This made me cry...

I'm on my way to work this morning, listening to the radio, when the news comes on.
A man in Lancaster, CA stabbed his girlfriend to death with a sword, in front of their four children after an argument. The 911 tape of their daughter pleading with the opperator to get help was played, and it was the most horrible, gut-wrenchingly sad thing I've heard in ages.

Now, it's been about an hour and I'm sitting here thinking about it, and the thing that's pissing me off right now is that I know that the thing that's going to get paraded out as soon as this starts gaining traction is that there was a history of domestic violence, and some people are going to start saying things like "Well, she should have left."

And while the question of why a particular person stays when they're a victim of domestic violence is an important one, it's not actually helpful in this case at this point. We'll never know why stayed, because he murdered her. And the fact that she stayed should not, in any way, excuse, validate, or implicate her in her murder. The question "Why?" is important in that it can allow the people who care to provide assistence and help the victim escape the cycle of violence. In retrospect, the why is less helpful, and if it's used as a weapon to implicate or denigrate the victim, it's in particularly poor taste.

I hope they catch this guy very very soon, and I hope that those poor kids get the care that they'll need. I can only imagine how completely screwed up you'd be after watching your father stab your mother to death with a sword.

..edited 9:06 am...

Apparently, there's already a discussion happening over at Feministe about the question "why don't victims leave?" It's not about this case in particular, but more about the general questions around domestic violence. I'm reading through it right now, and some of the comments are very good- the point about how the question "why" is too big and cumbersome, while questions like "what is preventing the victim from leaving" tend to get more concrete answers (some of which Thomas mentioned in the comments here already). I hadn't thought of that before, but that makes some sense. Anyway, just thought I'd point to it, since it was a weird coincidence, and since some of the points are very good.

This headline pisses me off... -or- Porn stars are people, too.

So, I was browsing the local paper, and I came across this headline: Missing college student led a double life as online porn star. The story is about Emily Sander, a woman who went missing last weekend, and is, at this point, assumed dead. Police are searching for a man named Israel Mireles, since he was the last person seen with her. They searched his hotel, and found "a large quantity of blood".

Now, read the first line of that article: "A missing Kansas college student believed to be the victim of foul play apparently led a double life as an Internet porn star by the name of Zoey Zane."

What, exactly, does this have to do with anything?

At this point? Nothing. The police are looking into it, but so far there's no reason to believe that her posting pictures on the internet had anything to do with whatever happened to her. According to a close friend of the missing woman, Sander had just recently signed a contract for the work, and had told her parents, but didn't want people to know. So what does ABC news do?

Oh, they go and ask her grandparents about it. Nice.

Ultimately, this sort of thing pisses me off. It's not enough that this woman is missing and presumed dead, or that the primary suspect is likely making a run for the border with his pregnant 16 year-old girlfriend? They have to publicize her private activities? They have to confront her grandmother with this?

And the comments are worse. The very first comment to the article? "So where are the photo's Freep?" Lovely. Because, yeah, that's classy- this woman is probably dead, and you want to ogle her naked pictures. Ass. Over on this story the comments aren't any better:

"Missing Student May Have Been Porn Star"...That headline is taken from an abcnews.com headline...Does anyone know if it is true? If it is true, it would represent and sad and disgusting turn in this case. Therefore, we may all have been wrong thinking that this missing person story was as tragic as the other stories listed the ABC news site because there is no evidence they engaged in reckless and dangerous activities.

I know that other blogs have covered this before, in relation to judges treating sex-workers like shit, but, Christ on a cracker, this woman is missing and presumed dead, and the fact that she posted some pornographic pictures on the web represents a sad and disgusting turn in the case? Really? It wasn't sad and disgusting when it was thought that a random guy murdered her? And the story is less tragic because she may have done porn? Posting pictures of herself was a reckless and dangerous activity? Fuck you.

It doesn't matter what her professional occupation was- she's still a human being, and still deserving of respect and sympathy. Why does the fact that she's done some internet porn matter one iota? Why should it be less tragic? That she did internet porn doesn't make her more deserving of violence. That she did internet porn doesn't make the fact that she's missing and presumed dead less painful to her family and friends. If it turns out that she has been murdered, it doesn't make the murderer less sick, or the crime less heinous and deplorable.

