Experiences with Rape Culture

Iowa human trafficking victim Pieper Lewis sentenced, ordered to pay $150,000 : NPR

A teenage human trafficking victim who was initially charged with first-degree murder after she stabbed her accused rapist to death was sentenced Tuesday in an Iowa court to five years of closely supervised probation and ordered to pay $150,000 restitution to the man's family.

Pieper Lewis, 17, was sentenced Tuesday after she pleaded last year to involuntary manslaughter and willful injury in the June 2020 killing of 37-year-old Zachary Brooks of Des Moines. Both charges were punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Polk County District judge David M. Porter on Tuesday deferred those prison sentences, meaning that if Lewis violates any portion of her probation, she could be sent to prison to serve that 20-year term.

As for being required to pay the estate of her rapist, "this court is presented with no other option," Porter said, noting the restitution is mandatory under Iowa law that has been upheld by the Iowa Supreme Court.

Lewis was 15 when she stabbed Brooks more than 30 times in a Des Moines apartment. Officials have said Lewis was a runaway who was seeking to escape an abusive life with her adopted mother and was sleeping in the hallways of a Des Moines apartment building when a 28-year-old man took her in before forcibly trafficking her to other men for sex.

Malta confirms free gender affirming surgery in LGBTQ+ rights reform

Malta’s prime minister confirms that the country will have free gender affirming surgery for trans people, under reformed laws.

Robert Abela attended Malta’s Pride event on 10 September, where he shared the news that changes are being made to the country’s current LGBTQ+ rights.

The PM told local ONE Radio: “My presence yesterday, as well as that of ministers and MPs, symbolises the messages that while we have done a lot, more is yet to come. While we’re proud of what we did, more needs to be done.”

Abela, who is leader of Malta’s Labour Party, also mentioned that the nations ban on gay men donating blood was recently lifted.

Free gender affirming surgeries are the next step in making Malta a more LGBTQ+ inclusive country.

In a facebook post announcing that the ban was lifted, Abela wrote: “Pride Week should serve not only to remember with pride what we have achieved in recent years, but also to understand that the work in favour of equality can never stop.

Graham proposes 15-week abortion bill, dividing Republicans ahead of midterm elections - CNNPolitics

(CNN)Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced on Tuesday a bill that would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, the most significant proposal by Republicans in Congress to curtail the procedure since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade three months ago.

Senate Democratic candidates immediately tried to link their Republican opponents to Graham's bill, but the South Carolina Republican defended his legislation as a bulwark against late-term abortions.

"I think the Democrats made a huge mistake in introducing legislation in Washington that would basically allow abortion up to the moment of birth," Graham told CNN. "Now we have an alternative to that."

'As capable as a son': Indians say no to the abortion of girls

The preference for sons in India - seen as breadwinners who will carry on the family name and perform the last rites for their parents - has led to the illegal abortion of millions of female foetuses, particularly in northern states like Haryana.

But the latest government data and anecdotal evidence from women and health experts suggests that trend is changing due to education, the success of high-profile Indian women in business and sport and a crackdown on clinics that illegally abort girls.

For the first time, the national family health survey (NFHS) of 2019-21 found that females outnumber males - with 1,020 females for every 1,000 males. In the last NFHS of 2015-16, there were 991 females for every 1,000 males.

Several women's rights activists said they were skeptical about the figure because it only sampled 637,000 households in a country of 1.3 billion people and were waiting to see the results of the 2021 census, which has been delayed by COVID-19.

But women and community leaders say sexist attitudes are starting to shift as parents see that daughters can contribute financially, rather than being a burden, requiring a dowry when they marry.

There is no official data on sex-selective abortions.

But the U.N. sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA, estimates that India lost about 590,000 girl children to pre-natal sex selection every year between 2015 and 2020 and that about 46 million women and girls were missing in India in 2020.

