Misogyny and Sexism in the News

[CherylNYC]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/op...01&tntemail0=y

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Can a woman effectively run the Federal Reserve? That shouldn’t even be a question. And Janet Yellen, the vice chairwoman of the Fed’s Board of Governors, isn’t just up to the job; by any objective standard, she’s the best-qualified person in America to take over when Ben Bernanke steps down as chairman.

Yet there are not one but two sexist campaigns under way against Ms. Yellen. One is a whisper campaign whose sexism is implicit, while the other involves raw misogyny. And both campaigns manage to combine sexism with very bad economic analysis.

Let’s start with the more extreme, open campaign. Last week, The New York Sun published an editorial attacking Ms. Yellen titled “The Female Dollar.” The editorial took it for granted that the Fed has been following disastrously inflationary monetary policies for years, even though actual inflation is at a 50-year low. And it warned that things would get even worse if the dollar were to become merely “gender-backed.” I am not making this up.

True, The Sun is a marginal publication, with strong gold-bug tendencies, and nobody would pay much attention if the rest of the right had ignored or distanced itself from that editorial. In fact, however, The Wall Street Journal immediately followed up with its own editorial along the same lines, in the course of which it approvingly quoted The Sun piece, female dollar and all.

The other campaign against Ms. Yellen has been subtler, involving repeated suggestions — almost always off the record — that she lacks the “gravitas” to lead the Fed. What does that mean? Well, suppose we were talking about a man with Ms. Yellen’s credentials: distinguished academic work, leader of the Council of Economic Advisers, six years as president of the San Francisco Fed, a record of working effectively with colleagues at the Board of Governors. Would anyone suggest that a man with those credentials was somehow unqualified for office?

Sorry, but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that gravitas, in this context, mainly means possessing a Y chromosome.

Both anti-Yellen campaigns, then, involve unmistakable sexism, and should be condemned for that reason. As it happens, however, both campaigns have another problem, too: They’re based on bad economic analysis.

In the case of the “female dollar” types, the wrongheadedness of the economics is as raw and obvious as the sexism. The people shouting that the Fed is “debasing the dollar” have been warning of runaway inflation any day now for almost five years, and they have been wrong every step of the way. Worse, they have shown no willingness to admit having been wrong, let alone to revise their views in the face of experience. They are, in short, the last people in the world you should listen to when it comes to monetary policy.

The wrongheadedness of the gravitas crowd, like its sexism, is subtler. But to the extent that having gravitas means something other than being male, it means being what I like to call a Very Serious Person — the kind of person who talks a lot about the need to make tough decisions, which somehow always involves demanding sacrifices on the part of ordinary families while treating the wealthy with kid gloves. And here’s the thing: The Very Serious People have been almost as consistently wrong, although not as spectacularly, as the inflation hysterics.

This has been obviously true in the case of budget policy, where the Serious People hijacked the national conversation, shifting it away from job creation to deficits, on the grounds that we were facing an imminent fiscal crisis — which somehow keeps not coming.

But it has also been true for monetary policy. The Wall Street Journal (news department, not editorial) recently surveyed the forecasting records of top policy makers at the Fed, whom it divided into “hawks” (officials who keep warning that the Fed is doing too much to fight unemployment) and “doves” (who warn that it’s doing too little). It found that the doves made consistently better forecasts, with the best forecaster of all being the most prominent of the doves — Janet Yellen.

The point is that while the gravitas types like to think of themselves as serious men (and I do mean men) who are willing to do what needs to be done, recent history suggests that they’re actually men who are eager to prove their seriousness by doing what doesn’t need to be done, at the public’s expense.

Also, there was a time not along ago when almost everyone in the gravitas crowd, if asked who possessed that mystical quality in its purest form, would surely have answered “Alan Greenspan.” How well did that turn out?

So is Janet Yellen the only possible candidate to be the next leader of the Fed? Of course not. But the case for someone else should be made on the merits — and, so far, that hasn’t been what’s happening.

[Kobi]

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's government on Thursday proposed emergency measures to combat violence against women after national outrage over a spate of attacks including the burning alive of a teenager by a jealous boyfriend.

Prime Minister Enrico Letta told reporters he was "very proud" of the emergency decree, which toughens penalties and increases protection for victims. It must be approved by both houses of parliament to become law.

Under the decree, after a women has reported an attack she can no longer ask for the case to be dropped, something that often happens as a result of intimidation.

Among other changes, women victims will be continually informed of developments in their case, such as when their attacker's sentence has expired or when he is released from custody.

Cases of violence against women are to be given priority in Italy's notoriously slow justice system and victims will be guaranteed a state lawyer regardless of their income.

"We have not only sent out a signal, we have made radical changes," Letta said.

The decree increases current sentences by a third if violence against a woman is carried out in the presence of a minor, if the victim is pregnant or the perpetrator is a husband, ex-husband or boyfriend.

If the victim is an illegal immigrant she will be entitled to a resident's permit on humanitarian grounds.

No official statistics exist on the number of murders of women in Italy, but Telefono Rosa, a domestic violence support group, said that last year 124 women were killed by men because of their gender, most by current or former partners.

A 2012 United Nations report on violence against women in Italy said more than 90 percent of women who suffered rape or abuse did not report it, and though murders of men by men had fallen, the number of women killed by men had increased.

In May 16-year-old Fabiana Luzzi was burned alive by her jealous 17-year-old boyfriend in southern Italy. The lower house of parliament observed a minute's silence in her memory.

Italy ranked 80th out of 135 countries in the World Economic Forum's 2012 Gender Gap Report, one of the lowest ratings in Europe. The report said it had low wage equality and low numbers of women in senior positions.

http://news.yahoo.com/italy-proposes...153506443.html

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I am speechless again. Only a man could think these changes were "radical" and be proud of them. SMH.

[Soon]

The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia

[Cin]

Louisiana parish claims incarcerated 14-year-old consented to be raped by a corrections officer

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/07/loui...tions_officer/

[Cin]

Raped in Virginia? Prepare to Be Doubted—Until Recently Virginia Police Policy Was to "Assume All Rape Victims Are Lying"
Until last week, Norfolk, VA classified all sexual assault claims as “unfounded” by default


August 14, 2013 |

The police department in Norfolk, Virginia, was forced to evaluate its sexual assault policy last week following a rape case in which officers did not believe a victim’s story and closed her file while her attacker – a serial rapist - was still on the loose.

According to Think Progress, the 22-year-old rape victim, who reported the sexual assault immediately after her attack, was told by police, “If we find out that you’re lying, this will be a felony charge”.

During the interrogation, the woman was subject to repeated harassment and intimidation by detectives who continuously doubted that the young woman was telling the truth, saying things like:

“You’re telling us a different story than you told…the other detectives. This only happened hours ago. Why can’t you remember?” as reported by PilotOnline.

The woman ended the interview out of frustration after she was fed up with being interrogated. Eventually, police were able to arrest and charge her attacker after he tried to attack three more women near his neighborhood in Virginia Beach.

