The Two Commandments.

Don Ardell, Palace blogger and fellow godless heathen, sent this to me this morning.

[Charlton Heston as Moses holding two stone tablets: one reads “BE COOL” and the other “DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE.”]

Don was of course very wise to bring this to my urgent attention: because I am a world-renowned expert in moral philosophy, I instantly recognized that the proposed Two Commandments needed a tweak or two.  Here are my edits:

“1.  Be good.  And don’t confuse niceness for goodness.”
“2.  Don’t be an asshole.  But if you are going to be an asshole, only use your asshole powers for good (see #1).”

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The Freedom From Religion Foundation is constantly battling public schools that insist on displaying the biblical ten commandments, about which Christians so love to crow.  In a brilliant essay entitled “What’s Wrong With the Ten Commandments?” from her 1983 book Lead Us Not Into Penn Station, FFRF founder and president emerita Anne Nicol Gaylor explains exactly what is wrong with them.  Unfortunately, her essay offers no insight into what is wrong with god-besotted public school principals and community school boards who do not care one whit that displaying sectarian crap on public school property is a constitutional violation.  (We have our own hypothesis about that.)

Perhaps the biggest failing of the commandments is what they don’t say, rather than what they do.  As Gaylor points out regarding the seventh commandment:

Adultery, it must be remembered, involves an act between consenting adults. Should it really rate in the Christian’s “Big Ten?” How much more relevant and valuable it would be to have, for instance, a commandment that forbids the violent crimes of rape and incest.

Sure, it would be relevant and valuable. But on the other hand it would directly contradict the god character’s enthusiastic endorsements of rape and incest elsewhere in the novel.  Kind of like how the sixth commandment “Thou shalt not kill” is really more the exception than the rule, as the villain in the story, “Lord,” repeatedly commands his chosen people to march around to village after village in the Middle East and mercilessly slaughter every man, woman, child and non-human animal.  (Except for female hotties, of course.  Those they get to capture and keep as wives, after raping them.  Duh!)

But the commandment that really turns my stomach — and the one that should instantly banish all thought of holding them up as a moral guide or letting schoolchildren be anywhere near them — is the tenth:

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” (Exodus 20:17 RSV)

So, a man’s wife is lumped into a list of his personal property including his farm animals, right there between his house and his slave.  It’s all his stuff, to do with whatever he damn well pleases.

In 1976 Nebraska, of all places, became the first U.S. state to abolish the “marital rape exemption,” which prior to that had been the law of the land.  The exemption codified that a spouse exists in a state of perpetual consent to sexual intercourse, and therefore cannot possibly be raped:

The so-called “marital rape exemption” has been embedded in the sexual assault laws of our country since its founding. In its most drastic form, the exemption means that a husband, by definition, cannot legally rape his wife. The theory goes that by accepting the marital contract, a woman has tacitly consented to sexual intercourse any time her husband demands it.

The concept dates back to 18th century common law, and was articulated by English jurist Matthew Hale as follows: “The husband cannot be guilty of rape . . . for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract, the wife [has] given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract.”

Over 200 years later, American lawmakers were not ready to do away with the marital rape exemption, as shown by the Model Penal Code. Drafted in the 1950s, the code states that: “Marriage . . . while not amounting to a legal waiver of the woman’s right to say ‘no,’ does imply a kind of generalized consent that distinguishes some versions of the crime of rape from parallel behavior by a husband. . . . Retaining the spousal exclusion avoids this unwarranted intrusion of the penal law into the life of the family.”

North Carolina became the last state to jettison the marital rape exemption from its penal code, all the way back in 1993.  Until then, a person could not be convicted of rape “if the victim is the person’s legal spouse at the time of the commission of the alleged rape.”

Why on earth would victims rights advocates, lawyers and politicians need to work so tirelessly for so many years to finally get marital rape exemptions revoked across country?  I mean, I know they were up against the powerful rapist rights lobby and everything, but where would anyone ever get such a repugnant idea about women in the first place?  From the fucking tenth commandment, that’s where.

Here’s a little story.  Once upon a time…

(WOMENSENEWS)–The scars on Regan Martin’s wrists are a painful reminder of a past filled with violence and fear. While handcuffed behind her back, Martin’s husband brutally beat and raped her, leaving her bloody, bruised and severely injured on the floor of their Crete, Ill., home.

The 2005 incident began, police reports say, after Martin refused to have sex with her husband John Samolis.

Sadly, Martin’s story is not uncommon among American women. Studies indicate that between 15 and 25 percent of all married women have been victims of spousal rape and some scholars suggest that this type of rape is the most common form in our society.

…

Evidently, Regan Martin’s husband believed that spousal rape should not be considered a crime at all. He exhibited a commonly held assumption among perpetrators of the crime: that husbands have property rights in their wives’ bodies.

“He thought he had every right to do what he was doing because he was her husband,” Cherry Simpson, Regan Martin’s mother, told Women’s eNews.

Regan Martin’s husband was offered a plea bargain to plead guilty to the lesser crime of aggravated domestic violence in return for the DA dropping rape and unlawful restraint charges.  He served 19 months in prison on the aggravated domestic violence charge.

Rape convictions are vanishingly rare:

54% of rapes/sexual assaults are not reported to the police, according to a statistical average of the past 5 years. Those rapists, of course, never spend a day in prison. Factoring in unreported rapes, only about 3% of rapists ever serve a day in jail.

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References

1. Justice Department, National Crime Victimization Survey: 2006-2010
2. FBI, Uniform Crime Reports: 2006-2010
3. National Center for Policy Analysis, Crime and Punishment in America, 1999
4. Department of Justice, Felony Defendents in Large Urban Counties: average of 2002-2006

Rapists:  Christianity is your friend.

Christians:  that is some telling company you keep.  Also, your god is a cruel, sick creep and your holy book is a rapist’s manifesto.

And anyone who proffers the ten commandments as a moral guide really should not have access to U.S. schoolchildren.

The Slut Vote.

[Cross-posted at The Political Junkies for Progressive Democracy.]

Much hay has been made, both before and after the recent election, about the right’s “War on Women.”  If conservative policies with respect to abortion and birth control were not so deadly the whole thing could have been scripted as a comic farce set in the 12th century, the era to which conservatives apparently long for civilization to return.

There was Rush Limbaugh calling college student Sandra Fluke a slut for advancing the outrageous idea that oral contraception is basic health care.  In a tour de force of delusionary ranting entirely untethered from reality, Limbaugh said:

What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex. What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.

How is it possible for a man who has been married four times and has no children to hold the incomprehensibly ignorant notion that birth control pills are taken each time one engages in heterosexual intercourse?  Sandra Fluke’s congressional testimony, of course, only concerned her friend who requires oral contraception strictly for medical reasons, but was denied coverage by those compassionate Christians who run the Catholic university of Georgetown.  But never mind those pesky facts.  The next day Limbaugh doubled down:

So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you post the videos online so we can all watch.