New Toolkit! Safety Planning and Intimate Partner Violence | Survived + Punished

In situations of domestic violence, survival can become criminalized in unexpected and chilling ways. However, because isolation is a central strategy of abuse, many survivors lack the community and resources needed to find support for both the violence as well as the risks of criminalization. What can concrete support for intimate partner violence survivors look like from a prison abolitionist perspective? What can it look like in practice to support survivors while being acutely aware of both the dangers of abuse and the overwhelming violence of the criminal legal system? Join us for a lively exploration of the concept of “abolitionist safety planning” from feminists and abolitionists, who will share their experiences, challenges, and lessons learned from supporting survivors in situations of active and ongoing violence.

Spanish language download also available

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The middle school boys thought their teacher was a ‘creep.’ So they tracked how he treated the girls. - The Boston Globe

They had tried talking to adults about what they heard and saw. None of the adults listened or took them seriously, the student told the Globe. It made the boys uncomfortable to see the girls in their class struggling to deal with their teacher flirting with them.

“Sometimes they’d laugh. Sometimes they just kind of just sit there awkwardly,” the boy recalled. “Even the ones that said he was ‘creepy’ laughed, because they were obviously not trying to tick him off or anything. So they’re just fake laughing, awkwardly laughing.”

“Other students noticed it too,” the boy added.

And so, on Jan. 5, 2021, a small group of seventh-grade boys decided to stick up for the girls.

They set up a subchannel on Discord, named it after the teacher, and called it the “Pedo Database.” “Post the [teacher’s] pedo moments and quotes here so we can get evidence,” one boy wrote.

“This is now the official chat that we will later use as evidence against [the teacher] about pedophilia in case anything does come up in the future and we do turn out to be right,” wrote another.

Anna Kendrick "resonated" with Alice, Darling abuse plot

Of the relationship with an unnamed partner, Kendrick recalls, “I was in a situation where I loved and trusted this person more than I trusted myself. So when that person is telling you that you have a distorted sense of reality and that you are impossible and that all the stuff that you think is going on is not going on, your life gets really confusing really quickly.” She continues, “And I was in a situation where, at the end, I had the unique experience of finding out that everything I thought was going on was in fact going on. So I had this kind of springboard for feeling and recovery that a lot of people don’t get.”

Kendrick admits most movies about toxic or abusive relationships “didn’t really look like what was happening to me,” which in fact “helped me normalize and minimize” the abuse she was experiencing. But with Alice, Darling, the script hewed so closely to her reality that she told director Mary Nighy that “‘if the movie was shooting in a month, I probably shouldn’t do it.’” Luckily, she had time to prepare, “So I wasn’t in danger of re-traumatizing myself.”

Child Rape Victims Have ‘Options’ and Other Wild Things the GOP Says About Abortion

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June unleashed a wave of anger at the GOP and lawmakers who’ve been pushing to ban abortion for years.

It also unleashed some of the most unhinged takes on pregnancy, abortion, and how uteruses function that we’ve seen in quite some time.

Michigan Judge Rules 1931 Abortion Ban Is Unconstitutional | The Mary Sue

A judge in Michigan has ruled that an abortion ban passed in 1931 that’s still on the books in the state is unconstitutional and cannot be enforced.

The law as written makes it a felony to perform an abortion in nearly every instance. A suit brought by Planned Parenthood of Michigan and Michigan abortion provider Dr. Sarah Wallett argues that the law is unconstitutionally vague and that it violates the state constitution’s protections for the rights to liberty, bodily integrity, equal protection, and privacy. Michigan Court of Claims Judge Elizabeth Gleicher issued a temporary injunction suspending the law back in May, after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson WHO decision was leaked. Wallett and Planned Parenthood got a jump on things to make sure the law couldn’t take effect even after the official decision was handed down and Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey were overturned.

Now Judge Gleicher has made that injunction permanent, barring the state’s Attorney General from enforcing the ban. (In fact, the AG, Dana Nessel, has said she would not enforce the law, but she’s up for re-election in November so this might be necessary for future AGs.)

