Laurie Penny, on her rape.
This probably doesn’t need any sort of signal boost, but I thought I’d do my little part to keep it circulating, because the topic means something to me. This is an important post, because it really makes something clear: until we let go of the illusions that a) nice guys don’t rape, and b) anyone who commits rape is totally incapable of being a nice guy in other parts of their life, we will never be able to have a proper grown up conversation about the topic. We must be able to understand that rape can be as much accident as malice, and that does not diminish the pain of the victims. We must let go of the urge to say “This person wouldn’t do that, he’s too nice, the girl must be lying”. It is possible for a person to be nice, *and* to have done that. Rape does not obliterate niceness, any more than niceness excuses rape.
BBC News – Arrests in Critical Mass bike ride near Olympic Park Last night, while it seems like my entire twitter feed was watching the Olympic opening ceremony, a group of cyclists were kettled and arrested. This is a group of cyclists who meet and perform this particular bike ride regularly, and with no problems. It is of course possible that some of them decided to so something stupid and/or illegal this time, but I can't imagine why they would, when they never have before, In other words: this looks an awful lot like the police deciding that an act that is usually legal and problem-free is suddenly illegal just because the Olympics is on, presumably because they believe they'll be able to get away with it because everyone is so dazzled by the opening ceremony. Please, spread this link around, because this would seem to be to high a price to pay for a bit of pageantry.