In three fourths of these rapes, the sexual aggressor was someone close to the woman (a relative, acquaintance or date, a lover, a husband, or a friend).”

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Dee Graham, Edna Rawlings & Roberta Rigsby. Loving to Survive: sexual terror, men’s violence, and women’s lives. NYU Press. July 1 1994. (p. 15 - 16)

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Thu, 23 May 2013 12:42:08 -0400

"An event usually was not called rape by women unless the perpetrator was a stranger, it happened at..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:34:50 -0400

“An event usually was not called rape by women unless the perpetrator was a stranger, it happened at night and outdoors, physical force was used, and they resisted. Moreover, cheppele and Bart (1983) found that women tended not to define non phallic rape (for example, digital penetration) as rape. These findings reveal that most women strongly resist perceiving an event which happened to them as coercive or rape, but that most of the sexual experiences of most women involve altruistic or compliant sex.”

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Dee Graham, Edna Rawlings & Roberta Rigsby. Loving to Survive: sexual terror, men’s violence, and women’s lives. NYU Press. July 1 1994. (p. 15)