Last month, Wheelock College University of Pennsylvania professor Mary Anne Layden hit Capitol Hill to explain how pornography "robs men of their masculinity, of their psychological health, of their self-respect, of their greatness . . . of themselves." Now, Layden is back to explain the effects of pornography use among women: It gets them raped.

From a Washington Times story on the new trend of pornography "addiction" among women:

"The more pornography women use, the more likely they are to be victims of non-consensual sex," said Mary Anne Layden, professor of sociology and women's studies at Wheelock College in Boston. "The earlier the male starts using pornography, the more likely they are to be the perpetrators of non-consensual sex."

The story never mentions that rape thing again. It doesn't offer up any evidence or statistics in its defense. (In fact, it never uses the word "rape"—just the skeezy "non-consensual sex"). In a response, psychologist David J. Ley attempts to figure this all out:

This is a staggering statement, and a frightening insight into the rebirth of the "blame the victim" argument against rape. . . So a female victim testifying her assailant is going to be asked about that time she downloaded a dirty movie to watch? And that has what to do with the immoral, narcissistic, selfish and angry acts of the man who violated her rights? The only way this has any kernel of truth is that highly sexual women are more likely to report use of pornography. Highly sexual women are also likely to report greater numbers of partners, and somewhat higher risk of an incident of sexual abuse or rape, possibly as a result of situations of date rape. But it's not the pornography, and it's not even the women's sexuality. It's the act of person who violates the rights of another.

Layden's assertion is both victim-blaming and perpetrator-excusing. Pretending that porn is responsible for creating rape victims and perpetrators—that it robs men of "themselves" and robs women of consent—shifts the blame for sexual assault away from rapists (the few) and on to every man and woman who watches porn (the many). The implication is that the perpetrator and the victim deserve each other.

And since almost every man admits to looking at porn—and only some women admit to the same—the burden for avoiding "bad" behavior falls largely onto women. Notice how, in Layden's statement, women are faulted for the quantity of porn they consume, whereas men are faulted for the age at which they begin watching porn. Presumably, a woman can control the amount of porn she consumes, but a man can't control the fact that he was initially exposed to pornography at a young age.

Under Layden's model, all men are potential rapists—but some women are good enough to resist making themselves into rape victims.

On Thursday, Men Can Stop Rape will host the D.C. premiere of THE LINE, Nancy Schwartzman's documentary about sexual consent as filtered through her own experience with rape. I interviewed Schwartzman in April about confronting her rapist on camera for the film; she'll be on-hand at the event to "facilitate discussion on how to use the film as a teaching tool among advocates, prosecutors, and college men." Details after the jump.

Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 6 p.m.
Center for Education on Violence Against Women
801 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Suite 375

Space is limited, and RSVP is required: Send full name and organization affiliation to nbates@ncjfcj.org by July 21.

* Via GLAA Forum, The Nation reports on queer youth in juvenile detention facilities.

* From THE LINE: "I have noticed a disturbing trend among women: we do not like to admit we have sex."

* SAFER Campus on alcohol and consent:

there is so much defensiveness about alcohol and consent, as though it’s a really really complicated thing. And ya know, I think that for people who are aren’t raised to think about sex as a shared experience in which two people are actively, positively participating, it can actually seem that complicated. But the reality is that it doesn’t have to be. Having sex with an incapacitated person should be widely understand as rape. Two drunk people having sex should be aware enough of the other person to have a sense of what is or isn’t consent because they’ve been raised to respect other people, and it’s second nature to them to check and make sure their partner is involved. I understand this is reductive; that it’s real nice to think about this sexual utopia where things are simple, but perhaps not a realistic picture of how things are now so what’s the point. But I think that we overcomplicate consent; people say that defining consent is making something natural more complicated than it needs to be, but really isn’t something only complicated when it’s unclear? Wouldn’t the actions themselves be less complicated if we had the complicated conversations beforehand? I dunno. I long for the day when this can be that simple.

* Tony Perkins is concerned that Amtrak is using taxpayer money for "recruiting homosexual passengers." Gays on trains? Is nothing sacred?

* Adult Video News reporter Mark Kernes registers his displeasure with the court on its handling of the John Stagliano obscenity case. At issue: The judge's decision to keep jury selection private, presumably because of the porn-y nature of the line of questioning:

As a journalist, I have covered three previous federal obscenity cases—U.S. v. Little (Middle Dist. of Fla.), U.S. v. JM Productions (Dist. of Ariz.) and U.S. v. Isaacs (Central Dist. of Calif.)—and in all of those cases, reporters were permitted to attend all phases of the trial, including the jury selection, during which the jurors were all referred to by their juror number in order to protect their privacy.

However, in the Stagliano case, Judge Leon closed the courtroom while the attorneys were discussing the written jury questionnaires and questioning individual prospective jurors based on their answers in the questionnaires. It has been my experience that prospective jurors' answers to counsels' questions can be very informative of their backgrounds and mindsets, and as a reporter, I believe I should have had access to that information as background for my coverage of the trial, and that Judge Leon's order amounted to a violation of the First Amendment's "freedom of the press" clause.

* At Slate, Emily Gould argues that feminist blogs are motivated by jealousy:

It's a prime example of the feminist blogosphere's tendency to tap into the market force of what I've come to think of as "outrage world"—the regularly occurring firestorms stirred up on mainstream, for-profit, woman-targeted blogs like Jezebel and also, to a lesser degree, Slate's own XX Factor and Salon's Broadsheet. They're ignited by writers who are pushing readers to feel what the writers claim is righteously indignant rage but which is actually just petty jealousy, cleverly marketed as feminism. . . . The vibe is less sisterhood-is-powerful than middle-school clique in-fight, with anyone who dares to step outside of chalk-drawn lines delimiting what's "empowering" and "anti-feminist" inevitably getting flamed and shamed to bits. Paradoxically, in the midst of all the deeply felt concern about women's sexual and professional freedom to look and be however they want, it's considered de rigueur to criticize anyone, like [Olivia] Munn, who dares to seem to want to sexually attract men.

Really interesting points here, except for that "petty jealousy" part, where Gould's piece descends into misogyny. Poorly-researched Internet link-bait is poorly-researched Internet link-bait—and I've yet to find a comments section anywhere that's teeming with "progressive thought and rational discourse"—but apparently only "jealousy" is to blame when women are behind this. Gould doesn't offer any evidence to support the jealous theory, so perhaps she is just jealous? She is a woman writing linkbait about other women on the Internet!

* The DC Trans Coalition announces the formation of the National Coalition of State-Level Transgender Organizations, which will build a nationwide grassroots network on trans issues.

* Zack Rosen of The New Gay reminds bachelorette parties at gay bars: "I'm a person first, sodomite later":

Three nights ago I was walking down DC’s U Street, the east end of which holds several gay bars, with a couple male friends of mine. Granted many of us were wearing tank tops but I don’t think that precludes kind, humane treatment. Some girls who I don’t think were lesbians were stalled drunkenly at the alley next to Nellies, checking their phones and twiddling their Mardi Gras necklaces, when one decided to annoy the everloving crap out of me. ARE YOU GUYS GOING TO NELLIES? She screamed, in a volume usually reserved for running alongside the train taking your loved one to the Korean War. I mumbled back that no, I was going to Town, a megaclub down the street. YOU’RE SO CRAZY!!!!! she screamed back, as if singing “What a Man” to a deaf person.

I hate when people say “you’re so crazy.”

* Fugitivus gives some advice on suddenly finding you're a feminist:

A reader recently emailed me asking for some advice. She’s having her feminist “click” moment, and now finds that she is incompatible with almost everybody around her. Suddenly, the presence of rape apologism, racist jokes, sexist sneering, and other such Socialization Aids is inescapably fucking gross instead of invisibly malforming. She finds she can’t talk to anybody without finding out they believe something that is offensive, oppressive, and/or horrifyingly inhumane. She asked me, to briefly summarize: What the fuck do I do now?

* At Yes Means Yes!, Thomas MacAulay Millar on safewords and consent in BDSM, via Clarisse Thorn:

Some folks may have come across the term “consensual nonconsent.” It’s one of those terms with multiple meanings. Some people use it to describe any situation where the bottom is saying “no, don’t” but has not yet safeworded — a usage I find less than useful. Others use it to describe roleplays of nonconsensual situations. The last common usage, though, is that which I like to describe using Hunter S. Thompson’s phrase, “buy the ticket, take the ride.” It means that the bottom consents to be in a situation I’ve just described, where the top decides if the bottom needs to stop, often but not always around specific activities, and usually (wisely) heavily negotiated.

Photo via George Eastman House

Munn details the event in her book Suck It, Wonder Woman!: The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek. After signing a comprehensive contract specifying which specific areas of Munn were on-limits and off for the photographer—side boob and underboob, yes; nipple, butt crack and vagina no—Munn describes all the ways Playboy attempted to convince her to show what she didn't want to show. Munn presents this as a lighthearted story, but it's actually a pretty frightening account of how manipulators attempt to coerce their targets into consent:

STAGE 1: Control. Prior to the shoot, Munn requests her "normal glam team—makeup artist, hair stylist and wardrobe stylist," but the Playboy photographer insisting on using his own stylist for the shoot. The photographer "was really pushing his stylist on me," Munn writes.

STAGE 2: Denial. Once Munn meets the stylist, a "tall, heavyset, bald man from Scandinavia with a very heavy accent," the attire was "nothing like we discussed." He "quite horrifyingly" offers up "a black, fishnet, one-piece bathing suit where you can see everything going on" for Munn to wear. On top, the stylist explains, "you would be wearing nothing under here and then your boobs just hang right over ze pink part." Writes Munn: "Here we are, contracts decided, conversations spanning weeks about this day, and everyone has a different agenda."

STAGE 3: Social pressure. When Munn insisted that this was a "non-nude shoot," the stylist told her that in Playboy, "you show everything!" Munn says she felt "woozy" explaining her contract and "tried to understand what the hell was happening." The stylist then told her that the photographer "says all nude today for Playboy. It's Playboy!"

STAGE 4: Appeal to her sense of trust. After Munn calls her publicist to come advocate for her on the set, the photographer offers this compromise: "Oh, yeah, you'll be nude but we'll just Photoshop everything out."

STAGE 5: "Accidental" exposure. The photographer continues to insist on poses that aren't in Munn's contract: "The photographer isn't doing much to help ease the tension. He wants me to pose nude, while strategically placing my arms and legs; my  publicist of course doesn't. He wants to do a shower scene nude with strategically placed bubbles and steam on the glass; my publicist of course doesn't. It's exhausting. All the while I'm trying to pose flirty, fun, summery with about five dudes—strangers working the set—watching my every move. One of the shots has me without a top and my long, thick hair covering my breasts. The whole time I'm worried about the wind blowing, exposing a nipple, the filthy five and the photographer snapping away because that's the shot he wants." (Playboy ended up publishing shots of Munn with only her hair or limbs covering her breasts).

* STAGE 6: Downplaying her concerns. The photographer and stylist "insist they've shot more revealing stuff for Esquire and GQ."

* STAGE 6: Silencing. Munn feels "afraid to speak up and yell at everyone because it would ruin the shoot," she writes. "I'm the one who sets the tone and energy on the shoot. If I show everyone I'm upset, the shoot will spiral downward faster than it already has."

* STAGE 7: Anger. Late in the shoot, the stylist throws a fit. "I am a great stylist," he announced. "And this is not all about Olivia okay? It iz about me, too! I have my own motivations with this shoot and I'm going to get what I want out of it! Zis iz Playboy!!! She haz to be naked!"

* STAGE 8: Condescension. The stylist indignantly informs Munn's publicist that she could pick out the panties, if she thinks she knows so much.

* STAGE 8: Abandonment.The stylist storms out.

Munn finishes the shoot, writing that she had "managed to bury my feelings deep, deep inside". After the shoot, she says, "I wanted to break down crying." When she woke up the next day, she got an email from the photographer telling her they didn't get an adequate  cover shot, and they needed her to come in again the following week.

* A new study suggests that 11 percent of male drivers under 30 are masturbating  on the road. No word on the habits of the ladies, who these days are cleared to both drive and touch their own genitalia—but can they do it at the same time? Get science on this.

* Figleaf supports Lindsay Beyerstein's assertion that Palin is a feminist—-the worst feminist, amirite? Of Palin's contribution to the movement, he writes:

Maybe 10-15 years ago Michael Moore had a television series where he did his Bowling for Columbine/Roger and Me schtick in generally nicely-paced 10-15 minute segments. I didn’t see very many episodes (I’m not sure how many episodes there were) but in one of them he managed to get himself invited on a skeet-shooting trip with the wives of a bunch of conservative Republican congressmen. He seemed to get along well enough with them, and they with him, but at one point he made a leading statement like “you know, I didn’t think women could be so handy with a shotgun. You’re better than a lot of men I know.” There was a little general laughter and one or another of the women said something like “women can be better at a lot of things.” He said something like “maybe some of you could run for Congress, you might be really good at that too.” And the women just sort of clammed up and looked at each other like that was a terrible idea. And that seemed like the point where he wore out his welcome.

Fast forward to today and, thanks in surprisingly large part to Sarah Palin, I don’t think Moore would have gotten the same shocked or embarrassed silence were he to try the same stunt now.

* The Curvature's Cara Kulwicki on the efforts of Australian detectives to derail the investigation of a rape case.

* Thomas McAulay Millar at Yes Means Yes! on "ugly":

some insults appear to be empirical claims, but are effective even when demonstrably untrue. “Ugly” is like that. Antifeminist trolls call even the most obviously conventionally attractive women ugly; and it still has some power, even when used against women famous for their beauty. Why?Why indeed. Because they’re not empirical claims at all. They are claims that assert a truth based in social structure. “Ugly” and “slut” work not because of the truth of the matter asserted, but primarily and often exclusively because there are elements of the culture that work to instill in every woman an insecurity that these things are true. The insult is really a claim about the existence of an insecurity; and the hurling of the insult itself is part of the social structure that creates and maintains the unsecurity. And I know several prominent feminists who admit that some of these insults sting even if rationally they know it’s untrue, for just that reason. It takes a strong woman to really just remain unaffected by it. A lot of women I’ve talked to over the years remember vividly when Kathleen Hanna wrote “slut” on herself in lipstick, because it was a difficult and radical thing to do.

* Sady Doyle is smart, and talks about books.

Eligon begins by recounting the woman's assault, and its aftermath:

Elizabeth Pressman recalled sitting in her bedroom last year drinking tea and chatting with an acquaintance of 20 years when he snapped. The man began choking her, trying to force her to perform oral sex and shoving his fist in her mouth, she said.

Somewhat in shock the following evening, Ms. Pressman, 51, said she let the man back into her apartment to pick up belongings he had left there. He attacked her a second time, she said. The next day, she went to a hospital and reported the attacks to the police.

Ms. Pressman, a news researcher who formerly worked for The Times, said the officers who interviewed her at the hospital had told her that because she had invited the man in, it would be a “he said, she said” situation and that she did not have a case.

The matter was referred to a detective, who interrogated her, Ms. Pressman said. After she described what had happened, Ms. Pressman said, the detective told her, “Sounds like rough sex gone awry.”

Manhattan prosecutors eventually determined that there was not enough evidence to proceed, Ms. Pressman said. (The prosecutor’s office declined to comment on her remarks.)

In Eligon's story, we don't learn much about Elizabeth Pressman. We learn her age and gender and that she drinks tea, details which help us place her as a specific character in our minds. We learn that she was raped twice by a longtime acquaintance and that police dismissed these assaults, facts essential to Elgion's story. And we learn that Pressman is a "news researcher who formerly worked for The Times," a disclosure which covers any potential conflict of interest in Elgion's reporting of the story.

But then, Elgion closes the story with this odd kicker:

“If I were to speak to a woman about reporting a rape, I would say: ‘Don’t put yourself through it. Don’t put yourself through the humiliation and the abuse,’ ” said Ms. Pressman, whose father is the veteran television newsman Gabe Pressman. “It’s horrific what the cops do to you. It’s not worth it. Be ready to be raped a second time.”

Why? Why, at the conclusion of a story about a woman's traumatic assault and the humiliating and abusive police response that followed, is it necessary to note her father's name and occupation? Does the Times think Pressman is a more credible rape victim because her father is an accomplished journalist? Was the newspaper worried that we'd walk away from the story of this woman's rape with the nagging suspicion that she is somehow related to a man we've seen on television? Personally, I can't find any appropriate reason for derailing a woman's thoughts about her own assault in order to talk up her dad.

Role-playing time! Let's say you're having sex, with a partner, in whatever manner that you both enjoy. And let's say that toward the end of your time together, your partner asks, "Hey, would you mind if I brought several million of our closest friends in here, just to observe this?" And you're like, "Oh, please, no. I would not prefer that." And then your sex partner invites millions of people into the room anyway, instructing each of them that you would really prefer they not come in. This excites them! They are willing to pay $10 a pop to observe what you do not want them to see.

So: What does this experience say about you, as a person? Let's take a representative sample of public responses to people who once privately videotaped themselves during sex many years ago, and then later saw that videotape disseminated to millions of people without their consent:

* You don't deserve reproduce, or ever succeed at any job: "[to] all the little girls and boys out there who one day hope to be famous/have a family/have an awesome career. Don't make a sex tape."

* You're either a calculating liar, or too dumb to fuck: "Spare us the outrage at how you feel sooooo betrayed, how you have no idea how this could have fallen into the wrong hands. . . . if you are actually dumb enough to make a sex tape and think it won’t get leaked, you are too dumb to ever have sex again."

* If you express discomfort at having your sex tape disseminated without your consent, you're a whiner: "Forgive us if we don't feel too sorry for Paris, given that the sex tape helped transform her from a two-bit reality TV star and wannabe to an internationally famous tabloid darling and blonde icon."

* And on the off-chance that you are not embarrassed by the tape's release? Well, you're a whore: "Like any mentally unstable famewhore, she's speaking out about the entire debacle."

Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I disagree with these sentiments! Join us in this edition of Sexist Beatdown as we chat consent with girls on film, until the conversation devolves into a demonstration of OUR FEMINIST HULK RAGE:

SADY: Well, good morning! Who wants to discuss... THE EROTICIZATION OF NON-CONSENT????

AMANDA: Oh me! Me! Wait ... I believe I am meant to feign disinterest in this discussion, in order to make it hotter. THE CHAT THEY DIDN'T WANT YOU TO READ.

SADY: Perhaps you should hire a lawyer to stop me from chatting with you, so that I might go ahead and continue chatting anyway!

AMANDA: For that is the consequence of having a Gmail account.

SADY: EXACTLY. And we all know that, however many verbal and/or legal refusals a woman may utter, she SECRETLY WANTS YOU to do whatever the hell you want and/or will profit from, anyway. If she didn't WANT you to release her sex tape, why did she make a sex tape? If she didn't WANT you to penetrate her vagina, why did she have a vagina? And so on! And so forth!

AMANDA: Right? So, the whole wink-wink "taboo" behind the "leaked"-but-not-actually-leaked sex tape doesn't bother me so much – I know that some people get off on the idea of watching people have sex on tape who don't normally have sex on tape. . . as long as all parties are actually just playing the "leak" card for its erotic potential. The problem is that the people who are selling, downloading, and writing about these things don't appear interested in differentiating between "leaked" sex tapes and. . . leaked sex tapes.

SADY: Right. That's the thing. And the assumption, among people I've talked to, is that these things ARE leaked purposefully. Thus making their subjects total sluts! But when one brings up the idea that maybe, JUST MAYBE, someone like Kendra Wilkinson may be repeatedly saying that she doesn't want people to sell or view her sex tape because SHE DOESN'T WANT PEOPLE TO SELL OR VIEW HER SEX TAPE, then the reply that comes back is, all too often, "well, then she's just stupid." Stupid for making the sex tape, stupid for not thinking strangers would jerk off to it without her consent. Which MAKES the non-consent involved in your jerk-off time... okay? Because you think she's not smart? How does that work? As far as I can tell, we value consent no matter who it comes from. It's not like you have to pass the SAT in order to decide whether or not you want a certain sexual experience. You just want it or you don't, and if you clearly don't, it's not okay for anyone else to proceed with that against your will.

AMANDA: Right. I am also confused as to why some people assume that people who fight the release of their sex tape in court are simply doing it for publicity purposes? Because I have been involved in a civil court proceeding like one time on a relatively minor matter and it was hugely inconvenient and horrible! And I imagine that when a video of you having sex is involved in evidence collection it is even more unpleasant!

SADY: Right. And the fact is, even when we all assume the release of the tape was fully consensual — instigated by both or all of the people in it — the idea of it not being consensual IS kind of eroticized, by the people selling it. That, I am actually NOT okay with — the way there were, according to Tracy Clark-Flory, mocking speech bubbles over Kim Kardashian's face on the packaging of her own sex tape, reading like, "OMG!" or "PWNED" or whatever. The idea that you're dominating this specific woman — er, excuse me, stupid fauxlebrity bitch, I believe, is the term we for some reason think is appropriate when discussing her — and doing something sexual to her against her will IS CAPITALIZED UPON. As is the idea that legal court proceedings are just cute little gestures of resistance so you won't think she's a slut. That, to me, is exactly what rape culture looks like.

AMANDA: It is. And it's also this really weird phenomenon where even people who are OK with other people having consensual sex the way they want to get all confused once that sex is transferred onto videotape and commence with the slut-shaming again. Like, one of the biggest arguments I've heard against people who make sex tapes and then don't want them released for strangers to jack off to them, is that they don't understand the "consequences" of sex. REALLY? Because while I understand the practical concerns involved here, and think everyone should be educated about the risks of sexual intercourse, people who trump up "personal responsibility" while doing no fucking work to help make bad "consequences" of sex any better just essentially think people who have sex OUGHT TO BE punished for it. These are the same arguments against abortion, the same arguments against working to stop HIV, the same arguments against working to stop rape.

SADY: Right. It's the "well, she's stupid, so she deserves it" argument. And people can make sexual tapes or photos or whatever for a lot of reasons, aside from being stupid. They can be young, they can be drunk, they can be getting off on it, they can be trying to get their partner off better, they can have trusted their partner's multiple protestations that he'll never in a million years show it to anyone and in fact he'll erase it once he gets home HE SWEARS and... whoops, your partner lied. As far as I can tell, "you trusted your partner and then he lied to you and hurt you" isn't a "consequence" of sex. It's a "consequence" of your partner being abusive. And we're placing the onus of guilt on the victim.

AMANDA: Exactly. And I just want to give a shout out to Amanda Marcotte and Lena Chen here, who have written about this stuff a lot, and I really wouldn't understand any of the dynamics at play here if not for their work.

SADY: Yeah, Lena Chen really clarified a lot of this in her own writing, as far as my reading goes. Because she's experienced this form of assault first-hand. And the shaming that goes along with it.

AMANDA: One of the things Lena spoke to me about in an interview I did with her is that at Harvard, where she blogged about sex, she would get so much slut-shaming from other college students who were also having sex, and also probably had taken some photos during sex at some point, but who a) didn't write about it publicly, and b) didn't have some douchey ex leak those photos on a blog. The assumption being made by all of the people shaming people who make sex tapes is that it would never happen to them because they're not idiots. When really, it probably won't happen to them because they're not targets. Lena was a target because she talked about sex; Kim Kardashian was a target because she has a name that could sell copies. If random Internet Commenter makes a sex tape, they will likely never see the "consequences" of having sex on tape, because no one is particularly interested in watching random Internet Commenter do it, and yet they glean some sort of moral superiority out of that.

SADY: Right. Another thing that crops up, in these discussions, is the idea that if the woman ALREADY has expressed some of her sexuality in public, ALL of her sexuality belongs to the public. Like, Megan Fox is shooting a nude scene in a movie — where she probably has a carefully worked-out deal about how much is going to show up on screen and how it will look, or whatever — and that's assumed consent for some random douche to take a photo of her for the Internet. Lena Chen blogs about sex, so that's assumed consent for people to leak and/or look at sexual photos of her. Kendra Wilkinson has made porn, so therefore anything she does on film can be distributed as porn. Whereas the reality is, if someone as comfortable with being naked on-screen as KENDRA FREAKING WILKINSON is saying "no, I don't like this, this is hard for me, don't sell or watch my tape," I think that REALLY, REALLY SUPER-DUPER MEANS that she doesn't want you to do those things.

AMANDA: Exactly. Christ. It's that really awful anti-sex impulse rearing its head again. Like, you're allowed to make a sex tape – as long as you stay married to the other person in the sex tape forever and ever and never betray each other until you go to Heaven. Or you can make a sex tape – as long as you keep your head down and never make a name for yourself, because people who reach some level of success deserve to be shamed for having sex.

SADY: Exactly. They're successful, and they're often already "impermissibly" sexual, so the whole "humiliation" — we can see your cleavage! We think you're skanky! You belong to US now, whether you give consent or not — is really just about scaring women out of being sexual. Again.

AMANDA: And people who give the "skank" treatment to celebrity women? They're actually talking about all women, everywhere, but they use the fame as a convenient excuse. We all hear these messages.

