Recently in Violence Against Women Category

You know, we've written about police brutality and taser violence before...but this just beats all.

*Strong trigger warning*

I'm sorry, but how the fuck could a game titled, "Hit the Bitch" be anti-violent?

Apparently the game was created by a Danish anti-violence organization, and allows the user to use either their mouse or hand (through the webcam) to hit this woman virtually enough times to the point where she is so bloody and bruised that the screen tells the person they're a "100% Idiot" and gives some information about intimate partner violence. I don't really care what words you throw out after the game is over - the main message is the game and that message is straight up glorifying violence against women. Jill has more.

If you think this campaign is more damaging that it is advocating, email the organization that created the game and tell them so.

This is the kind of story that makes you wonder about the basic goodness of people.

A group of past and present University of Sydney students set up a ''pro-rape'' page in the sports and recreation section on Facebook, describing themselves as ''anti-consent''.

The male students, mostly from the elite, all-male St Paul's College, initially ensured the ''Define Statutory'' group had an open, public profile, and proudly displayed their membership on their personal Facebook pages.

Both the commander of the NSW Police sex crimes unit and the head of the NSW Rape Crisis Centre condemned the site, describing it as ''grooming perpetrators of sexual violence''.

And people have the nerve to argue rape culture doesn't exist...

Outside of the general horribleness of this story, Hortense at Jezebel asks a really great question: Why would Facebook allow this group to exist for so long?

This is a social networking site that refuses to let women post pictures of themselves breastfeeding, mind you, but it's okay to make a "hilarious" pro-rape group in the "Sports and Recreation" category? The group was public, by the way, accessible to anyone and visible to all. Interesting, isn't it, that in the eyes of Facebook, a woman shouldn't be allowed to show her breasts while feeding her child, but it's perfectly acceptable for men to make a highly public "sport" out of rape.

A new report from the Parents Television Council, Women in Peril, found a 120% increase in depictions of violence against women on television since 2004. (In the same time period, violence that occurred irrespective of gender only increased by 2%.)

Cumulatively, across all study periods and all networks, the most frequent type of violence was beating (29%), followed by credible threats of violence (18%), shooting (11%), rape (8%), stabbing (6%), and torture (2%). Violence against women resulted in death 19% of the time. Violence towards women or the graphic consequences of violence tends overwhelmingly to be depicted (92%) rather than implied (5%) or described (3%).

Even more disturbingly, there has been a 400% increase in the depiction of teen girls as victims of violence.

The report notes that the portrayals of violence against women, especially young women, "with increasing frequency, or as a trivial, even humorous matter, the networks may be contributing to an atmosphere in which young people view aggression and violence against women as normative, even acceptable." (Emphasis mine)

h/t Sociological Images

We'll have more to say on this once the full interview is up, but for now, check out this moving excerpt of Rihanna's interview with Diane Sawyer.

Really interesting choice, huh? I covered that she would be in Glamour on Tuesday, but didn't discuss that they had made her Woman of the Year.

Glamour Magazine chose her as one of their "Women of the year." Although the article does not go into depth about her experience of domestic violence or any treatment she may have received, she does openly discuss the shame and isolation she endured...

...Many women who have suffered from domestic violence also feel that same sense of loss and loneliness. The shame women feel from choosing an abusive partner and feeling that they "allowed" it to happen can also contribute to not seeking help. Sometimes when women do reach out for support from their families or friends, they feel judged and retreat more.

Women who find themselves with abusive partners typically do not have media hounding them day and night after their abuse is reported to authorities. They also do not have the public scrutinizing their involvement and reactions.

I can understand that Glamour chose to do this because it brings to light the issue of violence against women, but it seems a little soon and potentially exploitative of her story. As the article asks, I have to wonder if this was her choice and part of her healing process or created by her PR team to support her upcoming single? And hours before her 20/20 interview tomorrow, MTV is airing an interview with Chris Brown. The media spectacle of it does give me pause.

In other news, his new tour is doing lousy. Wonder if it is connected to his "anger issues?"

In response to the constant objectification of women, the recent gang rape of a 15 year old girl in Richmond, CA, the unjust incarceration of Sara Kruzan and even the highly publicized violence faced by Rihanna, conscientious rapper and activist Jasiri X has put out a track that discusses the injustice and inhumanity of these crimes.

Love it. Lyrics after the jump.

Lynn Hecht Schafran and Jillian Weinberger of Legal Momentum (a women's legal defense and education fund) say that recent reports from the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) underestimate the number of rapes among persons with disabilities and women.

Schafran and Weinberger point specifically to two reports, Crime Against Persons with Disabilities (2007) and Female Victims of Violence (2008), arguing that the methodology for both were flawed.

Crime Against Persons with Disabilities, for example, excluded institutionalized people with disabilities - a huge omissions considering that sexual assault and abuse happen at extremely high rates in institutional settings. Schafran and Weinberger also note that the statistic in the report related to reporting abuse to the police is only "based on 10 or fewer sample cases."

Female Victims of Violence - which showed that rape rates have decreased significantly recently, has similar methodological problems.

Earlier this year, Rihanna became the center for a media spectacle after being attacked by then boyfriend Chris Brown and having pictures of her released. Brown has made several public appearances, "apologizing," and defending himself. But Rihanna hadn't made a peep, it was just continual speculation about whether it was her fault (!) or if they had gotten back together.

Well, Rihanna is speaking out now. She will be on the Today Show this Thursday, along with 20/20 this Friday and is featured in the December issue of Glamour. Some bits of her interviews have been released and she is putting forth the words of a confident, young woman that got the support she needed to deal with this painful and humiliating situation.

Speaking to "Good Morning America," the singer will send the message, "This happened to me. ... It can happen to anyone," according to excerpts of the interview released on Tuesday (November 3).

Rihanna, 21, also reportedly tells Diane Sawyer that the attack by Brown was especially difficult because of how she felt about him before the incident occurred. "He was definitely my first big love," she said in an interview that will continue on Friday night's "20/20."

The singer also opened up for the December issue of Glamour magazine, describing how she coped with the aftermath of the assault. "I went to sleep as Rihanna and woke up as Britney Spears," she said in the Women of the Year issue, out on November 10. "That was the level of media chaos that happened the next day. It was like, 'What, there are helicopters circling my house? There are 100 people in my cul-de-sac? What do you mean, I can't go back home?' "

Check out Ann's newest column at Tapped, titled The Polanksi Paradox, on some of the drawbacks to taking legal action with respect to violence against women.

It's understandable, given the prevalence of violence against women in this country, to want to push for big, systemic solutions to the problem. That is the premise on which VAWA was based. But the deeply personal nature of this crime is what makes such a broad response inherently problematic. Many observers were shocked when Rihanna chose not to press charges against Brown. The woman who, as a child, was raped by Polanski later said that she wished prosecutors would drop the case. This may be hard to accept for those of us who saw the photos of Rihanna's bruised face or read the damning testimony from Polanski's trial, but these women have a right to decline to get involved with the justice system. Violence against women is a public scourge, but respecting survivors' wishes must be paramount.

Go read the whole thing.

Yesterday was the The National Day of Action Against Police Brutality, and guess what went down in Brooklyn? Yes, just that. From a reader:

This morning at 11:30am a young woman was having an altercation with about 8 folks from the nypd at the R/M 25th st stop in bklyn. After it was over and she was on her way to the turn style, they came back to arrest her. When she resisted, they tasered her. Clearly, I don't know the background, but she was one, unarmed, woman and the tasering was undeniably excessive.

This is breaking news, so I don't know if anyone is organizing around this incident, but please use the comments section as a place to link folks to that work if and when it happens!

Related posts:
Police Taser Disabled Man for Not Leaving Bathroom
Obama on Skip Gates
Understanding the Dialogue Around Lovelle Mixon
Understanding the Dialogue Around Lovelle Mixon Part II
Justice for Oscar Grant-Please spread widely!
Justice for Oscar Grant: Update on Fruitvale BART Protest

*Content is triggering*

This story speaks for itself. From the free Sara Kruzan action page at change.org:

"Life without parole means absolutely no opportunity for release," said Senator Yee. (of California) "It also means minors are often left without access to programs and rehabilitative services while in prison. This sentence was created for the worst of criminals that have no possibility of reform and it is not a humane way to handle children. While the crimes they committed caused undeniable suffering, these youth offenders are not the worst of the worst."

"As a society we've learned a lot since the time we started using life without parole for children," said Elizabeth Calvin, a children's rights advocate with Human Rights Watch. "We now know that this sentence provides no deterrent effect. While children who commit serious crimes should be held accountable, public safety can be protected without subjecting youth to the harshest prison sentence possible."

Watch. Listen. Weep. Take Action.

Also, read our previous coverage on prisons.

When Kathy Cleaves-Milan's live-in boyfriend abused her she did what society is always telling abused women to do: she reported him to the police. And what did she get for bravely doing "the right thing?" She go evicted.

A day after she told police that her live-in boyfriend had brandished a gun and promised to end both of their lives, the managers of her Elmhurst, Ill., apartment complex served her with eviction papers for violating the terms of the lease, citing the criminal activity she had reported to police.

"I was punished for protecting myself and my daughter," Cleaves-Milan, 36, said.

Cleaves-Milan's lawyers are suing the company that owns her apartment building, alleging that her eviction was a form of sex discrimination - based on her gender and status as a DV survivor. And get this:

A representative of the company said the eviction wasn't solely about the domestic violence but also involved Cleaves-Milan's ability to afford the rent if her boyfriend moved out -- an assertion Cleaves-Milan strongly rejects.

If that's was really the case, should Cleaves-Milan should have stayed with her abusive boyfriend in order to pay the rent? This is why women don't - and often can't - leave abusive relationships.

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) bans victims who live in public or subsidized housing from eviction, but the law concerning private landlords is not as clear.

Sandra Park, a staff attorney in the ACLU Women's Rights Project says that this "forces women into a situation where they have to choose between reaching out for safety or staying in their homes."

For more information on employment and housing rights for victims of intimate partner violence, click here.

Via Feminists for Choice.

Picture via Chicago Tribune.

Michael Kimmel is an author, teacher and activist, and is widely acknowledged as America's most prominent and prolific scholar on masculinity. Kimmel is the author of a staggering number of books, including Men Confront Pornography, The History of Men, The Gendered Society and Manhood in America (noticing a theme?). Most recently, Kimmel's book Guyland examined the lives of young American men. To write it, Kimmel interviewed hundreds of men between the ages of 15 and 25, using their words and his expertise to draw a frightening picture of young American manhood today. Luckily, Kimmel has a one-word solution to the problem: feminism.

Kimmel lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Amy Aronson, with whom he frequently co-writes, and their 10-year-old son Zachary, a budding male feminist. He is a Professor of Sociology at SUNY Stonybrook, where he teaches on gender and masculinity, and has taught and lectured all over the world. He is also a frequent contributor at The Huffington Post. And as if all this wasn't impressive enough, last year he was brought in as a consultant on gender politics during the production of Feministing's favorite TV show, Mad Men.

And now, without further ado, the Feministing Five, with Michael Kimmel.

Just when you think that insurance companies can't get any lower than scum on this whole pre-existing condition mess, think again. As we've posted before, several states allow for domestic violence to be listed as a pre-existing condition. Some recent data (also in the link) reports:

An informal survey by the House Judiciary Committee in 1994 found that half of the 16 largest insurers in the country considered domestic violence in deciding whether to approve health coverage. The Pennsylvania insurance Department reported a year or so later that nearly one out of four insurance companies factored in domestic violence when deciding whether to issue or renew policies.

Ryan Grim at Huff Po has updates on the measures that some state reps have taken to stamp out this kind of discrimination. He also sums the issue up here:

Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you're more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.

In human terms, it's a second punishment for a victim of domestic violence.

I wonder what else we don't know that counts against us as women. Talk about a double disadvantage. The good news? Democrats have vowed to ban on the practice in the health care reform legislation.

This guy is pretty awesome. After leading police to a man wanted for sexual assault and battery in the UK, Lloyd Gardner was told he was being given 10,000 pounds as a reward. Instead of taking the money, he gave it to the survivor:

He spotted two women he knew on the film - and they led police to rapist Jakub Tomczak.

Mr Gardner said he did not deserve the reward and hoped the cash would help the woman rebuild her life.

"It was a difficult decision to make because it is a lot of money and it would have been very helpful but I didn't feel like a deserved it at all."

The 48-year old survivor suffered a skull fracture and severe brain damage from the attack.

Considering the history of the UK agency that is supposed to give reparations to rape survivors, it feels hopeful to know we have folks like Gardner on our side.

I mentioned in a What We Missed post two weeks ago that an organization based in DC had decided to close it's doors after the DC government slashed their budget almost completely. A group of volunteers and founders from the almost ten year old domestic violence organization (one of the biggest in the District) got together to try and save WEAVE. And save they did!

I am very, very excited to tell you that it's official... we have saved WEAVE!

On the morning of September 30th, the Board of Directors officially voted to keep WEAVE open. This is a long-term commitment not just a temporary reprieve. Every dollar of the more than $85,000 you helped the team behind the SaveWEAVE.org effort raise was pivotal in convincing a consortium of foundation funders to make a significant investment that will keep WEAVE going in the coming months.

All in all, more than 700 gifts were made to SaveWEAVE.org in just 10 days! This campaign has truly been one of the most amazing things I've ever been a part of and I cannot thank you enough for being part of it, too, by making a gift and helping us get the word out. Every one of you has a special place in WEAVE's history for helping us make sure that domestic violence survivors still have WEAVE to turn to.

We have all been overwhelmed by the breadth and depth of support WEAVE has. This proves that WEAVE is viable and is necessary in our community. WEAVE has had to make some changes in order to stay strong and continue to pay a key role in the community. Unfortunately, that has meant some lay-offs of staff and the transfer to SAFE (another domestic violence organization in DC) of a very long-standing program that WEAVE adopted in the early 2000s that helps people file the necessary paperwork to seek court-ordered protection orders. WEAVE is very grateful to SAFE and so many other partner organizations that were willing to help during this tumultuous time.

I know the work of WEAVE in the DC community and chipped in what I could to this campaign. I'm really happy to know that the larger community values their work as well, and as tight as times are, folks were willing to chip in. Their struggles are still ahead of them, as $85,000 does not replace the budget of a large organization, but hopefully we can ensure women in DC still have access to their import domestic violence support and services.

If you still want to support WEAVE, they are continuing their push to raise money.

But that doesn't mean the rate of rapes in this country still isn't really high.

USA Today reports that FBI data shows that the rate of reported rapes in the U.S. has gone down considerably.

The FBI estimates 89,000 women reported being raped in 2008 -- 29 women for every 100,000 people. That's down from a high of 109,062 reported rapes in 1992 -- 43 women for every 100,000 people. Data for 2009 are not yet available.

"We have seen reform in how police work with victims, gather evidence and investigate rape; we've seen increased awareness of the crime, and we've seen better prosecution," says Michael Males, senior researcher for the Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice in San Francisco. "Hospitals now have rape kits that they didn't have 40 years ago" which make it easier to collect an attacker's DNA and other evidence of a crime.

Okay, I'm glad - really glad - that the number of reported rapes have declined. (Thanks, feminism and VAWA!) But there are still over tens of thousands of women a year who are reporting being raped - imagine how many more are not reporting their assaults.

And even if we have made inroads in terms of police and rape kits (though even that is debatable), the culture that condones and excuses rape is far from gone.

Males says in the USA Today piece that today, "you don't see the nightmarish trials of the 1960s where a woman's reputation would be brought into question and people would conclude she deserved it." But the thing is...we really do see that kind of victim-blaming. All the time.

So while, we should thank feminism for the small victories surrounding sexual assault legislation and policy - let's continue to fight the rape culture that makes this country such an unsafe place for women.

You don't even have to watch, and you know it's going to be good.

This post reminds me why Amanda Hess at The Sexist is quickly becoming one of my favorite bloggers.

Update: Apparently Feministing love for Hess runs deep. My bad.

I had to post a link to the new movie, Precious:

I am halfway through Push, the book by Sapphire that the movie is based on. It is not often that so many issues women face are embodied in one character. From racism, sizism, sexual violence, domestic violence, welfare issues, colorism, ablism, and many, many more -- this is the ultimate feminist primer! I am not quite sure what to make of how Precious' mother's character, played by Mo'Nique, is being framed as the "monstrous matriarch." On one hand, giving her villainous character, it seems fitting. On the other hand, what does it mean that the black single mom has once again gotten this branding? This is especially interesting considering the villainous male characters in the story that seem conspicuously absent from this trailer.

On another note, I posted earlier this week about Tyler Perry. He is serving as an executive producer of this film, alongside Oprah. Again, I think we can log some progress points for Perry on this one. It will be important to see what, if any, the trade offs will be.

But, after all, I'm just a cautious optimist. Preliminary thoughts?

I am totally floored to read about the attack against Tasha Hill, an African-American woman in Morrow, Georgia, which occurred last week in a Cracker Barrel -- all in front of her 7-year old daughter. My heart goes out to her as she pursues justice. But it seems she might have two fights on her hands: trial by law and trial by media.