The attitude that women who work in porn are less valuable as human beings or that terrible things that happen to them aren't as bad as if they happened to someone else is what is really disgusting here. I left a comment to that article saying as much. It's not enough to be angry and say these things on my own space, where the asshole who made the statement isn't likely to see it.

Hit the road, Jack...

Drinking and rape...
Almost any time you talk about rape, the drinking thing comes up. I think, next to criticizing the way that women dress, the fact that people like to drink is about the issue most often brought up. You see it in the news. You see it in the comments on posts about rape.

Despite the best attempts to clarify that a victim's choice to drink or not drink doesn't cause that person to get raped, but rapists choose whether or not to rape, the argument rages on.

In this case, I want to talk about and respond to some of Jack's comments from Cara's thread. Jack's comments are near the end of the thread, and his first question was about rape apologism:

Now, firstly, please elaborate on rape apologism. I read through the ‘no cookie’ guy’s page and I think it’s bullshit. People who believe the oppressed shouldn’t point our their problems to the oppressor are living in cloud cuckoo land. The vast majority of people do not just happen upon the best way of doing things. They wait until someone is so pissed off with them that they have to listen. So, please go on.

I think that this is really important, because it means that either Jack is seriously misreading/misunderstanding the point or that the point has been poorly explained. When we (or, at least, I) talk about rape apologism, it's about people who make excuses for and try to diminish the seriousness of rape and sexual assaults. It's not about whether rape victims should or shouldn't point out or take action against their attackers, it's about the ways that society dismisses and ignores the victims of these crimes. It's about the ways that victims of rape are constantly accused of lying, or how they're told that the crime is, to varying degress, their own fault because they: shouldn't have been alone with that person/shouldn't have had so much to drink/shouldn't have worn that outfit/had consented to sex with that person in the past/etc, etc, etc.

My impression is that Jack is actually responding to the post about whether feminists have an obligation to hand-hold people new to the movement or interested in the movement. I stated that, no, I don't think that women have an obligation to teach men what is or is not acceptable behavior, just as I don't think that people of color have an obligation to teach whites what is and is not acceptable behavior. I stand behind that: it's not the responsibility of the oppressed to point out opression to the oppressors.

Now, the difference between what I said, and how Jack read it is, admittedly, somewhat subtle, but it's an important distinction, none-the-less. I said that the oppressed don't have an obligation to teach the oppressors. The responsibility for not being an asshole lies with the person acting. Each of us is responsible for our own actions, and we each have an obligation to not treat other people poorly. That's not the same as saying that the oppressed shouldn't mention their oppression.

In reality, there are tons of people working to point out and fight oppression from within oppressed groups. There's no shortage of people writing about their experiences with bigotry or oppression every day. So, it's not for lack of resources that a person is ignorant about oppression. The original point was more about any particular person. I can't walk up to any particular POC and expect that person to treat me with kid gloves- to teach me about what it means to be a POC, and in what ways that person experiences bigotry and racism. That person doesn't have an obligation to act as my mentor and teacher.

That's why I went on to point out that it's my responsibility to seek out information and to learn. No particular person is obligated to help me- but that's not the same as saying that people shouldn't help me. If someone feels inclined to help- andy many people do- that's awesome.

I'm going to go out on a limb, and guess that the part that pissed Cara off the most was when Jack gets into discussing the connection between rape and clothing:

However, there are some things that you MUST realise, not just for the sake of this argument, but because it is indicative of human behaviour, drunk or sober, man or woman, rapist or anyone else. When someone gets pissed up at a club or bar and dresses in skimpy clothing, they are saying, “Hey, I want easy sex, for one night only.” That IS what that means. This is a matter of social relationships and these are norms that have been around for a long, long, long time and it applies to men just as much as women. If you don’t want easy sex, you dress down. Most people are turned on by the sight of a bit of extra skin on the right person. If we were all nudists, that would be different, but we are not.

This is the sort of comment that makes a lot of us say that we live in a society of rape apologists. The suggestion that this attitude is indicative of human behavior betrays a really low opinion of mankind, and is, to put it mildly, misguided.