In response to the mistreatment by the department of the women’s initial allegations, Norfolk police chief Mike Goldsmith apologized and announced there would be a change to police policy toward sexual assault victims, so that officers must now assume rape victims are telling the truth. Officers would also be trained in how to handle victims of rape and undergo training for post-traumatic stress disorder.

The case illustrates a prime example of why so many rape cases go unreported. Classifying rape as “unfounded” essentially means that police do not believe it happened which in turn causes women to feel reluctant about reporting sexual assault cases because of the stigmatization. This can have far-reaching consequences for the victim, particularly in light of the fact that only two to eight per cent of reported rape cases are actually false, according to the National Centre for Prosecution of Violence Against Women.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-libert...sumed-be-lying

i want to add that it is not true that two to eight percent of reported rape cases are actually false. They are listed as unfounded not false. And unfounded is a far cry from false.

Bruce Gross of the Forensic Examiner is quoted as saying:
"This statistic (unfounded rape) is almost meaningless, as many of the jurisdictions from which the FBI collects data on crime use different definitions of, or criteria for, "unfounded." That is, a report of rape might be classified as unfounded (rather than as forcible rape) if the alleged victim did not try to fight off the suspect, if the alleged perpetrator did not use physical force or a weapon of some sort, if the alleged victim did not sustain any physical injuries, or if the alleged victim and the accused had a prior sexual relationship. Similarly, a report might be deemed unfounded if there is no physical evidence or too many inconsistencies between the accuser's statement and what evidence does exist. As such, although some unfounded cases of rape may be false or fabricated, not all unfounded cases are false."

And of course let us not forget that ever popular with academia euphemism, nonconsensual sex, i'm sure that adds to that percentage of reported rape that is classified as unfounded.

[Cin]

7 Shocking Ways Colleges Have Trivialized RapeUniversities are some of the worst offenders when it comes to undermining the problem of rape and violence against women.

Apparently “Rape is like football.”

When Annie E. Clark, a student at the University of North Carolina, tried to report her rape, the administrator reportedly said to her, "Well... rape is like football, if you look back on the game, and you're the quarterback, Annie... is there anything you would have done differently?"

http://http://www.alternet.org/gende...ivialized-rape

[DapperButch]

Don't miss the video


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...ef=mostpopular

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Raped and Impregnated at 14, Girl Must Now Share Parental Rights with Her Attacker
Rapist's paternity rights locks victim into 16-year relationship with him.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...s-her-attacker


BOSTON (CN) - A rape victim sued Massachusetts to stop it from subjecting her to "a court-ordered 16-year unwanted relationship with her attacker" by giving him paternity rights over the child born from the rape.

H.T., of Norwood, Mass., sued the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in Federal Court.

"The plaintiff, a rape victim in a state criminal matter, became pregnant in 2009 at age 14 as a result of the crime and gave birth to her attacker's child," the lawsuit states.

"The defendant in the state criminal proceeding, age 20 at the time of the impregnation, was convicted of rape in 2011 and was sentenced to 16 years probation. Conditions of probation include an order that he initiate proceedings in family court and comply with that court's orders until the child reaches adulthood. The plaintiff here seeks to enjoin enforcement of so much of the state court's order as violates her federal rights by binding her to an unwanted 16-year legal relationship with her rapist."

H.T., who recently graduated from high school, says the order forces her to participate in unwanted court proceedings for 16 years with the man who raped her, and to spend money on legal fees.


"Melendez pleaded guilty to rape in September, 2011 (Norfolk Criminal Docket No . CR200900499) and was sentenced to probation for 16 years. As a condition of probation, Melendez was ordered to initiate proceedings in family court, declare paternity as to the child born of his crime, (paternity had already been determined in the criminal case, via DNA testing), and comply with the family court's orders throughout the probationary period. The plaintiff and her mother were adamantly opposed to participation in family court proceedings and repeatedly expressed this sentiment to state officials." (Parentheses in complaint).

In June 2012, H.T. found out that Melendez was seeking visitation rights with the child.

After a family court judge ordered Melendez to pay $110 a week in child support, he Melendez asked for visitation rights, and offered to withdraw his request in exchange for not having to pay child support, according to the lawsuit.

"Melendez had no prior contact with the child and had expressed no interest in the child, but no Massachusetts law forbids the enforcement of visitation rights by a biological father who causes a child's birth through the crime of rape," the complaint states.

The sentencing judge in the state criminal court denied H.T.'s request to order Melendez to pay criminal restitution instead of child support, and release her from any legal proceedings involving him.

[Cin]

Julian Assange Says Being Anti-Choice Represents ‘Non-Violence.’ Non-Violent for Whom?

by Lauren Rankin

During a recent online Q&A session with Campus Reform, Julian Assange, founder of the government secret-leaking group WikiLeaks, admitted he’s a “big admirer” of former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), for what he called “their very principled positions.” He spoke of their commitment to “non-violence,” highlighting the various ways in which he sees that commitment reflected in their political stances, including opposing abortion.

“The position of the libertarian Republican—or a better description, right—coming from a principle of non-violence which is the American libertarian tradition. That produces interesting results,” said Assange. “So, non-violence: well, don’t go and invade a foreign country. Non-violence: don’t force people at the barrel of a gun to serve in the U.S. Army. Non-violence: doesn’t extort taxes from people to the federal Government with a policeman. Similarly, other aspects of non-violence in relation to abortion that they hold.”

He went on to say, “I think some of these positions that are held by Rand Paul, while I can see how they come from the same underlying Libertarian principle, I think the world is often more complex and by taking a no-doubt principled, but sometimes simplistic position, you end up undermining the principle.”

While he seems to suggest there is a contradiction with the libertarian movement and the politics of some libertarians, it is unclear, at least to me, how opposition to abortion is grounded in a commitment to non-violence. Non-violent for whom, exactly?

According to the National Abortion Federation, there have been 6,461 reported incidents of violence against abortion providers since 1977, including eight murders and 17 attempted murders. Abortion providers and clinics have faced numerous bombings, cases of arson, butyric acid attacks, death threats, kidnappings, and more, all from opponents of abortion rights. In 2009, Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed while at church with his family. His convicted killer, Scott Roeder, is heralded as a “hero” in some anti-choice circles.

In 1965, eight years before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the United States, illegal abortion accounted for 17 percent of all deaths attributed to pregnancy and childbirth. And today, around the globe—mostly in the developing world—at least 47,000 women die from unsafe abortions each year (roughly 13 percent of maternal deaths worldwide) and many times that number suffer serious and sometimes lifelong health consequences.

It is impossible to quantify how many people in the United States avoid accessing safe and legal abortion care because of fear of harassment and intimidation, but with 5,165 abortion clinics reporting some form of disruption or harassment in 2011 alone, it’s safe to assume that it plays at least a small role; people often avoid accessing the basic reproductive health care to which they have a constitutional right because of virulent hostility from abortion opponents.

What’s that about anti-abortion views being non-violent again?