CNN's coverage of this event by Rick Sanchez on Thursday was on the shady side. To be totally honest, I really don't watch him that much to know whether he is an ally or an enemy. My suspicion first rose, though, when he framed this piece of news as something that he had been twittered, blogged and e-mailed about.

I wasn't sure if this was simply standard protocol, an innocent appeal to plug CNN's new media. But given that the event happened a week ago and he was just reporting it now, it felt like the media had to be lobbied by readership that demonstrated that there was a growing demand for this news story. And only after this demand was quantified was this black woman's story important enough to cover.

Then, I almost dropped my Miso soup when he started the interview asking the survivor if she "provoked this incident."   This man called her the N-word and the B-word, punched and kicked her several times and she can be asked if the crime was provoked??!!!??   I made a second attempt to assume best intent. Perhaps, this was also a protocol Sanchez was upholding to frame the event from both sides. But because of this framing, Tasha Hill's lawyer, Kip Jones, remained on the defensive throughout the interview clarifying more than once that she did not provoke this attack. Not once did anyone state that attacks of this nature cannot be provoked. That there is no justification for racism and sexism and certainly none for the violence that historically and increasingly accompany these isms.

So I ask, are these simply protocols? Or is there some underlying truth about these protocols that coincide with the reality that a Black woman has survived this crime?

Can we be surprised? Via the Frisky, according to Bill Maher, choking a woman is A-OK if she's an annoying, promiscuous publicity whore, right?

Said Maher:

New rule: stop acting surprised someone choked Tila Tequila! The surprise is that someone hasn't choked this bitch sooner.

And I don't give a rat's ass what actually happened with San Diego Charger Shawne Merriman that night; where the charges are true or not, it doesn't make jokes about violence against women acceptable. It's never acceptable.

Sam Riche/AP Photo

*Possible trigger warning*

Many of you have probably heard about the arrest of former GOP lawmaker and one-time gubernatorial candidate Steve Nunn, whose ex-girlfriend was shot and killed on Friday. Hours later, Nunn slit his wrists.

While Nunn (who survived) is pleading not guilty to the charges made - he had a domestic violence order against him by victim Amanda Ross and found with a gun at the scene of his suicide attempt - his lawyer Astrida Lemkins is saying that the issuance of the domestic violence order this past winter "caused all the problems":

"It caused Steve Nunn to lose his job, reputation and drove him to slit his wrists," she said.

"If there does turn out to be a relationship between the death of Amanda Ross and Steve Nunn, it is not because the DVO failed, but rather because the DVO was issued," said Lemkins.

Lemkins said Ross should have also been held accountable for her role in the domestic violence incident.

"Things are not black and white," she said. "There's a lot of gray in there."

Um, what? Whatever Steve Nunn has done to himself and to Ross is absolutely no fault but his own - to place any blame on a woman who was not only a victim of abuse but has no opportunity to defend herself (because, you know, her life was taken from her) is inhuman.

Furthermore, blaming the DVO made against him after he repeatedly beat Ross and implying that if he did kill her, that could have been avoided sounds pretty damn similar to threats used to keep women in abusive relationships; in other words, if she hadn't went to the authorities and caused trouble, she would be alive right now.

There are just no words for this kind of offense.

h/t to reader Katie

Incredibly disturbing news from the SEIU blog:

[I]n DC and nine other states, including Arkansas, Idaho, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming, insurance companies have gone too far, claiming that "domestic violence victim" is also a pre-existing condition.

For more information, read the National Women's Law Center report, Nowhere to Turn: How the Individual Health Insurance Market Fails Women.

Related: A cartoon from Mikhaela Reid

UPDATE: In April, Arkansas prohibited insurance discrimination against DV survivors

Mark Whicker, a sport columnist at The Orange County Register, had a terrible idea for an article: use the imprisonment, systematic rape, and forced pregnancy Jaycee Dugard was subjected to by Phillip Garrido as an excuse to talk about moments from the last 18 years of sports that Whicker wanted to rant about. Then, Whicker actually wrote this article. Someone actually approved it. And the Orange County Register actually published it. In case you needed evidence of the institutionalization of rape culture.

It doesn't sound as if Jaycee Dugard got to see a sports page.

Box scores were not available to her from June 10, 1991 until Aug. 31 of this year.

She never saw a highlight. Never got to the ballpark for Beach Towel Night. Probably hasn't high-fived in a while.

She was not allowed to spike a volleyball. Or pitch a softball. Or smack a forehand down the line. Or run in a 5-footer for double bogey.

Now, that's deprivation.

Can you imagine? Dugard was 11 when she was kidnapped and stashed in Phillip Garrido's backyard. She was 29 when she escaped. Penitentiary inmates at least get an hour of TV a day. Dugard was cut off from everything but the elements.

How long before she fully digests the world she re-enters? How difficult to adjust to such cataclysmic change?

More than that, who's going to explain the fact that there's a President Obama?

I'm sorry, how does any of this, including Obama's presidency, matter in comparison to the hell Dugard was put through by Garrido? In what world is missing events in sports history the relevant "deprivation" Dugard experienced? How can a person write a sentence like this: "I know you've had trouble digesting all this so far, but they also built a basketball arena at USC. Honest to God." You think the building of a basketball arena will be hard for this woman to digest? Seriously Whicker, how clueless are you?

Unsurprisingly, Whicker and The Orange County Register got a lot of negative, outraged feedback on the article. So Whicker issued an "apology."

It was not my intention to do so. But it's obvious that I miscalculated the effect the column on Jaycee Dugard, and the events that she might have missed during her captivity, had on those who read, buy and advertise in our newspaper. ...

I'll try to earn back the trust of those customers in my future endeavors.

Whicker is sorry he lost the paper paying customers and probably advertisers? That's what he apologizes for? There's no overstating how messed up Whicker's priorities are. You know we live in an overwhelmingly oppressive patriarchal and misogynist world when Garrido can imprison Dugard for eighteen years and enough people can fail to understand the weight of the sexual and reproductive violence she experienced that both the original article and subsequent "apology" could be published.

Mark Whicker can be contacted at mwhicker@ocregister.com. Contact information for plenty more people at The Orange County Register responsible for the publication of these articles can be found at this page.

h/t to Vanessa's friend Mary Alice.

Previously: Friday Feminist Fuck You: Philip Garrido

Inappropriate nicknames are turning bizarre assaults into hilarious encounters on college campuses.

At Georgetown University yesterday morning, an unknown man revived a year-long series of assaults between GWU, Georgetown, and American University in which he breaks into women's apartments near campus, lies down next to or on top of them while they sleep, attempts to enter them with his hand, then runs away when they scream. This earned him the nickname "The Georgetown Cuddler."

This March at the University of California, Berkeley, a man targeted young women wearing dresses and skirts, and attempted to penetrate them with his hand before running away. Many of the assaulted students were en route from frat or sorority parties on Piedmont Avenue, and the man was dubbed the "Piedmont Poker," and the "Digital Penetrator," after the police report for "digital penetration."

News coverage of assaults has varied results; it can empower women by condemning the violence, but can also heighten fear in the discussion of diminished personal safety. It is possible that these inappropriate nicknames could serve as coping mechanisms for some students to alleviate their fears. Monikers can turn horror into humor. But in the long run, they diminish the seriousness of the situation.

When someone "cuddly" has "surprise sex" with or "pokes" women, reporting it as such excuses the attacker, dismisses violence as acceptable, and condescends to survivors.

The Sexist took this on in Feburary.

That is more or less all Chris Brown could say in this teaser of his Larry King interview when discussing his feelings about attacking his ex-girlfriend Rihanna.

It's like he completely disconnects himself from that person who did what he can't even publicly say he did. Tracy from Broadsheet hits the nail on the head in her sum-up of what this guest appearance seems to be: convincing the public that he is a good boy who would never do such a thing, that he still loves Rihanna and doesn't even remember brutalizing and threatening to kill her (despite prior incidences), and in other words, he's talking the same talk most abusers do but imploring America - not Rihanna - to forgive him.

Ugh.

UPDATE: A reader alerted us to Brown clarifying that he does, in fact, remember the attack.
Approximate transcript after the jump.

Josh Phillips and Rachel Griffin make one heck of a team. The pair met at Central Michigan University, where they were both members of Sexual Aggression Peer Advocates, CMU's sexual assault education and prevention group. Today, they're taking the mission of that group off campus and all over the country.

Dr. Griffin is an Assistant Professor of Speech Communication at Southern Illinois University. Griffin's written works, including her doctoral dissertation, address the intersection of gender and race.

Phillips is the founder of East Coast Walkers, a group of CMU students who, in the summer of 2008, walked from Miami to Boston to raise awareness about sexual violence. His book about the experience, 1800 Miles, comes out this fall. The Walkers blogged about their trek along the way, and one entry, written from South Carolina, filled me with hope:

"Something remarkable keeps happen on this trip: our restaurant bills disappear. We will stop in a small mom and pop diner, the waitress will undoubtedly inquire what we are doing, and an eavesdropping patron will sneakily pay our tab as we devour whatever food is on the table. It must be magic..."

It's not magic, but something better: it's a sign that Phillips, Griffin and the East Coast Walkers are not alone in wishing and working for an end to sexual violence.

Phillips and Griffin regularly team up to speak about sexual violence, and to teach workshops on awareness and prevention. Their team approach works well, Griffin says, because when they're addressing a crowd on the topic of sexual violence, "there are people who can hear Josh who can't hear me and vice versa."

And now, without further ado, the inaugural Feministing Five, with Rachel Griffin and Josh Phillips.

Ann already mentioned this video - made by a group of young people in Chicago discussing rape culture - but I wanted to make sure we posted it as well...

Transcript after the jump.

*Trigger Warning*

Because being raped isn't traumatic enough, let's throw in some blame shame. Via Hartford Courant.

The woman allowed Fricker to go through her wallet and told him to take it, but Fricker demanded she take off her clothes. He then sexually assaulted her for several minutes while he pointed the gun at the children and threatened to sexually assault one of them. The attack stopped when another car pulled up and the woman screamed. Fricker fled and was arrested three days later in White Plains, N.Y.

In the civil suit, the woman claims Fricker had been in the hotel and garage behaving suspiciously days before the attack and on the afternoon of the attack, but the hotel failed to notice him, apprehend him or force him to leave, the Stamford Advocate reported. The suit also claims that during the attack security personnel did not see Fricker or stop him.

The hotel claims in their special defense that the hotel had not been notified about Fricker and that his acts were unforeseen and beyond their control, the newspaper reported

Thanks to Jaclyn for the heads up.

The responses to the recent Pennsylvania shooting speaks volumes about how we view (or ignore) misogyny.

In the aftermath of George Sodini's horrific crime, I took some solace in the fact that the media was covering the crime as one targeted towards women. (Something they failed to do several years ago when similar shootings occurred.) And this weekend, I was even more heartened - and not at all surprised - to see Bob Herbert of The New York Times link the shooting to our culture's hatred of women:

We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected.

We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation's entertainment.

Yet despite the links being made in the mainstream media, and the numerous bloggers and reporters who have shown that Sodini had ties to the "pick up artist" community and probably would have fit in well with the "Nice Guy" sect as well - some people are aghast that anyone would link Sodini's crime to a larger culture of misogyny.

Take, for example (and this is just one of many), conservative anti-feminist blogger Cassy Fiano - who after a roundup of feminist blogger responses to the shooting, writes:

...To say that it is a "culture-wide problem" because America is apparently just still so misogynistic is ridiculous and wrong. And feminists know that. Most men do not harbor secret fantasies of forcing women to have sex with them whether they want to or not, nor do most men dream about enacting violence against women. Yet it doesn't keep feminists from labeling men this way.

What I think it boils down to is that feminists no longer have anything to fight for. And so, a movement that once was dedicated to fighting for equality between sexes has now resorted to slandering all men as angry, violent, women-haters in order to further their own feminist agenda. George Sodini is a sick, evil man who I hope rots in hell for what he's done. And while I don't think feminists are evil, they should still be ashamed of themselves for exploiting a tragedy of this nature in order to continue to smear men.

I genuinely find this kind of reasoning completely fascinating. Calling feminists opportunists and conflating cultural criticisms with man-bashing seems to serve only one purpose - denial. (And some head-patting from misogynists, of course - but that's a post for a different day.) Seriously, I have often wondered why anti-feminists spout what they do. The only answer I've been able to come up with is denial, and an extreme desire to believe that if they're not one of those women (feminists, sluts, etc) then they will be safe. If they can separate themselves from the reality of most women's lives, and the terrifying culture that is misogyny in America, then somehow they will be immune to it all.

Carleton University is being sued by an assault victim who says the school failed to have adequate security measures in the building where she was attacked. In response, Carleton has said that the student didn't keep a "proper lookout" for her own safety and should have locked the door to the lab where she was working.

Erik Halliwell, president of the Carleton University Students' Association, says, "We're quite saddened that it seems the university has viewed this sexual assault in a pretty dismissive manner."

Trigger warning and spoilers ahead

Via Lisa at Sociological Images, we're introduced to Deadgirl - a lauded movie making the independent film circuit. Oh yeah, and it's about kidnapping, rape and necrophilia. Good times!

As if the posters weren't enough to give you pause - you really have to love the tagline "You'll never have anything better" and the sideways mouth-as-vagina - the synopsis reveals just how horrifying this movie actually is.

On Tuesday, George Sodini opened fire in a gym outside Pittsburgh, killing three women at injuring at least ten others. It was a crime he had planned for months - and it was a crime that targeted women.

The New York Post has published the full text of Sodini's blog (read with caution), where - in addition to racist ramblings - he writes about his disdain for women and his plan to kill them.

Time is moving along. Planned to have this done already. I will just keep a running log here as time passes. Many of the young girls here look so beautiful as to not be human, very edible.

...I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne - yet 30 million women rejected me - over an 18 or 25-year period. That is how I see it. Thirty million is my rough guesstimate of how many desirable single women there are. A man needs a woman for confidence.

This isn't the first gender-based misogynist shooting in recent years - in 2006 a gunman went into an Amish schoolhouse (also in Pennsylvania), sent the boys outside and opened fire on a dozen girls, killing three. That same year in Colorado, a shooter sexually assaulted six female high school students he had taken hostage, before killing one of them. When these shootings happened, the only person making the misogynist connection was Bob Herbert at The New York Times.

I'm at least glad to see that the mainstream media is reporting this as a crime against women. The Christian Science Monitor even discusses misogyny as a factor in the crime (can't remember the last time I saw that word in a mainstream news outlet):

While the gender-equality movement has made strides in the past century when it comes to some of the more blatant forms of societal misogyny, such as banning women from academic and professional settings, misogyny persists in American and other cultures around the world, according to historians.

"This killer fits into a long pattern of males who harbor hatred towards all women, the image of 'woman,' and towards individual real women, and who take out their frustration on a female scapegoat," says David Gilmore, an anthropology professor at Stony Brook University in New York and author of "Misogyny: the Male Malady."

It's also important to remember that Sodini's crime is not so different from the misogynist violence that women face every day. As Amanda writes:

George Sodini was angry at the entire world of "desirable" women for not up and volunteering to have sex with him, and every day anonymous men around the country and world beat, rape, and even kill women because said women were also considered insufficiently compliant, often to unstated demands that women were supposed to just anticipate and fill without complaint.

As ill as Sodini may have been (and it seems clear from his blog and videos that he was indeed sick), we can't separate this from the larger culture of misogyny and sexism. And also like Amanda, I find it disturbing - and downright frightening - to see how similar Sodini's writing is to a lot of MRA/NiceGuy ramblings we see so often online. Anna at Jezebel even finds some bloggers in the "pick up artist" world who say if women would have just fucked Sodini, he never would have killed.

So yes, let's continue to talk about this horrible shooting as a crime against women. But let's also make sure that we're discussing this not as an isolated crime - but as one part of an incredibly dangerous, culture-wide problem.

More at The Pursuit of Harpyness, WIMN's Voices, and Feministe.

Image via Jezebel

Larry King Live will be doing an interview with Chris Brown this Wednesday, after he was denied by Oprah,

After being turned down by Oprah, Chris Brown is planning to give his first interview since the assault this coming Wednesday on CNN's Larry King show.

According to radaronline.com, he will be formally sentenced on that day and his team is hoping to snag an interview with Larry King immediately afterwards. During the interview, he plans to apologize again and finally talk about the night he assaulted Rihanna. His handlers believe that King will allow Chris the opportunity to get his apology across without facing "brutal questioning".

(h/t Jaclyn Friedman)

Interesting choice of words there, "brutal questioning.." It is clear that Oprah has no love for Chris and I think this show that she dedicated to domestic violence explores that,

I am glad she took a stance and denied him access to her audience with his bullshit plea for us to accept his apology.

I feel I have to continue writing about this story because it continues to boil my blood, so apologies for all the airtime. Last week, I got in an argument with a well known male writer about the way that people were dealing with Chris Brown's apology. The argument revolved around comments left on his facebook page by young men calling Chris Brown "a bitch" for apologizing and a series of comments by young women about how they bought the apology and felt sorry for Chris. I was not shocked by these reactions, but was struggling to find a way to talk across this difference. With the men, I had zero patience and frankly, if you ever think it is OK to hit a woman, under any circumstance, you and I share a world view so vastly different, that I don't know where to begin.

