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.

Most people will look at this as an isolated incident. A horrific incident, but an isolated one. (Some still will look at it as an unpreventable one.) But this isn’t a case of two individual judges being irresponsible, incompetent, misogynistic jackasses — though they certainly were. This is the result of a larger system, of which those particular judges, while absolutely responsible, are only a part.

It’s a part of a system that says women can’t be believed, particularly about violence. It’s a part of a system actively encouraged by Men’s Rights Activists, who spread the lie that women regularly make up false stories about abuse during custody hearings and encourage judges to particularly disregard them — even though during the time when a woman leaves an abusive relationship, there is a 75% increase in risk of the abuser murdering her or her family. It’s a part of a system which teaches us that when a man admits to domestic abuse and blames it on victim provocation, that’s not a severe warning sign, but a sympathetic and believable justification. It’s a part of a system that says women’s lives don’t matter, that men’s rights are worth more than women’s, and domestic abuse doesn’t pose a serious threat. It’s a part of a “family values” ideology that says having all parents involved in a child’s life isn’t only important and ideal, but so important that it’s worth more than the child and other parent’s safety.

Frequently, it’s this system’s failure to protect that results in women losing their lives. This time, it was the life of a baby. Neither kind of death is unpreventable. Neither kind of death is isolated. Neither kind of death is more or less connected to patriarchal structures than the other.

When we, as a society, decide to not believe victims of gender-based violence, we do a lot of things. We give abusers a supportive environment in which to continue their terrorism. We re-traumatize victims who speak out, a trauma that can last for years or even lifetimes. We encourage other victims to stay silent, and thus close off avenues for their safety. We uphold the idea that women do not matter, and that children do not matter.

And we also cost lives. We sit back, and allow violent men to take them. We turn away from abuse, and we ignore those suffering under the weight of abusers, noticing them only once they’re gone.

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.

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.”

This is not a purely theoretical interpretation of the decision. What the court has opted to do here is say that a certain type of sexual assault is acceptable — and so you better believe that the type of guy who gets a kick out of sexual assault is thanking his lucky stars for this green light and breaking out his camera as we speak. Sexual predators have a tendency to enact their violence in ways they think they are most likely to get away with, and take cues from social attitudes and the judicial system in terms of which victims are seen to be the least sympathetic, most marginalized, and most unrapeable — so thinking that no sexual predator will read of this decision and start acting accordingly is naive at best.

But what we have here is not only the assertion that no parts of one’s body are ever private and that consent is not needed to photograph them, but also that one’s body does not have the right to be free from physical assault. The photographs themselves were certainly a sexual assault. But so was the act of lifting up the victim’s skirt without any form of permission — a type of assault which I would like to believe is illegal in Sweden, and so presumably the court simply decided didn’t count. Again, she was there.

This isn’t a view held only by a misogynistic court, the idea that hey, there was no physical injury, so how could non-consensual touching possibly be a violation or assault, it’s one that is unsurprisingly shared by many members of the general public. In the comments to the original article (not recommended, trigger warnings apply), while many thankfully note the appalling nature of the decision, others blame the victim for allegedly failing to wear underwear. Of course, they have no evidence that she wasn’t wearing underwear, only an absence of its mention in the description of the assault. But that doesn’t stop them, any more than does the fact that what one does or does not wear under one’s own clothing is nobody else’s business. Only sluts don’t wear underwear under a skirt. And, as we know, sluts always totally want it. Especially when their all existing in public and such, and dressing as they want, as though they deserve some sort of bodily autonomy.

My first inclination upon reading this story was to think that the court made a grave and reprehensible error through a very narrow reading of the law, and that legislators needed to immediately close what was quite possibly an unintentional loophole. Sadly, I should have known better than to have given anyone the benefit of the doubt here. Because the last line of the article makes note of a previous case, on which this decision was based. And it is abhorrent:

The court cited a Swedish Supreme Court (Högsta domstolen) case that cleared a man who had been brought to trial for filming sexual intercourse without the consent of the woman involved.

Presumably, this other case didn’t happen within the past couple weeks, and yet here we are, with the problem persisting. The Swedish Supreme Court ruled that the autonomy and rights of women become irrelevant once any kind of sexual consent has been given. She agreed to intercourse, and therefore the man she was with could do whatever the hell else he liked with her.

The same rule applied to this decision, though what the victim did consent to changed. In this case, she consented to falling asleep near someone who had the inclination to sexually assault her. Or, perhaps, she consented to not wearing underwear under her own damn skirt. Or, at the very least, she consented to existing as a woman outside of her own home, and didn’t remain absolutely vigilant during every single second that she did so. And that, apparently, is more than enough consent for absolutely nothing else to matter.

