Hunt's article is in response to an earlier Guardian piece by Mark Kermode, who admits he isn't really a game player but draws parallels to the horror movie genre, and ultimately concludes that outsiders can't judge an art form they don't understand:

With almost any genuine art form, the most important works can rarely be taken at face value, and are only fully appreciated by those who have an affinity for the medium. Today, the British Board of Film Classification prides itself in bringing that kind of knowledge to bear when rating horror films.

Now videogames are the tabloid press's demon du jour. So, when I hear murmurings about "violent video games" such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (left), I tend to pay less attention to the opinions of MPs than to writers such as Charlie Brooker, who spends his life gazing at a TV screen. Brooker described CoD:MW2 as "the Citizen Kane of repeatedly shooting people in the face" concluding: "Don't worry, it won't turn anyone into a killer." I believe him. Why? Because he knows his subject. The game is rated 18, is not intended for kids and as far as I'm concerned it is no more of a threat today than The Evil Dead was 25 years ago.

Hunt was apparently moved to respond, pointing out that gamers are generally a hostile bunch (how is this news?) and gender based stereotypes can have a hazardous effect in the real world. As a feminist, anti-racist, and gamer, I concur - it's an ugly digital world out there. But I found myself sighing with frustration after reading the article.

Hunt's argument appears to hinge on two points.

The first, the idea that all video games contain content similar to RapeLay - the Japanese rape simulator game that made international headlines - is ridiculous. Hunt writes:

[Equality Now, Hunt's organization, led an] international campaign called on the Japanese government to ban games that promote sexual violence against women and girls. Fans of these games were outraged. They asked us why we were targeting RapeLay when, they said, it was mild compared to similar available games. In Japan there is a whole genre of extreme pornography, known as hentai, which takes in cartoons and comic books as well as videogames. Imagery includes women and girls being molested, stalked and gang-raped.

Yes. Those are games used for pornographic purposes, mainly, in the same way that major companies will use games as advertising, and educators can use games as an instructional tool. In this case, the video game is one type of format for that type of content - it isn't necessarily a reflection on the industry at large. And, just as no one is offering up the latest skin flick from Vivid Pictures to the Oscars, RapeLay falls pretty far outside of the boundaries of the types of games that would earn the title of "art."

The second point is a bit sticker - it deals with Grand Theft Auto, one of the gaming industry's top selling and most contentious franchises, arguing that the games help reinforce harmful stereotypes:

But if games such as RapeLay can now be classified as art, maybe the popular media promotion of sexual violence against women is so normalised that we don't even pay attention any more. Does "killing" a prostituted woman in Grand Theft Auto just reconfirm to a gamer the "lesser value" of women in prostitution generally?

And that it does. We make video games, and many of them follow the norms of our culture - so what the culture values is reflected within the gaming environment. It is true, with video games becoming a popular past time more and more, people are exposed to these virtual worlds - and more and more people are calling attention to the problematic aspects of gaming, like its whole-hearted embrace of sexism. And Grand Theft Auto is certainly no exception. However, there are a great many women who play GTA - and I include myself in this count. So while, it is easy for my gender and racial outlook to pinpoint a great many issues with the game itself - a lack of decent women characters outside of love interests and sex workers tops my list - I'm also listening to the criticism as a fan and player.

Here's what gender based criticism of GTA sounds like to someone who plays the franchise:

"Excuse me - I know you're busy attacking with people with chain saws, fleeing from burning crackhouses, acquiring new territory for your gang, and coordinating heroin shipments, but I'd really like to take a moment to discuss the deplorable way you treated that prostitute!"

Now, this isn't to say that Grand Theft Auto has no issues with gender and representation, or that an argument can't be made for normalizing images of violence against sex workers or reinforcing other harmful societal norms, including racial stereotyping. But it can be hard to launch that argument when the in-game norm makes places you in the role of a trigger happy underworld kingpin. This isn't an environment of moral, upstanding citizens.

When Grand Theft Auto IV released, it was seen as something far closer to art than entertainment. As many have pointed out, it isn't the violence that makes the game so special, but rather the intrinsic theme of moral ambiguity. The complex narrative of the game, combined with a lush background and the freedom to do as you will, presents an immersible experience rather than violence for the sake of violence. Rapelay was a game created as a masturbatory aid.

These things are not on the same level.

I do not object to Hunt attempting to critique a flourishing media environment, and make people aware of issues of gender and sexualized violence in video games. It will be work that is necessary if video games truly want to make the full transition (at least in some genres) from base entertainment to art. However, I do object to her flattening the full world of video games, which encompasses everything from Metroid to Little Big Planet to Super Smash Bros. to Spore, as if it is all one teeming mass of violence and perversion. There are many, many reasons why people are players. And, if one seeks to truly understand the difference between video games and pornography, I would suggest they start by picking up a controller.

These Videogames Are Not Art. They Are Extreme Pornography [Guardian]
Do Violent Computer Games Turn Us Into Killers? [Guardian]
Equality Now [Official Site]
The Best-Selling Video Games [Newsweek]
Open Letter Implores Games Industry: "Don't Forget Women" [Border House]
Reviews: "Grand Theft Auto IV" will change your life [Salon]
"Grand Theft Auto IV" is a dark urban masterpiece [Salon]
How Can Grand Theft Auto Transition from Base Entertainment to Art? [Cerise]

Earlier: U.S. Ban On Rape Simulation Game Not Likely

Like most people who succumbed to the sweaty, boozy, spray-tanned draw of Jersey Shore last week, I was taken aback when, during the highlights preview, I saw that twitchy lunatic haul off and smash Snooki in the face. The scene, like the punch itself, was jarring, mostly because, as a female friend of mine put it, "A man who does that is perfectly comfortable not even acting like he respects women." On top of that, that punch was hard. Nevertheless, Snooki's beating wasn't anything I considered unairable—not by MTV's standards, and certainly not by Jersey Shore's standards. In the series' first two episodes, for instance, not only do we see one of the male housemates punch another guy who was "lookin' at him" (which is every crazy jerk's Achilles' heel, by the way), we also see a man vomit all over a coffee table, women calling other women "whores," and, in the same preview reel containing the Snooki punch, several incidents of male-on-male and female-on-male violence.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, after first seeing Jersey Shore on Saturday, I didn't think much of Snooki or the punch until yesterday, when Irin posted "There's Nothing Funnier Than a Woman Getting Punched in the Face." After reading the post and the comments beneath it, I was again taken aback, though not by just the punch this time.

