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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% [?]

Will someone tell me what the fuck this shit is?

A study has concluded that men often “misinterpret” women’s subtle messages during a sexual encounter when the message means “stop”. But my WTF is not towards the study, which is nonetheless very interesting to talk about — my outrage is at the blog post from Broadsheet (emphasis mine).

Now, for the ear steam: I think it’s unfair to blame this sexual miscommunication on men. Just as men are misreading women’s indirect resistance, women are miscalculating how men will interpret their cues to slow down or stop. (Interestingly enough, in previous research, Motley found that women use indirect messages of resistance to avoid upsetting men, but most men easily accept direct resistance.) I also find it hard to blame men for not correctly reading women’s indirect resistance; women are often expected to, in the very least, put on a halfhearted performance as the steadfast sexual gatekeeper — even if it’s clear that she ultimately intends to abandon her post for the night. Given that cultural script — first she resists, then she consents — how is it any surprise that a guy would misinterpret a woman’s subtle suggestions to slow down?

What. The. Fuck.

Of course, the commenters think that it’s the best damn thing since sliced bread.

When Clark-Flory began this post with anger for the concept of “faulty male introspection,” I was with her. The idea sounded pretty damn offensive to me, too. What, guys are just too stupid to talk to women and ask what they mean when unsure? Women are a whole different species that we can’t expect men to actually communicate with? It’s not that he’s sexually assaulting you, ladies, it’s that he has faulty male introspection.

But no. That’s not what she was mad about. She was mad because it placed all the blame on guys. Due to ambiguous writing, I’m not even sure if she merely thinks that women need to take some of the blame, or if she thinks men should be entirely off the hook.

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Popularity: 24% [?]

Trigger Warning

Via abyss2hope comes this disturbing and nauseating story about a wedding disc jokey who has been arrested for allegedly sharing an instructional video on how to sexually abuse children.

A New York disc jockey has been accused of sharing an instructional video showing how to sexually abuse children.

The case was referred to the Queens district attorney’s office by police in Illinois who said they found two child porn videos in an Internet file-sharing program the DJ was using in February.

Police say one video shows a 4-year-old girl having sex with a man and the other gives advice and examples on how to sexually abuse minors.

Sigh. Everybody say it with me: a 4-year-old cannot have sex. This called rape. This other article describes the video slightly differently as showing “4-year-old girl performing a sex act on a man.” While desperately trying to avoid an image in my mind’s eye, I can make an educated guess as to what that “sex act” was in order for them to describe it as the 4-year-old girl performing it on the man. But I can assure you that he was indeed the one raping her. As a 4-year-old, she was not doing the “performing,” assholes. For fuck’s sake.

This is all a tangent, but Theologian said here that feminists need to work on a way to hold the media accountable for the language they use, and I couldn’t agree more. Especially since (as a general rule) when I do google news searches, more stories about rape come up under the keyword “sex” than under the keyword “rape”. Often, media outlets will excuse this language on the basis of “he’s only alleged to have raped her! To say ‘rape’ would be misleading!” First of all, that’s generally bull. Secondly, it doesn’t fly in this case, as under absolutely no circumstances can a 4-year-old consent to sex act.

Anyway, back to the story at hand.

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Popularity: 18% [?]

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% [?]

You’ve probably already read about Barack Obama’s statements regarding teen pregnancy and the outrage it has inspired in forced-birth proponents. Amanda has already wonderfully skewered the reaction. This is what Obama said:

“When it comes specifically to HIV/AIDS, the most important prevention is education, which should include — which should include abstinence education and teaching the children — teaching children, you know, that sex is not something casual. But it should also include — it should also include other, you know, information about contraception because, look, I’ve got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby. I don’t want them punished with an STD at the age of 16. You know, so it doesn’t make sense to not give them information.”

I mean, really, with all the talk about sex not being anything casual and engaging in sex is a “mistake,” it would seem that Obama is pandering enough to the religious right “sex-is-bad-mmkay?” crowd. But no, instead he has made them very, very angry. Honestly, I think they’re pissed because of his reasonable assertion that telling kids not to have sex doesn’t mean they’re going to listen. But in typical “the liberal made a reasonable point — quick, make everyone look over here!” fashion, they’re screaming and hollering about how Obama said that babies are punishment. They also claim that his comments were about abortion, which is blatantly false, even if the comments he made do easily carry over and most likely influence his pro-choice views.

