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A grand jury has found that there is not enough evidence to move forward in the De Anza rape case (trigger warning for this link and the rest of the post).

I am so angry that I can hardly see straight.

Allow me to jog your memory. This would be the case of gang rape where nine men allegedly attacked an unconscious teenage girl while she was covered in her own vomit. This would be the case where three very brave other girls forced their way inside the room, rescued the victim and took her to a hospital.

What we have here is one of the most clear-cut kind of rape cases in existance: the victim was unconscious, had to be taken to the hospital, and there were three eye witnesses to the crime. Normally, you hear “it’s her word against his, no one knows what happened in there.” You’ll hear the lack of impartial witnesses as an excuse for acquittal or even lack of an arrest. Here, there were eye witnesses. Three of them. And are we on our way to a conviction? No. These nine men will walk free to happily live the rest of their worthless rapist lives.

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Popularity: 16% [?]

Rev. Stuart Campbell sent me this email in response to this post about Johnny Vegas:

Sexual harrassment

…is what you will doubtless describe this email at, since you seem to be on only the remotest of nodding terms with your marbles. However, I do urge you with the greatest of sincerity to reconsider your approach to what you incredibly damagingly describe as “feminism”. I have no idea whatever of your personal circumstances beyond the comments you make on your blog, but it appears that you’ve suffered some kind of sexual assault short of rape, but desperately wish to channel the anger of those who have been raped.

I have no desire to minimise whatever you suffered, but as someone who’s worked with several rape victims I find this behaviour deeply troubling, and rather more importantly know it to be greatly counter-productive in terms of attitudes to women. Perhaps things are different in America, where it appears to be widely acceptable to call for the murder of abortion-clinic doctors and the like, and adopt a rather cavalier approach to human life in general, but in the rather more rational environment of the rest of Western society your attitude only serves to encourage and empower misogyny and the trivialisation of all forms of sexual violence by portraying genuine victims as hysterical exaggerators. Your attitude to debate, rather astonishingly in the circumstances, only makes your position even weaker.

Regards,
Rev. S. Campbell

If Campbell actually has worked with rape victims, I offer those victims my greatest sympathies and hope that they find the actual help they need.

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Popularity: 29% [?]

UPDATE: The Guardian has removed O’Hara’s blog post about the Johnny Vegas incident and Vegas has filed a complaint. This does not surprise me, actually, as Britain has very strong libel laws and the post called the actions “sexual assault” in the title even though he was not charged or convicted of anything. Personally, I don’t think that this means the incident did not happen. The facts are supposed to be in dispute, but this will be the case with any crime. Again, I’ve seen no one dispute the sexual assault — I have seen disputes over whether or not penetrative rape took place. I also haven’t found a statement from Vegas about the incident, a statement from the woman who was allegedly assaulted, or a statement from O’Hara in defense or retraction of her article.

Of course, I feel that I made it clear in the blog post that he has been neither charged nor convicted of any crime. And I stand by everything I said, in the context of an opinion about what the nature of these actions would be if they occurred, and so long as its recognized that the opinion on this specific instance was based off of an eye-witness account that was corroborated and printed in a major international newspaper. I am reopening comments, but will absolutely close them again if things get out of hand like they did last time.

Warning: I personally found this to be very upsetting and triggering.

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Popularity: 41% [?]

Because John McCain is a misogynist nutbag. As are his fellow Republicans.

Yesterday, Republican Senators successfully filibustered — that’s right, not just voted against but fucking filibustered — a bill that would provide those who have been the victims of discriminatory pay with more legal recourse. In other words, they filibustered a civil rights bill. Because Republicans have so learned the error of their prejudiced ways.

Republicans said the proposal to ease the time constraints would prompt more lawsuits and lead to litigation over outdated cases. “This debate today is not about allowing, favoring or supporting discrimination,” said Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia.

[. . .]

Mr. McCain, who was campaigning in Louisiana, skipped the vote but told reporters he would have opposed the bill since it could contribute to frivolous lawsuits harmful to businesses.

Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, accused Democrats of unfairly trying to paint opponents of the bill as unsympathetic to victims of salary discrimination. “The only ones who will see an increase in pay are some of the trial lawyers who bring the cases,” he said.

Um, what exactly, Senator Hatch, is being unfairly represented? Victims of unfair pay discrimination need a recourse, and you are actively denying it to them. You’re openly protecting companies who have a history of discrimination. And you are allowing, favoring or supporting discrimination, Senator Isakson, by refusing to hold those corporations who have engaged in it responsible for their actions. This is pretty fucking simple.

John McCain didn’t show up to vote — but did support the “it would provoke lawsuits” argument (um, assholes, that’s the point), and had this to say:

“They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else,” McCain said. “And it’s hard for them to leave their families when they don’t have somebody to take care of them.

“It’s a vicious cycle that’s affecting women, particularly in a part of the country like this, where mining is the mainstay; traditionally, women have not gone into that line of work, to say the least,” he said.

Oh, I see: so Senator McCain, you’re going to start supporting flexible work schedules and reduced working hours for both parents? You’re going to promote men taking a more active role in child-rearing and support social services that help women with child care? You’re also going to support those who are genuinely stuck in low paying jobs because a lack of educational opportunity with resources, and work to improve school systems and economic equality?