As it turned out, Rush Limbaugh had nothing against sluts after all — provided they were willing to service his infantile sexual pathology.

99% of American women of reproductive age who have had sex have used birth control.  The figure is 98% for Catholic women.  Gosh, that sure seems like a whole lot of sluts.

Then there were the mandatory rape laws enacted in several states, requiring that medically unnecessary trans-vaginal ultrasounds be performed upon women before abortions.  (Virginia State Senator Janet Howell proposed an amendment to such a law that would have required men seeking erectile dysfunction medication to first have a medically unnecessary rectal exam.  Strangely, her amendment failed.)  The state of Arizona enacted a law whereby a doctor can now lie to a pregnant woman about serious fetal abnormalities in order to prevent her from terminating, and not be sued for the unconscionable devastation that results.

There was the hideous parade of Republican rape apologists running for office: Rick “accept what God has given to you” Santorum; Todd “legitimate rape” Akin; John “uh, the rape thing…how does it make it better by killing a child?” Koster; Joe “there is no such exception as life of the mother” Walsh; and Richard “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen” Mourdock.

But the uproar over the no-copay birth control mandate in the Affordable Care Act really put the right’s derangement on vivid display for all to see.  One poor fellow from The Christian Men’s Defense Network (?!) had this to say in the wake of Romney’s loss:

Democrats tried to make this election about a single issue:

The right to slut.

Or more precisely, the right to slut without the responsibility of consequences.  The famous “gender gap” isn’t really a gap based on gender.  The right overwhelmingly wins older and married women.  The “gender gap” should more accurately be called the slut vote.

Okay, then.  The slut vote it is.  If by “slut” we mean “sexually active woman responsibly preventing pregnancy,” I and at least 98% of American women will be quite happy to embrace the label.  All those “older and married women” on the right?  Sluts, the lot of ‘em.  As a matter of fact, it’s a pretty safe bet that all of these guys’ wives are sluts, too.  Well, all of them except for Karen Santorum.  She has given birth to eight children.

Anyway, this whole War on Women thing?  Even if you are not a Vagina-American — i.e., a slut — you still might want to pay attention.  This has not been happening in a vacuum:  it is part of the larger conservative war on Social Security.  Unions.  The environment.  Education.  Food and water.  Immigrants.  Cancer patients.  Muslims.  The poor.  Gay and trans people.  The oceans.  Palestinians.  The middle class.  Black people.  Brown people.  The young.  The elderly.  The disabled.  Science.  The Earth.  The godless.  History.

For it seems that to whatever extent conservative policy is unleashed in one arena, it invariably inflicts its many miseries in other areas, too.  As go women’s reproductive rights, so go civil rights, and ultimately human rights.  And let us not overstate the enlightened liberalism of the Democratic Party on these issues, either.  Both parties have drifted rightward over the years and there are plenty of Democrats who are conservative, not just on reproductive rights but on a whole host of social and fiscal issues.  Those who would posit that Democrats in general or Barack Obama in particular have been unrelenting champions of reproductive rights will need to explain the administration’s overruling of FDA scientists on over-the-counter access to Plan B contraceptives, and the party’s cynical strategy of raising funds on the pretext of “holding Republicans accountable” for viciously misogynist legislation when those funds would be put to use reelecting Democrats who voted for exactly the same bills.

In fact, I think it’s probably fair to say that it was the right asserting their long-held, backward views with such unapologetic brio that benefited the Democrats in the election more than anything that they actively did on these issues themselves.  It came in the form of the slut voter backlash against the right’s medieval views of women.  In light of this, the Democrats would be wise to do some serious housecleaning.  They can stop promoting and supporting anti-choice candidates like Senators Harry Reid and Bob Casey, and start actively pushing forward on reproductive rights instead of compromising with the enemies of women — who are, not coincidentally, the enemies of humanity.

We sluts are paying attention.  There are a whole lot of us.  And we vote.

Uh-oh. SIWOMB.

Someone Is Wrong On My Blog!

PLEASE don’t say there isn’t much difference between the two candidates. That’s just nonsense.

There isn’t much difference between the two candidates.

I believe I have made my case, so that is exactly what I will say (even if you tell me very nicely not to).  Note that I have never asserted that there is no difference between Obama and Romney.  I have said — and this is thrice now — that our current president is “a Wall Street-serving corporatist, a radical and lawless executive, and an unrepentant, murderous warmonger very much like his predecessor.”

Maybe none of that bothers you very much.  Or maybe you are under the mistaken impression that my statement isn’t true.  You are of course under no obligation to agree with me.  But if your argument boils down to “Nuh-uh!” and you provide neither evidence nor argument that Barack Obama is not, in fact, “a Wall Street-serving corporatist, a radical and lawless executive, and an unrepentant, murderous warmonger very much like his predecessor” (that’s four!) then naturally I will remain unpersuaded.  I’m not being glib here;  this is important to me, because I would very much like to be wrong about him.  But I fear that I am not.

I’m sure you’re resting easy knowing Obama has already appointed two women to the SCOTUS and will appoint between 1 and 3 more SCOTUS justices who WON’T overturn Roe V. Wade.

I’m not resting easy for one second.  Roe v. Wade is and always will be under constant assault, especially at the state level.  However, if (when?) Roe falls, abortion law would immediately revert back to the domain of the states: they would be free to restrict it, or, at least theoretically, to enact expanded access.  This scenario is pretty much what we have right now.  For all practical purposes, TRAP laws, waiting periods and the defunding of women’s health care in Red states have made access to legal abortion impossible for many thousands of women.  This is happening with Roe still in place, rendering it all but symbolic at best.

I have acknowledged that Supreme Court appointments is an issue on which Obama is better than Romney.  And I am of course pleased to see three women on the high court.  But women are not magically immune from CPD.  Sotomayor in particular was an excellent choice:  an actual liberal with no apparent symptoms of Conservative Personality Disorder.  Kagan replacing Stevens has actually moved the court to the right, albeit only slightly.  Personally, I would rather see a liberal male appointed than a slightly conservative female.  YMMV.  Here’s my point:  if Romney had appointed a wingnut or three the appointment(s) would still have to get by the Senate, which in case you haven’t noticed is home to a lot of conservative Democrats including anti-choicer-in-chief Harry Reid.  The problem isn’t the wingnuts, who will always be clambering for power.  It’s the Democrats who enable them, especially the conservative Democrats who agree with them.  They are the targets of my scorn, and justifiably so.  If you can think of any way to stop them other than voting them out of office — even at the cost of a Republican winning the seat — I’m all ears.  If you cannot, and remain unwilling to support this course of action, you can expect to see both parties drift rightward.

Women’s reproductive rights just got a huge boost from the SCOTUS side with Obama’s re-election.