First of all, a person's choice to get drunk and dress in a certain way doesn't tell you a damn thing about what that person is looking for. It most certainly does not mean "Hey, I want easy sex, for one night only." It could mean myriad different things: "Hey, I want easy sex tonight", "Hey, check out this hot new dress I bought that I think really flatters me", "Hey, I'm out partying with my friends", "Hey, I've had a rough week and I wanted to get dressed up and have some drinks and have a nice time, but I'm not looking for sex", etc. So, yeah, sometimes it means that you're looking for sex when you wear a skimpy outfit and go out clubbing and drinking, but the mere fact that you're wearing an outfit that you think is hot doesn't say anything to other people about what you're actually thinking. The fact that some people think that a person's choice in clothing tells them what she IS thinking, is a big problem.

Another issue here is this: Even if a person is looking for easy sex, it doesn't excuse or justify rape. If a woman, for example, decides that she's looking for a one night stand, and chooses to wear something low-cut and short, and goes to a bar and drinks a lot... so what? Just because she's at a bar looking to pick up a guy doesn't mean that she's looking for every guy or any particular guy. The fact that she's wearing something skimpy and drinking doesn't excuse another person assaulting her. Even if she's looking to get laid, she still has the right to say "no" to any particular request.

The fact that some particular person is turned on by that woman's clothing choice doesn't create an obligation on her part to fulfill that person's desire anymore than the fact that some woman or man might think that I'm hot creates an obligation on my part to please that person. Do I realize that if I get dressed up and go out to a club that it's possible that another person might think I'm hot and be turned on by me? Absolutely. That fact doesn't matter, though- it doesn't justify or excuse a sexual assault on my person.

If you think that a person's choice of clothing tells you more about what that person is thinking, feeling, or desiring than that person's actual words, you're treating that person as an object. You're not fighting rape culture, you're reinforcing it. If you're turned on by someone and they don't return the sentiment, it doesn't matter what that person is wearing or how much that person has had to drink.

Jack doesn't do himself any favors when he continues, though:

There are plenty of people (the majority, would you believe it?), who do not see skimpy clothing and drunkenness as a ticket to rape. You make it sound like this is not the case. That is why I find (pending your reply), the rape apologist idea a little OTT. Seeing a load of scantily clad ladies drinking and laughing gives me urges. But I refrain from raping them because that would be utterly abhorrent in itself, not because it’s OK to be a rape apologist, but actual rape is just, you know, not for me… Do you see? Sorry, that was rather a clumsy phrasing.

I think we can all agree, that is rather clumsy phrasing. Sure, I'll agree that probably most people, if asked, agree "rape is wrong". That's not the whole story, though. There are some people who think that rape is wrong, but that if a person is dressed a certain way, or has been drinking, or is a sex worker, etc, etc, that it's not rape. Even if those people are the minority, they're still out there, and they're still a problem. Jack's own comments hint at rape apology. Even if you say "rape is bad", when you follow it up with "but, it's understandable that it happens to people who dress a certain way. They should know that dressing a certain way turns people on", you're treading in apologist territory.

Mostly, though, that paragraph is sort of troubling because of the statement "rape is just, you know, not for me..." Rape is a sexual assault- it's a crime because you're attacking another person. I mean, imagine saying the following: "Actual murder is just, you know, not for me..." People don't talk like that. That's the sort of thing we say about a type of cola or a movie genre: "Coke is just, you know, not for me" or "Crime dramas are just, you know, not for me".

The way it's worded creates the feeling that rape is, somehow, just a matter of personal preference. I doubt that Jack actually feels that way, but that's how the paragraph sort of reads to me, and I imagine it didn't help his case much. Rape is a serious assault, and it's wrong, not because it's "not for me" but because it's a serious violation of another person's personal autonomy.

The interesting thing is that Jack's own analysis of his relationship to rape victims ought to be indicative of the problems that we face. They should reveil to him just how screwed up the situation is. When he notes that, statistically speaking, he probably knows a number of victims of rape, but that he'll probably never know which ones, and that they aren't willing to "put down a dismissive comment about rape in public", that should suggest to him that the ways we view and treat rape victims is problematic. The ways that our society treats rape victims doesn't make it easy for them to talk about their experiences. He almost gets there, I think, when he talks about his own dismissiveness towards rape during his teenage years, but I'm not sure he completely understands the social implications, even as he repeatedly notices and mentions the difficulties that rape victims face:

...it IS the responsibility of the oppressed to speak out. Most men (because let’s face it gents, it’s so overwhelmingly men who commit rape), will never commit rape, but that does not make them devoid of responsibility - because they have neither the personal fear/experience, nor the second-hand emotional information from vocal rape victims, to make a concrete socio-political stand on it, it just might be that many men find it more acceptable or that they are pretty ambivalent about it. This cannot be allowed to continue, but I find it difficult to see how the situation can be improved when women are so divided by personal feelings of shame, or helplessness, or just not wanting to bring it up, that they are not combating ignorance of this issue.