One commenter summed up the attack thusly: "Men hitting women violates a social contract ... Men on men violence or women on men violence doesn't have the same implications." Another said, "When I first saw the clip on the previews for the show, I had hoped that the guy was aiming to punch somebody else and accidentally hit Snooki." And still another noted, "I'm ... very much against men hitting women."

Now, you'll not ever get me to say or agree with the wrongheaded Mad Lib that is "If women want equality, then..." However, I find it remarkably troubling that a handful of Jezebel readers—a demographic distinctly aware of some of the world's most stupid violence—is so comfortable talking about violence as if it's something to be categorized and rated.

Yes, domestic violence against women is a serious issue, and much worse than a barroom brawl between two drunken males. But why is it unimaginably worse for an asshole to haul off and hit Snooki than for an asshole to haul off and hit a man Snooki's size, for no reason whatsoever? Why is random violence—again, not premeditated, protracted violence, like war rapes and domestic abuse—something MTV should consider not showing when against women, but air at will when it's against men? The government has laws in place to protect America's most vulnerable victims—battered wives, children, elders, etc.—from calculated attacks, as it should. But attempting to argue that some mindnumbingly stupid bit of violence, like that that befell Snooki, is better than some other stupid bit of violence, even marginally, is a slope slippery with blood.

Two weeks ago, it's very possible that Tiger Woods' wife beat him bloody and then chased him out of their home with a golf club. At the thought of this—a man being domestically abused by his wife—one clearly skeptical Jezebel commenter wrote, "Are we labeling every semi-physical interaction between couples as domestic abuse nowadays?" Presumably, the idea here is that violent women (like Elin Nordegren) lose their heads, while violent men (like Chris Brown) are monsters.

Unfortunately, I'm all too familiar with the taxonomy of violence. Six years ago, at late-night taco shop in Tucson, Arizona, a table of drunk jackasses in glittery t-shirts made a comment about my friend's breasts while I was in the bathroom. I exited just in time to see her lifting her tray of nachos and dumping it all over one of the guy's heads. The three men immediately stood up and squared off with my friend, and I ran over and put myself between them and her. "I'm sorry she did that," I told them, my friend still screaming obscenities at them behind me. "But let's let this one go, huh?" They didn't. Instead, one of them cracked me in the side of the face while I turned around to try and calm my friend, who was in tears at that point. I fell hard, hitting my skull on a table on the way down.

When I came to, my face was in a pool of my own blood, and an ambulance was on its way. I couldn't remember where I was, and the guy who beat me was long gone. But to this day I'm almost certain I knew what he was thinking the instant before he smashed my face in and gave me 36 stitches in my head: "I can't hit a woman."

Cord Jefferson is writer-editor. His work has appeared in 'National Geographic', 'Filter', 'The Awl', 'The Root' and on MTV.

In the almost two weeks since his Thanksgiving weekend car crash, much has been speculated about the state of Tiger Woods's marriage...and the reason for the crash itself. (In a press conference last week, the Florida Highway patrol announced that its representatives saw no evidence of anything but reckless driving and, in a statement a few days later, Woods confessed to "transgressions.")

Of course, Tiger's reported infidelity and problems with his wife are private matters, but matters that filtered through to the public consciousness long ago. Nothing better epitomizes this than this past Saturday's SNL skit with Keenan Thompson playing Tiger Woods and Blake Lively as his wife Elin.

The skit moves the assumptions about what happened to Tiger Woods three steps forward. "Elin" is shown standing behind Woods at a press conference, during which Woods makes increasingly feeble excuses as to his battered state, finally holding up a sign saying "help me." Many of the excuses the writers provide are classic lines from the domestic violence "script" ("I fell down the stairs...") and Elin hovering behind him menacingly is supposed to add to the laughs.

Obviously, many people found this funny. But in the context of how we talk about domestic violence in this country, I found it downright depressing. It's hard enough to get these sorts of conversation going without a catalyst - reports on domestic violence often go unremarked upon, and unless there is a celebrity hook, most news outlets will not spend much time going into detail about those reports. And, as we saw in the case of Chris Brown and Rihanna - the latter was the musical guest on SNL, as Hortense pointed out - even if it eventually emerges that domestic violence did occur in a high-profile couple, most of the public conversation revolves around blaming the victim and trying to silence discussion entirely. But, as Elizabeth Mendez Barry wrote over on The New Agenda, the way in which we frame such conversations has a great many unintended consequences:

The Bloods have a strict policy against domestic violence. That's what a 16-year-old male affiliate proudly told me last year before a weekly "gang awareness" meeting of about fifteen teens, most of them Crips, Bloods or Latin Kings, at a high school in Castle Hill, the Bronx. That week, the topic was domestic violence, and several members of the group, including the 16-year-old, said that hitting a woman was never acceptable. Others argued that there were situations where it just couldn't be helped.

The conversation turned to an article I had written about domestic violence in the hip hop industry for Vibe. The rapper Big Pun grew up near the high school, and his devastating abuse of his wife (which started when the couple was just 16) was described in the piece. "I heard she cheated on him," said the only young woman in the group, and others repeated some of the many rumors that swirled around Pun's wife when she told her story (up until then she had been Soundview's favorite widow). Several people enthusiastically launched into scenarios where it was OK to hit a woman. There were many. The bottom line: sometimes you've got to teach a woman a lesson if she gets out of line. It sounded like a man's responsibility.

In the midst of the rationalizing, one usually talkative young man stood up and walked out. When he returned twenty minutes later, he quietly told the group that his aunt had recently been murdered by her abusive boyfriend. It was no longer a hypothetical conversation. The jokes stopped. Young men who were significantly invested in their inner gangsters gave them time off, and started talking about how domestic violence had affected their lives–and it had affected most of them. The young woman, who minutes before had been arguing in favor of beating females who didn't know their place, talked about how despite the rules, male gang members beat up on female gang members. Behind her swagger, she seemed anxious.