Furthermore, I can't say if these women are drawing from personal experience or they just believe Chris Brown, but I know what it doesn't mean. I don't know what is it like to be in a (physically) abusive relationship, but I know what it means to be around violence or to have it be normalized in the world around you. I know what it is like to live in a world where violence against women is so normalized, that you end up defending the person that hurt you. It is interesting that a facebook comment would create this much turmoil for me, but it did, I was deeply saddened by the comments.

A violent world hurts us all. But I still struggle with the lapse in dialogue that seems harshest along racial and class lines. How do we talk across the difference in experiences with violence to build a broad based anti-violence movement and effectively centralize the needs and voices of those most affected by violence in their lives and their communities? And how do we even begin to tackle the kind of sexism embedded in the statement that Chris Brown was a "bitch" for apologizing. Saying, "they don't mean it like that," or "he would never hurt a woman," is really not good enough.

Related:
On Chris Brown's Public Apology
Black women's bodies, voyeurism and Rihanna
Beyond Chris Brown and Rihanna: An interview with Elizabeth Mendez Berry
The media reminds us, famous women have no right to privacy.
Rihanna and Chris Brown might be getting back together, allegedly.

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger - making last minute cuts to the budget - eliminated all of the state funding for domestic violence shelters. That's right - all of it.

Although the state Legislature submitted a budget with a 20 percent reduction to the $20.4 million the state provides to agencies that offer domestic violence services, Schwarzenegger slashed the funding by 100 percent Tuesday.

For Catalyst, which relies on state funding for nearly 35 percent of its operating budget, the affect will be "devastating," Executive Director Anastacia Snyder said.

"We're still in shock," Snyder said Wednesday afternoon. "We were bracing for the 20 percent cut, but did not believe the governor could, with a clear conscience, cut 100 percent of funding for services that keep women and children safe and alive."

If you're a resident of California, please click on Stop Family Violence's action alert to urge lawmakers to reinstate funding for the programs that save women's lives. If you're not in CA - pass this on to someone who is! You can also post the following message to your Facebook account, or tweet it: CA Gov Eliminates funding for Domestic Violence Programs. Lives will be lost. You can help! CA residents click http://bit.ly/3jKQSo

Stand up comics say rape "is the new black."

I'm a big fan of stand up comedy. (Wanda Sykes and Margaret Cho, swoon!) I like dirty jokes, controversial comics and dark humor. What I don't think is funny, however, is this:

[Comedy festival] Fringe 2009 also welcomes back Aussie standup Jim Jeffries, whose jokes include: "Women to me are like public toilets. They're all dirty except for the disabled ones." Jeffries tells me: "You can't do a joke these days about black or Asian people - and rightly so - [but] you can do rape jokes on stage and that's not a problem." Why does he think rape is now less of a taboo than racism? "I don't write the rules," he says. Nor, it seems, does he seek to challenge them. [San Francisco comedian Scott] Capurro told me, with some distaste: "For a lot of comics, it's OK to talk about raping women now. That's the new black on the comedy circuit."

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. From Family Guy to Seth Rogen, folks joking about rape and violence against women seems to be the oh-so-hilarious thing to do. (Though of course, it's hardly a new trend.)

What I truly don't understand is how anyone could possibly think that joking about rape is being edgy or somehow fighting against the mainstream - which seems to be what the comics in this Guardian article are arguing. They say they're taking taboos head-on. But the thing is, rape jokes and mocking violence against women are mainstream. They're not a taboo at all - they're the norm, sadly. So all of these comedians giving themselves a pat on the back for being sooo controversial - when all they're doing is upholding the status quo - really fucking irk me.

Because if their rape jokes were actually challenging the mainstream, they'd be subversive, not holding up what American culture already perpetuates - that rape is a-okay. I think what is particularly telling is that so many of the people arguing that jokes about sexual assault are fine are dudes - the demographic that tends to be ones who, well...rape. (And who get assaulted at much lower rates than women.)

Similarly, some of the comedians arguing that racist jokes are okay are white - and appear to believe that we're in some sort of Utopian world where racism and sexism don't exist anymore.

A younger generation see things differently: challenging taboos is less a betrayal of their recent forebears, more a concession to a changing world. "In the 1970s, black and Asian people were getting shit put through their letterboxes," says [comic Richard] Herring. "But the world has moved on. Now we accept the [anti-racist, anti-sexist] tenets of alternative comedy as true, and don't need to patronise audiences any more."

Perhaps the world "has moved on" for Herring - but it sure hasn't for a lot of other folks. So long as racism, sexism, rape, and violence are accepted norms, telling these kind of faux-controversial jokes will do nothing but prop up a culture that thinks rape is not just not a big deal, but hilarious.

Related: Sense and Humor
Melissa's "Rape is Hilarious" post series
I'm Going to Rape You Later

Window displays at Barneys in New York City - featuring blood spattered mannequins who appeared to be fighting off attackers - were taken down after customers were horrified. (Inquiries from The Daily News didn't hurt either, I'm sure.)

Simon Doonan, creative director at the department store, said the windows were done while he was away. "We encourage our display people to be creative. We give them a lot of latitude, but this clearly crossed the line." Uh, yeah. I'd say so.

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Via BUST.

Chris Brown is sorry. Or at least he is sorry enough to almost say what he did (without quite saying it), furrow his brows and remind you that he is still a good boy and you should definitely continue to buy his records.

I don't buy it. I am sure on some level he is sorry, but that is not really the point. This is about what he is saying, accountability for what he did and the quickness with which the American public is willing to take an apology from someone that brutalized his girlfriend to the point of putting her in the hospital. What is most frustrating about this video is that his fans are probably swooning. And the message is clear; beat, bite, punch and strangle your girlfriend, and as long as you apologize, you are a-OK. You might think I am being too harsh, but let's be clear, dominant narratives indicate that when women are victims of violence, the first question people ask is "what did she do wrong?" That was true when the story first broke, message boards everywhere were asking "what she did wrong?" and "it wasn't that bad..." Or let's not forget the headlines that were out and surveys that found young men felt it was Rihanna's fault.

Furthermore, generally when people apologize they mention what they are sorry about. He doesn't mention what he did, while calling it the "situation." Ann just mentioned to me over IM, maybe if we spliced in the picture of what actually happened to Rihanna after the assault, "the situation" wouldn't be so vague and we could remember the extent of her injuries. I am obviously not actually endorsing this and we have written and talked about how TMZ shouldn't have published her picture. The public was fascinated by the picture, but apparently TMZ's claim about "raising awareness" really was bullshit, since so many have quickly forgotten. Anna at Jezebel has a really good analysis of the video. She writes,

By going the vague route, Brown allows fans to forget the visceral reality of what he did -- assaulting Rihanna until her face was swollen and bruised -- and instead focus on all the nice things he says about his mother, his "spiritual advisors," and his commitment to change. By saying he's sorry he didn't "handle the situation better," he casts the beating as a response to a bad "situation" -- and instance of poor conflict resolution, not of flying off the handle. And by implying there was something that needed to be "handled" in some way, this statement subtly implicates Rihanna too.

I concur. But ultimately we are not the ones that this video is for. We know this is bullshit, but the target of this video are other young men and women that might be in this very same situation. They might have to navigate a tense situation, violence might be used and if this is what our role models do, we don't have much to look up to. And while I appreciate him actually discussing that he experienced domestic violence so as to gesture towards cycles of violence, the moral of the story is, "it wasn't really my fault." It was a "bad situation" that he "didn't deal with well," and he himself is a "victim" which is true, but shouldn't be used as an excuse to not have to take direct accountability for his actions.

Yeah, I'm mad. What could he have said to make this an effective apology? Thoughts?

PS: If you really want to feel horrified read what people are saying on twitter about his apology.

Related:
Black women's bodies, voyeurism and Rihanna
Beyond Chris Brown and Rihanna: An interview with Elizabeth Mendez Berry
The media reminds us, famous women have no right to privacy.
Rihanna and Chris Brown might be getting back together, allegedly.

Remember Chrissie Brodigan, the woman who was allegedly assaulted by a NYPD officer who said, "If you're going to act like a woman I'm going to treat you like a woman"? Well, it looks like allegations of anti-Semitic comments during the incident has resulted in her getting fired.

The New York Post "revealed" a witness (very shortly after Gothamist broke the story) who claims she saw Brodigan yell at Officer Witriol, the city's first Hasidic officer, "You f---ing Jew, you're not even human. Jewish people think they own everything." But Brodigan claims (as do other witnesses) that she said nothing of the sort, yet was fired from her job at Plum TV shortly thereafter. Brodigan says:

I was terminated for "equivocating" in the press. My boss [Chris Glowacki] is threatening to not offer an agreeable severance package, including health insurance, which is crucial because i have cystic fibrosis and he is aware. He's angry that this is out in the press. I think he made a judgment based on perceived bigotry.

While obviously we can't know for sure who said what, Brodigan responded with a compelling letter to Gothamist about the allegations and her termination:

There were witnesses at the scene and these witnesses did not hear me make any anti-Semitic remarks and specifically did not recall the existence of the Post's alleged witness. I do not believe that this witness was at the scene nor did any witness hear me make antisemitic remarks.

The truth is that smearing the victim is a classic police technique to cover up abuse and protect the arresting officer. I am not a bigot, and accusations of bigotry are so absurd that I did not think it even necessary to respond to them.
...

These anti-Semitic comments printed by the New York Post never crossed my lips on the day I was wrongfully arrested and physically abused. And, to be even more succinct, those words and statements have NEVER crossed my lips on any other day in my life. EVER.

I believe that ultimately the evidence will come out that the police were involved in the Post's smear job of me, which was an effort to cover up police misconduct.

Brodigan also discloses her social justice-oriented academic background and that she has "devoted [her] adult life to studying and supporting the civil rights of minorities."

If Brodigan is right (and I'd personally believe her pug over the Post), the level of bullshit going on here is completely obscene. A woman who is slandered and subsequently fired (not to mention without the decency of health insurance extension, which she obviously needs) for being assaulted is pretty unreal.

Although I'm not holding my breath, I hope the truth is revealed behind this story; injustice has been committed here, one way or another.

Photo by Jason Wagner, via Gothamist.

The Obama Administration took a step in the right direction this week regarding immigration reform and domestic violence in attempts to reverse Bush's policy (or lack thereof) concerning DV survivors seeking asylum in the U.S.

The action was taken due to the revisiting of the landmark case of Rodi Alvarado (trigger warning), a Guatemalan woman who sought asylum in the U.S. because she feared for her life; her common law husband (who was really more her captor than anything) consistently beat her and raped her at gunpoint, including tried to burn her alive when he found out she was pregnant. Because there was no U.S. asylum law specifying for the protection of DV survivors, she wasn't granted asylum and was forced to leave her children in Guatemala when fleeing to the U.S.

Even as recently as last year, the case was addressed where Bush administration lawyers argued that Alvarado and other survivors could not meet the standards of U.S. asylum. According to the Times:

Any applicant for asylum or refugee status in the United States must demonstrate a "well-founded fear of persecution" because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or "membership in a particular social group." The extended legal argument has been whether abused women could be part of any social group that would be eligible under those terms.

And Alvarado wasn't a part of any "persecuted group." Right.

Now the administration has submitted an immigration appeals court filing, requesting that Alvarado's case be further reviewed. While this may be a good sign of how Obama plans to handle immigration reform and undocumented women's rights, there are still strict requirements for asylum:

[A]bused women will need to show that they are treated by their abuser as subordinates and little better than property, according to an immigration court filing by the administration, and that domestic abuse is widely tolerated in their country. They must show that they could not find protection from institutions at home or by moving to another place within their own country.

Not to mention the issue of women seeking asylum from genital mutilation is not included in the new policy. But while these "requirements" aren't leaving me with a huge feeling of victory, it's certainly the right step moving forward.

I've written about GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Services) before. Basically, I think they are the shit. In more official terms, they are "the nation's largest survivor-led organization serving American girls and young women who have experienced sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation." You may remember the amazing documentary on their work called Very Young Girls, which is now available via Netflix.

Well GEMS is at it again. This time they're joining forces with Beyoncé Knowles, Halle Berry, Demi Moore, Sinead O'Connor, Mary J Blige, Katie Ford and women across America for their Girls Are Not for Sale campaign. According to GEMS:

The campaign will use e-activism, live events, all-star artist collaborations and other initiatives to promote girls empowerment and education as critical tools in the fight against child traffickers and pimps who victimize between 100,000 and 300,000 American children and teens each year.

After seeing the film, Beyonce said, "I don't know how anyone could see that documentary and not want to help those young women. I didn't want to just donate money, I wanted them to know that someone really cared about them. My time, my heart, my ears, and my voice are the biggest gifts I could think to give." She hung out with the girls featured in the film and others who are now working with GEMS, and reflected: "I wanted to listen to every girl's story and the stories were all so different. I watched them dance. I heard them sing. I asked lots of questions. They were so open and so brave."

You go Ms. Fierce. Want to get involved? Join the Council of Daughters:

GEMS hopes many more women will join Knowles and other artists in spreading the girls' message. The organization has launched a national social network, The Council of Daughters, to empower women and girls to bring the needs of young survivors into local communities. Through its online hub - http://www.councilofdaughters.ning.com - Council members can meet, share news and ideas, plan campaign events, raise funds and introduce the needs of girls to their friends through a variety of social media tools. Council members across the country, in conjunction with Netflix, the world's largest online movie rental service, will host National Viewing Nights to celebrate the online and DVD premiere of 'Very Young Girls'.

We'd love to hear about your viewing night experience on our community site, so get registered, get watching, get reflecting, and make the world a better place for this country's most vulnerable girls.

On June 19 -- that's right, during Pride Month -- Leslie Moya (pictured above), a transgender woman from Queens, was walking home from a nightclub when two men assaulted her and brutally beat her with a belt buckle.

They stopped only when a passing motorist threatened to call the police. Throughout the attack, Leslie's assailants called her a "faggot" in Spanish. The attack left Leslie with multiple injuries, including bruises all over her body, and stitches in her scalp. Police called to the scene found Leslie nearly naked and bleeding on the sidewalk. They also recovered a belt buckle from the assailants that was covered in blood.

Despite the fact that Mora was clearly targeted for her (perceived) sexual orientation, the Queens District Attorney is refusing to investigate (PDF) the attack as a hate crime.

If you're a New York State resident, now's a good time to pressure the state Senate to pass the pending transgender hate-crimes legislation, the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA). (It has passed the Assembly and is awaiting Senate action.)

Click here for a list of states with trans-inclusive hate crimes laws. And also check out an alternate view on hate-crimes laws, from the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.

Via Media Matters, I wasn't shocked to find that Rush Limbaugh was happy to mock the White House appointment of Adviser on Violence Against Women Lynn Rosenthal, but felt it necessary to point out his thoughts on what one who occupies the appointment would advise: "Put some ice on it."

It's a domestic violence adviser. What the hell kind of advice are you gonna get? About the only kind of advice - I mean we're talking about democrats here, right? We're talking about the party of Bill Clinton. So I assume If you're going to have a domestic policy adviser, the advice you're gonna get - put some ice on it. Your lip's a little bleeding and swollen - put some ice on it, as you leave the swanky motel room.

Domestic violence, domestic policy, same shit. Read the whole transcript after the jump; his complete inability to make sense shines through.

Note: A reader pointed out that this comment was meant to be a reference to Bill Clinton's allegation of rape against Juanita Broderick, in which in her story, she said Clinton told her to put ice on her swollen lip after the alleged attack.

Vice President Biden announced the appointment of Lynn Rosenthal as the first-ever White House Advisor on Violence Against Women on Friday.

From the Family Violence Prevention Fund:

In this new position, Rosenthal will be a liaison to the domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy community; coordinate with the Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women on implementation of Violence Against Women Act programs; coordinate with the Department of Health and Human Services on implementation of Family Violence Prevention Act services (including the National Domestic Violence Hotline); coordinate with the State Department and USAID on global domestic violence initiatives; and drive the development of new initiatives and policy aimed at combating domestic violence and sexual assault with advocacy groups and members of Congress.

Rosenthal's expertise includes housing, state and local coordinated community response, federal policy on violence against women, and survivor-centered advocacy. She most recently served as the Executive Director of the New Mexico Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and was Executive Director of the National Network to End Domestic Violence from 2000 to 2006. She partnered with The Allstate Foundation to develop a highly successful national initiative to promote economic empowerment for survivors of violence.

Click to see larger.

Amnesty International has released a pretty high-tech public awareness campaign against domestic violence: in bus shelters, the poster has an "eye tracker," making the image change from a seemingly happy couple (if you're looking directly at it) to an image of violence when you look away.

The text on the ad says, "It happens when nobody is watching." Thoughts?

h/t to Shara.

Remember the Chris Brown/Rihanna drama? Well, Brown reached a plea deal admitting that he assaulted girlfriend Rihanna with the intent to do "great bodily harm."

via CNN.

Under terms of the agreement, Brown will serve five years of probation and must serve 180 days in jail or the equivalent -- about 1,400 hours -- in "labor-oriented service," said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office. He must also undergo a year-long domestic-violence counseling class, she said.

