Coalition To End Rape Culture (CERC) Rally Against Rape Culture at Umass Amherst
PHOTO CREDIT:
Hannah Cohen http://www.hannahcohenphotography.com/
Check out the Coalition to End Rape Culture on facebook!
http://www.facebook.com/groups/coalitiontoendrapeculture/
About CERC:
“In a rape culture people are surrounded with images, language, laws, and other everyday phenomena that validate and perpetuate rape. Rape culture includes jokes, TV, music, advertising, legal jargon, laws, words and imagery that make violence against women and sexual coercion seem so normal that people believe rape is inevitable.”
-http://upsettingrapeculture.com/rapeculture.html
The CEPA Gender Equity Core Team is organizing a coalition of organizations and individuals to engage the campus around the issue of rape culture. The mission of the Coalition to End Rape Culture (CERC) is to inspire critical discourse around the issue of rape and sexual violence, educate the campus community, change social norms, and demand that the administration implement programs to better address and combat the culture of violence that exists on campus.
We are planning a week of action against sexual violence and rape culture for the last week in February, Feb 25- Mar 1. We hope to host and facilitate a variety of events and actions, as well as publish critical columns in the Collegian during that week.
We will additionally be working on a proposal to present to the UMass administration demanding a mandatory online training on sexual violence and rape culture (similar to the one currently being used for drug and alcohol education) for all incoming students. We hope that this online program will be used in conjunction with an NSO session to help prepare students to challenge each other in changing our community’s discourse and behavior.
If you or your organization woud like to join this coalition in our movement against sexual violence, please do not hesitate to dive in headfirst! Come to any of our posted meetings to become acquainted with our organization and our members, and please share your ideas and information with the group. Ask question, make suggestions, start conversations, and take action!
If you or you organization would like support in hosting an event or action that relates to the CERC mission, please get in contact with us. We are hoping to build a strong network of mutual support across groups to create a community united over shared goals and values.
Hey. I am sorry for not being on in FOREVER! I fell into some major depression… I am doing much better now and hope to be on here more often.
Voting is just about the least political thing one does in this country. Occupy streets… not the voting booth. Is the ability to vote in an asshole every four years supposed to make me feel like we have democracy? All freedoms we do have in this country are the product of the struggles of workers and activists organizing on the ground. Democrat politicians have more in common with Republican politicians than they do with us, the working class. Their interests are the same. They just choose different ways of getting there. Just because we vote, doesn’t mean we are able to make any real decisions about what our government does. How is that democracy? If we want to be able to make decisions about what this country does and the issues that impact our lives, then we need to stand together strong and fight back. Power never gives anything up without a fight and a demand. We can have the power, if we organize. If the working class of the world all got together and spit on the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie would drown. Vote if you want to, but if you want to see change then join me on the streets. Organize protests, speak outs, educational meetings. Obama may not be the big bad scary monster that the GOP is, but don’t expect any huge improvements in your lives during his second term.
Only some of the reasons why we need a strong unified fight against rape culture!
quay-cur replied to your photo: Does the bigotry ever end?….
they want to do everything they can to punish and blame a woman for unwanted pregnancy, to the point where they distort the definition of rape to fit that belief
It is so disgusting and heartbreaking
People often ask me this. After a socialist revolution who will do the shit jobs nobody wants to do like cleaning toilets and mopping floors? I then look at them and answer. The bourgeoisie. Let the 1% do the shit jobs for a change. Once they die off there is another solution. When everything is produced based off of human needs and not profit, much more time will be free. Workers won’t need to spend nearly as much time slaving at a job, and there would be much more time to divvy up that work and still have plenty of time for leisure and recreational activities.
TRIGGER WARNING
One of my favorite parts of this great article:
You used the expression “legitimate” rape as if to imply there were such a thing as “illegitimate” rape. Let me try to explain to you what that does to the minds, hearts and souls of the millions of women on this planet who experience rape. It is a form of re-rape. The underlying assumption of your statement is that women and their experiences are not to be trusted. That their understanding of rape must be qualified by some higher, wiser authority. It delegitimizes and undermines and belittles the horror, invasion, desecration they experienced. It makes them feel as alone and powerless as they did at the moment of rape.
When you, Paul Ryan and 225 of your fellow co-sponsors play with words around rape suggesting only “forcible” rape be treated seriously as if all rapes weren’t forcible, it brings back a flood of memories of the way the rapists played with us in the act of being raped — intimidating us, threatening us,muting us. Your playing with words like “forcible” and “legitimate” is playing with our souls which have been shattered by unwanted penises shoving into us, ripping our flesh, our vaginas, our consciousness, our confidence, our pride, our futures.
Now you want to say that you misspoke when you said that a legitimate rape couldn’t get us pregnant. Did you honestly believe that rape sperm is different than love sperm, that some mysterious religious process occurs and rape sperm self-destructs due to its evilcontent? Or, were you implying that women and their bodies are somehow responsible for rejecting legitimate rape sperm, once again putting the onus on us? It would seem you were saying that getting pregnant after a rape would indicate it was not a “legitimate” rape.
I encourage EVERYONE to read this article in it’s ENTIRETY.
From website:
I demand the immediate resignation of Congressman Todd Akin who went on national television to defame victims of rape and all women when he said that pregnancy is “really, really” rare in cases of “legitimate rape.” Akin wants to destroy abortion rights for all women, including rape victims. His implication is clear: pregnant rape victims weren’t really raped. What an outrageous lie! Akin and the other right wing political bigots are carrying out a war against women and women’s rights by by perpetuating the most vile and sexist stereotypes. Akin must go!
you are a damn good person, for the record. keep on keepin' on. cheers, juli
Thanks a bunch! Same to you! SOLIDARITY!
It is my followers that keep me posting on this site…
To be honest when I first started this I never thought it would get this popular. xD
Does the bigotry ever end?….
![theatlantic:
Manic Pixie Dream Dissidents: How the World Misunderstands Pussy Riot
Imagine this: The three men sit in a Moscow court, awaiting their verdict. The youngest, an experienced dissident described by Western media as a “sultry sex symbol” with “Angelina Jolie lips,” glances at his colleague, an activist praised by the Associated Press for his “pre-Raphaelite looks.” Between them sits a third man, whose lack of glamour has led the New Republic to label him “the brain” and deem his hair a “poof of dirty blonde frizz.” The dissidents — or “boys” as they are called in headlines around the world — have been the subject of numerous fashion and style profiles ever since they first spoke out against the Russian government. “He’s a flash of moving color,” the New York Timeswrites approvingly about their protests, “never an individual boy.”
If this sounds ridiculous, it should — and not just because I’ve changed their gender. These are actual excerpts from the Western media coverage of Pussy Riot, the Russian dissident performance art collective sentenced to two years in prison for protesting against the government. Pussy Riot identifies as feminist, but you would never know it from the Western media, who celebrate the group with the same language that the Russian regime uses to marginalize them.
Read more. [Image: AFP/Getty]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m92c8zWuxK1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
