#criminalise coercive control | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

just-stop · 3 years

Text

‘Feel the outrage’: 98 Queensland domestic violence orders broken every day

Anger is growing about a rise in domestic violence order breaches in Queensland after a Gold Coast mother of three was found dead in her backyard.

Kelly Wilkinson’s burnt body was found at her Arundel home on Tuesday morning and her estranged husband has been charged with murder, contravention of a domestic violence order and breach of bail conditions.

Kelly Wilkinson’s ex-partner has been charged with her murder.

Ms Wilkinson’s three young children, aged between two and nine, were home at the time of her death.

Bonney MP Sam O’Connor, who has been messaging Ms Wilkinson’s sister, said Ms Wilkinson’s mother had died just before Easter.

He said Ms Wilkinson’s death had left the grieving community with a lot of questions.

“In our part of the Gold Coast we have been absolutely devastated by this, it happened on a quiet suburban street,” he said.

“People who would have brought their kids to school beside Kelly, who had their kids in the same class as Kelly, can not believe this has happened.

“They can not believe hearing there was a charge of a breach of a domestic violence order, people are angry that she did everything possible and this could still happen.

“She was clearly doing as much as she could.”

Domestic violence advocates say “enough is enough” and more needed to be done to save women who were trying to seek protection from dangerous relationships.

“Yes, another woman [allegedly] killed by her estranged partner whilst having a domestic violence order in place and trying to protect her family,” the Allison Baden-Clay Foundation posted on social media.

“Feel the outrage at this national crisis.”

Domestic violence orders were broken 98 times a day on average in Queensland in 2020, police statistics show, for a total of 35,860 last year.

In 2019, it was an average of 84 breaches each day.

A major review has been ordered into the way the criminal justice system dealt with victims of sexual and domestic violence, headed up by former Court of Appeal judge Margaret McMurdo.

The taskforce has been charged with drawing up legislation to criminalise coercive control and will report back to government later this year.

Mr O’Connor, who pointed out the “horrific similarity” to Hannah Clarke and her children’s murders in 2020, said more needed to be done.

“It is not just legislation alone,” he said.

“There is a cultural change that is needed, women are overwhelming the victim of this at the hands of men and there is serious cultural change that needs to happen among men.”

Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman extended her sympathy to Ms Wilkinson’s family, in particular her three young children.

“We know that there is more work to be done, especially in light of COVID which has increased violence against women in our community,” she said.

“During the pandemic almost one in 10 women in a relationship experienced domestic violence, with two-thirds saying attacks started or became worse.”

Ms Fentiman said the government had pledged another $2.5 million in COVID-19 grants through 23 projects.

“These projects will be delivered from the Torres Strait to the Gold Coast and will deliver innovative responses to the impacts of COVID across sexual violence and domestic violence,” she said.

A national summit on women’s safety will be held in late July in a deal between federal and state ministers to canvass new programs to prevent violence.

If you or someone you know needs help or support, contact DV Connect on 1800 811 811 or 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or the Brisbane Domestic Violence Service on 07 3217 2544.’

61 notes · View notes

discyours · 5 years

Note

Could you make a list of ur opinions?

I can try, but I never really learned how tumblr works so I don’t know how to make this an actual page on my blog. Once I do figure out how I’ll definitely link to this. I’ll go off the top of my head for most frequently asked/what I think is most relevant, but if there’s anything you’re missing feel free to ask.

Gender:

Gender is, in short, the roles that are ascribed to sex. This includes the idea that anyone who is born female is bound to be docile, caring, or even just more likely to like pink. But gender identity also falls under this. Defining a woman as someone who wants to be female is referring to something - an action, a personality trait, a feeling, a thought - beyond sex as what “makes” a woman. Gender is not fake, but it is a social construct and in my opinion it’s a harmful one. Whether deliberately created to oppress women (like is the case with women being expected to be submissive) or originated as a relative accident like with certain fashion trends, gender roles end up restricting women’s freedom. Believing in female liberation means being against, or at least critical of that.

Gender identity:

Again, falls under gender but I think it deserves its own answer. I don’t think gender identity is necessarily “fake” either. When people say that they “feel like” a woman rather than a man I don’t think that they’re lying. I may take issue with the wording just like I may expect people to be critical of their own reasoning when they explain that their gender identity is male because the idea of being a man feels right to them whereas being a woman doesn’t, but I do understand how they feel. I relate to the feeling myself and I do think that the average trans man feels differently about this than the average cis (meaning non-trans) woman, however I’m not convinced that this feeling is rigid or innate.

