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“A dream you dream alone is only a dream; a dream you dream together is reality.” — Yoko Ono
Mar
12
On Prison Rape and Complacency
Filed Under assholes, bigotry, discrimination, human rights, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls | 4 Comments
Trigger Warning for descriptions of sexual violence and rape apologism.
The NY Review of Books has published an article by David Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow about the enormous problem of prison rape in the U.S. and how to adequately address it (h/t).
The authors describe in detail the sickening severity and tremendousness of the problem, and how it is only exacerbated by the apathy of those with the power to help victims. A very small excerpt (again, trigger warning):
When Laura Berry told the Arkansas corrections officer who had raped her that she thought she might be pregnant, he forced her, according to the commission’s findings, to drink turpentine and quinine, hoping that would induce an abortion. After Kenneth Young was raped at knifepoint by a cellmate in Pennsylvania, he flooded the cell to attract the attention of officers, and as punishment was put in a “dry cell” for ninety-six hours, with no access to running water, a shower, or a toilet—forced “to live in his own excrement,” as a court later put it. Alisha Brewer told our organization, JDI, that she was raped by three different corrections officers as a twenty-two-year-old prisoner in Kentucky; she reported the last two incidents, and was punished with more than four months of punitive segregation and loss of sixty days of good time on her sentence. Another prisoner who wrote to us, and who for obvious reasons prefers to remain anonymous, quoted the male officer who was abusing her: “Remember if you tell anyone anything, you’ll have to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life.” We get letters like this every day.
But perhaps their most shocking part of the article for many will be their claim that these atrocities do not need to continue:
One of the most pernicious myths about prisoner rape is that it is an inevitable part of life behind bars. This is simply wrong. As the variance in the BJS findings shows, it can be prevented. In well-run facilities across the country it is being prevented—and this shouldn’t be surprising. After all, the government has extraordinary control over the lives of those it locks up. Stopping sexual abuse in detention is a matter of using sound policies and practices, and passing laws that require them.
If we think rape is bad, one of the worst things a person could force another to endure, we should find prison rape to be especially horrific. For rape in prison involves not just rape, but also being legally kept captive either by or with your rapist(s), for an extended period of time.
Rape in prison is also a form of social discrimination and violence. In prison, as with everywhere else in the world, rapists deliberately seek out the most vulnerable potential victims, whether it be with regards to physical ability, social stature, or both. Even within prison, a place that makes all of its inhabitants marginalized, the most marginalized and the most vulnerable are still the most likely to be raped. Rape in prison is horrific violence, human rights abuse, and personal act of control, but it is also a means of reinforcing abusive social hierarchies of power.
Feb
20
Yes, Abuse Is Your Business
Filed Under assholes, misogyny, patriarchy, pop culture, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls | 25 Comments
This video (sorry, embedding is disabled) is of Ewan McGregor on Good Morning America. The part of the video that I’m going to talk about (beginning at :38), discussing McGregor’s recent film made with Roman Polanski, is transcribed below:
George Stephanopoulos: [Roman Polanski]’s also of course going through his troubles right now, being held in Switzerland for, uh … because he’s been extradited for that sex charge [from] many, many years ago. Do think he’s getting what he deserved?
Ewan McGregor: I don’t know, I don’t comment on his case, because it has nothing to do with me. I, I, worked with him as actor, with a director for … I’ve known him for less than I year and … uh, so I don’t make any comment on the case, because it’s, it’s none of my business.
It has nothing to do with me. It’s none of my business.
Now, I don’t know Ewan McGregor from anyone else. I’ve only ever seen one or two of his films, and didn’t walk away with much of an impression in either direction. With regards to Ewan McGregor, I have neither any prior disdain nor affection. He’s just a guy. And, indeed, what McGregor said here is quite arguably not as bad as what Johnny Depp said on the same subject. But people have talked a lot about the kind of thing that Depp said (rationalizations for why Polanski’s rape wasn’t “really” rape, or isn’t worthy of punishment). We’ve talked a lot less about McGregor’s assertion that the subject doesn’t concern him.
I fully understand not wanting to get involved in situations that you were not already a part of, especially when they’re labeled “controversial.” And I also understand not wanting to trash talk your boss — though I don’t understand actively choosing to work for a rapist boss, when there are probably a whole lot of bosses looking to hire you.
