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“A dream you dream alone is only a dream; a dream you dream together is reality.” — Yoko Ono
Feb
4
Court Ignores Man’s Domestic Violence Prior to Murder-Suicide
Filed Under courts, misogyny, parenthood, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls | 15 Comments
Via SAFER comes a really awful story about a man named Stephen Garcia who murdered his 9-month-old son Wyatt before taking his own life. Obviously any kind of violence like this is always horrible, but what makes it even more appalling is that the man’s actions were easily predicted by his previous threats and behavior, and evidence of that was presented by the boy’s mother Katie Tagle in court. And while it’s possible that a similar outcome might have unfolded had the court acted, the fact is that it did absolutely nothing (all emphasis mine).
Her family said Garcia abused [Katie] Tagle throughout their two-year relationship, which ended in August 2009, when, her family said, he punched her in the face, knocking her unconscious
…
On Dec. 15, Tagle asked for an emergency restraining order against Garcia, telling Judge Debra Harris in a Joshua Tree courtroom that Garcia had threatened Wyatt. “He had sent me text messages before that if his son was around certain people … that he would kill him,” Tagle told the judge, according to transcripts of the hearing. “And that if I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, he’d find me and kill me.”
“What about the threat to shoot you, where did that occur, to hunt you down and shoot you with a gun?” the judge asked. “That was in a text message, Tagle replied. When Harris asked for copies of the text messages, Tagle said she had no way of printing them out and her phone was shut off. The judge denied the emergency order and set a hearing.
At that hearing, on Jan. 12, Tagle went before Judge David Mazurek in the Joshua Tree courthouse to show cause for a restraining order. “…On Dec. 31, we were doing our exchange, and he proposed to me, and I said no. He got angry and stole my phone and pushed me down. I made a police report about that,” Tagle told the judge, according to a transcript.
Garcia told the judge the report was “falsely made up.” Mazurek denied Tagle the restraining order. “If I grant the restraining order, how do you think that’s going to help with respect to you two being able to raise Wyatt together or work together to make sure Wyatt grows up happy and healthy?” the judge asked, according to the transcripts.
Asked about an e-mail in which he confessed to hitting Tagle, Garcia told the judge he had slapped her during a fight, but it was Tagle’s fault for “pushing and pushing and pushing until she could get something from me.” Tagle pointed out she was nine months pregnant when Garcia hit her.
“I kind of get an idea of what’s going on,” Mazurek said. He denied the restraining order, saying, “I don’t think that Mr. Garcia poses a threat to Ms. Tagle.” Mazurek went on to suggest Tagle might have ulterior motives for alleging domestic violence. “I get concerned when there’s a pending child custody and visitation issue and in between that, one party or the other claims that there’s some violence in between. It raises the court’s eyebrows because based on my experience, it’s a way for one party to try to gain an advantage over the other,” he said, according to the transcripts.
Unbelievably, the story gets even worse from here. The day after the hearing, Garcia sent Tagle a “story” about their relationship, which ended in him murdering their son and committing suicide. Tagle called the police and obtained an emergency restraining order, but a month later Judge Robert Lemkau not only refused to uphold it, but also ordered that Wyatt be handed over the Garcia for his scheduled visitation. A couple weeks later, Wyatt was dead.
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
14
Swedish Court Decides Sexual Assault is Not a Crime
Filed Under Europe, International, bigotry, courts, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, sexual exploitation and harassment, violence against women and girls | 13 Comments
Trigger Warning for descriptions of sexual assault, apologism, and victim-blaming
At a New Year’s party in Sweden, a 17-year-old girl laid down to sleep on a sofa. The 49-year-old father of the boy hosting the party proceeded to lift up her skirt while she was unconscious and photograph her genitals. He then, in some unspecified manner, spread the photo to other people.
The victim pressed charges, once she learned of what had been done to her. Then, the court dismissed the charges — not because they found that there was insufficient evidence, or because the victim changed her mind about pursuing the case, but because they said that lifting an unconscious person’s skirt without her consent and photographing her genitals, also without her consent, is not against the law.
A court in Halmstad on the southwest coast of Sweden has dismissed charges against a man who reportedly took a photo of a 17-year-old girl’s genitals while she was sleeping. The court said that the incident was was not a punishable offense.
…
Citing several other cases, the Halmstad district court said that the man had not committed a crime. There is no general prohibition against photographing people without their consent. The same applies to people who are asleep.
The fact that other people have seen the photograph, as claimed by the prosecutor in this case, doesn’t make the incident a punishable offense either, according to the court.
What we’re looking at here is a legal system which has absolutely no respect for women’s bodily autonomy — a legal system that says “so long as she’s there, you can do whatever you want with her.”
Dec
23
Mother’s Disability Featured in Custody Dispute
Filed Under bigotry, courts, disability, discrimination, parenthood, reproductive justice | 10 Comments
Kaney O’Neill is a 31-year-old mother with a 5-month-old son. Her ex-boyfriend, and her son’s father, is now waging an ugly custody battle against her. So far, it’s an experience that countless parents have endured. What makes O’Neill’s story newsworthy, if not rare, is the fact that she has a disability — and her ex is using that disability as evidence that she is an unfit parent.
