Courts to victims: "You don't count."

If you're not reading The Curvature, you ought to be. Cara is relentless- she's always posting a story that I haven't seen yet or that other blogs haven't jumped on yet, and this was no exception.

Not only does she break stories, but she breaks them down, too:

Like the judge who thought that a prostitute wouldn’t care about being raped because, well, she’s a prostitute, this judge seems to think that a woman who won’t testify in a domestic violence case doesn’t care about the abuse. He of course fails to take into account that women who are abused are very commonly either 1. afraid of their partner 2. think that they are to blame for the abuse or 3. have mental health issues that make them want to stay with their partners. This does not mean that the abuse did not occur — as any reasonable person should already know.

The prostitution story she's talking about is this horrible story, by the way.

Either of those stories, alone, is horrible enough. Taken together, and in the face of the many other examples of questionable judicial rulings, and mistreatment by police, and it's hard not to think that maybe they're part of a larger problem.

One might even say a systemic one.

One might, in fact, go so far as to call it institutional.

To expand on what Cara is saying (and to shamelessly reference my own comments): the judge's argument doesn't make any sense beyond (or even on) the surface level. Even if we agree that it's possible that some people might consent to being struck repeatedly in the face, that the victim did not come forward and testify does not suggest that she, in fact, consented, but, rather, suggests the opposite.

The judge is reaching for an unlikely reason for the the victim's behavior when a simpler, and more likely, explanation exists. The sad reality is that victims of domestic violence often do not feel safe coming to the authorities or testifying against the people abusing them. Many times, the victims have come to think that there is no escape, and that going to authorities will leave them with no support, or, worse, will escalate the violence that they're experiencing.

Even if we accept what the judge is saying- that there are "rare cases; sadomasochists sometimes like to get beat up,"- we should be asking if that is likely, and if that makes sense in regards to this case, or if the victim's behavior is more likely the result of fear.

The test for this is rather simple: Assume that the judge is correct for a moment, and that the victim, in this case, was actually a consenting partner to the incident, and that this was some kind of sadomasochistic game or something. Does the victim's behavior make sense in this context?

I think it should be obvious that the answer is "no," it does not. If the victim was a consenting party to the assault, it doesn't any make sense that she would not come forward to exonerate the attacker. After all, if she was consenting to being struck in the face, why wouldn't she come forward when they arrested her attacker to say "Why are you arresting my partner? He didn't do anything to me that I didn't give consent to, and he's innocent of the crime you're charging him with."

The judge, instead, ignores an obvious, simple, and well documented reason why a victim might not come forward, and jumps on an unlikely, absurd, and unreasonable one, and, in the process, sets the justice system even further back. Over and over our courts keep showing the victims of crimes that they shouldn't trust the judicial system to protect them. When courts dismiss cases even when the police witness the crime taking place, it sends a chilling message to victims of abuse: even when we see it happen it doesn't count.

Irony so thick, it's clogging my lungs...

I guess I'm a bit late to this one (since it's almost 90 comments strong now), but how do you respond with a straight face to a post entitled "Your Women Are Ugly!" is not a political argument" with comments that can roughly be summed up with "yeah, especially when they're ugly!"?

I know I'm a broken record on this, but it just keeps coming up. A person's perceived attractiveness isn't a valid basis for political criticism. It doesn't matter how attractive you think Ann Coulter is. Whether she's hot or not doesn't change the message she's spewing, and it doesn't validate or invalidate the hatred in her message. When you attack her appearence you're not criticizing her message, you're actually, in some way validating part of it.

Yes, Coulter repeatedly tries to sell or is sold as this attractive conservative voice. She does try to invalidate liberal opinions by suggesting that they're unattractive, as though a person's beauty is a valid basis for criticizing arguments. When you say "but you're not hot, Coulter!" you're not countering her argument. In fact, what you're really doing is validating it in some way. The implication is that her argument is wrong, not because looks don't matter, but because she's not hot. In other words, her premise is fine, just her conclusion is wrong.

So, I'm just going to go ahead and keep on saying it:
If your response to that post was to point out how you think that conservatives are ugly or that liberals are attractive, you didn't help. You reinforced the problem. What you're saying is "they're wrong because we're hot or they're ugly" when you ought to have been saying "they're wrong, it doesn't matter how attractive you are, but, rather, what your socio-political acheivements are." When you focus on people's looks instead of their contributions, you're just reinforcing the notion that the most important thing a person can be is pretty.

A fair question... Why am I a feminist?