Reproductive rights is another issue on which Barack Obama is better than Mitt Romney.  However, let’s not overstate the case:  if Obama is such an unrelenting champion for reproductive rights, please explain this.

I am not only a life-long activist on this issue, I am also someone who would be at grave risk personally were I to get pregnant and find myself unable to terminate immediately.  However, I am convinced that misogyny and militarism march in lockstep, hand in hand:  where you find one, you will always find the other.  This is why rape is and has always been a weapon of war (endorsed by the god character in the bible, by the way); it is also why sexual assault is endemic in our own military.

Perhaps you misunderstood the point of my series:  I am looking at the bigger picture, and thinking about a term longer than the next four years.  Our culture and even our police forces have become more and more militarized under Barack Obama — and he wants to make the War on Terror permanent, with all of the tyrannical power and civil liberties erosion that entails.  The sanctions on Iran are pure evil, and as Iraq should have proven once and for all, they do not work and are in fact counterproductive.  It will take even more effort to limit U.S. militarism than it will to keep abortion safe and legal, but I remain convinced that these are two sides of the same coin.  This is why Democrats who are warmongers, who double down on Bush’s idiotic foreign policy, are flat-out unacceptable to me for reasons above and beyond innocent dead Muslims (including children).

Also, you can visit http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com to be reminded of some of the non-existent accomplishments of the last four years.

Don’t be an @$$hole.  Please point to where I said that the Nobel Peace Prize Winner has accomplished exactly nothing of value, or retract this statement.  And two can play at that game: you can visit this very blog to be reminded that in addition to being “a Wall Street-serving corporatist, a radical and lawless executive, and an unrepentant, murderous warmonger very much like his predecessor” (five!), Barack Obama is in favor of expanding offshore oil drilling, pro-death penalty, pro-SuperPACs, against raising the federal minimum wage, against legalizing marijuana, has no intention of exiting Afghanistan, wants no cuts to our insane defense budget, supports military tribunals and indefinite detention, unleashed an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, supports targeted killings of American citizens on his word alone, secretly cut a deal with Big Pharma and health insurers to enact his conservative health care “reform” law…

I can do this all day.

Speaking of Obamacare, I personally believe in the one sentence healthcare solution “Medicare For All”.

So do I.  For-profit healthcare is evil.  Please enjoy this custom Palace graphic, which I append to posts wherein “Medicare for All” is mentioned:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That doesn’t mean Obamacare isn’t a huge step in the right direction.

It means exactly that.  Obamacare entrenches the for-profit system; if it’s a “huge step” in any direction — and I don’t agree that it is — it is in exactly the wrong direction.  Ferchrissakes, the blueprint came right out of a wingnut welfare operation, the odious Heritage Foundation.  It’s a private-market “solution” to what should by all rights be the government’s problem to solve.

Being a pragmatist, Obama’s ACA is an intermediary step toward single payer not the final solution.

This is just flat out false.  Please explain how the ACA is in any way a step toward single payer when it entrenches the existing for-profit system.  An option to buy into Medicare (“public option”) would have been an intermediary step toward single payer health care.  Unfortunately the conservative Barack Obama had already sold out exactly that (while pretending to support it) in his secret deal with pharma and insurance.  If that is “pragmatic” in your view, then the word clearly has a different definition for you than it does for me.  More to my point, the health care law that came out of Pelosi’s House had a robust public option.  It was DOA in the Senate, though.  Why?  Conservative Democrats.  You know:  like Barack Obama.

Single payer wasn’t going to happen in one fell swoop.

That is why the public option was so critical.

There are PLENTY of people who have already benefited greatly from Obamacare so at least it’s doing something positive, which is saying something for today’s Washingtonian legislative products.

Agreed.  However, there are still PLENTY of our fellow citizens suffering every day and dying unnecessarily, while we hand out billions in foreign aid to countries like Israel whose citizens enjoy universal health care.  And there are also PLENTY of people losing their homes and life’s savings, becoming impoverished literally overnight for seeking necessary medical care for themselves and their loved ones.  How exactly do you see the ACA putting an end to that?

Have I mentioned that for-profit healthcare is evil?  For-profit health care is evil.

See where I said in my post that if you want single payer healthcare you are necessarily going to have to stop voting for (conservative) Democrats who don’t?  Yeah, that.

Thanks for your comment.  It’s always a pleasure to hear from you — even when we disagree.

Winners.

Today I feel like writing about some good news coming out of the election.

Teenage girls in Florida.  It truly breaks my heart to tell you this, Loyal Readers™ — and I know that this may come as quite a shock to you — but conservatives really are quite deranged.  Apparently, some Conservative Personality Disorder cases in Florida put an amendment on the ballot that would have eliminated taxpayer funding for abortions… in a state where there is no taxpayer funding for abortion.  These principled, free-market acolytes also included in the amendment restrictions on private health insurance coverage for abortion.  And because their hatred for young women knows no bounds, the same amendment would have overturned “a Florida rule that has protected girls from requiring parental consent or notification prior to a termination.”  Parental consent and notification laws are particularly cruel.  Also: breathtakingly stupid.  Allegedly, the underlying rationale is that abortion is a medical procedure fraught with significant risks, thus parents have a singular right that trumps all others to be informed that their child is terminating (in the case of parental notification), or to prevent termination (in the case of parental consent).  This is such obvious bullshit, because abortion is much safer than childbirth.  And yet curiously, no parental consent or notification is ever required for the child to continue her pregnancy to term — a proposition with vastly more serious and far-reaching implications for a teenage girl and her family.

The amendment failed.  YAY.

Gay people.  Maine, Maryland and Washington became the first states to enact gay marriage by popular vote, and Minnesota voters defeated a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.  Of course, there are still 30-something medieval-ass states that previously passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.  But last night, the score was 4-0 for gay marriage.  YAY.

And in the Wisconsin Senate race, Democrat Tammy Baldwin defeated Republican Tommy Thompson.  Baldwin is the first openly gay member of the U.S. Senate.  YAY.

People who click on this link.  Without endorsing everything in it, I highly recommend it.

Vagina-Americans.  The next Congress will have 20 female Senators — a record (if an unimpressive one).  Reprehensible rape apologist doucheweasels Todd “legitimate rape” Akin, John “uh, the rape thing…how does it make it better by killing a child?” Koster, and Joe “there is no such exception as life of the mother” Walsh were all defeated.  By women.  Reprehensible rape apologist doucheweasel Richard “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen” Mourdock also went down in flames.  As Liss at Shakesville put it:

US voters chose women of color, women with disabilities, women who are gay, pro-choice women, and rejected men who minimize rape.

Residents of the city of Longmont, Colorado.  Voters passed an amendment to the city’s charter that bans fracking.  Opponents of the ban raised over a half-million dollars, every cent of it from the oil and gas industries.  Not a single Longmont resident contributed.  Via Food and Water Watch:

Longmont’s victory over this highly industrialized and dangerous oil and gas extraction process signals to communities throughout the state and the nation that they can and will prevail over state officials who answer to the oil and gas industry rather than to their constituents.