Why discuss teenage gang members when the issue at hand is a couple of unaffiliated celebrities? Because frank conversations like the one I described are rare, but they're crucial to stopping relationship violence and healing the wounds it inflicts not just on its victims, but on their families, and even on abusers, many of whom grew up in abusive households themselves. Because of one young man's honesty about his own experiences, everyone else anted up. The conversation got past knee jerk reactions, and revealed some of the pain lurking behind them. It certainly didn't resolve all the issues that came up, but it was a start that gave a group of teens an opportunity to share the conflicting emotions they had about the issue.

Teenagers and children are listening to how we treat these conversations. With Chris Brown and Rihanna, many different groups, writers, and bloggers spoke out against victim blaming, about stereotyping based on race or nationality and about quickly forcing someone into the advocate role.

With Tiger Woods it's a bit more difficult. It's true that we do not know exactly what happened, in large part because Woods and his family aren't elaborating and, perhaps more importantly, because the State of Florida sees no further reason to suspect domestic violence. Thing is, with skits like the one shown on SNL, the message being sent is that it is okay to joke about punishing men with force. That it's understandable for women to react to allegations of infidelity with violence. Such demonstrations tell us that men bearing the brunt of a woman's rage should be the subject of laughter, not concern.

Some, of course, won't see what the big deal is. Admittedly, I didn't either - until recently. I was walking through New York one night with a friend when we passed a heterosexual couple who appeared to be having an argument - but with an inverted dynamic. In this case, the male (who was taller and heavier set than the woman) was trying to retreat while the female aggressively screamed, pulled and tugged at him. I sighed and kept going. After we got about a block up the street, my friend stopped me. "I'm sorry, and I'm sorry for dragging you into this, but we really have to go back." She explained that her brother was in a situation with an ex-girlfriend that was violent and full of manipulation, but that neither police, nor his apartment security took seriously the fact that his petite ex-girlfriend was out to do him bodily harm. "I have to help," she pressed. We turned around. Standing on the corner closest to the still-warring couple, she asked, "I'm sorry to be intrusive, but do you need any help?"

"Mind your business bitch!" shouted the woman, now trying to leap onto the man's back.

"Yes, I do," he said. The woman hit him.

For the next twenty minutes, the four of us engaged in horrible game of frogger: my friend and I would flag down a cab, and the woman would physically block the man from getting in and leaving the scene. Repeatedly, he lifted his hands, making sure to announce loudly "I am not touching you, I am not trying to touch you, please let me get in the cab."

Occasionally, the woman would remember we were around and would scream at us to leave - she was insistent that he come home with her and not to his house. After the third pissed off cabdriver left with no charge, we decided to call the police. The man didn't want us to leave and the woman showed no signs of giving in. When the cops showed up a few minutes later, one of the officers rolled his eyes. We left.

Even with that experience, I might have not taken violence against men seriously - except for the fact that it kept cropping up in seemingly strange places. A coworker laughed off a prominent mark on his face with a bashful, "oh, you know the wife." A friend asked me to accompany him to pick up his child in an increasingly rancorous (and increasingly violent) shared custody situation. Another coworker initiated divorce proceedings when the honeymoon went sour and his wife started taking literal bites out of his skin.

I know many people will shrug this off as well - but it's worth asking why we sweep violence against women under the rug, and play violence against men for laughs, but are still too afraid to risk confronting any of these issues directly. Saturday Night Live writers: I'm asking you first.

Update: TMZ reports that The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence is not pleased:

During the show, the audience laughs, but Smith claims, "There's nothing funny about this story, particularly if violence was part of the events that took place ... I hope that SNL refrains from using this kind of skit in the future as it diminishes people's support for victims of domestic violence."

Beyond Gossip, Good and Evil [The New Agenda]
Domestic Violence Group Rips SNL's Tiger Sketch [TMZ]

Earlier: SNL Brings Us "Shy Ronnie," The Salahis, And Gossip Girl: Staten Island
Game Over: Woods Charged With Reckless Driving; No Evidence Of Domestic Violence
"Some Simple, Human Measure Of Privacy": A Textual Analysis Of Tiger Woods

Kristof begins by discussing how the problem of the 20th century was slavery and gender inequity is the major problem of the 21st. He and WuDunn then launched into a long-ranging discussion about their observations from global conflict zones. Celebrities like Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Ben Affleck, Demi Moore, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also did segments for the show.

While the effort was wonderful for consciousness raising, some issues felt as though they were glossed over. For one thing, images of suffering women were shown often - but where were those who inflicted the suffering? A warlord was featured at the beginning of the show, but perpetrators were conspicuously absent from this narrative. Where were the pimps? Former sex slave Long Pross was stabbed in the eye by a female pimp - but this was barely touched upon. In the clip above, Kristof also brings up how the owner for one of the brothels is also an employee of the local police force.

Watching the segment reminded me of the frustration many activists felt when reading The Woman's Crusade article in the Saving The World's Women issue in the NY Times magazine. As Melissa over at Shakesville wrote:

If I'm not mistaken, I just read seven pages that are the philosophical equivalent of "She got raped." Passive. Rape is something that happens to women. Something that gets done to them.

So, apparently, is worldwide institutional oppression.

I don't guess I need to say that I am all for giving women around the world every tool, every resource, every dollar and dinar, every bit of choice and opportunity and access, everything possible to lift themselves up and achieve everything they could want or imagine.

But how can we talk about lifting women up without a serious discussion of, no less without more than the merest passing reference to, who and what has been keeping them down?

The segment focused on women's oppression, but glossed over other complicating factors. For example, Kristof actually purchased two girls from sexual slavery and returned them to their villages. One girl remained in her village and wed - the other went back to the brothels, presumably in search of drugs. Kristof mentioned that this made him understand that "freeing" someone is "more than just opening a door" - but that type of analysis was lacking in the articles and segments that Kristof appeared on. Instead, the focus was on feel-good narratives and painful images of poverty and suffering.

On Oprah's website, she has a registry sub-site set up to help.

The various ways to assist (financial and awareness-based) are helpful, but is human intervention enough in the face of structural and societal problems of this magnitude?

