Petition for the termination of an Argentinian journalist

     Please join me in calling for the immediate termination of Juan Terranova, a prominent Argentinian journalist who threatened the director of Hollaback Buenos Aires with rape.
     To anyone who might be unfamiliar, Hollaback is an international organization devoted to ending street harassment. It allows victims of harassment to take photos of their harassers and submit them to an online library, thereby eroding the anonymity that allows harassers to operate from a place of perceived impunity. Hollaback has already lead to the arrest of at least one individual, who made the mistake of exposing himself to a woman on a subway and thinking he could get away with it.  Many more victories are certain to follow.
     If Mr. Terranova's rape threat seems more destructive than the perpetration of street harassment, it is largely because rape has a more identifiable impact. While I have no intention whatsoever of downplaying the attrocity of rape, it is crucial to note that sexual assault would be inherently less possible without the culture of violence in which such acts are encouraged, and in the creation of this culture, harassment plays an indispensable role.  Like the overarching mindset to which it gives rise, harassment requires a dehumanization and objectification of women, accompanied by alienation. Through wolf whistles, gestures, and lewd exclamations, women are made to feel as if they don't belong on the streets of the very cities they inhabit. With their identities reduced, in the eyes of their aggressors, to walking targets of verbal abuse, the physical abuse of these women is but a natural extension of the dynamic.
    In a world where these destructive cultures have been categorically dismantled, in which the perpetrators of violence are the overwhelming exception and not the rule, a rapist would stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.
    I therefore ask you to sign the following petition, simultaneously supporting Hollaback and silencing an individual whose transgression cannot and should not go unpunished.