Friday, January 29, 2010

For Pimps: Silence Please; It's Time for the Women Who Left Your Sorry Male Supremacist Asses on the Curb, to Speak Out Without Apologising for the Likes of YOU

[image from the XPALSS website is from here]

The following is a statement by the women of XPALLS. It is from *here* at their website. The "sex liberal" gig is up for white, privileged folks to speak FOR raped women, mostly poor and of color, in and now out of those heinous systems of male privilege and power used against and on female bodies who happen to also have souls that desire more than "better conditions" at "work" that is oppressive to all women as a class of people made to serve men in so many hideous and compulsory ways.

About Us

Statement by members of:

Ex-Prostitutes Against Legislated Sexual Servitude

As women who have been prostituted in Vancouver and in the light of these facts:
  • That current discourse on prostitution would have the public believe that it is normal work that simply needs to be better regulated
  • That there is currently a proposal to open a legal brothel in Vancouver
  • That this proposal is said to speak for current and former prostitutes of Vancouver
  • That this proposal promises to make the lives of prostituted women “safer” at best
  • That none of us have ever met a prostituted woman who would not leave the “trade” if she had a real chance to do so
  • That we are women who have been abused on Canadian soil, by Canadian men while all levels of  our Government did nothing to intervene.
  • That some members of parliament are now advocating to legalize that abuse.
We want you to know:

We are women who have been harmed by prostitution.  We believe that no amount of changing the conditions or the locations in which we were prostituted could ever have significantly reduced that harm. We experience the normalizing of that harm by calling it “work” insulting at best.

It matters very little to us whether we were prostituted on the streets or in the tolerated indoor venues and escort agencies of Vancouver.  Our memories are not of the locations but of the men who consistently acted as though we were not quite human.  We remember the countless other men and women who daily averted their eyes.  We remember the utter lack of services or options that made any sense and the blatant denial of access to any kind of help or justice.  We remember the need to “dumb down” our sense of entitlement to a better life so we could  bear the one we were in.  And we remember too well the numbing despair that came when we finally lost faith that there existed in this world anything decent and good.

We oppose any measure that would put more power in the hands of the men who abused us by telling them that they are legally entitled to do so.  This proposal does not speak for us, would not have affected our level of safety in a way that matters, and would not have spared us the harm that is inherent in prostitution.

We are not impressed with lip service proposals to make prostituted women’s lives “safer”.   Safer is not good enough.  We consider it a violation of our human rights that we were abandoned to years of situations that fit the definition of sexual assault under current law.  But not only is this violence not recorded, not prosecuted, not punished. We are now being told that we chose it.

We believe that, where there is public and political will, lives can be changed for the better.  We do not believe the lie that prostitution is inevitable. We believe it can be abolished.

As hosts of the 2010 games, we want our city, our home, to refuse to take part in the global flesh market that is sex tourism and send a message to the world that women will not be sold in Vancouver.

We believe that every sexually exploited woman represents a life wasted.   We are greatly saddened for the lives of women lost in prostitution, as well as the loss of the sum of the contributions that countless women still living would have made had they not been abandoned to sexual slavery.

We urge you all to refuse to believe that prostitution is normal or that it is an equal exchange ”between two consenting adults”.  We urge you to oppose any attempt to introduce a legal brothel in Vancouver.
© xpalss.org 2009
last updated February 2009
xpalss@shaw.ca

How to Speak Truth to Oppressive Institutional Power: the case of Kevin Annett and the Canadian Church

 
[image of steel cross is from *here*]

What follows is from *here*.

Hidden from History:
The Canadian Holocaust

An Open Letter to Brian Thorpe, Head Officer of the United Church of Canada

Sun, 28 Apr 2002 (EDT)
Dear Mr. Thorpe,

In March, 1997, I was expelled from my livelihood as an ordained minister in your church because of public allegations I made concerning the murder of native children and other criminal acts by staff at your Port Alberni "Indian residential school".

Until yesterday, you and your church vehemently denied that such crimes occurred in these schools. But now that eyewitnesses to these murders have spoken out on national television, on CTV's "First Story" program on April 27, you have quickly reversed your position and stated on air,

"We know that criminal acts occurred in the residential schools ... anything is possible."

