At least it’s not passive voice, I guess

Um, no.

There’s been a series of rapes in Western Sydney in recent months, apparently committed by the same man. One of the young women he’s attacked saw him again recently (which must be pretty terrible!). [NB: I use the word "attacked" because he didn't manage to actually rape all the women, but all of the attacks were either rapes or attempted rapes.]

(I don’t think there are too many triggers below the cut, but this is a post about rape, so there may be.)

Women - not the medical “norm” (Part 2)

I wrote about this phenomenon recently.

Heard this morning on the BBC, this headline:

Anxiety, depression and sleepless nights increase the risk of diabetes in men, a Swedish study suggests.

Of course, I heard that and wondered: does that also apply to women? So I listened to the rest of the 30 second or so segment, and they didn’t mention women until the last sentence (the linked page is a little better, it at least mentions in the third sentence that the study also looked at women - but other than that, yep, last sentence is the only reference).

Ok, so on one hand: finding no link is a negative result, in a way, and so perhaps it makes sense that the positive result gets more airtime. But having said that … negative results often do get reported by the newspapers in a field like this, which might be expected to have some general public interest. And it doesn’t justify having just one and a half sentences devoted to women, especially when the results are so different! So I think the positive result > negative result is a justification as much as an explanation.

Exactly!

Julie Bindel says something that is not new, but needs to be said again and again until everyone gets it:

Let’s be clear; women have the right to go out dressed outrageously and be gagging to pull a man for sex. Consensual sex. Women do not want to be raped. Ever. All rape is “real rape”, even if she is wearing a skirt up to her neck, has her breasts on show and is drinking and flirting like crazy. Rape is sex without consent. Which part of that is difficult to understand?

PS: the Italian “her jeans were so tight there’s no way I could have got them off myself so it can’t have been rape” defence from 1999 has finally been overturned!

ETA: Of course, the article is classified in the Life & Style Women’s section of the Guardian, again …

I always thought Hillsong were scary

Now I know they are.

The program, called Shine, was created by the Hillsong Church. It is being run in at least 20 NSW public schools, numerous small community organisations and within the juvenile justice system.

Hillsong describes Shine as a “practical, life-equipping, values-based course” and its website is awash with glowing testimonials from young women whose lives have been improved by learning about “being a good friend” and “learning about myself”.

…

“Through skin care, natural make-up, hair care, nail care girls discover their value and created uniqueness,” the material says.

Ugh.

That! That’s it right there!

BBC Radio 4’s daily review programme, Front Row, is right now this minute interviewing some writers of crime novels (men and women) about sexism in writing.

I’m listening to it in the background as I (procrastinate from) work(ing) on my thesis, so I haven’t caught who the authors are. But one of the female authors has written a book (possibly a series?) which centres around an ex-soldier named Charlie. The programme presenter, Mark Lawson, commented on how she was generally playing with gender stereotypes (this came right after a comment from the author that she’s been accused of having her husband write the books, and that she’s just putting her name to them, because of the technical detail), because if most people were asked to draw Charlie (given the description I’ve just given), they would draw a man. But Charlie is a woman.

British airports to help people with disabilities

On the face of it, this seems to be really good news: the gap in the disability discrimination legislation (which, as far as access in airports goes, only covers buildings) is being filled in by a regulation which will state that airports have a responsibility to actually give people with disabilities* the help they need.

I can see two potential problems. One is that people with disabilities might get forcibly “helped” rather than actually asked what they need and given assistance in the way they need and want. The other is this:

The benefits of these new set of rules will be felt not only by the disabled, but those who have had an accident on holiday, such as a skiing mishap.

Recognition of Aboriginal people in the constitution?

If this happens, it will be a very good thing: Kevin Rudd has told indigenous leaders “that he intend[s] to honour an election promise to recognise the rights of Aboriginal people in the constitution”.

The illusory nature of choice

Lisa Kansas, who is definitely one of my current favourite bloggers, gets it spot right on with her post about how society condemns women for every single choice they might want to make about whether or not to have kids.

I read it yesterday, kept it unread in my feed-reader so I could read it again today, and then took a look at the comments today. Kind of fun. It’s not a long comment thread, but there are, inevitably, a couple of people there who do the “I’m going to say I agree but I’m going to completely miss the point!” thing. Including one commenter who said (in effect) “there’s always going to be at least one person who’s happy with the choice a woman makes, why are you so upset that you can’t please everyone all of the time?”

Anyway, the post is well worth a look, for Lisa’s great writing and for the absolutely nail-hammer-bang (to quote another commenter) nature of her work.