So I don’t think gender identity is “fake” or complete nonsense, but I don’t think it’s a particularly useful category either. There’s no reason I should be sharing bathrooms with people who have an internal sense that they should be male rather than female over people who lack the ability to use urinals and require trash cans to dispose of menstrual products. There’s no reason for me to share changing rooms with people with similar genderfeels rather than people who have similar bodies to mine and are statistically far less likely to sexually assault me than people with a different type of body.

In the context of feminism we need to recognise that sex is the category in which women are being oppressed when they suffer FGM, when they’re put into menstrual huts, when they’re denied reproductive freedom, when they’re kept out of government positions because of their unreliable, hormone driven female emotions, when they’re missing out on jobs that an equally qualified man would be accepted for because their employer doesn’t want to risk having to deal with them getting pregnant. Sex, not gender identity.

Egalitarianism:

I actually don’t get asked about this much which is a shame because I know that people are thinking it; if it’s just about wanting women to have rights then why not be an egalitarian? Why, unless you hate men and want them to be below women rather than being equal?

There’s multiple reasons. For one, feminism started as a women’s rights movement and women do not owe it to men to change that as soon as they decided they were done fully opposing it. There would be something inherently disgusting to me about denying women their own movement for their own issues regardless of where I stand on egalitarianism.

But beyond that, I oppose the idea that we just draw a line at men’s current quality of life and decide that that’s the standard women must be judged against. The idea of it is misogynistic but in practice it’s harmful too; we’ve all seen those “if you want equality then women need to join the draft” and “if we’re equal then can I punch you in the face?” statements. This form of “equality” is still just letting men control the standard for women’s lives. Is still forcing women to fit into a system built by men.

A lot of egalitarians seem hypocritically focused on equal outcome which I also disagree with. The ratio of men to women that die during physically taxing jobs is hardly any more of an issue than the ratio of men to women that die during child birth. There are biological reasons for these discrepancies (one moreso than the other, but there’s still never going to be an effective way to have a 50/50 sex split in every single job) and compensating for them for the sake of some vague concept of “equality” is pointless. The inadequacies in female-specific healthcare are a big reason to have a movement specifically for women’s rights, to have a movement that can advocate for improvement. Likewise if a lack of health and safety regulations in manual labour disproportionately affects men, that’s a good reason for a men’s rights movement to advocate for improvement (not that either of these can replace non-sexspecific advocacy groups which are also very important). I just don’t believe that women have any responsibility to merge with or be involved in men’s rights movements, considering women have historically always been oppressed by men and men still hold the majority of political as well as financial power.

Liberal feminism:

Liberal feminism is often what people refer to as mainstream feminism, but I don’t think it’s right to write off liberal feminism as a whole just because I disagree with the direction that mainstream feminism has gone. In simple terms liberal feminism is just feminism which seeks more individual freedom for women within the current system, whereas radical feminism is focused on class freedom and radically changing the system if not creating a new one altogether. I don’t fully disagree with liberal feminism and in fact I don’t believe any form of feminism that doesn’t at times utilise more liberal solutions has any way of succeeding. Getting more women into our current government without actually overhauling our political system and changing the reasons that women are kept out of government positions is liberal; I still only vote for women when I can, and encourage other people to do the same because when we’re unable to change things completely, it’s better than nothing.

The reason I lean more towards radical feminism is because I ultimately don’t find liberal solutions to be good enough. I don’t want to regulate the porn industry, I want to abolish it. I don’t believe any amount of regulation or “reclamation” can ever make the sex industry ethical and while completely eradicating it is never going to happen, having that as the end goal at least means that you never stop pushing. The same thing goes for just about all other systems which oppress women; I fundamentally disagree with liberal feminists that giving individual women more individual freedom about whether or not to participate in these systems is ever going to be good enough.

Sex work:

I don’t believe that consuming or procuring sex work (ie being a john or a pimp) can ever be ethical as I don’t believe that consent can be bought. If somebody would not have sex with you without being paid, I don’t see that as true consent. There is something inherently coercive about having to choose between not having the money you need or having sex with someone. Coerced sex is not consensual and we all know what non-consensual sex is.