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.

The fact of the matter is that if O’Neill were not able to access the support she requires in caring for Aidan, that would be far from a failure of parenting, but a result of our society’s ableist structure. But, in this case, O’Neill actually does have access to those resources. She is not raising Aidan alone, she is raising him with the assistance of her full-time caretaker, her mother, and her brother who lives with her.

And so, it seems to me that the allegation being made against O’Neill is not that she is failing to ensure proper care for Aidan. The allegation appears to be that she is failing to care for Aidan entirely by herself, without any outside assistance.

This is flat out ableism. The assumption that one is not as valuable, responsible, or worthy because they rely on support systems and the help of others is blatantly denigrating to people with disabilities. Specifically with regards to parenting, it also has a history of being incredibly sexist, and I imagine that this is playing into the response to O’Neill’s parenting, as well.

Mothers are constantly ridiculed and reviled for not being able to do everything at once. Mothers who use daycare, babysitters, familial support, and the help of friends, are frequently looked at as lacking in maternal skill and maternal love. And while even mothers in heterosexual couplings tend to take on the bulk of childcare, this prejudice hits single mothers particularly hard. It’s true that some have in fact had to cope entirely on their own, and are doing so as we speak. But no one should ever have to. And looking to one’s community for help should never be used as a mark against their parental fitness.

But that’s exactly what those onlookers judging O’Neill now are doing. It’s also what actual judges have done in the past when they’ve ruled against disabled parents in custody disputes, even when the other parent has a history of neglect or abuse. In other words, many times over, it has been decided that an abusive and neglectful parent is a better caretaker than a loving and attentive parent who needs the help of other caretakers. That ought to make us all feel ill on numerous levels.

I don’t know who would be a better parent to hold custody of little Aidan. Mothers are not automatically better parents than fathers, there seem to be no allegations of abuse on either side, and so apart from thinking that Trais is quite the bigot, I can’t make that judgment. But I do know that a judge would be appallingly wrong to make the decision based on O’Neill’s disability. I do know that saying a parent must be able to play sports in order to properly care for her child is ableist and absurd. I do know that a child is much more likely to grow up “feeling sorry” for his disabled parent if he is exposed to those attitudes which say that disability is a tragedy worthy of pity. And I do know that reproductive rights don’t end when a pregnancy is terminated or when a child is born, but that they need to extend to the right of women to parent their own kids, even when those women have an identity that is marginalized and devalued.

via FWD/Forward

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.

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.

And yet, despite his clear admission of rape, he simultaneously claimed that it wasn’t rape — as we know, men will frequently admit to behavior that classifies as rape so long as the word rape is not actually used. The fact that he would do so in a court of law, though, is particularly shocking, exposes some extremely concerning cognitive dissonance, and most appalling of all, displays a clear belief by his defense attorney that such a tactic would succeed, and that the jury would accept that cognitive dissonance right along with him.

That belief was, of course, ultimately validated by the jury. But why? Because the victim was a sex worker, and many people believe that sex workers have no right to bodily autonomy, and therefore cannot be raped? Because she had consented to the sex up to that point, and many people believe that women who have consented to sex generally have no right to bodily autonomy, and therefore cannot revoke or renegotiate consent once it is given? Because the rape may have “only” lasted a few moments, and how could a rape — of a sex worker! who had previously consented! — possibly “count” as real rape? Because Davis is a member of the U.S. military, and therefore he doesn’t look how most people expect a rapist to look?

My best guess is that all of these forms of misogynistic prejudice played a role, most likely in the order I’ve listed them. Yet again, even a blatant confession in a court of law is not enough to earn a conviction from a jury pulled from a culture that thinks men are never to blame, and women always are.

After all, the men and their feelings are the only ones that matter:

Davis made no comment to reporters following the verdict, but his attorney, Sam Macedone, said Davis was very happy with the outcome.

“He is glad it’s over,” Macedone said. “It has been very stressful for him.”

Yes, clearly too few of us spend enough time thinking about the toll that rape accusations take on rapists.

link via $pread

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.

In Hoxha’s initial confession, he used the trans panic defense. Police initially, though differently, also attempted to construe Kristina’s murder as her own fault, and the result of an act of self-defense by Hoxha:

“I took him for a woman, but it turned out to be a man and in the heat of the moment I killed him and I don’t know what I did”, claimed Sefedin Hoxha, arrested two days ago for the murder of [male name redacted], known by the name Kristina.