I feel personally grateful that you have finally exonerated me by this acknowledgment of the criminal actions and liability of your church. I therefore look forward to a full and public apology by you - as one of the officials who arranged my firing without cause and expulsion from ministry - for the wrongs done by you to my family and I, including your years-long campaign to discredit and libel me for claiming what you yourself have finally acknowledged.

Beyond this, however, your admission of guilt requires that you now respond to the Diplomatic Summons issued to you by a United Nations body, IHRAAM, on May 22, 1998 - a Summons you ignored - which required that you testify before a War Crimes Tribunal concerning the criminal acts which you have now acknowledged occurred in your church's residential schools.

Accordingly, as the former Advisor to this Tribunal, I demand that you publicly answer these questions which were to be asked of you at the IHRAAM War Crimes Tribunal:

1. Did your church plan and perpetrate the planned extermination of non-Christian aboriginal peoples in league with the Canadian state, including through the deliberate exposure of native children to tuberculosis, sexual sterilisation programs, land theft, murder, torture, and other acts designed to destroy native lives and culture?

2. Did more than 50,000 children die as a direct result of these actions by your church, and the Catholics and Anglicans, as government records indicate?

3. Do you acknowledge that your church has engaged in deliberate and joint cover-up of these crimes with the federal government since at least 1960, as your own lawyer Mr. Hinkson admitted in a Nanaimo court room in October, 1998? (The Province, October 27, 1998)

4. Did you, without my knowledge or permission, and with the encouragement of church lawyer Jon Jessiman, take personal documents of mine out of my briefcase at a Vancouver press conference on September 3, 1997 -documents which proved the legal liability of your church for crimes at the Alberni residential school? Are you aware that your and Mr. Jessiman's action was recorded by a Cable 4 TV crew?

5. Do you have any knowledge of a native pedophile ring which operates out of The Vancouver Club and originated in your Alberni residential school, and which involves senior United Church lawyers and officers who are associated with you?

6. Did you pay members of the Ahousat band council over $7,000 to disassociate themselves from myself and Chief Earl George after we had discovered and made public that your church had illegally sold ancestral land of the Ahousats to persons associated with your church's corporate benefactor, the logging company MacMillan-Bloedel?

7. As Chief Officer of the United Church in BC in 1995, did you order or have knowledge of the destruction of records from the R.W. Large Memorial Hospital in Bella Bella, B.C., which documented the sterilisation of thousands of non-Christian native men and women by your church's medical missionary, Dr. George Darby sr., between 1923 and 1962?

8. Why did you personally arrange the "de-listing" trial that expelled me from my livelihood in United Church ministry after having stated in writing to me in September, 1995, "There are no charges against you"?

9. Why is your church exonerating and publicly defending convicted serial rapists in your ranks, such as "Reverend" Russell Crossley of Victoria?

10. As a fiduciary officer of the United Church of Canada, are you willing to surrender all information and evidence in the possession of your church pertaining to any criminal and genocidal acts and intentions by the United Church towards aboriginal people in Canada?

11. Will your church surrender itself and those guilty of genocide and other criminal acts to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, for having committed all five definitions of "genocide" contained in the U.N. Convention on Genocide which the Canadian government ratified in 1952?

12. Why should Canadian taxpayers continue to subsidize your church through allowing it a tax-free charitable status when it, and its officers, have engaged and are engaging in such crimes, cover-ups, lies, and Genocidal acts?

The world awaits your public reply.

Sincerely,

Rev. Kevin D. Annett
Secretary, The Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada

cc: world media
The World Council of Churches
The UN Human Rights Commission
The Assembly of First Nations

Let Us Prey: a story of a WHM rapist priest, and another anti-racist/pro-Indigenist WHM priest: Guess which one is Celebrated and which one is Despised?

[This is the cover of the book reporting on the atrocities committed against Indigenous People in Canada, perpetrated by the WHM Supremacist Christian Church; this and more about this book may be found *here @ www.hiddenfromhistory.org*]

What follows was found at Censored News, posted there by Brenda Norrell. Thank you, Brenda. -- Julian

Let Us Prey: A Tale of Two Clergymen

Let Us Prey: A Tale of Two Clergymen
By Hidden from History
http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/

Reverend Russell Crossley raped women and even young girls for over thirty years before he was arrested. The truth is he was caught right away, in the mid 1960’s, when as a young clergyman in the United Church of Canada he was named as a rapist by one of the parishioners whom he had assaulted.