George Clooney, Ben Affleck, Demi Moore And Hillary Clinton [Oprah]

Related: Half The Sky Movement [Official Site]

The Women's Crusade [NY Times]
Here's Your Big Chance To Ask: What About The Men? [Shakesville]

"Hit the Bitch" is the campaign, which shares the same name as the advergame-style simulation that accompanies it. You play a man (represented by a disembodied white forearm and hand) in some sort of altercation with a woman you know. (I was unable to find a translation of the content from Danish). At various points, the woman provokes you, at one point flipping you the bird. As you smack her, the meter creeps slowly upwards. The way to end the game is to continue slapping the girl until your meter moves from 100% pussy (no hits) to 100% gangsta (around ten hits).

After reaching the end, the girl falls to the floor, and you are greeted with a 100% Idiot message, as well as a scolding in Danish. Statistics also flash over the screen, which are presumably about the death toll of physical violence.

I finished the game unnerved - the long slog to get to the end wasn't at all rewarding (unless you get off on images of violence) and the tsk-tsking at the very end isn't nearly enough to counter the bruality of the game play, which can be done using a mouse or a webcam to control the hits. Adfreak shares this feeling of unease:

Setting up an interface where you're encouraged to slap and punch a woman seems pretty extreme. It's almost like an advergame, except you're delivering an adverbeating! (You can use the mouse, or connect with your Webcam and swing at the girl with your hand.) Getting called a "100% idiot" at the end doesn't feel like much of a rebuke. Perhaps you're supposed to feel guilty, like a real-life abuser might, for continuing to hit the woman just to see what happens next?

What bothered me most about the game was definitely the sexualization of the abuse. From the opening scene, it is inescapable.

Sociological Images points us toward the documentary Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex, and Power in Music Video, and its segment on sexualized violence. This snippet discusses the prevalent practice of showing violent imagery in a sexualized context, and the stunning real life consequences:

This game is saturated with the sexy-violence meme, from the woman's cute clubbing outfit (complete with a short leather skirt)...

...to the post-hit pouty face she makes (before her face is completely bruised that is.)

The project is way too glamorized and stylized to have the impact the organization hoped. Instead, the project ends up reinforcing the idea that violence is sexy, while allowing their ultimate message to fall to the wayside.

Official Site [Hit the Bitch]
Anti-violence site urges you to 'hit the bitch' [AdFreak]
Sexualized Violence in a Lady Gaga Video [Sociological Images]
Official Site [Dreamworlds 3]

This is the pop singer's first big TV interview since the domestic violence episode she very publicly suffered. Sawyer was sympathetic regarding Rihanna's initial decision to go back to Chris Brown, pointing out that it takes a woman an average of seven attempts to leave an abusive partner, to which Rihanna responded "eight or nine actually." One of the saddest parts of the interview was the singer's admission that she still feels ashamed of the violence she suffered. She says, "I fell in love with that person. That's embarrassing. That's embarrassing that that's the type of person that I fell in love with, so far in love, so unconditionally that I went back." And even though she adds that, "It's completely normal to go back. You start lying to yourself," she says she feels guilty about the message her return to Brown sent to her fans.

This is a difficult part of the interview to watch, because Rihanna seems to authentically reproach herself for somehow being a "bad" role model. She says, "I realize that my selfish decision for love could result in some young girl getting killed." It's a big burden to shoulder, especially for someone still recovering from a trauma, and especially for someone who is herself so young. Yet alongside all the people who blamed Rihanna for her own abuse (whom she addresses when she tells Sawyer, "I didn't cause this") were people who demanded that Rihanna stand up as an example of domestic violence victims everywhere and essentially show them what to do. It's a challenge she appears to have taken up, as when she tells young victims "eff love," but it may not be a particularly fair one.

Rihanna got some flack for her recent single "Russian Roulette," which some people feel glorifies violence, and it's clear that, at least for a while to come, she'll be viewed as a Singer Who Is Also an Abuse Victim. It's admirable that she's chosen to turn the violation of her privacy (she talks ruefully about how she felt when her infamous post-abuse photo was released) into an opportunity to help other women, but it doesn't seem entirely just that she's forced to be a role model — and it's especially unfair that she has to feel guilty about what is, as Sawyer points out, sadly normal conduct, just because it took place in the public eye. The job of preventing future domestic violence should fall to law enforcement, to social workers, to trained anti-domestic violence educators, and to parents, who need to raise children to know that abuse is never acceptable. It shouldn't fall to the victims themselves, no matter how famous they are. And while perhaps Rihanna can derive some peace from helping other women, she shouldn't have to struggle with guilt on top of everything else she's been through.

Rihanna Speaks Out In Exclusive Interview [ABC]

I'd never gone into a movie knowing as much about it, shot for shot, as I did Antichrist. And yet, I was still shocked. Or at least grossed out enough that I had to bury my face in my hands at strategic moments. Despite its moments of beauty (you may have heard a little something about the others?) I couldn't get past the movie's essential misanthropy - although if the experience did indeed prove a therapeutic fever-dream for the director, well, good on him. The New Yorker's Anthony Lane remarked,

At Cannes, the film received two prizes: one for Charlotte Gainsbourg, as Best Actress, and a scornful anti-trophy for von Trier, awarded for misogyny by the Ecumenical Jury. How the two should be squared I am unsure. The movie certainly shudders with a terror of female power, and the last thing we see is a monstrous regiment of women, their faces blanked out, streaming up a hillside, like the nightmare of a Puritan preacher. Yet so plain is Gainsbourg's dramatic dominance, as opposed to her place in von Trier's mad ideological scheme, that she carries the tale with a conviction barely hinted at in the script.

Last month, a British writer and critic, Jessica Mann, hit on these same issues when she declared in an essay that she could no longer review increasingly brutal crime fiction, filled with violence against women. This set off a small tempest, especially when she clarified that her objection wasn't to do with straightforward sexism, since the most extreme examples were by female writers. Rather, she just didn't want to read it. While the two can definitely start a discussion of the role of gaze, intent and control, my basic feeling was one of. well, agreement. Because that's what I felt watching - or rather, not watching - Antichrist. My objection wasn't intellectual but visceral. And if no one's looking, how effective is the lesson?