The police, on the contrary, suspect that the victim and the perpetrator might have clashed following a possible attempted theft. Sources say that so far the strongest suspicion is that [Kristina] wanted to rob her client but, they say, the opposite cannot be ruled out.

Kristina is alleged to have been a sex worker, with Hoxha as a client who was unaware of her trans status, and who murdered her in the “panic” of discovering it. Whether or not Kristina was actually a sex worker, I do not know — I do, however, imagine that regardless of whether or not it is true, prejudice against sex workers is being employed to rally sympathy for Hoxha. Phobia of sex workers only works to compound the trans panic defense — the bigoted and bullshit argument that of course no cis man would want to engage in a sex act with a trans woman, and of course a woman not explaining her trans status is therefore lying, and of course trans women regularly fail to inform potentially violent sex partners of their trans statuses, and of course any heterosexual cis man in those circumstances would react violently — as both trans people and sex workers are regularly portrayed as “deceptive” and out to prey on poor men. Then, police dismiss the admission by Hoxha, and introduce new prejudice against Kristina by portraying her as a thief who initiated the violence.

Some news outlets have also jumped at the opportunity to portray alleged murderer Hoxha as the victim of a deceitful trans woman (please note: original, triggering language retained in this quote to convey the full effect of the apologism):

According to [Hoxha], he had been drinking on the night of the crime and was in a state of intoxication. On the street he came across the transvestite, who offered him sex in return for 500 lek. Being drunk, he agreed and went to a dark place to have sex. At that point the transvestite turned round and prepared for the act. The vagabond from Kosovo turned round right at the point when the transvestite was half undressed and he realized that it was a man. Safedin Hoxha was leaning in a corner and surprised and disappointed, he asked for his money back so that he could leave, but the transvestite said that they could carry on, that there was no problem, and approached the Kosovar. The latter, unable to cope with the situation that had come about, drew a knife from his pocket and stabbed him in the throat.

Hoxha’s drinking has been emphasized here, seemingly to reduce his culpability rather than increase it. In this account, he only paid a sex worker because he was intoxicated, and thus being taken advantage of. In this account, Kristina is also not portrayed as a woman, or even as human — in addition to being referred to as a man, she is also called “it” but as “really” a man.* And, in this account, Hoxha responded calmly to the “surprise” and only upon further deceit and manipulation did he react violently, due to being “unable to cope.”

In other words, male violence against women is stated over and over again to be not the man’s fault, not the man’s fault, not the man’s fault. As always, it’s seen as the victim’s fault for being a woman, for being transgender, for (allegedly) being a sex worker, and for therefore being perceived as not fully human.

And speaking of which, police have apparently used Kristina’s murder as an excuse to persecute trans people and sex workers in the area — with, again, the media portraying cis people and non-sex workers as the real victims:

After the shocking killing of Kristina, the police of the capital city have decided to impose “order”, checking the entire area which is known as a haunt for drug users, prostitutes or transvestites.

…

The area behind the Palace of Culture is known as a place where transvestites and prostitutes congregate, causing serious disturbances for all the inhabitants of the area or for passers-by. In the case of the latter, because there have been no small number of attacks by the criminal gangs, bent on theft. As seen in the photograph above, the police are taking no action to send the lawbreakers to the cells, but think it enough to move them on from the deserted buildings in the centre of the capital, opposite the General Administration of Prisons. The entire “tragicomic” scene unrolls before the eyes of dozens of curious onlookers and the DPB (General Administration of Prisons) security guards, entirely powerless just like their colleagues, to detain the many drug users, transvestites and prostitutes who have found refuge in the deserted buildings. Their freedom of movement has become a major concern for the people living in the area, while anyone might find themselves endangered if for their own reasons their journey takes them to the “heart” of the capital.

…

The area where Kristina was killed is frequented by sexual deviants as well as prostitutes. Police employees have been “patrolling” and inspecting this area for years, but not only do they fail to arrest lawbreakers, they often become the victims of their insults and beatings.

So a trans woman is murdered, and general, cis dominated society not only takes this as a cue to heap abuse on the trans community, portraying them as criminals and “sexual deviants,” but the government uses it as an opportunity to enact more violence against trans people, too. A highly typical story, but a no less disturbing one.

Hoxha has recanted his confession and pleaded not guilty. There is no further news, and the case is presumably working its way through the courts. Kristina has also been buried by her friends.

Everything above is incredibly distressing. And there is no larger message that I have found, other than a reminder of how hostile, dangerous and violent our cissupremacist world is to trans people, trans women in particular. But Kristina deserves to be remembered, and to have what small part of her story we know told. With the Transgender Day of Remembrance being commemorated this Friday, now also seems like a particularly apt moment. May she rest in peace.

