Comments on: Sex News: No rape kits at Burning Man, novelist Sasha Grey, Folsom 2012, sex doll rescue

By: Iamcuriousblue

Iamcuriousblue — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 18:06:41 +0000

What Ducky said. The article in question really ran with a weird angle about the rape kits. It is unlikely that the staff of BM have the training or equipment to properly store and administer a rape kit. I would not be surprised if one could find women’s shelters that were in the same situation. And as for “driving women off the playa”, that’s simply a matter of their staff *taking* victims to a facility where such an exam can be done, and offering to return them to BM if they so choose. Nothing sinister there.

Not saying BM is perfect or that more can’t be done in that community to prevent sexual assault. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they have the same problems with thinking they’re above such petty concerns that the BDSM community fell pray to. But the lack of rape kits really isn’t the issue.

By: Ducky

Ducky — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 14:04:14 +0000

As a Sexual Assault & Violence Intervention Counselor I can tell you… Burning Man medics are spot on here. For them to perform an evidence collection kit on the playa would potentially open a survivor up to more trauma and contaminate evidence. Evidence collection kits must follow a strict protocol to ensure they will hold up in court if a survivor decides to prosecute. And it always helps if a survivor has an advocate by their side to help them decide how they want their body cared for and if they even want to have a kit done. Burning Man might actually do well by having an advocate on hand. or perhaps they already do.

By: David

David — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 03:02:53 +0000

“The fact that Burning Man has not been doing rape kits before shipping sexual assault victims off the playa is so fucking inexcusable” Your expectations are clearly out of whack then. Burning Man is simply an event, the organizers just regular folks. They stated that they are not trained to administer a rape kit. Who on earth would expect them to be trained in this?

If you went to a concert would you expect the organizers/band/promoters to be able to administer a rape kit? No that is the job of law enforcement, they gather evidence and investigate crimes. I can’t see a single thing in the article that is bad, in fact they seem to go above and beyond their duty as event organizers.

Good for you Burning Man.

By: Jack Greenall

Jack Greenall — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 12:05:12 +0000

The Burning Man thing – I’m confused. They say that they help victims to reach appropriate medical facilities – ones that can administer rape kits that will stand up in court. And that they assign mental health specialists and sexual assault specialists to help the victims.

I don’t know a lot about the appropriate level of care in these circumstances, but reading that blog post I didn’t get the feeling of “one horrifying admission after another”. Would you be able to go into a bit more detail on this story?

By: Billy Bob

Billy Bob — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 08:23:26 +0000

Hmm, Paris Hilton is a nitwit, I think we agree on that. But I’m not sure that I can add “bigot against gays” to the list based on those comments. As I understand it, there is a distressingly high prevalence of HIV infection among gay men. And I have to suspect that men hooking up with strangers using Grinder probably have an even higher risk than less promiscuous men. So while her choice of words was very immature and insensitive, I’m not sure that she was behaving like a bigot. If one of my gay friends said he wanted to hook up with random people using Grinder, I’d probably express concern about that being a somewhat risky behavior and urge him to use protection.

By: ViennaCodex

ViennaCodex — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 08:16:34 +0000

Hey, not sure you read that burning man article correctly but it said physicians can’t actually perform the sexual assault forensic exams in the desert.