There may be some people who don’t need the money but do it regardless because they enjoy it/want extra cash, especially in “milder” forms of sex work like camming or stripping. But the reality is that the vast majority of people (90% of prostitutes) who do “sex work” do not want to and would be doing something else if they had the option. Their suffering is more important to me than the enjoyment of the select few who do want to be “sex workers”, and that of the johns they “service”.

That being said, I support the Nordic model which criminalises the consumption and procurement of sex work but decriminalises actually being a sex worker. This model has been shown to reduces trafficking as it reduces demand, and it doesn’t harm sex workers (who are the ones we’re trying to protect). Sidenote, I hate the term “sex work” as it already goes along with the idea that sex can ever be a job and should be held to the same standards as one when it comes to the ethics of being indirectly coerced by a need for money - however I’ll use it when I need to to explain my stance to people who do use the term.

Surrogacy:

I view surrogacy similarly to sex work; as an unethical and unnecessary commodification of women’s bodies which puts their health and safety at risk, and is often indirectly coerced through financial needs. Viewing parenthood as being primarily about who “claims” a newborn rather than who actually carried and gave life to it is inherently patriarchal and sets a terrifying precedent. Pregnancy puts a huge strain on women’s physical as well as mental health, and ending the process with a cheque or a sincere thank you rather than a baby can be mentally devastating, even if you knew from the start that you wouldn’t keep it. It is morally inconsistent that surrogacy is often legal in places where it’s illegal to receive money for giving away an organ or your blood; policies that are in place to avoid turning the poor into a class of kidney-suppliers. The idea of consent magically justifying everything falls way short when the same concept hasn’t been applied to blood donations for aforementioned reasons, and when you’re stuck to a contract. If we’ve agreed that consent to sex does not count if it’s irrevocable, why is surrogacy treated differently?

Much like with sex work, the demand always far outweighs the supply which means that the few women who sincerely and genuinely want to do this don’t just justify the whole thing. I believe a system similar to the Nordic model should be in place, where there’s no legal repercussions to being a surrogate but where attempting to recruit one is illegal.

Communism:

I’m definitely a leftist and radical feminism itself has marxist roots. I recognise that capitalism plays quite a big role in women’s oppression through the barriers that women experience to enter many forms of paid labour, and the unpaid labour that is expected of them. Capitalism also leads to the commodification of women’s bodies through sex work or surrogacy. That being said, the inherently authoritarian nature of communism simply can’t be justified in my opinion. People who are corrupted by power exist under every system, which is why authoritarianism can never be safe regardless of the ideology it’s attached to. Even a “benevolent dictator” will die eventually if they don’t get overthrown first.

Transmedicalism:

I view transmedicalism as a harmful ideology. The brain sex studies transmedicalists often link are extremely flawed; incredibly small sample sizes used to draw overreaching conclusions, and a failure to account for neuroplasticity (the fact that your brain’s structure can change over time). Their insistence that transition is the only option for dysphoric people is harmful to all dysphoric/trans people, and often worsens dysphoria while also discouraging the development of alternative treatments. Their claims that all detransitioners were never really trans in the first place and every person who transitioned must’ve secretly been dysphoric regardless of their insistence otherwise are based on no actual fact, just a need for their ideology to make sense.

#anon #my opinions #radfem #gender critical #anti sex work #anti surrogacy #I swear I'm gonna edit this later on bc the last two answers seem kinda half assed #but if I leave this in my drafts any longer it's gonna stay there forever

40 notes · View notes

mrdinglesugden · 5 years

Text

The new Domestic Abuse Bill 2019

I work for a Domestic Abuse charity supporting victims and their children to flee abusive partners and family members, and the new bill being debated in parliament today will mean:

-Their abuser can’t cross examine them in court (I’ve watched this happen and it was sickening)

-They automatically get special measures in court i.e screens, separate entrances, video links

- A new protection order landing between a non-molestation order and a restraining order

-A Domestic Abuse commissioner that will examine how police, solicitors, social services and the courts treat victims!!!!!

-New Training for police, ambulance workers, teachers etc!!!!!!!

- Criminalisation of coercive controlling behaviour!!!!!!