Department of the Interior Removes Slur From Over 650 Public Lands | The Mary Sue

In February 2022, Department of the Interior (DOI) Secretary Deb Haaland announced that the slur “sq__”—used primarily against Indigenous North American women—was in the process of being removed from all public lands. This means over 650 locations (encompassing roughly 38 states) will be changed to new names. A September 8, 2022 press statement, released by the DOI, stated a public comment period yielded about 1,000 name suggestions, and consultation with over 70 Tribal governments came with hundreds more

Rape, incest exceptions out of South Carolina abortion bill | AP News

 A South Carolina Senate committee voted Tuesday to remove exceptions for rape and incest from a proposed abortion ban setting up a showdown among Republicans wary of passing such a restrictive bill.

Democrats helped set up the fight, choosing not to vote with three moderate Republicans who wanted to keep the exceptions in the bill.

The same bill without the exceptions appeared to fail in the more conservative state House last week before some Republicans maneuvered through a series of votes to allow abortions for rape and incest victims up to the 12th week of pregnancy.

U.S. backs students claiming Harvard ignored professor's sexual harassment | Reuters

The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday threw its support behind a lawsuit by three graduate students accusing Harvard University of ignoring sexual harassment by a professor who they said threatened their academic careers if they reported him.

The department in a court filing urged a federal judge in Boston to reject Harvard's claim that it could only be held liable for retaliation by the Ivy League school itself, not by any of its faculty members.

Pregnant women held for months in one Alabama jail to protect fetuses from drugs - al.com

Police arrested Ashley Banks on May 25 with a small amount of marijuana and a pistol without a permit to carry.

Under normal circumstances, the 23-year-old from Gadsden would have been able to post bond and leave jail until her criminal trial. But Banks admitted to smoking pot on the same day she found out she was pregnant – two days before her arrest. In Etowah County, that meant she couldn’t leave jail unless she entered drug rehab, leaving her in limbo for three months.

She’s not the only one, according to attorneys involved in her case. Several pregnant women and new moms accused of exposing their fetuses to drugs have been held for weeks or months inside the Etowah County Detention Center under special bond conditions that require rehab and $10,000 cash.

The Link between Hurricane Katrina and Anti-LGBTQ Rhetoric | Dame Magazine

for the last 17 years, I have kept a list. It is a list of pastors and preachers and spokespeople for religious organizations who blamed Hurricane Katrina on the “sin” in New Orleans. Those that said the city deserved it. Purveyors of the notion that the hurricane was God’s judgment on the city, that the dead had it coming, that America had it coming, that, especially, the LGBTQIA+ community was and is such a moral abomination that God smote the city to punish it for supporting them. That Southern Decadence, one of the largest celebrations of the gay community in the Crescent City, that opened my eyes to how much bigger and brighter and more beautiful the world could be outside of my small Missouri hometown, was why the city had to be destroyed. The idea that my gay, bisexual, and transgender friends, all of whom were scattered and hurting in the aftermath, were why New Orleans was drowned by their God.

Pat Robertson. Franklin Graham. John Hagee. Rick Joyner. Bill Shanks. Jennifer Giroux. Gerhard Wagner. John McTernan. Hal Lindsey. Charles Colson. Michael Marcavage. Rick Scarborough. Fred Phelps. A droplet of names out of a sea of hate. Anti-LGBTQIA+ violence has always been a bedrock of Christian nationalists, and that the renewed fervor of it, combined with the ignoring of natural disasters and pandemics—or blaming them on LGBTQIA+ communities, as is happening with monkeypox—is not new, it is what the Christian right in this country does. And as much as we like to think things have changed, that list? Those people? They are still at it.

Fourteen days after the levees broke, Pat Robertson got on The 700 Club and blamed both terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina on abortion, while discussing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts

Iran sentences two LGBT activists to death - rights group - BBC News

Two LGBT activists have been sentenced to death in Iran, a rights group says.