Um . . . no. McCain supports the “free market” — the very same free market that allows employers to discriminate against women, racial minorities, the disabled and LGBTQ individuals. He’s just using an opportunity to remind everyone that women belong back in the kitchen with a child on each hip. He also needed to point out that women are only paid less is because we just can’t stop popping out the kiddies, are uneducated and don’t do equal work — even though the Ledbetter case shows that this argument is a bunch of shit.

Below the jump, what I think of McCain and the Senate Republicans (all but six of whom voted to block the measure).

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Popularity: 18% [?]

Victim ‘had sex with her captor willingly’

And this is where we have a conversation about how exceedingly few fucking people in the world actually understand what rape is — and about how cops are some of the worst rape-deniers.

Here is the back story.

I’d say more, but pieces of my head seem to be scattered all over the room . . . and once I collect them all, I do believe there’s a fetal position with my name on it.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Maryland’s highest court has overturned a horrid ruling and joined seven other states in recognition of the fact that a woman (and hopefully any person?) can revoke her consent to sexual activity — and that, shockingly enough, when a person continues sex after being told to stop, that sex becomes rape.

I’m thrilled that the court has made this ruling. Though I really shouldn’t have to applaud them for what basically amounts to common sense, I do. It’s also extremely reassuring that the decision was unanimous.

But it makes me want to bang my head against the wall that we are living in two thousand fucking eight, and until yesterday forty-three states in the USA did not legally regard as rape certain kinds of sex that continue once one of the parties has clearly said “no” or “stop.” Especially since that number of states still today holds at forty-two. And though wholly unsurprised by it, I want to rip my hair out at the misleading nature of a lot of the reporting/blogging. (Please do not google this case; doing so made me want to cry.)

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Popularity: 18% [?]

Who remembers the 2005 and 2006 California propositions that tried to instate parental notification rules for minors seeking abortions? You know, the ones that failed? Well, not so fast. Looks like it’s probably going to be on the ballot this year, too. Meet the man you can thank:

Jim Holman, owner of the San Diego Reader, has spent millions trying to persuade Californians to pass a law requiring parents to be notified before their underage daughter has an abortion.

After two failed ballot measure campaigns, Holman said last year that he didn’t want to try again.

But when other anti-abortion advocates, including winemaker Don Sebastiani, launched a third campaign, Holman couldn’t resist opening up his checkbook once again.

“Sebastiani was not deterred. He said, ‘We have to go back again and again,’ ” Holman said. “He led with big donations and I sort of followed.”

The result could make California political history.

The $1.8 million donated by Holman and Sebastiani so far is likely to put a parental-notification initiative before voters for the third time in four years. The measure would require a physician to notify a parent or guardian 48 hours before performing an abortion for a girl under the age of 18.

If the measure qualifies, it would be the first time since the California initiative process was established in 1914 that the state’s voters will consider the same measure so many times in a four-year period.

Planned Parenthood is arguing that Holman, while not doing anything illegal, is abusing the electoral process, and I agree. No, money alone does not get an initiative on a ballot, but if you spend $1.8 on an issue that inspires the kind of passion abortion does and don’t manage to get the just-under 700,000 signatures needed in a very large state, you’d have to be pretty damn inept. Holman is, of course, perfectly within his rights — that doesn’t mean there’s nothing unethical about it.

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Popularity: 17% [?]

I love the folks over at SAFER, and you really ought to go check out this post.

In short, some guy wrote a really obnoxious opinion piece about rape for his student newspaper. (The jackass starts off by saying that rape is “controversial” — WTF?) Essentially, he was playing the How Far Can I Go Before It’s Rape? Game. Where’s the line in the sand? Can you please tell me the exact point at which sex that is incredibly ethically dubious technically turns into sexual assault? Consent is just so confuuuuusing. How can I knoooow? (psst: consent is when she says YES.) He also throws in a bit of “if the woman who was raped doesn’t call it rape then it’s not” . . . and fuck all the social conditioning that says women who have been raped are damaged goods and that what happened to them is their own fault. Also, ignore that using the word “rape” only to have your experience invalidated hurts more than if you don’t go out on that limb.

But in the middle of it all, he manages to let an inadvertent nugget of truth slip out. I can only assume that it was an accident. But there it is, and Ashley pounces on it and makes the excellent point that yes, sometimes definitions of sexual assault can go too far — and when they do, it hurts women and anti-rape advocates a hell of a lot more than it hurts the rapists. And while I don’t really think that this is an exceedingly common occurrence — in fact, the opposite problem is one that comes up a lot more — I’ve seen it enough that it needs to be addressed. So go read the post.

Popularity: 16% [?]

If you read or receive updates from Media Matters, or are masochistic enough to do your own right-wing media watch, you’ll have probably heard of Marc Rudov. He’s a frequent guess on The O’Reilly Factor, apparently has his own radio show now, and has made his pathetic career off of telling the world what exactly is wrong with women and how they fail to live up to his standards. Most of the time, it comes off as petulant whining about how women are such big whores who will fuck anyone but for some reason won’t fuck him.