SADY: Exactly. No matter how comfortable you are with your own sexuality, no matter how well you think you can set your own boundaries, you don't belong to you: You belong to the people looking at you. They decide what to do with your sexuality, not you. So don't flirt at the bar. Don't wear that short skirt. Don't go to the bar. Don't go out. And when you're in the house, don't make a sex tape. Because we'll find it if we want to. I mean, so many people don't even watch this stuff to get off: They watch it to mock. To feel superior. They watch it, pretty bluntly, to shame.

AMANDA: It's just really sad to me that when it comes to "sex tapes," we can't even reach the level of common courtesy of your standard Girls Gone Wild shoot, where at least the women being videotaped expect what it's being used for, and are generally forced to sign a contract stating as much. Like, that's a really really low bar.

SADY: Yeah. I mean, there's basically no responsibility at a GGW shoot. Girls are young and girls are WASTED. GGW goes over the line of consent pretty continually. BUT AT LEAST THERE IS THE ILLUSION OF CONSENT, you know what I'm saying? When we, the American public, hold ourselves to a lower standard than Joe "Alleged Rapist" Francis, things have gone pretty far in the direction of Hell.

AMANDA: Yeah I'm pretty depressed about this whole human enterprise right now. Thank Christ for Lena Chen.

SADY: Dear Lord. Woman is sharp and woman is strong. She has dignity like I will never in a million years have. Although, right now, I am also developing a real affection for Kendra W.

AMANDA: For real.

SADY: In conclusion: YAY for the survivors. Especially the ones who keep telling us that this is fucked up even though occasionally real live grown adults keep finding reasons not to listen.

AMANDA: I know. I am seriously proud of them for being brave enough to speak out about this. Even though they know people will turn around their honest commentary about how fucked-up this situation is in order to accuse them of trying to make money off not consenting. UGH. I'M LOSING IT AGAIN.

SADY: "SURELY YOU ARE NO ORDINARY SLUT! SURELY YOU ARE A MONEY-HUNGRY SLUT AS WELL!" "You only want your rapist to go to jail because you support the prison-industrial complex!"

AMANDA: URRGGGG

SADY: "Something something! No legal recourse for slatterns! Something something word barf!"

AMANDA: Someone get FEMINIST HULK on this.

SADY: FEMINIST HULK NOT KNOW MUCH ABOUT HOW TO APPROXIMATE NOT-HULK TALK. FEMINIST HULK STILL PROBABLY UNDERSTAND WORD "NO."

Photo via ed.ward, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

On April 22, Chloe Rubenstein posted a note on her Facebook page.

“ATTENTION WOMEN,” she wrote, before identifying two American university students by name and calling them rapists. She went on: “we should all be aware! Stay away at all costs. They are predators and will show no remorse for anyone. If you have been effected by either one of these sickos please feel free to talk to me. With enough help we can take them down!”

Two months earlier, the American University sophomore and a group of her fellow students had gathered to pass the time during the snowstorm. As feet of snow blanketed the city, Rubenstein’s apartment filled with friends and one new acquaintance—a male AU student who lived in the same building. They drank cheap vodka and danced. At the end of the night, a female friend left the party and entered Rubenstein’s bedroom. Five minutes later, the new guy followed. Rubenstein noticed and followed him in.

Four years earlier, as a high school junior in Massachusetts, Rubenstein found herself alone with a classmate she barely knew, a football star she described as “100 percent muscle.” Rubenstein was 16. She didn’t tell anyone what happened for four months. Even after she moved to D.C. and entered college, she wasn’t comfortable calling the incident by its name. But when she walked into her own bedroom the night of the snowstorm, she recognized what was happening. “It was re-traumatizing for me. I was trying to wrap my head around it for a month,” says Rubenstein, now 20. “It was the same weird feeling I had had a month after I was raped.”

Weeks after the snow had melted, Rubenstein called her friend to see how she was doing. She refused to take Rubenstein’s calls, but a mutual friend informed Rubenstein that the woman was still reeling from the events of the party. “I started slowly trying to figure out what I was going to do about that,” Rubenstein says. Around the same time, another friend informed her that she had recently been raped by another AU student in an unrelated incident. Then, Rubenstein did something she couldn’t do in high school: She attempted to tell as many people as possible what happened.

Rubenstein posted the note without consulting anyone on strategy. “I just did it,” Rubenstein says. “I followed what I believed was right to do at the time.” The accusations were disseminated to 968 of her online friends. A dozen people clicked a box indicating that they “liked” the announcement.

Two female AU students sent Rubenstein private messages claiming that one of the alleged rapists had “done some really screwed-up things to them, too,” Rubenstein says. When she would see him in her building or on campus, Rubenstein says that the accused would run in the opposite direction.

Others were more confrontational. On campus, Rubenstein says that supporters of the accused started to walk “in circles around me, trying to intimidate me.” She received several anonymous phone calls at odd hours. When she picked up the phone, from a private number, a male voice repeated the phrase, “I’m a police officer and I have a few questions I need to ask you,” growing sterner with each iteration. Friends warned Rubenstein of the legal implications of making a rape accusation without absolute proof.

“You’re playing with fire when you throw people’s names out,” admits Rubenstein. “I was aware of the dangers of that. I knew it was a bold move,” she says. “But when I told people that I was fully aware of what I was doing, it made them feel a little more fearless. After that, I started getting a lot more support from people.”

It’s been a banner year for controversial rape announcements on the American University campus. Added encouragement for Rubenstein’s activism came from an unlikely source: Alex Knepper, a sophomore columnist for school newspaper the Eagle, who devoted a great deal of column inches this year to complaining about AU’s “campus of victims.” On March 28, Knepper published a column explaining how women who have been drinking can’t really be raped: “Let’s get this straight: any woman who heads to an EI [fraternity] party as an anonymous onlooker, drinks five cups of the jungle juice, and walks back to a boy’s room with him is indicating that she wants sex, OK? To cry ‘date rape’ after you sober up the next morning and regret the incident is the equivalent of pulling a gun to someone’s head and then later claiming that you didn’t ever actually intend to pull the trigger.”

On the day the column was published, an anonymous group of campus activists removed the papers from their stands, returned them to the paper’s offices, and hung posters printed with the words "NO ROOM FOR RAPE APOLOGY" around campus. Rubenstein participated in the stunt, albeit halfheartedly. “I took some of the copies and moved them around,” she says. “The article was insulting to every woman who has ever been sexually assaulted on campus. So it was an effective action in the sense that it got people to talk, but it was sort of an immature way to do it,” she says. But Knepper’s column shifted something else for Rubenstein. “I wasn’t able to comfortably talk about rape until that article came out,” she says. “Now, I can say, ‘I am a victim of rape and I’m not afraid to say it.’ But this time last year, I wasn’t saying that. This time three months ago, I wasn’t saying that.”

On April 13, two weeks after the column dropped, Rubenstein attended AU’s “Take Back the Night” rally, an annual demonstration against sexual violence. It was the first time Rubenstein openly referred to her experience in high school as a rape. A week later, she wrote her Facebook note. Rubenstein says she posted it for all the women on AU’s campus who might find themselves drunk at parties around the accused. “At first, I wasn’t thinking that this was going to help my friends. I felt like I needed to warn everyone else about these guys,” Rubenstein says. After leaving the message up for a few days, Rubenstein removed it. “I don’t clear my status because I’m scared,” she wrote on Facebook. “I clear it for legal reasons and because my message reached 968 people. If you or someone you know has been raped or sexually assaulted and needs a safe place to talk about how they feel or what can be done, please contact me. No Fear. No Secrets. 2010.”

After removing the note, Rubenstein finally heard from the woman she had followed into the bedroom. “That’s the most beautiful thing that came out of all this,” says Rubenstein. “She called me and asked me why I took my status down…She said that if the other victims decide they
want to do something, that she might want to be there to do something too,” she says. On Facebook, 968 people can be warned of potential predators in an instant; reaching actual victims of sexual assault is more difficult. “When it had happened to me in high school, I did nothing about it,” Rubenstein says. “There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about that. I promised myself that I would do whatever I possibly could when this happened to people I know. I just didn’t expect it to happen to so many of them.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Last night, I re-read Gene Weingarten's Pulitzer Prize-winning feature on parents who accidentally forget their infants in the backseats of their cars, leaving them to swelter to death in the heat. And since I can make connections to rape culture out of practically anything, I was struck by this section in Weingarten's story, about the public's reaction to parents who make this fatal mistake:

"This is a case of pure evil negligence of the worse kind . . . He deserves the death sentence."

"I wonder if this was his way of telling his wife that he didn't really want a kid."

"He was too busy chasing after real estate commissions. This shows how morally corrupt people in real estate-related professions are."

These were readers' online comments to The Washington Post news article of July 10, 2008, reporting the circumstances of the death of Miles Harrison's son. These comments were typical of many others, and they are typical of what happens again and again, year after year in community after community, when these cases arise. A substantial proportion of the public reacts not merely with anger, but with frothing vitriol.

Ed Hickling believes he knows why. Hickling is a clinical psychologist from Albany, N.Y., who has studied the effects of fatal auto accidents on the drivers who survive them. He says these people are often judged with disproportionate harshness by the public, even when it was clearly an accident, and even when it was indisputably not their fault.

Humans, Hickling said, have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible.

In hyperthermia cases, he believes, the parents are demonized for much the same reasons. "We are vulnerable, but we don't want to be reminded of that. We want to believe that the world is understandable and controllable and unthreatening, that if we follow the rules, we'll be okay. So, when this kind of thing happens to other people, we need to put them in a different category from us. We don't want to resemble them, and the fact that we might is too terrifying to deal with. So, they have to be monsters."

Sound familiar? The comparison to victims of rape doesn't end there. One mother whose baby died after she forgot him in the backseat of her car was—strangely—explicitly slut-shamed by an online commenter:

After Lyn Balfour's acquittal, this comment appeared on the Charlottesville News Web site:

"If she had too many things on her mind then she should have kept her legs closed and not had any kids. They should lock her in a car during a hot day and see what happens."

The idea of addressing parents who accidentally kill their children by putting them "in a different category" functions a bit differently when applied to the victims and perpetrators of rape. When we are confronted with victims of rape, we put them in a different category ("irresponsible sluts") in order to avoid believing that rape could ever happen to us; when we are confronted with rapists, we put them in a different category ("evil monsters") in order to avoid believing that our classmates, friends, brothers, and sons are actually capable of such a heinous crime. Parents who accidentally kill their children are both victims and perpetrators—they're our evil monsters and irresponsible sluts all wrapped into one.

Photo via spaceodissey, Creative Commons Attribution license 2.0

On Monday, Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown will speak at Harvard's "Rethinking Virginity" conference, a summit on the state of sexual purity.

But before she Rethinks virginity, Sady must first Think it! Accordingly, I have volunteered to help Sady pop the proverbial cherry of Virginity Thinkin', a rite of passage every ladyblogger must endure, and which readers of this blog must endure as well!  It is awkward! It is sometimes painful! And it goes on far too long! In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, join Sady and I as we recall That Time It Almost Went In, mourn the loss of the Precious Treasures, and devolve into a fit of terrible sexual puns.

SADY: LADY! I think it is time for me to lose my Having This Particular Chat Virginity! As opposed to my Oral Sex (Receiving) Virginity, my Oral Sex (Delivering) Virginity, my Various Other Stuff Virginity, and my Virginity Virginity. All of which are gone already. I HAVE SQUANDERED MY PRECIOUS TREASURE!

AMANDA: Oh wonderful! Well I'm personally excited to commence Rethinking Virginity ... out of existence! For it has never really worked for me.

SADY: Oh, no? Please do detail the manner in which it failed to work!

AMANDA: "Failed to work" may actually be the operative term here? Because if someone were to ask me When I Lost My Virginity, they would then be subjected to a series of stories about Those Times It Almost Went In, But Didn't. I tried REALLY HARD to lose my virginity! I was like, Out, Out, Damned Virginity! But it just ... it just didn't work. Physically. For a long time. And now I don't fucking know/remember when it happened. It was late.

SADY: Right. The definitive moment at which you become an Anti-Virgin is hard to peg! In fact! And, honestly, gives too much credit to the first person to definitively Stick It In. Like, it's not like no-one has visited these territories before! Those dudes are like Christopher Columbus. They, like, Claim This Land for Spain, but fail to notice all the people who were already there. Uh. Sort of.

AMANDA: RIGHT. (?) And everyone pretends it's this really objective moment that's defined from the outside, but I've found for most people you just have to Decide when it is, and pretend that that time syncs up with whatever everyone else is talking about. I count myself as lucky to not have a very intimate relationship with Virginity and Non-Virginity, though. Fuck that noise.

SADY: Yeah. I mean, I myself was at one point one of those girls who went around telling everybody that I was totally not going to sex it up until I met the dude I was going to marry. And people would laugh at me, and I would be like, "WHY MUST YOU DEVALUE MY MORAL CHOICES?" But then something magical happened, which was that I went to college. And there were like three dudes with whom it could very plausibly have happened, and I was just so tired of trying to figure out which one was going to be my husband (HINT: None) that I had sex with the WORST ONE just to get it over with. Which is also not a choice I recommend!

AMANDA: Haha! STRATEGY. I waited a long time to (try) to have sex, and it wasn't for some sort of sense of morality. I was never surrounded by any religious influences or anything like that growing up. But I did feel really, really, really, really uncomfortable with the idea of having sex, and a lot of that had to do with stuff imposed on me on the outside about how sex was bad. Like I was worried about getting AIDS if my boyfriend's penis got too close to me.

SADY: Yeah. That is also part of it. Like, there are so many risks to sex — AIDS, all the other terrifying illnesses, etc — that delaying sex can feel, really, like the best of all possible options. And also, there are other risks of sex If You Are A Lady, which include: Getting Knocked Up (I would basically consider this to be a terrible illness, in my current circumstance) and Getting Called a Slut. But here is the magic thing: All of these things can happen to you EVEN if you are not a virgin! And I feel like the emphasis on virginity, or the lack thereof, encourages everyone to place the emphasis on this ONE sexual encounter, your FIRST (and hopefully not last), instead of being like: Sex! You're going to be doing this eventually! Here's a realistic risk evaluation!

AMANDA: Exactly. And the emphasis on virginity didn't really help what I was going through either. The message was, "Don't have sex! And if you do, just wear a condom!" Which didn't speak to any of the issues I had with sex, or how to decide how to do it and when and with whom and why. Like, I am very much anti-abstinence-only education – and in high school, having sex was NOT going to be a productive option for me, in the place that I was. I was a VIRGIN and wanted to stay one, for a while. And still the emphasis on the virginity stuff really did not help me.

SADY: Right! And, like, a while ago, there was this headline all over the place, which was "Abstinence Only Education: Totally Works!" And what it actually WORKED at, apparently, was delaying vagina-to-weiner intercourse for a few years among the preteens. Good job! But also, this magically effective abstinence-only education program taught abstinence this way: Don't have sex until you are totally comfortable with having sex and know how to make good sexual decisions for you. This program that worked? NOT TEACHING ABSTINENCE, actually. What it was teaching was SEXUAL CONSENT. Like, "Hey, when you decide to have sex, your decision should probably be full and informed!" Uh, OK. But feminists have been teaching this for approximately FOREVER? I guess we never thought to call it "abstinence." I guess that's why we don't get the credit for our revolutionary sex-education technology!

AMANDA: Exactly. SEX ED EDUCATORS: PLEASE TEACH CONSENT. Because honestly, I've been having sex for a while now, and it took me a long time to be "totally comfortable" with it. A lot of that had to do with body-image stuff and all the connotations that went along with not being a virgin anymore, and so being a slut, but some of it had to do with people not respecting my right to make decisions about when I have sex and when I don't.

SADY: Right. I mean, I think my thing is: My first few sex experiences were kind of HORRIBLE, which I think had a lot to do with choosing the worst of all possible contenders so that I wouldn't have to think about being a virgin or not being a virgin any more. Because when I say "the worst," I mean we were at TWILIGHT LEVELS OF AWFUL. But also, I think they would have been awful anyway, because I had been taught "don't have sex," and I had been taught about the importance of putting a little rubber outfit on his apparatus if I ever DID have sex. But what I had NEVER been taught, apparently, was how to respect what I wanted, and to ask for it, and how to say "no" if I did NOT want something he wanted. I mean, I didn't even know how to say "ow" or "yikes." My impression was that one could Have Sex or Not Have Sex, and so my first few experiences were like, "oh, so apparently sex is AWFUL? It seems weird that people are so into it! But, OK! I am Having Sex!"

AMANDA: EXACTLY. GOD. I very much had the experience of something like, happening to me—-"Having" "Sex"—not participating or enjoying something, but like, enduring it. And part of that was necessary to come to a time when I would figure out how to like it, and assert myself, and that stuff. But surely, we can do better about the way we talk about things and prepare people for them, and how to know when Bad Sex is not bad sex and when it's Rape. We don't do enough of that.

SADY: Right. And I think it goes back to what we were talking about before, which is: Sex being defined as this very heterosexual experience of having a Penile Apparatus stuck into our Vaginal Apparatus in an Act That Could Potentially Produce Offspring (if you don't make his weiner wear an outfit, or whatever). Like, OK: There are a lot of things that are pretty darn sexual, which this description of Sex does not cover! And I am struggling to say this without sounding like some kind of creepy Tantric sex instructor, but: If you're like, "OK. So somebody is going to stick that into the other thing, and then you will Have Had Sex," you're missing out on (a) much of what makes sex fun or enjoyable, (b) much of the potential complications, and (c) the fact that sex, ideally, should not be some sort of terrifying Bene Gesserit test of fortitude? Like, that thing where they stick Kyle McLachlan's hand in the box and are like, "WITHSTAND THE PAIN OR DIE" so he can't take his hand out or the space nun will kill him instantly: Sex should, ideally, have little or nothing in common with this experience. Why can't we all just enjoy ourselves? By, like, respecting what feels good and what doesn't?

AMANDA: Right! And I'll add that making the definition of "sex" "Penile Apparatus stuck into our Vaginal Apparatus in an Act That Could Potentially Produce Offspring" also includes "rape" as a thing that is "sex," and so perhaps we should move toward a definition that includes shit that people want to do, and also expels the word Virginity from existence, because it doesn't mean anything and it's stupid.

SADY: RIGHT? Okay, so: Here's another reason why making "virginity" important is scary. There was, some time ago, an Ohio-based abstinence education group, and they had this little online "game" for students. This game, it was kind of a downer! In that it was about deciding whether a lady had been raped or not! So, lady SAYS she's raped. And, as we all know, rape accusations are totally fun to make for kicks! So you have to evaluate the testimonies of the people she knows, about her character. And one of them — A GIRL CHARACTER! IN THE GAME! I BELIEVE! — mentions that she's had sex before, and is thus probably a liar. Guess which conclusion you are supposed to draw?

AMANDA: UM. That she's a liar?

SADY: YES. Like, the idea that you can either want NONE of the penises or ALL of the penises: That is an idea that is taught! By "education" "groups!" They had to take the game down. But we can't take it out of the equation, when we look at the cultural ideals around virginity.

AMANDA: Well I know that there's a direct correlation between how much sex I'm having and how much I lie about everything!

SADY: LIAR. I mean, I would classify several of my experiences, especially early experiences, in the "consensual but not okay" zone of sexual activity. Not to make this a big downer of a chat. But, the idea of Sex or Not Sex means that sometimes you don't say "no" because you don't totally have it in your mind that you CAN say "no," because you don't have any idea in your mind that Sex is not just one big package that you are either OK or not OK with. So, like: You go along with it, and you even say “yes,” so there is consent although it's not enthusiastic, but that is in large part because Boundaries are not really a part of the understanding you have of Sex. Or maybe that is just me! Maybe I am just a people-pleaser! But I don't think I am! Because I please very few people, really, on a daily basis.

AMANDA: Yeah, well, you either want to Have Sex (slut) or you want to Not Have Sex (virgin), and so if you decide to have sex, then—"SEX"! Sometimes, you don't really know all the possibilities of what that could mean, but you do know that you've consented to It, Sex, and that's as far as the conversation goes.

SADY: Right. And I think a lot of girls struggle with it. Like: My frequent yelling about slut-shaming and my frequent yelling about rape culture are actually the same yelling. Because the devaluation of female sexuality devalues female pleasure which in turn devalues your ability to say, "I don't like this, but I do like something else, can we do that instead?"

AMANDA: And some people who have had sex many, many times, when confronted with the opportunity to pass judgment in a rape case, still believe that. Even though it's plainly obvious that sex is not all or nothing.

SADY: Right. Exactly. That's where it gets really kind of scary. And, I mean, if I look at my various virginities: Every time you do something new for the first time, you are basically a virgin at it. You have no idea how anything works and you are probably kind of bad at it and you just sort of muddle through. Like this chat! Which for some reason I am terrible at expressing any ideas within!

AMANDA: We are virgins at rethinking virginity! It's OK! But now we're rethinking virginity sluts. And there was much rejoicing.

SADY: Yes. Next time I do this, hopefully I will know more about what is happening, and be able to contribute! Or something!

AMANDA: Instead of being like, Ow! You are inserting your opinions into mine quite vigorously, and in a way I am unprepared to respond to! Can we try this on e-mail!

SADY: I am just sort of lying here. I am like, "okay, you take it from here, I'm just going to scope out the whole operation." I didn't mean for this to end in a really inappropriate sex metaphor between two heterosexual ladies with dudepartners, Amanda. IT IS JUST PART OF THE PROCESS!

AMANDA: And I'm like, ouch, my position ... on virginity is beginning to form a cramp, in my brainparts. OK! I have finished! After dragging this on for far too long, after you have grown bored with it!

SADY: Yeah. I think we're done. And now, to go on and have Rethinking Virginity Chats... WITH MANY OTHERS! Truly, after doing this one-on-one, the only other option is to do it with four other people. Simultaneously! In public! And possibly on film! THEY WERE RIGHT! THEY WERE RIGHT ABOUT THE ABSTINENCE! THE DAM HAS BROKEN, THERE IS NO TURNING BACK NOW.

Photo via MRBECK, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Photo via LZ Creations, Creative Commons License 2.0

In order to achieve that goal, the commission has laid down a list of proposed standards for U.S. facilities housing men, women, and juveniles. Among them: That facilities adopt a "zero tolerance" policy "toward all forms of sexual abuse"; that staff be trained to identify its warning signs and respond to them; that prisoners be assessed for their "risk of being sexually abused by other inmates or sexually abusive toward other inmates"; that institutions implement sufficient surveillance procedures and technologies with an eye at preventing abuse; and that they keep records of assault rates inside their facilities.

Prison rape can be prevented, and some corrections authorities are already moving to implement the commission's standards in an attempt to do just that. But other corrections leaders have shot back with one major complaint—ending prison rape sounds expensive.

The New Mexico Corrections Department submitted this in response to the proposed standards:

A simple cost-benefit analysis shows that when weighed against the twelve million dollar cost of compliance, non-compliance would be much cheaper. To be clear, the Department has every intention of complying with whatever standards are ultimately approved, but the fact remains that compliance with the currently proposed standards would be very expensive.

The Alabama Department of Corrections estimated that implementing these standards would cost the state $58 million dollars, but that the state could cut costs by keeping the definition of "prison rape" limited:

We strongly recommend the use of the statutory definition of "rape," as directed by PREA. The term "sexual abuse" is much too broad and encompassing of incidences such as verbal harassment which is not the intent of PREA. That type of behavior is certainly not condoned and is managed through state departmental administrative disciplinary actions and procedures. The purposes of PREA as detailed in section three of the law, is to provide for the analysis of the incidence and effects of prison rape in Federal, State, and local institutions and to provide information, resources, recommendations, and funding to protect individuals from prison rape, not "sexual abuse."

Also submitting public comments on this issue are the commission's supporters, who believe that the price of preventing the sexual abuse of prisoners is not too high. Below are the personal statements of six men and women who have survived sexual abuse in U.S. prisons. Each of them have come forward to publicly and explicitly detail the abuse they suffered at the hands of corrections officers and fellow prisoners, and urge the Department of Justice to institute the commission's standards:

After being convicted of a drug charge, Marilyn Shirley served time in the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Tx., from Jan. 1998 to Sept. 2000. Six months before being released, she was raped by a corrections officer. She writes:

I was a model prisoner; I took all of the required Bureau of Prisons courses and never had an incident report written against me. In fact, I was rewarded with time credited for good behavior. Upon my release, I walked away with a $250 check from the Bureau of Prisons and a permanently devastated emotional and mental state as a result of my rape.

In March 2000, I was awakened at approximately 3:30 a.m. by prison guard Michael Miller, a Senior Officer of the Bureau of Prisons. He told me, in the presence of my roommates, that I was wanted at the officer’s station. In the officer’s station, Miller made a phone call stating that if a Lieutenant heads for the Camp to give him ‘the signal.’

After hanging up the phone, Miller started forcing himself on me, kissing me and groping my breasts. I was pushed into a storeroom. He continued to assault me; the more that I begged and pleaded for him to stop, the more violent he became. He tried to force me to perform oral sex on him. He then threw me against the wall and violently raped me.

