Thinking of the people of the towns of Mortlake, Edenhope, Swan Hill, Apollo Bay, Warrnambool, Inglewood, Ballarat and others. Of that grim map of the western districts of Victoria and all of the children who lived in those towns who were let down. There are hundreds and that is a national shame.
Hmmm, this bit fell off...
See @veragraf.bsky.social's book, Right Amount of Panic policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/trade/the-righ…
& @proflizkelly.bsky.social's idea of safety work.
See @veragraf.bsky.social’s book, Right Amount of Panic policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/trade/the-righ… & @proflizkelly.bsky.social's idea of safety work.
And if we’re angry when our fear is trivialised or ignored, god help us.
Women constantly do ‘safety work’ to avoid sexual violence, knowing odds are we’ll be blamed if that fails. We have to have the (impossible) ‘right amount of panic’.
If you’re brown, and a lesbian, even less space is ‘right’; you have to be both right and scrupulously polite.
#SamKerr #notguilty
A photo of a peak in the Grampians (Mt Abrupt/Mad-Dadjug), with sprinklers watering the Dunkeld football ground in front of it. Large swathes of the Grampians are being ravaged by bushfires, & with greatly rising temperatures the next two days, there is great fear that the fire will intensify.
Sitting around after a day inexpertly preparing for fire, discussing how at-risk we are, when we hear the un-ignorable fire-truck siren. Freeze. Panic. Then realise #Santa Claus Is Coming To Town & the kids up the road are about to get a present. #antipodean #surealism #truestory #grampians
A photo of part of the Grampians, in the west Victoria, Australia. Part of this area currently has a runaway bushfire.
If the fed government has a KPI for the percentage of country that burns while they continue their climate action go-slow, there should be bonuses for them at Christmas. Meanwhile, we watch with sickening dread the incineration of the glorious Grampians.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
I've been on bsky too much today! Before I go, some posts about the importance of grass roots feminism.
theconversation.com/squatting-ki...
@sasvic.bsky.social go.bsky.app/RjGuuMJ
Must read work on so called rape "victim withdrawals" and how recording practices undermine confidence of victims. "survivors are routinely described as ‘unwilling’, ‘uncooperative’, ‘reluctant’, ‘resisting’, and ‘disengaged’. This is a language rarely, if ever, used in descriptions of the suspect"
Devastating. And important questions to be answered about Ms Bell’s reference to #trafficking. What terrible violence.
www.theage.com.au/national/vic...
It’s surprising how many people, who are strong advocates for #regulation of, say, carbon polluting industries, are all for self-regulation when it comes to social media. I think they 1) misread the level of parents’ anxiety about sm & 2) trivialise the way it’s used for #csa & other deep harm.
I got the impression from the article that she might be in her 40s, but I’m not sure.
Thanks. I'd prefer that social media platforms are child safe. But they aren't, and they won't be for the foreseeable future. The people saying we should slow down, not rush into age verification, etc, are not the people at the frontlines of this issue, swamped by increased victims month on month.
Perhaps if academics and commentators had paid closer attention to the scale and hierarchy of online harms to children, they wouldn't have been taken by surprise like this?
The Australian govt is introducing legislation today to ban under 16s from social media, in the wake of calls for them to slow down the reforms and go through a more thorough policy development process. But it's too late. All state and territory govts have signed on and so has the opposition.
one problem amongst many, so that academics can move on to talk about the aspects of online sociality that they really want to study. But CSA is such an acute violation that it shouldn't be dispensed with in this way, and there are empirical, political and moral consequences for doing so.
Child sexual abuse raises such strong moral imperatives that it is often "bracketed out" of discussion, so that people can talk about other things that interest them. For instance, academic discussion of children's "digital rights" and "digital citizenship" often relativises the harms of CSA as just
Your 'bonus moment of doom' for today:
"...the Australian Institute of Marine Science said one area around Cooktown and Lizard Island had lost more than a third of its live hard coral – the biggest annual drop in 39 years of monitoring."
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Do you work in the sexual assault sector or provide support to survivors of child sexual abuse? We want to hear about your experiences with survivors of online child sexual abuse and exploitation. Pls fill out this brief survey! (Just for Australians)
unsw.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
And disturbing that some people who should have protected @jennaprice.bsky.social in this case were willing to throw her under the bus.
If only these tactics of abuse were both rare & ineffective.
A sobering dissection of the tactics used to try to silence and scare women who won’t dare to have opinions - try to get them sacked, threaten them and those they love, signal to your supporters that this person is to be punished. Sickening.
Back in 2012, a bunch of us decided we'd had enough of the way Alan Jones talked about women. We decided to #destroythejoint. Much love to all those women and men who helped. www.smh.com.au/national/i-t...
Education is fine. But one powerful way to educate perpetrators is to show them that the omertà is cracking, that impunity is fading. Charges like today’s and court cases like Dominique Pelicot’s are a more powerful form of education than most.
The son of Gisèle Pelicot, David, is quoted in today’s paper as saying ‘The omertà is over. We have to speak out.’
Their protection of other perpetrators and persecution of survivors isn’t ignorance. It’s resistance. They are protecting their own interests. They’re creating the conditions for their own impunity.
When it comes to men’s violence, we often talk about needing to offer education etc. Of course that’s important. But we know the stats. There are large numbers of men, inc in positions of power, who understand sexual violence perfectly. They’re perpetrating it.