In a political climate so openly hostile and threatening to abortion rights, one in which states have enacted 43 abortion restrictions in the first six months of 2013 alone, where 37 of the 42 abortion clinics in Texas will be forced to close because of an omnibus anti-abortion bill, where serious legal threats to Roe v. Wade abound every day, women’s lives are literally at risk.

So why are men like Assange essentially telling women to get over the abortion issue and praise Ron and Rand Paul anyway? It’s simple: privilege.

While these white, cisgender men may be able to pick and choose which political positions they like from the Pauls, marginalized groups do not have that luxury. They are essentially asking women and people of color to praise politicians who disdain and combat their very existence. This is not petty partisanship; it is a fundamental lack of respect for who we are as people. A simple look at their political records proves this.

In 2011, Ron Paul sponsored the Sanctity of Life Act, which would define life as beginning at the moment of conception. He has stated that he favors abortion as an option only if a woman is a victim of an “honest rape.” He is listed as the author of some controversial newsletters from the 1980s that featured racism and other types of bigotry. In 1999, he voted yes on HR 2587, a bill that would have banned adoption for gay couples in Washington, D.C. He has run ads that vehemently state his opposition to granting amnesty to undocumented immigrants and has been critical of current efforts to overhaul the nation’s immigration system.

As RH Reality Check‘s Adele M. Stan has pointed out in the past, Rand Paul opposes the 1964 Civil Rights Act because he believes it infringes on private establishments’ rights to refuse service to whomever they deem unfit. Earlier this year, he introduced a “personhood” bill that would give legal recognition to fertilized eggs and effectively outlaw safe abortion care in the United States. He has linked same-sex marriage to bestiality and opposed a bill that would ban workplace discrimination against LGBTQ people in the United States. He publicly opposed the creation of an Islamic community center at Ground Zero and has been accused of running anti-Muslim attack ads.

If, as Assange suggested, “pro-life” libertarians like Rand Paul are the “only hope” for U.S. electoral politics, that doesn’t bode well for women, people of color, or LGBTQ individuals. These aren’t small bumps-in-the-road in an otherwise spotless political record; this is evidence of general disdain for and bigotry against women, people of color, LGBTQ communities, and other marginalized groups. Yet civil libertarians expect us to put aside our partisan squabbles to cheer for these men? Please.

It’s easy for Julian Assange to endorse Rand Paul as “non-violent” when he doesn’t belong to the marginalized groups against which the younger Paul perpetuates violent oppression. Likewise, it’s easy for journalists like Salon‘s David Sirota to belittle reproductive and civil rights activists for their opposition to Paul when his rights aren’t on the line. And it’s easy for The Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald to say that the elder Paul is “willing to advocate views that Americans urgently need to hear,” when the views of which Ron Paul speaks so often come at the expense of women and people of color.

For those of us on the front lines of the fight for reproductive rights, many of us women, it is both demoralizing and sexist to hear these men scold us for not embracing Ron and Rand Paul more fully. As people who will never need to access abortion care, it is telling that they aren’t more willing to check their privilege and listen to the individuals whose health care and basic reproductive rights are eroding before our very eyes. It is both offensive and absurd to ask that women put concern for something as fundamental as their own bodily autonomy aside in order to commend the very men working to erode it. And it is the embodiment of hypocrisy that Julian Assange, a so-called champion against governmental overreach, lobbies for an end to imperialistic foreign policies while supporting politicians who participate in the occupation of women’s bodies.

These men have the privilege of never having to worry firsthand about accessing abortion care or being disenfranchised because of their skin color. As men who are often heralded as progressive heroes, one would think that they would not only understand and acknowledge their privilege, but advocate for political candidates who embrace women’s and civil rights, in addition to civil liberties and anti-imperialism.

But as we’ve unfortunately witnessed, they largely don’t. They and other civil libertarians like them eulogize the duo for their opposition to drone strikes but remain conveniently silent on their virulent disdain for women, people of color, and LGBTQ people. Yes, it is possible to commend them on certain issues, even if they’re terrible on others. But it seems woefully hypocritical to support politicians who undermine the rights and liberties of people who don’t look like you.

When Julian Assange heaped praise on Ron and Rand Paul while equating abortion with violence, he simply reified what many of us already knew: Too often, civil libertarians like Assange prioritize other issues ahead of our own basic human rights, and then condemn us for being petty and partisan.

If you champion men like Ron and Rand Paul for their anti-imperialism, but casually disregard their bigotry, it isn’t women’s and civil rights activists who are being politically myopic. It’s you.

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/20...lent-for-whom/

[Kobi]

Montana judge apologized but said he had no plans to resign after his remarks about a 14-year-old rape victim – and the 30-day jail sentence he handed the perpetrator – sparked outrage.

The case involves a 54-year-old former teacher who raped the teen, who later committed suicide.

District Judge G. Todd Baugh said Wednesday he "deserved to be chastised" for his comments about the victim, who he had said was "older than her chronological age" and had as much control of the situation as the Billings Senior High School teacher who was in a sexual relationship with her.

Baugh, 71, said he stood by his decision Monday to sentence the former teacher, Stacey Rambold, to 15 years in prison, with all of but 31 days of that term suspended. He gave Rambold credit for one day already served.

Baugh, 71, wrote an apology Wednesday in a letter to the editor to the Billings Gazette. He said his comments were demeaning of all women and not reflective of his beliefs.

The judge later told reporters he was "fumbling around" in court trying to explain his sentence and "made some really stupid remarks."

"I don't know how to pass that off. I'm saying I'm sorry and it's not who I am," Baugh said. "I deserve to be chastised. I apologize for that."


Protests Planned
Protesters planned a Thursday afternoon rally outside the Yellowstone County Courthouse to demand that Baugh resign. Organizer Sheena Rice said it's important for the community to show it is not going to stand for victim blaming.

"I'm glad he apologized, but he should have known better as a judge," Rice said. "The fact that he said it makes me think he still believes it."

If Baugh doesn't resign, protesters will try to defeat him in an election in 2014, Rice said.

Baugh was first elected to the bench in 1984 and has been re-elected every six years since then without an opponent. He said he has not decided whether to run again in 2014.

Rambold was charged in October 2008 with three counts of sexual intercourse without consent after authorities alleged he had an ongoing sexual relationship with Cherice Moralez, starting the previous year when she was 14. Moralez killed herself in 2010 at age 16 while the case was pending.

Yellowstone County officials agreed to defer Rambold's prosecution for three years and dismiss the charges if he completed a sexual offender treatment program. The case was revived in December after prosecutors learned Rambold, 54, was kicked out of the program for having unsupervised visits with minors who were family members and not telling counselors he was having a sexual relationship with a woman.

"She wasn't even old enough to get a driver's license. But Judge Baugh, who never met our daughter, justified the paltry sentence saying she was older than her chronological age," the girl's mother, Auleia Hanlon, said in a statement to the Gazette after Monday's sentencing.