The Hengaw Organization for Human Rights reported that a court in Urmia had found Zahra Seddiqi Hamedani, 31, and Elham Choubdar, 24, guilty of "spreading corruption on Earth".

It said prosecutors had accused them of promoting homosexuality, promoting Christianity and communicating with media opposed to the Islamic Republic.

The activists were apparently told of the verdicts at Urmia Central Prison.

There was no immediate confirmation from the judiciary, but many Iranians took to social media to demand that the death sentences be revoked.

Birth control access can be limited in places with Catholic health systems : Shots - Health News : NPR

Last week, students returning to campus at Oberlin College in Ohio got a shock: A local news outlet reported that the campus' student health services would severely limit who could get contraception prescriptions. They would only be given to treat health problems — not for the purpose of preventing pregnancy — and emergency contraception would only be available to victims of sexual assault.

It turned out the college had outsourced its student health services to a Catholic health agency – and like other Catholic health institutions, it follows religious directives that prohibit contraception to prevent pregnancy. They also prohibit gender-affirming care.

"I would characterize the student's reaction as outrage," says Remsen Welsh, a fourth-year Oberlin student and co-director of the student-run Sexual Information Center on campus. "A lot of people in my circles were sending [the news story] around like, what is happening?"

Although the college quickly came up with a new plan to offer reproductive health services to students on campus, the incident at Oberlin shows the wide reach of Catholic health care in the U.S., and how the rules these institutions follow can limit access to contraception.

Texas governor says rape victims can prevent pregnancy by taking Plan B | The Hill

The Republican governor also told “Lone Star Politics” that reporting a rape to law enforcement “will ensure that the rapist will be arrested and prosecuted.”

However, very few rape cases result in an arrest. While there were 13,327 reported rapes in Texas in 2020, there were only 1,828 arrests for rape, according to the state’s department of public safety.

VA Will Provide Abortions to Eligible Vets—Even in States That Forbid It – Mother Jones

The US Department of Veterans Affairs will begin offering abortion services for the first time, opening up new options for veterans and other VA beneficiaries whose pregnancies resulted from rape or incest or otherwise pose a threat to their health. Under a new Biden administration interim rule that takes effect immediately, pregnant veterans and their eligible family members will be able to receive abortion counseling at VA hospitals. Those that qualify will be able to get an abortion, regardless of state laws.

The VA is preparing to provide abortions services in “as many locations as possible,” the department announced Friday. VA doctors will have case-by-case discretion to decide, along with their patients, when a pregnancy puts a patient’s health at risk. Those who seek abortions under the rape or incest provisions won’t be required to provide a police report; self-reporting will be considered sufficient evidence.

3 Disability Activists on Accessible Sex Toys and Pleasure | POPSUGAR Love & Sex

Disabled people deserve — and have — great sex. This may seem obvious to disabled people, and maybe even a little silly to call out. But when so much writing and coverage around disability comes from a medical, ableist, and nondisabled perspective, that simple truth can get lost in stigma and a sea of statistics on how "joyless" living with a disability is.

Of course, no one's experience of disability is exactly the same, and to ignore the very real consequences of ableist institutions, poor accommodations at every level of infrastructure, and the limitations of the medical industry is naïve at best. But it's also important to hold two truths at once: disabled people face unique challenges and obstacles both on interpersonal and societal levels and disabled people form thriving communities, creative problem-solving strategies, and have hot sex lives.

The state of sex education particularly fails disabled people, though. This isn't exactly groundbreaking information — most free, school-led sex education does not educate its students about pleasure, consent, queer sex, and gender in a relevant, ethical manner. But even in a wave of sex positivity and stigma-free educational media, disabled people are too often sidelined. According to the CDC, 61 million adults living in the United States are disabled, so it simply doesn't make sense that on a national level, the lives and realities of disabled people are not front and center.

POPSUGAR spoke with three disability activists about sex, their favorite sex toys, and how they cultivate pleasure in their own lives.