(by the way- this is the 101st post on No Cookies For Me! Hooray!)

In my It's a Small World post, reader projektleiterin responded with a great question of her own for me. I think it's a totally fair question:

...most guys I hear talking about equal rights strike me as quite insincere (very professional method for picking up gullible women who love fawning over a sensitive man who takes their issues seriously) or as having issues with themselves (nice guy syndrome). The only question I have is, what motivates you as a man to deal with the issues of women?

I keep thinking I've written about this, but I can't, for the life of me, figure out where. So, why do I care about women's issues? Why am I a feminist? What motivates me, as a man, to get involved?

The short answer: I think it's the right thing to do.

The long answer: Most of my thoughts on women's issues are grounded in my philosophical beliefs. A lot of my beliefs are based on theories of fairness- I'm concerned about and interested in making sure that people are treated fairly. When people are treated unfairly, it creates un-necessary suffering and hardship. When we work to increase fairness, I think that we all benefit, and the world is a better place. I think that all of us have an obligation to try to make the world a better place, and that improving the status of women is one way to do that.

While I spend a great deal of time discussing and addressing the issues that women face, and sexism as I see it, I try to discuss and address issues surrounding race and sexuality, too. I think that the discussions I have here and on other blogs help make me a better person, and (I hope) help other people as well. I'm also a believer in the idea that all of these things are interconnected. I think that women's issues are men's issues, are people's issues. I suppose this is a way of arguing that patriarchy hurts men too, which is sort of cliche, but it's true. Which, I suppose, is a way of saying that my interest isn't exactly altruistic. I do benefit from my feminism. Breaking down tradition gender roles and fighting sexism also helps me, as a man. It helps create a world where I can be judged on who I actually am, not what kind of plumbing I have downstairs.

So, yeah. Why am I interested in women's issues? I think that the answer is that, ultimately, women's issues are human issues, and I firmly believe that the world becomes a better place every time we make progress, if only a little bit. There are women in my life that I care about, and, but for the flip of a genetic coin, I could easily have been born a woman. I think that, as a moral being, I have an obligation to better myself and to care about how I treat other people. All of us are better off when we address these things and care about how people are treated.

Abortion <> Child Support

The Weekly Feminist Reader, over at Feministing, reminds me, once again, how difficult I think discussions about men's roles in pregnancy and childbirth can be. The bulk of the comments are about a post on MRAs from Shakespearessister. The conversation was more specifically about whether or not men ought to have the ability to "opt out" of parenthood/fatherhood.

It's a conversation that I don't know if I've ever seen go well (and yet, here I am, putting my foot in the water, too). I think that one of the biggest problems with the conversation is that it conflates two very different issues. Despite the best attempts by some commenters, abortion is not comparable to opting out. Abortion is about the right to personal autonomy regarding the use of one's body as an incubator for an unwanted fetus. Opting out is about the desire not to be held financially responsible for your offspring.

There are a lot of problems with conflating the two things. The arguments in support or against them simply aren't the same, and, I think, men's rights groups shoot themselves in the foot when they try to pretend that they are. The suggestion that your right to control your wallet is the same as a woman's right to control her body is... well... it's sort of offensive. It treats a woman's body like a piece of property, and I think that women are rightly annoyed and disturbed by that kind of reasoning.

So, what I propose to do in this post is talk about child support as child support- not as an issue somehow comparable to abortion. The question here is simple: should a parent have a right to opt out of child support?

Honestly, I think it'd be great if we had a system that would allow for people who don't want to be parents to not have to bear any of the unwanted burdens associated with childcare. Right now, if neither parent wants the child, they have options that let them avoid those burdens, but if the child is born and either parent decides to keep it, we run into the problem of child support payments.

The problem is that children have needs and the needs of those children must be taken into consideration. Having and caring for children isn't cheap- there are doctor visits, and food, and clothes, and supplies for school, babysitters or childcare, etc. I don't think it's reasonable to expect most single parents have the resources to care for a child just lying around. I suspect that most single parents need all the help they can get. Hell, most coupled parents need help from time to time.

As it stands, I don't see any way to abolish child support that doesn't do more harm than good, and I don't blame feminists for not jumping on the issue with full force. Why should they? Child support is something that goes to the child, not the parent, and either parent can collect it. I don't think that child support is unfair, given the purpose and the beneficiary. I don't doubt that some people can point out cases of abuse wherein the money didn't go where it should have, but if those cases are punished, and they represent a tiny minority of the problems with the system (people not paying representing a much bigger problem), I'm not going to get too down on people over it.