-Make Clare’s Law statutory (meaning every victim will have the right to know if their partner has perpetrated DV in the past and often helps women decide to leave)!!!!!!!

-Develop a programme to track and charge serial perpetrators!!!!!!!!

-Make healthy relationship education part of the school curriculum!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you’re in the UK please support this bill, I can’t emphasise enough how much these new policies will change victims’ lives 🙏

#personal #this could change the lives of my clients #if you’re in the uk please support #domestic abuse #domestic abuse bill 2019 #parliament #domestic abuse bill

6 notes · View notes

cultnews101 · 2 years

Text

ICSA Annual Conference: Reflections on 5 years of the Masters in the Psychology of Coercive Control

Rod and Linda Dubrow-Marshall were inspired to create a new Masters of Science (MSc) programme on the Psychology of Coercive Control.

Rod Dubrow-Marshall, Richard Turner, Linda Dubrow-Marshall, Ashley McLean, Kate Amber, Carla James Friday, June 24, 2022: 1:00 PM-1:50 PM Part 1, 2:00 PM-2:50 PM Part 2 March 7, 2022 admin After the passing of the Serious Crime Act in the UK in 2015 criminalised coercive and controlling behaviour (psychological and emotional abuse) and the passing of the Modern Slavery Act (2015) criminalised…

View On WordPress

#coercive control #Events

0 notes

leanpick · 2 years

Text

NSW to criminalise coercive control

The NSW government has committed to outlawing the historically overlooked form of intimate abuse known as coercive control following an inquiry. Attorney-General and Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention Minister Mark Speakman released the government’s response on Saturday, indicating support for 17 of the inquiry’s 23 recommendations. The remaining six have “been noted as further consideration…

View On WordPress

0 notes

southeastasianists · 6 years

Link

For the past four years, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) has sought to control political resistance. Measures have included confining protest leaders and key political figures in detention for ‘attitude adjustment’ and coercive memorandums on political activity. Soldiers, police and other security officers continue to pay visits to the homes of activists. Laws to curb political assembly, enacted via executive powers, include but are certainly not limited to NCPO Order No. 7/2557 and NCPO Order No. 3/2558 (bans on political gatherings of five or more people), and NCPO Order 49/2557 (a ban on providing support for political assembly).

At a glance, the NCPO’s efforts may appear to have had some measure of success. Key political movements such as the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) has ceased organising rallies at the scales seen before the 2014 coup. Yet the UDD’s quietness does not at all mean that civilians who disagree with military rule have surrendered to the finality of the NCPO. In a context where peaceful assembly is outlawed, activists are managing the risk of open conflict with authorities by creatively transforming everyday activities into symbolic expressions of frustration.

These strategies are as much about toeing the lines set by law, as they are about imparting a message that political expression is a normal thing that all people can do, rather than a dangerous and scary thing as suggested by the NCPO’s discourse. To mark the fourth anniversary of the NCPO’s coup, I have compiled a tapestry of activist inventiveness that military rule has not been able to stamp out.

Anti-coup sandwiches

Activists never intended to use sandwiches during protests—rather, it was the authorities themselves who seized upon sandwiches in 2014, making their own, unintended contribution to anti-authoritarian emblems.

Kate, an activist leader*, recalls that after the junta announced its ban on political gatherings of five people or more, she and her friends (who at the time were still students) decided they should organise some kind of resistance activity. Not wanting to draw the ire of officials, they decided to revolve the event around an everyday activity: watching a movie and eating snacks together. So Kate and fellow activists created an open Facebook event for 6 June 2014: “Picnic Under The Shade: Poetry, Movie Screening, Coup”.

At first, Kate and the activists had no ulterior motives in serving sandwiches at the event to attendees—they had brought them because they are easy to cut and hand out. But before the event began, authorities gathered at the event location and forcibly cancelled the event. The students requested to merely eat the sandwiches and then go home, seeing as they had prepared them already. The authorities refused—leading to a now notorious image of a security officer snatching sandwiches from a small-bodied student. In that second, sandwiches were transformed into a resonant anti-authoritarian symbol.

“The best spokesmen for the activists isn’t Rome or Ja New, but the NCPO itself,” Kate laughs.