I can still remember him whispering in my ear during the rape: “Do you think you’re the only one? Don’t even think of telling, because it’s your word against mine, and you will lose.” Miller also said to me “who do you think they will believe, an inmate or a fine upstanding officer like me?”

The ordeal was finally over after Miller received the abrupt signal of someone clearing their throat over his radio, signaling that someone was coming. I later learned there are no security cameras in the officer’s station.

After returning to my room, I took off my sweatpants and put them in plastic and hid them in my locker.

Soon after, I confided in my welding boss that Officer Miller had raped me. I asked her not to tell anyone because I didn’t want anything to interfere with my release date and I was afraid of what Miller would do to me if I reported it. I also told one of my roommates, and I swore her to secrecy, too.

I stayed silent for months. Having nowhere to hide, I went to sleep every night not knowing if he was going to come for me again. Following the rape, Officer Miller harassed, intimidated and threatened me in many direct and indirect ways.

I lived in fear, until I was released from prison in September 2000. That day, I brought my sweatpants to the Carswell camp administrator and told her about the rape. I gave statements and answered questions. The semen-stained sweatpants were taken as evidence to the FBI Crime Lab. I was then given a lie detector test, which I passed.

About three years after my release Officer Miller was found guilty of rape.

Now that I am out of prison, I am left with the devastating impact of the rape. I have paralyzing panic attacks. I can’t even hold my grandbaby because I’m afraid of having a panic attack and dropping her. I can’t do some of the basic things, like watch certain TV shows, or go over high freeway overpasses because I start to panic.

I have awful nightmares and sometimes I wet the bed as a result. Sometimes my husband has to come and pull me out of the closet, where I go when I have these attacks. We have been married for 30 years, but I haven’t been able to be intimate with my husband since the rape. Sometimes, I fear that he will all of a sudden want an intimacy that I am unable to give.

When I was first released, I had a job. My boss was very understanding about my situation, but it got to a point where I could not work anymore. So I am now unable to work.

I sometimes fear that Officer Miller is going to come after me. He is scheduled to be released soon and I am very scared that he will come after me. I’m afraid this is never going to go away.

I sometimes wonder about other victims who aren’t so lucky, either because they are still inside, or because they don’t have evidence to confront their attackers. The sooner that you pass standards like those developed by the Commission the more sexual abuse can be prevented.

Scott Howard-Smith was repeatedly raped and forced into prostitution by his fellow prisoners after being convicted of "state theft charges and federal tax code violations" and incarcerated in a Colorado state facility. He writes:

Members of the 2-11 Crew, a white supremacist gang, had seen some news reports about my crimes. They tried to get me to fraudulently obtain money for them from the IRS, but I refused. When they learned that I was gay, they increased their threats and became violent.

One gang member forced me to perform oral sex on other inmates to pay off his debts. After contacting a friend on the outside, I was transferred to another state facility. I told three case managers there that I needed protection from the 2-11 Crew, but they said that I needed to name names. I knew that if I provided the names of members of this large and powerful gang, I would be in further danger. So nothing was done and I was again raped and forced to perform oral sex on gang members.

I spent many months trying to get protection by writing to officials. I was told that I could enter Administrative Segregating only if I provided a taped statement against the gang members. In early 2006, I finally decided to identify the gang members who raped me and forced me into prostitution. On the day that I was released from state custody in September 2007, I was placed in a holding cell with one of my assailants. He beat me and forced me to perform oral sex, calling me a snitch for reporting him to prison officials.

If the Commission's standards had been in place when I was incarcerated, so much of what happened to me could have been prevented. I would have been provided with protection, without naming names. I also could have received some much-needed counseling. Even once I did report, my efforts to report were mostly fruitless and put me at greater risk. Because I am openly gay, officials blamed me for the attacks. They said that as a homosexual I should expect to be targeted by one gang or another. They never recognized that, rather than instigating the abuse, I was actually far more vulnerable because of my sexuality. The officials to whom I reported, even when they were not hostile to me, still did not know how to react. They simply did not know what to do with me and failed to take even the most basic measures. When I finally provided testimony against a gang member, I was later put in the same cell with him anyway.

Staff need to be educated about this problem and what they can do to protect inmates. There was already a PREA coordinator at the facility where I was, but no one knew anything about PREA. The officers only wanted perpetrator names, they did not know how to help me. When I was too afraid to name assailants, they did not know who to contact, they did not know what to do with my reports. Safe, confidential counseling must also be available and not dependant on naming assailants. The facility only provided group therapy. Having been targeted by a large gang, I was too afraid to address my assaults with other inmates. I was told that if I chose to refuse group therapy that was my choice and I would not be provided with any individual counseling.

Now that I am out, I am working with counselors at a nearby rape crisis center who have been incredibly supportive. However, I continue to have various medical problems stemming from this abuse. I have nightmares, suffer from paranoia, inability to eat at times and I take various medications for blood pressure, cardiac palpitations, and other anxiety-related problems. I am working with counselors at the local rape crisis center, and they have been very helpful. My case manager and U.S. Probation Officer are also supportive. Being targeted by a gang placed me at obvious risk for ongoing abuse but officials took no real actions to protect me. Vulnerable inmates are powerless and have no real way to be heard. Outsiders need to monitor what is happening in prisons, and inmates must have a way to contact them safely. In my case, not only could an ombudsperson have called attention to my abuse, but he or she could have provided suggestions for how to best protect me. To some extent, my abuse was indicative of how much control the gang had within Colorado facilities. Strong standards would not just have prevented my ordeal, but would have restored proper control to officials. Please pass the Commission's standards without delay.

While serving time at a women's prison work camp, Jan Lacostey was sexually harassed and then assaulted by a prison employee who openly stated that he enjoyed working in a prison because of the "power" it afforded him over others:

I was incarcerated in 1998 and soon transferred to a women’s prison work camp.  I wound up working as a clerk at the warehouse for the men’s prison.  I basically did a lot of secretarial and janitorial work.

After a couple months without problems, a new employee began working in the warehouse with us. Within two weeks of him arriving at the warehouse, the mood had changed. He was definitely a different type of person than what I was used to dealing with.  He could take a joke or an innocent comment and make it nasty and dirty.  It seemed like all of his “jokes” were sexual in nature and I immediately began to feel uncomfortable. He started to ask a lot of personal questions about my life; especially my sexual life with my husband.

Then he started to talk about how he liked all of the “power” that he had working inside the men’s prison. He made a big deal of talking about giving guys major tickets just because he didn’t like the way that they looked at him. A major ticket is a major offense or write-up that goes into your record and it can really mess you up.  It can add time to your sentence, you can lose good time, you can lose privileges, you can even have to stop working. His favorite line was “I love the power it gives me.” That comment was enough to put the fear of god into any prisoner that heard him say it.

He then started asking me even more questions about my personal life.  I normally would have just continued to ignore him or if I was still on the outside I would have immediately told someone.  However, this was prison and this was a whole new ballgame.  If he decided to write me a major ticket, it could have held me up for a very long time. All tickets are supposed to be heard within a specified time frame; however, this is not always true. A hearing can be delayed for many reasons, especially a sexual misconduct ticket.

In your notice, you request input on the definition of “prison rape.” My experience shows how important it is that the standards you are reviewing cover the full range of sexual abuse and staff sexual misconduct. In my case, sexual harassment was a direct precursor to this employee sexually assaulting me. If the administration had stopped his harassment when it started, I might never have been raped.

I had received my date to go to the Corrections Center near my home which would allow me to get back into counseling, get a job, and even go home for a few hours on the weekend to see my family.  I knew that if I reported what he was doing to anyone or if he got wind of the fact that I was even thinking about reporting him, he would write me a major misconduct sexual act ticket and I would never get home!  I kept thinking about the fact that the Warden at the Prison Camp was well known for saying that if an inmate reported an assault or rape or any type of sexual contact by a male guard or employee and there was no physical evidence such as DNA or a witness willing to testify, she would always believe the guard or employee over the inmate.  How did I dare take my chances with that when I was so close to getting out of that horrid place?

It is extremely important that the leadership show by example and that the administration take sexual abuse seriously, responding appropriately and immediately to all reported incidents. As you can see by my story, the warden at that facility obviously did not show the needed leadership. The standards should require a “zero tolerance” policy at all facilities, but it has to be backed up with words and actions, and not just be a piece of paper that the officials ignore.

Considering all of the factors, I had to make the hardest decision of my life and weigh my options.  I decided that it was more important to get back home to my family and try to get my life back on track.  I decided that I would not tell anyone what had happened and I would keep it to myself.  If it meant that I had to put up with being sexually assaulted and raped for another two months, I could do it as long as I could still go home the beginning of December.

At first he would just put his hands under my clothes.  Then, he would demand that I perform oral sex. He would demand that I do other sexual acts for him. And all the time he was making me perform these degrading acts on him, he kept talking about how I must be missing my sex life with my husband.

Eventually, he said that he wanted more. He wanted to have intercourse with me. I told him that I didn’t want to do that and begged him to please not do this to me.  He informed me that he could simply issue a major sexual conduct ticket and very snottily said “how long do you think it will take for you to get home then?”

After months of abuse, the day that I no longer had to see him finally arrived. I was going to the Center, one step closer to home! How was I to know that unfortunately, this was definitely not going to be the last time I would have to see him. His control over my life would continue for many, many more years following my release from prison.

It seemed that once I got on the bus leaving the prison and went to the Corrections Center, I put everything regarding him deep into the back of my mind.  I didn’t tell anyone – not my husband, no one.  I don’t think that I even thought about it myself.  Maybe in some ways, not thinking about it was my way of dealing with it.  If I didn’t think about it, then maybe it meant that it didn’t happen.

About 10 months after I was released from the prison, I was reporting to my parole officer. He asked me if I knew why Internal Affairs would want to talk to me. I said no I had no clue. He then asked me if I had ever had a problem with any of the guards or employees when I worked at the warehouse. I immediately burst into tears and I think that my heart literally stopped. I instantly knew that he was talking about him. I told him that yes, I had indeed had a problem with one of them.

Apparently, one of the female prisoners had finally decided that enough was enough, and she had gotten the guts to come forward with what he had been doing to her.  This opened an investigation and once it reached a criminal investigation, Internal Affairs was involved.  She had managed to get some DNA and turned it over to the officials.  They ended up trying to find other inmates that worked at the warehouse and interviewing each one of them.  I was the original victim and the last person interviewed.

I ended up having to meet with an inspector from Internal Affairs. He was a caring, respectful person.  He never made me feel like I was less important because I had been a prisoner. He didn’t make me think that because I had been a prisoner I “deserved” to be raped. He let me know that I still had rights and that this person wouldn’t be allowed to get away with raping me and all of those other women – he would make sure of that.

I must admit that I had my doubts. I honestly didn’t think that anything would every come of it – after all, the females he had raped were “just prisoners” – and not as good as everyone else. We had no rights and I thought that we would just have to deal with it.

In the end though, I think the Internal Affairs inspectors, and later detectives with the Michigan State Police, did the right thing. They treated me like a human being, and they took the case seriously. Internal Affairs referred the case for prosecution. But I know this doesn’t always happen, which is why it’s important that the standards address things like training for staff, policies and protocols, and collaboration with outside agencies.

I am so much luckier than most Prison Rape victims. I had a fantastic support system.  I got into counseling and it truly helped. After 10 years, I still periodically see my counselor. I had been diagnosed with Bi-Polar Disorder shortly before becoming incarcerated and have now been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  To this day, I still take medication to allow me to sleep without having nightmares.

Once he was charged criminally, I ended up having to go through a criminal trial.  This wasn’t simply a quick simple deal.  This defendant managed to drag the criminal trial out for over 5 years!  He was finally sent to prison and is now on the Sex Offender Registry.  While he was incarcerated I constantly wondered if anyone was threatening him with a Major Misconduct Ticket if he didn’t do what they wanted.  But I couldn’t wish that on even him.  Not only did we end up actually having two trials, while testifying and talking about it, forced me to have to relive the nightmares of being raped in prison.

Watching the other victims during the trial, meeting them and hearing their stories brought to light an entirely new issue. I also had to deal with the fact of knowing that since I was the first victim, if I had only had the courage to say something, none of the other victims would have been raped. If only there was a way that would have allowed me to report these instances of rape to someone – not just inside the prison system – but outside the system! The standards have to ensure that victims can report abuse without fear of repercussion.  I also feel it is important to have outsiders checking on prisons to make sure they are doing the right thing, and not sweeping these cases under the rug – the standards need to have a way to hold prison officials accountable for protecting inmates.

Imagine all of the pain, heartbreak and suffering that could have been avoided if there was someway to report sexual assaults where you could be assured someone would take you seriously?  It is not acceptable that a prison can ignore a complaint of abuse, deem it unfounded without enough evidence or even retaliate against the prisoner lodging the complaint.  There needs to be some sort of checks and balances – such as the standards – in place so that you can stop the abuse that continues to occur.  You have the opportunity to implement the changes that can prevent this.  I implore you to make these changes and to do them as soon as possible.

The Wardens and all of the prison system need to know that those incarcerated in the prison system are still people who can be raped!  Please understand the importance of immediately implementing the standards that the Commission is recommending and do everything in your power to stop the repeated rape of prisoners – male and female.  As one of the intake guards told us when I entered prison, there aren’t really that many “bad people,” there are just “people who make bad mistakes.”  Remember, the prisoners are still people, they have wives, husbands, children and parents just like anyone else.

Barrilee Bannister was sexually abused by both male and female officers while in prison on a second-degree robbery conviction in Florence, Arizona:

I was sexually harassed and abused while in a private prison, and I urge you to take strong action to prevent this torture from happening to any other women.

In 1995, I was arrested on two charges of second degree robbery and sentenced to serve 140 months in the custody of the Oregon Department of Corrections. Due to overcrowding in the state prison system, Oregon contracted with the Corrections Corporation of America to house a large percentage of the state’s female prison population. I was one of 78 women who were sent to a men’s facility in Florence, Arizona. We were housed in a separate unit from the men, but their presence was strongly felt, and at times we could see them and they could see us. I immediately felt that the facility was not prepared to house us safely.

When we first entered the facility, the 77 other women and I were paraded down a long corridor where male officers gawked, whistled, and made lewd comments at us. After we had all settled into our cells, an officer came and ushered us into the shower area where we were strip searched by female officers. During the search, I looked up and noticed that male guards were standing on the top tier of the unit looking down at us as we stood there, naked. There was a short wall separating the shower area from the rest of the unit, but if you stood on the walkway of the second tier, you had an unobstructed view of the showers. Several of us complained to the female officers who were performing the strip searches, but they laughed at us and refused to ask the men to leave.

The abuse only got worse when I was in the medical isolation cell area. Six women were housed in one small cell. One night, a captain came into the cell, took out a marijuana cigarette, and smoked it with us. Afterwards, he handed another marijuana cigarette to one of the other women and told us to save it for later. Minutes after he left, the captain returned with five or six other male officers and told us that the cell was going to be searched for contraband. We were warned that if anything illegal was found, our property would be confiscated and we might face criminal charges.

One officer told us that we could avoid the search and any resulting charges by putting on a strip show. Fearing that the marijuana cigarette that the captain had provided minutes earlier would result in additional charges, several of us danced and stripped for the officers, who watched and laughed. From that day on, the officers would walk by the segregation cell and demand that we lift up our shirts to bare our breasts.

I really wanted to report the officers, but there was no way to do so without running the risk of retaliation. To keep us in line, the officers frequently threatened to charge us with violations, saying that they would make sure we remained in segregation for a long time if we did not comply with their demands.

Several weeks later, I was put into a solitary “dry cell,” which meant that it had no running water. For two days, no one checked on me or gave me food and, because there was no water, I could not get a drink from the sink or flush the toilet.

Finally, a male corrections officer checked on me. After I told him that I had been in the cell without any food or water for two days, he brought his lunch to my cell and asked if I wanted to eat with him. From that day forward, he would check on me almost every day.

After several weeks of him visiting my cell, the officer leaned over and kissed me. I did not want for him to kiss me, and I tried to laugh it off. I feared that if I turned down his advances I would be placed back on dry cell status, with no food or running water. He started kissing me whenever he came to visit and eventually forced me to perform oral sex on him.

A rumor had spread through the facility that I was pregnant. I’m not sure how the rumor got started, but medical staff forced me to provide a urine sample that they could use to test for pregnancy. They did not ask me any questions, offer me any support, or seem at all concerned for my well-being. That same night, three guards came into my cell, sprayed me in the face with mace, handcuffed me behind my back, threw me down on the ground, and said, “We hear you are pregnant by one of ours and we’re gonna make sure you abort.” The two female guards began to kick me as the male guard stood watch. The beating lasted about a minute, but it felt like ten or more. Afterwards, the male officer uncuffed me and they left.

Once back in general population, I contacted a friend and asked him to immediately visit me to take pictures of bruises on my body that were the result of the beating. He was not allowed to bring his camera into the facility, but I felt relieved that somebody on the outside knew what had happened. I started contacting outside organizations and letting them know what was going on inside the prison. Some of the organizations that I contacted went to the media and bombarded the prison with phone calls and letters. Eventually, the CCA and the Florence Police Department began investigating the facility.

The investigation confirmed that sexual misconduct had taken place at the facility. The 78 of us were sent back to the Oregon Women’s Correctional Center in Salem. According to one newspaper article, at least a dozen officers from the CCA facility were terminated. Charges were filed against two of the officers, including the man who had forced me to perform oral sex.

I spent almost a year in Arizona, and during that time, I did not receive any medical or mental health care. Oregon lacked enough space to house its female prison population safely, so I was continuously moved around until 2001, when I was transferred to the newly built Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, Oregon. I wanted to see a counselor, and repeatedly requested mental health treatment at Coffee Creek. The officials did not allow me to see the mental health counselor until a lymph node disorder caused me to experience severe paranoia and hallucinations.

There was only one counselor at the facility and she did not seem accustomed to dealing with survivors of sexual violence. Although I very much wanted to speak with her about what I endured in Arizona, she mostly offered me medication. When I did have the opportunity to speak with the counselor, our sessions were closely monitored and I never felt comfortable speaking openly about what had happened to me in Arizona. I really would have benefited from being able to talk to a rape crisis counselor with experience in dealing with issues of sexual violence.

I started turning more and more to my support system on the outside. I stayed in close contact with several of the feminist organizations that had helped bring attention to the abuse in Arizona, and it was only with their help that I was able to let go of some of the anger I was experiencing.

Being able to contact people on the outside made a significant difference for me. In addition to the individuals and organizations that helped secure an investigation at CCA and provided me with support through the remainder of my incarceration, I was able to find an attorney in Oregon to represent me in a federal lawsuit. The case was eventually settled. CCA officials admitted wrongdoing and gave me and the 77 other women an apology. We did not receive any monetary compensation.

However, steps should have been taken to prevent the abuse in the first place. Male officers need to be closely monitored when in female units and should not be allowed to see female prisoners when they aren’t fully dressed. Female officers knew about the male officers’ actions but seemed to accept it as part of the culture.

Harassment must be taken as seriously as other forms of abuse. The officers’ bad behavior at CCA began with gawking and lewd comments, then to forced strip shows, and for me it ultimately resulted in forced oral sex. Without facing any consequences for their harassment, the officers knew that they could do whatever they wanted.

I fear for abused prisoners who are not as lucky as I was, and who may not have access to the outside support that I had. The standards’ requirement that all survivors of sexual assault in detention have access to confidential support from an outside rape crisis counselor is very important. Prison mental health staff also need proper training on how to provide appropriation response to a sexual assault victim.

Ongoing harassment and abuse should not have been part of my sentence. Please pass strong standards so that current inmates are protected from sexual abuse and are treated properly if they are raped.

While spending time in juvenile detention centers and adult prisons, Troy Erik Isaac was repeatedly raped by fellow prisoners:

My name is Troy Erik Isaac. I'm a 36 year old male. I am writing to encourage you to adopt swiftly the standards developed by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission.

I identify as transgender. I think and feel like a woman. I've spent most of my adolescent year's in juvenile hall, youth authority, from 12 to 18. I was raped numerous times by fellow inmates, and even was assaulted by a fellow prisoner incarcerated for rape. Frankly I was never supposed to be around a prisoner convicted of rape in this case.

I went on to serve a total of 15 years in adult prison from ages 19 to 34. Again I was raped and abused by prisoners and staff lacked the training to handle rape cases and often looked the other way or ignored me.

The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) is a very vital tool to combat sexual assaults and rape of juvenile offenders and adult offenders, like myself. The sooner the PREA standards are adopted the sooner prison officials will get the training and understanding to combat and eliminate rape from harming youth offenders and adult offenders, and staff.

Please pass the Commission's standards quickly so that others do not have to suffer the abuse I already experienced.

Frank Mendoza was never convicted of a crime and only spent two weeks in jail. But it was enough time for a corrections officer to sexually assault him:

I experienced a brutal sexual assault when I was in jail for a non-violent offense. I am writing to express my strong support for the National Standards to Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Prison Rape. Even though I was never convicted of a crime, I received a life sentence of pain and hurt from the abuse I suffered at the hands of a guard.

In 2006, I was fired from my job at a law firm and was arrested for public drunkenness. I was transferred from the Orange County Jail to the Los Angeles County Jail. I was scared of other inmates, but did not know at the time that I had more reason to fear the staff. While at the Los Angeles County Jail, I was repeatedly harassed by corrections officers because I was openly gay. Officers would verbally abuse and taunt me, and nothing I did would make them leave me alone. After one particularly humiliating incident, I tried to defend myself. In response, one of the officers threatened to hurt me. I had no idea he would actually carry out those threats and get away with it. I believe my rape was premeditated.

At the time, I was housed in Administrative Segregation. A day or two after I was threatened, all of the officers in the watchtower left and it got eerily quiet. That is when the officer who threatened me entered my cell and severely beat and digitally raped me. When the officer on the next shift saw me naked and bloodied in my cell, he asked what happened. I told him I was raped and he just told me to get dressed, but never followed up on my report. The inmate in the cell next to mine heard the attack, but he wasn't willing to help me or to testify against the officer, for fear that it might happen to him too.

Survivors need multiple avenues to report a sexual assault, especially if they were raped by a staff member. Inmates cannot be expected to report abuse to an officer who works closely with the perpetrator. I told an officer what happened to me, but nothing was ever done. Because of the "code of silence," officers refused to report on one another, leaving me without any options to seek help. For that reason, it is critically important that the standards include an option for survivors to report to someone on the outside, so that facilities will be forced to take reports of sexual violence seriously.

The standards should also make sure that rape in jail is investigated like rape in the community. I was denied a forensic exam, which made it almost impossible to collect any evidence from the rape. No one ever provided me with any treatment for my injuries, even though I was badly beaten. I never spoke with a counselor or mental health staff member and was left to suffer alone in my cell. If I had access to these services, I could have been spared years of needless suffering and pain.

I was only in the jail for two weeks, but I was very traumatized by the attack. I was virtually homeless, but I was determined to seek justice in my case. I went to the Rampart Police Station to report the rape and did everything I could do move it forward. But nothing ever came of it. Without a forensic exam or any kind of evidence from the assault, building a criminal case against the officer was virtually impossible. As far as I know, he still works at the jail.

I was released from the jail four years ago and am working hard to put my life together. I currently live in Los Angeles and have been seeing a therapist for two years and also meet regularly with a psychologist. Healing from the wounds of the sexual assault is hard work, but I am determined to move on with my life. Prisoner rape is not just a statistic for those of us who have lived through it, it is a life shattering experience. This violence has to stop and I ask you to pass the standards quickly so that others do not have to experience the abuse that I endured.

Does eliminating prison rape sound like an investment worth making? On May 10, the comment period on these standards will close. Just Detention International encourages supporters of the standards to submit their comments online:

It is crucial that people who care about ending sexual abuse behind bars submit comments. We know that corrections officials and their lobbyists will weigh in en masse. During the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission's public comment period in 2008, on a draft version of the standards, more than 100 corrections departments and associations submitted comments objecting to the standards. Supportive public comments are vital to ensuring that the Attorney General promulgates strong standards.

Supporters of the proposed standards can also sign JDI's online petition to have their names included in JDI's comments to the Department of Justice.

In a recent Sexist thread, a couple of commenters got to arguing a grim set of statistics. The question at hand: Which group experiences more rapes, men in prison or women outside of prison?

In order to resolve this question, one commenter referred to the "Prison Rape" Wikipedia page, which reads: "Stop Prisoner Rape, Inc. statistics indicate that there are more men raped in U.S. prisons than non-incarcerated women similarly assaulted."