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Popularity: 21% [?]

You may have heard that two days ago, a British politician was revealed to be behind a far-right blog that spews prejudice at every turn. Among Nick Eriksen’s most offensive comments were those regarding rape (trigger warning).

The Standard can reveal that Nick Eriksen, the BNP’s London organiser and the second-highest candidate on its list for the Assembly, is the author of “Sir John Bull,” a notorious far-Right blog which has regularly advocated hatred and abuse against women. The disclosure will be a serious blow to the BNP’s hopes of London electoral success.

On 24 August 2005, Mr Eriksen wrote: “I’ve never understood why so many men have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by the feminazi myth machine into believing that rape is such a serious crime … Rape is simply sex. Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal.

“To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting that forcefeeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence. A woman would be more inconvenienced by having her handbag snatched.

“The demonisation of rape is all part of the feminazi desire to obtain power and mastery over men. Men who go along with the rape myth are either morons or traitors.”

As far as conservative nutjobs go, Eriksen is extreme. Based on his other blog posts, I honestly don’t think it’s possible for him to look at a woman with anything but vile contempt. And the British National Party? They’re terrifying, and run almost entirely on a platform of making racism acceptable. There’s also the fun irony of the fact that they are “tough on crime” and support “the rights of victims” — no, really, they support corporal punishment for vandals and petty thieves. Which can only mean Eriksen thinks that spray painting graffiti on a wall is worse than raping your girlfriend.

We’re not dealing with your average misogynist, but once the shock wears off, I find Eriksen’s comments to be absolutely fascinating. And significant.

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Popularity: 19% [?]

Dear Leslee Unruh,

Why, exactly, do you hate women so much? What did a vagina, yours or someone else’s, ever do to you? Did your uterus really piss you off at some point? Did some lady give you a nasty look as a child? What is it about the XX chromosome that makes you want to punish as many human beings carrying it around as you possibly can?

No, really, I have to know. What is it about yourself and the rest of us that makes you spend your every waking moment, every single breath you get on this earth, trying to make sure that people with similar biological makeup live a miserable, oppressed, torturous existence?

What is it? And once you figure it out, please get yourself some fucking therapy and leave the rest of us alone.

–

I’ve written about the zombie South Dakota abortion ban before. For those of you out there who think that maybe, just maybe, Leslee Unruh actually does think that she’s doing something good, that she really is stupid enough to believe that making the autonomous decision to have an abortion is more damaging to a woman than forcing her to give birth to an infant she does not want or cannot afford, for those of you who think that she’s just a woman ridiculous enough to think that an embryo deserves more rights than the born human being carrying it, and really she just loves embryo-babies so much that she can’t control herself . . . you’re wrong. This woman hates women. I don’t know how she feels about babies. I have an inkling that she couldn’t give a shit less about them, but maybe she loves them and even intends to start adopting them from the orphanages she sees as a fair “compromise” on abortion for everyone involved. It doesn’t matter. Because the fact remains that she hates women, and so does her ilk.

How do I know that? Because I’ve read the text of the new abortion ban legislation she’s gleefully shoving on the South Dakota ballot this November (pdf).

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Popularity: 17% [?]

A new UK book about sexual assault reveals some judges’ disturbing if not particularly unexpected views about victims of sexual assault and their personal role in “interpreting” sexual assault laws.

Judges have undermined a law intended to stop defence lawyers cross-examining women in rape cases about their sexual history, by continuing to insist on their discretion to allow it, a new book discloses.

Interviews with 17 judges in London and Manchester found that some insisted they still had a wide discretion to allow questions on sexual history, although the law was changed in 2000 to impose severe limits on questioning.

One judge described the provision as “pretty pathetic because it’s get-roundable”.

Another said: “I’m not one for being unduly fettered. I’ve been appointed to do a job on the basis that I have a certain amount of judgment, and to be fettered or shackled by statutory constraints I don’t think helps anybody.”