"I guess somehow it makes a rape more acceptable if you blame the victim," said Hanlon, "even if she was only 14."

http://www.people.com/people/article...ntent=My+Yahoo

[Kobi]

For years, women have had to pay higher health care premiums because insurance companies have used gender rating — a practice that, as of 2014, will be outlawed by the Affordable Care Act. The provision is one of the least controversial of the health care overhaul. But "Fox & Friends" still couldn't resist debating the issue Tuesday in a gender-baiting exchange (see video below) that's caused a controversy of its own.

“We only have the prostate,” noted Fox News medical contributor Dr. David Samadi, who fanned the flames by arguing that women actually should pay more than men. "Women have the breasts, they have the ovaries, they have the uterus, they get checked in every part."

It was just one of several surreal points raised by Samadi, who is a professor at Hofstra University and chairman of the Urology Department at New York's Lenox Hill Hospital.

Look, it's not bias, I'm not saying this as a man," he said. "They go through a lot of preventive screenings, they give birth, they have the whole mammogram, the Pap smear. Guys, we don't like to go to doctors, right? Seventy percent of health care decisions are made by women. In my own practice, I see it's the women who bring the guys, who say, 'Go get screened.' Otherwise, we would never go."

Host Gretchen Carlson couldn't help jumping in to note that those facts alone should actually earn women a discount (which got her a blank look from Samadi). She looked alternately amused and outraged by every one of the doctor's points, and responded to Samadi's argument that "women live longer" with a sarcastic "Let's just kill 'em off!"

Online criticism of Samadi has been swift, with Twitter commenters calling him an "idiot," "sexist," "stupid," "ridiculous," a "fool," and an "'expert.'"

Slate's Amanda Marcotte noted, "This newfound enthusiasm for strict economic fairness between men and women sadly did not lead Fox to also advocate that men stop getting paid more than women for their work." Marcotte also took Samadi to task for his vague response to Carlson's suggestion that maternity costs be shared since a pregnancy is created with two people, to which he said, "Not always."

"Was he suggesting that the ridiculously small number of pregnancies created in single or lesbian women by sperm donors was justification enough to spare men the responsibility of sharing childbirth costs?" Marcotte asked.

Freak Out Nation took the doctor to task for that sort of "mansplaining," countering his "Not always" comment with "Yes Dr. Dummy, always."

Wonkette offered pitch-perfect Samadi translations, with "Why are women so greedy, with their breast and ovarian cancer costing men all this money?" and "Man, women love going to the doctor like they love buying SHOES, amirite?"

There was a quick response from the National Women’s Law Center, which recently did an in-depth study of gender rating among insurers. "We did the research and the fact is that women are charged more for health coverage simply because they are women," the center noted on its website. "Yes, women access more preventive services, as the commentators point out. But shouldn't all of us get the preventive care we need to get and stay healthy? Why should women be discriminated against for simply going to the doctor?"

Daily Kos was over it. "I am not going to even list off the reasons why this statement made by an actual as-seen-on-teevee-medical-doctor-hi-doctor-nick-expert-guy is stupid, because it does not deserve even that much," read the post.

"Listen, Dr. Samadi, this isn't a kindergarten counting lesson — body parts don't operate under the 'three is greater than one' rule here," wrote Marie Claire blogger Maura Brannigan. "The fight for women's health and empowerment doesn't start in Congress, and it definitely doesn't start in the Whole House — instead, it starts with men like Samadi, who refuse to view women as equal partners, yet alone equal, insurance-deserving citizens."

http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-livin...172914267.html

[Kobi]

WASHINGTON (AP) — A midshipman testified Wednesday that she didn’t remember being sexually assaulted by three former Navy football players after a night of heavy drinking, but she said one of the men told her she had sex with him and another accused player.

The woman, who is now a senior at the U.S. Naval Academy, testified for more than two hours at the Washington Navy Yard at a hearing to determine whether the three midshipmen will face court-martial. She described a night of drinking in her room at the academy with a friend before going to the toga-themed party in April 2012 at an off-campus house in Annapolis, Md.

At the crowded party, which took place in what was known as ‘‘the football house’’ because of its association to the team, the woman said she felt ‘‘overwhelmed’’ and ‘‘dizzy’’ from drinking too much.

‘‘I felt like I was going to pass out,’’ she said, noting that she leaned against structural beams in the basement to keep from falling over.

The woman said she spent the night at the house and woke up the next morning without her phone or purse.

‘‘I was really confused, and I noticed my back was really sore,’’ she said.

She also testified that she had consensual sex that Sunday morning with a student at the house who has not been charged.

The woman described feeling troubled by not remembering what happened and asked Tate, who had initially invited her to the party, to come to her room to see what he knew.

The woman also noticed ‘‘lewd comments’’ on Twitter that seemed directed at her and tagged to people she had slept with in the past. She also testified that rumors had spread rapidly that she had had sex with multiple partners at the party.

When Tate came to her room, she testified that he joked about her not remembering and suggested he refresh her memory.

‘‘He told me that we did have sex,’’ she said.

The woman also said she asked Tate if she had had sex with Graham.

‘‘He said yes, and then I was like, ‘I don’t want to hear anymore,'’’ she said.

The woman also described being reluctant to seek an investigation at first.

‘‘Mainly, I was scared,’’ she said. ‘‘I didn’t want to anyone else to get in trouble.’’

She also said she feared her mother would find out and force her to leave the academy.

The woman said she decided to cooperate after hearing rumors that other people, specifically underclassmen, could be blamed.

Her cooperation with Navy investigators included wiretaps.

On cross-examination, Andrew Weinstein, Bush’s attorney, noted that the woman had had a previous sexual relationship with Bush. When asked by Weinstein whether she had ever considered him capable of rape, she said, ‘‘I don’t think that he would.’’

She also said, ‘‘He wasn’t mean to me by any means,’’ during their previous sexual relationship.

The female midshipman also testified that she didn’t remember whether she had sex with Bush that night. Weinstein noted that it was Bush who told her he had told Navy investigators that the two had had sex.

Testimony resumes today.

[Kobi]

NEW DELHI (AP) — A series of recent high-profile gang rape cases in India has ignited a debate: Are such crimes on the rise, or is it simply that more attention is being paid to a problem long hidden within families and villages? The answer, experts say, is both.

Modernization is fueling a crisis of sexual assault in India, with increasingly independent women now working in factories and offices and stepping beyond the subservient roles to which they had traditionally been relegated. They are also more likely than their mothers and grandmothers were to report rapes, and more likely to encounter male strangers in public.

"We never used to see so many cases of gang rape, and so many involving groups of young, unemployed men," said Supreme Court lawyer Kirti Singh, who specializes in women's issues.

While there are no reliable statistics on gang rapes, experts say the trend, along with the growing sense of insecurity it has brought for women, led to recent outbursts of public anger over the long-ignored epidemic of violence against women.

The silence broke in December, when a New Delhi student was gang-raped on a bus in a particularly vicious attack from which she died two weeks later. A juvenile court on Saturday handed down the first conviction in the case, sending a teenager to a reform home for three years for rape and murder.

The sentence, the maximum a juvenile can face, was widely denounced as too lenient, and the girl's parents vowed to appeal. The other suspects in the case are being tried as adults and could face execution if convicted.