Now, personally, I think it'd be great if there was a social net for single parents who were raising a child alone. If there were circumstances where either parent had made it clear that they wanted nothing to do with being a parent, all rights and obligations could be severed and some kind of public fund would help defer the costs of childcare.

I think that there are several very real advantages to a system like this. The first advantage is that it allows people who don't want to be parents to opt out of that, with the stipulation being that, by giving up all of the burdens of being a parent, they also give up on all of the rights, as well. For the people who feel frustrated by being compelled to pay child support for a child they neither wanted nor want anything to do with, that's a very real benefit.

Another benefit is that, by spreading the burden out over a larger number of people, we can (theoretically, at least) better provide for those children. Child support barely scratches the surface when it comes to the actual costs of raising children. A public fund that would help pay for the cost of raising children, or that would, for example, provide some of the things children require, the needs of a child might better be met. According to USDA research, an average full child support payment for a middle income household in 1996 only covered about 33% of the estimated expenditure on that child. Ideally, we want each parent to contribute half of the cost of raising the child, since they contributed equally to the creation of the child- but the custodial parent caries the bulk of the burden.

And that's assuming that the payments are actually made. In many cases, the non-custodial parent does not make the payments, or pays less than the full ammount, which only increases the burden on the custodial parent.

A system where child support was paid for through public funding might actually let us increase the standard of living for those children living in single parent homes.

Of course, I recognize that such a system would be ripe for abuse, and that drives some people up the wall. The notion that someone would exploit such a system- and, I have no doubts that some people might- is enough to reduce support for such a plan. The other side of that is that there are plenty of people who think that such a system would further negate men's involvement in their children's lives, by creating a system where there were no consequences to fathering many children.

Which leads me to a bit of criticism with regards to the feministing thread. As much as I can understand where the frustration comes from, I don't think that all of the responses are helpful or fair. The only real justification that I see for child support (and I really don't see how any other is needed) is that the welfare of the child must be taken into consideration, and, barring support for an alternative plan, the burden has to be shared by the people who created the child. But, there are a number of comments in that thread that ammount to "Well, men need to face consequences for sex."

That kind of argument strikes me as being sort of weird. One of the things that we've often talked about around the feminist blogosphere is that pregnancy is not a punishment. We shouldn't be using children as a means of punishing people for having sex, either. If we could find a way to reasonably provide for the child without forcing either parent (who doesn't want children) to bear the burden, we should consider it. The notion that child support should be used as a means of creating consequences for men is a bit problematic to me.

Consider this:

Women do not have the right to have sex without coping with the consequences--that's impossible for us. One of the ways we cope is abortion. But MRAs want men to be able to have sex without coping with the consequences. Nope. We don't get to skip off, and neither do they.

Another major benefit of a system like this would be the providing of care in the cases where one parent is absent due to death. As it stands, the death of one parent can be a serious financial burden on a family, and, if life insurance isn't something that the family could reasonable afford, or if the family spent a lot of money or racked up a lot of bills paying for medical care prior to the death, it could substantially reduce the quality of a child's life.

The problem I have is that, ultimately, I want everyone to be able to have sex that is as free of consequences as possible. I sort of think that most of us would like that. The only people I want to have children are, well, people who want to have children. I want people who just want to have sex for recreational purposes to find partners who want the same, and to be able to have safe, healthy, fun sex, without unwanted pregnancy or disease.

So, yeah, I do, in fact, want men and women to be able to have consequence free sex. And it's true, the way things are right now, that rarely, if ever, happens. I don't, however, think that we should be doing things to reinforce that, or that reinforce the idea that children should be used as a means of punishing people for poor choices, which is how some of the comments read to me.

The fact that women, as the party that becomes pregnant, can never fully escape the risk of consequences is no more a justification for forcing men to pay child support than it is a justification for suggesting that women must act as walking incubators for children if men want them. The biological aspects of creation are beyond our control, but that doesn't excuse or justify treating either party unfairly.

Right now, I think that child support coming from the non-custodial biological parent is necessary, because I think that the needs of the child have to be taken into consideration, and there's simply not support for any alternative right now. That doesn't, though, mean that we shouldn't consider the possibility of a system wherein the needs of the child are met in some other way. The current system is better than no system- but that doesn't make a great system, or beyond improvement.

Right now it's sort of a "least bad" situation. It's certainly not a particularly good one, given that almost nobody is happy with it: the custodial parents still bear a substantially large piece of the financial burden, children still aren't getting the money that's required for their care, non-custodial parents don't always pay or pay less than they're supposed to, and some non-custodial parents resent being forced to pay for a child that they never wanted and made clear that they never wanted.