I'm not completely sure what to make of this. I don't know of any feminist who thinks that men are devoid of responsibility when it comes to rape. Ultimately, most of us suggest that it's rapists responsibilities not to rape, but, given how that's not happening, we need to create a society that takes rape more seriously, and doesn't treat rape like a joke, or blame the victims, or excuse rape because the attacker "couldn't help it" or whatever. Many people believe that men have a responsibility to stand up to rape and to confront other men on the issue when they make light of it or excuse rape.

I'm also confused because it's not like no women speak out. It's true that many victims- male and female- of rape feel shamed or frightened about speaking out about their attack, but it's not the case that no victims speak out. We certainly need to make it easier for victims of sexual assault to be heard, but it doesn't make sense to suggest that nobody is trying to raise awareness about rape. Telling the victims of a serious assault "You ought to be doing more" doesn't help- it's just piling more guilt on top of what, for many, is an already tremendously difficult time.

It's true that it's difficult to raise awareness about an issue when the victims are often silenced- but Jack comes to the wrong conclusion. This is exactly an area where he could be making a difference, rather than standing around complaining about how victims don't do enough. Instead, he could be doing advocacy work. He could be, himself, pointing out the problems that victims of sexual assault face, and trying to help people understand the realities of rape. Instead, he says:

The responsibility to improve on the numbers of women subject to rape, on the care victims receive afterwards AND on the conviction rate lies with women and most specifically with rape victims not out of some moral high-ground kind of thing, but because men in general, through thoughtlessness, common stupidity, gender socialisation and because nobody has bothered or been able to tell them, simply don’t know what they are talking about. That’s the crux of the matter and you even said it in one of your posts. If you just get annoyed with people who don’t get it, you can’t wait until they’re interested. Why would they be? They don’t know anyone who has been raped, or rather, nobody they know has let on that they’ve been raped.

The responsibility to improve on the sexual assault rate and the resources available to the victims of assault doesn't sit at the feet of the victims or at the feet of women- it's all of our responsibilities. That some people- even most- are ignorant or thoughtless or even stupid doesn't excuse the rest of us from working on it. If some, even most, men are stupid about it, it just means that the men who do get it have a tough battle to try to help those men "get it". Jack claims to be gender egalitarian, but shoving the responsibility at the feet of women after pointing out that rape is a problem that disproportionately affects women doesn't make sense. If you really think that men are the biggest source of rape, and that women are the biggest set of victims, why would you throw your hands up and suggest that it's women's responsibility to fix the problem?

Ultimately, Jack ended up getting banned after suggesting that Cara- who was, it should be noted, doing a lot of things that Jack wanted women to do (talking about rape, raising awareness, etc)- "part of the problem." You see, her attitude is "essentially the same as the ones which have kept women in the kitchen and the bedroom institutionally for hundreds/thousands of years."

Jack: If you want women to help you understand feminist concerns and issues, I don't think that arguing that women dressing in skimpy clothing is a good start. And after you've annoyed and upset someone on their own blog, telling them to "Grow up" and telling them that they're "pathetic" aren't going to help your case, either.

*Feminism's* Rape Fallacy? Really?

h/t Feministing, I think?

David Cox, from the Guardian, has this to say on the subject of rape.

First of all- and this is nitpicky- where, exactly is the fallacy supposedly being commited? Because, uh... I don't see one. Or is Cox using some use of "fallacy" that I'm not familiar with? Also, for an article that's called "Feminism's Rape Fallacy" he doesn't even mention feminism until the penultimate paragraph.

Nitpicks out of the way...

It's hard to know what to say to Cox, because a lot of what he says is completely unfounded, or out-and-out made up. Let's start at the begining, with his opening statement: Isn't it time to acknowledge that it's beyond the capacity of the judicial process to deal with date-rape?

