Chris

I adore the hell out of Alara Rogers' comments.  She usually comments at Pandagon; today's gem of awesome is:

The fact that we only hear about drunken ex-boyfriends when they beat up and rape their ex-girlfriends is why we might think that a drunken ex would be dangerous to a woman, but telling women that they shouldn't trust men that they loved once… that basically boils down to saying "Men are evil." And you know, when people make the argument that men are evil I want them to follow through. I want them to admit that men should have a curfew and men should be restricted in their movements and men should be treated like dangerous animals. Because if women cannot trust men they *love*, as a matter of *routine*–if we can say, looking at a situation, "well of course she shouldn't have trusted him! He was a man, what did she expect? Even if they used to be lovers, hell, *especially* if they used to be lovers she shouldn't have let him into her home", then we also need to be saying "Men are dangerous animals and should be treated as such." You know, the way we treat pet tigers. But if men are human, if men deserve human rights, if men *aren't* automatically rapists, if most men can be assumed to be good people… then women should never, ever, ever be punished or castigated for trusting the wrong man.

Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts.  Comment here or there.

Rape charges dropped against pharmacist who posed as gynecologist:

"Prosecutors say they cannot press rape charges against a pharmacist who allegedly posed as a gynecologist and examined two women because of a half-century old state law that says an assault can't be considered rape if consent is obtained through fraud or deceit."

Thankfully, state representative Peter Koutoujian is working on changing that:

"In fact, we know now through decades of work with victims that rape is not necessarily only a physical act. You don't need to use force in order to rape someone. It's really the act of consent that is more pivotal to the charge of rape."

One of these years, I'm going to post my thoughts on (adult) rape, as influenced by reading many, many blogs on the topic.  In the meantime, I'm going to continue wondering how I'm supposed to not mistrust men on sight.

(W-ell, I'm actually going to continue trying to wake up.  You know.)

Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts.  Comment here or there.

* Jessica at Feministing posts a YouTube link: Practical joke show "rapes" mom to terrorize daughter.  As someone said at Feministing, "Oh good. I think rape hasn't been funny enough in the past. This sort of humor is just what we need."  This is truly vile, and is not helping humanity's case any.

* Jill writes: 10 Reasons to Support Reproductive Justice on Roe Day.  Her post is full of excellent points and linkage.

* PortlyDyke writes about Christianity and the US.

Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts.  Comment here or there.

Novelist Sheri S. Tepper once had an elder sister protagonist who explained the difference between rape and sex to a younger brother who had been hanging around with sniggering teens propagating the "they all want it really" view. In it she pointed out that liking chocolate cake is not the same thing as liking to have chocolate cake shoved down your throat with a stick no matter how much you say no, or resist, or are in danger of choking and the cake just keeps on getting shoved down your mouth; and that it's made infinitely worse if people dismiss your complaints with "oh, but it can't have been that bad: you love chocolate cake!".

- tigtog, here.

Let's not forget about those days when really, you just kind of don't want cake right now.

Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts.  Comment here or there.

Somehow, the subject of feminism came up yesterday when I was chatting with B, my live-in partner.  (That makes him sound like a sofa-bed.)  He asserted, partially tongue-in-cheekily, that the world is run by a small group of rich white men, and he's not one of them.  There's The Top Of The Pack, and then waaay later on the power scale, there's men, women, non-whites, and so forth.

Somehow, this turned into me ranting about rape.  I broke it down to chat style for ease of reading.

X: Recently, there was an item in the news wherein which a woman who was throwing up due to being so drunk was prevented from leaving the building and was gang-raped.  The responses to this were normal – "She probably deserved it.  She got herself drunk.  She got herself raped.  Oh, those poor boys!"

X: Like the Duke lacrosse thing – a bunch of frat boys hired a prostitute for their kegger, she files rape charges, and all anyone can talk about, aside from at the feminist blogs I read, is oh, those poor boys!  Meanwhile, her personal information – her full name and a picture of her – is plastered in the media.

X: And what other crimes are there (crimes that involve two people, I mean, a victim and a perp) where the victim is told that they were probably lying, or they were asking for it, and oh those poor perps?  I mean, if we left our front door open and we were robbed, we'd be called fucking stupid, but we still would have been robbed.  It's still a crime.

X: FURthermore, about the lying part, you know what the stats are for "those crazy bitches" lying about rape?  The same as any other two-party crime.  In the same range, anyways.  But oh, those lying bitches.