Iris Vander Pluym.  It was surprising to me how relaxed and downright zen I felt on Election Day not giving a rat’s @$$ which conservative corporatist warmonger would win the White House.  I had a phenomenal day.  I cleaned out my refrigerator, emptying it of all perishable food that had been sitting in there since I fled New York in the wake of Sandy.  I caught up on some non-political reading.  I had a fantastic dinner at Left Bank with My Amazing Lover™.  And then I drifted peacefully off to sleep, having neither seen nor heard any election news whatsoever.  None of which should be construed as my not caring about the future of the nation and the world.

Quite the contrary, actually.

Palace service interruption.

Over the past week or so, I’ve been doggedly working on a few half-assed rants that at this moment remain unfinished.  It’s not “writers block” exactly.  It’s more like I find myself wrestling with an issue — which is not at all unusual — but somehow in my efforts to write something approximating a clear and accurate picture (with good fact citations) inorder to infotain my Many Tens of Loyal Readers™, I would instead find myself lost, off in the mists and deep in the woods somewhere, and frustrated with the (my?) lack of clarity and inability to see how all of the pieces fit together.  Normally the more I read about and research an issue the clearer the picture becomes to me, even though paradoxically it also becomes much more nuanced and complex at the same time.  You know: more like actual reality.  (We’re not Fox News, here, people: idiots need not apply.  Well, except for positions in the Palace Kitchen, where idiocy is a job requirement.)

But lately this just isn’t the case; I get bogged down and frustrated.  (Sure, I’ve had some stressful shit going on recently.  Maybe that’s it.)  Anyway, I’ve saved these crappy draft posts and will look at them with fresh eyes this week, hoping that where I went awry will instantly jump out at me, and my obliging neurons will immediately serve up an easy and obvious fix.  Or, alternatively, I’ll realize what a hopeless mess they truly are and banish them to oblivion, for the good of all concerned.  Fortunately, while I have been wandering around in the weeds and muck the denizens of the internet have graciously provided some clarity of their own as to exactly, precisely what it is they desire when they click on a link to the Palace.  Here are the top searches this past week that led ‘netizens to our fabulous gates:

• cake man raven red velvet cake recipe

• muscle girl rape

• flag of ecuador to color

• prayers to god

Now as loyal readers well know, we truly aspire to be a full-service Palace.  That is, we endeavor to provide our guests with anything and everything their hearts desire — provided, of course, that it coincides exactly 100% with whatever it is we feel like doing.  But just as one cannot be all things to all people, one’s Palace cannot be, either.  We must draw some lines, determine some priorities, maintain some standards, and enforce some goddamn boundaries—all at our capricious whim.  To give you some idea of the shape such whims tend to take, witness our sincere efforts to meet the needs of our new Palace readers:

yum.

cake man raven red velvet cake recipe:  A perennial favorite search term that leads directly to Iris the Idiot’s Kitchen and an insufferably long-winded, bloviating post explaining in excruciating detail and with plenty of pictures how to make the best goddamn red velvet cake known to humankind thus far.  (Srsly.)

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muscle girl rape:   FUCK.  OFF.  NOW.

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flag of ecuador to color:  Here you go.  I just ran a picture of the bright and beautiful flag of Ecuador through a few filters, and hope that the result will suffice for all of your flag-of-ecuador coloring needs.  (It lost some of the fine detail in the process, but as you apparently prefer to work in the crayon medium, this is probably a good thing.)

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prayers to god:  Hmmm.  Okay, this is a tough one—it’s been a while.  Let’s see:

Dear Jeezus:  If you wanted us to worship you, how come you won’t even bother to do us the favor of existing?  Anxiously awaiting your response.  Thanks in advance.  Oh!  I almost forgot:  Amen.  Also:  Hallelujah!  And…um…peace be upon you.  P.S., Hey Jeezuz?  Why are so many followers of you and your dad such epic, ginourmous doucheweasels?  Also, what’s up with all the gay-hatin’?  I mean, you had two dads, and yet you supposedly turned out all right.
: |

Dear Vishnu:  Congratulations!  You are totally kicking Christ’s ass!  As it is a tenet of my faith that it is generally prudent to, you know, “go with a winner,” I am hereby praying to inform you that I am now your devoted follower… at least until some other god comes along and kicks your ass, obviously.  (I’d keep an eye on that Thor if I were you.  He is a badass.)

Dear Aphrodite:  I do apologize to your Goddessishness, but right now all I can think of are the lyrics to the Frank Sinatra song Fly Me to the Moon:

Fly me to the moon
and let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like
on Jupiter and Mars
In other words, hold my hand
In other words, baby kiss me

Fill my heart with song
and let me sing for ever more
You are all I long for
all I worship and adore
In other words, please be true
In other words, I love you

Welcome, new readers!  (Except for you muscle girl rape fans. You’re all probably a bunch of conservatives anyway. Go away and stay away. )

Legitimate Rape by the Renegade Raging Grannies

(Lyrics at http://raginggrannies.net/legitimate-rape)

Hahaha.  Mock on, grannies.  Mock on.

[h/t Don Ardell]

World Wide Culture War report.

Well it certainly was a busy few days for the culture warriors of the world.  Here’s a little roundup of the good, the bad and the ugly.

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On Friday, members of the Russian band Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in prison for performing a 40 second anti-Putin “punk prayer” inside a Russian Orthodox church in February.  The song was a protest of the church leader’s support for Putin, who won his election two weeks later.  At the trial, the band’s “victims”—none of whom were at the church during the performance—testified that when they heard about it or watched it on Youtube, they had a sad.  WAAAAHHHHHHH!  they cried, YOU HURT OUR FEE-FEES!  The judge wholeheartedly agreed, and convicted the women of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”  She also said the women had “crudely undermined social order,” offended the feelings of Orthodox believers and shown a “complete lack of respect.”  Of course she did:  Russia has a 99% conviction rate.

Madonna joined a slew of artists, including Faith No More, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pete Townshend, Franz Ferdinand, Sting in condemning the arrests and now the sentencing.  On Facebook she said:

“Even if one disagrees with the location or how they chose to express themselves, the sentence is too harsh and in fact is inhumane.  I call on all those who love freedom to condemn this unjust punishment. I urge artists around the world to speak up in protest against this travesty. They’ve spent enough time in jail. I call on ALL of Russia to let Pussy Riot go free.”

She also played her stadium gig in Moscow with Pussy Riot stenciled on her back.  Putin supporters responded with disapproval: deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin called Madonna a “slut … lecturing everyone on morality.”  LOL.

Madonna had already incurred the wrath of Russia’s conservatives for voicing her support for gay rights at her recent concert in St. Petersburg:  ten anti-gay activists are suing her, demanding $10m for “moral damages and suffering,” apparently without any sense of irony whatsoever.

