when the status quo frustrates.

It’s The Way You Said It, Boss

Friday, April 18th, 2008

So I was just sittin’ at home, relaxing with some online poker and surfing the Blogosphere to occupy the mental space between hands, when on Feministing I came across this:

After the highest court of Maryland reheard the case which made the horrifying ruling that a woman cannot be raped once she has consented to sex, the court has overturned the decision and broadened the definition of rape…

Oh good, I thought to myself, feeling the momentary warm glow of faith restored in my fellow human beings. I did remember that case, of course, and how totally unbelievable it seemed to me at the time–you can’t actually give someone your BODY, y’know, of course it’s understood that your actual BODY the one and only irreplaceable item you live in 24/7 is a “loaner” situation ONLY…yeah, I never really believed they’d go through with that crazy ruling. Didn’t really remember the specific specifics of the situation but probably there was some technicality or something was misrepresented. Yeah! Happily I clicked on the thoughtfully-provided link to the Baltimore Sun story, and was greeted by:

Definition of rape widened
By Julie Bykowicz | Sun reporter
April 17, 2008

The state’s highest court ruled yesterday that a man can be charged with rape if he ignores a woman’s calls to stop – even if she had previously consented to sex.

WHOA!

Run that by me again…

(dramatic pause indicated by dash)EVEN IF! she had previously consented to sex

Have you ever turned in a project at work, felt really good about it, gone to your boss’s office ready for a little congratulatory back-patting, and found yourself instead getting seriously told how badly you missed the actual point of the entire thing? Have you ever taken a test, turned it in, felt really good about it, held out your hand for your B-at-the-minimum paper, and found yourself staring at a D instead?

I made a feeble attempt at rallying, though. So they phrased it, er, in a fashion that seemed to indicate that it was a shocking radical notion that a if a woman said she wanted to have sex with you, that didn’t give you legal ownership of all her bodily orifices til you, not her, decided you were through with them. Probably a typo..! Or maybe I’m being oversensitive. Cause I’m afraid I might sometimes be oversensitive when it comes to the “R” word. God knows that it’s easy to be oversensitive—

With this expansion of the legal definition of rape, Maryland joins seven other states whose courts have determined that a woman can revoke her consent after intercourse begins.

(Shocked silence.)

(me, in a small voice) “I didn’t know that the default in 86% of the United States was that I wasn’t allowed to revoke consent whenever I felt like it.”

Always thought I could.

Always operated under that assumption.

I guess I’m luckier than I even knew that I got disillusioned this way, rather than…some OTHER way, eh?

18.04.2008 Rape, Rights? What rights? 5 Comments

Rape and assumptions

Monday, September 10th, 2007

Two women were raped last Friday in their dorm rooms at York University, and the rapists tried for a few others before being chased out. I was hesitant to read about the attacks in any detail, figuring that any news coverage would be chock-full of the usual victim-blaming, but I finally caved and checked out the far-right National Post. Their article did not disappoint.

The details that we know are as follows: There were two attackers, both white men in their early 20s. The dorms are only accessible by swipe cards. The victims’ rooms were unlocked.

The Post doesn’t stop at reporting those facts, though. They’ve got to get some racism and classism in there:

Students at York say they are inured to a certain amount of insecurity after a series of random sex assaults on the vast, sprawling campus last year and due to their proximity to a troubled neighbourhood that is often the scene of gang, drug and gun violence. But many were reeling yesterday from the brazen nature of the most recent attacks.

York, for those of you who haven’t had the dubious pleasure of attending, is bleak and, yes, quite sprawling. It’s also fairly isolated from the “troubled” (read: primarily black and lower class) Jane and Finch neighbourhood. Most of the people who live in the surrounding community don’t have the money or opportunities to attend university. One of the big problems with Jane and Finch is its awful urban planning—there’s nowhere to walk to. So York students, most of whom commute, don’t really venture off the campus, and people who live nearby don’t really venture on campus.

[York University spokesman] Mr. Bilyk said no one is sure how the two suspects managed to gain entry to the dorm, which requires use of a swipe card and where visitors are supposed to sign in. He speculated the pair might have slipped in behind a larger group returning from a pub night held on campus Thursday as part of frosh week festivities.

Or, you know, they could be students. Given their age and their access to the building, it seems as likely a possibility as any. York students seem to think so too.

York security’s advice is typical: Women should be “vigilant,” make sure that no one follows them home at night, make sure that their doors are locked, don’t walk around unaccompanied. They declined to provide advice for the menfolk, such as “don’t rape women.”