Trouble In Eden [New Yorker]
Sexist Violence Sickens Crime Critic [Guardian]
"Feminists" Love Mutilated Women? [New Yorker]

A new article in the Daily Beast highlights the stories of two such women, Amina and Habiba. (The names in the article were changed for privacy.) Habiba enjoyed a thriving childcare business, until one horrific day:

Habiba's kindergarten at the end of a narrow and dusty alley is still open, but only barely. A year ago, laughter and the sounds of children playing floated from the new two-story white house with rows of little red and yellow chairs filling its freshly painted living rooms. Then Habiba's son was kidnapped by men demanding more than $25,000 from his mother, an outrageous sum for an entrepreneur saddled by startup debt and struggling to keep capital flowing through her young business. Fearing for her own safety and that of her other children, she shuttered her classrooms and moved her family to Pakistan while she awaited word from the men who took her son. The family's life savings vanished as Habiba spent what cash she had to cover travel and living expenses in Peshawar. By the time she returned to Afghanistan months later, her customers were gone, her business was hobbled and her debts had mounted. [...]

Female entrepreneurs now see their families threatened regularly. Sons, nephews, and sometimes the entrepreneurs themselves are abducted by thugs demanding tens of thousands of dollars, a death knell for businesswomen in a capital-starved country where banks don't tend to lend to small businesses, particularly ones owned by women without either collateral or a track record. The Afghan National Police have proved powerless to rein in the criminality now menacing the entrepreneurs the nation needs, if it is ever to stand on its own two feet without the financial backing of the increasingly impatient international community. (Habiba's son was released after being held for about six weeks.)

As tragic as Habiba's story is, the problem touches the lives of many women in Afghanistan. The article explains how many women turned toward entrepreneurship in the wake of the Taliban's reign of terror, as traditional options for employment closed in the face of extremism. As Afghanistan struggles to rebuild, women who are creating and managing businesses are the government's best hope toward steering the country's future. Sadly, with so many women being targeted, the hopes for women - as well as the economic health of the country - are slowly dribbling away.

For Amina*, an entrepreneur who owns a petrol distribution firm, it is too late for protection. Her small business grew steadily during the past few years, with revenue climbing after she opened a gas station convenience store. Criminals caught on to her success, however, and kidnapped her. Her family scrambled to gather the more than $100,000 in ransom money her abductors demanded, eventually winning her release, but she now owes friends and relatives tens of thousands of dollars. Profits Amina saved to grow her enterprise are gone-instead of financing investment, those dollars now fund her kidnappers. The fledgling entrepreneur's dream of expanding her distribution operations to neighboring provinces is destroyed and her company has run out of working capital. It is likely her dozen employees will soon be jobless.

Like Habiba, Amina was eager to build her business and help rebuild her nation. These entrepreneurs, like many others in Afghanistan, relied upon their ventures to support their extended families and to fund their children's education. Now, drained of cash and out of hope, they are eager to leave the country. But that might bring more danger, not less.

Reports like these underscore how important it is to take a full, comprehensive approach to solving a societal problem. As wonderful as microloan programs like Kiva can be, if women are persecuted for exercising these opportunities or for growing their businesses, all of our best efforts will be for naught.

Thugs Plague Women Entrepreneurs [The Daily Beast]

Well, luckily for us, Broadview Security (formerly Brinks) knows the risks that come with being a successful young woman who owns her own home. They've already made it pretty clear that every dame's a potential damsel in distress - especially young, hip ones! - and that the world's full of lurking psychopaths who are invariably instantly deterred from malevolent intent by a beeping security system. Now, they're driving home that you can't trust anyone. Oh, except, of course, the cute cop who answers the alarm.

Because being a candle-loving, yogurt-lapping lady, you'll want to be able to adopt the inappropriately flirty body-language we all favor mere minutes after a violent scare! And Broadview (emphasis on 'broad') gives you that freedom!

Related: Security Systems And The Culture Of Fear

So, how did this start? According the BBC's country profile of Guinea, Camara rose to power in a "bloodless coup" after the death of President Lansana Conte at the end of last year. Initially, Camara was popular with the people, promising democracy and a more transparent society.

However, in an article published post-massacre, the BBC reports that Camara's behavior had grown increasingly contradictory in the months leading up to the protest:

Following the coup, he said he had not come to power by chance, listing a patriotic spirit and generosity among his leadership qualities.

His popularity has now dwindled, as he appears to be reneging on his promises of a transition to democracy and has shown signs of wanting to hold onto power.

After shooting at the protesters, the soldiers in the square decided to take their domestic terrorism one step further - they began to rape and sexually assault women in the streets. The New York Times reports:

Cellphone snapshots, ugly and hard to refute, are circulating here and feeding rage: they show that women were the particular targets of the Guinean soldiers who suppressed a political demonstration at a stadium here last week, with victims and witnesses describing rapes, beatings and acts of intentional humiliation. [...]

One photograph shows a naked woman lying on muddy ground, her legs up in the air, a man in military fatigues in front of her. In a second picture a soldier in a red beret is pulling the clothes off a distraught-looking woman half-lying, half-sitting on muddy ground. In a third a mostly nude woman lying on the ground is pulling on her trousers.

Rape is a fairly common tool of military repression in Africa, but large-scale violence against women has not been a previous government tactic here. "This time, a new stage has been reached," said Sidya Touré, a former prime minister who was also beaten at the stadium and said he had witnessed brutalities there. "Women as battlefield targets. We could never have imagined that."

"Where could people get the idea to start raping women in broad daylight?" Mr. Touré asked, in an interview at his home here. "It's so contrary to our culture. To molest women using rifle barrels. ... "

In response to this dire situation, the international community has called for an intervention. France, the former colonial ruler of Guinea - located on the west coast of Africa and bordering Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Mali, Liberia and Sierra Leone - has threatened to cease all business with the country; Camara has responded that Guinea is a sovereign nation and will deal with its own "internal matters."

Amid these tensions, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has stepped to the forefront of crisis. In keeping with her pledge to make women the cornerstone of her national security strategy, she has already released a statement condemning the actions.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for "appropriate actions" against a military government that she said "cannot remain in power."

"It was criminality of the greatest degree, and those who committed such acts should not be given any reason to expect that they will escape justice," Mrs. Clinton told reporters in Washington. She said that the nation's leader, Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara, and his government "must turn back to the people the right to choose their own leaders."