In September, Trais sued O’Neill for full custody, charging that his former girlfriend is “not a fit and proper person” to care for their son, Aidan James O’Neill.
In court documents, Trais said O’Neill’s disability “greatly limits her ability to care for the minor, or even wake up if the minor is distressed.”
O’Neill counters that she always has another able-bodied adult on hand for Aidan — be it her full-time caretaker, live-in brother or her mother. Even before she gave birth to Aidan, O’Neill said, she never went more than a few hours by herself.
The custody case, expected back before Cook County Judge Patricia Logue next month, raises profound questions about what rights disabled parents have to care for their own children.
Ella Callow, the director of legal programs for the National Center for Parents with Disabilities and their Families, said disabled parents are incorrectly “perceived as unable to perform to standard.”
“No judge wants to be the judge who sends a child home when the child gets hurt,” said Callow, of the Berkeley, Calif.-based advocacy group.
Callow said the bias against disabled parents is such that judges tend to grant custody to an able-bodied partner “even if they have a history that might usually be a heavy mark against them — not having been in the child’s life, a history of violence, etc.”
What Trais is attempting is repulsive, wrong, and inexcusable. But the bigger problem is that parents who try to pull this type of nonsense have a whole lot of backup. It ranges from the multitudes of ignorant online commenters who have agreed with him, to the judges who have ruled previous custody cases based on one parent’s disability, to complete outsiders who feel the right to speak on the matter as experts (emphasis mine):
But Howard LeVine, a Tinley Park attorney not affiliated with the case, said Trais’ concerns are legitimate and may hold legal weight.
“Certainly, I sympathize with the mom, but assuming both parties are equal (in other respects), isn’t the child obviously better off with the father?“
LeVine, who has specialized in divorce and custody cases for the last 40 years, pointed out that O’Neill would likely not be able to teach her son to write, paint or play ball. “What’s the effect on the child — feeling sorry for the mother and becoming the parent?”
Well here we see a bias exposed in all of its glory: you see, Mr. LeVine, all things being equal, the disability wouldn’t factor in to this decision at all.
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.
Nov
24
U.S. Sailor Acquitted of Rape, Despite Admission of Physical Force
Filed Under Australia, International, courts, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, sex work, violence against women and girls | 21 Comments
Trigger Warning for rape apologism and graphic descriptions of sexual violence
In Sydney, a U.S. sailor has been acquitted on charges of raping a sex worker who told him to stop — even though he admitted, in court, to using a “lock down maneuver” to pin her to the bed.
A New South Wales District Court jury cleared Petty Officer Timothy Davis, 25, of a charge of sexual intercourse without consent, with the aggravating factor of causing the woman actual bodily harm. The charge carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
Davis was one of 3,000 Marines and Navy personnel on shore leave in Sydney after the amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu and guided missile destroyer USS Halsey arrived in the port in October, 2008.
The woman told the court she had protected, consensual sex with Davis at the brothel where she worked, but said he became aggressive when she told him his time was up and forced her to have unprotected sex. The jury was shown police photographs of scratches on the woman.
Davis denied forcing the woman to have sex, but admitted in court that he used a “lock down maneuver” to pin her to the bed when she said she wanted to stop. He told the court he backed off when she kicked him, though he said he muffled her mouth with his hand when she began to scream after he demanded his money back.
Could we possibly be reading this correctly? Let’s try another source:
She said he “ripped” off his condom, telling her he had paid for sex and he was going to finish it off “like a real man”.
The slight woman said he pushed her head into the pillow, started suffocating her, and had unprotected sex for 30 seconds.
The jury was shown police photos depicting scratches on the woman, who described Petty Officer Davis as an “animal” during an angry outburst at the trial.
In his evidence, the sailor – who agreed his weight was more than double the woman’s – admitted using a “lock down manoeuvre” to pin her down to the bed when she said she wanted to stop.
He said he told her he was going to “finish”, but when she kicked him away, he backed off with his hands in the air.
So, she told him to stop. And even only as far as he admits, instead of stopping as he was told, he pinned her to the bed and told her he was going to continue anyway. I repeat: against her wishes. After she told him to stop.
Which means that as far as any reasonable definition goes — hell, even working off an antiquated and misogynistic definition of rape that requires physical violence to be present — he confessed to raping her.
Nov
16
Man Allegedly Murdered Albanian Woman Because She Was Trans
Filed Under Europe, International, bigotry, courts, misogyny, patriarchy, trans, transphobia and trans misogyny, violence against women and girls | 1 Comment
Trigger Warning for transmisogyny and discussions of violence against women
In September, Kristina Muça was brutally murdered in Tirana, Albania. Her neck was slit, allegedly by a man she had only just met. The alleged motives for the crime were, according to prosecutors and to defendant Sefedin Hoxha’s now recanted confession, transphobic hatred towards the victim.