Since both the university and the media seem to be running on the assumption that sexual violence is linked to income, or that well-off university students can’t be rapists, I’m not holding out hope for these guys being caught.

10.09.2007 Rape 1 Comment

MSN spoon feeds discussion on reproductive choice to a hopefully ready mainstream audience

Monday, June 25th, 2007

I was a little suprised to find an “Abortion vs Adoption” story set on MSN in the same place they usually reserve for the hard-hitting “How to tell if he (she)’s into you” investigative reports. With MSN being what it is, I was suprised by how much they failed to disappoint me. While the selected stories are careful to use women who ‘deserve’ their choices (a woman violently raped by a stranger and a married woman whose fetus is diagnoised with a crippling spinal disorder) they actually show hints of balance.

I was especially impressed by the abortion story. In it, the author spends half the time describing her abortion in graphic detail and the other half discussing the ramifications of the Supreme Court partial birth abortion ruling and its impact on women like her. She also describes the story of the harsh judgement faced by another woman who had chosen to induce labor and let her doomed fetus die of natural causes when circumstances turned it into a de facto abortion. The message: like it or not, this could happen to you.

It’s no feminist evaluation of bodily autonomy by a long shot, but it was shockingly not horrible and certainly unexpected. I hope that it’s recieved well and we can start a real dialouge about reproductive rights with the teeming masses of people who find abortion squicky but would want the option if they needed it.

25.06.2007 Bodily Autonomy, Media, Rape, Reproductive Rights No Comments

You must pay for the crime of having a uterus someone else decided to populate!

Monday, June 11th, 2007

You’ve been raped and now you’re pregnant. Who better to decide what should happen to you than a room of middle-aged Catholic men?

Sen. Sam Brownback (news, bio, voting record), campaigning for president Saturday before the National Catholic Men’s Conference, questioned whether rape victims should get abortions.



Strikin’ a Jesus pose for my rapebabies

Isn’t it comforting to know so many men are putting so much thought into what’s best for women? You’d think they’d ask a few women for input, but I guess it’s easier to solve someone else’s problems instead of your own. No doubt these men are looking forward to the National Catholic Women’s Conference report on how many times a guy should shake his penis after taking a leak.

Brownback offered this well-considered insight into the problem of rape-related pregnancy:

“Rape is terrible. Rape is awful. Is it made any better by killing an innocent child?”

Hmm. Leaving aside the anti-scientific idiocy of the question, I’m intrigued by the idea that Brownback believes there are people protecting abortion rights because they think it makes rape “better.” I can see the literature now:
(more…)

11.06.2007 Rape, Reproductive Rights, Shame on you for being a woman, Wingnuts 13 Comments

Violating the conservative mythos on rape

Thursday, January 18th, 2007

After reading a Courtney Martin article on sex education that’s been covered quite well across the blogosphere, my mind was immediately flooded with the kneejerk reactions I would expect to hear from your standard-issue rape-apologist wingnut.

Courtney opens her article by recounting the story of her friend, Jen, whose sociology professor described the power dynamics of rape in class, leading Jen to realize one of her recent experiences after a night of drinking precisely fit the mold.

The Right would be incensed by this tale, but not because of the rape. No, they’d be pissed she had the gall to get raped and then realize she got raped, advancing arguments like:

“It’s her own fault for putting herself in a bad situation!”

Yep. Drinking is dangerous. Problem is, the conservatives never ask themselves what’s worse: drinking which puts you in danger of being raped, or drinking so that you release your inner rapist and actually rape someone. If anyone should be chastised for imbibing so much alcohol that you can’t control yourself, it should probably be the violent offender. Wacky pinko liberal theory, I know. But hey, when a drunk driver hurts someone, we usually blame the person who got hit for being out in the road, don’t we?

What’s that? We don’t? Oh.

Getting in a car is dangerous. Jaywalking is dangerous. Challenging Jeff Goldstein to a fight is dange- okay, well, not that one so much, but you get the idea. Every day, each of us do plenty of things that increase our risk of being hurt, but that doesn’t give a single soul the license to hurt us.

“If she really didn’t want to have sex, she’d have fought back harder!”

A famous conservative once made waves with a powerful and popular slogan: “Just Say No.” For las drogas, that was supposed to be good enough. For rape? Apparently, in a paradox to the previous wingnut axiom, you’re expected to increase your risk of being harmed even further by instigating violence against your attacker. That’s the only way to “prove” you didn’t want it. If you didn’t bleed, says the ‘nut, then voluntary sex was decreed.