Brown's sentence is comparable to other felony sentences when the defendant has no previous record, she said.

I think it is good that he at least plead guilty to one charge of assault but I am still conflicted on the long-term effectiveness of the sentence.

Thoughts?

In the latest issue of Essence magazine, Queen Latifah speaks candidly about her experience with sexual abuse as a child.

For a short period of time when she was a child, Latifah was the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of a teenager charged with her care. "He violated me," she says of the abuser. "I never told anybody; I just buried it as deeply as I could and kept people at an arm's distance. I never really let a person get too close to me. I could have been married years ago, but I had a commitment issue." Eventually, she opened up to her parents, who separated when she was young.

...She points out that one in four girls is sexually abused in some way. "That's 25 percent of all girls. This is a real problem," she says. Not unlike many victims of abuse, she wondered if she had played a role in what happened. Her talks with a therapist helped her find the unequivocal answer. "He said, 'Imagine yourself as an adult and think about what a child can do to you. Can they beat you? Can they defeat you? No. Now, imagine yourself as that child.' That really helped put things in perspective. I was a kid, and I had no power or control over the situation."

I have been a fan of Queen Latifah for...well, forever. And I think it's wonderful that she's talking about her experience in a way that recognizes just how common sexual abuse is. The US Department of Health and Human Services reports that 15-33% of females and 13-16% of males were sexually abused as children.

Via Racialicious.

Marilu Morales has filed a federal lawsuit after being allegedly shackled while giving birth at Cook County Jail in Chicago.

...Morales was eight months' pregnant when she was incarcerated in April 2008, according to the lawsuit. It could not be immediately determined on what charges Morales was being held.

When she went into labor three days later, she was taken to Stroger. A sheriff's deputy shackled a hand and foot to the hospital bed, the lawsuit alleged.

Morales was in labor for four hours before a physician ordered the deputy to remove the shackles shortly before she gave birth, the lawsuit said. The shackles were allegedly put back on immediately after the baby was born.

This is the fourth lawsuit that Flaxman has filed against Sheriff Tom Dart's office regarding a pregnant prisoner had been shackled while giving birth. Unbelievable.

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Today, Catherine Pierce, the Acting Director of the DOJ's Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the importance of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

Some highlights from her testimony after the jump.

This is pretty unbelievable. Choi Jin-sil, a South Korean actress and model who died by apparent suicide in 2008, is being sued posthumously for failing to maintain a decent image while working as a spokesmodel for the Shinhan Engineering and Construction Co, LTD.

What's worse is that the South Korean Court ruled in their favor. The heirs of Jin-sil are being forced by the courts to repay the damages requested, totaling the equivalent of almost $400,000.

So what is it that Jin-sil did to fail in maintaining a decent image? She was a survivor of her husband's abuse. Pictures were released after Jin-sil ended up in the hospital as a result of this abuse.

From The Chosun Ilbo:

The company paid Choi W250 million in March 2004 for modeling for apartment buildings. The contract included a clause that if Choi disgraced the image of the company by damaging her social and moral image through her own fault, she would repay the firm twice the modeling fee. Five months later, pictures of her beaten and of the inside of her house in a chaotic state were released.

As the clause states above, the fact that the Courts ruled in the company's favor means they actually believe that this abuse was "through her own fault." It's disgusting victim-blaming at it's worst, and shows that some people still blame women for domestic violence.

*Potentially triggering*

This story is intense. An 11 year old was brutally raped. Members of her community beat up the man they think committed the crime. The neighbors will not be charged for the beating. Here's why,

Before making his decision, Ramsey said, he monitored Carrasquillo's condition and reviewed surveillance video of the assault. As soon as officers arrived at the scene, he said, the group stopped the beating.

"These people saw him, he attempted to run and they caught up with him," Ramsey said. "If the injuries had been severe, maybe we'd have to rethink it."

The Philadelphia chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police had offered a $10,000 reward in the rape case.

Carrasquillo has not been charged in the rape, but Ramsey said investigators have very strong forensic evidence and witness identification placing him at the scene.

Marc Lamont Hill makes the point that because of the erasure of the experiences of women of color and specifically black women with sexual violence in the justice system and the news media, there is an understanding within the community that no one is going to do anything about this injustice. So while we may fall on the side of never resorting to violence, many people do not have this privilege.

via Bird of Paradox comes the depressing news that a Memphis resident named Kelvin Denton was recently shot for "misrepresenting gender." (FIVE trans women have been shot in Memphis since 2006.) Cara notes that it's not yet clear whether the victim is transgender or not. But the alleged assailant has apparently made clear that confusion about Denton's gender prompted him to pull the trigger -- the all-too-common "trans panic" defense. Writes Helen at Bird of Paradox,

Mr Taylor told police he carried out the attack because he felt he had been "misled" about Ms Denton's gender - surely a clear indication that that Mr Taylor will be trying to use the trans panic defense to avoid taking responsibility for his actions. However, the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition have urged Shelby County authorities to "prosecute Taylor aggressively and not permit the use of the trans-panic defense".

Denton is in critical condition.

Right now, California is the only state that has a law that specifically addresses "panic" defenses -- the Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act.

Take action: If you live in Tennessee, please contact your state legislators and ask them to add gender identity/expression to "make it easier for state and local authorities to track and prosecute hate crimes against all LGBT Tennesseans."

This is also an appropriate moment for all of us to contact our senators about the importance of including gender identity and expression in the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). It's looking like ENDA will be introduced in the next several weeks, so now is the time to express your support for gender-identity protections. (Some basic sample language is here.) Helen at en|Gender has more.

UPDATE: Thanks to mfemme in comments for pointing out that Memphis recently passed an anti-discrimination resolution, and noting:

I was *hoping* that passing this legislation a couple days ago would be a step forward for Memphis... passing the anti-discrimination act: which is a big win for LGBT people in Memphis who are forced to stay in the closet for fear of being fired.

But obviously, when LGBT (particularly transgender and genderqueer) folks who are living in a city where they are fearful for THEIR LIVES, what good does it do to say at least we can't get fired for being LGBT? srsly wtf Memphis. the atmosphere there is really hostile towards LGBT people...legislation can only do so much. it's a step, but just not enough to change the mindset citywide.

More information:
Julia Serano: There's Something About "Deception"
States with trans-inclusive hate crimes laws
Banning the "Trans Panic Defense"
What Does "Justice For Angie" Mean?

Recent updates about the photos taken at Abu Ghraib (and being withheld by President Obama) including sexual assault of the detainees is incredibly upsetting, infuriating and fills me with deep shame for being a citizen of a nation whose (previous) administration sanctioned this kind of inhumanity and violence. And these truths are ones that I along with so many others feel must be exposed. Author Tara McKelvey, whose book has accounts from female prisoners of Abu Ghraib, takes on the issue at TAPPED, saying that without the photos it's almost as if the crimes didn't exist:

While reporting my book, Monstering, I heard about an interpreter who had worked at the prison and allegedly raped a 14-year-old boy, and that there was a video or a photograph of the crime that had been recorded by a female soldier. (It wasn't Lynndie England -- I asked her about it.) Military investigators looked into the alleged crime against the boy - but half-heartedly -- and the investigation was eventually dropped. Since there was no photo or video that had been released to the public, it was not a priority.

At the same time, Mark Goldberg at UN Dispatch notes that not a lot of folks are talking in depth about the privacy rights of the detainees who were so brutally assaulted:

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for refocusing "public attention on the torture, humiliation and abuse of prisoners sanctioned by senior Bush administration officials" as Daphne Evitar says. But scanning memeorandum, no one seems to be balancing the rights of victims of sexual abuse with the need to air the previous administration's dirty laundry. (Emphasis mine)

It's so difficult to decide what's "right" in this situation as so many of us are advocates for survivors' rights but also feel that openness is the only way to wake Americans up to the realities of our Iraq policies. I have to say that amidst our horror of these atrocities, my gut feels it would be deeply problematic to ignore the rights of the individuals that these atrocities were perpetrated against.

After everything they have endured, shouldn't detainees be able to decide whether these pictures go public or not? If their privacy rights were violated by these photos being released "for the good of the country," aren't we relying under the same argument pro-torture folks might make for committing these crimes against them?

*Possible trigger warning*

While we haven't been the biggest fans of Amazon as of late and their history of selling a rape simulation game (which they did end up banning), it looks like another game involving violence against women seems to have"slipped" past their radar. "Stockholm: An Exploration of True Love" is a game that allows the user to experience,

"...a terrifyingly vivid exploration of Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological condition in which a captive falls in love with her kidnapper. And you play the part of the kidnapper. With a limited number of options, you must figure out how to make her fall in love with you."

This includes using poison gas on the victim, sexually assaulting her and using psychological abuse against her in efforts to make her "love" you. Unbelievable.

Contact Amazon and let them know that profiting off of sexual and psychological abuse is completely unacceptable.

h/t to Jennifer for the heads up.

*Trigger Warning*

If you know anything about femicide in Mexico, then you already know it is an epidemic of gross proportions. The mutilation, rape and murder of women along the US/Mexico border has become an annual statistic, with little mainstream media coverage and even less national outcry. And the worse part of it is that many of these disappearances are not even investigated, they literally disappear, vanish and are wiped from legibility.

From a piece written in 2004 in Off Our Backs Corie Osborn writes,

For the past decade, a sexual genocide has raged virtually unnoticed in Juarez, the largest city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Approximately 370 women have been found murdered in the State of Chihuahua over the past decade, according to an Amnesty International report published last August. At least 137 women were sexually assaulted prior to their death.

The majority of these murders occurred in and around Ciudad Jurez; however, in the past three years incidences of murder and disappearances have risen in the nearby state capital Ciudad Chihuahua.

Many of the violent murders that have taken place in Juarez follow a similar pattern. Authorities believe that 93 of the victims fit the same rape-murder pattern, which indicates that they are all the work of a serial killer or killers.

Why has a killer who has murdered more than twice the number of people as the Boston Strangler, Jack the Ripper and Ted Bundy combined, been able to continue terrorizing Ciudad Juarez for ten years with only vague interest from the international community or even from the Mexican federal government? And who is responsible for the killings of the other hundreds of women found dead in Juarez over the past decade?

Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are veiled by the power of a dominant machismo culture and what appears to be a police conspiracy preventing a thorough investigation of the murders.

Two years ago the documentary On the Edge: Femicide in Cuidad Juarez took on the horrific examples and sheer numbers of women disappearing in Juarez. The whole thing is up on youtube (in ten parts) and I strongly recommend watching it.

Here is the first part.

I bring this up today is because it was released yesterday that this epidemic hasn't stopped and that the disappearance of women in the Baja peninsula outnumber those disappeared in Chihuahua.

In Mexicali and other parts of Baja California, women's murders tend to get "buried" in the avalanche of news about violent crime, which includes hundreds of slayings, numerous kidnappings and street-side shoot outs since last year alone. While femicides in Ciudad Juarez and the state of Chihuahua garnered international headlines in recent years, little international attention was paid to women's murders in Baja California.

A report issued earlier this year by the femicide commission of the lower house of the Mexican Congress, found 105 women were murdered in Baja California during 2006-2007. Using official numbers, more women were murdered in Baja California than in Chihuahua (84 female murder victims) during the same comparable period.

In 2006-07 Baja California ranked eighth place nationally for women's homicides, falling slightly behind Mexican states with much larger populations including Jalisco, Veracruz and Puebla, according to the Mexican Congressional report.

This epidemic shows us that women's bodies are considered expendable and between patterns of globalization and a corrupt government the bodies of young women are not important and not worth investigating.

I've been following the horrible news about Johanna Justin-Jinich, a woman at Wesleyan University who was recently shot by a man who was stalking her. The man who allegedly killed her, Stephen Morgan, had been stalking her for quite some time. (It seems he had some anti-semitic motivations as well.) This story is harrowing:

As the investigation unfolded, the police focused on the only known point of connection between the victim and the assailant. It was a six-week summer program, in June and July 2007, at New York University, called Sexual Diversity in Society. [...]

The two lived in student housing, but not in the same residence hall, said John Beckman, an N.Y.U. spokesman. On July 17, as the program was nearing its end, Ms. Justin-Jinich notified the university that she had received repeated harassing e-mail messages and phone calls from Mr. Morgan. The school notified the police, and officers spoke with her. The case was referred to detectives.

The police report told of 38 e-mail messages that were "insulting" and "unwanted." It quoted one as saying, "You're going to have a lot more problems down the road if you can't take any criticism, Johanna," using an expletive. But she declined to file charges, and the matter was dropped.

One reason this news has me shaken up is that I know a lot of women who have been stalked. Thankfully, none of those situations has ended in violence. But stories like Johanna's are all too common. Asia McGowan. Elnora Caldwell. Natasha Hall. Countless others.

Whether these women were stalked by someone they'd been in a relationship with or by a total stranger, reading about so many acts of violence by stalkers really makes it home that we have completely inadequate ways of addressing this issue. Yes, the Violence Against Women Act funds various police programs and local services to assist stalking victims. Yes, women can opt to press charges or file restraining orders. But as with so many situations of violence against women, in the end, there is no guarantee of safety, no fail-safe answer. It's both depressing and infuriating at the same time. (Seems like a good time to point out again how messed up it is when products and magazines try to appeal to stalkers.)

Oh, and fuck you, Daily News. I'm sure Justin-Jinich, who was a women's rights advocate, would have really appreciated being identified only as a "raven-haired stunner."

Related:
NCVC tip sheet on stalking (PDF)
Is a restraining order ever enough?

I'm headed to DC this weekend for Code Pink's Mother's Day slumber party on the White House lawn for peace. I'm following one of their organizers for my book. The protest is inspired by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe's bad ass Mother's Day Proclamation, which I thought I'd post here in case folks hadn't seen it:

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Check out the video of famous ladies reading parts of it:

Check out this video by Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley reporting from Tokyo on the women who are speaking out about the problem of domestic violence in Japan.

Transcript after the jump.

Angie Zapata's family has made a statement on the trial of Allen Andrade. Below is Angie's brother, Gonzalo, speaking.

Potentially triggering

Read the transcript at Feministe.

Via TransGriot

You've all heard the great news - Angie Zapata's murderer, Allen Andrade, has been found guilty and last night received a mandatory life sentence. I don't know that there can ever be real justice - because Angie isn't here - but this is certainly something.

More from Pam's House Blend, Race Wire, Queerty, GLAADBlog, PageOneQ, the Human Rights Campaign, Womanist Musings, EDNAblog, TransGriot, and the Justice for Angie Twitter Feed.

Immigration reform is back in the news. I asked Christine Neumann-Ortiz, founding executive director of Voces de la Frontera based in Wisconsin, to help explain the latest developments.

Here's Christine...

From the CBC:

About 300 mostly young women gathered in Kabul to show their opposition to a recently passed law that forbids women from refusing to have sex with their husbands and requires them to get a male relative's permission to leave the house.

The demonstration, organized by women's rights activists in the country, occurred in front of a Shia mosque recently built by a cleric who helped craft the law. Critics of the law say it effectively legalizes rape within marriage and is a return to Taliban-style rule.

About 1,000 people opposed to the protest surrounded the women and threw gravel and small stones as police struggled to hold them back.

I am so moved by the courage of these 300 women, dwarfed by over two times as many in opposition, marching through the streets for their right to have control over their bodies and their sexuality--even in marriage. I'm also struck by the solidarity of the women police officers, who reportedly formed a human chain around the protesters to protect them from the angry counter-protesters. It's heartening to hear a story where law enforcement respects peoples' right to gather and express dissent, even on such a volatile issue.

Thanks to all the readers who made sure we covered this by sending in links.

Check out this piece from the NYT featuring two pediatricians talking about young people and sex:

It has never been easy for adults to deal with young teenagers honestly and sensibly on this subject, and it isn't easy now. We live with an endless parade of hypersexualized images -- and a constant soundtrack of adults lamenting children's exposure to that endless parade. There's increasing knowledge of dating violence, including well-publicized celebrity incidents. And there's always a new movie to see about how adolescent boys are clueless, sex-obsessed goofballs.

Stir it all together, and you may get an official worldview in which boys are viewed as potential criminals and girls as potential victims.

Thoughts on the whole article?

*Trigger Warning*

A young woman in Detroit, Asia McGowan, was shot and killed by someone who had been leaving her nasty comments on her Youtube account and also had been stalking her on Facebook. This was someone she knew in real life-it was one of her classmates.

This story is really upsetting me, but I am trying to keep my head straight about the issues at hand. It is stressing me out for two reasons. One, almost every woman I know that has an internet identity has received some sort of threatening, stalker-ish, troll-ish email, comment, forum posting, death threat, blog post or shit even a vlog. This story is chilling and it is important to remember the stalking and murder of women happened before the invention of social networking technology, but this story is chilling nonetheless. As Miriam just said to me over IM, maybe these cases are just more visible now because of technology.

Two, why isn't this story on any of the national news networks? Because black women getting stalked and killed isn't worthy of national news coverage?

For more on this story check out What About Our Daughters, she has all the youtube videos up.

Thanks to Tiffany for the link and reminding me that this type of thing happened even before the internet.

