Group items tagged

The Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence is an organization that advocates awareness on intimate violence as a global issue. The website provides information on family life and focuses on strengthening the partnership between parents and children.

I think this website is really important because it focuses on intimate violence which affects not only women but children as well. The majority of the other bookmarked websites primarily discuss violence against women, and although that is obviously extremely important, I think it is also very important to look at how violence against women in the home can affect children and the ways to help families cope with intimate violence and the ways we as a world can try and stop it. SAIV works to raise awareness about this issue that occurs around the globe by grassroots movements and by bringing these issues to different sectors of the government, two very important movements that help in creating change. This website and SAIV are very important to our class because they work to bring to light intimate violence as a global issue and the ways we can become active to stop the violence and help families affected by intimate violence around the globe.

This site is about domestic violence perpetrated by police officers. I thought this site was interesting because it deals with a subset of domestic violence that is not always on the top of the discussion list. It talks about the added problems that victims have when their abuser is a cop who has been trained to be the authority figure.

I agree that this site is interesting and worth noting because it does happen and when it does, there is practically nothing a civilian victim can do against a government paid law enforcement officer. It was difficult for me to read because it reminded me of a classmate I had in high school who had been physically abused by his father who was a judge. His story was particularly difficult for me to understand because he had volunteered all of this information about his horrible home life without warning. It was also interesting to me because he had decided to leave his house to live with his grandmother, which is actually how we started carpooling. He was a year older than I, but he has a younger brother in my year who stayed at home with his parents. I never knew how to act around him knowing what I did even though he hadn't told me. The boy in my year must have had a crush on one of my best friends and had a poor way of showing it, which I think was partly due to his violent family dynamic. My girlfriend still tells me about how he stalked her and still calls and sends her odd and unwelcome messages.

I also agree that this site is very interesting. Not only does it expose a flaw of prosecuting domestic violence in our legal system, but also shows how traditional "masculine" roles influence domestic violence. I like that the author shows how police culture, which conforms to many stereotypes about masculinity, works to increase rates and intensity of domestic violence, rather than only looking at problems with the individual abusers. The only thing I didn't like about this article was that I felt it down played the difficulties that women who have not been abused by officers face. The beginning of the article made it seem as if there was a wide network of support and help for victims of domestic violence within the legal system, which is not typically the case.

I found this particular piece of art among several others under the category of on deviantart.com, an online community created for all sorts of artists. X4rsyzt3m, the artist, provided a short explanation of her piece, which included statistics about violence against women, particularly violence among intimate partners of which she is a victim. I read the comments below the work and was taken aback by what a person called Saywhaat and another called Humanisticparadox said in response to the piece. (I do not agree with either of them). Saywhaat was offended by the piece because she (I'm assuming it is a she) thinks that the artist is, "degrading not only [her]self but [her] entire sex" because the artist thinks that women should be treated differently, which I am not sure the artist is trying to say. I was personally offended by what Humanisticparadox said because he (he admitted to being a he) thinks that it is our fault that we are the weaker sex emotionally and physically and that we should be toughened up instead of protected.

This article investigates the experience of low-income Hispanic women in terms of their risk of intimate partner violence. The authors argue that because African American women and Hispanic women tend to be over represented in the low-income strata, their economic status affects the type and duration of abuse they may be susceptible.

This article is interesting because it is a study that compares the rate of IPV among Latinos and non-Latinos. It is interesting however because it delves into the impact of aproval of IPV as a result of cultural and alcohol related influences.

This sound clip interview discusses the first UK studies and survey of violence against women... well, not so much women as adolescent girls. I appreciated this news bit as it was addressing younger girls and women who are facing some of the same problems that older women are facing in marital or intimate relationships. Many of these young women are dealing with battering and typical types of domestic violence that most people only relate to older women. Christine Barter, senior research fellow for the School of Policy Studies at Bristol University is head of the research. Once the research is obtained, it is examined in relation to the government's policies. People are hoping to catch this violence early and teach girls about it so as to prevent it later in their lives. I find this to be a noble and valuable effort. Relates to past readings like Crenshaw, Yllo, Ptacek, Tjaden, and DeKeseredy.

Unaware before taking this class of reality, I too, like the majority of society, was influenced by the misconception that rape was a stereotypical image. I have come to find through taking this class that the majority of rape and physical assaults are experienced by females from a male perpetrator who is an intimate partner, including spouses, boyfriends, or dates. When searching ways in which the violence against women has been an issue under which proactive means have been taken toward awareness or even a solution, I came across the website for the Bahamas Crisis Center. This page offers a direct introduction to the issue with the poster that states, "When we got married, I promised to love, honour and obey him and he promised the same to me. I gave him my love, respect and my heart, but last night he betrayed that love and broke my heart. He RAPED me." This page seeks to directly address marital rape as an eminent threat to the well-being of women and the society at large by taking a problem that ordinarily occurs within the home and places it in people's faces. The video "Silent Pain" is a collage of images, words, songs, and interviews. It begins with a description of the emotions felt by women whom are betrayed and raped by their husbands. When asked if they were aware of what marital rape was, those interviewed replied "no" and of those who were female, they remarked that it is indeed, unacceptable while the males depicted it as "a condoned act of marriage". Fortunately, the video also attempted to show how the issue has become increasingly apparent in the media to raise social acknowledgment. The video ends with a detailed personal account of a woman who was raped by her husband. I believe this is a positive step toward making a private issue a public one that needs to urgently be addressed.

This was an amazingly difficult video for me to watch. The explicit images from films, reenactments, etc. were incredibly jarring. However, I think that this was a good thing because it really sent the message through to me, even more so than the readings we have been doing in this course, especially those from last week. I think it is great that you found this. Is this also implemented in the US or only in the UK? This might be something really good to place within the symposium!

McDonnell, Karen A., Andrea C. Gielen, Patricia O'Campo and Jessica G. Burke. 2005. "Abuse, HIV Status and Health-Related Quality of Life among a Sample of HIV Positive and HIV Negative Low Income Women." Quality of Life Research 14(4):945-957. This article is important because it looks at how a person's quality of life is affected by HIV and intimate partner violence. This helps to address the question of my paper (how rape and HIV status are related) in that it looks at how rape and HIV can affect a woman's quality of life. The quality of life argument is very important because it will add a more personal, and less academic look at HIV and IPV. This will add a perspective to my paper that an article merely focusing on the spread of HIV through rape cannot.

Kim, Julia C., Lorna J. Martin and Lynette Denny. 2003. "Rape and HIV Post-Exposure Prophylaxis: Addressing the Dual Epidemics in South Africa." Reproductive Health Matters 11(22, HIV/AIDS, Sexual and Reproductive Health: Intimately Related):101-112. This article is very important for my paper because it looks at the way that the South African government deals with post-exposure prophylaxis. This is important for this paper because it looks at one way that rape and HIV are linked. The link between rape and HIV, especially in South Africa is key to the paper because it constitutes a major risk of rape, especially in South Africa. Additionally, it argues that there is a very strong link between sexual violence against women and the spread of HIV.