But the fact is that “It’s none of my business” is a big problem. Not only because McGregor is essentially saying that rape is not important to him, but also because he’s not the only one who speaks these words. These words are extremely, extremely common.
And they’re words that allow abuse to continue.
All kinds of abuse, whether they be sexual, physical, or emotional — though most commonly when the victim is a marginalized person — are supported through the assertion that it doesn’t concern me. It’s not my problem. I don’t want to get involved. Why should I have an opinion? That’s a private matter. Abuse is allowed to continue because all kinds of people decide that it has nothing to do with them. Victims go unsupported because outsiders don’t want to take a side. Perpetrators are allowed to continue their violence because it doesn’t matter to those who aren’t being abused.
When you say that abuse has nothing to do with you, what you’re actually saying is that abuse has everything to do with you. By deciding to turn away from abuse, to not comment, to not stand up against it, to say that you want to stay out of it, you are taking a side. The side of silence is the side of the abuser. The side of apathy is the side of abuse.
Abuse is all of our business. It affects all of us, whether directly or indirectly. Because we are all a part of a society that is responsible for it. And when a victim speaks out and makes an allegation — whether it be a formal one or not — it is our business, and it is our job to stand by that victim. It is our job to remind ourselves and those around us that abuse thrives on good people doing nothing, on good people saying nothing, on people deciding that people who are not them, especially those who are marginalized, are not really their concern.
It is Ewan McGregor’s prerogative to not comment on Polanski’s rape. It is all of our prerogative to stay quiet about any and all types of abuse, sometimes for even quite compelling and legitimate personal reasons. But we need to know and acknowledge and take responsibility for the fact that we are not neutral when we do so. And when we say that it is none of our business, we are not only letting victims down and allowing perpetrators to prosper, we are also lying through our teeth.
Jan
15
Alleged Victim Slut-Shamed, Rape Case Thrown Out
Filed Under Europe, International, assholes, bigotry, courts, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, slut-shaming, violence against women and girls | 10 Comments
A particular rape case has been making the rounds lately, for its especially ludicrous and misogynistic outcome. In short, a U.K. woman made allegations of a gang rape by five perpetrators. The case made it to court. And then, the judge ordered the jury to return a not guilty verdict when “evidence” was presented — not by the defense, but the prosecution — showing that the alleged victim had made statements online about her fantasies involving group sex. The revelation that she had had group sex fantasies was, in fact, the entire reason presented for the dismissal of the case. Indeed, agreeing with the prosecutor, the judge remarked that with the admission of these fantasies, “her credibility was shot to pieces.”
Many have written about this case by now, ranging from the F-Word, to Penny Red, to Pandora Blake (Note: images on this site may be NSFW). These are all great posts that each touch on several important points — I particularly like Pandora’s concise statement that “Desire is not consent. Consent is consent.” — and I highly recommend that you go check them all out, right now, if you have not already. Especially since I’m going to avoid repeating those points very much here.
Because with all of the astute analysis I’ve seen, one thing I’m not seeing discussed a lot is the nature of the fantasy itself. I’m very, very glad, on the one hand, to see that a fantasy of group sex is not being treated as some sort of abnormal, shameful thing for a woman to fantasize about, and that women are not being treated as immoral for having sexual fantasies at all and particularly immoral for having a fantasy that involves multiple partners. This is very important, and good on everyone for it.
But I also think it’s important to acknowledge the cultural context in which the decision was made. And that cultural context is one of a world in which group sex is seen as being among the most debasing things that a woman could think about, let alone do. In a misogynistic world where sex is seen as inherently degrading to a woman’s sense of integrity, sex with multiple partners at the same time is seen to leave her with no integrity left at all.
And so while I’m willing to be entirely proven wrong, and while I put absolutely nothing past the courts at this point, I think it’s a lot less likely — possible, but less likely — that we’d be seeing this case exist if the woman had fantasized about “vanilla” intercourse with a single partner, and then was raped by a single man. I think this case is less about whether or not a woman has a right to refuse consent to something she has previously expressed interest in — though it certainly is about that as well, and this is an ongoing source of horrific rape trial outcomes — but more about whether or not a “slut” has a right to ever say no to anything. The victim in this case has been officially portrayed, by way of her fantasy and cultural attitude towards it, as a “slut.” And the answer to the question by the prosecutor and judge alike is “no, a slut does not have that right.”