I’d wager that if any of the asshats promoting that position ever switched places with Ned Beatty in Deliverance, they’d have a whole different outlook on how one would react in a rape situation, or any situation where you are in real danger of being hurt even more by escalating violence. Of course, these same nitwits think waving a gun at an intruder in your home will somehow “protect” you, so maybe they shouldn’t be considered too trustworthy when it comes to risk factors. [Insurance agents, take note!]

“Liberal academics are filling our kids’ heads with lies!”

I guess if evolution is a lie, so, too, is the idea that being forced to have sex after saying “no” equates to rape. Either that, or those kooky academic ideas just happen to threaten two of the conservative’s most endearing positions, namely “I will NOT die and rot in the ground because I AM A BEAUTIFUL AND UNIQUE SNOWFLAKE GODDAMIT” and “Boy will be boys!”

When handled by a reasonable teacher, almost all meaningful education points to a belief in equality. The traditional differences we’ve been taught to fear are better explained, and in some cases torn down, by biology, philosophy, and, yes, sociology. But hey, if you go that route, then the special treatment and double standards afforded men don’t make as much sense any more, and *poof!* you lose your ability to get away with stealing a bit of the ol’ in-and-out.

That simple fact is part of why we have so much trouble fulfilling Ms. Martin’s desire to see reasonable sex ed taught in American schools. She’s right that, if done correctly, sex ed could dramatically reduce rape and sexual confusion, but I fear there are far too many people who like the system just the way it is. It’ll be some time before we can even hope to have a reasonably-sized pool of teachers in our school system who wouldn’t mangle sex ed with their own broken beliefs or religious righteousness.

Fortunately, painful as it has been at times, feminism continues to make real progress in America. Maybe in 100 years it won’t be so easy for so many people to dismiss stories like Jen’s with the loathsome lies above, or so hard to teach our kids about the basics of their bodies and how to interact with them responsibly.

18.01.2007 Edumakashun, Feminism, Rape, Shame on you for being a woman 7 Comments

Rape spam leads to secret patriarchy handbook

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

This morning, I noticed a comment caught by our spamguard:
rape pornrape picturesrape fantasylesbian rapehentai rapegay rapegang rapedate rapeanime rapeanal raperape videorape videosrape

Subtle. With that “fantasylesbian” bit thrown in, I almost missed that this might lead to some rape porn.

I had a feeling the link provided would be [THE LEAST WORK-SAFE LINK I'VE EVER POSTED] one of the ugliest sites I’d ever visited. It was, but it also provided a surprise: it turns out that the patriarchy keeps its handbook at a “rape paysite portal.”

[Warning: This is disturbing, graphic stuff. Proceed at your own risk.]

(more…)

28.09.2006 Pr0n, Rape, Rights? What rights? 114 Comments

Sweater dresses are the Key to Countering Dangerous Sexual Encounters on Campus

Saturday, August 26th, 2006

It’s the end of August, and that means vacations for everyone! I don’t get an advisor until next week since we’re waiting for all of the professors to get back; when I left work yesterday two out of the three senior members of our development team fled the building early and headed straight for Europe. And over at Human Events Online, it’s the week where the Claire Boothe Luce interns get to write the articles.

College coeds have all heard the statistic: one out of four college-age women will be the victim of a rape or attempted rape. While that statistic, which comes from a 1985 Mary Koss study reported in Ms. Magazine, has largely been discredited, the message behind it remains firmly in place; young women have a great deal to fear in their college environment. Statistics devoid of context, though, offer no insight into the sexual politics of college campuses.

Actually, Marianne, we do have newer 1 in 4 stats. This page here (simply one of the first google results for “campus avoid sexual assault”) uses one from a study published in 2000, which was way more recent than 1985. But I can see why you’d go retro for this statistic – the US Department of Justice, the National Institute of Justice, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (all of whom are listed on the title page of the referenced pdf) lack the glamour of Ms. Magazine. Guess what else is back from the ’80′s? Sweater dresses! Hell yeah, I’m excited too!

But please, don’t let this stop you from offering us some insight on the sexual politics of college campuses.

As a college sophomore, I’ve been subject to the same messages as the rest of my peers.

“GO GREEK!”? “Football Fri 7pm”? “Kareoke Thu @ [Your Club]“? “Looking for Roommate 2bdrm close to campus $500/mo+utl”?

I know, I know, it’s a bit overwhelming. But you don’t have to go to every club event or pledge every sorority. The trick to successfull college time management is knowing when to decline an invitiation. Didn’t they cover this last year in orientation?
(more…)

26.08.2006 Feminism, For the ladies, Rape, Sex, Shame on you for being a woman 16 Comments

On second thoughts, anthropologists being surprised that marriage might have economic aspects is just funny

Friday, August 11th, 2006

Sorry about that last post, I have attracted a band of implacable word lawyers, and so should know better than to engage in the most outrageous hyperbole possible.