I've seen this comparison quoted on other threads, but I've never seen any specific stats to back it up—and the Wiki page doesn't refer to any, either. I'm a big fan of the work of the organization to which the stats are attributed—Just Detention International, formerly Stop Prisoner Rape, Inc.—so I reached out to JDI for some insight. JDI program director Cynthia Totten had this to say:

JDI does not compare numbers of people raped in society vs. prison as a way to show how frequent rape in detention is—doing so would be problematic and troubling on many levels. Rape is devastatingly common both inside and outside prison walls. The best academic research finds that 20 percent of inmates in men’s prisons are assaulted while rates in women’s institutions vary, with one in four inmates raped in the worst facilities. According to recent government studies by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, approximately 60,500 inmates reported being sexually abused at their current federal and state prison in the preceding year alone, while 25,000 jail detainees were victimized in just the prior six months; we can realistically say that at least 100,000 inmates are raped in prisons and jails each year, without considering juvenile detention or immigration detention. Add to this the fact that annual jail intakes are 17 times the population in a jail on any given day, and this number likely represents only the tip of the iceberg. Regardless of custody status, rape and sexual assault traumatizes millions of people in the United States every year, and we are committed to putting an end to this violence, no matter where it occurs.

I wholeheartedly agree with Totten: These sorts of comparisons are profoundly unhelpful.

First of all, until a reliable study is undertaken to directly answer this question, it is scientifically unsound to compare studies that employ different methods, definitions, and standards in determining the prevalence of rape in different communities. Second, these comparisons are often employed solely to derail conversations about addressing the problem of rape. Comparing statistics about the prevalence of rape in different communities ignores the fact that rapes are happening, even one is too many, and all rapists need to be stopped. When you say, "You shouldn't be addressing rape against women in society, you should be addressing rape against male prisoners," you stop a productive conversation about ending rape. When you say, "You shouldn't be addressing rape against male prisoners, you should be addressing rape against women in society," you stop a productive conversation about ending rape.

What Totten—a person who has dedicated her career to ending prison rape—is saying is that we should be encouraging conversations about sexual violence against anyone, and supporting all organizations committed to ending this violence everywhere. It's important to note, however, that these conversations won't all be happening at the same time, and addressing one form of rape in no way detracts from the task of ending rape in all its other forms. The work of ending prison rape is going to take a vastly different approach than the work of ending acquaintance rapes, or child molestation, or elder abuse, or the rape of LGBTQ victims, or male victims, or female victims. That's OK—as long as we also understand that the work of encouraging all of these conversations about all different forms of rape will not be accomplished by jostling for position. As one commenter wrote on another rape stats argument: "I can’t believe you all are arguing over this. Some of you are essentially angry for not including everyone, while missing the point: RAPE = BAD. Do we all agree on that point? Okay! Good."

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Just Detention International has attempted to edit the Prison Rape Wikipedia page with updated information—for one thing, the organization hasn't been called "Stop Prisoner Rape, Inc." for a few years now—but the erroneous and unsourced statement has since been restored to the page.

Photo via amandabhslater, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

* Problem: girls in developing countries have a lower "school life expectancy" than boys. Is the solution as easy as sending over some sanitary pads? The World Bank has claimed that girls in developing countries "may miss up to 20 percent of school because of menstruation," but a new study by economists Emily Oster and Rebecca Thornton suggests that "feminine problems" are not responsible for the gap:

Although girls in our sample were indeed less likely to attend school on days they had their period, the effect is very, very tiny.  On non-period days, girls were in school about 85.7 percent of the time; on days they are menstruating, they were in school 83.0 percent of the time (a difference of only 3.2 percent). This means that girls missed only about a third of a day per year due to their period.

* Happy belated birthday, The Pill.

* FoxSports' Jason Whitlock on Ben Roethlisberger:

Statements made by drunken sorority girls are not facts. Statements made by sober sorority girls about an evening spent bar-hopping and drinking are not facts.  Late last week I received an e-mail from a former sorority president and current advisor to a sorority. She warned me that the media were being foolish for believing the allegations of drunken 20-somethings. She explained what she'd witnessed firsthand as a student and what she now deals with as an advisor. Some young women use alcohol as an excuse to be sexually aggressive at fraternity houses and nightclubs and then quickly concoct a story of sexual assault when confronted by their disapproving peers. Most of these allegations never make it to police headquarters. The allegations are too sketchy and the accuser's immediate jury of peers reject them.

Because if there's anyone more credible than a "drunken sorority girl" eyewitness, it's an anonymous sorority advisor totally unrelated to the case who has no knowledge of what happened that night, but sent Jason Whitlock an e-mail.

* If you're a man who watches pornography, Susannah Breslin wants to hear from you.

* Via From Austin to A&M: An NPR piece on the problematic preponderance of male "experts" in journalism brings on a male expert on male expertise to talk about the issue. Th expert, Clay Shirkey, had this to say:

CLAY SHIRKY: I think one of the big impacts is that the male voice is what expertise comes to sound like. And so, even from someone who doesn’t go in with a formally sexist bias about whether men are more expert than women in general, you may just unconsciously flip through to those parts of the rolodex. Someone somewhere has to say, we have to change the fact of the representation before we change people’s mental model of what expertise sounds like because if we just wait, we will always lag the cultural change rather than leading it.

I wonder if NPR listeners had to hear this from a man in order to believe it?

Photo via freeparking, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Last week, I wrote a piece about why some universities are reluctant to alert students to acquaintance rapes that are committed on campus. This weekend, that hands-off policy was on full display at George Mason University, where officials refused to send an alert in response to a reported sexual assault because "they don't believe there is a threat to the campus community."

As I noted last week, most colleges and universities are legally required to issue a "timely warning" when crimes occur on campus that pose an "on-going threat" to students or staff. But deciding which crimes constitute an on-going threat is a task largely left to each university's discretion—and most schools generally don't think that acquaintance rapes fit the bill.

That being said, schools are in no way obligated to only send alerts for crimes they deem to be "on-going threats." There are plenty of reasons, beyond legal compliance, for schools to consider sending a timely warning in the case of an acquaintance rape. This WUSA9 story, about an acquaintance sexual assault reported in a GMU dorm early Sunday morning, illustrates several reasons for doing this:

1. Students want information about what's going on on campus: At GMU, many students learned of the reported assault after noticing "lots of police activity" on campus; releasing an alert detailing the nature of the police activity can help inform and reassure students.

George Mason University police are investigating an alleged sex assault on campus. Campus officials did not send out an alert to students. They say they don't believe there is a threat to the campus community. But It's the lack of information about the assault that has some students worried. Katie Horn is a freshman and was heading to church Sunday morning when she noticed lots of police activity. She says, "There was a group of them. There were three cop cars sitting at the entrance. Three state troopers talking and two George Mason University police officers."

2. Students are often undereducated on the problem of acquaintance rapes on campus. Even though college-aged women are four times more likely than other women to experience sexual assault, one GMU student expressed "shock" that anything like that could happen on her campus. Another hoped that the accusation was false (funny how that works), and said that the police presence made the incident seem "more serious":

Campus officials say the freshman was acquainted with her attacker. Horn says, "I'm shocked, I've never heard anything like that happening at Mason." George Mason University Police would not go on camera Sunday, but would only say they are investigating an alleged sex assault on campus and that Fairfax County Police are helping them with the case. Police arrived at Madison Hall, a co-ed dorm, located at Presidents Park on campus around 5 o'clock Sunday morning. Katie Blacklege is a GMU freshman and says, "It's awful, I hope it's not true. but if there were actually police here, it seems more serious."

3. Students are only prepared to protect themselves against stranger rapes. Even when informed of an acquaintance rape, students defer back to safety precautions for avoiding the much less likely scenario of a stranger rape. One student worried about how easy it is for strangers to access her dorm, and said she would take more precautions while running alone at night. In fact, acquaintance rapists operate by subverting these safety precautions—offering to escort their victims home so that they are not walking home "alone," or convincing their victims to willingly grant them access to their rooms.

Students use key cards to swipe themselves in and get access between halls. But students say that's a false sense of security. French says, "People let people in all the time. There are so many doors you can go into. There are a lot of young women who walk around at night by themselves, like me, I run at night by myself. Knowing that, that happened, I'll be more cautious about that."

4. Parents are perhaps even more hideously misinformed about these realities than students are. One student's father attributed acquaintance rape to a "sign of the times," an inevitable consequence of putting too many people together in one space, and "weekends":

Katie Horn's parents visit their daughter every Sunday and are not surprised to find trouble on college campuses.  Art Horn says, "It disturbs you, but it's the sign of the times. When you put this many people together and on the weekend, things can happen.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Last week, University of Virginia student Madeleine Conger pointed me to some bizarre language the university has been employing to tip-toe around the word "rape"in its student safety e-mails. "Our Chief Student Affairs Officer, Pat Lampkin, sends us these handy safety reminders before major binge drinking holidays—Halloween, Spring break, fraternity bid night," Conger writes. "This time it's Foxfield—an annual horse race in the area that students use as a day to get devastatingly drunk in an open field.  It's also the site of some of the infamous Tucker Max's sexual exploits."

Let's see how Lampkin warns UVA students of the danger of a drunken a horse race:

If you are intoxicated, your impaired judgment places you at a much greater risk for the following: injuries; sexual activity that is later regretted or deemed to have lacked consent; or a police citation. Plan not to drink or set a drink limit for yourself and stick to it.

Tell us what you really mean, UVA. Observe the entirely passive nature of this "sexual activity that is later regretted or deemed to have lacked consent." Sexual activity can be "regretted" by someone, but only "later." Similarly, non-consensual sexual activity isn't something that actually occurs when the "sex" happens—but it can be later "deemed" that way. Here, responsibility is administered evenly to both sexual partners—the one who "regrets" it, and the one who is accused of rape because of it.

At best, it seems that Lampkin is warning students against having bad sex and inspiring false rape accusations—an odd set of priorities for a campus security expert to focus on, no? I have an e-mail out to Lampkin, asking if what she really meant to warn students of was "rape." I'll update you when I hear back.

Photo via Tambako the Jaguar, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

In the world of sexual assault prevention, the work of University of Massachusetts psychologist David Lisak has gained some serious traction. Lisak has spent the past 20 years studying men who commit acquaintance rapes. In the past year, that work has been dissected by feminist blogs, employed in an investigative report from the Center for Public Integrity, and integrated into the policies of campus safety nonprofit Security On Campus. Being a bit of a fan girl myself, I was happy to discover more from Liak: This CBS news interview in which the researcher talks about the ways in which non-stranger rapists operate, how they're ignored by the criminal justice system, and why these men tell him about the rapes they've committed. Transcript after the jump.

The most common rape is a non-stranger assault where the victim is picked out by the offender at a party, at a bar. The degree of acquaintance between them is usually very, very incidental. It is really just the perpetrator finding a particular individual who they're going to target. And so if they're in a bar, if you've got a predator in a bar, he's not going to look for the most sober individual in the bar. He's going to look for the most intoxicated individual. In fact, he'll look for the individual who is not only intoxicated but seems to be doing outrageous things.

Somehow all we can do is take the statement from the victim, take the statement from the alleged perpetrator, and then throw up our hands because they're saying conflicting things and we don't know how to resolve this. That's not how we investigate other crimes. You know, in almost any other circumstance, if we have an alleged perpetrator, we begin an investigation. And it doesn't end with asking the alleged perpetrator whether or not they did the crime. Rather than taking the report and investigating the alleged offender—which is what we do in virtually every other crime and certainly in violent crimes, that is our approach—and yet somehow that's not the approach that's taken in non-stranger cases.

The reason that this is such a common part of the scenario—the non-stranger assault—is that we know, and I've interviewed these rapists for 20 years and they have told me explicitly, they are predators. They go after victims in those kinds of circumstances, and they look for potential victims who are already somwhat vulnerable. They're going to get her so intoxicated that she might have blackouts, she may be unconscious, she is much more susceptible to all the manipulations you would use. So for example, you get her completely intoxicated and then you say, "You know what? You really shouldn't drive. I'll drive you home." And then, presto! The rapist has her in his car, and the assault can happen whether in his car, his apartment, or wherever, but she's under his control. And that scenario has been described to me so many different times by these non-stranger rapists.

Predators look for vulnerable people, and they prey on vulnerable peope, and if as a criminal justice system, we're going to essentially turn away from any victim who is drinking or any victim who is in some way vulnearble, we're essentially giving a free pass to sexual predators. A lot of these men, especially the serial rapists, are very very narcissistic, there is nothing they enjoy more than to sit down in a room with a guy like me and impress me with all their sexual exploits. And that's how they view them.

* I am one of those magical unicorns who suppresses her period with hormonal birth control. I do this for three reasons:

1. I prefer not to bleed out of my vagina for several days each month;

2. I prefer not to experience menstrual cramps for several days each month;

3. I really fucking prefer not to have my emotional reactions reduced to popular culture's pseudo-scientific understanding of my menstrual cycle for several days each month. Case in point:  "Code Red," a new iPhone app for men that allows them to chart our cycles, helping them to predict when we'll be horny, when we'll be bitchy, and when we'll bleed on their penises, I guess? Fuck it: I'd rather not have a menstrual cycle at all than risk the possibility of having my righteous bitchiness be discounted as irrational, that-time-of-the-month bitchiness.

[youtube:v=2Q7IzwUa_kI]

* Via Feministing: Performance artist Ivan E. Coyote's love-letter to femmes.

* Also on Feministing, an anonymous essay on how passing as heterosexual can complicate a queer woman's relationship with her community.

* Heartless Doll argues against prom, as the practice largely functions as a creepy and exclusionary mass High School Wedding. Co-sign.

* Consent and hair cuts.

* On Nerve, guy loses his virginity by hiring a  "sex surrogate" . . . the same sex surrogate employed by his also-virginal roommate, Scott:

Later, when Scott got home from his own "getting acquainted" session, we realized we both had the same surrogate. Maybe Dr. Klein had planned it that way for some mysterious therapeutic reason. Or maybe Jan was the only surrogate who worked for him. Either way, once Jan found out that Scott and I were roommates, she sensed our natural competitiveness and played us off each other. She would fill us in on each other's sessions, telling us how well the other had performed. Sometimes, she would make it sound like we were getting away with something, going beyond our prescribed allotment of sex. "Oh, we shouldn't be doing this," she would tease. "Don't tell Scott, it'll be our little secret." After our sessions, we'd brag about our milestones. Soon, it became unclear which was more important — losing my virginity or beating Scott.

In an episode of Isabella Rossellini's new animal sex series, "Seduce Me," Rossellini acts out a scene of "forced copulation" between ducks (fair warning: video depiction of anthropomorphized duck rape ahoy). While costumed as a female duck, Rossellini exclaims, "Ouch! Ouch! One of them is raping me! I don’t care." The line prompts sex educator Emily Nagoski to pose the question: "Is there such a thing as duck 'rape'? Or is rape a strictly human concept?" Are animals capable of consenting to sex? And if so, why can't we have sex with them?

Forced copulation is a regular feature of sexual activity among ducks. In the phenomenon known as "rape flight," several mallards will aggressively peck at a female duck until she submits to sex (or dies). There's reason to believe that female ducks very much do not enjoy this; the duck vagina has developed in a "rape-specific way" which allows female ducks to prevent pregnancy from this forced sexual contact. But can we compare this animal behavior to the human conception of rape? Nagoski argues that there's no such thing as "duck rape" for the same reason that meat isn't murder—animals are incapable of consenting (or not consenting) to sex:

Rape has a deep moral, as well as legal, meaning. Rape is (briefly) penetration without consent. Can a duck give consent? Can an orangutan? You may say I’m an arrogant human, but as far as I’m concerned, NO, a duck can’t give consent. (If a duck could give consent, I’d feel like a terrible, cruel, and, what’s more, cannibalistic person when I ate one. Personally, I can’t eat something to which I apply the same moral standards as humans.)

It’s not so easy to avoid imposing human moral standards on orangutans and chimps; they’re so like us, they’re so close to human. But we must avoid it. It’s not appropriate to overlay moral meaning on animal behavior; chimps commit infanticide, but that’s just part of being a chimp. It’s not immoral or wrong, it’s just . . . chimpanzeedom. There’s something in us, some apparently innate tendency, to find lessons and moral standards in nature. This is, in part, the naturalistic fallacy—the conclusion that if something is natural it must be right or good. Just as mistaken is the conclusion that something in natural is bad or wrong because it violates a human moral standard.

Nagoski's point is well-taken. Human rape can't be justified through the claim that it's just "natural animal behavior," and animal "rape" can't be condemned through our human moral codes. But if animals are totally removed from the concept of consent—and if that provides justification for humans killing and eating them—then why can't that same argument be used to justify humans fucking animals? Dan Savage turns the meat-is-murder argument on its head when discussing the moral argument against bestiality:

The standard bestiality-is-always-wrong argument—one I've deployed for years—is that animals can't consent, so . . . you know . . . fucking animals is wrong. We are not, however, at all concerned with consent when we want to have an animal for dinner or skinning one for a pair of assless chaps. So our sudden concern with consent when it comes to human/animal sex—which most animals survive (and some humans do not)—seems a little convenient and a lot hypocritical. We would all be vegans in canvas shoes if we gave a shit about an animal's consent. (And our chaps would all be made out of rubber.) And where does the consent argument go if the science shows that some animals are orientated towards humans?

The logical conclusion of this argument leads me one of two places: It's either morally inexcusable to both eat and have sex with animals, or both activities are A-OK.  Unfortunately, I'm really jonesing for a hamburger right now, but I'm not totally prepared to sign on to the idea of moral bestiality. Has anybody got a loophole for me?

It's extremely important to unpack all the myths and excuses provided around sexual assault together. When we detail every way that rape apologists shift their justifications to fit the circumstances of each crime, we reveal that these excuses really aren't about what assault victims are wearing, or who they're dating, or what crimes they've committed in the past—it's about the people in our society who just don't care to stop sexual assault. When you add up all the excuses, you'd be hard pressed to find an instance of sexual violence that can't be explained away through the cultural script:

Here are Denim Day's 12 examples of ways we discount sexual assaults:

#1 SHE WAS WEARING TIGHT JEANS:

In 1999, the Italian High Court overturned a rape conviction because the victim was wearing tight jeans at the time of the assault. The justices stated that the victim must have helped her attacker remove her jeans, from which they inferred consent. People all around the world were outraged. Wearing jeans on this anniversary became an international symbol of protest against erroneous and destructive attitudes abotu sexual violence.

#2 SHE WAS ASKING FOR IT:

It is often believed that sexy or suggestive clothing invites wanted male attention, positive or negative. Regardless, wearing revealing clothing does not invite sexual assault. In fact, women and girls have been raped in everything from jeans to business suits to pajamas. This belief reinforces the myth that women and girls invite assault by their clothing choices and shifts the blame for the crime to the victim and away from the perpetrator, where it belongs.

#3 SHE WAS FLIRTING ONLINE:

Teenagers and children have increasingly become targets for predators both online and via mobile devices. Predators today will use social networking sites to contact youth and convince them that the "stranger" is a "friend."This connection increases the child / teen's trust in them and interest in sexual relations. Learning about the dangers of internet use and speaking about them openly can help minimize the risks from those who wish to abuse.

#4 SHE WAS HIS STEADY GIRLFRIEND:

One of the most common misconceptions is that most rapes are committed by strangers. In reality, more than 75% of sexual assaults are committed by someone the survivor knew and trusted—such as a teacher, co-worker, relative, friend, or even their steady girlfriend or boyfriend. Just because someone has consented to a sexual act in the past does not give someone the right to assume consent and force or coerce sexual contact.

#5 SHE WAS DRUNK AND PARTYING:

It is commonly believed that because a woman is drinking she somehow invites rape. In most states, it is against the law to have sex with someone who is unable to give legal consent. Coercing or forcing sex without consent is considered rape/sexual violence. If convicted of this crime, a perpetrator would likely have to register as a sex offender.

#6 HE HAD IT COMING:

Male anger and violence is afflicted upon other men and not just women. Rape is a violent act of power and control that damages the victim—male or female. The socialization of men creates immense challenges for them to disclose any type of sexual victimization.

#7 SHE WAS HIS WIFE:

Spousal rape or marital rape is often unreported and overlooked.There is a widely held view that a woman surrenders consent at the time of marriage, and is responsible for satisfying all her husband's needs and desires in order to be a good wife. The law has been slow to criminalize marital rape, but it is now recognized as a crime in all 50 states.

#8 I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING FOR HER:

Sexual assault is a function of power and control. Frail older persons are often dependent on others for care and can be extremely vulnerable to sexual mistreatment. 96% of sexual abuse of elder persons is committed by a family member or a caretaker. 86% of elder sexual assault victims are women.

#9 THE INTENSITY GOT TO HIM:

Today, there are more women serving in the military than ever before.  However, women soldiers who signed up to defend their countries have instead had to defend themselves from assault and rape by their own fellow soldiers and in some cases their commanding officers. The phenomena is not only unique to women, but inclusive of men as well. Military sexual violence has occurred during training, times of peace, and times of war.

#10 SHE HAS SEX FOR MONEY:

Because a sex worker exchanges a sex act for money does not mean that they cannot be raped or deserve to be sexually violated. Someone's choices in profession, lifestyle, and appearance do not give anyone the right to rape, assault, or otherwise hurt them.

#11 SHE CANNOT HEAR, TALK, OR REPORT:

According to a survey by the U.S. Department of Justice, rates of rape and sexual assault among persons who are deaf or disabled are more than twice that of the general population. Persons who are deaf or have a disibility are also more likely to experience repeated sexual assaults throughout their lifetimes. The perception of vulnerability or inability to report does not give someone the right to force or coerce sexual contact.

#12 RAPE IS NOT PART OF THE SENTENCE:

Every year, more than 100,000 U.S. male and female inmates are sexually abused by other inmates or correctional staff. More often than not, the perpetrators are correctional staff, whose very job it is to keep prisoners safe. When the government removes someone's liberty, it takes on an absolute responsibility to protect that person's safety. Rape is not part of the penalty. In the aftermath, most prisoner rape survivors are forced to suffer in silence, too fearful of retaliation and further abuse ever to file a formal report. Rape is an abomination, whether it occurs in jail or in the community.

See a pattern emerging here? No, me neither. We excuse rape if she's a "bad girl." We excuse rape if she's a "good wife." We excuse rape if her clothes are too difficult to remove. We excuse rape if her clothes are too easy to remove. We excuse rape if he's a man. We excuse rape if the victim is serving time. We excuse rape if the victim is serving our country. In short, we excuse rape. And Denim Day's 12 excuses are hardly an exhaustive list: Off the top of my head, I'd also add "She was transgender" and "We must protect the reputation of the Catholic Church." I imagine a list of all the sexual assault scenarios that are never discounted, disbelieved, or brushed under the rug would be much, much shorter.

Katsnelson indicated he hoped his victims could take something “positive” away from the experience of being sexually assaulted. “When asked what that might be, he suggested that maybe she will now know to keep her doors locked,” the pre-sentence report stated.

Anti-rape blogger Cara Kulwicki wasn't surprised by Katsnelson's comments; she encounters disgusting sentiments like that one every single day. But she was surprised to learn that mainstream media outlets reacted with disgust to the "lock your doors" lesson. After all, when victim-blaming tips are handed down by anyone other than a convicted rapist, nobody seems to bat an eye. Kulwicki writes:

And far more than I’m surprised by his comments, I’m surprised by the fact that the media seems to be almost as appalled as I am. The statement isn’t just printed in the article, it’s featured in quite a few headlines. His words are referred to as “startling” and the “revulsion” of listeners is carefully noted. And while relieved that for once publications aren’t just parroting back the victim-blaming excuses and framing of a rapist and his attorney, I also simply cannot help but ask myself: where the hell are they the rest of the time?

Where is the shock and outrage when it’s argued that a victim shouldn’t have gotten into a car or entered a building with her assailant? Where is the outrage when it’s argued that if women didn’t get themselves so drunk, rapists wouldn’t rape them? Where is the outrage when it’s essentially stated that sex workers can’t be raped? Why is it not a cause of shock and source of headlines when a sexual assault is explained away as verifying the genitals of a person the assailant suspected was trans? Where are the expressions of horror when those who failed to stop the reported and ongoing rape of a woman with a mental illness declare themselves to have not been negligent? Where are the editors shaking their fists when a defense attorney goes out of his way to note that an alleged victim was a drug user? Where is the anti-rape media perspective when the assault of a child by an adult is being referred to as “sex”? Where are they? Because nine times out of ten, they’re turning the other way.

As far as victim-blaming sentiments are concerned, Katsnelson's comments were far from extreme. Last fall, a series of sexual assaults were reported inside a freshman dorm at the George Washington University. In October of last year, a University of Maryland student entered the residence early in the morning, prowled for open doors, and then sexually assaulted several women, placing his hands down their pants and forcibly kissing them. In response to the attacks, G.W. student newspaper the Hatchet—the leading media source on campus—performed an act of victim-blaming nearly identical to Katsnelson's. The assaults, the paper's editors wrote, served as a “valuable reminder of the necessity for students to lock their doors at all times and to take responsibility for guests you bring into residence halls.”