Kate and eight other friends decided to make the best out of a bad situation, and organised an event to eat sandwiches—‘Nothing Much, We Just Want To Eat Sandwiches’—outside the Siam Paragon mall on 22 June 2014. The students were promptly arrested and detained in a camp for ‘attitude adjustment’. Several other sandwich-eating events have been since been staged, leading to international headlines such as “4 Absurdly Harmless Acts Now Criminalised By Thailand’s Military Rulers” and “Man Eats Sandwich, Gets Arrested”.

*At the time of this article’s publication, Kate is being detained in a police station for leading a protest demanding elections at Thammasat University.

Subversive reading groups

‘Peach’ (pseudonym), the activist behind past stunts where civilians gathered to do nothing more and nothing less than read books together, recalls following the news of activists being harrassed in the aftermath of the coup. She felt that the NCPO was succeeding in building a climate of fear through open collisions between protesters and authorities. She and her friends began divising resistance tactics that avoided overt political expression—to give authorities no cause to interfere—but which could still impart forcefully an anti-authoritarian sentiment. When a friend told Peach about a stunt in Turkey in 2013 where civilians gathered to read books at a park to protest plans to turn the public space into a mall, Peach borrowed the idea and applied it to the recent coup.

Peach felt that the activity of reading was not overly confrontational, but that the choice of books—George Orwell’s 1984 and other political books—would still impart that the gathering was aligned against the coup. In total, she organised four gatherings to read books: at the National Stadium skywalk, the Chong Nonsi BTS skywalk and near Wat Pathum Wanaram. The fourth reading session was mobile—readers rode on trains.

Peach recounts that the reading sessions were closed events, in that attendees were invited by word of mouth, out of fears for their safety. Only the fourth session was advertised through a Facebook event. At each gathering, Peach brought a cheap phone that she could quickly discard if necessary, rather than her usual smartphone. Though the reading sessions were organised secretly, Peach contacted trusted media contacts to cover the events and disperse images of civilians reading political texts together. She did not experience any direct harassment from authorities, which she puts down to their covert organisation.

Peach and her friends also poked holes in the junta’s laws, by reading in groups of four—not enough to violate the ban on gatherings on five people or more. Though Peach felt some fear while reading, she feels now certain they brought new tactics to Thailand’s resistance space that left authorities scratching their heads over law enforcement manuals—Peach recalls with humour that after the third reading session at the Chong Nonsi BTS skywalk, a stage for aerobics was conspicuously erected covering the space where the event had been held.

The three-finger salute

Protests against the NCPO took place as early as 23 May 2014 (the day after the coup). But in the coup’s immediate aftermath, protesters in their urgency did not think to seek a unifying symbol of resistance—individuals constructed their respective signs, converged at agreed meeting points, and shouted their grievances. Gatherings that took place on 1 June 2014 were probably the first time that protesters performed a shared symbolic gesture across a number of disparate meeting points (the National Stadium skywalk, outside the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, outside the Terminal 21 Mall, Thammasat University’s Tha Prachan campus).

This gesture was a raising of three fingers, a salute borrowed from The Hunger Games. In the book and film series, the three-finger salute “means thanks, it means admiration, it means goodbye to someone you love”. But for protesters on the ground, the raising of three fingers is laden with further meaning borrowed from other “revolutionary trios” such as the 1789 French Revolution’s liberty, equality and fraternity.

On 19 November 2014, while General Prayuth was visiting the province of Khon Kaen, five students from the local activist group Dao Din stood in a line and raised the salute, while wearing shirts reading, “No To The Coup”. The students were arrested quickly—the day the first part of The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay was scheduled to come out in Thai theatres. The following day, another student from Bangkok University stood in front of an advertisement for the film, raised the three finger salute and placed her other hand over her mouth. Unsurprisingly, she was “invited” by police officers to Pathum Wan Police Station.

The salute has been repeatedly performed at resistance events in Thailand, capturing considerable public attention. But its meaning has also shifted with political context. The formation in early 2018 of the People Who Want Elections (คนอยากเลือกตั้ง), an activist network mobilising against the entrenchment of military rule, has vested the three-finger salute with the following messages: “1. elections in 2018 2. down with dictatorship 3. long live democracy”.

This article was submitted by iLaw as an amended version of its annual post-coup report.

#Southeast Asia #Thailand #Military Junta #NCPO #Politics #Democracy

9 notes · View notes