According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, “Nearly 1 in 10 men in the United States has experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner and reported at least one measured impact related to experiencing these or other forms of violent behavior in the relationship” and while most offenders of that are “predominantly male perpetrators” it doesn’t mean women can’t do it themselves. Especially when they have grown up being heavily sexualized and believe it to be “normal” behavior.
A study focusing on the way that female sexual assault perps are treated notes that:
“Female perpetration is downplayed among professionals in mental health, social work, public health, and law, with harmful results for male and female victims, in part due to these “stereotypical understandings of women as sexually harmless,” even as ongoing “heterosexism can render lesbian and bisexual victims of female-perpetrated sexual victimization invisible to professionals.”
Studies have also shown that when men are abused by female predators, they are less likely to report it, because “male victims may experience pressure to interpret sexual victimization by women in a way more consistent with masculinity ideals, such as the idea that men should relish any available opportunity for sex.”
None of this erases the fact that we have issues with men in authority abusing women, but feminism is not supposed to be about ignoring the problematic and awful things women in power do. Asia Argento and Avital Ronell do not undermine #MeToo—they stand as a reminder of the work that needs to be done, and a sign of progress that men now feel like they can come forward about sexual abuse no matter who perpetrated it.
I’ve talked about this before, but our elementary school was the only one before I hit college which even had machines on the wall. Those machines may or may not have ever been filled since they were installed in like 1970, but that’s still better than I can say for any other public K-12 I went to.
A persistent heatwave has been lingering over parts of Europe, setting record high temperatures and turning typically green landscapes brown.
The United Kingdom experienced its driest first half of summer (June 1 to July 16) on record.
These images, acquired by our Terra satellite, show the burned landscape of the United Kingdom and northwestern Europe as of July 15, 2018, compared with July 17, 2017.
Peter Gibson, a postdoctoral researcher at our Jet Propulsion Laboratory, examined how rising global temperatures are linked to regional heatwaves. “If the globe continues to warm, it’s clear we will continue to see events like this increasing in frequency, severity and duration,” Gibson said. “We found that parts of Europe and North America could experience an extra 10 to 15 heatwave days per degree of global warming beyond what we have seen already.”
Unpopular opinion: straight people using “partner” to refer to their SO actually helps normalize the term so that lgbt folx can use it without automatically outing themselves to strangers. It also helps other straight ppl get comfortable with the fact that strangers aren’t entitled to information about other people’s gender or sexuality.
Give op their hard-earned notes
Tbh I hear “partner” and assume gay, I didn’t know straights used it. Very fair point, OP
I hear ‘partner’ and think ‘gay’ too. A girl at work used it for months and I just went with it. When she would say ‘he’ I even thought maybe he was trans*. Anyways, someone using partner makes me more comfortable and I came out to her. She was just an intelligent straight girl that liked the term and was knowledgeable in human sexuality so definitely someone I should have felt comfortable coming out too. It’s a good sign of a straight person uses it IMO.
As a mental health clinician, this is actually my blanket term when discussing any romantic relationship. I agree it normalizes it, but I also think it’s a relatively safe term to use to describe most romantic relationships without making any assumptions about the person’s orientation or identity. I also use the word “partnered” when describing a monogamous relationship status.
The term “partner” also removes the implied hierarchy of boyfriend/girlfriend vs husband/wife. This is relevant both to non-monogamous people, and unmarried individuals for whom the importance of their relationship isn’t dictated by its legal status.
also you can make cowboy jokes
Also people in “straight” relationships may be bi and/or one partner may be trans and not out. Just so people don’t assume. Not that that’s the point of this post but thinking of people I know in what look like standard male female relationships who use the term partner, and some really are cis and straight but some are not and you’d never casually know the difference unless you knew the people involved.
The first time I heard straight people say partner btw was in the nineties. I was surprised but have never been offended. It’s a legit term it’s not like we own it.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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