By Laura Woodhouse | 22 June 2009, 22:32

Firstly, we have the serious. This comes from a Guardian article which we missed a few weeks back, highlighting the continued failure (for the most part) of police forces to tackle the appallingly low rape conviction rate. Forces across the UK have been allocated the excruciatingly poorly named ‘rape champions’ whose job is to challenge negative attitudes towards rape victims and generally improve the way the police deal with victims of sexual assault. One of these ‘champions’ reportedly came out with this stunner during one of the government’s violence against women consultations in May:

“everyone knows most women and girls who report rape can’t be believed”

This from a guy who is being paid and trained to convince his colleagues that, actually, assuming that at least 25% of women reporting rape are lying isn’t particularly helpful or, you know, fair. As Cara at The Curvature says:

First of all: how the hell does this guy still have his job? Can we get him fired, please? Preferably, yesterday?

Secondly, what kind of training are we really talking about if this is the view that those undergoing it walk away with? That “everybody knows” that women aren’t really raped, and are actually lying, vindictive whores? If this is the post-training attitude, I doubt that I even want to know what the attitude is pre-training.

Next, we have the not quite so serious, but infuriating in its own depressingly predictable way. This comes from an article decrying the apparent deterioration in women’s tennis over the last couple of years:

Something seems to have gone wrong with women’s tennis, which, only a year ago, was in sufficiently good health - despite the retirement of Justine Henin while still world No1 - for these pages to celebrate its achievements. A big fashion photograph of Venus and Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic, five of the very personable stars at the top of the women’s game, accompanied the article.

Ah yes, celebrating women’s achievements by focusing on their looks. Just fantastic. Thanks for that. Oh, and to add to the infuriating tennis quotes theme, I just read this post at Jezebel which quotes former Wimbledon champion Michael Stitch saying that female players exist to ‘sell sex’ as much as to play tennis, and links to various discussions on the ‘grunting’ controversy, most of which reference the ‘unattractive’ nature of women’s grunting as at least one reason for considering a ban on it.

I’m going to bed…