*ETA: Kim has emailed me to clarify that she believes her translation was off, and the phrase “he realized that it was a man” should actually be something closer to “and there emerged a man.” Still, of course, extremely offensive and ungendering, but not in the way I had originally understood.

Via CBS News:

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?

It’s no secret that rape kit collection is often experienced by the person undergoing it as extremely violating. This is not necessarily the fault of those doing the collection (though I’m sure that, just like in every other line of work, insensitive assholes exist), but simply the nature of the process. No matter how kind, how gentle, or how efficient the person doing the collection is, laying (at least partially) undressed on a table while strangers examine and swab your body is uncomfortable at best. When you’ve just been raped, when what they’re swabbing and collecting are the body fluids, hairs and DNA of the rapist, and when the only thing you want to do is take a shower and get all remnants of them off and out of you as quickly as possible, it has the potential to be downright traumatizing.

For a person to make the decision to undergo such a process is difficult, and usually done with the desire for justice in mind. To subject a person to it and not even make marginal attempts to bring about that justice is utterly disrespectful, and completely dismissive of what they’ve been through. When women are the vast majority of those being victimized by rape and thus undergoing rape kit collection, it’s also misogynistic, and says a lot about how sexual violence is viewed in comparison to other crimes.

The fact is that in many cases (as rape kits are most frequently useful when the rapist’s identity is unknown), a rape kit also has the potential to catch and stop a rapist who would otherwise not be stopped. And so this delay is also ensuring a failure on the part of our justice system to prevent specific rapes that could easily be prevented:

“If they don’t catch the person on this rape, they are going to commit another one,” Leahy said.

That’s what David Lisak found. An expert on rape at the University of Massachusetts, he says research shows that 71 percent of rapists are repeat offenders.

“The number of assaults that they commit can be anywhere from, in non-stranger cases, it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 3, 4, 5, 6 offenses at least per rapist,” Lisak said.

Even with accused repeat offenders there are delays. Prosecutors had to wait 11 months for lab results before they could charge one man with three rapes in Missouri. And because of a backlog at the Louisiana crime lab, a sex offender was just charged with rape, from 2006. Both men deny the charges.

“We had a sense that there were perpetrators out there who were not being followed up on,” said Steve Redding. He’s a county attorney in Minneapolis, and started digging through old cases where the victim didn’t know her attacker, and for one reason or another, the kits were never tested. He sent 35 kits to the lab. Patterns emerged. A case from 1998 matched DNA from a 2007 case.

“Do I think that the person has not committed any sexual assaults in between those nine years,” Redding asked? “Not in my life as a prosecutor for 30 years.

In the end, Redding got DNA matches on eight of the 35 cases, charging all eight with rapes.

I don’t personally believe that rape kits and DNA evidence are ever going to be what stops rape — finding offenders and holding them responsible is important, but changing our culture so that rapes aren’t committed in the first place is the goal. It’s also true that a rape kit turning up a DNA match is hardly a guarantee of a conviction (though it tends to help, at least in stranger rape cases).

And yet all the same, this is an utter travesty. It’s a slap in the face to those women who underwent the process of collection. And it’s a mocking laugh towards the women who are raped by men who would have already been arrested if only the state had gotten up off their damn asses and run the tests they were supposed to run. And when it’s the same law enforcement establishment that tells rape victims they need to report, they need to report, they need to report, and then sits on the evidence like it’s the lowest priority they have, it’s just a little bit hard to believe that they view rape survivors as anything more than the butt of a misogynistic joke.

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.

See, here’s the thing: it’s impossible for one to “misread a situation” to the point of raping someone. If one does not ensure that they have consent from a person prior to engaging in sexual contact, or ignores an explicit lack of consent from that person, they have not misread anything. They have intentionally failed to read the situation at all. Not even attempting to read a situation, or reading it and disregarding what it says, is not the same as misreading. Misreading a situation is asking your date, “Would you like to go back to my place?” and feeling surprised when they say “no.” It’s not purposely dragging them there once they have said no. And it’s not taking them there without telling them where you were going first.

What makes the statement particularly egregious in the context where it was made is the fact that Craig Byars’ victim was asleep. One cannot consent to sex, or to anything else for that matter, when they are asleep. Period. And so, there is absolutely nothing to “misread.” Unless, of course, you’re the kind of person who tends to read unconscious women as perfect sexual assault targets.