The church lawyers gathered and convinced the victim not to press charges against Russell. Then they had him moved to another unsuspecting parish in Ontario, where he started raping all over again.

That went on for decades. Each time, after the latest rape, someone would come forward and spill the beans, and she would be silenced and Russell was shielded by the church and quietly shuffled to another group of innocent lambs. The rapes and cover up went on, and on.

The rapist was nearing retirement years when his past finally caught him, thanks to the persistence of one of his victims, who wouldn’t be silenced. She pressed charges, along with others Russell had assaulted, including an (at the time) under age minor. The RCMP threatened and cajoled these latest victims, but they wouldn’t stop. And so reluctantly, in the spring of 1998, the cops arrested Russell and he faced trial in Victoria, BC, where he enjoyed a “prospering ministry” at Metropolitan United Church.

His trial revealed the kind of friends Russell had, Including former United Church Moderators, RCMP Superintendents, and other prominent men who stepped forward to give character references for the rapist. Church people poured out their empathy for Crossley, not for those innocents he had violated. And so, dutifully, the judge slapped Russell’s wrist with a six month prison term, most of which he didn’t serve.

After he walked free from prison, Russell resumed his ministry; indeed, he had remained on salary with the church even after having been convicted of rape and assault. Elated, his congregation and the B.C. Conference of the United Church lauded him with testimonial dinners and awards for “thirty five years of successful ministry”. And Russell continued in the pulpit until the fall of 2008, when he finally retired, on full pension.

By way of a contrast: During exactly the same time, and in the same church body, where Russell Crossley was being exonerated for his crime, Kevin Annett faced ostracism, persecution, expulsion and professional ruination for having named some of the United Church’s dirty secrets involving stolen native land and murdered Indian kids.

Kevin Annett too was a United Church minister, although with none of the institutional pull of Russell. He had never sat on the church’s national governing body or written the church’s books and faith statement documents, as had Russell. Nor did he number as his friends RCMP Commissioners or politicians.

Kevin is not a convicted rapist, as is Russell. But now Kevin is an officially defrocked United Church minister and Russell is not. Kevin faces daily slandering and defamation from the church and its allies, and Russell does not.

Kevin is still a “man to be avoided” by respectable church society, and Russell is officially admired, and honored.

A cynical or perhaps clear-seeing man might conclude that it pays to do the wrong thing, not the right, in the
church of Jesus Christ – or at least, in the United Church of Canada.

Perhaps Kevin’s main mistake was not knowing what he part of. Nothing that his Sunday school teacher or seminary instructors taught him prepared him for the fact that rape, murder and most other beastly crimes go on with impunity in the Christian churches, and even in the all-Canadian, liberal-seeming United Church: and that these crimes seem to be valued, and certainly not punished.

Yet experience is a cruel teacher, and Kevin certainly received enough clues along the way about the actual nature of official Christianity, one of the most memorable being when a United Church lawyer named Paul Mills, when told by Kevin of drug dealing and prostitution going on in the Toronto Fred Victor Mission where he worked, said simply, “I know about all that. The only problem here is that you wrote a letter about it.”

Perhaps the real problem all goes back to Genesis, and the odd Christian notion of “fallen innocence”, of how there is something suspect in anything that is good, untouched, and seemingly unblemished. There can’t be, after all, in a “cursed” world like ours. And so wherever it manifests, innocence is a mockery to Christianity’s entire faith and weltanschaung, whether that’s the untouched splendor of an unlogged rain forest, or the unalloyed integrity of one man, or the happy cries of a child who isn’t like us. And so that purity must be crushed.

God did exactly that, after all, to his own Son Jesus: the most pure and perfect being ever created, so says the church’s Bible. This radiant being was offered up, tortured and killed by his own Dad. The fact that the obligatory justification of all abusers, that something good came out of the crime, is tacked onto the Biblical story as a sort of redemption for the rest of us, doesn’t detract from the basic message: don’t be good and innocent – it will get you nailed.

So is it surprising, at all, that a clergyman can rape and violate at will for decades, and be encouraged in his crime, by the Christian church and its top leaders? Or, that another clergyman can be destroyed and sacrificed publicly by the same leaders for simply asking why such things can happen?

