Queen of Obscene

The posters read:

“Je ne remets pas en question votre parole, mais vous ettez quand mème beaucoup de tempt à répondre aux questions.”

“I am not questioning what you’re saying but still it takes you a lot of time to answer the questions.”

-Psychologist

“Pourquoi tu pleures?”

“Why are you crying?”

“Je ne l’ai pas voileé Elle aimait se “faire prendre” voilemment. Je lui au juste donné ce qu’elle voulait.”

“I didn’t rape her. She liked it when it hurt. I just gave her what she wanted.”

“Vous êtes sorti avec un homme de 20 ans de plus que vous, faut pas vous étonner de ce qu’il vous ait arrivé.” 

-Gendarme

“You dated a man 20 years older than you, don’t be surprised it happened to you.”

-Policeman

“Pourquoi vous ne vouliez pas coucher avec votre copain?”

-Gynércologue

“Why didn’t you want to have sex with your boyfriend?”

-Gynecologist

“pour quelqu’un qui vient de se faire violer, vous n’avez pas l’air en état de choc.”

-Psychologue

“For somebody who just got raped, you don’t seem to be in a state of shock.”

-Psychologist 

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Photographed in Paris, France on November 25th.

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30/30 Poetry Challenge, Day 29: A Theory of Evolution

I’m hoping this is legible. It’s long, so this is the only way I could think to do without making it a text entry, which always looks sloppy to me. I guess we’ll see. 

30/30 Poetry Challenge, Day 28: The Lightning Rod Effect

30/30 Poetry Challenge, Day 25: He told me I could call him Ryan

Not normally the kind of blog that would post material this heavy, but frankly this should be everywhere.

I think this is a really good campaign. I also liked that they used a gay couple too, it could be a problem for anyone 

wowww. and I always thought it was so romantic.

I always reblog this because for every one person who understands the true story behind this picture there’s about 50 who don’t.

D:

Scummy as grabbing and kissing a woman on the street undeniably is, I would like to caution people against ignoring Greta Friedman’s perspective and painting her as a victim.

I’ve seen a few people representing her story in fairly sensationalist ways, and it feels (to me) like her statements have been farmed for problematic quotes to support the writer’s conclusions, and her actual feelings on the matter have been ignored.

It’s Greta Friedman’s right to determine whether the situation on the street was positive or negative.

She’s fairly clear, over the course of this interview, about how she interpreted the mood that led to the infamous kiss as being a positive and elated one:

She does not consider herself to have been victimized by a sexual assault.

It is Friedman’s right to be horrified, unhappy, enthusiastic or proud about being kissed. Her experience is not our political scandal. We, as bystanders several generations in the future, do not get to decide she should have felt. 

Rape culture is a real thing, and trying to make what happened suddenly an okay thing simply because she personally shrugged it off would indeed be part of that—but when we make a spokesperson out of Friedman in this way, we are using her. She gets to decide how to tell her story. Full stop.

Greta Friedman: It’s kind of fun, because it’s very accidental. Fame for just being there…being dressed right. Actually, the fame belongs to the photographer. He provided an art… I can’t call it a skill. He was an artist. I just happened to be there…. and so did George.

Swapping christmas cards and being on good terms with with the guy who kissed her and his wife: this is her choice, and we need to respect that she is smart enough to decide whether she wants to associate with the guy afterwards or not.

It’s not OK to touch people or kiss people without permission. A culture that says that it’s all in good fun when men push women around is objectively sick, but can we please not rewrite a grown woman and an American icon into a symbol of victimhood without her consent? She has a voice here. Don’t take that away because you want to make a point on her behalf.

Disagree with her for taking what happened so lightly if you want, but  please do so knowing you’re arguing with a person who was actually there, and whose perspective is valid, however outdated by your social standards. 

Is Friedman herself guilty of the “wide misinterpretation” of the photo because she is not unhappy about what happened? When is it right to tell another person that their experience is invalid?

All my Greta Friedman quotes come from this interview, which I really recommend. It contains information about who she is, as well as the role she played during the war before the kiss.

reblogging myself to add some recent quotes in response to the controversy:

and

and finally

The only person who has a right to go on a crusade about this has now declared herself a willing participant. Let it go.

Source

wow okay one of my followers linked me to this new information! if any of you guys reblogged this from me when i posted it without this commentary you should reblog this too to clear things up!

new perspectives are good and valid.

“I joined the military because I wanted to serve my country.  I served as a Lance Corporal in the Marines for over three years.  In that time I was raped twice and sexually assaulted another two times. 

The first time it happened I was serving abroad in Afghanistan.  After that first incident I was assaulted three other times over the course of three years.  It came to happen so often that I assumed it was normal and that it must happen to everyone.  I never received any training on how to deal with sexual assault in the military- I didnt even know how to report it.  

When I finally decided to report the sexual assaults I was led through a maze of questions and excuses and I was even discouraged from reporting the crimes.  In the end, instead of getting justice I was ostracized and humiliated.  

I learned that there is currently no national military sex offender registry and that offenders are not required to disclose their crimes on their discharge papers.  A sex offender registration for convicted for military personal would help to address the impunity that surrounds rape within rape the military.  Most veterans are honorable men and women who have served our country, but there are some who have committed serious crimes like rape and sexual assault during their service and the military has a responsibility to disclose that information for the sake of the public good. 

When asked why sex offenders do not have to disclose on their discharge papers, some of the responses I was given were 1) It will take too long to create a national database or 2) the military is going green and it takes too much paper to add an extra check box to discharge papers. 

This is part of a larger issue of rape within the military.  Some estimates reveal that more than 1/3 of women in the armed services are raped during their service.  If you serve in the US military and you rape or sexually assault a fellow service member you have an 86.5% chance of keeping the crime a secret and a 92% chance of avoiding court martial.  

Join me in asking the Department of Defense to create a national database for sex offenders.”

So I received this in an e-mail today and my mouth was basically gaping open, would any of my followers mind signing the petition? 

Sometimes I have the time and patience to get from an idea to a fully fleshed-out, penciled, inked and coloured comic.

Sometimes I don’t.

A-FUCKING-MEN

This is cool.