Gisèle Pelicot is awarded France's highest civilian honour.
Pelicot, the French woman whose courage in publicly testifying about sexual abuse she endured made her a symbol of women's rights in France, has received the country's highest civilian honour.
Pelicot's landmark case led to reforms in France's rape laws after she bravely testified about enduring a decade of sexual abuse.
From The New Yorker-
Today's cartoon by Tim Hamilton
#Bigfoot #JeffreyEpstein #Trump #SexualAbuse
"Many of the online responses that have been so disappointing are, unsurprisingly, rooted in misogynoir — a form of misogyny directed specifically at Black women, shaped by both anti-Blackness and sexism. Misogynoir casts Black women as less innocent, more sexually deviant, and ultimately more deserving of harm. These ideas can be traced back to colonial narratives that hypersexualized Black women..."
Not the gays. Married men.
Blaming and attacking the gays is, as Diana Butler Bass rightly points out, diversionary. It draws attention away from how the abuse situation in churches across the board is linked to male-dominant, female-excluding, heterosexist structures that empower abusers, since the whole system is in itself abusive to everyone but heterosexual males.
They said that the abuse problems in the Catholic church were rooted in the fact that many priests are gay. The Vatican under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI colluded with this scapegoating technique, trying to pin blame for the abuse situation on gay priests.
Then sordid reports began to emerge about the huge problem of sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches — with their all-male ostensibly heterosexual leadership structure.
"Attacking LGBTQ persons has long been a political strategy of right-wing Christians and it should be no surprise that they would be ginning up this backlash in advance of the 2026 elections. Obergefell is their new Roe. Trust me on this."
From the time the abuse horror show in the Catholic church became public in the early 2000s, Southern Baptists, which demand that pastors be male and (unspoken rule) married, crowed that this was a Catholic problem.
"The SBC [Southern Baptist Convention], of course, has decided that scapegoating gay and lesbian families is more important to God than dealing with the mountains of claims and investigations regarding sexual abuse in their own church. Because — apparently — your married gay cousin is more of a threat to America than thousands of children being harmed at the hands of men-of-the-cloth."
~ Diana Butler Bass
#SouthernBaptists #LGBTQ #SexualAbuse
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https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/its-june-summer-is-heating-up-at
"It’s always the ones pointing the fingers, the ones screaming the loudest about 'protecting the children.' That’s why we call them gaslighters. They demonize drag queens and the LGBTQIA+ community. Meanwhile, they’re the ones doing the most harm behind closed doors."
~ Saadia Mirza
#Republicans #trans #drag #LGBTQ #SexualAbuse
https://beagoodinfluence.substack.com/p/its-always-the-ones-you-most-suspect
"Meanwhile, at the SBC annual meeting--amid this loss, the denomination's own refusal to address rampant sexual abuse in its own ranks, and the attacks on our democracy by the man Southern Baptists were instrumental in bringing to power--the leaders at the meeting determined that the most pressing issues God was calling them to address were overturning the legality of marriage equality and banning women from being pastors."
#SouthernBaptists #SexualAbuse #women #LGBTQ #SameSexMarriage
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"Lyell was labeled a temptress and adulteress who led a Christian leader astray. She was showered with hate, with pastors and churches calling for her to be fired. A prominent activist journalist published an account alleging that Lyell had been less than truthful and arguing that Sills had been denied a chance to return to ministry."
~ Bob Smietana
#SouthernBaptistConvention #JenniferLyell #SexualAbuse #misogynyt #MaleEntitlement #patriarchy
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But three years ago, Lyell told Du Mez that she didn't think she could live much longer with the torment the institution was visiting on her with a vicious smear campaign — that her body was giving out.
And she has now died of massive strokes, aged 47.
"Jennifer did what she did for love. She did it to protect other women. She also did it to protect the church that she loved.
That love placed her in directly in the line of fire."
George Clooney-Produced Ohio State Abuse Doc Gets Date, Trailer From HBO
#sports #movies #sexualabuse #OhioState
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/hbo-ohio-state-abuse-documentary-trailer-1236256897/
The Truth About #Diddy Might Be Darker Than the Rumors
The conspiratorial guesswork distracts from the all-too-ordinary issues at the center of his case.
“…the speed & sheer giddiness with which conspiracist thinking eclipsed the known details of #Combs’s case confirmed a few bleak realities about the psyche of a country in which economic #inequality & #SexualAbuse are both stubbornly endemic.
#EverydaySexism #RapeCulture
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2025/06/diddy-trial-allegations-rumors/683015/?gift=guxsrl_dAdXUP9zqbQPWxaYvccJysN9pQuWcQg94G3g&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
France arrests 55 men in suspected paedophile ring on Telegram.
Fifty-five men between 25 and 75 years old were arrested in France this week as part of an operation to dismantle a suspected paedophile ring operating via the Telegram messaging app.
The arrests followed a 10-month investigation.
"Christians are the true voice of Jews. In each case, marginalized people are seen as unable to speak for themselves; their voices are only valuable if they cosign or echo those who are not marginalized. Jews, sexual assault survivors, trans people, are not entitled to speak for themselves; they must fall silent before their betters. This is, in fact, a major part of what being marginalized means."
Noah Berlatsky calls mainstream media (and other powerful institutions out) on how they deal with the actual voices of the marginalized as the report on the issues of the marginalized:
"[For mainstream media,] cis people are better able to speak for trans people than trans people themselves; people who have not experienced sexual assault are better able to understand sexual assault than survivors;"
#trans #SexualAbuse #Jews #marginalization #media
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https://www.everythingishorrible.net/p/fighting-antisemitism-without-jews
As Charles Pierce notes, a cloud hangs over the new papacy due to Prevost's actions in shielding a sexual abuser of minors in the past:
"Those clouds never will part. Leo XIV will have to live with them over his head for the rest of his life. So will the church he now leads."
Survivors of sexual abuse by pastoral authority figures are already — and rightly so — speaking out about this. They won't and shouldn't stop doing so.
#LeoXIV #Vatican #SexualAbuse
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https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a64718265/new-pope-robert-prevost-pope-leo-xiv/
How Did Epstein Victim Virginia Giuffre REALLY Die? w/ Nick Bryant
#KatieHalper
May 8, 2025
Author and journalist #NickBryant who published Epstein's black book speaks to Katie about #Epstein and Epstein victim #VirginiaGiuffre, who died last month. #SexualExploitation #SexualAbuse #DomesticViolence #AU #DomesticAbuse #Suicide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxomhYndUMc
Columbia Will Pay Survivors of Abusive Doctor $750 Million After ProPublica Revealed University’s Failures
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The sweeping deal means the Ivy League school’s settlements will total more than $1 billion for over 1,000 claims of sexual abuse by former patients of OB-GYN Robert Hadden, who worked at the university for 20 years despite decades of complaints.