Again, in our society some women are more vulnerable than others to both sexual assault and rape apologism. And though virtually any woman can be made to be seen as unrapeable, some women start out closer to that status already. Among the many factors that can make a woman unrapeable in the eyes of our society, including race, gender identity, and disability, is the willingness to behave sexually. “Sexual” women are automatically seen as less rapeable than “chaste” women — “bad girls” more unrapeable than “good” ones. And women who behave sexually in ways that are less culturally approved are more unrapeable still.
This inevitably influenced the decision here. Judges and prosecutors are not magically immune from thinking nasty things about “sluts” when most of the general public does the same, nor are they immune from thinking that a fantasy about group sex makes a woman a dirty, dirty slut when this misogynistic notion is culturally ingrained.
The very official reason behind this decision seems to be “she openly fantasized about doing it, and thus she likely consented when the opportunity was presented to her” — and that assumption is a problem of proportions so enormous it’s impossible to overstate. But the prejudice behind that reason is “look what as slut she is, thinking about group sex with several men — how could a slut like that have possibly said no?” And that? That is an epically huge problem, too.
Jan
7
Iowa “Pro-Family” Group Protests Governor’s Support for the Transgender Day of Remembrance
Filed Under LGBTQ, assholes, bigotry, human rights, trans, transphobia and trans misogyny, violence against women and girls | 2 Comments
Trigger Warning for transphobia
In Iowa, a so-called “pro-family” group of hate-mongers have put out a statement admonishing the Governor for doing the absolute bare minimum in terms of acknowledging the state’s transgender residents, by signing a declaration recognizing the Transgender Day of Remembrance last November. Governor Culver was so lackluster about proclaiming it wrong to murder people even if they are trans, that he didn’t even put out a statement about the declaration. But that hasn’t stopped the Iowa Family Policy Center ACTION from protesting his stance, anyway:
A pro-family policy group today is taking issue with a proclamation Gov. Chet Culver signed that declared a “transgender day of remembrance” in Iowa last year.
The Iowa Family Policy Center ACTION released a copy of the proclamation that Culver signed last Nov. 20 which the Pleasant Hill-based group acquired from the governor’s office through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The organization’s president, Chuck Hurley, said he views the proclamation as an attempt by Culver to use the power of the governor’s office “to promote sexual confusion and deviant behavior.”
Hurley said the action follows Culver’s failure to keep his 2006 campaign promise to defend marriage as only between one man and one woman.
…
“Iowans know that Gov. Culver does not share their values,” the Iowa Family Policy Council ACTION leader said. “As if the governor’s unwillingness to exercise the influence of his office in the defense of marriage wasn’t evidence enough, we now know that he is spending his time creating special days celebrating sexual disorientation. The question that Iowans ought to be asking is why Gov. Culver wasn’t proud enough of his work to make his actions public?”
This is beyond appalling. Usually, I wouldn’t want to give publicity to this type of hate being propagated by a smaller scale group. But what it openly reveals, in this case, is astounding enough to make me see it as worth mention. It comes as little surprise that they refuse to acknowledge the gender identities of trans people, and instead portray them all as cis gay folks. And it comes as little surprise that they would somehow try to tie the “issue” of Culver’s small show of support for the TDOR back into their opposition to marriage equality.
But that they would take support for this day, the Transgender Day of Remembrance — a solemn and emotional day of mourning for the trans community, a day in which the violence committed against that community on such a wide scale is finally given just a tiny bit of mainstream attention, a day in which those who are so regularly forgotten are in fact remembered — and attack it is despicable. That they would connect it to what they call “deviant behavior” is even more so.
Because what it suggests, rather blatantly, is that they view the very act of trans people being alive as deviant. They view the suggestion of a world in which trans people are not under constant threatened and actual physical assault as an attack on their belief system. To say that the governor’s decision to sign this declaration goes against their values is to say in fact that their values involve trans people being dead.
The fact that they feel this way doesn’t shock me. The fact that they’d so casually admit it does, however, come as something of a surprise. Even the organizations most dedicated to vitriolic hatred of LGBT people will profess to believe that the people whose rights they so vehemently fight deserve life and safety. It’s not that they want people dead, they will claim, so much as they want them invisible. This statement here belies that common assertion. Here, they let us know that they believe folks who don’t fit into their rigid gender and sex norms not only don’t deserve to have their safety defended by the government in even the most passive, hidden, and symbolic ways, but also don’t even deserve to have their lives mourned once they have been taken.
