[TW for suicide, rape]

I’m not feeling particularly eloquent right now. I’ll keep this short and simple. A well known british blogger was raped while on holiday, and is currently recovering in hospital. The incident was violent enough that it made the news.

My thoughts go out to Alyzande. Anything I say towards this is going to be rather trite, so I’m not going to say anymore.

I would like to salute the male (and female) bloggers who have started participating in the White Ribbon Campaign. The White Ribbon Campaign is essentially about getting men to reduce gender based violence.

I’m not in the right headspace to give much shrift to the despicable post that cropped up on another gold blog. Criticalgoblin raised the spectre of ‘what if it is a sham?’. Describing rape as an ‘ailment’? Questioning the validity of her experiences on the basis of “I wouldn’t act like that if I was raped”? No matter the ‘spirit’ of critical rationality/skeptisim the post was intended to convey, what it does do is show a shining example of how the media, and people, often react to someone speaking out about rape or abuse. It’s his blog, he’s free to say it – I’m free to say that posting speculation about the rape of a woman he doesn’t know, while she is still in hospital, shows a new level of asshattery and lack of judgement.

There is a better and more lengthy analysis over at the Apple Cider Mage blog, who has posted a good summary of events if you wish to read about them. For me, I think I’m going to add another charity to my donation roll.

If you have strong feelings about this, I urge you to put up the white ribbon on your blog, or add your own voice to the fray in a more personal fashion, like Apple Cider did.  Personally I am going to attempt to write about this later. I’m angry, and have very few spoons, and I’d prefer to keep focus on the support for movement at the moment.

 

White Ribbon

List of international campaigns/resources

White Ribbon Twitter

Get Help or donate to RAINN

 

 

It has been very powerful seeing the gold blogging community, a circle I’m really not part of, pull together for this. You can see a summary of those who have participated at WoWEcon

 

There is also an excellent post up at Bibliotech.