Anyway, Antony kennersen has come up with his first ever interesting point (ooooOOOOOoooo).

Besides, regarding Collins’ theory of romantic love being all about “buying sex”: can’t RM understand that there is a significant difference between the institution of marriage for procreation (which is the principle objective of “romantic love”) is a bit different and far more promoted by the “patriarchial system” than some one merely paying a prostitute for a blow job or a quickie, or paying porn actresses to watch them engage in sex?

Now the thing that, in hindsight, should have jumped out and humped my leg, is that an anthropologist who doesn’t look at the marriage, which as antony points out is the end product of all the west’s romantic rituals*, and go “By gads! There’s economics in this here mating ritual!” is a really bad anthropologist, come on, the fathers “give away” their daughters to their husband, there’s exchanges of goods, and this activity has been recorded to have been occurring right back in the jewish sacred scrolls and the bits of them that got repeated in the Old Testament, and was clearly a primarily economic transaction that justified not smothering girls to death at birth (which is true for all ancient peoples, not specifically jews, infanticide being the primary form of contraceptives for most families at that time, as it was during the Victorian age for the working class english).

And back then, it wasn’t even covered with a pretense of romance and stuff, “don’t covet your neighbours things, wife or donkey” YWH commanded of the isrealites, and the greeks were even worse, that women were, or more often, had to be someone’s property, because they were unruly subhuman things that needed to be closely controlled or else they’d wreck society! Is laid out clearly in one of the many misogynistic greek creation myths, in which women were given to human kind as a punishment of the gods. That the slur hte athenians used for the ridiculously empowered** Spartan noble women.

When you have a long, written history of a practice that revolves around a custom, that is all about buying and selling people, from the custom’s original creation right up to the present day for the wives of men who believe vaginas are interchangable with clown cars, and most rpeulbican politicans, that athropologists might, in anyway, be surprised by the notion that marriage and romance involves economics is laughable. (more…)

11.08.2006 Feminism, Rape 3 Comments

Amnesty International denies amnesty to rape zygotes

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

From the corrupted hearts of do-gooders comes the work of the devil:

Famed for its human rights work, Amnesty International is under siege from religious groups outraged by a proposal that would expand Amnesty’s mandate to include supporting access to abortion in cases such as sexual violence.

A small but growing band of anti-abortion campaigners and Roman Catholic clerics – including some who have backed Amnesty’s activities in the past – claim the Nobel Prize-winning group is drifting away from its principles of unbiased advocacy.

Yea, for centuries, the Roman Catholics have looked down upon the unholy bearers of the uterus and prayed for some way to make more Adams without using any of those pesky Eves. Women, what with their unwholesome possession of those come-hither-to-hell pouty lips and lust-inducing bags of sand, are the cause of all evil — particularly sexual violence.

When Catholic lawyers founded Amnesty International, it was supposed to remain unbiased. Now they’ve gone off and started to help rape victims, a radical (practically Satanic) new attitude.

“This is completely inconsistent with what Amnesty has been about,” said John-Henry Westen, a board member of the Campaign Life Coalition, a Toronto-based group representing about 110,000 families. “We consider this an attack on the rights of the unborn.”

Absolutely. Tell it like it is, Mr. Western. Apple-plucking sluts everywhere act they don’t want it, and even after you give it to them anyway — your seed that is — and kickstart that career in motherhood they’ve always wanted, they still have the gall to pretend like this wasn’t what they wanted all along. If that were true, then why haven’t they mutilated their genitals, hmm?

As a self-confessed liberal, I’ve always felt most guilty about supporting the fringe notion of abortion access for the raped. It just doesn’t jive with our sensitive, common sense approach. The Republicans in this country have always kept their priorities in the right place — cells over people. They like zygotes over women, stem cells over the diseased, and surveillance cells over the entire American population.

Once a cell becomes a person, it goes from free-floating womb angel to a sinful sack of urges and loses all rights. Its only value — especially the damn Eves — is to keep making new womb angels, so that for a fleeting moment we might enjoy the company of something protected by God and Republican rule.

Westen said some members – including several “significant” financial contributors to Amnesty – already have stopped supporting the group.

“This is forcing people to make a choice,” he said.

Kudos to these people for sticking to the notion of anti-choice across the board. When a tough choice does have to be made, though, make sure it can only be done by the rich and unraped.

25.07.2006 Rape, Reproductive Rights, What Patriarchy? 7 Comments

Rape For Kids

Thursday, July 13th, 2006

I can’t even make this up.

