18-year-old man punished for raping 14-year-old girl, and this is somehow a travesty of justice

Anyone with any knowledge of sexual assault knows how rare and how difficult it is for a sexual predator to go to prison. But sometimes it happens, as with Ken Thornsberry, who was first given probation and then locked away for 15 years after violating the terms of his probation. But this is a terrible, terrible thing! At least according to Judy Molland in an article on Care2.com.

Did you know that rape is a form of casual sex? News to me, too.

Good old Man Boobz has done it again, and lead me to a post I can write about by Susan Walsh of Hooking Up Smart.

*Trigger warning for sexual assault apologia, and sexual assault stories


She made a “flow-chart” (in scare quotes because it’s…not really a flow-chart at all so much as, I don’t know, vomit with a bunch of arrows? I’m being generous here) in which she tries to show how casual sex leads to “ECONOMIC STAGNATION!!!!!!!!!!” Yes, that is an exact quotation from her chart. And you know, I could detail, as others already have, how problematic it is to assume that something untested and unproven is “common sense”, but that’s not what pissed me off or inspired me to write about it. Rather, it’s that sexual assault is included under “casual sex”.

Regender Challenge!

At man boobz, David issued a challenge using the Regender website. It allows one to enter a URL and change everything male to female and vice versa. I have a lot of MRA and other misogynist quotes I'd like to play with, so instead of cluttering up the thread, I've decided to post them here. For whatever reason, the deviantART URLs don't work, so I've edited the quotes myself. I've also reversed rape and false accusations of rape because I think it's funny.

I'll be waiting a while

Well, breakups suck. My boyfriend of six years broke up with me last night. That and many other reasons contribute to the suckitude (it's a word, damn it!) of this, not least that male "friends" of mine whom have shown more-than-friendly interest in the past are now going to assume I'll go for them. Men who can actually see women as human beings they might want to just be friends with seem few and far between for me past high school. One I lost contact with, one I ended up dating (he's the one who just broke up with me), and the other is gay. Just about every other male friend of mine is, well, too friendly, and there are few, if any, of them I would actually take up on their offers. You see, investing in a relationship with a very intelligent and intellectual man for over a quarter of my life has left me with some high standards. Basically, I don't want to do it all over again with another man. He's simply going to already be where I'm at. Thus, I decided to to devise some ground rules for dating me. The fact that none of the aforementioned too friendly males have likely read this or will read it pretty much solidifies that we will never end up together. So here it is as follows:

You think you even have a chance at a long-term relationship with me?

It gets easier

As a feminist, one becomes more and more aware of our misogynist society and all of the little and big things that help to uphold it. As anyone recognizable as a woman, cis or trans, one thus can no longer accept street harassment as "normal" behaviour. But it's still hard to deal with. Realizing that such people are exercising their privilege and think of you as an object, rather than it being something you've done, doesn't help one deal with such harassment, at least at first.
      

Smile, bitch!

So, it’s currently 5:22 this sunny afternoon* and I just got told to smile about ten minutes ago. What, on earth, does this have to do with anything, you ask? Well, let me share with you that I had just finished renewing my bus pass and was on my way to the bus stop when I noticed a man I’d passed earlier playing his guitar. I’d already given him two quarters and didn’t expect him to recognize me. I wanted to avoid the awkward, “Oh I just saw you a little while ago” partly because I hate not to give what little money I can spare to those in need of it. What can I say? I’m something of a philanthropist. Well, in trying to avoid looking at this man, I, looking in front of me (as one generally does when walking), accidentally made eye-contact with a different man sitting outside a restaurant. I looked away and continued walking and just as I passed him, he said “Smile.”

A true account of abortion

I have a story to tell here. For safety's sake, I won't tell who's it is, be that mine, my friend's, my family member's, or some random woman's whom I met on the bus, although I have written it in my style regardless. But I have to tell it because it deals with an important issue to me, made even more important by this story, and it flies in the face of many common myths surrounding abortion. Nothing has been embellished here; it's all true. Some of those reading may know whose story this is, and that's fine, but I'm relying on the relative anonymity of the internet to at least induce enough confusion to protect the narrator's identity.