While attacks on women occur constantly across India, often within the home, the brutality and public nature of the New Delhi case left many shocked and shamed. Thousands took to the streets in the capital to express their outrage.

The government, pledging to crack down, created fast-track courts for rape cases, doubled prison terms for rape and criminalized voyeurism, stalking, acid attacks and the trafficking of women.

The Tourism Ministry launched a nationwide "I Respect Women" campaign after a Swiss bicyclist was gang-raped in March in central India and an American woman was gang-raped two months later in the northern resort town of Manali.

Yet another high-profile gang rape last month, against a photojournalist on assignment in Mumbai, renewed public fury and sent the media into 24-7 coverage marked by daily front page headlines and talk shows debating how to make India safe for women.

"There is very clearly a class dimension" that is compounding the sudden outrage, women's rights lawyer Flavia Agnes said.

All five of the accused in the Mumbai attack had little to no education, and three had previously been arrested for theft, Mumbai police said. They lived in the slums near the abandoned textile mill where the woman was raped.

In both the Mumbai and the Delhi cases, "middle-class people identified with these young girls, aspiring professionals, trying to make their mark in a competitive world," said Sudha Sundararaman, an activist with the All India Democratic Women's Association.

Experts say the rapid growth of India's cities and the yawning gulf between rich and poor are exacerbating the problem, with young men struggling to prove their traditional dominance in a changing world.

"These are young men in the cities, without prospects, without hope. They feel rage against those who are perceived to have it," sociologist Sudhir Kakar said.

Cultural stigmas, police apathy and judicial incompetence have long made it difficult for women to even report rapes.

But if modernization is changing the risks women face, it is also giving them the ability to speak up. In the first three months after the December bus rape, the number of rapes reported in the city more than doubled to 359, from the 143 reported in January-March of 2012.

Those numbers, in a city of almost 17 million people, are still seen by experts as far below the actual number of attacks, but the jarring increase in just one year appeared to signal a significant change.

"The biggest change is that women in the middle classes are reporting crimes to police," Kakar said. They are fed up with the landscape of sexual harassment and fear, with the constant barrage of lewd comments and even groping — locally known as "eve-teasing" — and with being told they should stay indoors at night.

"Thirty years ago, even uttering the word 'rape' was almost taboo. That is changing," said Ranjana Kumari, a women's activist with the Center for Social Research. "There are so many cases, each more gruesome than the other, and people have lost patience, especially when no justice is served."

The photojournalist attacked last month stunned the nation by telling local media that "rape is not the end of life" — a groundbreaking statement given that many rape victims are still often dismissed as defiled. Many are shunned by their families, fired from jobs or driven from their home villages. As a result, most rape victims are still thought to remain silent.

"What's wrong with the system?" Supreme Court Justices R.M. Lodha and Madan B. Lokur said in a statement last week, while hearing a petition from the father of a 15-year-old girl gang-raped by three men in 2012, according to Indian media. The girl, who is a dalit, member of the outcast community once known as untouchables, has since been barred from her school in north India, and her mother was killed for refusing to withdraw a police complaint about the crime, according to Press Trust of India.

The court lambasted India's poor record of conviction in rape cases, saying "Why are 90 percent of rape cases ending in acquittals? The situation is going from bad to worse."

http://news.yahoo.com/india-fury-ove...102555774.html

[Soon]

Company in Texas Fails Hard with Tailgate Decal of Bound Woman

A marketing and advertising company in Waco, Tex. really wanted to drum up some new business, you know, make a splash. Most likely, there was a strategy meeting at which Hornet Signs’ owner, Brad Kolb, petitioned his crack creative team for some ideas. Maybe someone said tentatively, “We should all wear funny hats, like, everywhere,” but that idea was roundly rejected. Maybe some other someone then said, “Let’s use the INTERNET to, you know, make gifs of cats holding up our signs.” No, no — Hornet Signs needed to show the public how realistic its signs are, how they have depth, contour. Hornet needed to not just interest or entertain people — the company needed to alarm them, to spread panic across the Texas highways, which is how the “woman bounded in the bed of a truck” pickup truck tailgate decal was born.

The decal has attracted nothing but negative attention since local media got wind of it earlier in the week, though Kolb insisted to KWTX, “I wasn't expecting the reactions we got, nor do we condone this by any means. It was more or less something we put out there to see who noticed it.” Condone what, exactly? Violence against women? Kidnap? Rape? Wait, so you’re saying that this tailgate decal — that an employee had to slap on a truck and drive around with to “gauge how realistic [Hornet Signs’] decals are” — isn’t somehow an ad encouraging people to go forth, kidnap, and be prosperous? What you’re really saying, then, is that Kolb is just a sensationalistic asshole who mistakenly believes an image like the one on his company’s tailgate decals is provocative when, really, it’s just a graphic testament to the casual, callous misogyny that tries to assert some kind of ownership over women’s bodies.

By all accounts, Kolb has provoked exactly the reaction he no doubt was looking for: people have noticed, word is spreading, and the police have yet to get involved, although some alarmed Waco citizens have called the authorities (manufactured panic, which, notes The Frisky’s Julie Gerstein, said authorities must LOVE). The decal hit the streets a month ago, and, despite the ire on Hornet Signs’ Facebook page, Kolb claims that the bound-woman decal has done precisely what he wanted it to do, i.e. increase orders for more truck stickers.

That’s how utterly mundane this all is — quite likely, Kolb doesn’t really believe he or the people at his company did a horribly misogynistic thing. They’re just trying to grab some attention so they can peddle some stickers, even if their stunt has been done before, even if the public hates them for it. The stunt’s mundanity, though, is what makes this kind of thing so insidious. This decal is an act of visual violence, evidence of a misogyny that has blossomed like a cancer in someone’s worldview, eroding all empathy to the point where the image of a woman bound in the bed of a truck elicits only dumb snickers of, “Heh, heh — I’ll bet this’ll sell a whole mess of [insert stupid, useless thing that no one wants].”

[Kobi]

LONDON (AP) — About 1 in 10 men in some parts of Asia admitted raping a woman who was not their partner, according to the first large studies of rape and sexual violence. When their wife or girlfriend was included, that figure rose to about a quarter.

International researchers said their startling findings should change perceptions about how common violence against women is and prompt major campaigns to prevent it. Still, the results were based on a survey of only six Asian countries and the authors said it was uncertain what rates were like elsewhere in the region and beyond. They said engrained sexist attitudes contributed, but that other factors like poverty or being emotionally and physically abused as children were major risk factors for men's violent behavior.

A previous report from the World Health Organization found one-third of women worldwide say they have been victims of domestic or sexual violence.

"It's clear violence against women is far more widespread in the general population than we thought," said Rachel Jewkes of South Africa's Medical Research Council, who led the two studies. The research was paid for by several United Nations agencies and Australia, Britain, Norway and Sweden. The papers were published online Tuesday in the journal, Lancet Global Health.

In the new research, male interviewers surveyed more than 10,000 men in Bangladesh, China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea. The word "rape" was not used in the questions, but the men were asked if they had ever forced a woman to have sex when she wasn't willing or if they had ever forced sex on someone who was too drunk or drugged to consent.