You know, I knew that Courtney's Friday Feminist Fuck You would draw out the assholes and rape apologists. But this just pisses me off to no end.

Wired has a post on us "furious feminists" and Courtney's video, writing that we have a problem with Observe and Report's "shocking sex scene." Shocking sex scene? No, assholes - that's called rape. It's unbelievable to me that people are arguing whether or not this scene depicts a rape, not only because of the obvious inability for Anna Faris' character to give consent - but also because Faris herself calls it rape.

So please, you fucking idiots, stop calling it sex.

It's also worth pointing out that the comments at Wired (and hundreds at the YouTube video that I moderated) trying to argue that the scene isn't rape are of the "no one would want to rape you anyway you stupid cunt" variety. So yeah. I swear, it's stuff like this that makes me want to give up on humanity.

Please give the folks at Wired a piece of your mind - or any one else who wants to argue that you just don't get the hilarious genius humor behind a dude raping an unconscious woman.

abyss2hope, Majikthise, Jezebel, Tiger Beatdown and nshay1031 at the Community Blog have more.

We don't know how we missed this! The first Global Symposium on Engaging Men and Boys in Achieving Gender Equality took place this week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, concluding today. One of the things that came out of the conference was a Declaration and Call to Action. Here's a snippet:

We come from eighty countries. We are men and women, young and old, working side by side with respect and shared goals. We are active in community organizations, religious and educational institutions; we are representatives of governments, NGOs and the United Nations. We speak many languages, we look like the diverse peoples of the world and carry their diverse beliefs and religions, cultures, physical abilities, and sexual and gender identities. We are indigenous peoples, immigrants, and ones whose ancestors moved across the planet. We are fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, brothers and sisters, partners and lovers, husbands and wives.

What unites us is our strong outrage at the inequality that still plagues the lives of women and girls, and the self-destructive demands we put on boys and men. But even more so, what brings us together here is a powerful sense of hope, expectation, and possibility for we have seen the capacity of men and boys to change, to care, to cherish, to love passionately, and to work for justice for all.

While I've seen so many great local efforts by men working towards gender equality (like on college campuses, in organizational programs, etc.), to see activism on a global level like this is incredible. Check out the rest.

Trigger warning

The ad is for Women's Aid, a UK organization that works to end violence against women. It's definitely difficult to watch, but of course that's the point. Thoughts?

Via Copyranter.

Last Tuesday's post on the man in Oakland that killed 4 police officers yielded heated responses and I wanted to follow up after everyone (especially me) had some time to mull things over. I want to draw from some of the themes that came up and to update the news that broke last Tuesday night that Lovelle Mixon was also linked to the rape of a 12 year old girl. This act, along with the murders of John Hege, Mark Dunakin, Ervin Romans and Daniel Sakai, are reprehensible acts. I am stating this upfront so that it is not lost that this is a tragedy and there is no excuse for this kind of tragedy.

There seemed to be some concern that the way I approached my discussion of this topic made me sound like an apologist. Perhaps a matter of semantics but despite some folks understanding it was not my intention, there still seemed to be a need to accuse me of it. To clarify, there is a big difference between understanding what creates a condition/thought/action and then justifying that said action.

Thea Lim at Racialicious gave a very thorough breakdown of the fall-out around my post last week and the idea of trying to hold two thoughts at once. She writes,

Now, Mixon actually was guilty. But Mixon's guilt doesn't neutralise the rottenness of the system. In other words, just because Mixon was actually a dangerous felon doesn't mean that we are absolved from the duty to question how justice and innocence is defined and meted out in our culture.

It is not only possible for us to hold these two facts at once, but it is imperative in understanding the consequences of Mixon's actions for the greater community in Oakland and also for understanding how the youth in Oakland are dealing with this atrocity. Perhaps the huge backlash against my piece was due to a desire to use Mixon as an excuse to voice their own racism, whether conscious or subconscious. As lefties it is our job to point out these subtle nuances, as the implications are deadly.

With regard to the poster I chose to repost here, after posting the artist's statement and some conversation via comments and emails, I would just like to clarify why I thought it was powerful. I should have known that putting it up would make me look like I was complicit in making Mixon a poster-child, but the poster says, "Cop-Killer" not "American Hero" so I thought that the fact that I didn't think he was a hero was pretty self-explanatory. What I saw in that poster was several questions come up about what we need to be American. We need our villains, we need our heroes or the story is never complete. In short, people of color become the poster children for whatever we want them to be, Obama is on one side of the American dream, Mixon on the other. Also, while I don't totally agree with all of Weston's take, the one part I do agree with is that Mixon is a product of a culture of violence in America and we can either address that or we can write this off as a one off crazy man.

It is understandable why many different people are bound to the 'one off' point of view. It makes us feel comfortable to think that someone like Mixon is a 'one off' case because it takes responsibility off of us to look at, and, ultimately, change the systemic causes of violence. On the other hand, the belief that he is not a 'one off' incident will most definitely be used to justify further violence in the black community in Oakland and that is what we are afraid of. It is almost effective and more logical for those that live in the community to write this off as an aberration (which statistically it is) as opposed to part of a systemic problem.

But this story is not just about Mixon and his inability to get out of cycles of violence. This is about all the themes and ideas that have come out around Mixon and what that tells us about public perceptions of police brutality, black masculinity and why Oakland youth might be so juiced about this issue. As Puck clarified at the end of the comments section,

Regardless of whether or not she believes cop killing is a message of hope (and it's pretty clear that she doesn't), it's important to recognize that an image like the "poster" was created in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. It's important to recognize that there are a lot of people who see this as a tit-for-tat situation... and there are a lot of people who are conflicted - at once feeling sorry for the people who were killed (and their families) and simultaneously feeling like the system had it coming. Recognizing that these are perspectives that are very real and shared by a lot of people is not the same thing as holding such a perspective. Ignoring that such perspectives are worth considering or even exist stifles our capacity to understand all the angles on a tragedy such as this.

Mixon is a difficult person to build a narrative of police brutality around, but this story isn't about him. He is dead, he can do no more harm. But the police state can, and most likely will, use this case as an excuse to continually police and brutalize people of color in Oakland. Mixon was a very extreme example of violence, but he is still part of an entire system of violence. The more we have a repressive police system that engages in extreme forms of violence, the more people will support the actions of a cop-killer. Some have suggested that if perhaps Oakland police and stood up against what happened to Oscar Grant, Oakland youth would be singing a different tune right now.

For serious. I know I'm late on this one, but I just had to write something. (And no, it's not because the article is from the same woman who called me a "bridezilla" for daring to question wedding culture.)

Behold the wisdom of Kathryn Lopez:

According to an article in the Boston Globe, an informal poll taken among 200 teenagers has revealed that almost half of them blame the pop star Rihanna for her recent beating, allegedly by her boyfriend, Chris Brown.

It's just one survey. But it's very bad news. And feminists are to blame.

...What has happened -- and what Rihanna and Chris have to do with Gloria [Steinem] and us -- is that by inventing oppression where there is none and remaking woman in man's image, as the sexual and feminist revolutions have done, we've confused everyone. The reaction those kids had was unnatural. It's natural for us to expect men to protect women, and for women to expect some level of physical protection. But in post-modern America, those natural gender roles have been beaten by academics and political rhetoric and the occasional modern woman being offended by having a door opened for her. The result is confusion.

Right, we're just confused by all that equality - it's clouding our ladybrains! Plus, everyone knows that women were never ever blamed for the violence done to them before feminists came around. Sigh.

Trigger warning.

Do Something, an organization "using the power of online to get teens to do good stuff offline," has made a video re-enactment of the Chris Brown/Rhianna conflict as part of their 1 in 3 Campaign (designed to education young people about dating violence). It's obviously based on the actual police notes from the incident, making it highly realistic and unavoidably horrifying:

While I could understand why some people would be outraged by this bold PSA tactic, I'm completely in support of what Do Something is doing. They're making the incident--which has been so obscured by the media hype, ignorant commentary from pundits and the public alike, and so much disrespect--real again. A woman, a man, out of control emotions, and inexcusable violence. If Rhianna weren't already horribly outed by this whole incident, I might feel like it were an invasion of her privacy, but at this point, it's just so public. It seems like the most respectful thing we can do for Rhianna is make sure that this whole thing inspires young people to get educated about relationship violence--as the ad does.

What do you think?

One of the highlights of SXSW music so far for me has been seeing Grizzly Bear play in a church. Not only do the songs from their new album sound phenomenal, they played a cover of "He Hit Me and It Felt Like a Kiss":

Not from SXSW, but you get the idea. MP3 is here.

You're perhaps familiar with this song. It was recorded by girl-group The Crystals in the 1960s, and produced by Phil Spector (musical genius, perhaps, but total fucking misogynist). Songwriters Carol King and Gerry Goffin penned the song after learning their nanny, singer Little Eva, was being abused. King and Goffin meant the song as a critique of domestic violence. But Spector pushed the Crystals to record the song in a pretty straightforward manner:

Check out community poster ArmyVetJen's take (who beat us to the punch) on the new statistics just released by the Pentagon showing that there has been a 9% increase in the reports of sexual assault in the military over the past year. AP reports:

The Pentagon said it received 2,923 reports of sexual assault across the military in the 12 months ending Sept. 30 2008. That's about a 9 percent increase over the totals reported the year before, but only a fraction of the crimes presumably being committed.

Among the cases reported, only a small number went to military courts, officials acknowledged.

The Pentagon office that collects the data estimates that only 10 percent to 20 percent of sexual assaults among members of the active duty military are reported -- a figure similar to estimates of reported cases in the civilian sphere.

The military statistics, required by Congress, cover rape and other assaults across the approximately 1.4 million people in uniform.

The director of the Pentagon's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office says that the increase in reports is likely due to more women feeling confident enough to come forward rather than attributing it to an actual increase in sexual violence. While that would be great, as Cara says, there hasn't been any reported increase in awareness around sexual assault by the Pentagon so I'm not inclined to immediately buy that contention. (Also considering prosecutions are still low as ever.)

Reports in Iraq and Afghanistan have rose by about a quarter. You can find the report here. Feministe also has more.

A reader sent in this story, about how this 18 year-old man was given only 6 months in jail for raping two women. (Oh, and he gets work and school release privileges.)

Michael Philbin, son of a Green Bay Packers coach, said he was "ashamed" and "embarrassed." Well, that's lovely, but I wish he was feeling ashamed from prison for more than 6 frigging months. The short jail sentence aside, what really bugged me about this article was the language it used to describe the attacks:

Philbin had sex with one girl after she passed out and was placed on his parent's bed. He then joined another 17-year-old boy in the basement and forced a second girl to perform oral sex, according to the criminal complaint filed last month.

Excuse me, but you don't "have sex" with an unconscious girl. That's called rape.

Brown County Circuit Court Judge Sue Bischel, in accepting a joint sentencing recommendation, said by all accounts Philbin was a good person who made a horrible decision.

Making a "horrible decision" to rape someone doesn't make you a good person who fucked up - it makes you a rapist.

Reading from a pre-sentence report, Bischel said Philbin acknowledged that he took advantage of the girls knowing they had too much to drink.

Took advantage of? Again, rape. Judge Bischel also ruled that Philbin didn't have to register as a sex offender because it was "excessive" (and raping two women isn't?) and that after completing probation he could petition to have the convictions removed from his record.

I am so tired of the rape apologism - in the media, in the courts, in the culture. How much more can we really take?

This is not the kind of news I like to hear on a Monday morning. (Or I guess any morning for that matter.)

Nearly half of the 200 Boston teenagers interviewed for an informal poll said pop star Rihanna was responsible for the beating she allegedly took at the hands of her boyfriend, fellow music star Chris Brown, in February.

...Of the teens questioned, more than half said both Brown, 19, and Rihanna, 21, were equally responsible for the assault. More than half said the media were treating Brown unfairly, and 46 percent said Rihanna was responsible for the incident.

Ah, victim-blaming. It's always with us. What particularly depresses me about this statistic is that the victim-blaming is coming from young people. There's this optimistic part of me that likes to believe sexist attitudes and hating women will lessen with new generations. Articles like these snap me back into reality.

Thanks to Alise for the link.

Chris Brown's alleged violence against Rihanna has sparked intense debate and discussion about these celebrities.

I decided to ask Traci C. West, PhD, a professor of ethics and African American studies at Drew University's Theological School, for some perspective on the violence and the public's reactions. She researched the historical legacy of violence against black women for her book, Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence, and Resistance Ethics.

Here's Traci...

The Guardian and others have been reporting on the growing trend in South Africa where lesbians are raped and beaten in efforts to "correct" or "cure" their sexual orientation. And the authorities are not doing much about it.

After Eudy Simelane, the leading player on the Banyana Banyana national female soccer team was brutally raped and murdered last April, more awareness has been raised, but the prevalence of this horrific trend has only grown with it. One lesbian and gay support group in Cape Town says they get 10 new cases of "corrective rape" every week. And that's just in Cape Town.

And many of these cases result in murder, but with a barely existent conviction rate; there has only been one conviction out of 31 reported cases in the last decade. (The number of actual incidences are predicted to be much higher.)

In response, ActionAid and others have released a report, Hate Crimes: the rise of corrective rape in South Africa, bringing to light the prevalence of the "practice" as well as the failure of the South African legal system to take recourse; hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation is not recognized under South African law. On sentencing of Simelan's case, the judge said that her orientation had "no significance" in the murder.

Check out The Guardian's video of interviews with some survivors. (Trigger warning.)

Apparently police in Minneapolis are so fed up with prostitution that they're experimenting with a truly bold tactic:

Whether teenagers walking to and from South High School or young women waiting at the bus, the unwanted solicitation by "johns" has left civic leaders such as Schiff fed up and ready to take a new approach -- if the rule of law isn't a strong enough deterrent to the men looking for illegal sex, perhaps advertising their public humiliation will be.

Enter a huge electronic billboard at the intersection of Interstate 35W and Lake Street, which fired up Wednesday with direction to www.johnspics.org, a city website that prominently displays photos of men convicted or charged with soliciting prostitution within the past six months. Clear Channel, which donated the billboard space, will run the signs for the next six months. Though the photos have been online since 2004, the new Web address will be easier for drivers to remember.

What do you all think about this strategy? After learning that the average age a girl gets into prostitution is 13 recently, I've felt pretty tenacious about any policy that can cut down on the power of manipulative older men. On the other hand, this seems like one step down a slippery slope of eroding civil rights and, besides, deterrents like this don't seem to actually work all that well.

Read the full article here.

Thanks to reader Jess for the heads up.

Shockingly good article from Newsweek on the way the media has been talking about Rihanna and Chris Brown.

This study is really interesting (link it to a PDF), if by interesting you mean deeply tragic and horridly upsetting. According to the Times UK, 1 in 7 people find it is sometimes justified to hit women.

One in seven people believe it is acceptable in some circumstances for a man to hit his wife or girlfriend if she is dressed in "sexy or revealing clothes in public", according to the findings of a survey released today.

A similar number believed that it was all right for a man to slap his wife or girlfriend if she is "nagging or constantly moaning at him".

The findings of the poll, conducted for the Home Office, also disclosed about a quarter of people believe that wearing sexy or revealing clothing should lead to a woman being held partly responsible for being raped or sexually assaulted.

If that is not upsetting enough, Jess at the F-Word breaks the studies down even further. and concludes,

These figures appear to actually show the situation is worse than we thought from that pivotal 2005 poll by Amnesty. For example, Amnesty found about 1/3 of people think women who've been flirting are responsible if they get raped, whereas the Home Office poll puts the figure at a shocking 43%. About 50% believe that women in prostitution bear some or all of the responsibility if they're raped.

The article also suggested that older populations (over 65) and what they call "lower social groups" had a higher percentage of supporting that violence against women is sometimes justified. I actually have no idea what they mean by "lower social groups," and find that language really problematic, especially if they are talking about working class communities and communities of color. I looked through the study and found no delineation by age or background.

Despite those perhaps journalistic assumptions made, this data is appalling.

Thanks to Meg for the link and community post.

The UN estimates that the expulsions would leave 1.1 million people without food, 1.5 million without health care and at least one million without drinking water.

As Mark Goldberg wrote recently, the NGO crackdown was expected.

This, however, is no reason to shy away from the court's intervention in Darfur. Rather, the arrest warrant provides critical leverage over the government of Sudan, which the Obama administration can use to coerce it into cooperating more fulsomely in a credible peace process. Under the ICC's statute, the Security Council has the authority to suspend proceedings should it decide that doing so is in the interest of peace. This is the carrot to the proverbial stick of an arrest warrant.

Problem is, the Obama administration hasn't yet really stepped up to use that leverage. And even if this plan manages to bring Bashir to the negotiating table, it's clear that holding Sudanese leaders accountable comes at a price for civilians who are already suffering.

Further reading... UN Dispatch has a round-up of reactions to the Bashir warrant. And check out Richard Just's thorough essay on "everything we know about Darfur" in The New Republic, which also has a roundtable on Obama and Darfur.