I'm not sure it's possible for me to roll my eyes any harder. Does he think that this is something profound? Does he think that none of us have ever come to the conclusion that the problem of rape isn't something that the courts alone can deal with? I have a feeling that Cox thinks that he's really hit one out of the park there- that he's offered up something really deep.

A quick glance through almost any feminist blog, though, would have shown him that he's preaching to the choir with that one. I don't know anyone who thinks that the judicial process will stop rape. I don't know anyone who thinks that ending sexual violence and eliminating date-rape will happen in the courts. That's the whole reason that we talk about the social aspects of rape. That's why we talk about victim blaming. That's why we talk about the sense of entitlement, or slut shaming, or any other number of social, not just judicial, problems.

Date rape isn't something we expect the courts to solve, we just expect them to stop being part of the problem. Low conviction rates and hostile treatment of victims isn't a problem because it prevents us from ending rape- they're problems because they help further victimize people who are already victims. They're problems because they show that the courts don't take a problem seriously.

And when your conviction rate drops from 33% to 5.4%, it's possible that people might start to think that your courts don't take that crime very seriously. Or, you know, the your juries don't. Of course, when the number of reported rapes is increasing, but prosecutions aren't... well, that doesn't necessarily help, either.

So, no, David Cox, you're not being profound. You're arguing against a position that nobody has. At the very least, you're arguing against a minority opinion that I've never seen articulated.

Then, of course, there's Cox's claim that it's "doubtless" that "many" of the convicted 5% are unknown to their victims. Which is weird, because the Guardian reports that "Women are most likely to be raped by men they know and 50% involve repeated assaults by the same man." Researchers blamed a "culture of scepticism" for the low prosecution and conviction of rape. The same culture of scepticism that might, for example, lead to a "journalist" writing an article like this, perhaps?

Alright, I know, I'm just being petty.

But it's hard to know what to say when someone can write "Should we be surprised that juries acquit them, or that police or prosecutors consider a conviction unlikely in their cases?" of victims who've been raped by someone they know? Should we be surprised?

Absolutely!

If the evidence supports a victim's claim that she (or he) was raped, it shouldn't matter whether the attacker was a spouse, a friend, or a stranger off the street. Particularly since, you know, all evidence suggests that the majority of rapists are known to their victims.

Cox is hung up on this idea that it's always a "he says/she says" situation where a woman's claim can't be at all verified. Sure, sometimes that's true. Sometimes there's no way to know for sure what happened, and sometimes there's no evidence that an attack took place. That makes cases difficult- that doesn't mean that it's preferable to throw our hands up and say "Oh well! Tough shit, victims!"

To start with, if we want to make a system that finds guilty people guilty while letting the innocent walk free, we need to quit promoting the myth that women routinely make false allegations, as if that's a justification for not pursuing rape cases. The fact that there are some people who have falsely accused others of rape shouldn't lead us to conclude that most or all people who make rape accusations are liars.

As it turns out, people will lie about just about anything, given the right circumstances. People have made false assault charges. People have lied about being mugged. People have lied about being abused. Have lied about having property stolen. Have lied about people lying about them. That doesn't mean we don't look for evidence of assault, theft, robbery, burglery, extortion, or libel. And when we go to court, we don't treat the victims of those crimes as though they're liars.

In the end, all of this comes across as an excuse to get to what Cox really wants- an excuse to victim blame and slut shame. It's only at the end of the article that we get to the real meat, when Cox's suggestion is to stop putting yourselves at risk, ladies.

See, as the most likely targets for rape, it's your responsibility to stop getting raped. "Exercise caution" as he puts it. Keep your "valuables" out of sight. That's right. "Think twice before visiting footballers' hotel rooms late at night" and remember that getting yourself "into a drunken stupor in the company of a frisky male" is dangerous.

There are several problems with this.

First of all, as a man, I can't help but point out what a thoroughly low standard Cox apparently holds men to. This is one of those "Wow, you people think a lot less of men than any feminist does" situations. The implication is pretty clear- men can't help themselves around a drunken woman? That's a low standard if I've ever seen one.