Dec
10
New Report About Sexual Violence on College Campuses
Filed Under assholes, courts, discrimination, education and schools, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls | 11 Comments
The Center for Public Integrity has released a three-part report on sexual violence on college campuses, and the response of administrators to such allegations. Part one talks about the culture of secrecy surrounding sexual assault proceedings. Part two talks about the barriers to reporting sexual assault on campus, and how such reports are actively discouraged. And part three discusses how colleges are under-reporting the number of sexual assaults that are committed on their campuses.
Thankfully, the information is presented in a highly digestible form — and I recommend you go read it all for yourselves. But it’s also a huge amount of information, and there are more things to write about it than I can count — from the student told that she would face disciplinary action if she shared the outcome of the sexual assault hearing she had initiated, to the fact that “mediation” (mediation!) is regularly offered as a resolution to allegations of sexual violence, to the administrator who actually told a student that one of her options was to have that administrator call the perpetrator into her office and tell him that what he did was wrong. Schools are actively sweeping allegations under the rug, and since the victim leaving the school is an incredibly common outcome, seemingly also just trying to get rid of the accuser, period.
But in all of this information — and again, there is a lot — one thing in particular stood out at me. And it was the repeated allegation, from many, many sources, that the administrators were motivated by a desire to save the reputation of their schools. Of course, administrators all act appalled at the suggestion. But I can only presume that with so many victims, so many victims advocates, so many victims’ parents, and finally an impartial outside source, concluding independently that this is a main motivating factor, there has to be some truth to it.
This strikes me not because it’s some big surprise, but because it’s a damn travesty. And it’s a travesty not just because the rights and needs of a victim of violence should come before any other such trivial consideration, but also because they’re quite frankly handling their own comparably petty concern absurdly.
Only in a misogynistic rape culture is it possible for an institution to go about avoiding the appearance of sexual assault taking place on their campuses by telling the victim to shut the fuck up rather than by rooting out the offenders and getting them off the campus. It’s a bizarre reaction. For most people, if you want to avoid being seen as a liar, you try not to lie. If you don’t want to be seen as a thief, you don’t steal things. If you don’t want people to think you’re a jerk, you try to be a considerate, nice person. And if you don’t want your campus being perceived as unsafe, you try to make it safer.
Unless, of course, you want to take the easy way out, and making your campus safer involves refusing to partake in a misogynistic culture.
Yet again, we run up against the diametric perceptions of rape as theoretically even worse than murder, and as practically on par with accidentally bumping into someone on the sidewalk. Because rape is, in practice, seen as negligible, no big deal, a molehill turned into a mountain, administrators can dismiss the woman standing in front of them, speaking of being raped the night before. Because rape is, abstractly, treated as the greatest horror one can commit, and one that only a subhuman monster could even consider, those administrators have an even bigger reason to dismiss that woman, lest their institution be seen as a home to those kinds of monsters. They’d rather it be the habitat of actual rapists than perceived as the habitat of mythical ones.
That’s a big problem to unpack, because it’s rooted in so many different aspects of rape culture — from victim-blaming to rape denialism, from the idea that rape is not a common occurrence to the idea that rape is an unstoppable, unpreventable force not worth fighting. But we do know from repeated demonstration that student activism can go a long way towards changing individual school policies. And so if you’re a college student, despite the enormity of the problem, you shouldn’t feel helpless — rather, you should be getting to work. I recommend SAFER’s newly launched initiative, the Campus Accountability Project as a great place to start.
Oct
17
Judge Refers to Convicted Rapist’s Actions as “Rough Play”
Filed Under assholes, courts, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls | 8 Comments
Trigger Warning
I’ve written before about Fernando Manuel Alves, a pub owner who was convicted of brutally raping a drugged and unconscious woman, and the judge who decided not to send him to jail because he deemed the rape a crime of opportunity.
Now, via Broadsides, we’ve got the actual decision, and what it contains is incredibly disturbing. First of all, it confirms that the judge referred to the rape as a crime of opportunity — and horrifically reveals that he said as much when the prosecution asked that Alves be ordered to undergo counseling.
[51] MS. GAULD: And, Your Honour, just another condition I would ask you to consider is counselling as directed.
[52] THE COURT: No. What you did, sir, was reckless, but not something that shows some pathological danger to the community; indeed, the contrary. It was an opportunistic event, one that has caused tremendous harm to G.E. and her family and hopefully they can put this behind them.