But will these efforts be enough? The position of the US is a major influence on international policy, but will it work in nations like Guinea, who have tenuous ties, at best, to the United States?

"In America's view, Moussa Dadis Camara can't be president, and we are going to hold him to that," [William Fitzgerald, deputy assistant secretary of state] said.

He acknowledged that "America's leverage is not as strong here as it is in many parts of Africa," but he said that sanctions, a visa ban and an asset freeze were all possibilities.

In the meantime, the women of Guinea are waiting for a resolution.

In A Guinea Seized by Violence, Women Are Prey [NY Times]
Country Profile: Guinea [BBC]
Guinea's Erratic Military Ruler [BBC]
In A Guinea Seized by Violence, Women Are Prey [NY Times]
U.S. Envoy Protests Violence in Guinea [NY Times]

Apropos of a season of sexploitation films running at London's BFI Southbank, Guardian film writer Xan Brooks interviews Ray Greene, director of SCHLOCK! The Secret History of American Movies. Greene defines the sexploitation genre as films that were "selling sex," and in which filmmakers "had to, had to, had to, whether they wanted to or not, show naked women, and show sexual situations that were very risqué for their day." Greene also says the genre began with a movie called The Immoral Mr. Teas, which, if the Guardian's clips are any guide, showed some pretty ridiculous "sexual situations." The movie apparently made a lot of money, meaning 1959 audiences were turned on by a woman scrubbing a table wearing only an apron, while a guy in a straw hat verrrry sloowwwwwly ate a watermelon.

Less surreal, but maybe more sociologically interesting, were a pair of exploitation subgenres that emerged: "nudie cuties" and "roughies." "Nudie cuties" were set at nudist camps because of a Supreme Court ruling that found these settings "educational," and thus exempt from ordinary nudity laws. Greene describes these films as "bright, sunny, mostly silly films that actually show the trace elements of American burlesque." The "roughies," meanwhile, arrived in the mid-60s when sexploitation films "moved into darker subject matter." Greene says these movies are "very, very disturbing to watch for a lot of people." While they showed less nudity than the "nudie cuties," these movies "substitute violence, usually directed against women [...] for sex." A creepy clip from an example called The Defilers shows a kidnapper saying of his victim, "Look at her. If I don't feed her, she goes hungry. She belongs to me."

The interesting thing about the progression from sex to violence that Greene describes is that it's never really been reversed. It's been well-documented that the MPAA rating system is much more lenient toward violence than towards sex, even in language — a PG-13 movie can include the use of the word "fuck" in anger, but not to refer to actual fucking. But it's somewhat surprising to learn that the "substitution" of violence for sex, as though they were simply interchangeable methods for shocking or thrilling audiences, started in the middle of last century. It's a little played-out to complain about puritanical Americans who let their kids watch shootouts but don't want to see an erect dick, and few people these days think the ratings system is awesome. However, it's still interesting to consider why roughies supplanted nudie cuties, given that nudity laws didn't actually grow more stringent. Did Americans begin to prefer dark sex to "bright, sunny" sex, even if it meant seeing fewer actual boobs? Do they still? What is it about American culture that makes violence against women an easy substitute for sex? And given the fact that these films are currently screening in England, not America, does this substitution have a universal appeal?

Sexploitation Films: 'You Had To Show Naked Women To Make The Exercise Viable' [Guardian]

In interviews with Politico, the law enforcement vets say that massive social change (e.g., first African-American president) + rageahol = scary shit. The typical profile of a presidential assassin (or would-be assassin) might be a whacked-out loner with no coherent political views, but even those "can be influenced by the atmosphere around them. Some of the security experts said angry rhetoric and images in the culture can agitate and inspire those loners to cross the line from anger to violence."

And yes, talk radio rants and even Joe Wilson's infamous tantrum count as potentially dangerous "examples of fraying American nerves." Former Secret Service agent Ronald Williams told Politico, "When there are vitriolic comments, acrimonious commentary and anger, the likelihood of violence escalates." Williams then added, "I'm not a real big fan of Nancy Pelosi's, but she is correct."

Speaking of out-of-control anger and "acrimonious comments," David Neiwert at Crooks and Liars notes that "ACORN" has pretty much officially become a euphemism for the N-word, as demonstrated in a video from the 9/12 Teabagger protest. The video shows a foaming-at-the-mouth middle-aged white dude chasing three African-Americans (there to sell "Don't Tread on Me" flags) out of the protest, screaming the whole time. Neiwert:

As you can see, the man — who identifies himself as Tim Jones — shouts after them: "ACORN! These people are ACORN!!! They are frauds!!! ACORN is fraud!!! Obama sucks! This woman sells signs for profit of ACORN!!"

It attracts more harassers, and it verges on the point of an outbreak of violence when the D.C. bicycle police show up and break up the scene.

The whole thing is worth watching, but the highlight for me is around 5:30, as Jones is recapping the incident for the camera. He says one of the women smacked him in the face and adds, "They were getting very aggressive — of course, that's the nature of these people! They try their best to incite you, so that you will act in an inappropriate fashion, and then they will blame you for your actions."

Call me crazy, but I'm not nearly as concerned about a few young flag-sellers inciting violence as I am about raving middle-aged white guys, from Tim Jones to Glenn Beck. As another former Secret Service agent, Joseph Petro, told Politico, "Politically inspired violence is a real problem. If you add in racism, the bandwidth of potential violence expands exponentially."

Social Change Could Spark Violence [Politico]
ACORN Is A Handy Substitute For The 'N Word': At 912 Event, Black Teens Harassed By Hysterical Teabaggers [Crooks And Liars]

Banks, a pastor at the Word of Life Apostolic Church in Riverside, California, kept the girls in an unheated room in her garage, where she "beat them daily with cords, sticks, high-heeled shoes, extension cords and belts, fed them spoiled food, made them take sleeping pills, and sexually abused two of them with paint sticks," according to the San Jose Mercury News. She has been sentenced to 36 years and 8 months plus two consecutive life terms for her crimes.