When a rapist blames his victims, we're appalled. When we do it, we're just being "realistic," "concerned," "protective," "responsible." Why are we outraged when rapists blame their victims, but not when we blame them? Because while it's unseemly to blatantly support the sorry excuses of a convicted rapist, we're still invested in supporting a culture of victim-blaming that shifts the responsibility of eliminating rape away from society as a whole, and onto individual victims. When Katsnelson tells his victims to "lock their doors," he's shifting the responsibility for the rape off of the rapist. When the G.W. community tells victims to do the same thing, it similarly excuses the campus of taking any meaningful action against sexual assault.

But when rapists start using the same victim-blaming arguments we do, it makes it a lot harder for us to keep up the narrative of blame without being identified as rape apologists. One solution to this problem is to tell those rapists to shut up, because it's making us look bad. So we call out a rapist for revealing himself to be—gee, who would have thought!—a rape apologist, and we draw a line in the sand that helps to protect our own right to victim-blame. We use the same tactic to excuse our own casual homophobia and racism. Our homophobic slurs and racist jokes are just "ironic" and "anti-PC" and "social commentary," but when a gay basher or a white supremacist uses the same words, well, that's just socially unacceptable. The reason we are allowed to use these words, we tell ourselves, is because we are not truly homophobes, or racists, or rape apologists.

In other words, the only people who are allowed to blame rape victims are people who don't really, truly believe in their heart of hearts that the victim is at fault. This clever little set-up helps keep victim-blaming alive while preventing any victim-blamer from actually being identified as a bad person. It's also inspired the use of the very popular construction, "I'm not blaming the victim, but [enter victim-blaming sentiment here]."

In the end, the only people who are allowed to use the language of rapists are the millions of people in this country who haven't actually been convicted of the crime. How is this not a rape culture again?

THE LINE — It Was Cooperative from Nancy Schwartzman on Vimeo.

In 2004, Nancy Schwartzman flew back to Jerusalem to confront the man who raped her. Three years earlier, Schwartzman was living in Jerusalem by way of New York City, working at a cultural institution, and getting plenty of film footage on the side. Then, a co-worker raped her after a night out. Schwartzman quit her job, flew back home, and slowly processed what had happened. When she finally returned to Israel to sit down with her rapist, she had a hidden camera and microphone in tow.

The result of that videotaped conversation is "THE LINE," Schwartzman's 24-minute documentary about the way we process all the forms of sexual assault that don't adhere to the model of the stranger jumping out of the bushes. After completing THE LINE, Schwartzman launched an international sexual assault awareness campaign by the same name, which asks young people how they define their own "line" in terms of sexual consent.

I interviewed Schwartzman about the experience of confronting her rapist, her advice for survivors who want a face-to-face, and how a hidden camera can make all the difference.

SEXIST: What went into your decision to confront the man who raped you?

NS: I started reading Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery, this really amazing survival book. It talks a lot about post-traumatic stress and how natural it is to want to have a face-to-face with the person who caused you harm. I started videotaping and interviewing a lot of survivors, and I would ask them questions for hours and hours. What did you feel like you lost? What changed for you? But then I had these questions that no one else could answer but him. Why did it happen? Why did you do it? Did I do something to indicate that I wanted this? It was all sort of caught up in the miasma of self-blame. These survivors were not going to be able to tell me why he did it. I started doing a lot of homework on restorative justice and transitional justice. I researched the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, where many victims of human rights violations actually met their offenders. For some people, it was really useful. And for some, it was completely re-traumatizing. I did about 6 to 8 months of research and preparation for this meeting before I went.

How did you set up the meeting? What did you tell him you wanted to talk about?

NS: He and I worked together at this really wonderful cultural institution in Jerusalem. I had a close friend who was still here. I would be in contact back and forth with her, and she would tell me, ‘Yes, he’s still here. He still works here.’ I got his e-mail. I sent him a letter just saying, 'I’m coming back to Jerusalem, and I’d like to see you and talk to you.' It was just super general and open.

Before you confronted him, had you spoken to him about the assault at all?

NS: He tried to talk to me after the assault a few times. He was unsettled with how we left things. He wanted to keep telling me, and himself, that everything was fine. The day after he raped me, he came up to me in front of a group of people and pulled me aside. Literally the next day. I didn’t even want to get within ten feet of him. He said, ‘About last night. We were really drunk.’ He was already covering his ass the next day. I said, ‘Don’t talk to me in front of anyone. We’re at our place of work. Don’t talk to me at all. Last night you raped me, and I don’t want to talk to you ever again.’ Ten days later, he tried again. I think he was feeling uncomfortable that I was hanging out and talking to other people and avoiding him; we were still working together for 6 weeks after the assault. He was feeling left out. He knew I was very upset. He wanted to regain some control over our social situation.

Why was it important for you to go back and confront him again a few years later?

NS: Time had passed, and your mind really, really plays tricks on you after an assault. I was still confused as to what happened and why it happened. I said, ‘OK, you raped me,’ and he looked stunned, and then three years go by. I needed to know what happened and why it happened, on a political level. Politically, what’s going on? Why are these rules not clear to him? Maybe I have a different set of cultural norms than he does. I went into analytical mode and filmmaker mode, and I started thinking about capturing this potentially fascinating conversation to use in a larger piece of media. He could apologize. He could accuse me. He could take responsibility. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I wanted to give him one more chance to give me some reason.

What did it feel like to sit down with him?

NS: I had so many feelings going through my head at that moment. It was really powerful to see this guy who I thought was a monster. I was so terrified of him, so scared to look him in the eye again. When I saw him again, I just saw him as a person. He’s a person that I’m making really uncomfortable. And I liked that, you know? I was super confused throughout the process, because I witnessed his humanity. I realized that he’s not a monster. There were times when he tried to convince me of what a great guy he is. I was not convinced, but part of me felt torn, so it was disturbing, too.

Did the hidden camera change the way you felt about the confrontation?

NS: I wouldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the camera. What had happened the night of my assault was between us—there were no witnesses. It was just me and him. He could just negate what I considered my truth and my reality, and he did try and negate it many times after the assault. So the camera was coming in for me as my witness. I knew that it was going to tell the truth. The camera is objective. It was going to record what I said and what he said. I felt much safer with that camera. I didn’t feel alone. I also had a goal—go in, say what you need to say, give him a chance to speak, see how he behaves, and then decide how you’re going to use that footage. I felt so much safer that he couldn’t manipulate me, and if he had—look, it’s on my camera.

What was it like to go back and watch the footage?

NS: I absolutely fell in love with the footage. I had this very tangible thing in hand, and it made me feel like I had purpose. I felt so dedicated to doing something with it. It was such a unique piece of evidence. I loved how the images were breaking up in the wireless receiver, I saw it as a metaphor for the disconnection between us. I feel like it’s pretty inconclusive conversation, but I have that visual representation of his body language, his visual discomfort, and I can edit it and use it however I want. I was so convinced proof was in the pudding that now, no one is ever going to doubt that he raped me and knew that he was doing. But after I shot it, I spoke to a friend who was like, “yeah, I think he just doesn’t get it, it must just be cultural differences.” That plummeted me. I couldn’t get out of that rut for like a day. It was such a roller coaster. Even when you have someone on tape, people are still telling you he didn’t get it. It’s cultural. That’s why. People will still find reasons to doubt.

Last year, Ask Amy answered a letter from a reader who wasn't sure if she was raped, and Amy instructed her to go ask her rapist what happened. I thought, 'That's a really bad idea!'

NS: It took me three years after my assault to make the decision to go back. I spent one year completely in denial about what happened to me. I spent a year writing non-stop about what happened to me. And then I spent a year interviewing and researching. I did so much work determining all the possible things that could happen if I went back. I said, these are the 20 things that could happen: He could yell at me, he could cry, he could beg forgiveness. I did role-playing. I went through so many scenarios in my head. I walked in there saying, what if he apologizes? What if he’s really truly sorry? Was I prepared to forgive him? Would I go back on my righteous desire not to forgive him? He did not apologize, so that was not a problem. . . . But had I gone to him soon after the assault and said, ‘What happened?’ He would have said, ‘Nothing. You were great in bed and it was really fun.’ Seriously, he said that three years later. I did a shitload of work to prepare for this. You need to be so clear about your story, and you can’t go to him to have him tell you what happened. I went to him to find out, well: What the fuck is his version of events? What is his script? What has he been telling himself for the past three years?

What advice do you have for people who are thinking about confronting?

NS: . . . In the New York state justice system, there is a mediation program for victims and perpetrators. I spoke to a man there for a really long time while researching options for a subject in my film, who was assaulted in New York City by a stranger. And he told me that he was always really clear about the kinds of people he says 'yes' to and those he says 'no' to. The desire to meet always has to come from the victim. Sometimes rapists, in prison, will say, ‘I want to talk to the victim. I want to tell her why I did what I did.’ No—it has to always come from the victim. Then, he does a lengthy assessment of the perpetrator to determine if they’re willing to take responsibility, to see if the conversation is going to be re-traumatizing or productive. I think that’s a very important thing to think hard about. Is this a person who is going to listen? I would start by writing—write lists of how you remember your story. What that story was, what your grievances are, what you lost. I left my job that I really loved because I couldn’t be in the same room with him. I lost the opportunity to be in Jerusalem. I paid for that ticket home, I paid for therapy. All of these things that that instant does to you. I went through the process as if I was going to have an official victim offender meeting with a mediator that I didn’t have. There’s so much preparation that goes into it. Will he be a willing partner in a dialogue? What do I want from this experience? Do you want someone to come with you? You have to be super clear about your goals or expectations.

What have you heard from other survivors who have considered confronting their attackers?

NS: I don’t want the film to be a call to confront, like ‘Go do it! It’s going to make you feel better!’ This is absolutely my personal experience. . . . I’ve heard from survivors who have said, ‘I met with my father who abused me, and it was horrible.’ I’ve heard from survivors who said, ‘I spoke to the guy who raped me and he laughed in my face and walked away.’ They were completely re-traumatized by the experience. It’s confusing, because if you were assaulted by someone who is very manipulative, they will attempt to manipulate you when you meet with them. And it’s not always as productive as they want it to be.  What it comes down to is: How do we confront people who do us wrong? How do we do it safely? How do we take the burden off our own shoulders? How do we let them know this was absolutely wrong?

In response to the story about the Howard University student who was denied a rape kit after being allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted at a house party, some troll decided that this particular rape doesn't matter because the victim was wearing stiletto heels on the night of her assault:

You know god-damned well a woman today on a weekend night looks and acts like a prostitute. (tramp stamp/tongue ring/stiletto heels . . . This article is about a woman who wasn't even sure if she was raped. She thinks she was, but she doesn't know. The Doctor, who has important things to do, made the decision to turn this woman away. That is his prerogative. I don't blame him. Imagine if you will, a young woman coming into your clinic, drunk to the gills, stiletto heels, a pound of make-up, dressed like a prostitute, and expecting a rape kit. Too bad! . . . If she is shitfaced and wearing a slut uniform (tramp stamp/tongue ring/nipple piercing/one pound of make-up/stiletto heels) then whatever happens to her is her responsibility.

Well, there are a lot of problems with this statement, but let's focus on one: The victim in this case was almost certainly not wearing stiletto heels that night. Depressingly, that's a matter of public record now, because defense attorneys in the case found it relevant to ask what was on this woman's feet. From a deposition taken of Hannah's friend, Amanda, who was present at the party (and its aftermath):

Attorney: Do you remember what [Hannah] was wearing at the party?

Amanda: No. No, not at all.

Attorney: Do you remember if she was wearing high heels?

Amanda: It was probably one of the times—I would say she was probably wearing boots.

This is the general script for rape apologists:

1. Isolate a detail about the rape victim—it could be her appearance, her attire, her level of intoxication, her upbringing, her sexual history, or her presence at a particular party—really, anything will do.

2. Decide that that particular detail designates her as a less-than-perfect rape victim.

3. Assert that this rape doesn't matter because the victim was asking for it / wasn't taking charge of her own safety / is lying / doesn't deserve any of the limited amount of the sympathy we extend to "real" victims of rape.

This troll has reversed that script. First, decide that you don't care about the rape. Then, assume that the rape victim must conform to one of the accepted cultural markers of an "imperfect" victim (short skirt / stiletto heels / sexually promiscuous / had been drinking / has a piercing / in a bad neighborhood / has a tattoo—on the lower back! / wears make-up / and good luck if you're transgender).

Thomas MacAulay Millar, commenting on the story, wrote:

What is clear from this thread and others is that there is a very real pro-rape lobby. They talk the language of disbelieving, but when push comes to shove . . . these trolls really do understand that women get raped when they are most vulnerable—but they are in favor of it. Whether they are actually men who hate women, or are women who hate other women, we can't know. There are a number of possible motives for these sentiments. But they're not really in denial—that's a facade they drop when pressed. In fact, they're just pro-rape. They think it ought to be open-season for predators on certain women in certain circumstances.

What this troll demonstrates is that those cultural markers—the circumstances that make rape A-OK for rape apologists—are arbitrary, and they can always be shifted to excuse more rapes.  Even if the rape victim is a 15-year-old girl raped again and again on her own school campus during the homecoming dance, there is always something apologists can use against her. And even if all women everywhere cover up, stay sober, don't go to parties, always wear pants, remain un-pierced and un-inked, don't wear makeup, always wear flats, never leave the house without a man, and stop living our lives freely, the rape apologists will find a new set of criteria that will make us responsible for our rapes anyway. The shifting of blame will continue as long as rape continues. It's not that rape apologists despise women who were stiletto heels. It's that they despise women. That's what needs to change. Not our shoes.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Kiely Williams, whose new song "Spectacular" has her extolling the erotic benefits of guys having totally spectacular "sex" with her while she is passed out, has added a disclaimer to the video on YouTube. In the note, Williams explains that she was simply playing a role in order to raise awareness of a serious issue affecting young women today: Having unprotected sex. Wait, what about the rape part??

Here's Williams' full statement; thanks to commenter sybil for the tip:

Williams writes:

ATTENTION: I am an actress and performer. I have been so since my first role in a television pilot at five years old. I played a character when I was a Cheetah Girl. I am playing a character in the music video for the song Spectacular, as I did in the Cheetah Girl movies.

The fact is, that sometimes women get intoxicated and have unprotected sex. My video puts this issue front and center. It is absurd to infer or suggest that I am condoning this behavior. Are Lady Gaga and Beyonce advocating murder with the Telephone video? Of, course not. Was Rihanna encouraging suicide with Russian Roulette? No. Was Madonna suggesting that young unmarried girls get pregnant with Papa Dont Preach? I dont think so. Is Academy Award winner Monique a proponent of incest because of her portrayal of Mary in the movie Precious. Clearly, the answer is no.

I wrote Spectacular and made the video to bring attention to a serious womens health and safety issue. Dont shoot the messenger.

Actually, the fact is that sometimes women get intoxicated and men rape women. And now, Williams has responded to accusations that she has glorifying rape by . . . clarifying that she just wants an intoxicated young woman to make sure her rapist uses a rubber when he penetrates her while she's unconscious?

For this week's paper, I wrote a cover story on one young woman's crusade to secure a rape kit after she believed she had been drugged and raped at a college party. The D.C. police response to the woman's case illustrates how District rape victims can be dismissed as liars, drunks, or otherwise unworthy of an investigation:

On Saturday, Dec. 9, 2006, Hannah* woke up in her Howard University dorm room with a piece of her life missing. Hannah, a 19-year-old sophomore, had unexplained pain in her rectum and hip. Her panty liner, which she had worn the night before, was missing. Vomit dotted her gloves and coat. Her friend Kerston lay beside her in the skinny dorm room bed. Kerston told Hannah not to shower—they had to go back to the hospital to secure a rape kit. That weekend, Hannah claims that she was provided the following excuses for why she could not receive a sexual assault medical forensic examination: She was drunk; she ate a sandwich; she was a liar; she didn’t know her attacker’s last name; the police had to authorize the exam; she was outside the hospital’s jurisdiction; she wasn’t reporting a real crime; she was blacked out; she changed her story; her case was already closed.

Read the rest here.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Last year, a feminine hygiene company found that 50 percent of British women surveyed prefer having sex while drunk. And 6 percent of respondents have exclusively had sex while drunk. The armchair psychoanalysis employed to interpret these results didn't determine whether women actually enjoy drunk sex better than sober sex, or whether getting drunk simply helped to facilitate the sex even happening. Do women get drunk to have better sex or to feel better about having sex? Enter Pop singer Kiely Williams, who is leading the charge in heralding the erotic benefits of blackout intercourse.

A music video has emerged for Williams' ode to extremely memorable sex you won't remember the next day, "Spectacular." (Thanks to commenter KiaJD for the tip). Behold, the eroticization of the drunk girl!

In "Spectacular," Williams sings:

Last I remember I was face down
Ass up, clothes off, broke off, dozed off
Even though I’m not sure of his name
He could get it again if he wanted
Cause the sex was spectacular
The sex was spectacular
The sex was spectacular
The sex was spectacular

In the video, Williams is ass up, clothes off and very much awake as she performs a sexy and fully enthusiastic dance to lyrics about her being asleep while a man she doesn't know has (spectacular) sex with her. In the dance sequence, Williams expresses how being a passed-out recipient of "sex" made her feel—she felt sexy, confident, daring, and in control. Our drunk-sex researchers chalked up a woman's preference for intoxicated sex to body issues. Williams, apparently, just thinks it's hot.

Like it or not, the image of the "drunk girl" occupies an interesting space in popular culture. She's part wild girl, a sexually adventurous young woman in a shy girl's body, who just needs a bit of liquid courage to silence her inhibitions and access her sexual side. She's part Asking For It, an easy target for sexual coercion and rape who deserves to be punished for letting her guard down. Now, she's a fetish, too. The soft-core exhibitionism of Girls Gone Wild has made way for a genre of porn, targeted at heterosexual men, which mines the erotic potential of incoherently drunk women who are alternately sexually aggressive or asleep (Google "drunk sex" to find out what I'm talking about). There is also, of course, the works of Jamie Foxx.

Given Williams' girl power group audience, it looks like the sexiness of passing out is now being sold directly to women, and not to their sex partners. To me, "Spectacular" is the ultimate achievement in projecting a man's desire onto a woman's sexuality. Williams' "spectacular" sex is so centered on her partner's pleasure that she doesn't even inconvenience him by staying awake for it—and when she wakes up, she reassures him that it was the best sex she's ever had. Then again, I suppose Girls Gone Wild set the bar pretty low when it convinced drunk women to provide masturbatory material for thousands of subscribers in exchange for a free hat.

Anti-Rape Anthem: As of late, The Sexist's Date Rape Anthem series has taken a welcome turn for the feel-good. Over the past few weeks, we've examined series of songs about rape that actually take a stand against the crime, instead of reinforcing the "nonconsensual sex in da club" trend. In order to bolster the list of the antis, a reader sent in "Unspoken Request" by Boysetsfire. She also noted that the song is "triggering but amazing."

Relevant Lyrics:

Failed coercion leads to intrusion
and the blood forever runs in her head
into her hand, between her legs
where his mind lies

Power drives him in to murder innocence
on the rack of his devices, vices and designs
she will never scrub the stains from her arms
from her neck, from her legs
dirt will remain as a reminder of his hateful face
reach in rip apart the inner fibers of her soul
boy you'll never know how it feels to fear the shame
feel free to walk down any dark street without fear
without shame no one is going to touch you
and you don't need protection
she shouldn't need protection!

and you can sit there with that stupid smile on your face
and try to convince me that you care
defined by your power, defined by her body
the innocence she feels, everybody else contains
it's lost it's gone, but I guess it doesn't matter anyway

. . . and if he ever cares, maybe he will feel ashamed
for everything he's stolen, for all the trust she gave
possessed and broken, she cries but it's not our problem
pull down your goddamn blinds

he will never think he's wrong
she will never feel quite right
you will never think he's wrong
you will never think you're wrong
she will never feel quite right

About that "Triggering" thing: First of all, it's refreshing to hear guys making music in a male-dominated genre speaking out about a crime that predominantly affects women. This is not simply a political statement. In a scene where artists and fans are predominantly male and sometimes under the influence, sexual assault is a very real possibility (and if you haven't read Jonathan Fischer's CP story about a record label taking a stand against alleged rapists in its ranks, you should). I also love how the song addresses the idea of rape as a larger social concern by directly calling out rape apologists in the audience: "you will never think he's wrong / you will never think you're wrong / she will never feel quite right."

That being said, how do we deal with anti-rape anthems with lyrics—the blood forever runs in her head / into her hand, between her legs / where his mind lies—that are likely to trigger victims of sexual assault? It's not that I require all my anti-rape anthems to be vague, upbeat club tracks—which, it should be noted, can also be disturbing to rape survivors. Several times on this blog, readers have asked me to invoke a "trigger warning" when speaking explicitly about sexual assault, but since rape is a constant topic of discussion on this blog, and every post is a potential trigger to someone, I've decided not to include any explicit warnings. But what about when we exit the world of sexual assault blogs and enter a medium where we don't expect to be bombarded with talk about rape—like, say, the radio? I do think it's worth examining whether some songs written by feminist allies can end up inflicting some unintentional damage on the group for which they're attempting to advocate.

On Nirvana's "Rape Me," commenter Jill wrote, "Cobain, for all of his faults, was very progressive and feminist. That said? I still find the song disturbing and don’t really listen to it, no matter what its intent." Jaded16 wrote, "I somehow never got the whole anti-rape sentiment in this song. Though Curt Cobain was a feminist, this song creeped me out the first (co-incidentally the last) time I heard this song. I intend to keep it that way." And Kripa hypothesized, "It’s kinda like Mad Men, where they showcase all the misogyny of the early 60s and the whole damn point of the show is to let us know how awful things used to be, but still, it creeps me out because I suspect that on a subconscious level, the producers are reveling in all that sexism.
So the song “Rape Me” is good in intent, not so good in execution, I guess?"

I don't think that "Unspoken Request" is reveling in sexism, but it is, to some extent, trading in shock value. Explicit lyrics can help to get the attention of people who don't often think about the problem of sexual assault; they're also likely to reach those people who will never forget their rape.

In 2008, Lady Gaga dropped her first single, "Just Dance," an ode to dancing while extremely wasted. In the song, Gaga details her level of intoxication: She's lost her keys, she's lost her phone, she can't see straight, she's forgotten the name of the club she's in, and she can't figure out why her shirt is turned inside out. Still, everything is "gonna be okay"—until Colby O'Donis enters the scene and announces that he intends on doing more than just dancing with Gaga that night. "I'm gonna hit it, I'm gonna hit it and flex and do it until tomorrow," he says. "There's no reason at all why you can't leave here with me." Well, I can think of one.

The bouncy club track doesn't address the disconnect between Gaga's drunken intentions—just dancing—and those of O'Donnis—hitting it. In the recently released track "Monster," that drunken interaction takes a sinister turn, and Gaga finally addresses the negative space left by "Just Dance."

[youtube:v=2Abk1jAONjw]

"I asked my girlfriend if she'd seen you round before," Gaga sings in "Monster." "She mumbled something while we got down on the floor baby / We might've fucked not really sure, don't quite recall / But something tells me that I've seen him, yeah." If the friend's lack of clarity on her fucking history with this guy isn't enough of a red flag, wait for the chorus, where Gaga eliminates all the ambivalence of "Just Dance": "That boy is a monster."

Later in the song, Gaga makes a direct reference to her first single as the club monster turns into a "monster in my bed": "I wanna Just Dance / But he took me home instead / Uh oh, there was a monster in my bed / We french kissed on a subway train / He tore my clothes right off / He ate my heart then he ate my brain." In the background, the robotic voice of the "monster" provides the stalker's perspective: "I love that girl, wanna talk to her, she's hot as hell."

Reader Zoe, who sent in "Monster" as an example of an anti-Date Rape Anthem, says that the song works as a necessary footnote to "the trend . . . of women singing about how awesome it is to get disorientingly drunk, and then going Ke$ha and saying you can slap the guys away when they try to 'touch your junk':"

[youtube:v=iP6XpLQM2Cs]

"I don't think the song is supposed to be a 'lesson' to women about getting drunk," Zoe adds. "It's just connecting those dots, and then condemning the dude as a monster. Hooray!" Like Zoe, I'm glad that pop music has a figure like Lady Gaga, who can convincingly defend the harmless entertainment of drinking in the club, and then release an equally compelling dance track condemning the people who want to deny women that experience—rapists.

In a spirited diatribe entitled "Dealing With AU's anti-sex brigade" published yesterday in the American University Eagle, AU's resident anti-feminist thinker, Alex Knepper, argues that feminists who rally against rape are turning act of sex into a sorry ritual in which "two amorphous, gender-neutral blobs ask each other 'Is this OK with you?.'” According to Knepper, age 20, feminists are also responsible for stamping out the "yin and yang of masculinity and femininity [that] makes sexual exploration exciting," abolishing passion, and also somehow discouraging "inherently gendered thrills" like erotic cross-dressing. Knepper ends the column by providing a helpful reading list for his misguided peers, including works by Camille Paglia, the Marquis de Sade, and Christina Hoff Sommers.

An unidentified member of the campus community has responded with a more direct retort: They removed copies of the paper from their stands and posted a message above them reading, "NO ROOM FOR RAPE APOLOGISTS."

