News stories Archives | Page 11 of 161

Argentinean Women March to Protest Violence Against Women

October 19, 2016 By HKearl

Earlier this month, Lucía Pérez, a schoolgirl, was drugged, raped and tortured in the coastal city of Mar del Plata.

Via the Guardian: “The cruelty of her attack was such that Pérez suffered a cardiac arrest, according to prosecutor María Isabel Sánchez, who described it as “an act of inhuman sexual aggression”. Following their assault, the assailants washed the 16-year-old in an attempt to erase forensic evidence and took her to a nearby hospital, where she died shortly after arrival from internal injuries sustained during her rape.”

Today, women across Argentina marched to protest violence against women, including this horrific incident. No woman should ever have to experience this cruelty or lose her life just because she is female.

Michelle Obama’s Speech on Respecting Women!

October 13, 2016 By HKearl

Thank you for this important speech today, Michelle Obama!

“It is cruel. It’s frightening. And the truth is, it hurts. It hurts. It’s like that sick, sinking feeling you get when you’re walking down the street minding your own business and some guy yells out vulgar words about your body. Or when you see that guy at work that stands just a little too close, stares a little too long, and makes you feel uncomfortable in your own skin.

It’s that feeling of terror and violation that too many women have felt when someone has grabbed them, or forced himself on them and they’ve said no but he didn’t listen — something that we know happens on college campuses and countless other places every single day. It reminds us of stories we heard from our mothers and grandmothers about how, back in their day, the boss could say and do whatever he pleased to the women in the office, and even though they worked so hard, jumped over every hurdle to prove themselves, it was never enough.

We thought all of that was ancient history, didn’t we? And so many have worked for so many years to end this kind of violence and abuse and disrespect, but here we are in 2016 and we’re hearing these exact same things every day on the campaign trail. We are drowning in it. And all of us are doing what women have always done: We’re trying to keep our heads above water, just trying to get through it, trying to pretend like this doesn’t really bother us maybe because we think that admitting how much it hurts makes us as women look weak.”

Transcript

I’m also grateful to New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristoff for his op-ed on this topic today that includes a link to our 2014 study!

Trump’s Locker Room Banter is Our Life

October 11, 2016 By HKearl

A recently released 2005 recording of American presidential nominee Donald J. Trump engaging in what he calls “locker room banter” about forcing himself on women has prompted many people to speak out against his behavior and his excuse of his behavior.

For instance, famed Anita Hill wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe today saying,

“Trump’s language, which he and others have tried to minimize as “locker room banter,” is predatory and hostile. To excuse it as that or as youthful indiscretion or overzealous romantic interest normalizes male sexual violence….Today’s conversation that must extend far beyond the presidential election. We have made strides in how we think about sexual violence but we’re nowhere close to done.”

The most visible response is happening over Twitter. On Friday night, author Kelly Oxford tweeted, “Women: tweet me your first assaults. They aren’t just stats. I’ll go first: Old man on city bus grabs my ‘pussy’ and smiles at me, I’m 12.”

By Saturday morning, as many as 50 women tweeted their stories per minute of first-person accounts of sexual violence with the hashtag #notokay. By Monday afternoon, nearly 27 million people had responded or visited Oxford’s Twitter page.

Incredible, but not surprising. A 2014 study we commissioned GfK to conduct nationally in the USA showed that nearly 1 in 4 women had experienced unwanted sexual touching by a stranger while in a public space.

I can add to that number. When I was 18 years old and standing on the sidewalk in front of a cross country teammate’s friend’s house a few blocks from my college campus, a group of men walked past me. A man at least twice my size reached out and grabbed my crotch, then laughed and walked on. You don’t ever forget the humiliation and fear and disgust of something like that happening. And at the same time, I always feel “lucky” that I have never had to live through a more severe violation.

These are the kinds of stories women everywhere have lived through. To us, it is not locker room banter. It is traumatic, upsetting and memorable. We remember. Our bodies remember.

Anyway, I am really glad to see this huge response to the really alarming evidence of what we many of us suspected: Trump is a dangerous, entitled misogynist who does not respect women (nor persons of color, immigrants, etc). Surely now he will never be president. Surely now the American people will put women’s rights and respectability above any other characteristic they deem presidential about him. Surely.

Egyptian Activists Use Eggs to Shame Harassers

October 5, 2016 By HKearl

Well, this is a creative, new and in-your-face (on-your-head?) way to raise awareness that street harassment is not okay!

Via Observers:

“Egyptian activists recently took to the streets of Cairo to crack eggs on the heads of men who bragged about inappropriately touching women … They began by just starting casual conversations with men on the street. They chatted with them for a while, to put them at ease. Then, the activists ask a few targeted questions about street harassment. Often, the men they were talking to actually started bragging about touching women. When this happened, that was the activists’ cue to crack an egg on the person’s head.”

Two Hours of Walking as a Woman in Costa Rica

October 4, 2016 By HKearl

Here’s a new video about street harassment from Rene Montiel Bonilla, a Costa Rican filmmaker, who filmed a woman (Laura Leon) walking through San Jose for two hours.

Bonilla explained that 61.7% of the 2.4 million women in Costa Rica have reported being victims of street harassment and that she “decided to make a short documentary to do something about it,” according to QCostaRica.

« Previous Page