More important, though, is Cox's completely ignoring the realities of rape. It doesn't matter what a woman is wearing or how drunk she is, or if she's got her "valuables" on display- rape isn't about passion. It's not usually the case that it's a guy thinking "Wow, she's hot" and not being able to control himself. It's not a case of her dressing a certain way. Rape is usually perpetrated by men against women they know, regardless of dress.

Cox also misses the mark with regards to drinking. It's not women who drink that are at risk for getting raped. The relationship is all wrong- in most cases where drinking was involved in a rape, it's the perpetrator who was drinking, not the victim.

But, really, it's probably much easier to spread mistruths and lies about rape and to pile on about how the victims shouldn't get themselves raped than it is to examine any of the facts about rape and try to find ways to get the attackers to, you know, stop raping people.

And, lastly, there's that whole myth that feminists are completely and utterly opposed to women playing a part in securing their own safety?

Not true.

Concerning Cosmo- Battling the Myth of Gray Rape

Feministing recently posted about the horrible Cosmo article in the September issue. It supposedly tackled the issue of "gray rape" but mostly seems to have blamed women for getting raped and made a bunch of rape apologies.
Lovely.

Cara, over at Curvature, wrote a letter to Cosmo about the article. You can see Cara's letter, and what they wrote back, in this post. I wish I could say that their response is surprising, but it's not. It's the same kind of hand-waving that I've come to expect from major media outlets when you complain about some incredibly offensive sexist comment. Cara is asking for people to write more letters, and the NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault is organizing a letter writing campaign.

I'll be sending off a letter in a moment, and I urge you to take a look at the article and join in. It's easy for a magazine like Cosmo to brush off a handful of angry letters. It's less easy to write off a complaint when it starts coming from more and more people. Every person that writes a letter criticizing that article becomes a person who potentially may not buy their magazine.

As much as I hate to admit it, I think that hitting media outlets in the pocketbook is one of the most effective ways to get them to change their tune.

In Which I'm Called Out on Germaine Greer...

Because, gods know, I'm not one to turn down a challange: Natalia Antonova tags me to talk about Germaine Greer's comments about Princess Diana. And how can I resist being called out by someone kind enough to label me a real feminist blogger?

Obviously, I can't.

The story comes from this Salon blurb posted a few days ago. I looked around to try to find the full quote, and this is what I came up with:

I have come to the conclusion that she was a devious moron. One of the things I have been puzzled by is why her whole life was such a mess. She made a mess of being Princess of Wales, but that is fine because the job is not do-able. It is an insane job and, in history, all but one of the Princesses of Wales have come to a sticky end -- stickier than hers.

I am also interested in why she couldn't manage life after being Her Royal Highness. It still puzzles me that she does that no-no thing: she sleeps with married men. If you do that in Hello! magazine, you are beyond contempt. But she does it with Will Carling, we forgive her somehow – even though his marriage is in a very delicate state and it doesn't seem to have helped at all.

Then she does it with Oliver Hoare, the antiques dealer, who eventually realises he is in deep shit and goes back to his wife. She makes 300 nuisance calls to his home phone number. And this is the angel that people want to crown.

I'm not really sure what to say. I agree with Natalia, I'm not sure why it should be surprising that Diana's life was a mess. Hell, my life is a mess, and I'm not under constant scrutiny from reporters and the public. I don't have the weight of an entire country on my back. Diana's life doesn't seem to have been that much messier than a lot of people's, she just happened to have a lot of photographers and reporters eager to talk about hers.

The whole tirade stinks of publicity grabbing. There are some things that are sure-fire ways to get media attention and to incite reaction. Slagging on the dead- particularly when it's someone with as much public adoration as Princess Di- is high on the list.

And, for the record: Why is it a no-no thing for her to sleep with a married man? Were these men unable to say no to her? I think it's shitty to cheat on your spouse, but it's not her fault that this assholes didn't stay faithful to their wives. She didn't break a vow when/if she slept with them- they broke a vow to their wives.

Personally, I find Greer's comments tremendously offensive, not because she's insulting Diana, but because, quite frankly, they stink of misogyny. Look, I don't give two shits about Diana. I don't know that much about her except for her work on landmines and AIDS awareness, and I don't think she's a saint by any stretch. My problem isn't with being critical of Diana because she's dead, either- the fact that she's dead doesn't put her beyond criticism. My problem is with going off about what a "devious moron" she was when your only real complaints seem to be that you don't like how much or with whom she was having sex.