According to these photos sent in from an American University student, the message for Knepper has been posted near several Eagle newsstands around campus; in one photo, a stack of Eagles appears to have been strewn haphazardly across the floor in front of the paper's offices. "A few people had taken probably several thousand copies and threw them over against our door," says Jen Calantone, Eagle editor-in-chief. The vandalism was light; no papers were destroyed, and newspaper staff have since removed the posters and redistributed the papers. Some copies were crinkled.

In an e-mail, American University student (and campus feminist and LGBT activist) K. Travis Ballie explains the perceived impetus for the move: "In response to the very strong and passionate outrage at rape apologist Alex Knepper's latest column "Dealing With AU's Anti-Sex Brigade," an unidentified student not endorsed by any organization decided to take direct action," Ballie writes. "The Eagle has repeatedly refused for months to show adequate sensitivity, compassion, and common decency to the well-being of rape survivors on campus and is complicit in promoting a rape culture where survivors are blamed for the crimes of sexual assault perpetrators."

Knepper's column anticipated this criticism. In it, he wrote that on American University's campus, "For my pro-sex views, I am variously called a misogynist, a rape apologist and—my personal favorite—a 'pro-date rape protofascist.'" (I guess that one didn't fit on the poster). Knepper's column went on to provide a sampling of some of Knepper's "pro-sex views":

Let’s get this straight: any woman who heads to an EI party as an anonymous onlooker, drinks five cups of the jungle juice, and walks back to a boy’s room with him is indicating that she wants sex, OK? To cry “date rape” after you sober up the next morning and regret the incident is the equivalent of pulling a gun to someone’s head and then later claiming that you didn’t ever actually intend to pull the trigger.

“Date rape” is an incoherent concept. There’s rape and there’s not-rape, and we need a line of demarcation. It’s not clear enough to merely speak of consent, because the lines of consent in sex—especially anonymous sex—can become very blurry. If that bothers you, then stick with Pat Robertson and his brigade of anti-sex cavemen! Don’t jump into the sexual arena if you can’t handle the volatility of its practice!

Despite the column's defensive stance on the "rape apologist" label, Knepper didn't anticipate the ad-hoc campus campaign against him; when I called him around noon today he hadn't yet heard of the removal of the papers and the "RAPE APOLOGIST" posters. After perusing the evidence, Knepper agreed to answer some questions over e-mail. "Well, this is the new feminist orthodoxy: censorship," he wrote. "It started with Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, and it's an utter betrayal of the ideals of women like Wollstonecraft, Stanton, and even Friedan. I'm also very concerned with the highly fragile view of women that this promotes: I can't say something that offends them without stirring them to vandalism? Carmen Rios states that my column can act as a 'trigger' for survivors. Does anyone treat men with kid gloves like this?"

I asked Knepper whether he thought there was any room for rape apologists at American. "There is no room for rape apologists on campus. If I see any, I'll be sure to rebuke them," he wrote. I also asked him to expound on the whole feminist cross-dressing ban thing: "The entire concept of cross-dressing has no place within feminism," he explained. "[O]ne cannot 'cross' the line of something that does not exist." Finally, I asked him if the "yin and yang of masculinity and femininity" is truly "what makes sexual exploration exciting," then isn't it kind of boring to be gay? "Certainly not," replied Knepper, who is gay. "Gay men—by which I do not mean the eunuchs who constitute the vanguard of so-called queer activism—are far more likely to understand that dressing one's boyfriend up like a girl and fucking his ass with a dildo is to feminize him. The feminine element of sexuality is not literally about being female—it's about surrender and submission. One might say that my homosexuality is the ultimate expression of my deep-seated hatred for women, though, right?"

On Facebook, members of the university community aren't questioning the implications of Knepper's sexual orientation, but they are debating the tactics used to protest his articles. "If you don't like the Eagle, don't read it, support the AU Examiner, write a counter column, or start your own newspaper—DON'T act like children [and] follow the same idea-bashing tactics that the christian-conservo-right do every time they come to a school and insure it has the right books on the shelves," wrote one. "i think a lot of people who might be allies on this are really alienated by this type of vandalism," wrote another.

The Eagle, for one, isn't particularly pleased—but it has been inspired to take some action. "It's upsetting, because our general purpose as the campus newspaper is to start these types of discussions," says Calantone. "We were happy when people started talking about and criticizing this column, but it's upsetting when it devolves into a kind of vandalism situation." The newspaper is planning to hold open campus discussion on Knepper's column this Thursday evening.

UPDATE: This story was updated at 2 p.m. with comments from Knepper.

Jaclyn Friedman is, in short, a feminist rock star. She is the executive director of  WAM!: Women, Action & the Media. She edited the incredible Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, and continues the work of dismantling rape culture in her weekly pro-sex column. She writes as compellingly about taking off her shirt for fun as she does her college sexual assault. And she has been fucking under these conditions for nearly 20 years.

Fucking while feminist presents a peculiar set of challenges for the pro-sex single. How do you talk rape culture on a first date while still managing to get laid once in a while? How do you find the feminist guy who won't self-flagellate to the point of unfuckability? How do you avoid dying alone, basically? Friedman agreed to talk to me about establishing a feminist fucking litmus test, the art of locating non-douchey sex partners online, and the secret perks of fucking a feminist.

Sexist: So I was eating dinner with my boyfriend the other day and I started talking about my opinions on rape kits and shit, and I realized that I could probably never talk about this stuff on a first date with someone I had never met.

JF: And if you were me, you would go the a first date, and he would ask, "So, what do you do?" My online dating profile says that I’ve written a book and I’m writing another one. So they ask about it. And then literally ten minutes into a first date I’m talking about rape culture.

How does that usually work out?

JF: The way I hope it will work is that they ask these initial questions before we meet in person. So then they can go offline and collect their thoughts and then respond to me. My profile says I’m a feminist. So a lot of people who would be really scared off by me, we don’t get very far. When the whole Polanski thing was going down, I had this big argument with a guy about Polanski. First date. And last one.

JF: I would like for there to be a set of feminist litmus tests that I could reference and use to find the right guy. Right now, I feel like I'm in an endless cycle of asking myself, "Am I willing to let this slide?" I'm mostly dating guys right now, which is fairly new for me. From my early 20s to my mid-30s I dated exclusively women and trans men. I'm not romanticizing that, like "it's so much easier with women"—let me tell you, it's not. But it's a different set of questions you have to ask. I don't feel like I can go in to these dates expecting dudes to know as much about feminism or sexuality studies or rape culture, the stuff that I live my life talking about and thinking about. I feel like I’m going to die alone if I do that.

. . . Here is what’s depressing about dating while feminist. Feminism is what I do with my life, it's how I spend my days, it's my job, it's not just an opinion I have among many other opinions. If I had a hardcore litmus test, the pool of men I could date would be so tiny. And then when you weeded out men who are gay, the men I don't find attractive, the men already in monogamous, committed relationships—really, I would never get laid again. So I do feel that I have to try to be flexible out of necessity. But if I were to end up with someone—and I do want a long-term, stable relationship with someone at some point—they would have to be feminist on some basic level. They would have to be.

JF: That would be lovely, wouldn’t it? If I could turn a man feminist with the power of my vagina? It hasn’t happened yet. . . . When I was younger, I dated mostly women and trans men. Those relationships didn’t work out, obviously, they had their own issues. But the feminist thing wasn’t as much of an issue. And the only cisgender man I’ve been in a longterm relationship was a feminist when I met him. We would have feminism arguments where I was educated by him, and vice versa. And I thought, well, how lucky I am to have found a feminist guy! And he ended up being an ass . . . in somewhat unrelated ways.

JF: I'm e-mailing a guy right now I really want to meet who used the word "heteronormativity" in his profile . . . aside from that, which almost never happens, more what I look for is. . . you know the Bechdel Test for films? It states that any good film has to have two female characters who talk to each other about something other than a guy. Well, this is my test: When I look at personal ads, I look at their lists of favorite books, movies, and music, and they have to list women in all of those categories. They don't have to have a majority of women, but they have to know that women exist in the culture and be fans of some of them. It's a pretty low bar—or it should be. I used to look for guys who don’t list Fight Club in their favorites, but I've had to relax that rule, because all dudes evidently love Fight Club. I do draw the line at Ayn Rand. It's more about avoiding red flags than anything else. . . . I also don’t respond to any guy who says they’re looking for a woman who "doesn’t have drama," not because I have a lot of drama, but because I feel like that is code for women who have opinions.

JF: If you Google me, it’s pretty obvious where I stand on the sex stuff. Whenever I end up talking about my work on rape, I also am immediately communicating that I’m a pro-sex feminist. . . . I have been with some men who are surprised that I am, shall we say, less than vanilla in bed . . . A couple of guys were shocked that I like to play various games in bed, because I'm a feminist. That's always really interesting to me. I'm always like, 'Are you kidding me? The feminists I know are the craziest women in bed you can find!" Those are the moments where I feel like a one-woman feminist PR machine. I'm instructing the world one man at a time that feminists are really fun to sleep with.

JF: Oh God. There is a type of feminist guy who is so eager to fall over himself to be deferential to women and to prove his feminist bona fides and flagellate himself in front of you, to the point that it really turns me off. And it makes me sad, because politically, these are the guys that I should be sleeping with! You know what I'm talking about?

YES.

JF: Everyone knows what I'm talking about. And some of them are even really cute! I want to say to them, "If you could be a person, like a whole, complicated person, who I feel like I could crack jokes around, then I would really like you." But they're so serious about their feminism at every moment that I don’t feel like a person to them. I feel like I'm on a pedestal, almost. I know that they're not going to disagree with anything I say under any circumstances. And I don't feel like I can make a raunchy joke about sex, because they'll be horrified. . . . I hate to be critical of our allies in any way, because we need them, but there's something about that certain kind of hyperfeminist guy that makes them unappealing to date, to me. I suspect it has something to do with our internal conceptions of masculinity, which is terrible on my part.

JF: Yes. They haven't internalized their feminism, so it’s always being externalized. And it places a lot of pressure on the women they're with. There's this very self-conscious performance of feminism. And it does sometimes feel like they want a cookie. . . .  OK, I know this is such a delicate conversation to have, but I want those guys to wake up because those are the guys I want to want to sleep with!

JF: . . . What happens to me that drives me up a tree is this: The guys who respond to me and are like, 'You’re awesome. You’re kind of a hellcat." They think it's cool and kind of bad-ass that I'm outspoken and passionate about things. They think that’s really hot. They’re into it. But then when that outspokenness gets applied back to them, it’s suddenly game-over. You know the idea of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl? She's light, and quirky, and she has no inner life of her own, and just there to serve our hero’s development and erotic interests. I sort of feel that I get cast in these dudes' narratives as the Hellcat Dream Girl, there to prove how bad-ass they are because they’re dating such a bad-ass woman. They think it’s cute or sexy. But when I use that smart, outspoken bad-assery to challenge their own perspectives, it’s suddenly not sexy at all. It happens when they say something that I disagree with, and I act like a person and not someone that is playing out their particular fantasies.

It’s happened to me a million times . . . they want it as a trophy. "Hey, look at my bad-ass girl." They don’t want to deal with me as a person. It follows this pattern where it usually comes from a person who seeks me out. They try to seduce me. They think I would be an accomplishment to conquer or something. They seek me out and try to get me interested in them, and then I am, and then they flee. . . . I feel like the same thing happened with the guy I dated for two years. He liked the idea of being a guy who would be with someone like me, but ultimately it turned out that he wanted someone who wouldn’t challenge him as much, a person who was easier and quicker to sweep away. I got evidence of that when, within three months of breaking up with me, he was dating a 23 year old who lists her political views on Facebook as "moderate."

JF: Oftentimes I wonder what the people who know me professionally would think about the compromises I make when I’m dating. I wish this were a live conversation where other feminists were weighing in. I’d like to know what other women are doing. Am I making the right compromises here? Should dating require these sorts of compromises? Is there any tactic that produces better results? . . .  I feel very unsure about what the best way is to live my politics and have a sex life. I really feel in the weeds about it. But it's something I think about all the time, and I don’t feel like I have the answers.

Photo by Anh Dao Kolbe

In the long history of date rape jams, this blog has yet to tackle the many tunes dedicated to statutory rapes. So let's take a look at a couple of odes to sex with minors—one in the pro-underage-sex camp, and another that's anti.

PRO: "Young Girl," by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, (Thanks to Rooster over at if i raise my voice for the suggestion).

Relevant Lyrics:

Young girl, get out of my mind
My love for you is way out of line
Better run, girl.
You're much too young, girl.

With all the charms of a woman
You've kept the secret of your youth
You led me to believe
You're old enough
To give me Love
And now it hurts to know the truth, Oh,
Beneath your perfume and make-up
You're just a baby in disguise

. . . Get out of here
Before I have the time
To change my mind
'Cause I'm afraid we'll go too far, Oh,
Young girl

[youtube:v=jItz-uNjoZA]

CON: Oingo Boingo's "Little Girls," a cautionary tale about chasing after a girl who is "just to little."

Relevant Lyrics:

I love little girls they make me feel so good
I love little girls they make me feel so bad
When they're around they make me feel
Like I'm the only guy in town
I love little girls they make me feel so good

They don't care if I'm a one way mirror
They're not frightened by my cold exterior

. . . Uh oh take a second take
Uh oh it's a mistake
Uh oh I'm in trouble
Uh oh the little girl was just too little
Too little, too little, too little
Isn't this what life's all about
Isn't this a dream come true
Isn't this a nightmare too...

So, What's It Going to Be?: On the surface, both Gary Puckett and Oingo Boingo express ambivalence about having sex with women who are too young to consent. When Puckett learns that the object of his affections is "too young," and has simply been tricking him into believing she is of age with her "perfume and make-up," he expresses that his continued attraction to the girl is "way out of line." He then cautions her that she "better run, girl" in order to make sure that she doesn't temp him into having sex with her anyway. But though the song is about avoiding statutory rape, Puckett is hardly shy about his true feelings on the subject. "Get out of here," he tells the girl, "before I have the time / to change my mind." Is that a threat? Plus, check the soaring, indulgent tone adopted here—way to romanticize your creepiness, dude.

Oingo Boingo, on the other hand, adopts a disturbing, frantic, totally fucking creepy tone in describing a man who is sexually attracted to little girls. That seems more appropriate, no? Lines like "They don't care if I'm a one way mirror / They're not frightened by my cold exterior" reiterate the idea that Oingo Boingo's narrator is unreliable, not heroic. But even this guy understands that what he's doing is wrong: "Uh oh, I'm in trouble / Uh oh the little girl was just too little."

Today, Thomas MacAulay Millar at Yes Means Yes! pointed to a recent paper that addresses this myth head-on. The report, "If a girl doesn't say 'no': Young men, rape, and insufficient knowledge" [PDF], identifies the "miscommunication model" as one of the dominant theories informing public thinking about how sexual assault actually happens.

In order to identify how the "miscommunication model" functions in everyday conversation, researchers interviewed two focus groups of college-aged men in the UK Australia about their interpretations of sex and consent.  The young men who participated in the study displayed "sophisticated and nuanced understandings" of different ways people could indicate sexual refusal. But when it came time to talk about non-consensual sex, these same men were startlingly eager to explain away acquaintance rapes as communication failures instead of deliberate assaults.

* "I don’t think I’d ever say ‘no’": First, researches asked the men how they would turn down unwanted sex. The men displayed a marked reluctance to offer a clear "no" to sex, and instead suggested that they would employ euphemism and body language to communicate their refusal. (Note: I've edited the study for style).

Moderator: . . . the next scenario is, you’re back at your house with a girl. It’s looking like sex is on the cards for whatever reason you really don’t want to have sex with her tonight. How do you let her know?

John: You could come up with one of ya, your cliches, like, ‘I don’t think this is a good idea’, or ah, you know, ‘I’m not ready for this’ or you know one of the cliches. As soon as you come out with that cliche, they know. They know what you’re trying to say because it’s used all the time, whereas if you sort of try and dance around the cliches they might not get the point straight away.

. . . James: I’ve got no idea.

George: I know people that will do anything for a root.  If it got to that stage, obviously you’re interested. Well I’d assume that’d be the case so then why would you say no? You always, it’s easier to make an excuse the next day than at the time.

Moderator: Hehe. How do you say no?

James: If it’s a disgusting woman. I mean just a platonic kind of friend but a disgusting woman. You gotta make a face if they’re sort of implying something, then they’ll probably get the picture. . . .  I don’t think I’d, don’t think I’d ever say ‘no’

John: You just say—

James: If they were at my house then it’d be for a reason, so.

John: Oh yeah. ‘This isn’t quite what I expected tonight’ and then they’d say ‘what did you expect.’ ‘Not this, I just thought we’d have a drink and then you’d go home.’ . . .

James: And then they’d start to get the, get the idea.

Andrew: I’d call a cab (inaudible) rather sensitive excuse, I guess.

John: Yeah, you don’t wanna say. You couldn’t say ‘no’, could you. You don’t wanna say ‘No, I don’t like you now.' You know you’d come up with some excuse: ‘You looked good in the soft light at the pub, but now . . . ’

George: ‘I’m sobering up now’

John: Yeah hehehe, ‘And I’m having second thoughts.’ A soft gentle excuse would be the best one.

* "There’s always little hints": Researchers then asked the men how they know when a woman is refusing sex. The men indicated that women also often rely on body language and euphemism to relay their lack of consent. Interestingly, even though the men professed to favoring the exact same tactics, they attributed these devices to the way that "women are":

Moderator: Hmm, great, okay so are there ways of knowing when it’s not on the cards? How would a guy pick up that sex is not on the cards that way?

John: Body language.

James: Yeah (inaudible) body language.

Moderator: What’s that, sorry?

James: It’s all put down as body language. . . . Women are pretty good fakers, teasers, no, but it’s body language all the time.

George: The conversation gets shorter.

James: Mhmm.

George: Very abrupt.

John: Start looking at their watch and you know (inaudible) "It’s getting late."

Andrew: ‘How long does the taxi take to get here,’ that type of thing.

. . . John: "I just remembered I’m working early in the morning," you know there’s always little hints like letting you know that "I’ve just uh changed my mind." Yeah there’s always little hints.

* "The perpetrator could actually really be the victim": But then the young men start talking about rape, and the idea that lack of consent can be clearly communicated through euphemistic or nonverbal cues is quickly abandoned. The researchers note that prior to the rape discussion, the young men never indicated that "the explicit use of the word ‘no’ is necessary for a woman’s refusal of a sexual invitation to be understood as such." Suddenly, even "no" is not enough. Once the idea of rape is raised, these men claim ignorance of understanding when a woman is refusing sex, and go on to say that even when a woman explicitly says "no," she can be making a victim of the perpetrator.

Kyle: Um I just, I just had a thought. When does no mean no, when does yes mean yes, I’m just wondering how this type of information ties into rape and stuff like that. Um, with um, common defences of (inaudible) stuff like that. . . . I’m wondering in those situations, what is the thinking of the perpetrator in terms of these signals they’re interpreting that are coming their way, you know?

. . . Jason: If you don’t give a verbal ‘no’ then you’re up shit creek.

. . . Cam: Then again, well as you said, well, when’s no, no when’s yes yes. The perpetrator could actually really be the victim where they’re going ‘no’ and they’re basically throwing themself on you and go, ‘well, I said ‘‘no.’’’

Kyle: Playing hard to get.

* "So both parties are a problem there": Researchers then directly asked the men what they thought about the "miscommunication theory." They supported it:

Jason: If a girl doesn’t say ‘no’ look you in the eye and say ‘no.' Anything else can be sort of miscommunicated so if she looks you in the eye and goes ‘no’. . . Fine. But if she goes . . .  if she sort of says ‘no,’ and does the whole look away flirty it sort of like leaves you in the lurch.

Moderator: Alright. Any other ideas?

Cam: Basically, well, it can actually happen to a male or female, like, this myth that I’ve heard females say about ‘oh how could a guy get raped.’ Hey, just ‘cause you don’t want it don’t mean it don’t feel good. Um you know, the same goes for females basically. Whichever sex it is has to be clear about ‘look na this has gone past where I want to go I’m not prepared to go any further’ and make it clear. ‘No more.' ‘Stop there.’ Or you know if they want some of the stuff but they don’t wanna do it all. You know they need to go ‘look,' and be clear, ‘I want it to go here, and just here for now.’ . . .  Basically you know otherwise there is misconception and there is, you know miscommunication where one’s going ‘okay well they’re doing this’ and the other’s going, ‘I wish they’d back off a bit.' So unless each is clear then, you know, it will continue. . . .

Moderator: . . . do you think it’s necessary for a women to say ‘no’ clearly and effectively for her to be understood as not wanting to  have sex or are there other ways  of knowing that she doesn’t want to?

Mike: You can always take the physical signs, but like I said before they’re generally really ambiguous, you never know if they are definite. I reckon verbal's probably the best way to get round it. . . . If she says ‘no’ I’ll stop, you know.

. . . Cam: Yep, but they really need to make it clear in both physical and verbal. There’s no point them saying ‘oh no I don’t want it’ and then for you know, they’re basically they’re guiding you in, so to speak. Well, gee, do they really not want it?

. . . Jason: There’s plenty of opportunities for all women to stop it, assuming the boy’s being honourable and stuff but um they can not sort of get into that sort of situation the flirty situation in the first place or they can not go home with you an’ they can not go into the bedroom an’ they can once you’re there they can sort of like go ‘no you’re not allowed to take my clothes off’ and they can—I think it’s what’s that 30 second rule they had in America where the guy was having sex with her, and she goes ‘na this is a bad idea,’ says ‘no,’ he finishes, and she goes ‘oh that was rape’ and sort of like—so there’s plenty of opportunities for a girl to avoid the situation, and um, so, but if a girl looks you in the eye and says ‘no’ then that’s sort of the end of it.

Mike: Um back on that note I think I think things progress I’d say from the age of say maybe eighteen, or maybe even twenty onwards. Generally you find people being more sexually active, generally like they’re sort of coming out of the later stage of adolescence and that the sign is generally that if you go out with someone I think from that age on, you’re, that’s sort of what’s going to happen, that’s pretty much what the plan is, but then to back out, like if it gets to a situation where like, you can end up in a situation where it, like, becomes date rape. Generally you’re given the signs that to that point it is okay, you know, like it depends on the age (inaudible). Probably eighteen onwards I’d say.

Kyle: Um, sorry to interrupt, but I just realized that, um, that statement is kind of putting the blame on women almost. She fails, something she did—

Jason: He misinterprets her—

Kyle: She fails to say ‘no’ clearly. Well, what about the guy?

Cam: Yeah, he’s also, he’s failed to actually interpret what she means, so it’s actually both parties.

Mike: So both parties are a problem there.

. . . Jason: Women often seem to forget that men don’t deal with subtleties. If we want something, we tell you.

. . . Mike: Men deal in yes and no, whereas women deal in a vast array of options, so, yeah. . . . Like I think i-if the situation is ambiguous the male is going to lean towards the positive side of interpretation of it.

Jason: Hehe, of course.

This is where things fall off the rails. Suddenly, men don't deal with "subtleties," even though the men have previously reported that they would turn down sex in the same way they'd expect women to—subtly. Suddenly, a person misinterpreting lack of consent is completely understandable if "she fails to say 'no' clearly," even though the men had previously never invoked direct refusal as a way they know if women don't want to have sex with them.  Suddenly, a woman is required to engage in a very specific behavior—looking her sex partner in the eye and saying "no"—in order to not be responsible for her own rape. And suddenly, in order to neutralize the misogyny a little bit, both men and women are equally as likely to be in a position where they must deter sexual advances with eye contact and a firm "no," even though the men had previously indicated that they could never even conceive of a situation where they would be expected to do such a thing.

As Thomas MacAulay Millar notes, these men are likely not rapists. So why is it so natural for them to make excuses for them? "The gist of it is that these young men evidenced an understanding of and even a preference for nuances and diplomatic communication to refuse sex, but then when discussing rape, reversed course and began to argue that anything the least bit ambiguous was unintelligible," Millar writes. "What gives? Why create a social framework where rape is accidental if they don’t have to cover their own asses?"

I don't have an answer to that, but the study does suggest one way we to address this problem: Show people studies like this. "[I]n presenting this research, and its’ associated transcripts, to young men and women," the study claims, "we have found that by drawing attention to our shared commonsensical knowledge of how everyday refusals are normatively done, and then to how this knowledge is often then patently discounted in favour of the interpretative repertoire of miscommunication . . . young people become engaged in an active discussion of how it is that both sexual consent and sexual refusal are actually negotiated."

This time around, let's flip the script to examine what other terrible, no good, very bad things are just like rape. Like health care! The health-care-is-rape argument comes courtesy of WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian. In a piece entitled "Barack Obama and the date-rape of America," he writes:

Good Americans from sea to shining sea are grappling right now with how to mentally process what they're witnessing in Washington, D.C.

The spectacle of a far leftist president literally forcing socialized medicine down the throat of an unwilling center-right America is reminiscent, perhaps more than any other contemporary metaphor, of date rape.