Nice, he doesn’t need counseling because raping an unconscious and drugged woman is only reckless and does not pose a danger to the community. (What, did you think that women were a part of the community? There would be your mistake!) Also, it wasn’t actually a crime of opportunity … just an event.
But despite the new information about the judge refusing counseling as a part of the sentence, I’ve already discussed this aspect of the decision at length. Feel free to read it again. What I’m currently interested in is a newly revealed remark by the judge about the violence that Alves inflicted on his victim. He didn’t call it “violence.” Nor brutality, or physical force, or serious assault, or any other such appropriate phrase. And yes, even for rape apologists who don’t see rape itself as violence, what Alves did should be very easily considered violent (again, trigger warning):
[5] In Exhibit A, it is clear that G.E. was very distressed over what had happened, and the fact that she had a complete memory loss. She reported by way of injuries that her shoulders were tender and bruised. There was some bruises on her legs and the back of an arm. Her nipples were sore and bleeding. There was also significant pain and swelling to the vaginal area and there was some blood in the urine. It is indicated in Exhibit A that over the two weeks following the incident that her eyes became black. She had no recollection how the injuries were received which injuries are detailed in appendix B.
I’m pretty sure that these types of injuries do not generally appear, at least not all together, for reasons other than violence. I’m pretty sure that the fact that this was violence should be especially clear when the injuries were sustained after what has now been legally determined to be a rape.
But Judge Rideout has a different term for it (bold mine):
[6] There was also detailed in Exhibit B pictures of the complainant with the accused with his cellphone taken at or about two o’clock in the morning where there is no evidence of any injuries. It would appear to be clear that there was some rough play in relation to the sexual contact which resulted in injuries to G.E.
Oct
16
Attorney Uses “Boys Will Be Boys” Defense in Alleged Sexual Assault
Filed Under assholes, courts, education and schools, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls | 19 Comments
Last week, a freshman at the University of Maryland allegedly gained access to a dorm that was not his own, entered a female student’s room and woke her up by trying to kiss her. He also twice tried to put his hands down her shorts. When the victim screamed, he allegedly ran across the hallway to another room, and grabbed another female student by the head and tried to kiss her. Then, according to the official report, he did something similar to two other students in two other dorm rooms.
So, Seth Rudnitsky allegedly entered several dorm rooms illegally and then attempted to sexually assault their residents. Apparently Rudnitsky has even confessed to entering the dorm rooms and touching the women, though he does not say that he attempted to kiss the women or put his hands inside their clothing. In any case, what he has confessed to alone is already a serious crime — which is why he has been charged with first-degree burglary.
But Rudnitsky’s defense attorney Mark Schamel frames the allegations differently:
Mark Schamel, Rudnitsky’s attorney, said Rudnitsky was intoxicated and made a “typical freshman” mistake. Schamel declined to comment on the specific allegations from the female students who said Rudnitsky tried to initiate unwanted sexual conduct.
“This is not a sexual assault case. You have a really good kid who has never been in trouble his entire life,” Schamel said. “It’s your typical freshman ‘I went out and had too much to drink and was being silly’ kind of case.”
Charging documents refer to the incidents as “unwanted physical contact.” In an interview with police, Rudnitsky admitted to entering “3 to 4 rooms and touching a bed, arm, or shoulder,” according to the documents.
…
Schamel said his client simply made a mistake.
“He had no ulterior motives. He’s a wonderful kid who had too much to drink,” Schamel said. “This frankly shouldn’t even be a criminal case. I think it’s being entirely blown out of proportion.”
You know, the last time I checked, breaking and entering and then sexually touching sleeping people without their consent is not actually a “typical freshman mistake.” And trying to put your hands inside a sleeping woman’s clothing is not “being silly” — it’s assault. How exactly did you spend your college years, Mr. Schamel?
Oct
1
Teacher Groomed 13-Year-Old Girl Through the Internet, Raped Her
Filed Under Europe, International, assholes, courts, education and schools, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls | 14 Comments
This case is appalling on multiple levels. In the UK, 24-year-old man — a man who worked as a teacher — groomed a 13-year-old girl through the internet using a 15-year-old female alter ego, and then met her in person and raped her.
