Tag Archives: date rape

Girl Talk: Why Being Drunk Is A Feminist Issue

Kate Torgovnick/Kate-Book.comJune 1, 2011 //
Too Drunk?
If you're a drunk woman who gets raped, will you be taken seriously? Read More »

Last weekend, I stood on the subway platform, thumbing through a magazine and grumbling about how the next train wouldn’t arrive for another 11 minutes. As I waited, more and more feet descended the stairs. Two pairs caught my attention — one was manicured with bright red polish and strapped into a sky high silver sandals, the other was in electric blue stilettos. Both pairs of ankles wobbled as their owners awkwardly lowered their feet. It seemed like at any moment, one—or maybe both—of them would come plummeting down the stairs. A few unsteady steps later, two women appeared in full view—both their faces were flushed and they clung to each other’s arms for dear life. “Wha a you lookin’ at,” one of them slurred to a guy who shook his head as they passed.

These girls were trashed. It was only 8 p.m.

Watching them zig and zag down the subway platform, I felt adrenaline rush through me. I felt like I should do something. But what? These are adults. They’re just having fun, I thought. They can take care of themselves.

But then another part of me thought: how naive. Keep reading »

YWCA’s “Safety Siren” iPhone App Sends An S.O.S. Message For Help On A Sketchy Date

Jessica WakemanMay 20, 2011 //

Ten years ago, when I was 17, I got into a car with a young guy I barely knew who was a customer at my job. We drove deep into the woods, parked his car, and got stoned. Bryan* eventually became my boyfriend, but I often think back to that night when I went off with a strange guy — and more than a few other nights like it — that could have gone wrong. I’ve always been a risk-taker, but, knock on wood, all the risks I took when I maybe should have heeded some “stranger danger” have turned out safe. But I know not every guy or girl is so lucky and this is how date rape and other acts of violence happens.

Could smartphones help keep people safe on dates, at parties and during risk-taking adventures? An app from the YMCA YWCA in Canada called “Siren Safety” thinks it just might. Keep reading »

How USC Frat Boys Are Silently Judging You (And Plotting To Rape You)

Jessica WakemanMarch 9, 2011 //

The barfy things that frat boys do know no bounds. Fellow ladyblog Jezebel obtained an email yesterday which was allegedly written by a brother in USC’s Kappa Sigma fraternity instructing his brethren on how to “rate” their conquests. There’s a numbered scale, people. Oh, and rape jokes. Keep reading »

Pop Star Brian McFadden Pens New Ode To Date Rape

Chloe AngyalMarch 1, 2011 //


You would think that a song called “Just the Way You Are” would be about loving and accepting a person with all their faults and foibles and so on and so forth. But it turns out that the full title of Irish pop singer Brian McFadden’s new song is “Just the Way You Are (Drunk at the Bar).” And it turns out that this song, far from being about unconditional love and acceptance, is in fact a gift for the committee in charge of picking a new national anthem for the Republic of Daterapia. Check out this chorus, after the jump. Keep reading »

Rape Victim Was “Inviting” Sexual Assault With Provocative Dress, Flirting

Jessica WakemanFebruary 25, 2011 //

Watch out, because I am going to throw things. A judge in Manitoba has ruled that a 2006 rape victim who was wearing a tube top, high heels, makeup and no bra was sending “mixed signals” that “sex was in the air” to her rapist, Kenneth Rhodes, who was merely insensitive to the fact the sex near a “darkened highway” was not consensual. “This is a case of misunderstood signals and inconsiderate behavior,” said Queen’s Bench Justice Robert Dewar, who called Rhodes a “clumsy Don Juan.” Keep reading »

Why Are Politicians Attempting To Redefine Rape?

Jessica WakemanJanuary 31, 2011 //

The “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act” redefines “real” rape as only that which is “forcible” and has been co-sponsored by 173 mostly Republican legislators and was called a “top priority” by Speaker of the House John Boehner. Likely knowing that fully criminalizing abortion is impossible, politicians are going after the funding of abortions in certain cases of rape and incest. Slipped a roofie and raped while you are unconscious? Raped while you are blackout drunk and unable to consent? Sexually assaulted by your uncle at age 19? If you are poor and need governmental funding to help terminate a pregnancy resulting from this horrific acts, there will be no help for you.

I hope your breakfast is sitting well with you, because you’re about to get queasy if you read on. Keep reading »

11 Women Hospitalized For Spiked Drinks At Washington College Party

Jessica WakemanOctober 14, 2010 //

Scary times: 11 women were hospitalized after being possibly drugged with “roofies,” the date rape drug, at a Central Washington University college party on Saturday night in Washington state.

Police said 50 people attended an off-campus party and many of them began falling over and passing out after just one or two drinks. “Their level of intoxication just didn’t seem to make sense,” the police chief told CNN Radio. A bottle of vodka may have been spiked with an unknown substance and then distributed to partygoers, cops said, because kids who brought their own alcohol or drank beers from cans were fine. Given how almost all of those hospitalized were women, police say that women may have been targeted — possibly for sexual assault. Keep reading »

Dear Wendy Updates: Rape Survivor Responds

Wendy AtterberryJuly 6, 2010 //

In a new feature called “Dear Wendy Updates,” people I’ve given advice to in the past let us know whether they followed the advice and how they’re doing today. After the jump, we hear from “Survivor in Indiana,” who was wondering if/how/when she should tell her boyfriend of three months she’d been date raped in her last serious relationship. Did she tell him? Are they still together? How is she doing today? Find out after the jump. Keep reading »

Girl Talk: What Happened On Prom Night

Jessica WakemanMay 19, 2010 //

I shouldn’t even have gone to prom with Bryan. Just a couple of weeks prior he had made out with another girl and told me the purple marks on his neck came from soccer. Like the lovefool that I was, I believed him — until his best friend tattled on him over Instant Messenger. Oh, the acute heartbreak of a first love: I scribbled Ben Harper lyrics — “please bleed so I know that you are real, so I know that you can feel the damage you have done” — on my bedroom wall and devoted pages and pages to this fresh wound in my journal.

Still, I wanted to go on as if none of this had happened. I had just delivered a bouquet of roses to his class on Valentine’s Day. I had just lost my virginity on his bedroom floor while listening to Dave Matthews Band. I had just tanked my grades in Algebra II ditching class with him. What’s more, his mother actually baked casseroles for dinner and grounded him when he flunked AP calculus tests! That is to say they were so blissfully, utterly normal. Given the drinking, prescription drug use and daily acts of familial terrorism at my house, I clung to my first real, serious boyfriend like a life raft. Keep reading »

Kiely Williams Thinks Blacking Out And Having Sex Is “Spectacular”

Amelia McDonell-ParryApril 8, 2010 //


Kiely Williams — the Disney star who used to be in that beloved-by-tweens girl group, The Cheetah Girls — is a royal dumb-ass. The video for her new single, “Spectacular,” is a tale of a drunken night out which culminates in having sex with a guy whose name she doesn’t remember. (FYI, the video has a couple shots of some bare male booty midway through, so could be NSFW.) Basically, it’s an epic date rape tale set to a groovy dance beat. Now, Williams claims the song and video are her way of bringing attention to a “serious women’s health and safety issue.” She says:
“Young women across the country get intoxicated and have unprotected sex. That’s a fact. I recorded the song to bring attention to this frighteningly prevalent activity. It is absurd to infer or suggest that I am condoning this behavior.”

Keep reading »

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