A man determined to have his way with a woman may start off seducing her with lies, flattery and the usual pretense of caring about her. But at a critical moment, when she says, "Stop, I'm not comfortable with this and don't want to go any further," he has a choice: Either do the right thing and back off, or abandon all prior pretensions and take her by force.

As president, Barack Obama courted us with sweet talk, but America grew increasingly uncomfortable with his advances and firmly said, "Stop"—in fact, screamed bloody murder for months. Yet Obama remains obsessed with forcing himself on America.

Kupelian goes on to explain how Obama, much like your undetected date rapist, appears to be an otherwise great guy, until he unsuspectingly rapes America:

How can an apparently decent man like Barack Obama—who undoubtedly loves his daughters and probably reads them bedtime stories, has a good sense of humor, and is highly intelligent and likeable—justify lying and deceiving all the time, pretending to care about Republican input, about transparency, about controlling costs, and so on? Further, how can he justify using such dishonest means to force his will on an unwilling American public? In other words, how can he countenance, in effect, date-raping America?

. . . and how, just like in many date rape scenarios, alcohol is involved:

What we need to understand is that, between his hate-based ideology (Winston Churchill called socialism the "gospel of envy"), extreme narcissism and long-internalized political corruption, Obama and others like him, literally drunk on power, live essentially in a state of delusion: Down is up, truth is cruel and impractical, corruption is just "conducting business," morality is repression, lying is a creative force.

But Kupelian's analogy falls apart when he presents date rape as something that Republicans should actually give a shit about, because for the most part, they really, really don't. If you Google "Republicans date rape," you'll get a lot of hits about Republicans reiterating the idea that bipartisanship amounts to date rape. And Rush Limbaugh equating date rape to extramarital affairs. And Republican Senators refusing to support the right of rape victims to sue their employers. And joking that date rape is like being robbed of expensive jewelry by a beautiful and mysterious woman. Double rape analogy bonus!

Isn't it strange how Republicans seem to only invoke the problem of date rape when they need to use it as a rhetorical tool to transfer sympathy away from real victims of rape and onto themselves? And isn't it odd that when presented with legislation meant to aid real victims of rape, the party refuses to support it? The fact is, Kupelian and his party are far more likely to direct their righteous indignation at people who want everyone to have access to medical care than they are to condemn rapists for raping. So if Kupelian wants us to truly understand how terrible Obama's pursuit of health care is for Republicans, perhaps he should draw comparisons to something that Republicans actually detest. He should also refrain from misusing the term "literally." Twice.

Thankfully for Kupelian, the piece floats several alternate analogies through which Republicans may illustrate their strife. According to Kupelian, Barack Obama is Captain Ahab, and Obamacare is Moby Dick; Barack Obama is a dictator, and America is Zimbabwe; Republicans are "German undercover operatives in the Nazi army plotting to kill Hitler," and Obama is . . . Hitler, presumably.

Date Rape Anthem: The Gits' "Spear & Magic Helmet," our first anti-rape anthem inspired by the Looney Tunes set. Thanks to commenter basketcasey for the tip.

Relevant Lyrics:

You jump out from behind
Two against one
You said, “You’ve been a bad girl,”
Then you slapped her right across the face
What could be going through your mind
This does no one good
I suggest you buy a cage
Cause I’m full of rage

Then you raped her
You left her in the alleyway
I know I have to see you
And all I think of you is right
Could’ve gone on after you
You’re nothing but filth and scum
Now I have to wail on you
And your reputation
Just because you see her there
You think it’s all fair and square
All I fucking see in you
Is one goddamn lame excuse

Spear & The What Now?: The title of the song comes from the 1957 Merrie Melodies short, "What's Opera, Doc?" In it, Elmer Fudd attempts to kill Bugs Bunny, as per the usual plotline, except this time Fudd is costumed as the Viking god Thor, and the stock storyline parodies the operas of Wagner. Well aware that Fudd is no god, but just a plain old wabbit hunter, Bugs ridicules Fudd for wearing his absurd "spear and magic helmet."

Fudd: I'm going to kill the wabbit!

Bugs: Oh mighty warrior t'will be quite a task. How will you do it, might I enquire to ask?

Fudd: I will do it with my spear and magic helmet!

Bugs: Your spear and magic helmet?

Fudd: Spear and magic helmet!

Bugs: Magic helmet?

Fudd Magic helmet!

Bugs: Magic helmet.

Fudd Yes, magic helmet!

The Gits track, by the band's singer/songwriter Mia Zapata, is directed at a man among the speaker's group of friends who has raped a woman. (Two years after the track was recorded, Zapata would be found raped, murdered, and abandoned in a Seattle, Wa. street). Like Fudd's thirst for bunny wabbits, the rapist feels entitled to prey on women simply because they are there ("Just because you see her there / You think it’s all fair and square"). In the cartoon, Fudd's "spear and magic helmet" are constructs that falsely empower him to "play God" over all other creatures. The rapist's "goddamn lame excuse" is that he's built a "reputation" that allows him to get away with raping women. Like Fudd, the rapist has nurtured a false sense of superiority in order to convince himself that it's morally acceptable for him to teach lessons to women he deems to be "bad girls." But just as Bugs always outsmarts Fudd, the song insists that the rapist's actions will come back to bite him in the ass.

We most recently revisited the issue yesterday, after a study showed that women who observe public acts of sexism—like sexual harassment against other women—tend to direct more anger at men in general. The study demonstrates (among other things) that when men sexually harass women, they also hurt men who are not harassers. Pointing out ways that sexism affects men can provide men with a valuable access-point to feminist issues. It can also be seen as an invitation to throw a pity party for male victimhood.

As one commenter on the story wrote, "Here we go again. The poor menz! They have to experience the suspicion/scrutiny of women who have been put down, kept down, abused emotionally, fiscally, professionally, sometimes physically, yadayadayada." I don't think this is about feeling sorry for men; I think it's about recognizing that men can be valuable allies in working against women being put down, kept down, harassed, and abused. Is it fair that women have to first show men how sexism affects them in order to get them to care about how it affects us? No. But it sure is helpful.

So without any further ado, I'd like to introduce the first installment in a new Sexist feature: Interviews with experts on the subjects that most vex us around here. First up: Thomas MacAulay Millar, my favorite feminist writer who is also a man. Millar, which is not his real name, is a New-York based attorney and feminist writer. You may remember him for his essay condemning the comodification of sexuality, "Toward a Performance Model of Sex," which appeared in the Yes Means Yes! anthology last year, or from his work on the wonderful Yes Means Yes! blog. Below, Millar on the beginnings of a feminist man, how to find feminist access-points for boys, and what it's like to be a feminist with male privilege.

What personal experiences in your life contributed to your identification as a feminist?

TMM: My mom was a feminist, and raised me to understand that the world was unfair in big, structural ways, so I was in large part raised with it. She wasn’t an overtly ideological parent. She just believed in telling me how things really were, and I drew a lot of my own conclusions. I remember her telling me that my cousin (who was an evangelical), terminated two pregnancies. She was a clinic protester. But when it was her life, she thought it was different. Another cousin was molested, and when she wouldn't stop complaining, she was sent away to live in another state. (Eventually, she sued her abuser and got some justice.) My mother would tell me the parts of the stories in real life that people try to hide from children. I can't possibly thank her enough for that. I mean I literally can’t, because she died a decade ago. I thanked her a lot for being a great mom, but never enough.

As I got into high school, I started seeing issues like sex education and reproductive freedom through lenses heavily influenced by my women friends. I took my first women's studies class in high school, read some Steinem and some other feminist writing in high school. My mother had a bunch of feminist writing around the house that I read. And I started to see GLB issues through the prism of my friends' lives, and to see sexuality and sex education as my friends and I developed.

In my teens, too, I began a long process of growing into BDSM and figuring out what that meant for identity, and one of the early things I figured out what that there was a sort of mainstream position that wasn't overtly anti-sex in my area, but that was sort of very pro-partriarchally constrained models of sexuality, and that I was necessarily a dissident to that, and that I was therefore a natural ally to anyone else who didn't feel the official model fit them. So, in my mind, the idea especially around sexuality and gender expression that dissenters and dissidents should be in solidarity with each other developed early. So it was a pretty direct line from there to being active in college on choice and GLBT issues and doing my first minor in women’s studies. And also, people telling me when I said stupid things and learning from that, rinse, repeat.

I think most importantly, I began to hear one story after another about how women — mostly my women friends, and also some relatives — were molested and groped and raped (some men, too, but I didn't become aware of that until later). Women friends told me they had been raped, and not infrequently they had never told anyone else. The thing that stuck with me then and still does is how little space they had to safely process and heal. They felt that they couldn't say what had happened, let alone talk about how they felt, without being judged and shamed. And I think they were right about that, sad to say. They couldn't tell people. The reactions they would have gotten from parents and peers would have done damage. So they stayed silent, which is a very hard way to deal with trauma. Unfortunately, that's not something I see changing. Women I know are still telling me that they were raped, or that something happened that was rape but that they can't label, and that they have not or cannot talk about to anyone else. And I have a daughter and that scares the shit out of me.

How can we get more men and boys interested in the feminist movement?

TMM: Well, we can bullshit them and tell them that it's all upside, and that fighting for their relative privilege in an awful system that's no good for them doesn't have any benefits. But they'll quickly realize that's not true. And we can tell them that there are no downsides to participating in a movement where they have to confront their privilege and change how they do things. But they’d quickly find that that isn’t true.

You can’t sell a movement to cure structural unfairness to the beneficiaries of the unfairness unless there’s already a point of access. That means they have to really have a grievance against the way things are, for themselves or for people they love. But there are a lot of those. There are a lot of guys whose sister has needed an abortion, or whose wife was raped, or whose brother is transitioning, or who feel that the masculinity imposed on them is crushing them. If someone who knows that guy finds that point of access, like a pinhole in the patriarchal curtain, and starts pulling at it, eventually the hole gets so big that they accept that it’s not a matter of stitching the hole, it’s a whole panel or whole curtain that needs to be replaced. (And roman shades would look better in this room. Also, this paint is kinda tired. Let’s see how far I can stretch this metaphor ….*snap* Oops.)

. . . Or we can get them young and try to build into them a sense of fairness that is actually fair, and not one based on a set of artificially assigned roles based on two categories. I’m working on that. I’ll let you know how I did in about twenty years.

How does male privilege affect the way you approach feminist issues?

TMM: First, it means I don’t know everything and my personal leanings and experiences are not a trustworthy guide. I just have to accept that I’m going to be wrong and mess things up, and be gracious when people tell me what a schmuck I am. Because I am.

Second, it means forever keeping one eye on the dynamics of speaking for. In some ways it’s easier, as an affluent educated able bodied cis het white man, because I don’t have to think about the relative issues of when I’m privileged and when I’m not. I’m virtually always in the advantaged side of the structural issue, so I can keep the “I have an unfair advantage” light permanently on.

It’s something I talk about with friends a fair amount. In writing, a lot of what I do is talk about what something means for men, how men should read or deal with something, what it means as a parent, etc., where I’m interpreting my own experience and the experiences I have a better handle on, in light of the dynamics I’m talking about.

But I don’t do that with everything. Some of what I write is overarching theorizing, like Toward A Performance Model of Sex. I realize I don’t have any kind of omniscience, and my privilege informs what I write. I think there are three things I can do about it. I can decide that my understanding is so constrained by the limits of my experience and the dictates of my privilege that I should just shut up (some posts have ended their lives in the delete folder for that reason); I can try to learn and educate myself and improve and beat back my own privilege, which I’m forever trying to do and never fast enough; and I can put what I can out there and try to be as humble as I can about the limitations of it and then not get defensive when people move the discussion forward by pointing out the flaws in what I’ve done. I’ve edited a lot of posts to say, “I messed up, see comments.”

Do you think there are some feminist issues that are more readily accessible to men and boys than others?

TMM: There are things that should be feminist issues that are more the province of men and boys. Masculinity and manhood are becoming contested terrain, and that’s important. The most common discourse on masculinity reads to me like this: “I don’t know what it should look like. What we have is terrible in the following ways, and we should fix it. But I don’t know what it looks like when it gets fixed.” I have both so much and so little to say about that. Masculinity isn’t just “what men do,” but it is bound up with manhood. So we need women in that conversation, both those interested in masculinity and those that in some ways perform it. And we need people who reject binary identifications like “man” to weigh in. But mostly, whether cis- or trans-, the folks we need to help define masculinity are the people who perform it most, and that’s people who identify as men.

Also, there are angles and spaces that men have on feminist issues, where their understanding may be deeply limited by privilege, but where their position in the structural distribution of power is such that they can do more to make change. Men can do feminist work, even if they don’t apply the label to it, if they use what’s at their disposal to do the fair thing. Just as one example, George Tiller was a great hero for reproductive self-determination, not because he freed himself from male privilege, but because he was a doctor who would do that work, under the most terrifying circumstances. I know a guy who says the most awful shit, often to wind me up. But he also once physically intervened to prevent several men from raping a woman who was so intoxicated she didn’t know who she was with or what was going on. Security wouldn’t act, so he just started throwing punches. It worked, at significant cost to him which I won’t describe. That’s not a guy who self-identifies as feminist, but it was a deeply feminist act.

Less dramatically, just calling out rape jokes and rape-apology is something where guys’ views can influence other men a great deal. A guy who mentors younger women colleagues and makes sure their work is considered on its merits may not identify as feminist, or may have a very poor ability to check his own privilege, but that guy can to a lot of good with what he has, where he is.

So I guess I’d say that we need men to be situational allies where they can be, even if they are not (yet) able to make broader connections. Getting them to understand and see the unfairness of a specific situation or act is the first stage. If that creates the gateway for that guy to see those kinds of dynamics as pervasive, and pervasively unfair, great. If not, one person doing the right thing in one situation is better than not.

Are men in the position to play any unique roles in the feminist movement?

TMM: Leaving aside doing what we can with what we have where we are, because I don’t think that’s what the question calls for, I think the primary area where men have something specific and important to bring to feminism is in defining men and masculinity.

Those issues ripple through a lot. To take a particular class-specific issue, for example, take an opposite-sex couple with the same degree, working, say, as lawyers. They may have met in law school, gotten BigLaw jobs, proceeded on parallel tracks through the associate years, and then … that world is not perfect on treating women equally, but I see the social dynamics as the real hold-back. It’s very difficult for both partners to be driven professionals. They can pay for childcare solutions that leave them both free to work long and irregular hours and to travel, but many folks don’t want to do that for a lot of good reasons. Usually, someone takes a step back in professional responsibilities to parent. It’s almost always the woman. Some folks will tell you it has to do with women’s innate desire to mother, but I’m very skeptical of those explanations. Some people want to parent more than others, but I’m not going to accept anyone’s glib generalization that because it’s true for them, it’s an innate sex difference. Instead, I think it has a great deal to do with men’s unwillingness to take that step back. How men see their selves and role, and how their female partners will see them, and how they think their female partners will see them, is all about masculinity.

Of course, it’s more often the case that by the time a middle-class opposite sex couple decide to have kids, they are already in different careers with different compensation, and whoever makes less money becomes the parent with less professional responsibilities. And that has everything to do with the social construction or gender and work roles, tracking of women, conflation of some work identities with masculinity and femininity, etc.

All that is a narrow and class-bound analysis that leaves a lot out; a full treatment of just that example is a book topic. But that’s just one of many ways that construction of masculinity flows through work and distributional issues and other things that seem far removed from the direct performance of gender. I don’t think we can fully understand how much about masculinity is assumed until men start trying to take it apart, examine it and refashion it. And it’s principally men’s job to do that.

E-mail interview has been condensed. . . . a tiny bit.

Date Rape Anthem: Another refreshing addition to the anti-rape contingent of musical date rape anthems: Fugazi's "Suggestion," which commenter paprbgprncs claims "Restored my faith in men (boys at the time) when I was 16."

Relevant Lyrics:

Why can't I walk down a street free of suggestion?
Is my body the only trait in the eyes of men?
I've got some skin you want to look in
There lays no reward in what you discover
You spent yourself watching me suffer
Suffer you words, suffer your eyes, suffer your hands
Suffer your interpretation of what it is to be a man
I've got some skin you want to look in
She does nothing to deserve it
He only wants to observe it
We sit back like they taught us
We keep quiet like they taught us
He just wants to prove it
She does nothing to remove it
We don't want anyone to mind us
So we play the roles that they assigned us
She does nothing to conceal it
He touches her 'cause he wants to feel it
We blame her for being there
But we are all guilty

Why I Love This Song: I love this song, and here's why: It clearly articulates the connection between all the flavors of harassment inflicted against women, from street harassment ("suffer your words"), to objectification through the male gaze ("suffer your eyes"), to physical sexual assault ("suffer your hands"). In the song,  all contribute to a social structure that devalues women ("suffer your interpretation of what it is to be a man"). By song's end ("He touches her 'cause he wants to feel it / We blame her for being there / But we are all guilty") it's clear that the harm done here has gone far beyond the realm of "suggestion."

The song is clearly anti-rape, but it's also a stinging condemnation of all the bystanders who don't speak up when women are assaulted: "We sit back like they taught us / We keep quiet like they taught us . . . We don't want anyone to mind us / So we play the roles that they assigned us. . . . we are all guilty." The song leaves a lasting suggestion for men who are born into this society: Want to avoid being lumped in with men who harass women? Speak up against sexual harassment and assault, and no one will mistake you for an offender.

Hold on to your backwards hats and creatively groomed goatees, ya'll, because anti-rape anthems are about to go rapcore:

Date Rape Anthem: downset.'s "Ritual," an anti-rape song that rages against the machine . . . of gender hatred. Thanks to reader Chris Graffeo for the tip.

Relevant Lyrics:

How can I stand in silence while you are raping my sister?

Ritual!

Throw it in the wind because I ain’t with that.
What have we done with mother, sister, daughter, lover?
Beat them down to submission, into that corner of constant fear.
Humanity reduced to a sexual commodity, objectification, pretty faces.
Molded imagery damn they drop the dirty mack demands.
She’s more than booty to me; bypass her sexuality.

Tradition, your sexism is what you want me to learn.
Surrender gender hatred, fade it to kill it, compassion returns.
1 out of 3, and they say my sisters are free, incarcerated by hatred.
Propagated by sodomy, continual ritual victimizing my sister.
Physical rape is psychological murder.

Ritual! Jenny! Ho! Slut! Trick! Bitch! Buddy!

So, What Do We Do With This: Wikipedia informs me that downset.'s "original moniker was "Social Justice," and this song's message is just about that subtle. These guys hate rape, and they do a pretty good job of explaining exactly why that's the case. Being a rapcore band in the early 90's often meant adopting an aggressively masculine posture, a la Korn and Limp Bizkit, so it's great to hear an aggressive gender-equality message in a genre marketed largely to men. And hey, at least it's not "rapecore."

But does it hold up on the level of the song? I'm specifically not a fan of rapcore, so I can't say with any certainty, but I would be remiss if I did not invoke the Hierarchy of Date Rape Jams here. What is the Heirarchy of Date Rape Jams, you say? Why, it is my unscientific* and poorly designed graph that charts where date-rape songs fall on the "sweetness" and "positivity" axes:

In my view, "Ritual" scores high on the positivity scale and middling on the sweetness scale, situating the song as significantly more anti-rape than Sublime, but a fair bit less aesthetically pleasing than, say, your Tribe Called Quest. What say you?

* Yeah, I like Rod Stewart.

OK. It's about time these Date Rape Anthems got down to serious business:

Date Rape Anthem: 7 Year Bitch's "Dead Men Don't Rape," another in our anti-rape anthem series, obviously. Thanks to commenter Shannon Drury for the tip.

Relevant Lyrics: Oh hell let's just hear all of them!

You ain't got the right tellin' me I'm uptight
And I'm not obligated to give in cause you're frustrated
No, my revenge is death, cause  you deserve the best
And I'm not turned on by your masculinity
Dead men don't rape

I don't have pity, not a single tear
For those who get joy from a woman's fear
I'd rather get a gun and just blow you away
Then you'll learn firsthand
Dead men don't rape

You're getting sucked into society's sickest
Don't go out alone you might get raped
But not by a dead man 'cuz
Dead men don't rape

You ain't got the right tellin' me I'm uptight
Dead men don't rape

So, What Do We Do With This One? "Dead Men Don't Rape" endorses similar anti-rape tactics to one of our previous date rape anthems, the Raveonettes' "Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)": death and destruction for the world's rapists. But there are aesthetic differences. While The Raveonettes' dreamy indie pop serenades listeners with the polite suggestion that boys who rape "should" be destroyed, 7 Year Bitch's rapist-elimination plan takes a more aggressive approach. Because vocalist Selene Vigil intends on shooting rapists dead before they can ever feign sexual "frustration" ever again. DEAD MEN DON'T RAPE.

For comparison:

[youtube:v=6DpulDH89IE]

So, which do you think is a more effective anti-rape message:

(a) The Raveonettes' attempt to lull the listener into rape awareness.

(b)  7 Year Bitch scares-the-living-shit-out-of-you punk approach.

(c) Raveonettes until Memorial Day, 7 Year Bitch until Labor Day

(d) Neither. Violence is never the answer, mmkay?

(e) I don't care about rape! Why am I still reading this blog!

The health center at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada is currently outfitted with this anti-drinking PSA that warns that excessive drinking can get you raped. Funny how that just happens. Can't we get a "You can also rape someone"? Thanks to Waterloo student BuChanda for the tip.

In nearly a year of chronicling songs about rape here on the Sexist, I've yet to profile one of the most well-known songs about rape. Or is it about rape? Either way, this track name-checks the word "rape"  about a bajillion times:

Date Rape Anthem: Nirvana's "Rape Me"

Relevant Lyrics: Let's take a look at all of them, shall we?

Rape me / Rape me, my friend
Rape me / Rape me again

I'm not the only one  (x4)

Hate me / Do it and do it again
Waste me / Rape me, my friend

I'm not the only one (x4)

My favorite inside source
I'll kiss your open sores
I appreciate your concern
You're gonna stink and burn

Rape me / Rape me, my friend
Rape me / Rape me, again

I'm not the only one (x4)

Rape me! (x a lot)

So, What Do We Do With This One: Is "Rape Me" a Randian invitation to rough sex? The cry of a demoralized rock star who felt he had been "raped" by a backstabbing media source? Or a revenge anthem about a rapist getting raped himself? Fans are torn (OK, nobody believes the Ayn Rand thing).

Official sources claim that it is a song about rape—at least on a literal level. According to Wikipedia, Kurt Cobain unpacked the song in Spin Magazine in 1993: "It's like she's saying, 'Rape me, go ahead, rape me, beat me. You'll never kill me. I'll survive this and I'm gonna fucking rape you one of these days and you won't even know it."

Tori Amos provided a similar interpretation of the song to New Musical Express in 1994. "I spoke publicly about that because I thought it was very clear what it was about. It was like 'Go on, hit me! Rape me! You cross this line, motherfucker, and I'll kill you...you'll never break my spirit.' It's a defiant song. But the scariest thing to a rape victim are the words 'rape me'. When I first heard it I broke out in a cold sweat, but when you get over that you realize he's turning it back on people."

So, is it a song about the horrors of rape? Or is it rather about how Cobain's experience with the media is really a lot like the horrors of rape? One of these things is not like the other . . .

Thanks to commenter Keara for suggesting another positive addition to the annals of date rape anthems. Up next:

Date Rape Anthem: "Mother's Day" by Nada Surf, a 2002 track about boys who rape girls on their Star Wars sheets, and why that's unacceptable.

Relevant Lyrics:

What do you see when you look at a girl?
Is she a game you wanna win?
If no one was looking
What would you do to get in?
Do you have friends who would be proud
If you went in for the kill?
Do you have friends who would do it
Even against her will?

. . . On your Star Wars sheets
When you get the scene
Was she seducing you
Or did she want to scream?

It's you versus you versus you
I can't forget that tomorrow's Mother's Day,
I'm talking to you
You know who you are
Going too far
You'll feel good for ten minutes
She'll be screwed up for life
Blue balls and all of that bullshit

Why It's So Anti-Rapey: "Blue balls and all of that bullshit" indeed. The whole song is a pretty damning rejection of excuses made for rape—I'm particularly interested in how Nada Surf criticizes boys who count rapists among their friends—but at it's core, it's about refusing to turn your frustration at sexual rejection into violence against women. The boy in question here is framed as a nerd who has been "laughed at" and "left out" (Star Wars sheets, dude?)—a boy who might feel like he has some power to gain by forcing a woman to submit to him. Proudly nerdy indie rockers Nada Surf are here to tell these boys to cut out the bullshit.

The recession has been good to Ayn Rand. And why shouldn’t it be? Rand created objectivism, a philosophy that champions laissez-faire capitalism, individualism, and utter selfishness—a powerful opposition ideology at a time when government is growing and welfare for everyone is on the agenda. Almost 30 years after Rand’s death, her casket marked by a gigantic floral arrangement in the shape of a U.S. dollar sign, her economic ideas are gaining plenty of traction.

