Naima > Recent Status Updates

oh holy shit, antisemitism
"The author called into question the designation 'survivor', a term taken from Holocaust survivors, for people she said should be called 'accusers,' since no sexual assault had been proven." and this is ok for a professor to say about all sexual assault survivors how???

lmao i was rooting for u.... right up until u said it was alright for an old white woman to use the n-word in a discussion about racism. just because you're discussing the subject doesn't mean you get a free pass. just. say. 'n-word'. it's dehumanizing to hear it in any other context what's so hard to understand about that

oh maaaan Oliver is anti millenial... what a Surprise...

"Avoiding triggering material undermines this goal, especially in terms of the most pressing social issues facing students today. If we cannot critically analyze rape culture, then how can we begin to address the problem of rape myths and their role in sexual assault?"
1. you're not considering the fact that there could be women who were raped and don't want to hear about how the world is engineered to allow rape

"To provide a 'safe space' for those who might feel troubled or triggered, members of Sexual Assault Task Force set up a room with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, a video of puppies, and Play-Doh, where those 'triggered' could get to recover and feel 'safe'."
i REALLY don't like the infantilizing implications of this and the negative viewpoint those w ptsd from sexual assault are held in right here

more notes: there's something about the way this is written that denotes feminine girls and writes them off as inferior to masculine girls, without taking into account the fact that these more masculine girls (girls that engage in traditionally male sport like katniss or hanna) are more widely accepted because their actions and presentations mirror that of men

please don't use the word butch if ur not a lesbian... even if ur a lesbian u probably shouldn't use that word....

every damn time... okay so there was a Highly Implied gang rape scene early on in the divergent movie that definitely deserves recognition. after tris acts transgressively against a group of guys, they come after her in order to threaten her into submission... if that isn't applicable to this book what is....

god this is starting to become a trend...
when Oliver begins to discuss how forgiveness and self-forgiveness are a recurrent theme in ya-based movies, there should be some attention brought to the fact that these women shouldn't have to forgive their abusers to move on in their live. women are thought to be this well of forgiveness and goodness, and therefore Must Forgive, but, in doing so, it fails the victim

i also feel like she could've discussed the abusive undertones in twilight more? it's not just the violent sex, but also the emotional and physical manipulation throughout the book that makes it a similar case to beauty and the beast- bella is wooed by gifts and attention, and is motivated solely by something edward intends to keep out of her grasp forever.

another thing she brings up but doesn't really follow through with: the prominence of choking girls/women as a means to silence them. while it's both a violent act, it also parallels shutting them up and keeping them silent, all while making sure that their face remains beautiful for the camera

I feel like the author tiptoes around the fact that none of her examples are women of color? note to self: bring up how katniss is whitewashed from native american, thus only allowing white girls/women to experience this 'transition into adulthood'- women/girls of color are assumed to already be adults

The brutal violence against girls in these films suggests a response to feminists' calls for strong female characters by giving us tough girls, and then beating the shit out of them. Within the patriarchal imagination, these young upstarts deserve to be beaten. They have it coming. And it is titillating to watch, as evidenced by the popularity of these films.

Have these little girls grown up and entered the man's world of violence as equals? Are they equal-opportunity killers? Or are these films justifications for taking pleasure in the abuse of girls?

Under the pretext of girl power and feminist empowerment, we watch girl-on-girl violence, as if to prove that violence is no longer just the purview of men. And when women fight, especially girl-on-girl, it's seen as sexy.

Love between sisters, although stronger than that between lovers, is reinscribed at the end of the film within the heterosexual narrative of prince and princess living happily ever after

When girls and women fight back, this becomes justification for the increasing levels of violence done to them, as shown in recent films in ever-gorier detail to younger and younger audiences - manifest in the real world as retaliation and harassment against women who report sexual assault, and anti-rape activists on campus

[...] violence done to them. The camera feasts on their abuse and aestheticizes violence toward pubescent girls. Furthermore, the violence they suffer seems to be punishment for their sexual awakening. For these girls, violence, including sexual violence, is part of their everyday existence.

In the filmic presentations of heroines such as [Hanna, Katniss Everdeen, Bella Swan, and Tris Prior], these girls who "give as good as they get" are repeatedly beaten and attacked, including by their own boyfriends. Their resistance to patriarchal stereotypes becomes justification for their abuse. Their strength in fighting back against their assailants becomes filmic justification for visually reveling in the [...]

Even as Hollywood gives us new images of strong empowered girls, it continues to beat them. These tough girls are bruised, bloodied, and nearly killed.

Even while these contemporary stories are new in that they give us active teen girl protagonists who defy gender stereotypes, they continue to circumscribe girls into traditional heteronormative relationships wherein they care for, and sometimes suffer at the hands of, their traumatized boyfriends.

The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control estimates that one in five women are raped in college (Edwards et al. 2014)

Newsweek magazine reports that "nearly one-third of college men admit they might rape a woman if they could get away with it." (Bekiempis 2015)

The use of rape drugs to intentionally incapacitate college women is particularly reprehensible insofar as it is not only premeditated rape, but also because these drugs are in themselves dangerous, even lethal in high doses (Zorza 2001).

One study concludes: "Cultural expectations that partygoers drink heavily and trust party-mates become problematic when combined with expectations that women be nice and defer to men. Fulfilling the role of the partier produces vulnerability on the part of women, which some men exploit to extract nonconsensual sex." (Armstrong et al. 2006)