There's a term for that kind of criticism. I call that slut shaming.

And this, from the woman who once said "Women have very little idea of how much men hate them"?

This shouldn't really be surprising, though. I've found a lot of Greer's comments and actions pretty troubling, personally. Really, for someone with such an influential set of writings, some of her more recent writings leave a lot to be desired. Take a look at this lovely piece, for example:

There's no question that the women are stroppier. They're not embarrassed to say they agreed to sex with one man they'd only just met, or even with two, but they insist that they hadn't agreed to being brutalised, insulted or humiliated, and they want redress.

They might well be insisting on the right to free expression of their own desires, which include shagging the odd hyper-fit footballer, provided he doesn't abuse the privilege. But they also seem quite interested in another factor in sex with footballers - namely, indecent amounts of money.

That's right, her claim is that women- she actually calls them "rape fodder" at one point- who flirt with and might want to sleep with footballers, but get sexually assualted and raped... they're really not raped, they're in it for the money. Of course, the men involved can't help it. Oh, no! You see, Greer informs us that "Good family men have been known to succumb to the groupies' onslaught," because, you know, in the face of their overwhelming sluttiness, how can any man resist? And her last line of that piece? Fucking pricless: "Now that the women are beefing and the papers are printing and wives are walking out, the players are more vulnerable than ever."

That's right, those poor players. It's not, you know, the women they rape that are vulnerable. Oh no! It's those poor men.

And let's not forget her comments on female genital mutilation, right? In her book The Whole Woman, she argued that attempts to ban FGM were "an attack on cultural identity" and that "one man's beautification is another man's mutilation." She compared the practice of female circumcision to labia piercings: "If an Ohio punk has the right to have her genitalia operated on, why has not the Somali woman the same right?"

So, yeah. That's my take on Greer, for whatever it's worth. Probably the paper it's printed on, right? I'm not in the habit of telling other people whether they can or can't call themselves feminists, and I know that some of Greer's writings were damn influential... but I hope to damn that someone will stop me before I start going off on antifeminist tirades. Whatever type of feminist she is, I don't want any part of. I don't think it's particularly enlightened to cry "poor men!" and slut shame women because the man they're hooked up with is cheating on his wife.

No News is Good News...

(This is so lame, but until just now, I never noticed how that can be read in two ways... the lack of news is, itself, good news, or, as in this case, there is no news that is good news. How did I never notice that?)

Anyway, a news round-up: A homeless man in Cincinnati is shot to death when he asks a passerby for money. The woman who shot him is being charged with a hate crime. I'm not really sure where to fall on this one- I absoultely think that it's wrong to shoot someone because they ask you for money.

On the other hand, according to the article, the victim was known to use an aggressive style when asking for money "pushing on people" etc. A 62 year-old woman, alone at night being pushed by someone, I think, might reasonably fear for her safety. It may not justify her shooting the guy, but it makes it a hell of a lot more complicated than "he asked for a quarter."

Which makes the the article interesting, too, for the way that it tries to revoke sympathy for either party- they can't decide who they want to blame: a black woman with a gun, or a homeless dead guy. You're told about how the victim was homeless and used violent/aggressive means to ask for money, but then they describe the situation as a man being "shot to death... over a quarter" and the headline is "Woman Killed Man Over Spare Change" as though she was so outraged by his request for a quarter that she had to blow him away. I can't watch the video yet, but it certainly sounds, so far, like it was probably more about feeling threatened than about the quarter. What do I know, though? Regardless, it's a sad situation, all the same.

This story needs a trigger warning of some kind... I'm just not sure what. It's weird and disturbing... so... you know, be warned, I guess?

Our story starts roughly a year ago, when three men hatched a "scheme" to... dig up a woman's body to have sex with it. One of the men saw the woman's picture in the obits, and... I don't even want to know what he was thinking at that point, honestly. It's all just so fucked up and wrong. Anyway, the long-story-short version: They're caught digging up the grave and promptly arrested and charged with attempted sexual assault and robbery.