On a related note, Women's eNews calls for more women UN peacekeepers

Check out this reading by Eve Ensler of a section of her upcoming book, I'm an Emotional Creature: The Secret Lives of Girls Around the World. It's called "The Teenage Girl's Guide to Surviving Sex Slavery" and in it she speaks in the voice of a former sexual slave from the The Democratic Republic of Congo:

First let me say that I admire Eve's bold insistence on speaking truth, on writing deeply emotional pieces, on insisting that we talk about and stay conscious of and do something about the most horrific suffering on this planet--things that the rest of us often don't have the strength to face on a regular basis. V-Day is such an unbelievably successful movement--unparalleled in contemporary feminism. The idea that she got a nation of girls and women, and even a healthy number of men, thinking and talking about vaginas--as a metaphor for femaleness and violence and sexuality and so many other buried issues--is nothing short of a modern miracle. For all of this, I give her infinite props.

But I have to say that I find this piece really problematic and it makes me worried about the rest of the book that she's almost finished with.

The girl does sound real in many ways, authentic in her interactions with her friends and her experience of being abducted and raped. It's clear that Eve had spent a lot of time with these women, that she has talked to them about their lives and experiences in great detail. It's clear that Eve has the best of intentions, that she sees her own voice, her own persona, as the most effective way to amplify the messages that these young women from the Congo need the world to hear.

But no amount of reporting adds up to understanding, adds up to truly inhabiting the lives and experiences of others. As a journalist, I have continuously struggled with this reality. The most painful part of my job involves attempting to tell others' stories with empathy and clarity and honesty, while still respecting the living, breathing human being who owns them. I have a higher purpose--to paint a picture, for example, of the new normalcy of body hatred, to enrage people so they try to stop it, to lure people into a social issue with a good old fashioned story--but I also have an ethical commitment to respect people's ownership over their own stories, and quite connected, respect my own limitations.

I feel like Eve has lost sight of her own limitations, like this piece reveals this story of a girl, but also the story of an activist and storyteller who has forgotten to be humble in the process. I haven't read What is the What by Dave Eggers, but it seems that he tried to do something similar and he called it a novel (though he made clear that it was very grounded in reality). I totally get the impulse. You're an activist, a writer, a well-intentioned, empathic human being who feels like the most important stories aren't being told, so you think of the most immediate, palpable way to get them into the world. But it's not that simple.

Why not write a personal essay in her own voice about the experience of getting to know this girl, of hearing these stories? Why not publish an anthology of these women's stories or a collection of oral histories where we hear their voices exactly? Why not bring these women to the U.S. and let them stage their own play about what they've experienced? Why not make a documentary?

For me, Eve is taking too many liberties. She has the power to get these women's voices and stories out into the world, and instead, she has usurped them.

Last year we reported how a University of Portland student, after reporting being raped, was threatened by the school with charges of underage drinking.

In making the university's decision, UP judicial coordinator Natalie Shank suggested to Kerns that she could have been charged with violating university policies herself.

"Based upon my findings in my investigation, I am unable to determine if a sexual assault occurred," Shank wrote May 3, 2007. "I have reason to believe that intercourse occurred, but both parties admit to drinking and therefore, consent--or lack of consent--is difficult to determine. Given these facts, there are possible violations for which you could be charged."

Well, we have some good news. According to StudentActivism.net, the school's sexual assault reporting policies have been revised.

The school handbook now reads:

"To foster the safety and security of the entire community, the University of Portland encourages reporting of all instances of sexual assault. However, no disciplinary action will be taken without the consent of the survivor. To remove barriers to reporting, the University will not pursue potential policy violations of the survivor which occurred in the context of the sexual assault. Likewise, the University will not pursue potential policy violations of a person who comes forward to report sexual assault."

I love good news.

Trigger warning

From The New York Times:

Two police officers have been assigned to desk duty while prosecutors and the police investigate a complaint that at least one of them raped an intoxicated woman after they escorted her into her apartment in the East Village three months ago, the police said on Sunday.

Footage from a nearby bar's video surveillance camera shows the two officers helping the woman into her building on Dec. 7 and returning twice during the next two hours, according to the bar owner, who provided the video to investigators.

The woman was so impaired, that she got sick in a cab and the driver called 911. The video shows the officers helping her home and leaving. It then shows them returning to her apartment 39 minutes later, in which one of the officers notices the video. When the video catches them leaving, it appears as if they're trying to avoid the camera's range.

The Internal Affairs Bureau is conducting an investigation, but no arrests have been made yet.

Via Holly @ Feministe.

This is horrible.

Police are looking for a man who shot and killed one woman and wounded another in what is being called a bisexual love triangle gone wrong.

The NYPD says 22-year-old Janet Martinez was pronounced dead at the scene on Wednesday. A 20-year-old woman is in critical condition at Brookdale Hospital.

Martinez had obtained an order of protection against a man, and police said they are looking for him. There is no word on whether he is wanted for questioning in the shooting.

Note to MSNBC, calling this a love triangle makes it sound like hate crimes against the queer community is sometimes OK. It is not.

Via MSNBC and Daily News.

Thanks to Kenyon for the link.

Rumors are out that Chris Brown and Rihanna might have gotten back together. Whatever Rihanna does will be judged by everyone, but the reality is she is doing the best she can and the fact that this is a media spectacle makes it unusually trying I am sure. Jaclyn Friedman at the Yes means yes blog tells us what it doesn't mean if they do in fact get back together and let's just say it doesn't mean that Rihanna is "stupid" "should know better" or "doesn't know what is good for her."

It doesn't mean she is stupid. Leaving an abusive partner is hard - really, really hard. Some studies have shown that it takes an average woman 4-7 tries before she can leave her abuser for good. Why? Because abusers aren't transparent assholes all of the time. They can be very manipulative, and most of the time will wear down their partner's self-esteem quite thoroughly long before they start with the physical violence. They're also often charming and can be very loving and doting and romantic when they're not being violent. They can talk real pretty about what they've learned, how sorry they are, how they're going to change, how they can't change without the help of their wo/man. And of course, we want to believe that we haven't been so blind in choosing a partner for ourselves.

Go read the entire post, it is very important and flies in the face of all the bullshit that is going to come out about Rihanna's choices, along with the reality that it will not be her fault if she is assaulted again. And then circulate widely. We need to reframe the way we talk about women that have been victim to domestic violence.

And, no Kanye, we can't give Chris a break.

Related:
Black women's bodies, voyeurism and Rihanna
Beyond Chris Brown and Rihanna: An interview with Elizabeth Mendez Berry
The media reminds us, famous women have no right to privacy.

While we all know the media has been handling this situation disgustingly, I was still pretty stunned to see this Daily News headline. This is not to mention the actual content of the piece is full of victim-blaming banter:

[I]nsiders are rumbling that Chris shouldn't be taking the anger management classes alone. "Rihanna is temperamental, too," says our snitch. "They're both too hot-headed for their own good."

Adds another source: "It didn't help that Rihanna grabbed the keys out of his rented Lamborghini and threw them down the street. She knew it would really infuriate Chris, and it worked." (Emphasis mine)

Um, what? So not only does she need anger management for throwing keys out of a car (because of course that totally equates with domestic abuse), but she also "got what was coming to her"? Regardless of how angry a person may get or how much they're perceived to have "provoked" their partner, there is no excuse to turn to violence. Ever.

The Daily News should be ashamed of themselves. Send a letter to the editor and let them know.

Both statistically and anecdotally, incidents of violence against women increase as the economy falters. As Obama prepares to release his budget, now's the time to ask him and Congress not to reduce funding for preventing violence against women and helping survivors. According to Women's eNews:

Congress is currently authorized to spend up to $175 million a year for the program. But the actual allocation of federal dollars is subject to a congressional vote, and lawmakers last year set aside $123 million; over $50 million less than was approved. That was a slight cut from fiscal 2007, when Congress spent $125 million on the program.

Women's safety advocates also want Congress to fully fund the Violence Against Women Act, a broader anti-violence law originally passed in 1994 that provides some funds for domestic violence shelters but also sets aside money for a wide range of other services relating to sexual and domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking.

But with an ailing economy curtailing federal revenues from taxes, and lawmakers focused on economic-stimulus efforts, more money for discretionary social programs that combat domestic violence could be hard to come by.

In other words, the tanking economy means there's a greater need for these services, but less money to provide them. Marcella at abyss2hope writes,

I am asking each US citizen who reads this post to contact President Obama, your 2 senators (or 1 if you live in MN) and your representative and ask them all to support the reauthorization and the funding for the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act. After you contact your representatives, please ask those you know to do the same.

Again, contacted your elected officials HERE.

UPDATE: Obama's budget is up now. I don't have time right now to comb through for the info on violence against women, but will update this post later. In the meantime, post links in comments if you see some analysis elsewhere!

From the Associated Press: "A bill passed Monday by the state House would extend the protections of domestic violence restraining orders to pets owned by the person who secures the order."

I think this is actually great - abusers will often harm (or threaten to harm) pets as part of the violence against their victim.

Via Jezebel.

Trigger Warning

At some point or another you've probably heard of a Donkey Punch. If not, consider yourself lucky. The basic idea is that a man who is penetrating a woman from behind will punch her in the back of the head or neck as he's having an orgasm. Because beating women about the head is fucking hilarious and sexy, didn't ya know?

Well it seems that somebody thought it was be a genius idea to turn sexualized violence against women into a movie, where a woman gets killed via - you guessed it! - a Donkey Punch. The trailer is above.

It's movies like this one that make me wonder how anyone could ask why feminism is still necessary. We live in a world where sexual violence against women is a joke, an email forward, a fucking movie. This is not the world I want to live in.

Thanks to Maria for the link.

This is the shit that makes me want to crawl back in bed and never come out.

Wife-beaters.com, a Dallas-based business that sold wife-beater T-shirts, has been shut down after a San Antonio man complained to the company hosting the site.

...The Web site sold white tank tops, commonly referred to as "wife-beaters," and gave a discount to anyone who could prove they were convicted of wife beating.

Awesome that it was shut down, but the fact that anyone ever thought this was clever is just massively depressing.

I really wish I hadn't seen the pictures that were leaked of Rihanna after the supposed assault by boyfriend Chris Brown. I am not going to post them here, because I think they are too triggering. Needless to say, they show someone who was brutally attacked.

As I said the last time I wrote about this, it is rare that the media gives light to violence against women of color. From the jump, this story hinged from an angle of victim-blaming, from blaming Rihanna for "giving Brown herpes" to "cheating on him with Jay-Z." The narrative was clear; sometimes it is OK to beat a woman.

In releasing the pictures two things have happened. First, Rihanna's privacy has been violated in a very harmful way. We have no business seeing the extent of the harm done to her and this is a serious issue, not something we should be laughing at and making spectacle of. The video of her picture is in the top ten most watched videos on youtube. Our culture of voyeurism and the desire to be in people's lives never lets us down.

Secondly, releasing her pictures gave a validity to her story that she didn't have the right to prior to belief that she deserved to get hit. The picture has sent shockwaves around the internet and people changed their tune, some calling for Chris Brown to go to jail for a long time. What is unfortunate is that it took a picture that violated Rihanna's rights for the greater public to believe the perpetrator should be locked up. It is a sad world that we live in, when a woman is not taken at face value. And then her body must be consumed for the world to see in order to believe her story. The message is clear, women and especially black women, have no right to privacy, their image is for our consumption and story-telling.

In writing this, I actually didn't read what other people are saying, so please feel free to leave other links in comments. I am so deeply disturbed by this story and concerned for the impact it will have on not only what we consider the rights of women that have been victims of violence, but also the culture of victim-blaming. Can't we show our young women a better world than that?

Update: Don't forget to check out Jessica's quick video on why it is bullshit that TMZ published the picture and Jay Smooth's interview with Elizabeth Mendez.

Hating on TMZ on 12seconds.tv

This is probably my shortest Friday Feminist Fuck You ever, but I literally had nothing else to say.

For more info, see imbroglio's "Rant" on the Community blog.

Amnesty International is pressuring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to work with the UN to put pressure on the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo to end sexual violence and the recruitment and use of child soldiers. As an email alert notes, these are deeply entwined issues:

Rape is used in the conflict as a calculated strategy to destabilize opposition groups as well as promote fear and submission. It is not unusual for mothers and daughters to be raped in front of their families and villages. Human rights activists working to end violence against women often face grave threats of violence themselves.

Justine Masika Bihamba is one such activist. Because of her work to end violence against women, she and her family have been targeted.

Justine described the current situation in Congo as a war against women. "When two sides fight, the one punishes the other by raping women," she said.

Putting an end to the rampant sexual violence and the use of child soldiers is essential to ensuring peace in the region.

This video is heartbreaking:

During her confirmation hearings, Clinton herself said of violence against women:

I view these issues as central to our foreign policy, not as adjunct or auxiliary or in any way lesser than all of the other issues that we have to confront.

Click here to sign a letter to Secretary of State Clinton, asking her to work for peace for women and civilians in the DRC.

Samhita and zp27 on the community blog have mentioned this, but I really appreciated what Hussein Rashid had to say at Religion Dispatches,

Last week, Muzzammil Hassan apparently beheaded his wife, Aasiya Zubair. Although the reasons for this heinous act currently remain unclear, there was a history of domestic violence.

God rest her soul.

Mr. Hassan was co-founder, with his wife, of Bridges TV, a station dedicated to improving the image of Muslims in the US. His work was well-known and admired, and the case has shocked American Muslims. Although their private life was private, it was assumed that a couple who lived and worked together for eight years did not have more than average amount of spousal disagreement.

Fatemeh at Muslimah Media Watch has more links related to Aasiya Hassan's murder, but because more details have yet to emerge, Fatemeh is holding off on weighing in. (It's not clear that this was an honor killing, although some media outlets have defined it that way.) Here, I'll defer to Hussein Rashid again, who continues,

I cannot fathom the anger, the rage that would result in a beheading. According to my TV, crimes of passion tend to be the most violent, but a beheading is just such a foreign concept, in any context, that it is inconceivable. Yet it happened. I believed that it would be described as an expression of innate Muslim values, as though only Muslims are capable of such a crime. Although there is no monopoly on violence, there is a discourse that projects violence as being only a Muslim trait. A typical Orientalist fantasy that holds that the "Other" is inherently violent no matter what the reality may be. Thankfully, aside from some of the fringe sites, the media has been responsible in reporting this as a case of domestic violence.

Horrible things are done to women every day, every minute, everywhere, by all kinds of people. It's not as though we are not aware of it violence against women in the Muslim community. We are and we are trying to do something about it. But a moment like this shows how immediate the need is. The reality is that every community suffers from forms of domestic violence. It's not about religion; it's about power and control. We don't know why Aasiya Zubair was slaughtered. We do know that in difficult economic times, men tend to act out more, in an attempt to exercise control. We are seeing an increase in domestic violence issues, and this case is one of a larger pattern, that has nothing to do with religion.

Read the rest here.

Also, you can join the Facebook group In Memory of Aasiya Zubair: A Pledge to End Domestic Violence.

*Trigger Warning*

This is grotesque and sad. And from everything I have read, people seem really fixated on the fact that the perpetrator is a "moderate" Muslim and this is somehow ironic, since clearly he hates women as much as his "sexist, barbaric, uncivilized" Muslim brothers.

But you know what? Let's not get distracted. It doesn't matter who killed her or what religion he is. Sexism, violence against women and hatred for women transcends all culture, religion, creed and ethnicity. Let us resist brash generalizations and focus instead on what this tells us about women and domestic violence that is frequently and unnecessarily deathly.

More on the community site from zp27.

Well, this is good news. After community poster Gexx alerted us on Friday to Amazon's sale of a rape simulation game where not only does the player stalk and rape women, but force them to get an abortion, Amazon has now pulled the game from the site. "We determined that we did not want to be selling this particular item," said a spokesperson for the company.

However (and not surprisingly), the video game company, Illusion, is defending the game's right to exist. Their statement: "We believe there is no problem with the software, which has cleared the domestic ratings of an ethics watchdog body."

I wonder what fucked up, misogynist "watchdog group" that was.

Jay Smooth of Ill Doctrine has a great interview up with Elizabeth Mendez Berry, who wrote a 2005 Vibe magazine article about domestic violence and the hip hop community, Love Hurts. Watch it. Seriously.

Via AP:

Police said Thursday they will investigate death threats against octuplet mom Nadya Suleman and advise her publicist on how to handle a torrent of other nasty messages that have flooded his office.

Word that the 33-year-old single, unemployed mother is receiving public assistance to care for the 14 children she conceived through in vitro fertilization has stoked furor among many people.

Police Lt. John Romero said officers were meeting with Suleman's publicist Mike Furtney about the flood of angry phone calls and e-mail messages against Suleman, her children and Furtney.

"We are aware of the media accounts of the threats, and that they are being sent to the West Los Angeles detectives for appropriate action," Romero said.

Furtney said 500 new e-mails were received early Thursday.

In the meantime, MSNBC ponders "baby addiction - when moms always want a newborn, even at the expense of other children." Sigh.

A few weeks ago a group of what I would call 'Men's rights activists,' in India walked into a bar and physically assaulted all the women patrons that they believed were drinking freely and exhibiting obscene behavior. Because apparently, public beatings of women by hordes of men is polite and decent behavior. Let us resist the urge to suggest that given the cultural climate of India these women shouldn't have been in a bar. Fuck that. They are revolutionaries.