Thursday, January 28, 2010

On U.S. and other Whites Adopting Haitian Children: not so fast if you care about Haitian children

All that follows is from GLOBAL CONNECTIONS. Click on the article title just below to link back to their site and this article as it appears there. -- Julian

Haiti’s babies & its future are already being set up for Adoption before the dead are accounted for & buried.

help haitiThe dead have not even been accounted for nor received proper burials yet & America is already talking about adopting Haitian children instead of setting the foundation to keep families together. We have anti-immigration laws in this country calling for the deportation of over 30,000 Haitian immigrants, many of whom have American born children who they will be separated from if the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) remains only temporary -to be recalled at America’s leisure without consideration of the devastation to families; yet we are going on about taking Haitian children from their homeland & families & adopting them out to Americans- huh? We always say we want to help, but our help seems to come too often at a devastating cost. This is a time & lesson in global humanity & humanitarian servicing, where we should reevaluate policy, how we administer aid & how we really help nations & people in times of need & tragedy.

We could have helped Haitians long ago by aiding them to utilize their ripe land for their own agricultural & economic benefit instead of utilizing it to build many wealthy nations, while forcing them into poverty & dependency. We could have helped with infrastructure that would be able to stand the tests of nature instead of losing thousands of lives & destroying families before the earthquake hit. We could have helped by not aiding in or standing idle to the destabilization of Haiti’s government long before the earthquake. We did not do all that, so at a time when we have the opportunity to right our wrongs -the first thing for us to think about is building a nation back to its glory of old as an even better, stronger nation with its families intact & people united in the continuation of building a great nation, not adopting out the future generation who will be the ones to carry Haiti’s torch!

When I saw this tweet from Wolf Blitzer -all I could do was shake my head & say oh no what are we thinking & not again.

Wolf Blitzer | Washington D.C.
“So many of you want to help Haiti. Some want to adopt orphans. CNN’s Mary Snow will report on adoption procedures in Sitroom.”


I will be watching carefully to see what this is all about, but I must say I do not like the tone & direction it is heading.

As an African I cringe at the separation of families throughout the Diaspora & Africa that was brought on by slavery -which even today still continues in many ways because of poverty & bad governance, which often give families no choice but to separate & give away or leave their children in order to seek a so called “better life” away from family. African descendants /families have been separated for far too long through the selling of the so called “better life” , which has left us with nations devastated by wars, poverty, lack of infrastructure & a perpetual disadvantage toward taking care of ourselves & believing in & living our greatness due to the fact that many of our best & brightest are taken away or drawn to the so called “better life” that the world keeps telling us can never be found at home.

The amount of money spent on Madonna & the Jolie-Pitts adopted African children’s wardrobe alone could support the villages they came from & kept them with their families. I think adoption is a noble, selfless act which I encourage all those who have the means & desire to do so, seek in great numbers; however we have to also consider if adoption is always the best way to provide a child with a better life as opposed to providing their families the help, education & aid necessary to keep the family intact. Maybe we should practice more of an “it takes a village to raise a child” motto by adopting families, not necessarily in physical form, but in the form of mental, emotional & financial support needed to help raise any and all children.

“The Greatest good u can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own” (B. Disraeli)

“Of special note to international adoption are campaigns for adoptions that occur after disasters such as hurricanes, tsunamis, and wars. There is often an outpouring of adoption proposals in such cases from foreigners who want to give homes to children left in need. While adoption may be a way to provide stable, loving families for children in need, it is also suggested that adoption in the immediate aftermath of trauma or upheaval may not be the best option. Moving children too quickly into new adoptive homes among strangers may be a mistake because with time, it may turn out that the parents have survived but were unable to find the children, or there may be a relative or neighbor who can offer shelter and homes. Providing safety and emotional support may be better in those situations than immediate relocation to a new adoptive family.There is also an increased risk, immediately following a disaster, that displaced and/or orphaned children may be more vulnerable to exploitation and child trafficking.

