Claire Hennessy

On a day where apparently people don’t quite understand the meaning of ’sexual assault’ in this country, it seems appropriate to repost this thing (can’t find the original author but there are copies all over the internet – you’ve probably seen it before but nevertheless):

A lot has been said about how to prevent rape. Women should learn self-defense. Women should lock themselves in their houses after dark. Women shouldn’t have long hair and women shouldn’t wear short skirts. Women shouldn’t leave drinks unattended. Fuck, they shouldn’t dare to get drunk at all. Instead of that bullshit, how about:

If a woman is drunk, don’t rape her.
If a woman is walking alone at night, don’t rape her.
If a women is drugged and unconscious, don’t rape her.
If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don’t rape her.
If a woman is jogging in a park at 5 am, don’t rape her.
If a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you’re still hung up on, don’t rape her.
If a woman is asleep in her bed, don’t rape her.
If a woman is asleep in your bed, don’t rape her.
If a woman is doing her laundry, don’t rape her.
If a woman is in a coma, don’t rape her.
If a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don’t rape her.
If a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don’t rape her.
If a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don’t rape her.
If your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don’t rape her.
If your step-daughter is watching TV, don’t rape her.
If you break into a house and find a woman there, don’t rape her.
If your friend thinks it’s okay to rape someone, tell him it’s not, and that he’s not your friend.
If your “friend” tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.
If your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there’s an unconscious woman upstairs and it’s your turn, don’t rape her, call the police and tell the guy he’s a rapist.
Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it’s not okay to rape someone.
Don’t tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape.
Don’t imply that she could have avoided it if she’d only done/not done x.
Don’t imply that it’s in any way her fault.
Don’t let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he “got some” with the drunk girl.
Don’t perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions. You can, too, help yourself.

And from here:

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!
1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.
2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!
3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!
4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.
5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!
6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.
7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.
8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.
9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!
10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.
And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are commiting a crime–no matter how “into it” others appear to be.

More detail on the Kerry story here.

You know: you there, reading this, you know someone like this. You do. You may even be someone like this. Someone who thinks that basically, it’s okay to do whatever you like to women, for whatever reason: because they’re asking for it? Because they’re untrustworthy anyway? Because they’re drunk/slutty/hot? Because you want something to fuck? Maybe that someone is you. Maybe it’s that pal who’s a little bit of an asshole but you all laugh it off because sure he’s only kidding, right? Maybe it’s that ex-boyfriend who didn’t listen when you said no but you know it’s probably your fault for changing your mind, right? Maybe it’s that guy at the party you didn’t feel comfortable being alone with, but you were probably just being paranoid, right? You know someone like this. You do. Fifty people queued up to hug a sex offender yesterday. Rapists don’t come with devil horns and a forked tail and a tell-tale evil laugh. They’re ordinary people. Mostly male. Mostly normal. Mostly uncaught. Mostly assumed to be in the right. Fair play to that judge, and that woman, for dealing with that one, at least.

There is a quiz on the Roald Dahl website for teachers: about whether you are a Miss Trunchbull or a Miss Honey. Oh, the awesomeness.

There are apparently new Malory Towers books in existence! By Pamela Cox, who did write those dreadful including-boys inserts into the St Clare’s series, but from what I can tell they feature Felicity (Felicity Rivers! Little Felicity!) and her year an awful lot (June! Susan!) as well as return appearances from those famous horsey spinsters *cough* Bill and Clarissa, and Gwen and Darrell and all the rest. This is the first of what seems to be six (six!) new adventures of the Malory Towers girls.

I’m torn, readers, I truly am. On the one hand – it’s not Blyton. On the other hand, it’s not that scary German version where Darrell ends up as Matron (at least I hope not). On the other other hand, it’s new Malory Towers stories, and I do adore Malory Towers beyond reason. So. Let’s see how terrible they turn out to be… or wonderful.

Whose writing advice will you trust? Really useful post here about who to listen to, and why.

Why it’s good to horrify children. Talks about, among other things, ‘Salem’s Lot, which (though not mentioned in the article) has of course a smart kid who knows his horror better than the grown-ups could ever hope to. And I love this quote from the article:

Children have a hardwired sense of justice, and of right and wrong. It’s adults who engage in games of moral compromise, who seek to justify their sins and the sins of others by falling back on pleas of necessity, impotence or that old reliable: ”It’s very complicated. You’re just a bit too young to be able to understand.”

Finally. Muppets.

Emma Donoghue has a new novel out next year, as well as a non-fiction book. Shiny.

Laura Cassidy, whose bound-to-be-shiny YA book is out in 2011, suggests gift books for this Christmas.

Information is already available about Inkwell 4 Kids, running next summer.

If it wasn’t for Jedward, there would be no such quotes as “We met Queen. The band, not the Queen.” and “I have to judge you in Jedward-land, wherever that planet exists.” And that would be tragic, even though they still cannot sing. Or do anything in time with one another. Hee.

Goal for some point before the end of the month: book-review post thingy. Indeed.

Interesting post here especially about ‘accidental’ rape.

Is it just me or are there an awful lot more YA book fandoms up at Yuletide this year than there normally are? Especially realistic (non-fantasy, non-horror) YA?

Taylor Swift’s SNL monologue is slightly addictive. La la la.

So there was another round of bookish visits and talks and sessions in Meath for the Bookfest, and now it’s nearly November. I’m going back-and-forth about whether or not to do Nanowrimo. I do have a busy November, part of which involves writing something (non-fictiony) as well as classes, meetings etc, but November’s busy for most people, that’s sort of the whole point. Write when you’re busy and you’ll make the time; write when you’ve all the time in the world and your CDs will be in alphabetical order and the house will be spotless and there’ll be ten words on the page.

