I’ve taken a tiny break from blogging because I have 15+ hours of work a week, plus 12 hours of class, and a whole day of commuting to NYC to intern with the Margaret Sanger Papers Project… very simply put there is no time for me to blog here anymore. Luckily for me (and you!) blogging is an integral part of what I am getting paid/getting credits to do this semester! I’ll continue to cross-post anything I write for the Ramapo College Women’s Center Blog here. Also, feel free to check out the posts that I’ve started writing with the Margaret Sanger Papers Project… they’re a very different style because my writing in the past has not been nearly as academic/history based, but I am loving the chance to expand and adapt to a different style of blogging!

On a completley unrelated note, I want to direct you to read a particular post at Angry Feminist Doc in which the author lists out all of the ridiculous ways that women are blamed for their own sexual assaults. This is a list I have actually started myself many times, and simply not been able to finish due to time/emotions/etc. Her’s is way more detailed than my half-finished drafts anyways!

“Sometimes” does not give rape culture enough credit. “Sometimes” underestimates the ways in which rape culture diminishes sexual assaults and holds survivors responsible for them. They were drinking, they don’t get someone to “watch them”, they “[sit] on people’s laps”, they are crazy and on anti-psychotic drugs, they walk home alone at night, they walk home alone in the afternoon, they leave alone and may even announce that they are leaving alone, they wear skinny jeans, they wear bikinis, they’re “scantily-clad”, they are seductive and look like adults, they consent to other forms of sexual activity, they initially consented to this sexual activity, they have fantasies about group sex, they are prison inmates, they are married to their rapist’s brother, they regularly frequent the location at which they are later raped, they “failed to exercise due care for [their] own safety and the safety of [their] children and proper use of [their] senses and facilities“, they are sex workers, they may “visit footballers’ hotel rooms late at night“, they do not behave like “virtuous women“, they do not “dress properly“, they are “not really women”, they reported their rape and it didn’t result in convictions, they shoplift, they form a legally binding “sexual partnership”, they had not formed a legally binding sexual partnership, they fight back, they don’t fight back, they are “known for sleeping around, smoking weed, throwing wild parties, stealing liquor from her parents, getting drunk, giving liquor to neighborhood teens, participating in orgies, performing oral sex, engaging in group sex, gay sex, public sex and cyber sex“, they were DRUNKWHORESLUTTHEYDESERVEDIT.

I have a million things I want to write, as soon as I find the energy so I hope you’ll keep checking back!