Of course, I've got a vested interest in this conversation, as someone who is considering donating sperm to a woman so that she can have a child with her partner. Since our state does not recognize same-sex adoptions or marriages, I could be help legally responsible for child support, even though none of us involved want me to be held responsible. Is this a normal situation? Of course not- it's a tiny fraction of all child support cases- but it's still a concern for me.

Speaking of men...

Amanda responds to comments about MRA issues, and there are some interesting comments, so far.

In particular, I really appreciated this, from Peter:

Some of the issues are very genuine, but the solution to the real ones is ALWAYS de-genderizing the issue and applying some other rational basis. For example, things like child-support and alimony. It isn’t a “men’s issue” as much as needing a retooling for fairness based on pay and such and applying those standards to everybody (and until the pay gap and the social expectation that mothers do all the work change, any rationally applied standard is going to skew toward men paying women in the general case.)

The rest of the issues always strike me as the sort of thing where the privileged are complaining about the (very real) dirt on their silverware while the unprivileged are asking to be allowed to eat at all.

The current patriarchal system does privilege some individual women and does badly oppress some individual men. Denying that helps nobody, but using it as an excuse to perpetuate the system is insane.

It’s one thing to be on the bottom of the heap and try to level the field. It is another thing entirely to be on the bottom of the heap, value the heap, and try to throw others down so you can climb up the hill on their backs.

I've already talked a lot about this, but it's totally worth repeating: if men are legitimately and honestly concerned about the treatment of men, we have allies, but the bulk of the work is on our shoulders. Inquities with regards to childcare and the draft are harmful to everyone, and it's counterproductive to start pointing the finger at women or feminists, as though they don't also have a vested interest in fixing those broken systems.

Anyway, there are some really interesting comments there, and I'd definitely suggest checking it out, if you haven't already done so.

It's a Small World...

Like Jill, I often look to sitemeter to see where my traffic comes from. It's a pretty neat feature, and I'm constantly amazed to see all the places that readers call home. In the last 50 visitors, I've had people from South Africa, Egypt, Macau, Japan, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Canada, the UK, and the United States.

I know who some of these probably are, but some of them, I haven't got a clue. I'd love to hear where some of you are from, how you found my site, what you think, or just, really, whatever you feel comfortable sharing. I think it's absolutely wonderful that so many people from all over the world can end up in the same place.

So, welcome everyone!

A question about Halloween and costumes...

I love Halloween.

This is a fact that is hardly surprising to people who know me, and isn't really that remarkable amongst people my age, anyway. I mean, who doesn't like Halloween? It's an excuse to get together with a bunch of your friends and wear funny clothes and costumes. Oh, and candy.

Plus, you get to tell ghost stories and watch horror movies, and, really, the whole thing becomes a socially sanctioned day of getting to play dress-up and make-believe, and generally get to act like a kid without having to give up all the benefits that come with being an adult. In other words, it's one of the few times you get the best of both worlds.

With regards to costumes, though, this post on Feministing has me thinking and trying to figure out where I draw the line. I think that some costumes are really offensive, and some are just in poor taste, while others are completely fine, and I've never actually thought about where the line seperates them.

Most costumes are probably pretty inoffensive. Or, at least, not overtly racist or sexist. If you dress up as a ghost or a witch or a monster, you're probably not going to be crossing the line, right? Now, the weird way that women's costumes are almost always super sexied up is problematic, but that's sort of a different issue.

Now, there are some costumes that I think are almost always offensive- and a lot of times, I think that they're intentionally offensive. They're the costumes that people wear just to get a reaction. I've seen pictures of people dressed up as the twin towers from as far back as 2002. You don't dress up in that kind of costume unless you're specifically trying to get a rise out of people- it's the "Look at how shocking and offensive I can be! I'm a rebel!" costume.

I think that people who dress up as people like Hitler or as KKK members are probably falling somewhere along the same lines- they know that they've picked out a costume that people are going to be completely shocked by, and they're looking to get that reaction.

And then there are the costumes I'm more confused about- like the ones that were pointed out in that feministing post. How bright and well defined is the line between dressing as a character from another culture's history or mythology, and dressing as a racial stereotype?

I don't think that any of us are confused about the notion that dressing in blackface would be offensive. That seems to be well understood, and I certainly don't disagree in the slightest. What about that samurai costume, though? Or, to pick something that all of us almost surely seen at least a few times: the ninja?