Today, we learn that Russian police are looking for two other members of Pussy Riot who participated in the performance but have so far escaped arrest.

__________

Speaking of moral damage and suffering, Republican candidate for Senate and misogynist dumbass Todd Akin—whom we mocked just the other day for his expressed desire to ban birth control and confusing it with abortion—doubled down on the misogyny and dumbassitude over the weekend:

Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri who is running against Sen. Claire McCaskill, justified his opposition to abortion rights even in case of rape with a claim that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy.

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

This d00d has not the slightest clue about human biology and reproduction (to say nothing of rape).  I feel very sorry for his wife, since obviously the basic workings of a vagina completely mystify him.  I hope she divorces his dumb misogynist ass and finally gets herself laid good-and-proper.

As we noted the other day, my statement “Todd Akin is a misogynist dumbass” is a statement of fact, not an opinion.  It is just too easy to add even more weight to the “dumbass” charge:

A 1996 study by the American Journal of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found “rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency” and is “a cause of many unwanted pregnancies” — an estimated “32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year.”

That’s 32,101 vaginas—yearly—whose magical anti-rape-conception powers just didn’t work, I guess.  As to the “misogynist” charge, well…

Akin said that even in the worst-case scenario — when the supposed natural protections against unwanted pregnancy fail — abortion should still not be a legal option for the rape victim.

“Let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work, or something,” Akin said. “I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

That’s right: the 32,101 pregnant rape victims every year whose magical anti-rape-conception powers inexplicably fail them should be forced to bear their rapist’s baybeez.

Have I mentioned the fact that Todd Akin is a misogynist dumbass?  Todd Akin is a misogynist dumbass.  The scariest part of the story is this:

The PollTracker Average shows Akin leading McCaskill by a margin of 49.7 percent to 41.3 percent.

Astute readers may notice that Akin is up from when we reported the PollTracker numbers the other day, when he was only ahead 47.7 percent to 44 percent.

Todd Akin, misogynist dumbass.

__________

So last week, a gunman shot and wounded a security guard at the virulently anti-gay Family Patriarchy Research Council’s offices in D.C.  FRC’s Patriarch-In-Chief Tony Perkins has been running around blaming the violence on The Southern Poverty Law Center’s listing of FRC as a hate group, saying that by doing so it had encouraged and enabled the attack, and that the gunman “was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center.” Perkins said, “I believe the Southern Poverty Law Center should be held accountable for their reckless use of terminology.”  SPLC responded beautifully:

Perkins’ accusation is outrageous. The SPLC has listed the FRC as a hate group since 2010 because it has knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people — not, as some claim, because it opposes same-sex marriage. The FRC and its allies on the religious right are saying, in effect, that offering legitimate and fact-based criticism in a democratic society is tantamount to suggesting that the objects of criticism should be the targets of criminal violence.

As the SPLC made clear at the time and in hundreds of subsequent statements and press interviews, we criticize the FRC for claiming, in Perkins’ words, that pedophilia is “a homosexual problem” — an utter falsehood, as every relevant scientific authority has stated. An FRC official has said he wanted to “export homosexuals from the United States.” The same official advocated the criminalizing of homosexuality.

Perkins and his allies, seeing an opportunity to score points, are using the attack on their offices to pose a false equivalency between the SPLC’s criticisms of the FRC and the FRC’s criticisms of LGBT people. The FRC routinely pushes out demonizing claims that gay people are child molesters and worse — claims that are provably false. It should stop the demonization and affirm the dignity of all people.

Jeremy Hooper at goodasyou.org posted a list (with citations) of some of the many homophobic slurs and lies that have been shat forth from the mouth of Mr. Perkins and his hate group, FRC.  A few of the shit nuggets:

– Says about gay people: “They are intolerant. They are hateful. They are vile. They are spiteful…pawns of the enemy.” (See 0:43 mark.)

– The Family Research Council has distributed a pamphlet that erroneously depicts gay men and lesbians as physically and mentally ill pedophiles who can be cured.

– The Family Research Council has distributed a pamphlet that begins by likening the logic behind same-sex marriage to the logic behind man-horse marriage (complete with horse graphic)

– Compares gay people to terrorists (at 0:31 mark): “[B]ack in the 80s and early 90s, I worked with the State Department in anti-terrorism and we trained about 50 different countries in defending against terrorism, and it’s, at its base, what terrorism is, it’s a strike against the general populace simply to spread fear and intimidation so that they can disrupt and destabilize the system of government. That’s what the homosexuals are doing here to the legal system.”

Here’s a helpful suggestion:  If Mr. Perkins does not wish to be called a hateful liar, perhaps he might consider refraining from telling hateful lies.  Just a thought.

Of course, he’s not alone in all this whinging about the SPLC:

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), one of the nation’s leading opponents of same-sex marriage, told The Hill the shooting was a direct result of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s decision in 2010 to place the FRC on its list of hate groups for its rhetoric on gays.

…

“Today’s attack is the clearest sign we’ve seen that labeling pro-marriage groups as ‘hateful’ must end,” [president of NOM Brian] Brown said in a statement issued following the shooting.

“For too long national gay-rights groups have intentionally marginalized and ostracized pro-marriage groups and individuals by labeling them as ‘hateful’ and ‘bigoted.’”

For the love of Dog, people!  Don’t you see?!  It’s the hateful bigots who are the real victims here!  Poor hateful bigots!

Just for the record, the Palace stands with this statement from about 40 LGBTQi organizations in condemning the shooting:

We were saddened to hear news of the shooting this morning at the offices of the Family Research Council. Our hearts go out to the shooting victim, his family, and his co-workers.

The motivation and circumstances behind today’s tragedy are still unknown, but regardless of what emerges as the reason for this shooting, we utterly reject and condemn such violence.  We wish for a swift and complete recovery for the victim of this terrible incident.

__________

Finally, there was the speech given by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadoran embassy in London, where he sought and has received political asylum.  The full transcript is here, and I am not going to excerpt it here because I urge you to go read the whole thing.  Police had previously stormed the building in an unsuccessful attempt to capture him; the action was thwarted by protests and media presence outside the embassy.  The UK has now reiterated that contrary to its treaty obligations under international law, it will not allow Assange “safe passage” to Ecuador.  Leaders from other South American countries are responding to all of this bullying—which the U.S. government is undoubtedly behind—by standing with Ecuador.

The Palace stands with Ecuador, and with the people in the United States and all over the world, who deserve to know when their governments are secretly engaged in corruption, abuse, crime, deceit, torture, injustice, ineptitude and/or embarrassing stupidity.  If we had even a minimally functioning media—whose job used to be exposing such evils rather than protecting, sucking up to, and enabling the perpetrators—there would be no need for a Wikileaks.

Coathanger lobby update: Abortion spam?

