I don’t know if rape jokes encourage rape culture. I don’t care. You still shouldn’t tell them.

Statistically, if you have told a rape joke to a group of more than five people, one of the people you told it to was a rape survivor, possibly of multiple rapes. They will not necessarily disclose this to you; rape apologism is endemic in society and most rape survivors are cautious about whom they tell. Some may even be too ashamed of their rape to admit it to anyone, or because of rape-minimizing narratives like “men can’t be raped” and “I consented to oral, so I couldn’t have been raped” may not admit it even to themselves. The fact remains: if you’ve told dozens of rape jokes in your life, then you have almost certainly told a joke that minimizes or trivializes rape in front of a survivor.

And if you put as your Facebook status “I totally raped at Halo today” for your two hundred Facebook friends to see, statistically, you have just reminded thirty-three people of one of the worst experiences of their entire lives.

To describe how well you did at a video game.

Good job!

”

—

An Addendum, On Rape Jokes.  (via transformfeminism)

(via umbrellaofdegrassi)

As you certainly know by now, in “The Hunger Games,” Katniss Everdeen is a teenage girl living in a dystopian far-future America where children from slave communities are forced to slaughter one another on television for the amusement of the wealthy. Katniss is moody, rebellious, deeply committed to protecting her mother and baby sister, and can incidentally shoot a man’s eye out through his windpipe. Right now, millions of nice young ladies all over the world want to be her. This should probably worry Rick Santorum more than it seems to.

”

— The sexual politics of “The Hunger Games” - Salon.com (via becoming-wave)

(via itscandidlycara)

male character: i made a mistake

fandom: oh you poor misunderstood soul

female character: i made a mistake

fandom: WANTON MISTRESS OF THE NIGHT, RETURN TO THE SHADOWS FROM WHENCE YOU CAME, THIS IS NO PLACE FOR YOUR SELFISHNESS PLEASE GO BACK TO YOUR HOME ON WHORE ISLAND

4 Things The Hunger Games Can Teach Us About the War on Women »

The romantic subplot of The Hunger Games can make it seem like a Twilight clone: a young woman torn between two men who are driven to protect her, yet can’t seem to help endangering her. But scratch the surface, and you’ll find that heroine Katniss is quite the opposite of pallid, passive, lovesick Bella, and she’s got a lot to teach us about the current culture wars. In fact, it’s hard not to think of President Snow’s creepy obsession with controlling Katniss’ love life without being reminded of the Republican Party’s similar fixation on controlling our ladyparts. When Katniss manages to destabilize and ultimately upend a government hell-bent on manipulating her to its nefarious ends, she offers a blueprint for how to not only survive, but win, the war on women.

(Source: hegemon, via advicepeeta)