Now, I want to make it clear that I think that there are some important differences between blackface and ninja, and that the two really aren't the same, but I think that they exist on a continuum, and I'm not clear where, or even if, there's an easy point where we can draw the line.

I don't think that dressing as a ninja is particularly problematic. While ninja are associated with Japanese culture, I think that most people are aware that they're not real (or, at least, not real as presented). The ninja as a person who wears all black and disappears in a puff of smoke is a mythological figure- a fictional character from stories. More important, I think, is that "ninja" is an occupation- it's something you do. It's not a race. If the goal was to dress up as a Japanese person, I think that would become more problematic. Ninja has more in common with, say, Cowboy or Superhero than it does with blackface.

The more troubling and difficult cases, though, are things like the American Indian costume from that post. I find costumes like that troubling because they're not really costumes of occupations or characters- they're reinforcing stereotypes. Costumes like that strike me as being a lot more like blackface in that the whole point of the costume is that you're pretending to be a person of a particular race.

So, I think I'd really like to hear what other people are thinking about this, because I find myself wanting to justify or excuse some costumes that pull from other cultures- matador or samurai or pharoah, for example- because I seem to find them less troubling than others, but I can't help but wonder how that looks from the outside. Is it that some aren't offensive but others are, or maybe they're all problematic, but some moreso than others?

Thoughts?

Blogging about books... jumping prematurely into a challenge...

Dewey, over at the hidden side of a leaf takes a moment to Black Hole, by Charles Burns. It's a solid write-up of a pretty amazing, if somewhat disturbing, graphic novel. Dewey finishes up the post by pointing out that none of the bloggers she reads regularly write much about comics/graphic novels, and that maybe she needs to "host a graphic novel challenge!"

I keep meaning to write more about graphic novels, and putting it off for some reason. Over at 79 Soul I used to write about comics a little bit, and a number of the blogs I read are comic blogs, but I haven't really been in a position to pick up much new material lately.

Still, I love a challenge (even one that hasn't officialy been issued yet!).
(and, even if I can't spell the word correctly the first time around)

There are several works that I think would be interesting to write about on here, and I thought I'd go ahead and mention which ones I'm going to be taking a look at, so that other people can read them and give their opinions as well.

First, I think I'm going to start with something by Sam Kieth. He has a pretty long history of writing believable women in his stories, and many of his books focus on the lives and experiences of women. So, to that end, I'm suggesting that we take a look at Four Women first.

I want to warn anyone who is thinking of picking it up that it deals pretty frankly with sexual assault and rape. I've read it once before, and it can be really difficult to read- it definitely deserves a trigger warning. Noting that, I remember thinking it was a powerful comic, so I'm looking forward to reading it, now that I've got a few years distance between it and myself.

I'd love to know what other graphic novels people are interested in taking a look at- do any of you even care about comics/graphic novels?

On "Accidental Rape"

One of the comments that came up in Jill's post about rape and power was the point that rapists always know that they're raping. Several people pointed out that "rape is never an accident." There was also the suggestion that rapists always know what they're doing- or, to reword it slightly, rapists know that they're rapists- they don't rape without knowing that they're raping. Personally, I'm really not completely convinced of this.

One of the reasons that I advocate a shift in the ways that we think about sex is precisely because I think that the current model leads to rape. Right now, we're taught to think about sex as thing- largely a thing that men want and women have. Under this model, sex is often seen as a conquest- you're victorious if you have sex. This, I think, is at least partially responsible for some of the ways that people pursue sex- this is why people think it's okay to lie in the pursuit of sex, or why people think that it's okay to get someone drunk and "take advantage of them."

I'm going to try to find the stats, but I remember reading that surveys have shown that there's a divide between what people say and what they believe surrounding sex and rape. Most people will, if you ask them, agree that rape is wrong. But, when you start asking about specific situations, you start to see a divide form. There are many people who firmly believe that a situation is only rape if it meets all or most of the following:
The attacker is unknown to the victim.
The victim explicitly says "no".
The attacker threatens the victim with a weapon of some kind.
The attacker beats/chokes/strikes the victim.
The victim fights back, but is overpowered by the attacker.
The attacker penetrates the victim.

And, certainly, those are sufficient conditions to consider an attack a rape, but are the necessary? I think that many of us can agree that the first condition isn't necessary at all, given that most rapes are apparently perpetrated by someone the victim knows.