A couple comments from first-timers at the Palace came in the other day on one of SJ’s posts from a few weeks ago, and both were captured by the WordPress spam filter.  I scanned them briefly: they seemed legit, so I approved them.  But after re-reading them again in light of SJ’s original post (and my own response to it in comments), something seems amiss:  they are both about abortion, a subject mentioned in neither SJ’s post nor my comment thereon.  I mean, it’s hardly the case that there are no posts at the Palace on the topic of abortion, where such comments would be perfectly appropriate.  So perhaps they are indeed spam, of a type I’ve not seen before.

Nevertheless, I responded to one of the comments briefly in SJ’s original thread, and I will respond to the other comment here.  Because spam or no, the arguments made in it are ones I’ve heard many, many times before, and hopefully my responses will prove handy for readers who may encounter the same.

Here is Brian’s comment in its entirety:

this is an extremely difuciflt issue for me. When my teenage daughter got pregnant I wanted her to abort and she told me loud and clear, NO. Now my granddaughter is one year old and I have to admit, my daughter was right. I think in the moment when a couple chooses to have sex without protection they have taken their decision pro choice ends here where a new, third life has started. But then there are the what if like rape, severe brain damage/disability of the fetus, etc. It is extremely hard to come to a satisfying opinion. And I also see your point that a legal abortion at a US clinic is better than illegal bullshit. I don’t envy any pregnant woman who is confronted with the question wether or not been there done that.For me one of the American cultural mysteries is the fact that those who oppose war the most are also those who support the killing of unborn life and those who are pro war are those who want to protect unborn babies. Shouldn’t the ones who support the killing on battlefields be the one who support the killing in clinics? And those against ending life in wars, shouldn’t they be the ones with the most compassion for unborn life? One of the things hard to understand for alien XYZ alias Munichmaedchen.

Let’s break it down, shall we?

this is an extremely difuciflt issue for me.

I’m sorry to hear that.  It’s really not a difficult issue for me at all.

When my teenage daughter got pregnant I wanted her to abort and she told me loud and clear, NO.

Just to be clear:  your daughter making her own decision on the matter is the pro-choice position.

Now my granddaughter is one year old and I have to admit, my daughter was right.

I can see why you would feel that way, and I am sure your granddaughter is wonderful.  But your conclusion, “my daughter was right,” just does not follow from your premises.  What if your daughter had decided to abort?  Well, here you’d be a year later saying exactly the same thing: your daughter was right.  This granddaughter of yours simply never would have existed, and your daughter would be pursuing an education, perhaps a career or any number of other opportunities and interests, instead of being bogged down with the responsibility of a child at such a young age.

And speaking of grandchildren who never would have existed, by having this child, you must realize that your daughter has summarily rendered non-existent certain other children, the children she might have had if she had chosen to abort.  A few years down the line when she was a bit more mature and financially stable, perhaps she would have met a great partner and decided to have children.  But now, those other children that would have been?  Gone.  Do you really have any doubt that you would have fallen madly in love with those children, too?  And then, looking back on your daughter’s decision to abort when she was a teenager, wouldn’t you be saying that she had made the right decision?

I am not arguing that your daughter made a wrong decision.  I’m saying it does not follow that the existence of your granddaughter makes it a right decision.  Any decision she made would have been “the right decision”—for her. 

I think in the moment when a couple chooses to have sex without protection they have taken their decision pro choice ends here where a new, third life has started.

Nonsense.  First of all, that is a deeply unhealthy, anti-sex, anti-pleasure point of view.  Consenting to have sex is not consent to pregnancy and childbirth.  Period.  Why should it be?  Couples have sex all the time for all sorts of reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with childbearing.  There is no good reason to yoke sex and childbirth together and plenty of good reasons not to—starting with the fact that the decision to bring a child into the world has enormous, life-long consequences for its parents, and undertaking it willingly and deliberately leads to better outcomes for everyone concerned.  I am not making an ideological argument here, I am making a factual statement.  The U.S. fertility rate is about 2.01 children per woman.  Are women having sex just a few times in their lives in order to get pregnant, then calling it quits after bearing 2.01 kids?  Of course not.  The vast majority of the time—by far—women (and men) are having sex for reasons other than childbearing.  And assuming the sex is consensual, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Second, the idea that this “new, third life” is something precious to behold is also belied by pesky facts:

The NIH reports, “It is estimated that up to half of all fertilized eggs die and are lost (aborted) spontaneously, usually before the woman knows she is pregnant. Among those women who know they are pregnant, the miscarriage rate is about 15–20%.” [citations at the link.]

We are talking about untold billions of pregnancies that end, by definition, without any action on the part of women to terminate them.  Why is it somehow more concerning for a woman to end her pregnancy deliberately, i.e., for a reason?  Incidentally, I think I know the answer to that question—and it ain’t pretty.  But still, I ask it in all sincerity.  Why?  And the interesting corollary:  why are anti-choicers not putting even the slightest amount of thought or energy into saving and re-implanting even a single one of these billions upon billions of spontaneously aborted embryos?  Aren’t they precious special snowflakes, too?  Nature’s answer is a loud and clear no:  dead human embryos are a dime a dozen, and nobody thinks anything of it.  Why is there suddenly such grave concern for a particular embryo only when a woman doesn’t want to be pregnant?

This brings me to the mother of all abortion analogies (ironic pun very much intended).  In no other situation does anyone ever argue that it is right to make use of another living human’s body against their will.  None.  Hell, we do not even make use of dead human bodies against their previously expressed wishes: we don’t harvest the organs the dead no longer need in order to save other peoples’ lives.  We don’t strap people down and strip their bone marrow to save cancer patients.  We don’t forcibly take a kidney from anybody—not even prisoners on death row—and kidneys are desperately needed.  We don’t extract life-saving blood from anyone who does not volunteer to donate it.  To do any of these things would be abhorrent, even though people are dying every day because we don’t.  This human right to be free from such personal violence and coercion is so basic that everyone understands it, intuitively and viscerally.

Except in the case of pregnancy.  Only in this instance—pregnancy—is it somehow perfectly all right for some other entity to make use of another living human being’s body against her will.  Worse still, the entity that would demand such use of someone’s body?  It is an entity without awareness, one that cannot plausibly be afforded the same rights and moral considerations as an autonomous human being with consciousness, loved ones, dreams and desires.  So I’ll tell you what: when we are all in agreement that it is perfectly acceptable to forcibly extract blood from you, continuously for nine months—and justify doing so simply because you had unprotected sex, no less—then maybe we can talk about what a fine idea forced pregnancy is.

Moving on:

But then there are the what if like rape, severe brain damage/disability of the fetus, etc. It is extremely hard to come to a satisfying opinion.