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_adoption)

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/The-Case-for-Haitian-Immigrant-Amnesty-2184

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-wilentz/haiti-and-the-depths-of-d_b_424806.html

http://www.one.org/us/actnow/drophaitiandebt/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/opinion/15brooks.html

http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/articles.php?aid=1663

Madonna adoption-This is a bit harsh, but great points are being made here particularly since many African countries specifically put in place residency caveats because of lessons of slavery of old & slavery of new.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6260996
 
Help Haiti Art work by: Graphic artist KERRY DEBRUCE (check her at www.kladcreative.com)

Remembering Howard Zinn (1922-2010), a mensch who lived to the young age of 87


[image of Howard Zinn is from *here*

If you did not know him, please take a moment to read up about him and his life. He was one of many examples of how to be a white Jewish man, or a mensch. A mensch means many things--and is not specifically raced or gendered as a term. But to me and to many it means a man of integrity and honor, who respects people deeply and cares fiercely with a compassionate heart. It means someone who loves his spouse as his equal, who loves his children each as if they were an only child, and who cares as much about justice for the oppressed as for anything else on Earth. It is quite the opposite of what it means "to be a man" in dominant white gentile secular society. If living in the U.S., it is to reject that sort of being, in fact, in favor of being a man who is against all forms of domination, violation, and exploitation. Howard Zinn was, among other good things, an anti-racist, anti-corporate, pro-Indigenist historian and writer, and a civil rights, labor, and anti-war activist. He taught a young Alice Walker (and many other students!) at Spelman College, and taught for decades at Boston University. He was a dear man, a mensch to be missed and one to be remembered.

More information will be forthcoming at howardzinn.org.

This next news report is from *here*.

Howard Zinn, American Jewish historian, dies

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Howard Zinn, an American Jewish historian who wrote the "People's History of the United States," has died.

Zinn, whose best-seller helped establish him as a central figure of the American left, died of a heart attack Wednesday in California. He was 87.

Along with another Boston-based American Jewish professor, Noam Chomsky, Zinn was a leading left-wing intellectual. His "People's History," published in 1980, accused Christopher Columbus of genocide while venerating labor leaders and war opponents.

"He's made an amazing contribution to American intellectual and moral culture," Chomsky said, according to the Boston Globe. "He's changed the conscience of America in a highly constructive way. I really can't think of anyone I can compare him to in this respect."

"People's History" inspired a documentary in 2009 on the History Channel titled "The People Speak." Zinn narrated the documentary, which highlighted those who spoke up for social change.

Zinn, a New York City native and the son of Jewish immigrants, wrote several books and three plays. His last essay, about President Obama's first year in office, was published last week in The Nation.

His last essay, about President Obama's first year in office, was published last week in The Nation.

Recent news, from just two weeks ago:
Howard Zinn is 2010 New York University MLK Humanitarian Award Recipient  
NYU press release: On February 10, 1961, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech on the campus of New York University that advocated for civil rights and championed nonviolent protest for social change. For the fifth-consecutive year, the University will commemorate Dr. King’s visit and his legacy by hosting a weeklong schedule of special events and programs. This year’s theme “Who Will You Inspire to Dream?” is intended to remind us of Dr. King’s message of activism, motivation, and leadership in service to the community. 

The Week will showcase featured events that include the University-wide Feature Celebration in the Eisner and Lubin Auditorium, Kimmel Center, January 21, 2010 at 7pm. Join us for an evening of NYU student and special guest performances; the 2010 MLK Humanitarian Award presentation to distinguished alumnus, historian and author of “A People History of the United States,” and the landmark film, “The People Speak,” Dr. Howard Zinn and remarks from NYU President John Sexton.

The links that follow were found on his web page.

Please see the Democracy Now! tribute:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/28/howard_zinn_1922_2010_a_tribute
 
And from The Progressive:
http://www.progressive.org/wx012810.html
 
From The Nation / NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123063395
 
(Please also see the "Howard Zinn Series" of videos on NPR:)
http://forum-network.org/series/howard-zinn-series
 
From SocialistWorker.org:
http://socialistworker.org/2010/01/28/the-peoples-historian
 
From the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alex-green/remembering-howard-zinn_b_439541.html
 
From AntiWarBlog.com:
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2010/01/27/a-memory-of-howard-zinn/
 
From the Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/01/howard_zinn_his.html
 
From the Washington Post:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2010/01/the-daily-goodbye-146.html
 
From MTV.com:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alex-green/remembering-howard-zinn_b_439541.html
 
From the Assoiated Press:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/us/28zinn.html

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

A Light Bulb Moment: AHA! Men don't want to be called rapists because...*

 
[images above is from here]
*     *     *
TRIGGER WARNING: CLEAR DESCRIPTIONS OF THE CRIMES OF RAPISTS FOLLOW:

This image of David Alex Park, left, and the paragraph below are from *here*.