Those outraged by the bar attacks have started a facebook group called, "Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women." For Valentine's Day, they are sending Pramod Mutalik, the head of conservative anti-woman group responsible for the attack, Ram Senaall, up to 500 pairs of pink panties. They are also urging everyone to go a local pub and have a drink on Valentine's Day.

via BBC.

For more info on the Pink Chaddi campaign check here and Ultra Violet has more.

"Excuse me miss?"

You have probably heard about this, but pop-star Chris Brown was arrested Sunday night for allegedly attacking a woman. He is currently out on bail. At first there was speculation as to whether the victim of the attack had been his girlfriend Rihanna. Most newspapers protected her identity as they would any victim of domestic violence. The LA Times decided to run her name as the victim of the crime.

R&B singer Chris Brown has been booked tonight on suspicion of making felony criminal threats in connection with an incident involving his girlfriend, pop singer Rihanna, according to Los Angeles Police Department sources familiar with the case.

Is it OK that they ran her name? Celebrity culture currently thrives on depicting the stories of women's demise. We have seen this with Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears, among others. There is an obsession with making spectacle of women. So, all the more reason to keep her name out of the initial press materials.

On the other hand, Rihanna is really famous and one would hope that she has the resources and support to deal with a situation of domestic violence. She is a model to young women and they are affected by how she responds to this problem. This is a tremendous amount of pressure for anyone, let alone a young woman who is a victim of domestic violence. So it is the double edged sword of fame. She has the power and influence to make a statement, get the help she needs and take whatever legal means she needs to. But what if she doesn't want to? What if she doesn't have the support she needs? There is a strong possibility she will be demonized by the media as well. When the mainstream media covers domestic violence, it is generally not on the side of empowering women, but instead how the legal system victimizes men.

I had a conversation on my facebook about this with some of my friends and one of them said, "what if she doesn't want to be the posterchild for DV?" I think this is an apt point. What if she doesn't want to become the spokesperson for this issue? Is it already not traumatic enough about what happened, let alone have it happen in front of millions of people watching?

I think this so sad for a variety of reasons. Rihanna is a model for young women of color who statistically have a close relationship with violence in their communities and historically a lack of access to resources. Chris Brown is a role model for young men of color. What do we tell our youth when our stars are plagued by the same realities they face in their homes? This startling example lets us know that it doesn't matter how successful you are or how rich you get, you can still be a victim of a violent assault at the hands of a man. I am almost scared to see how this will play out in the media.

via HuffPo.

This is pretty interesting. A Dubai organization combating intimate partner violence created these make up kits with a message. Specifically, each color in the palette represents a different kind of abuse.

The brush in the kit says: "Don't cover up injustice. Speak." Along with City of Hope's hotline number. The kits were given out at shopping malls in Dubai.

I like it.

Via.

Colorado State University Police Chief Dexter Yarbrough was suspended on a litany of charges, like falsifying police documents - but it was this quote that stuck with me:

Yarbrough told students in a class lecture that "women want the dick, even when they say 'no.' They want the dick."

Ah rape culture, enforced by media, education and police alike!

Thanks to Brad for the link.

From the Associated Press:

Police have arrested a Greenfield man for allegedly arranging to sell his 14-year-old daughter into marriage in exchange for $16,000, 100 cases of beer and several cases of meat.

Police said they only learned of the deal after the 36-year-old man went to them to get his daughter back because payment wasn't made as promised. The man was arrested Sunday on suspicion of human trafficking.

What was that again about feminism being unnecessary? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Our gal Courtney has a great piece at TAP on dating violence prevention programs and how they rely on gender stereotypes. Check it out.

Yeah, I had to write the whole thing out, since the news report calls her "beaten" which just doesn't site well with me as a headline or a way to describe someone who has suffered both from domestic violence and then job discrimination.

Let's face it, Hooters is one of my least favorite companies in America. They cater to the lowest common denominator of male arousal via normative white beauty standards and create spaces where women are objectified. They also serve crappy food. And while this story isn't surprising (unfortunately), it is disgusting.

A young women suffered a severe life threatening attack and since the physical signs of the attack were apparent, Hooters said she was not fit to work. The world according to Hooters, this is totally logical right? The world according to common sense, I think this is actually-inhumane.

A waitress was barred from working at the Hooters restaurant in Davenport after a violent physical attack left her bruised and unable to meet company standards for maintaining a "glamorous appearance."

The waitress alleges she was fired after taking time off to recover from the assault. Hooters officials say the waitress abandoned her job, but also say that the woman's bruised body made her temporarily ineligible to work as a "Hooters Girl."

You can read the rest of the story here. (Trigger warning)

A week after I blogged about the the recent case of a lesbian being gang raped right outside of San Francisco, we find that most of the suspects have now been found and arrested.

Two of those in custody are 15 and 16 years old.

It wasn't so long ago that Duanna Johnson was murdered in Memphis. Now, in the same city, Leeneshia Edwards was shot - she is the third transwoman to be shot in Memphis in the last six months.

Renee notes that in the small number of articles that have covered the shooting, all mention Edwards' involvement with prostitution, "as though this somehow justifies the violence that has occurred."

We are given no relevant facts about her life other than that she is a trans woman of colour and that she has been associated with prostitution. Can anyone's life be so minimized in this way. It is as though these aspects alone made up her entire identity. We are meant to think of her as soiled, and beyond redemption. By reporting her attack in this way without explicitly victim blaming the media has reduced her to a two dimensional being; and therefore less likely to illicit any form of empathy or emotion.

Edwards - who was shot in the jaw, side, and back - is in critical condition.

For more information and ways to take action, check out the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition.

It takes a certain je ne sais quoi to unabashedly argue in favor of marital rape. Of course columnist Dennis Prager doesn't call it that. No no, he prefers to use some sort of bizarre high school logic about how ladies who really love their man will "give her body" on demand.

It is an axiom of contemporary marital life that if a wife is not in the mood, she need not have sex with her husband. Here are some arguments why a woman who loves her husband might want to rethink this axiom.

And here I thought the "if you really loved me" argument was only relegated to after-school specials! How wrong I was.

First, women need to recognize how a man understands a wife's refusal to have sex with him: A husband knows that his wife loves him first and foremost by her willingness to give her body to him. This is rarely the case for women. Few women know their husband loves them because he gives her his body (the idea sounds almost funny).

Haha, because the ideas of men's bodies as commodities is ridiculous, of course! Outside of the insulting notion that men only recognize love through sex, Prager also seems to think that sex is simply about women "giving" their bodies to men. (In fact, he writes some variation of the phrase "give your body" or "deprive your body" multiple times in the article.) The idea that sex could be a mutually enjoyable and wanted expression of love is lost on the dude. Which is actually pretty sad.

Prager goes on to write that men are no more than animals, and that "every man who is sexually faithful to his wife already engages in daily heroic self-control." (Seriously.) But don't worry, gals, Prager has a sensitive side:

Of course, there are times when a man must simply refrain from initiating sex out of concern for his wife's physical or emotional condition.

Talk about a keeper!

Yes Means Yes contributor (and long-time Feministing commenter) Thomas actually has a great essay that gets to the heart of what's wrong with Prager's ideas about sex:

We live in a culture where sex is not so much an act as a thing: a substance that can be given, bought, sold, or stolen, that has a value and a supply-and-demand curve. In this "commodity model," sex is like a ticket; women have it and men try to get it.

In this case, Prager seems to believe that men have an inherent right to the whole frigging box office.

Melissa, Jesse and Jeff have more.

Trigger warning

This is pretty devastating. Last Saturday in San Francisco, a lesbian was beaten and repeatedly raped by four men, while the perpetrators "made comments indicating they knew her sexual orientation." They then left the 28-year old naked outside of an abandoned apartment building, who was helped by someone living nearby.

This year has brought an increase in violence against LGBT individuals and a dramatic spike in murders resulting from LGBT hate crimes. And not surprisingly, some folks believe that anti-LGBT legislation such as California's Prop 8 is what is fueling the fire. Avy Skolnik of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) responded:

"Anytime there is an anti-LGBT initiative, we tend to see spikes both in the numbers and the severity of attacks. . . People feel this extra entitlement to act out their prejudice." (Emphasis mine)

The NCVAP is beginning to conduct research in the states that had gay marriage bans on the ballot this year to document the correlation with hate crimes.

Police in Richmond are offering a $10,000 reward to those who could lead them to the attackers. In the meantime, the local rape crisis center has set up a trust fund for her. Just donate in honor of "Jane Doe Richmond."

Trigger Warning

Apparently there's a comic called Rapeman that features a superhero who sexually assaults women who have "wronged" men. Anyone know anything about this craziness?

Thanks to Maddy for the link.

(Potential trigger warning)

Mind you she was resisting a false arrest.

Two officers in Galveston, TX were alerted to three white prostitutes soliciting a man and drug dealer, after which they mistakenly went to 12-year old Dymond Millburn's home, saw her outside in "tight shorts," assumed she was one of the perpetrators (even though she's not the same race as the suspects) and attacked her:

[A] blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, 'You're a prostitute. You're coming with me.'

Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, 'Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.' One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.

The house where they were supposed to be going was two blocks away. And despite the fact that this girl was not only hospitalized with black eyes, throat and ear drum injuries, the police came to her school three weeks later and arrested her for assaulting a public servant.

The case is scheduled for a new trial next month (it was declared a mistrial originally), but her lawyer is confident, saying "I think we'll be okay. I don't think a jury will find a 12-year-old girl guilty who's just sitting outside her house. Any 12-year-old attacked by three men and told that she's a prostitute is going to scream and yell for Daddy and hit back and do whatever she can. She's scared to death."

Two years later, Dymond still suffers nightmares from the attack.

The thought that these officers haven't seemed to even be considered for reprimand after sending this girl to the hospital is unbelievable. Is it okay because they thought she was a prostitute and, you know, police brutality is okay against prostitutes? Or is it okay because she's black? This makes me fucking sick to my stomach.

Honey, I only hit you because I love fetuses!

Garth George, columnist for The New Zealand Herald, says that the main cause of violence against women is abortion. That and equality - but I'll get to that in a second.

I have said it before and I say it again: The number one cause of abuse against women and children is abortion.

George's argument is basically that by having abortions, women have opened the door to violence, that we "reap what we have sown." Charming. But it's not long before George's real gripe come to light - it's not just women's reproductive rights that irks him, it's the fact that women have rights at all.

The second major cause of violence against women and children is the belief held by too many women that they should not just be equal to men but, in all but physical appurtenances, are the same.

...The assumption by so many women of the roles traditionally exclusive to men has left many men in confusion, frustration and anxiety, and more are lashing out because they feel their maleness is under threat.

What's funny is that I actually don't doubt that there's some truth to that - it's called backlash, motherfucker. But you have to love that George writes this as if violence is a reasonable response to women's social and political gains.

If you're feeling feisty, you can email George here.

Thought this was interesting...I had never thought about the money/business angle concerning FGM.

Women in playing dead for photography and fashion purposes might be considered high art or cutting edge marketing, but it is usually just a tacky excuse for sexist art and the reason it is considered avant garde is because it is offensive. That type of art annoys me.

**This images are not safe for work and are potentially triggering.**

Exotified images of women of color being tortured and images put together to play to the fantasy of "savage" with sexual overtones is actually just deeply disturbing. I am well aware that you can't curtail someone's fantasies, but I argue you sure as hell can analyze them. Women's bodies placed in native and indigenous seeming contexts where they are being dragged and eluding to torture or essentially comparing their bodies to animals to be hunted is a shocking display of colonial misogyny and woman hate. This calendar should be protested.

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Many of us are working to eliminate violence against women on a daily basis and we should be, but let's take today to really let it be heard, that we take a stand against violence and we will work to make a better world for women. According to the UNFPA,

Around the world, as many as one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or abused in some other way - most often by someone she knows, including by her husband or another male family member; one woman in four has been abused during pregnancy.

Violence against women crosses sectors, racial barriers, ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, size, ability, class and impedes a quality life for all types of women. It is a serious human rights issue. So let us commit again to eliminate violence against women and to let others know about it as well.

I was glad to see that the New York Times is continuing their important coverage of veteran issues, especially when it comes to violence stateside. Sunday they ran a story about the Army's major domestic violence problem.

This piece continued their commitment to reporting on the ways in which veterans' families have born the brunt of much of their PTSD problems. In February, they gave a deep and broad view of the emotional and physical violence characterizing so many families lives when a loved one returns from war. Prior to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon had committed to revamping the military response to domestic violence (there has been a rash of "wife-killings" that prompted response). But as task force members told reporters, the huge surge in violence both overseas and upon returning home, has complicated their efforts.

Complications are inevitable, but there is simply no excuse for not providing veterans' and their families the counseling they need. For example, USA Today reported last week that there are currently one drug counselor for every 3,100 soldiers; this at a time when the soldiers seeking help has skyrocketed by 25% in the last five years.

I think the Pentagon could learn a lot from feminists. When will the government commit to an intersectional analysis of what veterans and their families are experiencing, both in war and after? Violence, addiction, rape and sexual assault, suicide, PTSD etc. are all intimately connected afflictions. We have a moral obligation to bring this kind of sophisticated analysis to veterans' healing.

For more, check out my column from yesterday over at TAP on veteran's affairs and Michelle Obama.

Today is the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, when we stop and take note of the fact that transgender people are murdered at 10 times the rate of everyone else. And, as queenemily says, "Many of the dead lost their lives because they were trans women of colour, doubly disposable."

Please take a moment to read about the people we memorialize today.

At least thirty people, most of them women, were killed this year because of who they are, because of their gender. Cara points out that four of the people on this list were killed in the past 20 days alone. Writes Mercedes Allen at Bilerico:

What's more chilling is what those numbers don't include. That number doesn't include the unknown numbers of transfolk killed alongside gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in the ethnic cleansing that has been taking place in Iraq (Activist Peter Tatchell estimates the total number of GLBT casualties at around 300 people targeted by religious extremists since the war began). Bordering Iran, where a GRS-or-die policy has become a horrific distortion of the medical model and has caused many gay and lesbian persons to forcibly transition, Iraq may have a higher-than-usual trans (by birth or legally mandated) population.

But remembering these people and reflecting on their lives should not be a quiet process, as queenemily writes:

Few will respect our lives as they were, and few will mourn them, and they must be mourned. Their lives were meaningful, their names and genders were real and important, and they lost their lives from hate.

Today we hold on to some memory, even if it only be a name and a photo, so that they are not as erased as completely as their killers would have.

Because the medical people treating them will have tried to erase them. The media. The police. The juries. Will try to excuse, to render less than real, the lives that have been lost. Because who would mourn? Who would bother?

We would. And we do. Today, when we say their names and remember them -- as individuals and as people, not "its" -- we reject that erasure.

Kellie Telesford. Brian McGlothin. Gabriela Alejandra Albornoz. Patrick Murphy. Stacy Brown. Adolphus Simmons. Fedra. Sanesha Stewart. Lawrence King. Simmie Williams Jr. Luna. Lloyd Nixon. Felicia Melton-Smyth. Silvana Berisha. Ebony Whitaker. Rosa Pazos. Juan Carlos Aucalle Coronel. Angie Zapata. Jaylynn L. Namauu. Samantha Rangel Brandau. Nikki Williams. Ruby Molina. Aimee Wilcoxson. Duanna Johnson. Dilek Ince. Ali. And two other Iraqi transgender women.

Again, I have to quote queenemily:

And yes, today we remember those of us still living-our fear, the fear that lives at the heart of every trans person, that someone will know that we are trans, and will kill us for it. Today we remember all the other times we murmured "oh fuck" as we read the news. Today we discover the deaths we missed, because we couldn't bear hearing about them anymore for awhile, even though we must. We must.

This Italian ad reads:

Who pays for man's sins? Only four per cent of women who suffer sexual violence report their assailants.

The poster is part of the national Telefono Donna rape helpline to help raise awareness for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25th. It seems a bunch of male politicians are up in arms about it - what do you think?

Via.

I'm going to echo Kate's sentiments and ask Helen Mirren - for the love of all things good - to stop talking about rape.

Back in September the actress said in an interview that she didn't think that women should bring date rape cases to court and now she's said that female jurors on rape cases are "sexually jealous" of the victims. Seriously.

"Whether in a deep-seated animalistic way, going back billions of years, or from a sense of tribal jealousy or just antagonism, I don't know.

...But other women on a rape case would say she was asking for it. The only reason I can think of is that they're sexually jealous."

I'm speechless.

One in three Australian boys thinks that it's okay to hit girls; one in seven think "it's OK to make a girl have sex with you if she was flirting."

Via Feministe.

Last June, Duanna Johnson was brutally beaten by Memphis police - and it was caught on video.

Johnson was in the booking area at the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center when she was hit repeatedly in the face and head by a police officer while another held her down.

"Actually he was trying to get me to come over to where he was, and I responded by telling him that wasn't my name - that my mother didn't name me a 'faggot' or a 'he-she,' so he got upset and approached me. And that's when it started," Johnson said.

This week, Johnson was murdered. Helen at My Husband Betty brings us the tragic story:

She was shot execution style while on her "usual corner."