What Latif’s statement up above suggests is that one can, in fact, consent while they are asleep. That Byars’ decision to rape an unconscious woman was a little bit understandable, because certainly there are cases where “having sex” with a sleeping woman is okay. It suggests that complete and total lack of consent is a gray area rather than clear bright line. Saying that Byars misread the situation is the same thing as saying that on some level, he had good reason to believe that what he was doing was not rape. It fully reinforces the idea that women exist in a permanent state of sexual consent until that default consent is withdrawn.

This is what happens when we live in a world where many people still fully believe that when a woman says no, she doesn’t really mean it. Right now, we’re still, after decades, fighting an uphill battle to get people to accept the basic notion that no means no, that you don’t get to decide under which circumstances another person’s no is valid and worth accepting, and that your personal opinion of what a person “really meant” doesn’t have the right to overrule what they actually said. We’re still living in a world where certain women are perceived as unrapeable, and where their no’s are seen as counting for absolutely nothing. And we’re living in a culture that tells men that when a woman pushes you away, that’s just reason for you to try harder.

How, in the kind of society that has just that little regard for women, where their actual words do not matter, can we be surprised to see people dismissing their lack of words as also meaningless? How can we expect that a sleeping woman’s right to not be assaulted will be recognized and respected as obvious and inherent when the right of an actively protesting woman to not be assaulted is still seen as up for contention? If no doesn’t even really mean no to so many people, how can they possibly think to wait for a yes? Thinking that no doesn’t mean no is the very definition of believing that women exist in a permanent state of sexual consent. So of course, if this is your belief, one can potentially misread a sleeping woman as existing purely for his sexual use, and as saying “I’m here, so you might as well remove my pants and have sex with me.”

This view of women and consent is epitomized in one particularly chilling quote that Byars gave to police when they asked him if he had raped the victim:

Byars, 34, later claimed to police that he had consensual sex with the woman at his then flat above the Ghillies Lair pub, in Great Southern Road, in Aberdeen.

But when asked if the woman could have been sleeping or dozing when he had sex with her he replied: “Yes she could have been and I’ve never clicked.”

I hope, I really, really hope, that Byars was simply giving the most pathetic and ill-considered lie possible to police in response to that question. Because if he was being honest, if he pays so little attention to the women he is sexually touching that he doesn’t even notice when they are unconscious, I truly dread to think of just what else he has failed to notice, and how many women he has raped while they were awake.

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.

The previous ruling that Winn-Ritzenberg had to provide a letter from some sort of authority figure documenting a “need” for the name change also was not only a hurdle, it was an insult. What it meant was that a court could choose to take the word of individuals universally presumed to be cis (even though they’re not), about the lives and needs of trans people, over the words of trans people themselves. It medicalized and pathologized trans identities where they need not be, and dismissed marginalized people’s authority over their own lives.

And in addition to the fact that no one should need a letter of permission, or should be forced to disclose their medical history in order to complete a simple legal request, there’s also the reality that not all individuals requiring a name change have access to medical treatment as a part of their transitions, or even want it:

Advocates like Mr. Silverman note that not all transgender people take steps like hormone-replacement therapy or sex-reassignment surgery; many take the view that gender is socially constructed, or not even a stable or meaningful category altogether.

The Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, which represented Winn-Ritzenberg in his case, has also released a statement on the ruling, which says in part:

[T]he appellate court wrote, “[t]here is no sound basis in law or policy to engraft upon the statutory provisions an additional requirement that a transgendered-petitioner present medical substantiation for the desired name change.”  The court’s decision sends a powerful message that transgender people must be treated equally and that they cannot be subjected to different legal requirements than everyone else. People’s names are fundamental to their identities.  This decision confirms that each one of us has the right to be known by a name we choose.  That decision can’t be second-guessed by doctors, therapists or anyone else simply because someone is transgender.

Upon learning of the ruling, Olin said, “This means that I can finally change my name and move forward with my life.  My gender transition has been a very personal journey, and no one is in a better position to decide that I need to change my name than I am.”

Unfortunately, according to a comment left on a post about the ruling at Pam’s, there is question about whether or not the ruling will effectively set precedent throughout all of the state. (I don’t know enough about the law to have any idea one way or the other.) And it seems pretty clear that a legislative solution would be far more ideal than the current system whereby judges get to make their own decisions about whether or not to allow a name change, and bad rulings have to be individually challenged in districts all over the country.

But in spite of the limitations, the ruling was the right one, is undoubtedly a positive thing for those people whose lives will be affected by it, and does send a strong message of support for transgender rights. It’s just necessary to remember that as far as these messages go, a lot more of them are needed.