Last month, in Irvine, California, Officer David Alex Park, stalker and rapist, was acquitted by a jury of eleven men and one woman. He was acquitted, not because he is anything other than a stalker and a rapist—which he as much as admitted in open court, and which was proven well enough anyway by phone records, license plate requests, and DNA evidence. He was acquitted because he is a cop, and the woman that he harassed and sexually extorted danced at a strip club, and so the jury concluded that she made him do it, and besides, if she strips for a living, she must have been asking for it anyway.
*     *     *

Photo by Ross William Hamilton/The Oregonian
Image above is of the convicted rapist Richard Troy Gillmore at his parole hearing at the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem. The article can be found *here*
*     *     *

Thomas Cope, 55, tied up his teenage victim with a computer mouse cord and raped her twice before letting her go after an eight hour ordeal. He was jailed for life after a judge branded him 'a serious danger to women'.

 Thomas Cope
The above image of serial rapist Thomas Cope is from *here*.
*     *     *

Image to the right, of spyhole rapist Anthony Batchelor who was jailed indefinitely, is from *here*

A rapist who secretly filmed women and children for eight years was snared when his neighbours discovered a tiny spyhole had been drilled in their ceiling. Voyeur Anthony Batchelor, 33,  who had been filming his neighbour's partner sunbathing naked, was caught out after a coin-shaped hole was discovered in the roof.
When police searched Batchelor's home in Gloucester, they they scoured his computer and discovered damning footage he had filmed just before he raped a young woman at knifepoint and threatened her with red-hot hair tongs.

Officers also found videos where he had 'zoomed in' on women and children changing at swimming pools as well as clips of him setting up a spy camera by his lavatory to film four women. Jailing Batchelor indefinitely for public protection at Gloucester Crown Court, Judge Mark Horton told the father-of-one his unlimited sentence reflected the 'sexual depravity' he put his victims through.

Batchelor admitted 14 offences, including rape, voyeurism and possessing child pornography.
*Because we ARE rapists/sexual violators/agents of sexual assault. We molest, we incest, we force our desires onto others against their will. We force others to think our will is theirs, so we no longer have to use so much force. We do this: men do this.

How simple. How utterly obvious.

And how self-servingly and aggressively defensive men get about this.

Men traffick children and women. 20 million people worldwide are estimated to be trafficked, largely by men and always FOR men's pleasure. FOR MEN'S PLEASURE, and for men's abusive, vile power over others. Men enslave children and women. Men rape and batter their female spouses and girlfriends. Men do all of this and when anyone says so, the defensive pricks fight back with "You're a man-hater!!!" "You're overgeneralising!!!" "Not ALL men do that!!!"

I now have a weapon of argument I never had before. And it is a simple one. To any man who has been sexually active with women or girls: PROVE TO ME YOU ARE NOT A RAPIST. PROVE IT. Because all the men I know who have said they are not, when I find out what they have done that they call "fully consensual sex", reveals that, in fact, they have raped, they have violated, they have abused girls and women. And these men refuse to name their behavior that way. They refuse to name it this way so that they can continue to do it again and again and never think they are being a serial rapist--to one girl, to one woman, or to many.

Given that force, dominance, coercion, subordination, humiliation, degradation, violation, violation, violation are ALL turned into steamy hot, desired heterosexist sex by pimps, pornographers, and rapists, it is not surprising men are up in arms about this truthful accusation. They/we don't want to name ourselves this way. We don't want to know what we do. We don't wish to be responsible for our brothers. We want our entitlements and privileges, our power and our rights, left alone, in tact, undisturbed by those feminist voices who say "NO! STOP IT!"

And any man with an ounce of humanity, when hearing anyone say "men are rapists" would do one of two things.

1. Say "Yes, we are", "yes, men do rape women", "yes, men are rapists and we won't admit it", and
2. Let me reflect with honesty and compassion for women on all I have done sexually, to find the memories where I was coercive, dominating, forceful, humiliating, selfish, self-centered, oblivious to her needs, lost in my own fantasies played out on and against her body, etc. Let me make myself more humane by doing this personal-political inventory, rather than snap back "NOT ALL MEN ARE RAPISTS!!!"