In other words: “I’m a judge goddammit. That means it’s my job to judge. Who said anything about the law?” Or, perhaps: “Oh yeah, well I judge that your law is stupid! In your face!”

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Popularity: 15% [?]

A lot of what I’ve been writing about lately seems to fall under the category of wholly unsurprising and yet still utterly depressing. Here’s another one for the files:

Just like in the good old U.S. of A. (and Australia), a new poll shows that in Ireland, large numbers of citizens think that women are at least “partially responsible” for rape (note: this is a cached page. The Irish Examiner, which helped conduct the study and has the most comprehensive info about the results, is currently experiencing problems with his website. I’ll put the proper link in later if I notice the page is back up).

* More than 30% think a victim is some way responsible if she flirts with a man or fails to say no clearly.

* 10% of people think the victim is entirely at fault if she has had a number of sexual partners.

* 37% think a woman who flirts extensively is at least complicit, if not completely in the wrong, if she is the victim of a sex crime.

* One in three think a woman is either partly or fully to blame if she wears revealing clothes.

* 38% believe a woman must share some of the blame if she walks through a deserted area.

The results also show that defence barristers, looking to swing the deciding three members in every 12-person jury, can exploit misgivings in certain demographics about the perceived responsibility of female victims.

Dramatic differences in empathy towards victims based on age and social class are revealed. Gender, however, had little impact.

In every category, widowed, divorced and separated people took the harshest view on the role of the female victim, compared with married or cohabiting couples.

The results of the poll support the results of the ground-breaking Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland (SAVI) report in 2002, which found 15% of the population believed a raped woman was not an innocent victim.

A few notes are necessary, here.

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Popularity: 16% [?]

Yet again, an Illinois court is hearing a case about the state’s requirement that all pharmacies dispense emergency contraception. This time it’s in the Illinois Supreme Court hearing the same old tired crap about how requiring a person whose job is to provide medical care to actually provide medical care is somehow breaching their rights.

The rule doesn’t require pharmacies to stock Plan B, but it does require pharmacies to order the medicine if a patient requests it.

The patients whose prescriptions were returned by Vander Bleek and Kosirog’s pharmacies didn’t ask that the medicine be ordered when told that the businesses didn’t stock Plan B. But if asked, the pharmacies would refuse to order Plan B. That could result in suspension of their licenses to operate, Rienzi said.

Okay. Good. I actually doubt that the state would have the nerve to suspend their license, but if they did? Good. They should. I don’t think I’ve made it any big secret that I absolutely do not believe pharmacists should have the right to refuse to dispense EC. While pharmacies are indeed private businesses, they also happen to provide a public service. Refusing medical care is not okay.

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Popularity: 20% [?]

A defense attorney has yet again made a highly offensive argument about how a victim was advertising her desire to be raped by her choice of clothing. But this time, instead of just saying “oh well,” or “tsk tsk” or “everyone deserves a defense no matter how misleading and unethical,” a government official is actually doing something about it (emphasis and brackets mine).

An MSP is demanding action from the legal profession after a lawyer used the way a teenage sex assault victim was dressed as a defence for a client.

Iain Smith also brought up the 15-year-old’s sexual history and said she was not vulnerable.

His client, Rikki Tainsch, was given three years probation for plying the girl with drink then attacking her.

SNP MSP [Scottish National Party Member of Scottish Parliament] Roseanna Cunningham has lodged a parliamentary motion calling for such comments to be banned from the courts.

Tainsch, who had never met the 15-year-old before the day he attacked her, took her to his home in Tibbermore, Perthshire, in August last year.

He then gave her enough vodka and Irn Bru to make her violently sick.

She went to bed feeling unwell but woke to find the 24-year-old assaulting her.

During the trial at Perth Sheriff Court, Mr Smith said the teenager had been “scantily clad”, wearing shorts, black boots and a white top.

He also stated: “There was a suggestion the girl had been sexually active before.

“I don’t think it is fair to say this was a very vulnerable person.”

Damn straight these kinds of comments should be banned from court. I’ve made this argument more times than I can count (you’ll find many examples under the slut-shaming and courts gone crazy categories). Thank you, thank you, thank you Ms. Cunningham. If it hasn’t been made clear yet, she really is a bad ass:

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Popularity: 53% [?]