*Trigger warning for sexual abuse, emotional turmoil, and described abortion

The most laughable of MRA myths

I might be late to the party here as, but the MRA myths are getting really, really ridiculous, so I just have to debunk them.


Women urinate from their vaginas. (tenth comment down) 
Lead there from Man Boobz. 

Osama bin Laden

So apparently he's dead. I'd heard from unverified sources that he'd died years ago, and I do find it a little suspicious that his body was simply dumped into the ocean without, it would seem, an autopsy, etc.. Of course, they claim to have DNA evidence, but where's the proof that they have it? It also seems just a little too convenient given that Obama's popularity had significantly fallen and now this happens shortly before the next US election, and predictably everyone's an Obama fan now.


But whatever. We'll leave all that aside. It may be coincidence after all; he really could have been killed recently. I don't know for certain, so let's go with it. And this brings me to people's responses, mostly Christians, remember.

I can't help but cry

I love The Curvature and visit it often. There hasn't been an update in a while and the last post is on the De Anza rape case, an open letter in empathy to the victim since she lost the civil suit too. I had already read it, but couldn't help myself from reading it again. Maybe because the complete lack of justice in this case hurts and I'm still trying to process it, I don't know. But I decided to read Cara's earliest post on this. It's full of rage and understandably so, but coherent nonetheless. I also read the one following it. Cara's been at this case for a while, so I imagine she's still pretty upset by this.

Holding the Door

Cross-posted on my deviantART account.

Often, in arguments of feminism, you come across the subject of chivalry. These days, it seems that anti-feminists are offended at feminism's rejection of chivalry (holding the door, taking her coat, pulling out a chair, etc.), but let's take a closer examination, shall we?
      
      In many arguments I've had in the past, I've had men declare that if women wanted equality, then they shouldn't expect chivalry. Well, I personally have never expected chivalry. I was taught that it's polite to hold a door, not that it's polite for specifically men to hold the door for specifically women. If I reach the door first, I hold it for the person who comes after me, regardless of gender. If someone is ahead of me but is elderly, has too much to carry, is physically-handicapped, or has small children with hir, then I will speed ahead to hold the door. If, however, a perfectly capable person is ahead of me, then I expect that person, again regardless of gender, to hold the door for me. Or if I am carrying many things, I would be grateful if someone sped ahead of me to hold the door. It's just simple politeness between human beings.
      

Words and terms you may come across in this blog

Everyone has their own personal set. This is mine.

Enema: Replacement for "douche bag" as an insult since it is gender inclusive.

Dershbag: Also a replacement for "douche bag", but with its own meaning as well. Since the term "douche bag" is harmful to women, "dershbag" is a term for people who are themselves harmful to women, such as misogynist lawyer Alan Dershowitz. Dershbag may also be applied to people guilty of a slew of Dershowitz-like behaviour, such as plagiarism, hypocrisy, and outright lies, particularly pathological lying.

Wrestlemania: bad, but not as bad as it could be

Part of any relationship is compromise. The compromise last weekend began with a discussion well before in which I told my boyfriend that it would be nice if he involved me in some of the activities he did with his friends. He then recently extended an invitation to me to Wrestlemania weekend. So a compromise. I hadn't watched wrestling since I was a child since my stepfather loved it, nor had I any wish to. But I was happy to be invited and I enjoy spending time with my boyfriend and I felt it would be a good opportunity to analyze it from a feminist perspective.

So much for that "accidental" sexual assault...

Well, what do you know? A study shows what we've been saying all along! Rapists know when someone isn't consenting.

Why do they always get it wrong?

A relative of mine linked to this article on Facebook. Now, while I'm always glad when people are as upset with the sexual objectification of other people as I am, there are several problems with the views expressed in this article.

First off, I really, really dislike putting it in terms of "send[ing] out really bad signals to adult men about young girls being appropriate sexual objects, objects of sexual desire for young men". It nurses the myth that men can't control themselves and sexual assault happens because women dress like sluts*. The truth, of course, is that men know full fucking well that they should stay away from children (and women who haven't consented) regardless of "signals".