I haven’t seen very much written about him in the feminist blogosphere, and I think it’s for a good reason. He has a bit of the Ann Coulters about him; getting pissed off at the things he says only pleases and encourages him.

Which is why personally, I believe that it’s better to mock. Two days ago, he was on The O’Reilly Factor discussing beauty pageants (because O’Reilly likes to cover those hard hitting issues and because the Miss USA pageant was apparently last night), and used the opportunity — again — to call women filthy slutbags for having bodies and stuff. Check out the video and partial transcript below — the video even rewards you with some of the old Fox News Porn.

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Popularity: 20% [?]

NY Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof muses on the differences between misogyny and sexism. And I’d be really grateful if someone could honestly tell me that this is some kind of bizarre parody and he can’t be fucking serious. Instead, we do get to play the ironic game of determining which category Kristof falls into! Emphasis mine, and try to control your blood pressure:

Then in the reporting for this column, I spoke to evolutionary psychologists who emphasized the distinct origins of racism and misogyny/sexism. Racism seems based in a hard-wired tendency of ancient humans to divide into groups to improve odds of survival, and it was an evolutionary advantage to be able to identify strongly with your own tribe and to fear or kill members of other tribes. That may be why even very small children — even infants — draw racial distinctions or other in-group/out-group distinctions.

In contrast, the evolutionary origins of attitudes toward women were based presumably less on hatred and more on desire to control them and impregnate them, so as to pass on one’s genes. Acquiring and enforcing a harem, so as to improve the odds of one’s own genes being passed on, might involve ruthlessness, enslavement and brutal beatings, but there was no evolutionary incentive for gender hatred as there was for hatred of different tribes. And of course much of the anti-women behavior around the world, from genital cutting to bride burnings to sex trafficking, is typically overseen by women themselves, and it’s easier to see their behavior as opportunism or deeply-embedded sexism than as hatred of fellow women. So that’s why I wonder if sexism, in the sense of discriminatory attitudes toward males and females, isn’t a better way of thinking about the issue than misogyny, in the sense of hatred toward women.

Other anthropologists I spoke to also noted that the most discriminatory restrictions against women tend to come not from those who profess to hate women, but from those who profess to honor and protect them. Think of Afghan society, for example. After interviewing many men who beat and lock up women and threaten to kill them if they take a false step, I’d say that their attitudes for females are a mix of bizarre honor and contempt, but not usually hatred.

My head hurts.

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Popularity: 17% [?]

Trigger Warning

UPDATE: Tressa Gross’ cousin has shared his victim impact statement with us in the comments. I’ve verified his relation through this news article, which also provides some insight into Berger’s light sentence — assuming that his lawyer is telling the truth, which is always a gamble.

A St. Louis man named John Berger was sentenced in the death of Tressa Gross. You can see his photograph in the article; I was going to post it, and then decided that I couldn’t stand looking at his horrible fucking face for that long.

Berger admitted — is not accused of, admitted — to drugging Gross with GHB for the purposes of raping her. And the dose he gave her was a fatal one. He has apparently done this to countless other women, but this time I guess he made a mistake in his quest to derail a woman’s life with rape and ended it instead. Berger raped Gross. And then she died.

This man raped and killed a woman, a woman who he had only met that night. More than just being a horrible person, he’s a menace to society. This could have been anyone.

And for that, he will spend 5 years in jail. Maybe. He’s eligible for parole in four years.

For admitting to raping and killing a woman.

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Popularity: 33% [?]

Last week, I wrote about a Bush official who had written to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) about their new guidelines, which state that ethical practice requires doctors to refer patients to another doctor for any services (birth control, abortion, etc.) that they themselves will not perform due to conscientious objection. The Bush official, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, wanted this section removed. In other words, the Bush Administration sees no ethical obligation for doctors to refer their patients to medical services that they personally don’t like.

A few days later, I received an email from Steve at Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, and he shared some disturbing news. Extremist conservative doctors within ACOG have used Leavitt’s letter as an opportunity to challenge the organization — and have succeeded in getting ACOG in holding a special meeting to reevaluate the guidelines!

These doctors are fighting for the right to prevent women from receiving medical care due to their own personal beliefs — not just from themselves, but from any doctor. As I think all of us here have agreed, patients have a right to know all of their options and receive prompt, quality medical care. Withholding information from patients is absolutely unacceptable. Also keep in mind that this section of the guidelines is in no way binding; it just really hurts the poor anti-choice doctors’ feelings to be be referred to as unethical. And who can blame them? Getting called out on your own shit isn’t fun.

Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health have been working with ACOG in an attempt to ensure that they don’t back down from their extremely commonsense position. They’ve also started writing letters to the ACOG leadership; we can’t let the wingnuts who are in a definite minority succeed in making their voices louder.

Click here to send a letter and pass the information on. I honestly have not seen this issue discussed elsewhere. Anti-choicers are great at giant publicity stunts, but they’re even better at stealth operations. And their stealth is usually what hands them a victory. This is some publicity they’re not going to want. I think we owe it to ourselves to make sure they get it.

Popularity: 14% [?]