After Matthew Knott raped her, the girl reported the attack, and he has since been convicted on charges of grooming a child for sex on the internet and having sexual activity with a child (read: rape, because consensual sex with a child is impossible). I see no real reason to reproduce the details of the grooming and assault here; you can click through to read about the ways in which Knott manipulated the girl, and how he assaulted her not only through a lack of meaningful consent due to her age (more than enough), but also by obtaining her compliance through ordering her around in a threatening manner. He was sentenced to four years in prison, and is barred from working with children for five years.
Again, there are multiple levels of outrage here. There’s the fact that Knott committed this assault in the first place. Then there’s the fact that he did so as a teacher, someone who is entrusted with the well-being of children and adolescents every day, even if his victim was not one of his students. Further, there’s his mere sentence of four years in prison, which seems a bit short to me, though I suppose that it is in fact much longer than most rapists ever receive. And there’s the sickening knowledge that he will be able to legally work with children again in five years — I assume that means one year after his release? — even though he has raped a 13-year-old, and the school at which he taught at the time of the rape is for students age 11 through 16. One can only hope that no one would be so foolish as to hire him for a position that involves working with children, and certainly not for a teaching job.
Oh, wait, and then there’s this comment from the judge:
Judge Michael Henshaw told him: “It is perfectly clear to anybody here and those reading about these offences to see these were carefully planned calculated offences carried out in a devious way to enable you to meet this child for the purpose of having sex with her.
“The type of activity you engaged in is of enormous public concern.
“Parents throughout this country are no doubt worried sick what their offspring might be doing when they are using the computer.
“There are people like you who adopt identities to encourage children to commit offences.”
Yes, yes, mhm, agreed … what?
I keep trying to read that line another way. Maybe he meant “there are people like you who adopt identities in order to commit offenses through encouraging children”? Maybe, but that’s not what he says. Either way you read it, no matter how generously, the judge here frames grooming a child for sexual assault as “encouragement,” when in fact those two things are worlds apart. That is a big problem. And the way I’m reading it, he also frames the child who has been raped as having committed an offense.
No. No, no, no. Pretending to be a teenager and then telling an actual teen that they ought to go egg someone’s house is adopting an identity to encourage children to commit offenses. Pretending to be a teenager in order to obtain explicit photographs of an actual teen, and then to get her to meet you in order to rape her, is not encouraging children to commit offenses. It is victimizing a child, it is committing an offense, and the suggestion that the child has somehow been corrupted or merely been subject to a bad influence by someone who ought to know better is frankly disgusting.
Treating the rape of a child as just “having sex” that general society finds icky is a huge and pervasive problem. Pretending that grooming children is the same as seduction is a similar problem. And acting as though teenage sex is something just as fearsome, just as valid for parents to be concerned about as an adult raping a teenager, is something that regularly keeps victims marginalized and blaming themselves, and something which only encourages rapists — those like Matthew Knott.
Sep
8
Some Thoughts on Tucker Max
Filed Under assholes, education and schools, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls | 17 Comments
Over at Broadsheet, the marvelous Sady writes about the Tucker Max phenomenon. Tucker Max is an asshole who makes money from writing books about his (supposed) drunken sexual conquests — and by “drunken sexual conquests,” I mean, “the encounters as he describes them often include coercion, cajoling, heavy intoxication or some element of non-consent and therefore fit the moral definition of sexual assault and, according to some organizations, the legal definition in many places.” (Feel free to go read his website for evidence; I did, but I’m not linking it.) Max makes money from his books, some film he has out, repeatedly calling women by misogynistic names, and also — the subject of particular interest right now — by giving lectures. On college campuses.
These lectures have, quite logically, spawned protests. In her post, Sady argues that the protests are misguided — not because Tucker Max isn’t a piece of shit, but because he thrives off of the attention, and protesting him is giving him what he wants.
Max is a showman. Being hated is a part of his act. He’s a self-described asshole who succeeds by getting people to agree with him. His fans think he’s saying what they can’t; his critics think he’s saying what no one should. But if you’re offended, you’ve noticed him. And for his fans, knowing that he’s picketed by feminists — feminists! Dreaded nemeses of parties and good time! — isn’t cause for concern, but a ringing endorsement.
Giving Max his very own protest makes him seem far important than he actually is. It gives him the enemies he needs. And although Max is getting testier about the protesters, his most telling statement is in his blog post about the OSU incident.