13.07.2006 Asides, Music, Rape No Comments

Oh yes, please tell us more about this “Teh Sex” you speak of, oh wise asexuals!

Saturday, June 17th, 2006

Do you know what Twisty? Bite Me.

I dunno, maybe it’s just something odd about me, but lesbians and what appears to be asexual victims of patriarchal abuse telling me how to have hetereosexual sex just chaffs my wedge somewhat, you know?

I know I know, I was as shocked as anyone else to find out that lesbians find fellatio and penises disgusting, and while some idiot who never got over am incident of abusive sex they experienced once and has decided that, due to the wonderful combination of being frightfully dull and being too shit scared to risk being hurt again, that all sex with guys is Teh Icky and anyone who has sex with guys is trying to cozy up to the patriarchy etc…etc… *yawn*, those of us with two brain cells to rub together and an ability to actually connect in a sexually intimate way with other human beings of a male persuasion tend to be able to find ways to invite men into our beds without turning it into a threesome with the patriarchy.

But god forbid we should throw away the rape culture’s bullshit power games and heirarchies! Oh no we have to recreate them to suite our goals, so that the self appointed “high ranking” feminists (dipshit lesbians and their false conciousness prone bi/het acolytes) can dump on those “below” them for not raping men hard enough or something (because if the guy involved is enjoy it, then obviously it’s patriarchal), no doubt with “ex-straight” camps to help free us from the “false conciousness” that is making us abuse ourselves, because of teh “retching” and teh “gagging”, (Because Porn is Real, it’s like a documentary and shit) and OMGWTFBBQ!!!!11!!ELEVEN!! What about the pleasuring of men, how patriarchal is THAT!?

Of course I hope no one is surprised that, wonders of wonders, this sort of stupid ass outlook works to further stop heterosexual women from having sex, “oh you can’t do it like that!” “Oh no, that’s patriarchal!” Explain to me again why both this bullshit anti-sex “feminism” of yours and The Patriarchy you talk about despising so much, both involve me, a woman, becoming abstinent? Why is everyone afraid of the horrors I may commit with my vagina or mouth if just left alone to challenge the patriarchy one cock at a time?

Being Anti-Sex is being Pro-Patriarchy you fools! Patriarchy wants to control our sexuality and make us beileve that all sex is about dominance, and you’ve bought it you nincompoops! I hate the rape culture because of crap like this, where pleasure is subject interminably to who’s in control and who’s ontop of whom. (more…)

17.06.2006 Blogitics, Cock!, Rape, Sex, Shame on you for being a woman 119 Comments

Patriarchy means having to watch your glass of roofies in case someone tries to spike it with booze

Monday, May 29th, 2006

I have, in the past week or so, had my sexuality insulted twice in mutually exclusive ways.

Now I don’t mind the insults, I haven’t exactly explained my sexual behavior before, and so I’d find it understandable if I was that kind of witless patriarchy accepting bint.

So no, I am not going to either, I’m not Dawn “I’m so proud that I don’t bend over for passersby anymore, did I mention I don’t bend over for passersby anymore? Because I don’t anymore, bend over for passersby that is” Eden. Who, in the unholy name of fuck, are you to lower me to that level?

But I do find it interesting that both mutally exclusive insults relied on extremes of behavior, and put them forth as the only logical alternative to their prescribed modes of behavior, whatever that may actually be in the case of the guy who called me frigid and dateless (which wouldn’t be quite so funny if I hadn’t broken an ex’s nose with my pelvis area a week or so before I started blogging here, I slipped on the toilet seat if anyone actually cares about the how).

Because if you have any sex at all without a wedding ring being involved, then obviously you must be nothing more than a free prostitute! And you can’t have sex while also objecting to porn (or KY Jelly, or whatever Matt A thinks I was saying), because porn is the same thing as sex of course.

Of course both extremes are symptoms of the Always Fucknant philosophy of Patriarchy, if you’re not married and therefore always fucknant for your husband, you’re always fucknant for all men. Saying “no” is a manly activity like playing with powertools or fixing cars after all, and therefore bad for the feeble female figure (which is the important bit of the female, that and the meaty haunches, mmm, cannabilicious).

And don’t worry fellas if either of those don’t actually allow you to fuck a woman, there’s the magazines and videos full of women and their pneumatic bosoms for you to express your native right to fuck at, and don’t worry if that means you can’t personally abuse them in someway, rejoice because they have seen clear to abuse themselves on your behalf. (more…)

29.05.2006 Bodily Autonomy, Rape, Wingnuts 1 Comment

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