Banks denies the charges, stating that her daughters are "mentally disabled" and are lying about the way they were treated. One of the daughters (all of them are now in new foster homes) wrote a letter to Banks, noting ""Mom, I know somewhere in your heart you were a nice person. It was not right what you did to me and my sisters. Mom, I want you to know that I forgive you and I will be praying for you. But mom, It will never be OK what you did to me and my sisters."

SoCal Pastor Gets Life Term For Abusing 5 Girls [Mercury News]
Female Pastor Jailed For Drugging, Abusing 5 Girls [MSNBC]

It came out back in 1997, but many of our commenters mentioned The Gift of Fear after Sodini's shooting spree because it describes how to identify violent people and protect yourself from them. Sadly, these strategies are still very necessary today. Gavin de Becker is the founder of a consulting firm that helps a variety of public figures avoid stalking, harassment, and assassination — as a child, he was also a victim of domestic violence. His book offers tips for minimizing many different threats to personal and public safety, including attacks by disgruntled employees, parricide, and serial killing, but perhaps most relevant to the Sodini case is the chapter on date stalking. This isn't because Sodini necessarily stalked his dates — the women he killed seem to have been strangers to him — but because de Becker's points about men, women, and stalking may shed light on Sodini's psychology.

In a Broadsheet post on "Nice Guy Syndrome," Kate Harding asks, "How is it that so many guys like Sodini — the kind who routinely refer to women as "hoes" (sic) and "bitches," and act disgusted by the thought of women having sex with any other men — have heard, "You're really nice, but..." again and again in the course of being rejected?" The answer:

Telling a guy the real reasons you're not interested — you don't find him attractive, he's way too old for you, you get a distinctly creepy vibe off him, whatever — or offering no explanation at all, because you just met this guy and owe him nothing, would be "rude."

de Becker identified a very similar problem in 1997. He writes,

True to what they are taught, rejecting women often say less than they mean. True to what they are taught, men often hear less than what it said. Nowhere is this problem more alarmingly expressed than by the hundreds of thousands of fathers (and mothers), older brothers (and sisters), movies and television shows that teach most men that when she says no, that's not what she means.

He advocates for "a high school class that would teach young men how to hear 'no,' and teach young women that it's all right to explicitly reject." By "explicitly reject," he means avoiding phrases like "it's just that I don't want to be in a relationship right now," or "you're a great guy and you have a lot to offer, but I'm not the one for you." Statements like these, de Becker says, may cause men with poor boundaries to think, "she really likes me; it's just that she's confused. I've got to prove to her that she is the one for me." They may then escalate their pursuit, even resorting to violence.

de Becker doesn't mention it, but a culture of complimenting men while rejecting them fuels Nice Guy Syndrome and various professional enablers as well. Would Sodini still have turned violent if the women in his life had followed this advice? Maybe. But a whole cottage industry of lesser misogynists, built on the theory that women actually like being mistreated and "negged," might have a lot less business.

de Becker has advice for women about dealing with strangers as well as dates. He tells the story of a woman who was raped by a man who insisted on helping her with her groceries, and says women should respond with clear refusal to any unwanted offers of help from strangers. He writes,

I encourage women to explicitly rebuff unwanted approaches, but I know it is difficult to do. Just as rapport building has a good reputation, explicitness applied by women in the culture has a terrible reputation. A woman who is clear and precise is viewed as cold, or a bitch, or both. A woman is expected, first and foremost, to respond to every communication from a man. And the response is expected to be one of willingness and attentiveness. [...] Women are expected to be warm and open, and in the context of approaches from male strangers, warmth lengthens the encounter, raises expectations, increases investment, and, at best, wastes time. At worst, it serves the man who has sinister intent by providing much of the information he will need to evaluate and then control his prospective victim.

The most disturbing lesson of The Gift of Fear is that women are constantly receiving cultural messages that not only threaten their autonomy, but actually put them in physical danger. Our culture, our families, and the general soup of social influences that enforce our gender norms teach us to be polite and solicitous even we don't want to talk to someone — in so doing, we may unwittingly welcome our rapists. de Becker offers several antidotes to this socially-constructed politeness — he teaches not only firm refusal, but also a series of techniques for improving our intuitive sense of danger. He makes a persuasive case that everyone has such an intuitive sense, and that learning to listen to it rather than to our social conditioning may save our lives.

Of course, all these techniques put the onus for preventing crime on its potential victims. de Becker writes,

Whether it is learned the easy way or the hard way, the truth remains that your safety is yours. It is not the responsibility of the police, the government, industry, the apartment building manager, or the security company. Too often, we take the lazy route and invest our confidence without ever evaluating if it is earned.

de Becker offers plenty of criticisms for the police and security companies later in the book, but his advice for private citizens basically takes as its premise that no one else will protect us from harm — we have to do it ourselves. This is, of course, true — police can't follow us around all the time, and even a perfectly equitable society would probably have some crime. However, "the police, the government, and the security company" should be trying a little harder to earn our confidence.

Several times in the book, de Becker criticizes those who are in a position to prevent violence but, after a crime, throw up their hands and say, "who could have known?" He lists many warning signs that someone will become violent — sadness and depression, purchasing weapons, paranoia, "blaming others for the results of his own actions." George Sodini exhibited many of these signs in public — on his blog, and possibly even on a bus before the attack. Still, Pittsburgh police said "nobody could have stopped him." After the incident, several commenters mentioned giving The Gift of Fear to female friends or relatives. Maybe someone should send a copy to the Pittsburgh police department as well.

The Gift Of Fear [Amazon]
Gym Reopens After Deadly Shootings [AP, via NYT]
No More Mr. Nice Guy [Broadsheet]

Earlier: Gunman Murders Gym-Going Women; Misogynists Approve

[Modiin, Israel; August 2. Image via Getty]

Relatives of Israeli Nir Katz, who was killed in an attack on a gay club, grieve during his funeral in the Israeli city of Modiin near Tel Aviv on August 2, 2009. Katz was killed on August 1 when a man opened fire in a gay youth club in Tel Aviv, killing him and a teenage girl, in an attack that struck fear among the liberal city's homosexual community. Israeli police have launched a manhunt for the assailant. AFP PHOTO/DAVID FURST (Photo credit should read DAVID FURST/AFP/Getty Images)

The video, which was taken right after Neda was gunned down - she was reportedly shot in the heart - is below. It is extremely graphic and very upsetting — a more graphic version is on Facebook - providing a snapshot of life, and death, that is quickly becoming an iconic image for some Iranians, and, our headline attests (the phrase is popping up on posts all over Twitter), a rallying cry for people around the world.