As if that wasn't bad enough, at the end of July an appeals court dismissed the attempted sexual assault charges, saying that Wisconsin doesn't have laws against necrophilia. The point of contention was a provision that states that penalties apply: "whether a victim is dead or alive at the time of the sexual contact or sexual intercourse." The court ruling argues that the provision is intended only to cover cases where the victim is raped and murdered in close succession, such that it can't be determined whether the victim was alive or dead at the time of the sexual assault.

It remains to be seen whether they're going to pursue any other charges against the men involved. Seriously? They dug up her fucking grave to rape her corpse, and they're not necessarily being charged with it?! And their smarmy defense lawyer has the unmitigated gall to say that a criminal ban on necrophilia isn't needed because "the instances of it are so rare that I'm not sure that it's worth the time, money, resources and efforts of the Legislature to create that".

Your Lips Say "No More Rape" But Your Policies Say "Yes!"

This Slate article about a judge's deciding that the word "rape" can't be used during a rape trial is really, to put it mildly, disconcerting. The problem is, according to the article, that allowing the word "rape" (and several other words and phrases) to be used during the trial might taint the impartiality of the jury. After all, rape is a crime, and if you allow the victim... *ahem*... the person upon whom another person engaged in sex without consent to use the word "rape" to describe the condition, you might give the wrong impression. You know, the one that the person saying "He raped me!" might have been raped.

The Slate author sort of touches on a problem I've mentioned before. We treat rape cases very strangely, from my perspective. In most criminal cases, the assumption for most crimes is that a crime has actually happened. Sure, there is the occaisional exception, but in most cases, if someone says "I was robbed when I got off of the subway!" the general public aren't going to assume the victim is a lying jerk. We may question whether the right person is being charged, but we don't routinely paint the victims of most crimes as stupid liars. The defendant is supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, but that doesn't necessarily mean that no crime has occured- just that we can't assume that the defendant is the one that did it.

That seems fair.

Rape, though, is different. In a rape trial, it's not the defendant that's on trial- it's the entire case. It's the woman, and her claims to have been raped. When many rape victims step forward, they are immediately assumed to be liars. It's not just a matter of "Well, she's accusing the wrong person" it's often "she wasn't raped at all." Every aspect of her accusation is subject to the accusation that she's a lying slut who wanted it. The words are different, but the message is the same. Passed out? Maybe she said yes. Raped on a date? She consented, but regretted it later. Raped by strangers in a park? She's ugly, so she wanted it.

It's not that I think that the defense shouldn't be able to raise questions about whether there was actually a rape. Absolutely, they should, just as someone accused of murder can try to shed doubt over whether it was actually murder, or self defense. That being said, the starting position of any particular case shouldn't be "That lying slut just feels guilty after-the-fact," which is an all too common sentiment. The prosecution shouldn't be going into the case trying to convince the jury that the victim isn't a dirty liar who is out for attention.

Removing someone's ability to call an assault what it is just makes it more and more difficult to convince women that they should come forward when they've been attacked. What, exactly, is the incentive? On the one hand, we're told that we want to prosecute and punish rapists. Great! I'm all for that! On the other, cases like this make it seem a lot more like we're interested in punishing women who've been raped. We're asking women to come forward and charge rapists, but then we start off assuming that they're lying, and now we're even taking away their ability to use the words that describe what has happened to them.

We'll prosecute your rapist, and we'll let you talk about what happened... but you can't actually call it rape. You can't mention the rape-kit. You can't call it an assault. In fact, here's the thing... what you can do? You can call it sex or intercourse. We don't want to give the jury the impression that you've been the victim of a crime. After all, it's not like we're here to put someone on trial for committing a crime.

Can we imagine this happening in other trials? As the author points out, it would be ridiculous. We understand that, at a criminal trial the alleged victim is accusing the defendant of a crime. We understand that the person making the accusation is going to talk as though sie has been victimized... otherwise... why would we even be having a trial? If I go to the police and accuse someone of stealing my car, and we go to trial, it's obvious to everyone that I'm saying my car was stolen, and it's up to the jury to decide if it really happened, and if it did really happen, if the person being accused did it. My saying "my car was stolen" or "and he shoved a gun in my face and stole my keys" is important information. It lets the jury know my side of the tale, and allows me to give voice to the crime that was perpetrated against me.

All over the world, it seems like women are getting the same message, though: Rape is not a crime we punish. The state says "No, rape isn't okay. We take rape seriously!" but action after action says differently.