I’ve learned of this story through reader Kim Burton, who translated the local media reports into English and forwarded them to me, among others. She has verified the translations with a colleague and friend. All links in this post are to google documents of Kim’s translations, with the links to the original articles at the bottom of each. Please note that she has translated them faithfully, including the extremely disrespectful and ungendering language that so regularly accompanies reports on violence against trans people, and use caution when clicking through. The reports generally refer to Kristina as a “man,” “homosexual” or “transvestite,” complete with use of an incorrect name, though her boyfriend has strongly indicated that Kirstina identified as a woman, and prosecutors seem to be referring to her correctly. In the sections I have copied into the post, I have redacted Kristina’s male name, changed the pronouns, and altered or deleted some other disrespectful language when not used in direct quotes or noted otherwise by me. The original documents, however, are unchanged.
Nov
11
Rape Kits: Yes, Still Going Untested
Filed Under courts, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls | 6 Comments
A government report released Tuesday found that essential DNA evidence in rape cases is often never sent to crime labs for testing. But what our investigation also found is that even when police departments do send rape kits to crime labs, they can go untested for months — even years — while rapists go free.
…
Now, a five-month CBS News investigation of 24 cities and states has found more than 6,000 rape kits from active investigations waiting months, even years to be tested.
On average, six months in Rhode Island, Alabama and Illinois. It can take nearly a year in Missouri. Up to three years in Anchorage, Alaska. One state, Louisiana, has rape kits dating as far back as 2001 waiting to be tested.
“It’s absolutely astounding,” said Sarah Tofte, Research Director at Human Rights Watch. “What’s the point of sending a rape kit to a crime lab for testing if you can’t get to it for say, eight years?”
Better yet, what is the point of subjecting yourself to a rape kit collection if no one is going to give a shit enough to test it?
Oct
26
Lawyer Claims Rapist “Misread the Situation”
Filed Under Europe, International, courts, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls | 11 Comments
In Scotland, a man was convicted of raping a woman who fell asleep on his couch. She was unconscious throughout the assault, and woke to find herself partially undressed. Craig Byars admitted to the rape and has been sentenced to four years in jail.
But in spite of that confession, his lawyer is still making excuses — assuring us of what a good guy Byars really is, and that raping a sleeping woman is the kind of thing that can happen to the best of us!
Defence counsel Shahid Latif said Byars apologised for the consequences of his actions on the victim.
He said: “I have to stress that what happened was a gross error of judgement on his part. He misread the situation.”
He misread the situation.
The tendency for defenses of a rapist to continue even after he has been convicted or has confessed is something that gets under my skin at the best of times. There is seemingly a compulsive desire by every rapist and those close to him to ensure that the world knows he’s actually a good person. First of all, whether or not he’s a “good person” is incredibly irrelevant to the subject of whether or not he raped someone. Secondly, as we live in a world where only bad, bad men, evil, slimy subhuman creatures, are considered to be capable of raping, the insistence that raping someone was out of character for this particular rapist, a simple mistake, an error in judgment, seems to me to be the same thing as saying “yes, so he raped a woman this one time! But that doesn’t make him a real rapist.”
But this specific defense strikes me as a particularly awful and apologist way of making an already awful and apologist argument.
Oct
22
New York Ruling Eases Name Changes for Transgender People
Filed Under LGBTQ, courts, gender, human rights, trans | 4 Comments
The New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan has made a ruling that will make it easier for transgender people to petition for a name change. The ruling overturned a previous decision by a lower court:
Should a transgender person seeking judicial permission to change her or his name be required to furnish medical documentation justifying the change?
A panel of justices in State Supreme Court in Manhattan ruled on Wednesday that the answer is no. The ruling was a victory for the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, a nonprofit advocacy organization.
The fund had brought the case on behalf of a transgender man, Olin Yuri Winn-Ritzenberg, who had petitioned the New York City Civil Court seeking to legally change his name from Leah Uri Winn-Ritzenberg.
In February, a Civil Court judge in Manhattan, Manuel J. Mendez, denied the petition, ruling that Mr. Winn-Ritzenberg first had to provide a letter from a physician, psychologist or social worker documenting the “need” for the name change.
Michael D. Silverman, the executive director of the transgender advocacy group, argued that the state’s common law generally allows an adult “to change his or her name at will, for any reason,” and that transgender petitioners like Mr. Winn-Ritzenberg were being held to a higher standard. About 10 other people, all in Manhattan, have approached the fund with similar reports of having their name-changing petitions denied for the same reason Judge Mendez gave.
Legally changing one’s name is one of many major hurdles that trans people face during transition, and the unnecessary difficulty of the process is just yet another way that a cis controlled system polices trans people’s genders and identities. Cis people already regularly feel as though they get to call trans people by the incorrect name, and that’s all about reinforcing undeserved privilege. Further, the issue is about more than just respect and the right of every person to be called what they want to be called — which ought to be enough — but also about basic safety. In a world where transphobia is so regularly expressed through violence and seriously consequential discrimination, one’s official documents matching their identity can sadly be a matter of life and death, or of accessing needed services or not.
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“Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.” — Susan B. Anthony
