A World of Blogs!

This week, I wanted the highlight other sites that speak about sexual violence issues on a regular basis.  These sites can be a great way to connect with other survivors, advocates, and supporters.  The Internet has been a great way to demonstrate that we aren’t alone in our thoughts, experiences, or feelings, and that there are countless people who are trying to raise awareness about sexual violence in the hopes to contribute to ending it.

Yes Means Yes
Many people have heard of the book by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti.  The book has moved into the blogosphere with regular postings each month about a variety of different topics.  The posts regularly tie in aspects of rape culture and stereotypes into recent news stories and global events.  It can read a bit academic at some points and definitely takes a very feminist perspective.

Incite!
This blog focuses specifically on how violence affects women of color.  While all posts may not focus on sexual assault specifically, they all deal with how instrumental violence affects the world and safety of women of color.  Incite! has also published several books based on their grass-roots activist work.

A Rape Survivors Blog
This blog is written by a rape survivor and focuses on the struggles she has and also the triumphs.  Each post deals with a specific daily incident and how it affected her.  Writing is used by a lot of survivors to process through their reactions, feelings, and progress on the road to recovery.  By making hers public, this blogger shows to a variety of survivors that many of these reactions and feelings are similar despite how unique each survivor is.  Sometimes it can be helpful to know that someone else is having the same struggle and has made it through.

Ms. Magazine Blog
Ms. gathers all their op-eds about sexual assault in a single place.  There are a number of contributors and as a result the topics vary widely as well.  The frequency of posts depends on when people write about sexual assault, as opposed to other feminist topics.  Therefore, there can be several new additions each day or it could remain silent for weeks.  Many topics respond to current events or to other op-eds that are either positively or negatively representing rape culture.

The Curvature
This blog is written by Cara Kulwicki, who is also an editor at the Feministe.com website.  Posts are semi-regular and readers can expect at least one per month.  Topics range widely and usually are inspired by recent news articles.  She is good at labeling what each post is about and putting appropriate trigger warnings, which can help readers decide whether to continue further with a post or not. 

Boston Hollaback
Boston Hollaback recently launched in December 2011.  This is a collection of experiences of street harassment, how each individual poster responded to the incident, how they may have wanted to respond, and how it could still be affecting them.  This blog serves as proof that many women and LGBT members experience street harassment and that it can serve to make public spaces as very unsafe for many of us.  The site also has tips on how to handle street harassers and different resources that exist within the Boston area.

If you read any other blogs on a regular basis that discusses sexual violence well, please feel free to add the links in the comments section.

 

Written by: Stacey