The Iranian election was considered especially important to the country's female population and women have been some of the more visible protesters, even as the the situation has become increasingly violent and dangerous. From pictures on Flickr to images on blogs to citizen reporters on Demotix, images of women of all shapes, sizes, ages and styles are becoming the more-friendly face of the movement for government change. Instead of just men hurling rocks and being beaten (and killed) and standing, congested with tear gas, in front of burning cars, we are viewing the violence perpetrated by the state and its agents against women, some of whom are shown with rocks in their hands... and others, like Neda, innocent of anything other than a desire to make themselves heard.

The stories emerging from the chaos (despite the ban on Western journalists reporting on the protests) include tales of female leadership and courage. From Roger Cohen in today's New York Times:

I also know that Iran's women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I've seen them urging less courageous men on. I've seen them get beaten and return to the fray. "Why are you sitting there?" one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. "Get up! Get up!"

Another green-eyed woman, Mahin, aged 52, staggered into an alley clutching her face and in tears. Then, against the urging of those around her, she limped back into the crowd moving west toward Freedom Square. Cries of "Death to the dictator!" and "We want liberty!" accompanied her.

From eyewitnesses in Iran, reporting to the BBC:

There were lots of female protestors - I saw a guard attack one women and then she went back up to him and grabbed him by the collar and said 'why are you doing this? Are you not an Iranian?' - he was totally disarmed and didn't know what to do but her actions stopped him.

From another eyewitness:

In Sattar Khan I saw with my own eyes two ordinary 40-year-old women being beaten severely with electric batons, for nothing but raising their voice in protest.

From an Iranian student to a professor, as printed in the Jerusalem Post:

Girls are extremely active in all these rallies (a little less in night riots where patches of young men are more visible). They courageously charge anti-riot police, chant slogans in front of them, lead the crowd, etc., but they are equally beaten too.

From Nico Pitney's Iran Live Blog yesterday on the Huffington Post, there were a number of accounts of women's actions in the protests. At 3:20:

I witnessed peoples fear of the Basij dissapear, an 80 year old chadori woman with rocks in her hands calling for the exacution of khamenei and all Basij

At 3:25:

they were hitting the women as hard if it didn't seem harder.

And at 3:31:

I saw a girl injured by gon shot (in Amir abad St.)! and there weren't enough ambulances .

A young woman provided a first person account to The Guardian Weekly:

Yesterday evening I joined a demonstration at Hatim Nizar street, responding to the call given by our leader Mousavi to hold peaceful protests and march in memory of eight people killed. Most people wore black as we marched the streets silently, the majority of them were young boys and girls.

CNN talked to a woman it calls "Parisa."

"This regime is against all humanity, more specifically against all women," said Parisa, whom CNN is not fully identifying for security reasons.

"I see lots of girls and women in these demonstrations," she said. "They are all angry, ready to explode, scream out and let the world hear their voice. I want the world to know that as a woman in this country, I have no freedom."

The Wall Street Journal also carries a number of first-hand reports of the role women are playing in the protests, like this from "Negin".

At the beginning I thought this was going to be a fight between the lower class and the middle class. What I saw on Monday changed my mind completely. I saw many women, young and old, covered head-to-toe in black chadors shouting and chanting among the demonstrators and joining the young girls who were sitting on the ground in the middle of the street to stop the Basij militia from walking inside the crowd.

That image will never be wiped away from my mind. The women on the front line with their loose colorful scarves had opened their arms, ready to be killed, while others were beaten by the Basij on the side of the road.

Women in have become more than just a symbol for the kinds of reforms people were seeking with the election of Mir Hossein Mousavi: they're leading protests; they're encouraging others; they're allowing themselves to be visible symbols of the oppression of any opposition to the regime; and they're rapidly becoming the face of that opposition. (Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of a prominent cleric - and herself an opposition leader - has reportedly been arrested.) The thing is, the more a paternalistic regime with laws designed to "protect" women from men allows its (male) forces to brutally impose its will on those women, the more it shows the world that its laws are designed for the benefit of men — and only some men at that.

Update: Time magazine has just posted a piece on Neda's murder, what it may mean for the opposition movement, and the country as a whole.

Videos Posted by Shekoo Sab [Facebook via BreakforNews]
Removing The Veil That Covers The Truth [CBS News]
Etehraz's Photostream [Flickr]
Minute To Minute With Revolution [Revolutionary Road]
Running Battles As Iran Battle Reaches Climax [Demotix via The Guardian]
A Supreme Leader Loses His Aura As Iranians Flock To The Streets [NY Times]
'Ten Killed' In Iran Clashes - State TV [BBC]
'Movement By The People, For The People' [Jerusalem Post]
Iran Updates (VIDEO): Live-Blogging The Uprising [Huffington Post]
Iran Protests: 'I Ran For My Life' [The Guardian Weekly]
Women In Iran March Against Discrimination [CNN]
'The Fear Is Gone' [Wall Street Journal via Ianyan Mag]
In Iran, One Woman's Death May Have Many Consequences [Time]

Related: Everything by Andrew Sullivan [Andrew Sullivan]

Earlier: In Iran, "Pretty" Is Sometimes The Protest
10 Reasons Why You Should Be Following The Iranian Elections

[Washington, D.C., June 10. Image via Getty]

Freddy (L) and Lucia Hernandez (C) from Puerto Rico, and their granddaughter Maria Hernandez say they were inside the Holocaust Museum on June 10, 2009 when they heard five gunshots in Washington, DC. Two people were shot and wounded at the museum when a gunman opened fire on the building sparking panic in the heart of the capital's tourist area, officials and witnesses said. The two people with gunshot wounds had been taken to hospital, a police spokesman said. A third person was slightly wounded, possibly by breaking glass, but did not need further treatment. Police Sergeant David Schlosser said the wounded included a security guard and the shooter. AFP PHOTO/KAREN BLEIER (Photo credit should read KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images)