I’ll probably decide on Halloween, around 11.55pm. (There are tentative plans involving Going Out, but Saturdays are busy days for me and I’m not a fan of fancy dress, anyway.)

***

The madness at Knock is interesting and delighted to see they have Eugene Hynes commenting on it. Hynes’s book on Knock is very well put-together, and pretty much your one-stop guide to everything you need to know about nineteenth-century Knock. (I may have written an essay on Knock and its apparition, particularly it in the context of other nineteenth-century apparitions in Europe. And to think I had assumed all of my history learning would never be of any real use.)

I think it’s David Blackbourn, in his book on the Marpingen apparitions in the 1870s (ah, 1870s, Apparitionfest for so much of Europe) who talks about the idea of visions as ‘passive resistance’ – a way for relatively powerless people to resist those in power (corrupt and oppressive politicians?) by invoking the idea of divine disapproval of them. So, you know, that’s interesting. But the thing about apparitions is, obviously, that they’re constructed. Not that they’re imagined but they’re imagined collectively. And all the reports we have of nineteenth-century Knock are written. They’re from testimonies taken by priests, interviews in the church, where people were asked leading questions (i.e. not “What did you see?” but “When did you come upon the apparition?”), several weeks after the original incident, and where people had also been told beforehand what they were about to see. So to say that “The apparition of 1879 was neither sought nor expected by the humble, honest people who were its astonished witnesses…”, as the present Archbishop of Tuam does, is nonsense.

But Hynes’s point about why people are paying attention to this guy, when apparitions and visions (the Catholic church distinguishes between the two, incidentally) are pretty common, is interesting, and it’s also interesting that with the internet, with the ability for almost instant reporting of events, that this is happening. Because on the one hand it facilitates it – it spreads the ideas faster – and on the other hand it works against it. The idea of an apparition or even of a seer – think Bernadette – needs people to agree on what’s going on, and for that to happen, they need a bit of space before things get written down or officially reported. Not to collude in a deception, but to engage in that process that everyone does where they agree with others and their own interpretation of an event is altered slightly because of it. St Bernadette, who by the way was on my list for ‘People from history I would invite to a dinner party’ so I could have someone who’d witnessed an apparition (I was going to put her sitting next to Voltaire, because, y’know, that’d be fun, right?), saw a small girl about her own age and size and behaved as though she was playing with a friend; this got adapted into the more appropriate maternal Virgin Mary idea by those who watched and reported.

I don’t think it’s ever as simple as ‘lunatic claims something, people mindlessly follow because they want to believe in something’, because why that particular something, why is this guy convincing, why at this particular point in time (beyond the vagueness of ‘economic climate’) do people gather in the hope of seeing an apparition?

I bet historians of the future will blame NAMA or Stephen Gately’s death. Or both.

So there was Cork, where there were library visits and talks. I like doing them, especially when they go really well – I had a couple of really-and-truly lovely groups and they were an absolute joy, time flew by – but they are slightly tiring sometimes. Then teaching all day Saturday, and off to a lovely girls’ night in at a friend’s, and then watching the last third of Grey’s Anatomy Season 5, which I’d missed most of last year, on DVD.

Which was possibly far too much melodrama for one day, but oh gosh. That season finale! I adore the new characters brought in during S5 though – and Wikipedia has just told me that Kevin McKidd was in Father Ted and now I really want to rewatch that episode because I can’t imagine him not being Owen Hunt with all his angst and pain and fascinatingness. And Arizona! Oh, Arizona who roller-skates and is cute and perky and fabulous at her job and kisses Callie. I am not sure which of them I love more. And Meredith being slightly more well-adjusted than usual (but I do adore Meredith, more than is reasonable according to many people) and Derek being a brat. (So very much not a McDreamy fan.) Good times.

And now it is Monday and it’s another week and saying “it’s been a long week” seems slightly ridiculous and absurd when it’s only just begun. So I’ll stop yammering now, methinks…

So somehow it’s October, which means Children’s Book Festival, which means I’m in Cork later this week, visiting various libraries, and doing the same in Meath next week. And also had the Bubblegum Club Book Bash last Saturday, which was very cool and wonderful and there were chicken nuggets. (“Miss, you can go ahead in the line if you’re looking for real food. This is just chicken nuggets and chips.” “Yes. And?”)

Judi Curtin, Don Conroy and Marita Conlon-McKenna read. Derek Landy was fabulousness personified and wants to marry Snow White. Sarah Webb, organiser extraordinaire (and creator of Aunt Clover! Yes, I read the Amy Green books purely for Clover) sings enthusiastically. David Maybury draws balloon-authors expertly. And Sarah Rees Brennan really and truly can’t be unspoilery. Very fun book-lovery day and I got chatting to some lovely reader-y types too. Yay!

Same day we had our Big Smoke moment of newsworthiness with this piece in the Irish Times Magazine. In which tea was correctly identified as the tie that binds us.

I’m still not sure how it’s October. October is a month with a lot happening. CTYI classes start back in October. I have Song and Writing at the end of the month. It’s October, and I don’t know how that happened. I want to make lists. Lists for here. Of various kinds of favourite books. I also want to, you know, write stuff. Might be an idea. So lists may have to wait ’til, oh, 2010. 2012. Whenever.

(Hi and welcome to the new blog, by the way!)