violence against women

There are far more questions than answers surrounding the case of the three kidnapped women in Cleveland who finally escaped their captors this week after up to a decade of imprisonment. Many details about their ordeal will certainly come to light in the coming weeks. But one question that should be at the forefront is why police didn’t find the missing women years ago.

Part of the answer is that Cleveland police held a dangerous assumption: that two of the victims, Amanda Berry and Michelle Knight, were missing because they had each run away. Tragically, this assumption led law enforcement to take their cases less seriously.

To tabloid readers they are bodies and blood. Stories of scandal. The irresistible macabre. But the voices of art and activism group Ni Una Más want us to know that the ninety one women killed recently in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico are daughters, mothers, sisters, schoolmates, friends. And they have names, though they no longer have their lives.

Women in Mexico face an appalling rate of violence and murder—official studies show 67 percent of Mexican women personally suffer some sort of violence in their life and murder rates of women have climbed for the past four years. That's just the official numbers, the actual rates are likely higher. 

Today, on International Women's Day, the Chiapas academic and perfomance research center Centro Hemisférico adds a message of life to a campaign to end death, inviting the community to the steps of the Church of Guadalupe to remember and honor the women they love—past and present—with poetry, flowers, and photos. For the last 11 months, the arts-based Ni Una Más campaign has taken to the streets of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas to reclaim public spaces and demand an end to violence against women. 

I'm not saying that violence should never be shown or described. We need our movies and TV shows and games and books to address issues of the violence in our culture, and violence against women is included in that. But some of these examples just play into the same old misogyny—without asking anything more of the audience—which is a shame and a missed opportunity.

If you are a service member on deployment or stationed overseas you may find yourself limited in the ways that you are able to spend your free time. You could spend your time doing PT (physical training), studying for exams, doing PT, maybe doing college work online, doing PT, or, if you are a gamer, spending some quality time with your console or computer and your choice of n00bs to pwn. But that can be difficult when the higher brass decides to limit what games you can purchase.

 Last Friday night, reality TV star/pop singer Tila Tequila was attacked by concertgoers at the 11th annual Gathering of the Juggalos in rural Southern Illinois. But you probably already knew that.

It's a story made in gossip blog heaven; a Playboy-model-turned-Myspace-celebrity-turned-reality-TV-star being attacked by the fans of the self-appointed "Most Hated Band in Music." Yet, both Tequila and the Insane Clown Posse are comparatively unpopular and disrespected, so why is it that Tila Tequila is the one getting the bad rap?! 

White lipstick called "Ghosttown," a greyish nail polish called "Factory," and an eyeshadow called "Sleepwalker," were just some of the products of the MAC/Rodarte Fall 2010 makeup collaboration themed around the Mexican bordertown of Juarez, one of the most dangerous cities in the world, where 400 women have been murdered and gone missing (and that's just the reported cases--actual statistics are probably much higher.) The faux pas has finally hit the fan though, and while MAC almost immediately backtracked and said they would donate all proceeds to Juarez groups, they just announced that they are not continuing with the line at all.

Via my home planet of Racialicious: Borderhouse deconstructs a new flash video game called "Hey Baby."

Borderhouse says:

The game is called "Hey, Baby", and it is a game about street harassment. It is a first-person shooter where you play as a woman walking around a city fighting off waves of men who approach you while repeating "classic" street harassment lines, everything from the notorious "Smile, baby" to shouted rape threats. Killing the harassers results in a gravestone popping up with their line engraved on it.