Remember: if the witnesses to a rape aren't male, then they are inadmissible

Came across this on the curvature. Cara's words on it are well-thought out, as I always find her posts to be, so I don't have much more to add to it, other than the criminal case itself.

There are Islamist societies where, when it comes to rape, a man must have been a witness or it is inadmissible in court, meaning a man can rape a woman in the presence of other women and get away with it. But that's hardly anything unknown. All over the media we see Muslim=misogynist, regardless of the accuracy, etc. This, one would think, should be in contrast to the West, shouldn't it? Here in the West, if there's a witness to a crime, we take that witness seriously, regardless of gender, right? Except not.

man boobz: misogyny, the men's rights movement and more: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys

man boobz: misogyny, the men's rights movement and more: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys: "I'm walkin' here! Pierce Harlan of the False Rape Society has broken past the limits of mere logic, arguing that the fact that a small num..."

How feminists "expand the definition" of sexual assault

I hear and read this phrase a lot from pseudo-feminists (people, especially women, who call themselves feminists and use that as an excuse to criticize and disagree with just about everything feminism stands for), anti-feminists (same as pseudo-feminists, but they don't claim to be feminists), men's rights activists (anti-feminists who claim that men, not women, are oppressed), turncoats (they used to identify as feminists, and perhaps still do, and used to pretend to support feminist theory and philosophy, but are now pseudo-feminists, anti-feminists, or men's rights activists). First of all, let's be clear: I am in no way purporting that the continued expansion of the definition of sexual assault couldn't lead us down a dangerous road. If, for example, sexual assault included all anal sex (which, by the way, is a hell of a lot more likely to come from religious Right-wing fanatics than from feminists), or, in a rather mangled quote misattributed to feminist Catharine McKinnon (it was Andrea Dworkin), that all consensual sex between a woman and man is rape (and that wasn't what she meant), there is cause for concern.

About that "rape by deception"

*Trigger warning for sexual assault scenario

Last I wrote about it, I'll admit, I was angry, and what I said about that particular case I still stand by, but what if the case actually had been as we had initially thought? A few posts ago, I listed some "gray rape" scenarios and explained why each was either clearly rape or clearly sex. Rape by deception generally actually refers to instances such as a man turning out the lights and pretending to be woman's husband before sleeping with her, something I listed as rape for obvious reasons, which I won't explain here. If you want the explanation, visit my "gray rape" post. Another example of rape by deception would be a police officer telling a person ze caught that ze will let hir off if ze has 'sex' with hir, and the officer then did not let hir off. That's rape for other reasons too, obviously. So what about what we believed this case to be? Claims went from "She specifically said she wanted a long-term relationship with only a Jewish man, and he said he was Jewish" to "They were in the heat of the moment and she asked if he was Jewish and he said yes" to "She didn't even ask if he was Jewish or not; she just assumed because his nickname was considered Jewish". Not in any particular order, and there were all sorts of in between, but since these are the ones that stood out to me, these are what I will tackle.

Reverse Sexism

...doesn't exist but what if it did? Inspired by an essay where a woman described how, hey, she wouldn't mind a wife of her own! Men don't seem to get sexism, but I'm sure they might if the roles were reversed. A lot of people seemed to like this on deviantart (with the exception of that MRA I mentioned in my first post), so I'm posting it here.

*Trigger warning for simulated sexual assault apologia

       I am a modern woman. What do I want? First, let’s start with language. When using a singular pronoun of unknown gender, I want it to be written in the feminine (for example, she, her, hers). When referring to the human race, I want it called womankind, women, and woman because words like humanity, people, humankind, and humans are unnecessary after all. However, I want certain objects to have male pronouns such as ships and cars, and we shall call our home countries the “fatherland”, unless that country wants the world to know how powerful it is, in which case it will be appropriately termed "motherland".
       If we must be gender inclusive, we will always put the feminine before the masculine, such as “her or him,” “she or he,” “her or his.” Animal names shall also be in the feminine and we will only use the male version when referring to the gender (example; a lion is a male lioness).