In most places, scientists concluded between 6 to 8 percent of men raped a woman who wasn't their partner. When they included wives and girlfriends, the figures were mostly between 30 to 57 percent. The lowest rates were in Bangladesh and Indonesia and the highest were in Papa New Guinea. Previous studies of rape have been done in South Africa, where nearly 40 percent of men are believed to have raped a woman.

Of those who acknowledged forcing a woman to have sex, more than 70 percent of men said it was because of "sexual entitlement." Nearly 60 percent said they were bored or wanted to have fun while about 40 percent said it was because they were angry or wanted to punish the woman. Only about half of the men said they felt guilty and 23 percent had been imprisoned for a rape.

"The problem is shocking but anyplace we have looked, we see partner violence, victimization and sexual violence," said Michele Decker, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who co-wrote an accompanying commentary. "Rape doesn't just involve someone with a gun to a woman's head," she said. "People tend to think of rape as something someone else would do."

"It's not enough to focus on services for women," said Charlotte Watts, head of the Gender, Violence and Health Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who was not part of the study. She said some programs in Africa based on challenging traditional ideas of masculinity are proving successful.

"It may be that the culture where they grew up condones violence, but it's not impossible to change that," she said

http://news.yahoo.com/study-1-10-men...062455382.html

[Cin]

Is This The Worst College for Women in the United States?

Rust College is under fire for re-hiring a teacher accused of raping a 16-year-old, who went on to rape multiple students on campus.

A Mississippi college is under intense fire after a student was forcibly raped in the office of a professor with a long and public history of past sexual assault and rape charges.

Courthouse News reported a lawsuit alleging that professor Sylvester Oliver had already lost his teaching license after being accused of raping a 16-year old girl. Yet, he was re-hired by Rust College, where he went on to forcibly rape a student in his office.

The student, plaintiff Jane Doe, is suing Rust College and Oliver in federal court. Doe is arguing that the college turned a blind eye to Oliver’s sexual exploitation of students by concealing his pattern of sexual misconduct and blatantly threatened to fire anyone who assisted in the investigation into her rape.

In her lawsuit, Doe claims that Rust College allowed Oliver to resign after he was accused of having "an inappropriate sexual relationship with at least one female student." Oliver then went to work for a school in Memphis but was fired and lost his teaching license after a 16-year-old girl accused him of rape. Yet, despite the knowledge of the allegations, Rust College re-hired Oliver. Soon after, he forcibly raped Doe in his office.

Doe claims that shortly after her rape she reported it to the college and the Holly Springs Police Department but the college did not fire Oliver. Moreover, she claims that Oliver was not the only male employee of Rust College that has sexually assaulted a student at the historically black liberal arts college.

Doe is seeking compensation and punitive damages for the ordeal. Oliver is currently awaiting trial on criminal rape charged.

Doe’s lawyers from the Cochran Firm, believe there are more victims out there and last week launched a website for the lawsuit: http://www.rustcollegeabuse.com

Since the launch of the website, the lawyers say that more women have come forward to say they were raped, Local Memphis reported.

“A team of investigators have uncovered what we think is a scandalous type of approach to monitoring this type of activity,” said Cochran Firm attorney Sam Cherry to Wreg Memphis News.

http://www.alternet.org/investigatio...-united-states

[Cin]

The six ways we talk about a teenage girl’s age
The idea that a teen can be "older than her chronological age" puts young girls in danger

Last week, Montana District Judge G. Todd Baugh declared a troubled, now dead, 16-year-old girl culpable for her own rape. (The girl was just 14 when the crime occurred.) While in the process of reducing her rapist’s 15-year sentence to 30 days, he explained that the victim was “older than her chronological age,” and “as much in control of the situation” as the 49-year-old teacher found guilty of raping her. After outraged protest and demands that he be removed from the bench, Baugh apologized and has called for a new hearing. This case bears striking similarity to one in the U.K. earlier this summer in which a 13-year-old girl involved was described, including by the judge, as sexually “predatory.”

This happens with dulling regularity, and has for years. One month ago, defense lawyers in Louisiana used similar reasoning in a case involving a juvenile detention guard and a 14-year-old in his care. They argued that the girl had consented to sex with the guard, though she was three years younger than the age of consent in Louisiana.

The language used in these cases demonstrates our confused notions about girls’ ages and what they mean.

An adolescent girl isn’t allowed to be “her age.” Indeed, she doesn’t actually have one age but many that people assess and judge as she goes through her day. When it comes to sexual assault, consent and justice, an individual girl’s “age” is especially a matter of social construction. Society constructs her age in at least six different ways:

First, there’s her chronological age. This is the easiest one, based on a girl’s birthday. Simple enough.

Second, there’s the age her body looks — which, for too many people in and out of the justice system, apparently makes a difference in rape. In 2000, a South Caroline Circuit judge halved a 27-year-old youth minister’s sentence in a case involving a 14-year-old, explaining, that the girl’s body “was [at] an unusual stage of maturity.” But what does this ridiculous consideration of “physical maturation” mean for girls starting puberty at younger and younger ages? That assault of an older-looking 10-year-old is more forgivable?

Third, there’s emotional age. There are 12-year-olds capable of more easygoing conversation, passionate feeling, emotional intimacy and mature deliberation than some 30-year-olds. That does not, however, make them, in any way, the equal of a 30-year-old. These qualities are separate and apart from experience, power differentials, authority, control and consent. Judges generally don’t take emotional maturity into account when adults engage minors in other unlawful activities, and they shouldn’t in cases of sexual assault either. An emotionally and intellectually mature 15-year-old is still not allowed to vote. When a 49-year-old provides a 13-year-old alcohol, does a judge take into account how much the 13-year-old may have wanted to drink, or that the 13-year-old can hold his liquor? We cannot excuse teachers, coaches, priests and mentors from rape prosecution when they assault children in their care. We have legal ages for a reason.

Fourth, there’s commercially profitable age. This is the age at which a girl begins to be targeted for sexualizing products, often but not always based on her appearance. This age has become depressingly young. Girls are saturated with marketing messages about body enhancing products and “fun” ideas about how to look, dress, stand, speak, run, sit, eat, walk, work, sleep, starve, fix their hair, shave, bleach, cut bits off, add bits on and pose so that they are sexy. In other words, so that they are pleasing to boys and men.

Fifth, there’s media age. This is the age at which girls begin to be represented as sexual products themselves, as legitimate sexual targets and as prizes for male heroes. We regularly see 12-year-old girls in media who “look older,” and “looking older” is desirable and lauded. Movies and television portray younger and younger girls as hypersexualized, sexually predatory or somehow complicit in sexual crimes committed against them in gross disproportion to boys, who remain central to narrative, nonsexualized and productive. Girls get a great deal of social sanction for turning themselves into eye candy.