When anti-choicers waffle about rape victims, they are conceding some rather interesting points.  It’s a tacit admission that pregnancy and childbirth are not, in fact, like a walk in the park; they’re more like a violent invasion.  In this “rape exception” view, a rape victim gets a pass on abortion restrictions precisely because pregnancy and childbirth are traumatizing.  She is, after all, an innocent victim who has suffered a violent crime against her person, so the logic goes, and unless you’re a demented sociopath like Rick Santorum, it would seem callous and cruel to force her to endure the physical and psychological trauma of pregnancy and childbirth.  But that calculus has problems with it.  First, it puts the lie to any professed concern for the value of this “new, third life”:  if it really is a special little snowflake that has the status of personhood, and the inherent right to override another person’s bodily autonomy, why should a rape victim get a pass?  No one gets a free pass to commit a crime just because they were the victim of another one.  So if you are an anti-choice advocate who finds that forcing a rape victim to carry a resulting pregnancy to term somehow bothers you, ask yourself what happened to all that compassion for the embryo.  And think long and hard about the answer.

But the second issue the “rape exception” brings into shining focus is even more telling.  If a rape victim is an innocent victim with respect to her pregnancy, what is the pregnant woman who is not a rape victim guilty of, exactly?

Having sex.

That’s it.

Having s-e-x.

And so, this “logic” goes, we cannot give her a pass on abortion restrictions because quite unlike our rape victim, this woman actually committed an act so utterly depraved, so despicable, so vile—OMFG she had sex!—that really, the only just punishment society can mete out to her is twofold:  (a) strip her of the bodily autonomy enjoyed by everyone else in all circumstances, ever (even when they’re dead), and (b) force her to bring an unwanted child into the world.

Seriously?  The anti-choice view is like a black hole of wrong.  It’s wrong from every conceivable point of view:  the unwanted child, the woman, her family, the society.

And if you find it “hard to come to a satisfying opinion” on the subject of forcing a woman you don’t know to carry to term a fetus with severe brain damage or some other horrible malady, then I’ll assume you would be willing to take it upon yourself to care for the child that results from such a pregnancy for the rest of its life.  Jeezus.  I find it vastly easier to come to a “satisfying opinion” on that issue than on what to order for breakfast.

And I also see your point that a legal abortion at a US clinic is better than illegal bullshit.

Good.  This is something that many anti-choicers flat-out refuse to acknowledge.  As I pointed out the other day, “outlawing abortions doesn’t stop them, it just makes them unnecessarily dangerous for the women who are going to have abortions anyway.”  It is simply a fact that women with unwanted pregnancies die where abortion is illegal.  Watch this video if any doubts remain about whether women, their families and their societies are better off without access to safe, legal abortion on demand.

I don’t envy any pregnant woman who is confronted with the question wether or not been there done that.

Wut?

For me one of the American cultural mysteries is the fact that those who oppose war the most are also those who support the killing of unborn life and those who are pro war are those who want to protect unborn babies. Shouldn’t the ones who support the killing on battlefields be the one who support the killing in clinics?

I’ll venture that part of the reason you are mystified by the pro-choice/anti-war position is that you have bought into some rhetoric that bears little resemblance to those actual views, and even less resemblance to reality.  It really isn’t at all confusing when you think it through.

I do not purport to speak for everyone in the pro-choice camp:  I am just one activist, albeit a fairly well-informed one.  But just for starters, I’m pretty sure no one supports “the killing in clinics” or “the killing of unborn life.”  That is a gross mischaracterization of the pro-choice position.  No one is parading around cheering on abortions; Hallmark doesn’t make “Congratulations on your awesome abortion” greeting cards.  They’re not fun (although they are indeed like a walk in the park compared with childbirth).  What is happening in a clinic is that a woman is exercising a basic, fundamental right to refuse another entity the occupation and use of her body followed by an inevitable, violent expulsion therefrom.  She has withdrawn her consent—that is, if she ever consented to pregnancy in the first place.  [Helpful reminder: consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy and childbirth.]

More importantly, as I’ve pointed out before (and will no doubt have occasion to point out again), the anti-choice position is inherently violent, as Liss at Shakesville expressed so well here:

If anyone else suggested that I should be forced to submit my body against my will to nine months of potential discomfort and pain, followed by an act that might include the skin and muscle between my vagina and anus being torn open, I don’t think we’d mince words about whether they were using violent rhetoric.

To which I would helpfully add:

Substitute “skin and muscle between my testes and my anus being torn open” for “skin and muscle between my vagina and anus being torn open,” and we’d certainly not be mincing words.  Would we?

So while no one is parading around cheering on abortions, plenty of people are cheering on the violent ideology of forced pregnancy and childbirth.  Is it really all that baffling that many of the same people are cheering on wars?

It is not a coincidence that militarism and misogyny of the forced-birth flavor flourish together.  They are both violent ideologies, and feed off of each other symbiotically. I have written about this before:

[C]ultural memes like “war” tend to travel together in synergistic groups just like genes do, and thus wherever we see a warrior culture for men we will also see a breeding-sow culture for women.  (Exhibit A: the Old Testament.)  Warrior cultures also tend to be war-based economies, and it is easy to see why it would be extremely beneficial to such a society to control the means of production:  women quite literally produce soldiers in their bodies (and more breeding sows, of course).  That is:  war and misogyny are memes that travel together in virtual lockstep, organically reinforcing each other.

…

Each is an emergent property of the other.

(See also: this very interesting piece at Alternet on veteran science journalist John Horgan’s book The End of War, in which he “applies the scientific method to reach a unique conclusion: biologically speaking, we are just as likely to be peaceful as we are to be violent.”)

As far as articulating the anti-war position is concerned I am kind of a lightweight, especially compared to, say, these people.  I can only express my own views, with the obvious caveat that others who are also anti-war may or may not share them.  I deplore war, and feel strongly that the only morally justifiable use for it is self-defense.  (This is manifestly not what the U.S. government has been engaging in since WW II.)  I am of the opinion that in nearly all cases, a non-violent solution to any conflict exists, one that is superior in every conceivable way to violent action.  War necessarily unleashes death and human suffering on a massive scale.  You know what else unleashes death and human suffering on a massive scale?  Banning abortions.

The pro-choice and anti-war views are not incompatible.  Unfortunately, the anti-choice and pro-war views are not incompatible, either.

As to your final question:

And those against ending life in wars, shouldn’t they be the ones with the most compassion for unborn life?

Those against ending life in wars would, I think, have the most compassion for the living, breathing person with an unwanted pregnancy.  By comparison, a potential life is a distant consideration.  And I could not help but notice that in this fuzzy unborn “babies” vs. killing-on-battlefields calculus of yours, the living, breathing person with an unwanted pregnancy is entirely absent.  Speaks volumes, really.

One of the things hard to understand for alien XYZ alias Munichmaedchen.

Try starting with an understanding that “women are people.”  They are not society’s forcibly designated incubators for generating unwanted children.  If you are capable of understanding that, I think you will find that a lot of other things make perfect sense.