The fact is, there's not widespread agreement about where we draw the line regarding rape. I think the line ought to be obvious- but, unfortunately, that doesn't make it so.

I think that SarahMC was the first to mention rapists knowing whether or not they're rapists:

Even if women aren’t able to say “no” or get away for whatever reason, you’d think the fact that they freeze up and aren’t active/enthusiastic during the act would give these oh-so-innocent men pause. If your partner fucking freezes while you go to town on her body, it may be because you are raping her.

No, I totally agree with this- if you're with someone, and that person is giving you anything less than enthusiastic consent, you ought to check in and find out what is going on, because it could be the case that the other person is not on-board with what is happening. If you don't, you very might be raping that person.

So, yeah, these sorts of people- the sort of person who doesn't really care whether his/her partner is particularly enthusiastic and interested in the sex- the sort of person who sees the other person as a means to getting off? They're not exactly innocent. I think that the analysis that these sorts of people just don't care is right on. They don't care about the other person's feelings particularly.

Which is not quite the same as saying that they realize that they're rapists. It's possible to be a shitty, selfish human being without being a criminal. It's entirely possible- and, given the skewed model of human sexual relations that I think our society embraces, not particularly surprising- that some people who rape think that they're just participating in typical sexual behavior. When you have a conquest model of sex that you're working from, "taking advantage" of someone who is drunk and passing in and out of awareness doesn't parse as rape, because that person hasn't told you "no."

See, part of the problem is with the way many people read consent. For some people, consent isn't an affirmation, it's lack of a negation. In other words, some people think that it's only rape if the other person actually says "no" in a forceful way. If the other person is drunk and passing out, well... you can't say "no" if you're passed out, so it's not really rape.

Do they think that they're being nice?

Oh, absolutely not. But, they see sex as a struggle- a conquest- a thing to be taken from another through almost any means. They see the drunk victim as a person whose guard has been dropped, and is no longer capable of denying them access.

So, in that way, yes, I think that there are people who are rapists who simply don't realize that's what they are. I think that they probably think that they're just participating in typical sexual behavior. No, they don't care about their victim's feelings.

That's why I think it's so vital that we reframe the nature of consent and the ways that we view sex. If there's as much misunderstanding of consent as I think there is, we need to get people on the same page. We need to make it clear that lack of resistence is not the same as consent- consent is consent. We need to make it absolutely clear that, if you engage in sex with someone who is not giving you enthusiastic, affirmative consent, you might be raping that person.

Sarah reall nails another important part of this idea in her response on that thread:

As for the issue of whether or not the rapist knows they are raping in these cases, I would argue that they may not label the action as rape themselves and then justify the action to themselves because they feel entitled to their victims’ bodies.

I think our culture is so caught up with the idea that rapists are only strangers who jump out of trees and brutalize their victims in ways beyond the rape, that recognition of what rape actually is in most circomstances is often both unknown by both the rapist and the victim. If there was a pre-established relationship or freindship, the victim does not always recognize it is rape and blames herself. I’d argue the same could be true for the rapist, given the pre-established relationship, as well as our cultural misogynistic attitudes towards women’s bodies, a rapist may be convinced he is ENTITLED to her body.

And I honestly believe that education and changing the ways that we view sex are the best ways we have to change that.

Re: On Rape and Power...

Jill's post about the horrible case of Jeffrey M. Marsalis is an amazing and important read. I'm sure that a lot of you have already read the post, but in case you haven't, you should definitely check it out here.

I think that this is an important conversation to have. An analysis of what rape even is sometimes seems ridiculous. It sometimes feels like we ought to already have passed that particular conversation, but then cases like the one she's discussing come up, and I realize that we're not all on the same page, and it really brings home the point that there are a lot of people who don't know or understand what actually constitutes rape, even within the feminist community.

I think that this is one of the reasons why education is so very important. In part, I suspect that at least some rapists don't realize that they're rapists. I wouldn't even feel comfotable speculating on numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised to discover that there are some people who really are surprised when their victims report the rape, because they don't even realize that they've done anything wrong.

Do I think that education is the magic bullet that will help end rape? Of course not- I think that there's a lot of work to be done, but I think that education makes a difference. I think that a clearer understanding of rape and what it looks like can only help. Even if I'm wrong, and there aren't any rapists who don't realize what they've done, it helps because it helps give voice to the victims. It helps people find the words to describe what happened to them, and it helps to remove the silence that surrounds many victims of rape.

Anyway, Jill's post is really powerful and moving, and it's a razor sharp analysis. Go. Read it.