Feminist Peace Network

What is wrong with this story, let us count the ways…

“A paedophile from Merseyside who raped a 13-year-old girl and made her pregnant has been jailed at Liverpool Crown Court for seven-and-a-half years.

They had sex on later occasions and she became pregnant while still 13 and gave birth to his child.”

First off, this is a misuse of the word pedophile (and no that is not a mis-spelling above, just an English newspaper). There is nothing loving about rape. And the word pedophile comes from a Greek word that means to love children. Secondly, there is no equivalence between having sex and rape. Having sex implies consent, rape is a crime, and an unspeakably heinous one when it involves a child). And as activist Jennifer Drew points out, the child that the victim gave birth to is not “his child”,

“Not only does the international press continue to define sexual assault
and rape as simply cases wherein ‘the ‘participants have sex’ rather
than reporting ‘a man raped/sexually abused a woman/girl/boy/man. The
media continues to define a child as being owned and created by men
alone.

In fact no man creates or owns a child - the reproduction process is
always one involving two genders. Meaning irrespective of how the
reproductive process is carried out, sperm is always obtained from the
male and the female’s egg is consequently fertilized. Women are not just
reproductive receptacles who receive the creative sperm.’ A child
cannot be created with just a sperm.

However, it would seem only men create and ‘own children.’ Correct
terminology is ‘Munro raped the 13 year old girl on later occasions and
as a result the girl became pregnant and gave birth to a
child.’”

This marks the 3rd time this month that I have blogged on this subject (see this link as well). Unfortunately, the stories flagged here are just the tip of the iceberg. The damage done by this kind of media misogyny is clear and it is time it stopped.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Atrocities, Commentary