I'm tired of this.

I want there to be no reason for the Transgender Day of Remembrance. I want there to be no new names on that goddamn list.

I hope her mother, and her family, and her friends, find peace, and that she has too.

Johnson was suing the city for $1.3 million over the June assault, so something tells me they're not exactly going to give Johnson's case top priority.

Pam has more, including a statement from the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition.

This seems too insane to be real. (Click here for larger image)

Via copyranter, we find this old ad for Heinz soup that starts with:

"The things women have to put up with. Most husbands, nowadays, have stopped beating their wives, but what can be more agonizing to a sensitive soul than a man's boredom at meals. Yet, lady, there must be a reason. If your cooking and not your conversation is monotonous, that's easily fixed."

Just cook up some nice soup for your man to keep him preoccupied, because you wouldn't want to make him bored, would you, lady??

Totally. Speechless.

Dahlia Lithwick at the XX Factor highlights the assholedom that is Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who thinks violence against women is "not that serious an offense."

Yesterday the Supreme Court heard a case about the reach of the Federal Gun Control Act and whether it includes someone convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence.

...Courtesy of the LA Times' David Savage, here's a report of oral argument, which evidently went poorly for the proponents of disarming wife beaters. Of note in the transcript is the following exchange between Justice Antonin Scalia and Nicole Saharsky, the Justice Department lawyer arguing for the stricter interpretation of the law.

JUSTICE SCALIA: And this was misdemeanor assault and battery, wasn't it?

MS. SAHARSKY: Yes, that's right. I mean, I really--

JUSTICE SCALIA: So it's not that serious an offense. That's why we call it a misdemeanor.

MS. SAHARSKY: Well, I mean, certainly the offense is this particular case was serious. The charging document reflects that Respondent hit his wife all around the face until it swelled out, kicked her all around her body, kicked here in the ribs--

JUSTICE SCALIA: Then he should have been charged with a felony, but he wasn't. He was charged with a misdemeanor.

Wow. Nothing quite like dismissive nastiness when it comes to beating up women!

This is just so unbelievably disturbing. A new Japanese augmented reality (AR) software program features a "virtual girlfriend" that literally allows you to hit her with a paddle her until she cries.

All she seems to do is sweep the floor until you undress and paddle her until she cries herself into a fetal position, in which then you give her a teddy bear so she'll become happy again.

(Possible trigger warning)

This isn't a virtual girlfriend at all; this is a virtual torture victim.

h/t to reader Trish

My best friend who lives in Oakland, CA called me over the weekend because her neighbor was violently murdered by an ex and stalker whom she had a restraining order against. Everyone knew he was crazy, she had kicked him to the curb, she had done everything within her legal right to stop him from coming near her.

Elnora Caldwell was always clear about what she wanted. And after a turbulent marriage, she wanted nothing to do with Robert Woods. The 46-year-old Oakland woman, a Nordstrom employee in downtown San Francisco known for her impeccable appearance, served Woods with divorce papers several weeks ago, relatives said, and filed for a restraining order. She told her landlord, "I kicked him to the curb."

But police said Woods, a burly weight lifter who once worked for the city of Oakland, did not leave his estranged wife alone.

Woods fatally stabbed her Saturday evening in his black pickup and pushed her out on a road just off Highway 24 near the Orinda side of the Caldecott Tunnel in front of stunned motorists, authorities said.

But see the problem is a restraining order doesn't restrain someone who is psychotic, obsessed or just hates women which is usually at the root of most violence against women. Perhaps if the abusive person is a rational human being, than maybe it would work, but how many abusive people that are capable of taking someone's life are rational?

A quarter of women experience domestic violence and the murder of women via intimate partner violence and homicide is the fourth leading cause of death for women of childbearing age and 1/3 of women murdered are by intimate partners. Yet all of the resources that are available to us do not effectively solve the problem, nor do they save lives. Where were the cops? Why was he not being patrolled or why was he not forced to relocate? Or why was he not put in rehabilitative services, counseling, anything? What does it take to take that kind of action? He has to kill her first?

Sorry to sound so frustrated, but when I had to leave my apt for a stalking incident I too was told that the only recourse I had for a man that lived under me and could get to my front door at any time of day or night, was to file a restraining order. I don't think a piece of paper will actually stop a mentally ill person that hates women from doing what he is planning on doing. That is not how it works.

It is stories like this where theory meets action and I feel so at a loss for how to move forward or what words of solace to even offer. I don't support the heavy policing of communities of color, I don't support increased rates of incarceration and I support rehabilitation for all kinds of offenders, however, given the current conditions of the prison industrial complex, it is difficult to see any of that theory in action. Without policy based support for alternatives to rehabilitation for people committing domestic partner violence, what hope do we have?

My condolences to the family of Elnora Caldwell and the community surrounding her. Our thoughts are with you.

Update: They are considering the death penalty for the murderer.

This web video from the Obama campaign highlights the importance of the Violence Against Women Act (and, of course, Joe Biden's role in its passage):

(Trigger warning.)

Related:
Quick Hit: Biden and VAWA
Meet Joe Biden

Jessica Lenahan (formerly Gonzales)

We've written before about Castle Rock v. Gonzales, a 2005 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that local police departments are not responsible for enforcing restraining orders. Well, the plaintiff in that case, Jessica Lenahan (formerly Gonzales) is taking her case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights this week.

Here is a post from her on what the hearing is all about:

My name is Jessica Lenahan and I am a survivor of domestic violence. On Wednesday I will make my second appearance before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, DC. The IACHR is responsible for promoting and protecting human rights throughout the Americas. I turned to the IACHR three years ago because the justice system in the United States abandoned me.

In June 1999, my estranged husband, Simon Gonzales, abducted my three young daughters in violation of a domestic violence restraining order I had obtained against him three weeks before. I repeatedly contacted and pleaded with the Castle Rock Police for assistance, but they refused to act. Late that night, Simon arrived at the police station and opened fire. He was killed and the bodies of my three girls were found murdered in the cab of his truck.

I don't care if you call it domestic violence or intimate partner violence - but stop calling it a Facebook crime, or a MySpace murder. It has nothing to do with social networking and everything to do with violence against women.

Take this latest story from the BBC:

A man has been jailed for life for stabbing his wife to death over a posting she made on the social networking site Facebook.

Wayne Forrester, 34, told police he was devastated that his wife Emma, also 34, had changed her online profile to "single" days after he had moved out.

Forrester did not murder his wife because of her Facebook status, he murdered her because he was an abuser.

The couple, who had been together for 15 years, had a "volatile" marriage, jurors were told.

But talking about "volatile" marriages (you know, abusive relationships) isn't as trendy as talking about Facebook. I'm so incredibly sick of all of these stories coming out about women being killed by their partners and not hearing the words "domestic violence" once. Not once. Please, all, hold media accountable. When you see a story like this one, write a letter to the editor and tell them how important it is to call out violence against women for what it is.

Possibly triggering

This story from Canada is just peachy:

Told by a judge she should have 'walked out' of an abusive relationship and never to call police if she goes back to her former partner, a London woman has complained to Ontario's judicial watchdog.

Melodie White said she felt 'embarrassed and humiliated' by Justice Gregory Pockele, who heard the case in a domestic violence court last summer.

White has requested that the Ontario Judicial Council discipline the judge by "re-victimizing" and endangering her by telling her to not call the police if she goes back to her partner. This was all in front of the abusive ex-boyfriend, by the way. "It was supposed to be about (the accused) being violent to me and the police felt it was serious enough to lay four charges. But it turned out to be about me," said White.

And he dismissed the charges. He also told her that women today were not "not weak and disadvantaged" and she should have been gone "in a flash."

Megan Walker, head of the London Abused Women's Centre, responded, "Suddenly, he's saying women are able to walk out the doors into the sunset. He is closing his eyes to the number of women who have been killed trying to walk out the door."

h/t to Rory.

Trigger Warning

I'm way late to this, but I thought it was worth posting anyway. A woman has brought a lawsuit against against NYC's Metropolitan Transportation Authority after she was raped on a train platform three years ago and no one helped her.

And the victim, now 25, told the Daily News this weekend that she forgives her attacker ("I know he was sick in the head"), but not the token booth clerk clerk at the 21st Street station, "I can't forgive those five seconds when I stared into his eyes, screaming for help, imploring him with my tears and all I got back was a cold stare."

The victim's suit, filed two years ago, claims the MTA is negligent for not properly training its subway workers as well as lacking the proper communication tools between a booth and the platform below. As the woman, now 25, was being attacked, she says not only did the token booth clerk see her yet stay in his booth, but another conductor whose train entered during the attack saw her being assaulted and allowed his train to leave the station. The only action taken by both the clerk and the conductor respectively was to call into their command center for further help.

Apparently token booth clerks are not supposed to leave their booths, but I have a hard time believing he couldn't have done anything.

When asked in a pre-trial deposition why he didn't try to at least scare away the attacker by informing him that police were on their way, he said, "I did not even think about it." He says that when the woman was taken out of his view to the platform for the ten minutes that followed, he did "nothing really. I was just waiting for the police."

This absolutely terrifies me to my core.

Family Guy, which I must admit I enjoy, seems to have a thing for rape jokes. And I'm getting sick of it.

The most recent episode, I Dream of Jesus, featured this conversation with Peter and a waiter (Peter is trying to get the waiter to give him a jukebox record he likes):

Peter: Can I have that record? I love that song. I'll let you have sex with my daughter...

Waiter: I don't know...let's see what your daughter looks like.

P: She's...uhh...(pans past Meg to "hot" girl)...right there!

W: Ok, I'll do her. But can you tell her to cry and beg me to stop?

P: I think that can be arranged.

And this isn't the first time the show has made light of violence against women. Usually, I'd consider Family Guy one of my (Un)Feminist guilty pleasures, but I think I have to cut the show off completely. Sigh.

Thanks to Caitlin for the heads up.

Bad: Telling a joke about Sarah Palin being "gang-raped by my big black brothers."

Worse: Telling said joke at a women's shelter.

You've gotta love Planned Parenthood Action Fund! (For other ads, check out their YouTube channel.)

Transcript is after the jump.

Back in May, Postville, Iowa -- a small town not far from where I grew up -- was the site of the largest immigration raid in U.S. history. Nearly 400 undocumented workers were rounded up and detained. Today, 28 women remain in custody as they apply for political asylum and special visas for victims of violence (many have suffered sexual assault and/or sexual harassment).

New America Media has video interviews with two of the women who are fighting deportation, María Laura Gómez and Maricruz Rodríguez. (I can't figure out how to embed the vid, so you'll have to click here to watch.)

In Rodríguez's case, she's applying for political asylum, seeking protection from her alcoholic, abusive ex-husband, who she immigrated with but separated from nearly three years ago, completing her divorce earlier this year. Because Mexican authorities have proven woefully inadequate in protecting domestic abuse victims, she can apply for asylum under U.S. law as a "member of a particular social group" that a foreign government isn't able to adequately shield from persecution, says Rachel Yamamoto, an Omaha attorney.

"From what she's told me, the husband would follow her back to Mexico," Yamamoto says, "and she's terrified. You can't go to the police, the police won't help in Mexico."

Other women are applying for a "U-visa," which allows victims of violence to remain in the U.S. while their cases are investigated. But according to Legal Momentum's Immigrant Women Program (which does great work), there's a catch:

A couple of my friends found this offensive, but I think it's a hilarious way to shed light on the fucked-up-ness of Palin's involvement in charging victims of sexual assault for their own rape kits.

What do you think?

For a woman to be a high ranking police chief in Afghanistan is in fact a profound statement and considerable gain for women. So it is a statement that the Taliban assassinated one of the top female police officers in the country. An anti-woman statement.

The police officer, Malalai Kakar, who was in her mid-40s with six children, was an iconic figure among women's groups in Afghanistan and abroad. Often profiled in the Afghan and foreign news media, she was one of the leading totems for the wider freedoms gained by women when the Taliban, with their repressive policies toward women, were ousted from power by an American-led coalition in 2001.

From Gothamist:

The Health Department issued a report about "Intimate Partner Violence" in NYC, and, between 2003 and 2005, 44% of all women murdered were killed by intimate partners. The Health Department also noted that domestic violence also accounted for nearly 4,000 visits to the ER.

Those most at risk appear to be women in their 20s, black women, and women in low-income areas.

Say it isn't so, Helen!

In a recent interview, actor Helen Mirren talked about being raped and, shockingly, why she doesn't think women should bring date rape cases to court.

She told GQ: "I was [date-raped], yes. A couple of times.

"Not with excessive violence, or being hit, but rather being locked in a room and made to have sex against my will."

Dame Helen said it was rape if a couple engaged in sexual activity but the woman said "no" at the last second.

However, she said: "I don't think she can have that man into court under those circumstances."

Mirren said that she didn't report her own rape because "you couldn't do that in those days."

I feel terrible for Mirren, but I think her comments are really damaging. Jess at the f-word puts it best: "In reality, in this country, right now, men can rape with impunity. And in this country, right now, rapists are getting away with it because of woman-blaming attitudes."

Because fighting domestic violence makes one so unelectable. Via Barefoot and Progressive:

Exxon Eddie Whitfield's surrogate has just posted a clip of his opponent in KY's 1st congressional district race, Heather Ryan, performing a short piece from the Vagina Monologues earlier this year, which raised money for the Merriman House in Paducah for battered women. In it, he asks "Is this what we want to represent the first district of Kentucky?"

Uhhhh.... YES.

Violence, shmiolence - this woman is in a show about vaginas, people!! Sigh, how moronic. (Albeit not surprising.)

Trigger warning : This is very upsetting. At the convention, a CodePink protester was knocked down by a policeman saying (you can hear him in the video): "Back it up, bitch."

You can always count on The New York Post to bring you the bottom-of-the-barrel headlines.

And this one is no exception.

38 year-old Elizabeth Acevedo, a human being, was murdered in Brooklyn after someone hit her in the head. The police are still looking for a suspect.

Renee at Womanist Musings has more.

Via Ren at Feministe.

A reader sent in this story of a woman who intervened when she saw a girl getting physically abused, and I thought it brought up a lot of interesting questions about when to get involved.

I was waiting for my bus up to Ye Olde Transit Centre early this morning, and I noticed a young couple scuffling outside the Youth Employment Centre near my bus stop. They were older teenagers - the boy was 17 or 18, and the girl looked to be about 16. She was crying and yelling something at the boy, and suddenly they started pushing and shoving.

She took a swing and he grabbed her hand (he was easily 6' and she must have been 5'2 and about 100lbs) and he threw her up against the building and grabbed her throat. I was alone at the stop and reacted instinctively: I pushed my way between them and told the boy to back off. Predictably he started screaming at me to "stay out of his business" but I ignored him and worked on leading the girl away. She kept sobbing in apology, and flinched when the boy tried to grab her hand. The boy kept yelling at me to "stay out of it" and I told him that he if was going to assault his girlfriend on a public street than it damn well was my business, and that if he didn't back off and move away I was going to call the police.

...He muttered, "Fucking feminist bitch!" and moved away up the street.

Telling that he called her a feminist as a pejorative, but I digress. I've often seen things in public spaces that I found upsetting and/or well, criminal, and I've spoken up when I've felt safe. But how can we gauge safety, or if other women want us to get involved?

I'm reminded of two stories...

A women's studies professor I had as an undergrad told my class about how her sister was in an abusive relationship - his battering her was so loud that the neighbors called often the police. However, the police generally made things worse: Not just because they didn't arrest her boyfriend and treated her as if she was the criminal - not believing her, asking if she had attacked him - but also because once they left, she was beaten even worse. My prof went on to say that from then on whenever she saw or heard a woman being abused, she asked if the woman would like her to call the police - assuming that she knew what was best for her own situation.

Clearly, they're just ASKING to be raped.

Here at Feministing, we've seen our fair share of victim-blaming articles. But this one takes the asshole, rape-apologist cake.

Trigger Warning

Peter Hitchens (yes, they're related) writes that a rape victim that was drunk "deserves less sympathy."

Wait, it gets worse. As Melissa at Shakesville points out, Hitchens makes flat out false statements like "women who get drunk are more likely to be raped than women who do not get drunk," and that rape is "the inevitable result of the collapse of sexual morality." (You know, because rape never happened before free love, per-marital sex, feminism, etc)

But here's the real kicker:

Of course she is culpable, just as she would be culpable if she crashed a car and injured someone while drunk, or stepped out into the traffic while drunk and was run over.

Getting drunk is not something that happens to you. It is something you do.

Melissa's response:

At this point, as you can see, Hitchens has totally lost the plot. Indeed, "getting drunk" is not something that happens to you--but getting raped is. Comparing getting behind the wheel of a car and getting held down and forcibly penetrated without consent is patently ludicrous, not to mention about as divorced from the actual experience of being raped as I can imagine. Essentially, Hitchens' argument is that women should be responsible for their choices, without ever acknowledging that rape isn't a fucking choice.

Hitchens can't seem to get his head around the idea that rapists rape women, rather than women magically "getting themselves" raped. There's so much more to say, but really, it's impossible to unpack all of the idiocy in this article (including the charming accompanying art above). So I'll leave that you, lovely readers, in comments