“This was one of the coolest things that has ever happened to me,” he wrote. “This is the type of shit that only happens to famous people.”
Now, I said up above that Sady is marvelous, and I agree with her something like 95% of the time. This is one of those times when I’m going to have to very strongly disagree, at least partially. First of all, I’ve never been a huge fan of the “ignore him and he’ll go away” approach. Secondly, it may indeed be true that Tucker Max doesn’t warrant a protest, but his lectures on the other hand, absolutely do. Because while Max personally thrives off of the attention, he is not the one that these protests should be trying to reach. Nor, actually, is the student body who will attend his shows anyway.
Aug
31
Crisis Pregnancy Centers Regularly Engage in Coercive Adoption Practices
Filed Under anti-choice extremism, assholes, human rights, misogyny, patriarchy, pregnancy, religious fanaticism, reproductive justice, slut-shaming, women’s health | 14 Comments
Almost two years ago, I wrote about a distressing and eye-opening book called The Girls Who Went Away, which is about the women who surrendered their children for adoption under coercion in the years before legal abortion and when single or unwed parenting was ostracized. Most of the women who surrendered their children were threatened, taunted, scolded and otherwise coerced by Catholic or otherwise Christian-affiliated adoption agencies and maternity homes. It’s an absolutely heartbreaking read, and an important one on the subject of reproductive justice that I couldn’t more highly recommend.
Now there’s a terrifying and depressing article in the Nation about how the period of coercive adoptions is not one merely relegated to our history. It’s happening today, and it’s happening via the ever-infamous, deceptive and also Christian-affiliated crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs). If you thought that pretending they were abortion clinics and then admonishing women to not kill their babies was bad — and how could you not? — you ain’t seen nothing yet:
Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), the nonprofit pregnancy-testing facilities set up by antiabortion groups to dissuade women from having abortions, have become fixtures of the antiabortion landscape, buttressed by an estimated $60 million in federal abstinence and marriage-promotion funds. The National Abortion Federation estimates that as many as 4,000 CPCs operate in the United States, often using deceptive tactics like posing as abortion providers and showing women graphic antiabortion films. While there is growing awareness of how CPCs hinder abortion access, the centers have a broader agenda that is less well known: they seek not only to induce women to “choose life” but to choose adoption, either by offering adoption services themselves, as in Bethany’s case, or by referring women to Christian adoption agencies. Far more than other adoption agencies, conservative Christian agencies demonstrate a pattern and history of coercing women to relinquish their children.
Bethany guided Jordan through the Medicaid application process and in April moved her in with home-schooling parents outside Myrtle Beach. There, according to Jordan, the family referred to her as one of the agency’s “birth mothers”–a term adoption agencies use for relinquishing mothers that many adoption reform advocates reject–although she hadn’t yet agreed to adoption. “I felt like a walking uterus for the agency,” says Jordan.
Jordan was isolated in the shepherding family’s house; her only social contact was with the agency, which called her a “saint” for continuing her pregnancy but asked her to consider “what’s best for the baby.” “They come on really prolife: look at the baby, look at its heartbeat, don’t kill it. Then, once you say you won’t kill it, they ask, What can you give it? You have nothing to offer, but here’s a family that goes on a cruise every year.”
There is not much more to say other than go read the rest. Go read Jordan’s story, the story of other women like her, and the ways in which our government is supporting this absolute horror. And then share it with others. I did merely want to specifically highlight one more point:
Even as women have gained better reproductive healthcare access, adoption laws have become less favorable for birth mothers, advancing the time after birth when a mother can relinquish–in some states now within twenty-four hours–and cutting the period to revoke consent drastically or completely. Adoption organizations have published comparative lists of state laws, almost as a catalog for prospective adopters seeking states that restrict birth parent rights.
It’s desperately important to remember that when our government officials, including those who call themselves “pro-choice,” talk openly about “promoting” adoption, this, inadvertently or not, is precisely what they are supporting. “Promoting” one pregnancy option, any option, above another is not allowing women to make an objective decision based on unbiased facts and personal beliefs and circumstances. And I fervently believe that supporting adoption, the women who make the choice to put their children up for adoption, the families that adopt children, and the children who have been adopted, is a vastly different thing from promoting adoption to pregnant women as a more beneficial choice than abortion or parenting. The former is pro-choice and compassionate. The latter is anything but, and ought to be considered the nightmare that it is.
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“Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.” — Susan B. Anthony