X: And where is this coming from?

B: … I hope you don't expect me to answer that.

X: I think that was rhetorical.

–

* Rape — Sexual Assault at the US DoJ's Office for Victims of Crimes site.

* Sailorman at Alas, A Blog has a neat breakdown of types of rape charges.

* Of course, when the victim in question is male, rape is suddenly a traumatic event.  To quote a commenter, "Afterall, rape of a man is a terrible, traumatic crime. Rape of a woman/gay man/child is your average Tuesday."

* That item in the news I mentioned.

* And to end this on a really terrible note, from London: "A teenage girl who claims she was gang raped by three 13-year-old schoolboys was overweight and would have been "glad of the attention", a barrister told a jury."

…

Okay, I can't end there.  Check out the cutest kitten in the world.

Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts.  Comment here or there.

This was posted by Thomas over at the Feministing post "Quick Hit: Drinking and Rape".  I'm posting it here for posterity.  I definitely advise reading the main link, as well.

I think the key to changing the rape culture is to change the view of sexuality from a commodity model to a performance model.

What I mean by a commodity model is the view that sex is something women have and men get; what Amanda Marcotte refers to as the "pussy oversoul" that women are guardians of and that men make applications for access to. Sex is like a ticket; women have them and men try to get them. Women may give them away or may trade them for something valuable, but it's a transaction in a good.

The commodity model is shared in common by both the libertines and the prudes of a patriarchy. To the libertine, guys want to maximize their take of tickets. The prudes want women to keep the tickets to buy something really important: the spouse; provider, protector, etc.

That whole model is wrong. Under that model, consent is not an affiramtive partnership. Instead, if someone tries to take a ticket and the owner doesn't object, then the ticket is free for the taking. Under this way of thinking, consent is the absence of "no." It is therefore economically rational to someone with this commodity concept of sex that it can be taken; rape is a property crime in that view. In the past, the crime was against the male owner of women (let's not sugar-coat it; until very recently women were in a legal way very much male property and still are in many places and ways). Even among more enlightened folks, if one takes a commodity view of sex, rape is still basically a property crime against the victim.

The better model is the performance model, where sex is a performance, and partnered sex is a collaboration between the partners; like dance or music.

Under a performance model, consent is not the absence of "no." Consent is affirmative participation. Who picks up a guitar and jams with a bassist who just stands there? Who dances with a partner who is just standing there and staring? In the absence of affirmative participation, there is no collaboration; forcing participation by coersion is not a property crime, but a crime of violence like kidnapping.

Under this model, looking for affirmative participation is built into the conception. If our boys learn this from their pre-adolescence, then the idea that consent is affirmative rather than the absence of objection will be ingrained.

The performance model has the added feature that it eliminates slut-baiting. A commodity is finite; if women give or trade away their tickets, they have lost something of value, and the relevant question is what they got in exchange. If sex is a performance, then the question is how well it worked out. There's no finite commodity to run out of, and nobody gets called a slut for jamming with too many musicians.

Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts.  Comment here or there.

I don't get it.  I Don't Get It.

I try my very best to understand where people come from.  Sometimes this is misinterpreted as seeing the other side as having the right of things, which is both incorrect and a whole different rant.  I do anyways.  But I don't get this.

A decision by a Maryland appellate court (that once given and within a sexual context, women can't withdraw consent (link = .pdf)) is fucking revolting.  I could keep piling on adjectives, but my first reaction is both accurate and succint.  If I am in the middle of having sex and I say "Wait, stop", I expect the other person to fucking stop, and that's that.

There are some people men out there (I've not yet seen even one woman arguing this) who have a problem with this.  What if she sends mixed signals?  What if she says "no" but actually and non-ironically means "yes"?  This is just women using their sexual power, like we are!

Answers: You fucking communicate, you fucking communicate, and you fucking die in a fire.  I will cheerfully assist with the last one.

The main part I don't understand is, why are these men, and men like them, so incredibly insulting to their own gender?  "We can't stop in time, and it's unfair to expect us to!"  As my boyfriend says, "Could you stop if your mom walked in while you were having sex?  All right, then!"

I try my best not to be all the paranoid about assigning things to the patriarchy, largely due to me being new to the feminism thing, but fuck if I can't see anything here other than, "We want the power to do what we want, and it threatens us when women want to be treated as human."

Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts.  Comment here or there.