Lastly, there’s the age at which a girl is portrayed as “fair game” for older men. Mainstream movies regularly feature older male actors with much younger female ones. Older women in media virtually disappear after the age of 40, certainly in relation to younger men, but moviegoers don’t think twice about pairing aging male stars like Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Harrison Ford, George Clooney with ever younger female costars. This double standard glamorizes double-digit age gaps in romantic and sexual entanglements (not to mention perpetuates sex-based, lifetime wage discrimination in the industry).

Consider the movie “Two Mothers,” a story about two “older” women who fall in love with each other’s sons, in a “taboo sex drama.” It was the “most divisive film to screen at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.” The movie is based on a Doris Lessing story actually called, “Two Grandmothers.” Compare this to “American Beauty,” which was based on the Amy Fisher story, in which a man falls for his teenage daughter’s friend. American Beauty wasn’t “taboo” and caused no audience outrage. It was described as “poetic and humane.” The “unreliable narrator” of Nabokov’s “Lolita” infuses our media and apparently permeates parts of our judicial landscape.

When you consider the many ages of adolescent girls, it is clear that our cultural imagination encourages boys and men to think of young girls as fair game. By the time a girl is 12, she isn’t even seen as a whole human being, but regarded for her parts. She’s “forbidden fruit,” “a temptress,” “a man trap” and “asking for it.” All she has to do to be targeted sexually is go for a walk. If she wears skimpy clothes, is overly friendly with a teacher, dances with abandon, especially if she’s a girl or young woman of color, she might be blamed for her own assault. This is a male fantasy. And I haven’t even mentioned schoolgirl pornography or designer vaginas.

Not one of these many ways of measuring an adolescent girl’s age excuses predatory rapists — and yet time and time again, they’re used to do just that.

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/04/the_...age_girls_age/

[Cin]

A Case Study in Awful: The 8 Worst Parts of the Recent Naval Academy Rape Hearing
by Erin Matson, Editor at Large, RH Reality Check


Recently, attorneys defending three former Naval Academy football players against allegations of sexual assault at an off-campus party spent more than 20 hours over five grueling days questioning, taunting, blaming, shaming, and what appears to be re-victimizing a 21-year-old female midshipman.

At one point, the midshipman said she was too exhausted to continue testifying and the commander presiding over the hearing granted her a day off. “This is borderline abusive,” her attorney Susan Burke said upon leaving the Navy Yard that day. Abusive, yes, and sadly all too instructive in how rape culture encourages attorneys, members of the media, and others to turn sexual assault victims into the accused.

The routine process of victim blaming, as illuminated by this Article 32 hearing, serves to silence other sexual assault victims, generate sympathy for rapists, and create doubts that the definition of sexual assault includes anything beyond a stranger jumping out of an alley and raping a sweet, chaste woman wearing modest clothing.

In this case, the midshipman saw social media posts that led her to believe she was raped while drunk. All three defendants admitted sexual contact with the midshipman on the night at the center of the allegations—either to her, or prosecutors. What follows is a look at some of the horrible insinuations, statements, and questions used by defense attorneys to impugn the character of the midshipman, which offer an entry point to talk about and refute rape culture as a whole.

How do you perform oral sex?

Defense attorneys repeatedly asked the midshipman how she performs oral sex. This question is irrelevant, even though one of the defendants has said that he put his penis in her mouth that night. Here’s the deal: It doesn’t matter if a sexual assault victim has had sex, and it doesn’t matter how she (or he) prefers to have sex. People are biologically driven to have sex. Sex is part of normal life. A history or manner of having oral sex, or rough sex, or any specific style of sex, does not mean that you can’t be sexually assaulted orally, or roughly, or in that specific style. There are infinite ways to have sex, minus one: Sex without consent isn’t sex. By definition, it’s rape.

Tell us about your sex life.

Along with repeated queries about how she performs oral sex, the midshipman was asked to describe her sex life in detail. This, like the oral sex question, is also irrelevant and demeaning. Casting the spotlight on a victim’s sexual history in the context of discussing her (or his) rape serves to make others imagine the victim sexually. It serves to degrade her (or him). Sharing your sexuality with others is a personal choice. Being cast in a sexual light can be highly desired, even great, when freely chosen. But painting a sexual picture of someone when they haven’t asked you to serves to shame, silence, and sluttify.

You had sex with him before, right?

The midshipman and other witnesses were called to say that one of the defendants had a history of consensual sex with her prior to the night listed in the sexual assault charges. But this is irrelevant. There is no social role—boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, best friend, casual sex partner, community leader, religious official—that renders a person unable to rape. The only way to not be a rapist is to not rape. Further, consent is never permanent. Consenting to sex once or even 1,000 times is never consenting to future sex. Consent must be given for every single sex act, every single time. Sexual contact without consent is sexual assault.

But you were flirting!

In tandem with conflating and purposefully confusing previous consensual sex with rape charges, defense attorneys suggested that she was flirting that night. The dog whistle hangs rather obviously in the air: She’s a slut, they’re arguing, she wanted it. As nearly everyone who has attempted romantic interaction with another can say from personal experience, the interpretation that someone is flirting with you does not mean that someone has the intent to flirt with you, and vice versa. Heck, let’s even say she was flirting. Flirting is neither a crime nor an invitation to commit a crime. Flirtation never forces rape. Flirtation never excuses rape.

Did you “feel like a ho” the next morning?

This really happened: The defense attorneys asked the midshipman if she “felt like a ho” the next morning. Applying derogatory terms about sex workers to anyone, including sex workers themselves, is a tool of sexual dominance. Questions like these make it so painfully obvious why sexual assault victims can be hesitant to come forward. If you say something, they’ll trash you. They really will.

You must be hiding something.

While being compared to a “ho” and asked to describe how she performs oral sex, the midshipman said that she hadn’t always been totally forthcoming with information. For any sexual assault victim, it’s not hard to fill in the blanks and explain why. When people come forward about sexual assault, the spotlight is put on them, and it is not flattering. Giving rapists a pass and denying that victims have been victimized, or at least making them appear unreasonable, is what rape culture is all about.

“Drunk sex is not sexual assault.”

Defense attorneys said that a blackout state induced by alcohol “is a function of memory. It is not an attribute of capacity.” This argument is to say that a person saturated with alcohol can do anything, they just may not be able to remember it. That is not true physically, legally, or mentally. An extremely drunk person may be too incapacitated, physically, to walk or speak, or too incapacitated, legally, to drive or operate certain equipment. So, too, an extremely drunk person may be too incapacitated, mentally, to consent to sex. It is irrelevant how much, if any, alcohol is involved: The burden to not rape will always be on rapists, not victims. There is no free pass to rape a person unable to offer meaningful, understanding, reasonably aware consent to sexual contact.

What should we take away from this awful hearing?

Defense attorneys painted the midshipman as a “bad girl” in order to raise doubt about the rape charges against the three former Naval Academy football players charged with sexually assaulting her. In so doing, they relied upon sexism and stubborn myths that make it easy for rapists to get away with rape.

The myth that “good girls don’t get raped” is one of the cruelest lies to be found in the intersecting worlds of male dominance and rape culture. It serves to shift the focus of sexual assault conversations from perpetrators to victims. Culturally, we can understand why this happens, even when women, who are more likely to be victimized by sexual assault, participate.