[h/t the Pharyngula commentariat, for sharpening my thoughts as well as my rhetorical fangs.]

Monday morning rage rant.

**NOTE:  If you wish to comment on this post, this is required reading first.**

I saw this over the weekend, but had no time to write about it until today.

17-year-old sexual assault victim could face charges for tweeting names of attackers

A Kentucky girl who was sexually assaulted could face contempt of court charges after she tweeted the names of her juvenile attackers.

Savannah Dietrich (Twitter)

Savannah Dietrich, the 17-year-old victim, was frustrated by a plea deal reached late last month by the two boys who assaulted her, and took to Twitter to expose them–violating a court order to keep their names confidential.

“There you go, lock me up,” Dietrich tweeted after naming the perpetrators. “I’m not protecting anyone that made my life a living Hell.”

Attorneys for the attackers asked a Jefferson District Court judge to hold Dietrich in contempt for lashing out on Twitter. She could face up to 180 days in jail and a $500 fine if convicted. The boys have yet to be sentenced for the August 2011 attack.

“So many of my rights have been taken away by these boys,” Dietrich told Louisville’s Courier-Journal. “I’m at the point, that if I have to go to jail for my rights, I will do it. If they really feel it’s necessary to throw me in jail for talking about what happened to me as opposed to throwing these boys in jail for what they did to me, then I don’t understand justice.”

Dietrich was assaulted by the pair after passing out at a party. They later shared photos of the assault with friends.

“For months, I cried myself to sleep,” Dietrich said. “I couldn’t go out in public places.”

On June 26, the boys pleaded guilty to first-degree sexual abuse and misdemeanor voyeurism. Terms of their plea agreement were not released.

“They got off very easy,” Dietrich, who says she was unaware of the plea agreement before it was announced in court, said in her interview with the newspaper.

“They said I can’t talk about it or I’ll be locked up,” Dietrich tweeted after hearing, according to the paper. “So I’m waiting for them to read this and lock me up.”

Let me just highlight some key points of this story.

• A seventeen year old girl is drinking at a party with “friends,” and passes out.  Cold.

• Two of these “friends,” also age seventeen, sexually assault her while she is unconscious. 

• They take pictures of the girl while she is being assaulted so they can show their friends later (and presumably to enjoy reliving the event at their leisure).

• The victim eventually finds out about the assault and the pictures, and presses charges.

• The attackers plead guilty.  The sentencing terms are not yet released, but the victim is outraged at the leniency.  Other press accounts imply that the sentence includes no jail time.

• The judge orders the proceedings sealed, including the names of the attackers.

• The girl says, “If they really feel it’s necessary to throw me in jail for talking about what happened to me as opposed to throwing these boys in jail for what they did to me, then I don’t understand justice.” She tweets their names.

• She now faces fines and jail time for contempt of court.

Aside from every other injustice visited upon the victim here, her First Amendment rights are now being trampled—and she is having none of it.  Let us recall that these are not “accused” rapists who are presumed innocent.  They are admitted rapists.  They pleaded guilty to first-degree sexual abuse.

A hearing for the contempt of court charge is scheduled for July 30. Attorneys for Dietrich want it open to the media, while the boys lawyers want it closed.

Both the Gannett-owned Courier-Journal and Dietrich’s attorneys “have filed motions to open the proceedings, arguing she has a First Amendment right to speak about what happened in her case,” the newspaper said.

“[She] should not be legally barred from talking about what happened to her,” Gregg Leslie, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told the Associated Press. “That’s a wide-ranging restraint on speech.”

Rape and sexual assault are notoriously underreported: 97% of rapists will never spend a day in jail, and 54% of sexual assaults are not even reported to police.  It is no mystery why.  Savannah Dietrich sums it up nicely here:

“[Protecting rapists] is more important than getting justice for the victim in Louisville,” she added.

If it were only Louisville, that would be bad enough.  But it isn’t.

There’s a petition asking the judge to throw out the charges against Dietrich.  Please sign it if you are so inclined.

Now if you will please excuse me, I need to call my doctor to inquire about some emergency medical intervention for my blood pressure.

*REMINDER:  If you wish to comment on this post, this is required reading first.*

Good news.

Good:

U.S. Issues Far-Reaching Rules to Stem Prison Rape

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Thursday issued the first comprehensive federal rules aimed at “zero tolerance” for sexual assaults against inmates in prisons, jails and other houses of detention.

The regulations, issued after years of discussions among officials and prisoner advocacy groups, address a problem that a new government study finds may afflict one out of every 10 prisoners, more than twice as many as suggested by an earlier survey.

Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003, and the rules to carry it out are the first to address federal, state and local prisons and jails, including institutions holding juveniles.

The standards are binding on federal prisons, and states that do not comply could lose 5 percent of their federal financing.

…

Jamie Fellner, an expert on the subject with Human Rights Watch, said the costs would not be very high for any single facility, except perhaps those where very little has been done to address the problem.

“If states don’t want to pay the costs, then they have to reduce their prison populations,” she said. “If you are going to put them in prison, you have to keep them safe.”

The private prison industry in the United States is an evil blood-sucking menace.  As long as it is profitable and growing — and it is — the nation’s jails will be kept chock full in a country that already has the largest prison population in the world, with no fewer social problems or less criminality to show for it.  Innocent people are jailed and killed, and the lives of millions of non-violent low-level drug offenders are recklessly ruined.  But all of that is a subject for another post.

The rape of jailed inmates is unconscionable.  It does not matter what they may have done.  It is a sick mind that holds that rape is an appropriate punishment — for anything. Because that view is a cultural problem more than anything else, I was glad to see this:

The standards focus on prevention, supervision and changing the prison culture, not on setting numerical standards for results.

“In popular culture,” said a summary of the rules issued on Thursday, “prison rape is often the subject of jokes; in public discourse, it has been at times dismissed by some as an inevitable — or even deserved — consequence of criminality. But sexual abuse is never a laughing matter, nor is it punishment for a crime. Rather, it is a crime, and it is no more tolerable when its victims have committed crimes of their own.”

I urge everyone to read “Rape Culture 101” at Shakesville for a sense of the enormity of the problem, and not just in prisons.  Here are just a few points:

Rape culture is a militarized culture and “the natural product of all wars, everywhere, at all times, in all forms.”
Rape culture is 1 in 33 men being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is encouraging men to use the language of rape to establish dominance over one another (“I’ll make you my bitch”). Rape culture is making rape a ubiquitous part of male-exclusive bonding. Rape culture is ignoring the cavernous need for men’s prison reform in part because the threat of being raped in prison is considered an acceptable deterrent to committing crime, and the threat only works if actual men are actually being raped.

(See also: this recent post at Manboobz to crush any remaining hope for humanity you may still have this morning.)  Today’s news is only a small step of course, but it is a step in the right direction nonetheless.