Just days since a massive campaign was launched by a coalition of more than 40 groups and individuals, advertisers have already begun to act swiftly about seeing their ads adjacent to images depicting rape and violence against women on Facebook. Indeed, the response has inspired hope that the demands in the Open Letter to Facebook [...]
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Coalition: Time for Facebook to take responsibility for gender-based hate speech
*Trigger warning* Starting on May 21, a coalition of more than two dozen organizations — including Led by Women, Action & the Media, The Everyday Sexism Project, and author Soraya Chemaly — are calling on Facebook to end its complicit approval of memes and pages that promote violence against women and gender-based hate speech. As [...]
Beatriz Will Die Without an Abortion. Her Country Says No. Will You Help Us Save Her?
Last year, Savita Halappanavar, an Indian woman being treated in a hospital in Ireland, was denied a life saving abortion because of the country’s strict Catholic code of conduct. She died. The world was outraged as it came face to face with the horrifying truth that when religion guides your government, the death toll rises. Now we are again [...]
My home is not safe for women
By now, all of us are aware of the tragic circumstances of Rehtaeh Parsons’ rape, torment, and suicide. I don’t need to provide the details of what happened to her. To be honest, and perhaps selfishly so, I know I can’t bear to write about it. Because this isn’t the first time we have written [...]
What Facebook Continues To Tell Us About Violence Against Women
There is a photograph being shared in Facebook of a woman cowering in a corner, eyes downcast, as large man standing in the foreground swings his fist at her head. The caption reads, “Women deserve equal rights. And lefts.”
Sympathetic Rape Coverage is Nothing New
In the hours after the announcement of the Steubenville rape case verdict, the coverage has been non-stop. No big surprise in our 24/7 news culture. What should be a surprise, but sadly isn’t, is the sympathetic tone being taken by some reporters about the future of the two boys (or young men, depending on how you classify high school students [...]
Women and Mental Health
Over the past two weeks, the HBO show ‘Girls’ has focused on the mental health challenges of Hannah. We have been introduced to Hannah’s secret – her shameful struggle with anxiety characterized by obsessive tendencies, a necessity to repeat tasks 8 times, often until the point of embarrassment, injury (as we saw last week), and [...]
Consent and Ending Violence Against Women and Children
Or Why a “Small” Consent Revolution Needs to be a “Big” Consent Revolution The idea of consent, in terms of how we think about sex, sexual abuse, and power, is fairly new and historically radical. Laurie Penny, describing shifting attitudes about these topics, called it a “small revolution,” earlier this week in The New Statesman. [...]
Contest Raises Awareness for Violence Against Women Through Music: Interview with Pixel Project Founder Regina Yau
Rape, rape culture, domestic violence, and violence against women impact us all. The Pixel Project, a virtual, volunteer-led nonprofit, works to eradicate violence against women globally. They are currently running the Valentine 2013 YouTube Cover Carnival contest to raise awareness through the power and artistry of music. They dedicated the contest to Jyoti Singh Pandey, [...]
The Problem With “Grey Rape”
Recently, in an article for the Good Men Project , I referred to “grey rape” a term popularized by Cosmopolitan in a 2007 article titled “The New Kind of Date Rape.” I continue to place scare quotes around the term because while it does the work of communicating the issue that I am trying to talk about, it is also [...]