If there were a checklist to follow that means we couldn’t be sexually assaulted, then we wouldn’t have to live in fear of the reality that sexual assault will almost inevitably touch our lives or the lives of people we know. We wouldn’t have to filter online dates with a wary eye, or drink apple juice at the party, or clutch our keys when we walk home at night. We could just not be sluts. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way, and the practice of victim blaming neither protects anyone nor creates a climate where women can participate freely in public life the same way men can, including taking a keg stand at a college party where football players are present.

In the context of legal proceedings, a negative focus on victims carries an additional punch. The Naval Academy rape hearing is so gut-wrenching because the woman for whom prosecutors are seeking justice was treated as much (or more) of a defendant as the three alleged rapists.

In our legal system, the burden of proof is on the state to prove that a defendant is guilty. It is a flaw in logic, to say nothing of lazy lawyering on behalf of a defense team, to insist that if a victim is proven guilty a defendant is innocent. Unfortunately, this is often the case when men are put on trial for rape allegations, and it’s happening here within the context of the military chain of command presiding over a sexual assault case.

As RH Reality Check‘s Adele Stan has written on the ongoing push to remove the military chain of command from sexual assault prosecutions in the context of this case:

Those who advocate taking the authority to prosecute such cases out of the hands of the commanding officers of those accused of sexual assault say there is little hope that the military’s rape-culture crisis will dissipate until the immediate commanders of the accused are taken out of the picture.

Certainly, rape culture is a terrible beast, and it came out on full display within this brutal rape hearing at the Navy Yard. It’s a vicious lie to insinuate that you can avoid the threat of rape by being a good girl. Good girls can get raped and bad girls can get raped, and every time, it’s rape. Women (and men) can wear miniskirts and flirt and still get raped. Drunk people can get raped. Drunk people can rape. Victims are not the problem.

A decision is forthcoming as to whether this specific case at the Naval Academy will proceed against the defendants, and it’s also up for grabs whether the U.S. Naval Academy Superintendent will be removed from the case. Given an ongoing push on Capitol Hill to better address military sexual assault, it is likely that additional legislative debates about military sexual assault prosecutions will come along on their own timelines. Whether the routine practice of victim blaming within a broader rape culture is allowed to continue, however, is up to all of us. Perhaps this case has been vomit-inducing enough to advance the conversation.

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/20...-rape-hearing/

[Kobi]

ATLANTA (Reuters) - A Georgia Tech university fraternity member has apologized for the "lack of judgment" he showed in writing an email with offensive language, including the term "rapebait," about how to pick up women at campus parties.

The Georgia Institute of Technology student newspaper published the apology on Thursday. It was signed only "Matthew" and the paper's editor did not return a call seeking comment on who wrote it.

"I am deeply sorry for the pain and embarrassment my actions and lack of judgment have caused the students at Georgia Tech and my Phi Kappa Tau brotherhood as well as those who otherwise came into contact with the email," said the letter.

The email was "written as a joke for a small audience that understood the context and that it is not my nor my fraternity's actual beliefs on the subject," the letter said.

Georgia Tech spokesman Matt Nagel said Friday he could not confirm whether the letter writer was the same student who sent the email, which offered frat members tips on how to "succeed" with women by plying them with alcohol at parties.

"If anything ever fails, go get more alcohol," said the email, which signed off with the phrase "luring the rapebait."

In a statement earlier this week, Georgia Tech said it was looking into the incident.

"The Institute does not condone this type of behavior and continues to provide resources and education designed to create a supportive campus environment for all students, even those who exercise extremely poor judgment," the statement said.

Phi Kappa Tau's national office said in a statement that it has suspended the student, pending the outcome of the investigation.

The email is "extremely inappropriate and does not reflect the values of the Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity," it said.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/georgia-tec...230219118.html

[Gemme]

Missouri Teen Shunned by Community After Rape

Daisy Coleman, Missouri Teen, Shunned By Community After Rape Allegations
By Simon McCormack


A teenage girl in Maryville, Mo., claims she has been repeatedly threatened and harassed after she said she was raped last year by a classmate from a well-connected family.

The Huffington Post generally does not identify rape victims. However, the family confirmed that they wanted to go public with the information.

The Star explains the family's claims of the January 2012 incident:

A high school senior had sex with Coleman’s 14-year-old daughter, another boy did the same with her daughter’s 13-year-old friend, and a third student video-recorded one of the bedding scenes. Interviews and evidence initially supported the felony and misdemeanor charges that followed.
Daisy Coleman was then left on her front lawn, nearly unconscious in the freezing cold.

Nodaway County Sheriff Darren White told the Huffington Post his department presented a "strong case" to prosecutors that then 17-year-old Matthew Barnett raped Coleman's daughter.

He said charges were dropped when Daisy Coleman declined to cooperate with prosecutors.

Melinda Coleman told CNN's Erin Burnett on Monday that White's claims are "absolutely not true," and said the police report from the incident proves it.

"The victims decided they no longer wanted to participate in the case," White told HuffPost. "They gave no deposition or statement and invoked their Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves. The charges being dismissed had everything to do with the victims not wanting to assist in their case."

Prosecutor Robert Rice eventually dropped all charges against Barnett, who said the sex was consensual.

In an interview with the Star, Rice dismissed any suggestion the decision had to do with Barnett's grandfather, a former lawman and four-term state representative in the Missouri legislature. White also insisted to HuffPost that politics played no role in the decision not to prosecute.

Melinda Coleman told the Daily Mail that, after the allegations came to light, her family was continually threatened by residents in the town of 12,000. Her daughter suffered from depression and even attempted suicide.

Daisy Coleman told KCUR, "I just felt like if I'm this ugly on the inside, I might as well look it on the outside,” she said. “You're the s-word, you're the w-word…b-word. Just, after a while, you start to believe it.”

Melinda Coleman eventually decided to move the family back to Albany, Mo. The family had lived in Maryville for three years.

"Basically I was terrified, I wanted to protect my children, I wanted to get them out of there," Coleman told the Daily Mail.

Coleman moved in August 2012. Eight months later, her house in Maryville, which was still on the market, burned down under mysterious circumstances, detailed further in the Star's report.

"On one hand, it would almost be a comfort to think it was an electrical problem that caused the fire," Coleman told the Mail. "But on the other hand, there’s a part of me that really thinks that the fire could be part of all this."

Gawker reports that the accused teen is currently attending the University of Central Missouri and "apparently having a great time" based on a now seemingly deleted retweet:

“If her name begins with A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z, she wants the D."

Raw Story reports that Anonymous has threatened to target Maryville in much the same way the loose-knit "hacktivist" group did in the Steubenville rape case.

"Why was a suspect, who confessed to a crime, released with no charges?" a post from the group said. "If Maryville won’t defend these young girls, if the police are too cowardly or corrupt to do their jobs, if [the] justice system has abandoned them, then we will have to stand for them. Mayor Jim Fall, your hands are dirty. Maryville, expect us."