To any men who try and defend men who are rapists, I will say to you this: the only men I have ever known who get deeply upset, defensive, agitated, obnoxious, aggressive, hostile, and antifeminist about feminists stating this obvious truth is men who have committed rape and won't own up to it. And so you guys deflect by trying to make the declarer of the truth seem insane for stating a truth that resides somewhere in your own soul. And it works, too often. But not now it doesn't. Not here on this blog.

14 February 2010 ECD addendum:
What follows was written by Amber Rhea on Tuesday, 26 January 2010 (thank you, Amber!!!):

What would a man w/ an ounce of humanity/inkling of common sense/faint notion of what it means to be a decent person NOT say in such a situation?

“NOT ALL MEN!”

“SOME WOMEN RAPE, TOO”

“NOT ME!”

“DON’T PAINT US ALL WITH A BROAD BRUSH!”

“THAT’S SEXIST”

Another addendum:
What follows is also posted below as a comment, but I wanted it located here in the body of the post as well. It was written by karinova:

For any naysayers, I just wanted to contribute a resource to back up this point:
“[W]hat they call ‘fully consensual sex,’ reveals that, in fact, they have raped, they have violated, they have abused girls and women. And these men refuse to name their behavior that way.”

This is supported in spades by the work of Drs. David Lisak & Paul Miller. (Sadly, and to my utter unsurprise, it’s kind of obscure.) In short, they surveyed men asking if they’d committed rapes/attempted rapes/battery/etc. of women (and children). Normally, men would of course say no. But the surveys didn’t call it rape/violence; instead, they asked about specific acts. [eg: “Have you ever had oral sex with an adult when they didn’t want to because you used or threatened to use physical force (twisting their arm, holding them down, etc.) if they didn't cooperate?”] It’s mind-blowingly obvious, but indeed, as it turns out, when it's not labeled rape, men self-report like crazy.

Now, I’ve seen estimates that say 1 in 60 men will do something like this in their lifetime. And the bleakest thing about the L&M data (to me, anyway) is the incredible volume of violence this kind of man can do: “One sample of 122 undetected rapists admitted to 386 rapes, 20 other acts of sexual assault... 264 acts of battery against intimate partners... 365 acts of sexual abuse against children... and 91 acts of physical abuse against children.” Yes, all by just these 122 doodz. And there's lots more. Apparently, this is just what they think normal relationships are like. (Wonder where they got that idea?!)

They don’t understand that it’s rape/abuse. And a lot of other people don’t either. This has to be a big part of why they don't get caught. The entire System— which is controlled by men, and controls the image of rape/abuse— fails to define/recognize them as rapists/abuser. Men need to get on this, ASAP.

Full text of Repeat Rape and Multiple Offending Among Undetecgted Rapists [PDF] (Lisak & Miller)

Research on Undetected vs. Detected Sex Offenders, from Successfully Investigating Acquaintance Sexual Assault [DOC] (see pp. 1-7)
Sunday, February 14, 2010 4:41:00 AM EST


NEW Comments Policy @ A.R.P.: please read before sending any comments

[image is from here]

Here's the COMMENTS POLICY for this blog, A Radical Profeminist. Dated 26 January 2010 ECD. Revised on 17 September 2010.

To all people committed to ending rape and racism, gynocide, genocide, and ecocide, WELCOME. This blog is intended to be, and remains, radical feminist/woman of color-friendly space. This intention is one of my deepest political commitments.

I work on the blog to promote anti-patriarchal, anti-racist, anti-colonialist, pro-Indigenist perspectives, analysis, activism, and liberation. Any comments sent to this blog for posting publicly or reading by me privately that meet any of the following criteria will go directly to a spam box and will not find their way to this blog. They will also, in many cases, not even be read by me beyond discerning whether they fit into one of these "categories of rejection". NOTE: No anti-womanist or anti-feminist comments will be posted here.

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ADDED ON 9 MAY 2010ECD:
And NO terms which put down, degrade, or insult the dignity of disabled people are allowed in comments. That includes "the R word" folks.
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If you don't know what some of these terms or some acronyms used here on this blog mean, there is a reading list and glossary for you below either to the right or below where you clicked on this link. Please read that whole section before posting any comments.

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24 June 2010 Addendum: 
I probably ought to add this:  Submitted comments that insult, put down, harass, degrade, or are otherwise mean or disrespectful to the blog host will not be posted. Be courteous and respectful to me here or don't have a voice here.