But what about her ideas on sex?

Not every passage in Rand’s works speaks to her campaign platform, which is abridged in her 1,000-page 1957 allegorical novel Atlas Shrugged: “My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

Rand’s heroic man is also into some pretty coercive sex. Consider this scene, from Rand’s 1943 novel, The Fountainhead:

She tried to tear herself away from him. The effort broke against his arms that had not felt it. Her fists beat against his shoulders, against his face. He moved one hand, took her two wrists and pinned them behind her, under his arm, wrenching her shoulder blades.…She fell back against the dressing table, she stood crouching, her hands clasping the edge behind her, her eyes wide, colorless, shapeless in terror. He was laughing. There was the movement of laughter on his face, but no sound.…Then he approached. He lifted her without effort. She let her teeth sink into his hand and felt blood on the tip of her tongue. He pulled her head back and he forced her mouth open against his.

Kate first read that scene when she was 12 years old. “I read all of [Rand’s novels] when I was in middle school,” says Kate. Now 22 and a student at Georgetown University, Kate spent her tween years a committed objectivist. “I was really, really into them. I read them all at least twice. I had pages dog-eared. I would go back and read over the best parts. I kept a journal that I would fill with quotes I liked from the books, the stuff that struck me as meaningful.”

But Kate’s very favorite lines never made it into the diary. “I’ll be honest. The first time I read The Fountainhead, the courtroom scene—that long soliloquy where she goes on and on about her philosophy—I skimmed it. I was really more interested in the sex scenes.”

When Kate first discovered Rand, “Sex wasn’t even a part of my vocabulary,” she says. Rand’s involved, fantastical rape scenes quickly filled the void. After reading her next Rand novel, Atlas Shrugged, Kate became obsessed with heroine Dagny Taggart, an idealistic capitalist who conquers the railroad industry—and submits to the violent sexual conquests of three men along the way. “That was the big draw for me as a teenage girl,” says Kate. “It was my first exposure to pornographic kind of materials. But the really fucked-up thing was that I didn’t realize back then that those scenes were rapes.”

It’s not unusual for readers to turn to Rand at a formative time in their lives. “It happens at all ages, but I think it does happen more commonly among young people,” says Joshua Zader, creator of the Atlasphere, a social networking Web site that connects objectivists around the world. Zader says that many Randians experience their first contact with her books between the ages of 14 and 21. “Her books appeal to youthful idealism, to people who are at the point in their lives where they’re trying to figure out what’s important,” Zader says.

It’s also when they’re trying to figure out sex. Rand’s influence on young people can’t be overstated—her fans have described her books as “life-changing,” “my Bible,” and “hot.” “I know that your sexual inclinations can be kind of stamped into you when you’re going through puberty,” says Kate. “So it’s a little disconcerting that at 12, 13 years old, I was stamping myself with this complete and total interest in submission, when I didn’t have any experience with sex at all,” she says. “It’s an interesting seed to plant in a teenager’s mind that that’s how sex operates.”

Even those teens who aren’t particularly obsessed with Rand’s erotica have picked up long-lasting sexual cues from her books. Angela Huynh, 24, is another Randian who got hooked as a teenager. “The Fountainhead changed my life,” says Huynh, who first read the book at age 19. “I…loved that whole philosophy of being who you want to be and doing whatever the hell you want to do in the most selfish way possible,” she says. “Who gives a shit about what people think or expect from you? …It became my Bible for life for a while.”

And the sex? “I know that many view it as a rape scene, but I definitely did not see it that way,” says Huynh of the Fountainhead scene. “Yes, there are elements of nonconsensual sex in that scene, but I was aware of Dominique’s feelings towards Roark and to me, she internally agreed to it,” she says. “I guess in the way that a lot of females may enjoy ‘rough’ sex and want domination behind closed doors.” And Huynh’s view of the scene hasn’t evolved in the five years since her first reading. “I will always feel this way about sex in the novel,” she says. “It changed the way I viewed men. The way they are supposed to be. Their motivations. It also made me look for raw dynamics when it comes to relationships.”

Rand reportedly had this to say about the scene: “If it was rape, it was rape by engraved invitation.” But for young people with no practical experience with sex, Rand doesn’t provide any instruction on how exactly to seal the note. If your sex partner is biting you and beating you in the face, how can you be sure they’ve consented “internally”? Between Rand’s idealized heroes and heroines, why is the ideal sexual scenario a violent rape that the woman only privately desires? And for Rand, who was fond of invoking the tautological principle that “A is A,” when is rape not rape?

Zader was an 18-year-old freshman at the University of New Mexico when he first consumed The Fountainhead. “I didn’t get off the couch for three days until I was done with it,” he says. Twenty years later, Zader has had plenty of time to mull over the sexual dynamics at play there. “It was a welcomed rape is what it was,” he concludes. “It was a rape where both people wanted that sort of contact.…Now, one hopes that not too many people would actually go out and treat a woman that way.”

Perhaps it’s a concept that can only be understood by a fellow Randian. In 2003, Zader created the Atlasphere; soon, he added an online dating component to aid objectivists in finding “someone to fall in love with.” Today, 11,644 Randians and like-minded singles are looking for love—and sex—through the Atlasphere. The majority are men; currently, 96 men and 36 women in D.C. are enrolled in the service.

Despite all having an interest in novels that lean heavy on the rape fantasy, Atlasphere users rarely spell out their sexual inclinations on the site. Not one of the Atlasphere’s dating profiles includes the word “rape.” Only nine Atlasphere users have clicked a box signaling an interest in “erotica.” Many Atlasphere users express an interest in “domination”—world domination. The only woman with the word “submissive” in her profile is seeking a relationship and/or business partner to team up with her for her dream venture, “Pizza Tomb.” Pizza Tomb is a theme restaurant where “the gimmick is that the pizza is served on a hollow pyramid-shaped platter placed atop the customer’s head, requiring the customer to eat his or her way out,” she writes. The Pizza Tomb is currently lacking a dominant male figure: “Overly-effeminate and submissive men sicken me,” she writes.

Zader says sexual cues used on the site can sometimes be discreet. “People who are into dominance and submission tend to have their own vernacular,” says Zader. “Some will say, ‘I’m a sub, and if you don’t know what that means, you don’t need to contact me,’” he says. “Some people are more explicit about it and some might not come right out and say it.” Not that every Randian is into the rough stuff. Zader says the objectivist reaction to Ayn Rand’s sex scenes falls about like this: “I’d say a third of them, it turns them on; a third are neutral; and a third are really bothered by it.” For the most part, the Atlasphere isn’t about sex—it’s about rational self-interest. “What it signals most is that you want a relationship with someone who has similar values,” he says.

As for Kate, she never got the chance to apply her peculiar obsessions into some Randian role-playing. Kate fell out of love with objectivism before she ever got around to having sex in the real world. “People I meet now in college who are really into Ayn Rand—I can’t relate to them,” says Kate. “They’re just unpleasant. There’s no nuance.”

“I would never go back to read her philosophical rants in those books,” Kate adds. “I would probably go back to read the sex scenes—just purely for the pornographic effect.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The Sexist has been obsessively cataloging songs about rape for some time now, but so far we've only alighted upon one recent track that's clearly against assault: the Raveonettes' "Boys Who Rape (Shall All Be Destroyed)." I don't have another anti-rape track for you, but I do have a cover of "Boys Who Rape"—this time sung by some boys.

Pitchfork has this to say of the cover, courtesy of Brooklyn's Suckers: "the Brooklyn-based four-piece lend their dark orchestral touch to the song, turning the original ode into an elegy worthy of the equally heavy subject matter."

Really? Because a few seconds in, the song launches into some sleepy Brian Wilson-esque harmonies and . . . is that a maraca? Then there's some more dark "aaahing" and some other funny noise-making. (There's a reason I don't write for Pitchfork). I'm not against anybody letting some Beach Boys influence sneak into a song about murdering rapists. However, I'm not sure I'd ever choose to equate the "heaviness" of rape with what is a particularly sunny elegy.

Here's the Raveonettes' original:

[youtube:v=6DpulDH89IE]

a) Rape is just one big misunderstanding. The proponents of this argument believe that women who wear short skirts are signaling that they are interested in sex. Therefore, rapists will naturally gravitate to these women and proceed to fuck them without their consent, because, hey—the skirt already gave them the go-ahead.

b) Short skirts are just too sexy to resist. According to this view, rapists are well aware that every woman in a miniskirt isn't down to fuck. But they just can't help themselves when they catch sight of those gams, so be a good girl and don't tempt the rapist.

Let's see if we can't address both of these theories at once with the help of star commenter Frankie.

Here's the situation: Frankie was giving her girlfriend a good-night kiss when three men attempted to intercept the PDA. She writes:

After walking [my then-girlfriend] home, three guys who were hanging out around the block of flats where she lived approached . . . I think it was pretty obvious we were a couple, as not only were our arms around each other but they’d just watched us kissing.

"Hey, do you have boyfriends?"

My girlfriend looked confused. "No. I’m a lesbian"

"So you won’t show my friend some love then?"

"No."

They shouted a few sexual comments as we walked off, until I shouted back. "Lesbians means no fucking men. Literally."

Their response? Weirdly, it was, "You’re just chicks with dicks anyway."

Gay couples are not unaccustomed to this particular flavor of street harassment. "After speaking to a few of my friends about this, it seems I'm not alone in having this experience," Frankie writes. "All of us have noticed that if out and about as part of an obvious same sex couple that we seem to attract more attention, and often that this attention is negative. However . . . if both members in the couple are conventionally 'feminine', by which I mean thin, average or short in height and dressed in 'girly' clothing, then that attention is nearly always from men and nearly always sexual in nature."

Adds Frankie, "I think I have had a lot more hassle off guys trying to pick me up when I’ve been out in public with a girlfriend than when I’ve been out with a boyfriend, a group of friends or even on my own."

What can account for this? There's no "misunderstanding" of Frankie's sexual willingness here—Frankie and her girlfriend were clearly demonstrating that they were exclusively interested in each other, not the men. It's not that Frankie's body was just too hot to be resisted—she experiences sexual harassment at a much higher rate when she's clearly coupled up with another lady, and far less when she's out alone (and, we can assume, equally attractive). Of course, Frankie's harassers aren't rapists (as far as we know), but they are exhibiting some analogous behavior—they are attempting to gain verbal sexual dominance over someone who clearly doesn't want it. So, what is it?

Perhaps it's time to float another theory: That some rapists rape because they see women (or gays, or trans people, or other groups who are marginalized) who have autonomy over their sexuality, and they just really, really hate them for that. They seek to return control of that sexuality to its rightful owners—heterosexual men.

The sexual advances Frankie has experienced are clearly hate-motivated. If she's out in a same-sex couple that's perceived as insufficiently feminine, she'll get negative attention. If she's out in a same-sex couple that's perceived as fuckable by the standards of some heterosexual male passerby, she'll get negative sexual attention. And if she dares to reject that negative sexual attention ("lesbians means no fucking men"), her harassers will compound the negative sexual attention with some good old-fashioned homophobia—and labor to place the women back in the "insufficiently feminine" zone ("you're just chicks with dicks anyway").

There is no confusion here; there is only hate. On a recent post, a commenter wrote: "If short skirts signal sexual willingness, then it is reasonable to hypothesize that women who wear short skirts are more likely to be raped." In reality, "sexual willingness" is exactly the opposite of the signal that rapists are looking out for. If rapists zeroed in on sex partners who appeared to be  "sexually willing," then they would abandon their advances when the woman in the short skirt said "no," or struggled to fight him off, or tried to escape. Instead, sexual rejection only fuels the hateful activity. It is the rapist's desire to inflict pain upon people who are sexually unwilling.

That brings me to the third argument against women wearing short skirts that I've heard over and over again over the last couple weeks. It goes like this:

c) Short skirts prevent women from successfully prosecuting cases. These types claim not to believe that a woman who wears a short skirt is "asking for it." However, they know that a lot of their fellow citizens do think this way—citizens who are likely to be sitting in the jury of a rape trial. So: If a woman is raped while wearing a short skirt, no one will believe her, and therefore wearing a short skirt is irresponsible.  Women who want to protect themselves won't wear short skirts.

I wonder what these people might tell someone like Frankie. Don't date women, because it's too dangerous? Date women, but don't flaunt your queerness by kissing or holding hands, because it's too dangerous? Don't reject men's sexual advances, because it's too dangerous?

The reality is that the well-meaning types who propose solutions like (c) are no different from the rape apologists who perpetuate rape myths like (a) and (b). The end result is the same: They accommodate rapists by forcing women to arbitrarily modify perfectly reasonable behaviors (wearing a skirt, kissing other women in public)—and then discrediting rape victims' legal cases by situating those perfectly reasonable behaviors as irresponsible. These attitudes only work to reinforce the rapist's attitude toward his victims—that their sexuality needs to be controlled.

Don't accommodate rapists.

Date Rape Anthem: Juelz Santana's "Back to the Crib," featuring the no. 1 guy who really shouldn't be participating in tributes to sexual assault, Chris Brown. [Thanks to Megan Thomas-Melly for the recommendation].

Relevant Lyrics:

Shorty said she wanna roll with me
I said yeah
She don’t know that we going back to the crib
She know that I’m on her
She don’t know that we going back to the crib
Back to the crib, yeah

She wanna roll with me
She wanna go with with me
But she dont know I'm tryin to take her back home with me

. . . Lil mama we can birthday text
Yes I said text
But I know you know what I really meant (sex).

Why It's So Rapey: Here, Santana and Brown are essentially admitting that they are in the business of luring women back to their caves under false pretenses. Are you under the impression that you and Juelz are going to be engaging in some texting this evening, perhaps after rolling out of the club and on to a public second location? Guess again! You will be sexing this evening, in Juelz's crib. You should have known what he really meant.

But Is It Good? According to the hierarchy of date-rape jams,"Back to the Crib" is one of the most dangerous odes to predatory sexual behavior out there, because goddamn if I can't get the sweet melody of "she don't know we goin' back to the crib" out of my head. "The song is so catchy and of course I love it, I am meant to love it," writes Thomas-Melly. "but the lyrics are basically about raping someone."

Last week, several commenters on this blog suggested that wearing a short skirt is like walking alone in a bad neighborhood—it's an unsafe behavior that makes women more vulnerable to sexual assault. I live in a neighborhood that has been dismissed by some as a "bad neighborhood." So when I see comparisons to sexual assault that go like this . . .

If I’m walking late at night in a bad neighborhood with few people around and someone sticks a gun in my ribs and robs me, I wasn’t asking to be robbed and I wasn’t consenting to being robbed. I was not taking appropriate precautions against getting robbed. I was robbed and as I wish to avoid being robbed, I will endeavor to not put myself in circumstances where a criminal will take advantage and rob me.

. . . it is obvious to me that the person floating this little analogy has not considered the reality of the person who cannot avoid these "circumstances." The person that compares sexual assault to getting mugged after "walking in a bad neighborhood" does not consider the mugging victim who lives in that bad neighborhood because he can't afford a place with less street crime. He does not consider the mugging victim who works late into the night so that he can pay his rent. He does not consider the mugging victim who does not have the means to fastidiously avoid his life circumstances.

More than likely, the mugging victim in this analogy has the privilege of avoiding bad neighborhoods. He lives in a good neighborhood, works in a good neighborhood, eats in a good neighborhood, hangs out with friends in a good neighborhood, and gets wasted in a good neighborhood. He grew up in a good neighborhood and will raise his children in a good neighborhood. If he ever does cross over onto the wrong side of the tracks, it is strictly a voluntary—and wholly avoidable—diversion.

Tell a Georgetown resident that he needs to stay in Georgetown to avoid street crime, and he can easily satisfy that safety requirement; tell an Anacostia resident that he needs to stick exclusively to Georgetown, and your common-sense solution becomes a lot less tenable. Upon hearing this strategy, the Anacostia resident will likely laugh his ass off; the Georgetown resident will have a more insidious reaction. He'll start to feel a little bit empowered about his own safety. He'll start to think that he has avoided being held up at gunpoint because he's made good decisions in his life, not because he was born into privilege. He'll start to feel a little bit superior to people who live with street crime as a matter of course.

Acting like a woman, in many ways, involves performing behaviors that are out of the ordinary: shaving your entire body, coloring your lips and cheeks, lengthening your eyelashes, extending your legs on high heels, "doing" your hair, dieting obsessively, waxing, plucking, padding your breasts, painting your nails, stuffing your tummy into tight spandex casings, wearing skirts and dresses and pantyhose and earrings. The behaviors associated with femininity occupy a strange space in our culture. While they are obsessively reinforced as "normal" behaviors for women, they simultaneously work to situate women as abnormal, different, "other."

To the average heterosexual cisgender man, refraining from performing these behaviors is just a fact of life. For women, these feminizing behaviors are enforced from birth, and are extremely difficult to avoid. And when women do refrain from performing these behaviors—when they don't shave their body hair, don't cinch their waists and inflate their breasts, don't teeter on high heels, don't wear makeup, and don't wear skirts, just like men don't—they risk being dismissed as "abnormal" women. In a culture where the privileged experience of the average heterosexual cisgender man is the baseline for "normal," women are seen as outsiders no matter how they act.

And so when a woman is sexually assaulted—no matter what she's doing—it's easy for the culture at large to insist that she's done something out of the ordinary to bring it upon herself. Because women's lives are out of the "ordinary." Because heterosexual cisgender men are born with the privilege of not being systematically targeted as victims of sexual assault. When you say that women who wear too-short skirts, or too-high heels, or too much make up are not sufficiently protecting themselves against rape, what you are really saying is that women who act too much like women deserve to be raped. When you say that women who drink with the boys, or have casual sex like the boys, or walk alone like the boys are not sufficiently protecting themselves against rape, what you are really saying is that women who don't act enough like women deserve to be raped. And what you are really saying is that women deserve to be raped because they're women. In a culture where women's behavior is viewed as alien, it is this attitude that qualifies as "normal."

When it comes to sexual assault, every neighborhood is a bad neighborhood for a woman.

Other rape analogies debunked:

* The "Natural Disaster" Theory
* The "Stroll in the Jungle" Theory

Submit your rape analogies for analysis here.

Photo by luisvilla, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

The 76-year old film-maker, who was unable to attend the awards ceremony because he is under house arrest in his Swiss chalet, sent a pithy acceptance statement via his producers, saying: "Even if I could be there I wouldn't, because the last time I went to a festival to get a prize, I ended up in jail."

Some critics will argue that Polanski won the festival's "Silver Bear" award for best director solely based on the artistic merit of his film, the Ghost Writer, and not at all in order to exonerate him in his 30-year-old sex case. Polanski, apparently, is not one of them, as he continues to dangerously conflate his duel roles as famous film director and famous accused rapist.

To Polanski, the international justice system that has forced him to remain under house arrest until his case is resolved has intentionally victimized him as an artist, thereby denying the world the honor of celebrating the cinematic genius of Roman Polanski. In reality, Polanski didn't "end up in jail"—oh, what a passive victim he's played in this whole charade—because he showed up to receive accolades for his achievements. He "ended up in jail" because he failed to show up to receive punishment for his failures. Polanski isn't allowed to travel to Berlin because it's likely he will slip authorities and never return, like he did last time, and not because a bunch of sore federal governments just don't want poor Polanski to have a nice time for being such a swell director.

The international justice system, actually, is unconcerned with Polanski's creative output—it is exclusively concerned with Polanski's criminal history. In Roman Polanski's world, this singular view of the law is a travesty against art. And so, Polanski attempts to turn winning an award for a movie into a defiant act, a statement against all the critics who would criticize him—not on the basis of his art, but on the basis of him having sex with forcing sex on a 13-year-old and skipping town.

Making great films and sexually assaulting minors are not mutually exclusive activities. This obvious truth has yet to sink in for Polanski, and it probably never will. In Polanski's sad, ski-chalet-confined world, his cinematic gifts should be enough to set him free. Under this strange karmic equation, the benefit a film like the Ghost Writer provides to Berlin Film Festival judges like Werner Herzog and Renée Zellweger somehow balances out the harm Polanski caused to a 13-year-old girl in California 30 years ago. It's unclear whether Herzog, Zellweger, and the festival's other judges chose Polanski as Best Director out of political solidarity or pure artistic appreciation. If it's the former, the decision to honor Polanski sends the bizarre message that making a great film is not as important as making an incoherent political statement regarding your personal problems.

Though the most dedicated rape apologists may disagree, clothing choices like miniskirts, low-cut shirts and high heels are not reliable indicators of a woman's sexual availability. Inanimate objects don't consent to sex; people do. But is there any sartorial choice out there that does announce to the world that the wearer is down to fuck?

Enter The "LOVEBUCKLE," a product of sex toy retailer OhMiBod (suggested stylings here). This leather belt features a brushed metal buckle with "circular cut-out window" for displaying "uniquely designed One® condoms." Basically, it's a big 'ol condom belt, and it retails for $85.

It's pretty clear that the LOVEBUCKLE is the rare clothing accessory that's specifically designed to send a sexual message. But what exactly is it saying?

Are you one of those people who still believes that women wear short skirts in order to secretly signal that they want to have sex with you? Consider this: Even prancing about with a prophylactic strapped to your pubic area by an extravagant leather belt can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Possible messages sent by wearing a LOVEBUCKLE:

a) Have sex with me now! Last night, I strapped on my sample LOVEBUCKLE and asked some co-workers what it all means. "You're wearing a condom right above your vagina," one co-worker explained. "It means you're ready to get freaky."

b) Don't have sex with me! I consulted a trusted friend to get another opinion on the meaning of this LOVEBUCKLE. This is what a giant condom belt means to her: "It's one step up from a giant torso tattoo that says 'I NEVER WANT TO GET LAID.'"

c) I want you to know that I am committed to safe sex. According to the OhMiBod presser, the LOVEBUCKLE is perfect for the safe sex partner who cannot be bothered with the hassle of accessing a condom that's not directly above their genitals. "Never again find yourself digging though your wallet or purse to find a condom when the mood strikes," The press release reads. "You’ll always have one handy when wearing the practical and stylish LOVEBUCKLE."

d) I do not want you to know that I am committed to safe sex. In the next breath, OhMiBod recasts the LOVEBUCKLE as the pinnacle of discretion. "I find the LOVEBUCKLE a handy way to inconspicuously be prepared on-the-go," an OhMiBod representative told me over e-mail. The LOVEBUCKLE's promotional materials include the following travel tip: "Spare yourself the embarrassment of packing condoms in a carry-on or purse that may be searched. The LOVEBUCKLE allows you to discreetly carry artistic One® condoms in the buckle, and makes a great fashion statement at the same time. With the LOVEBUCKLE, you'll always be inconspicuously prepared for safe sex on-the-go." Until your gigantic brushed metal belt buckle sets off the metal detector, and sends you over for a more intimate inspection.

e) I want you to know that I'm committed to condom wrapper art. According to the OhMiBod press release, the LOVEBUCKLE can be filled with "200 different graphic [condom] designs . . . giving wearers hundreds of ways to express themselves, and making the idea of safe sex fun, hip and stylish." My LOVEBUCKLE sample condom was illustrated with a photograph of Yellowstone National Park's volcano-heated Old Faithful Geyser, which I can only assume means that the wearer is scheduled to erupt every 35 to 120 minutes.

f) Or, something completely different. According to an OhMiBod press release, "When the LOVEBUCKLE is empty, an engraved 're-load' message shows through the circular window, reminding wearers to refill it with One condoms, or leave it empty, giving off an entirely different type of message and showing a alternate fashion style."

So which is it? Is it a gigantic metal buckle dedicated to displaying your collection of designer condoms? Is it a discrete accessory that allows you to carry your safe sex accessories undetected? Is it a handy signal that you can take on or off depending on your level of horniness? Or is it a belt that carries an unnamed but "entirely different" message?

What's that old phrase? When you assume, you make an ass out of the extravagant condom belt. After all, even if the LOVEBUCKLE is meant to signal that you're "ready to get freaky," it does not automatically signify that you're willing to de-belt for just anyone who happens to spy your LOVEBUCKLE. For me, at least, strapping on the LOVEBUCKLE indicated only that I was conducting some field research on the meaning of strapping on a LOVEBUCKLE. Results were inconclusive.

Because seriously, this thing is hard not to notice.

Murray lists three "extremely stupid" things she did on the night she was raped: (1) She "had been drinking in the pub" and was "not used to alcohol"; (2) she "went with a group of friends to the home of a much older man"; and (3) she was wearing "what my mother described, disapprovingly, as an extended belt, but what to me was just a fashionable mini skirt."

Each of Murray's "mistakes" fall under the category of normal teenage behavior. But unlike Murray's first two sources of self-blame, wearing a short skirt has little actual connection to a person's personal safety—miniskirts are an entirely socially constructed vulnerability. So let's focus for a minute on that extended belt Murray was sporting.

A good percentage of the study's victim-blamers think Murray should take responsibility for what happened after she stepped out in the mini: Her friends drifted away, the older man began "violently molesting" her, and then, when she gave him a firm "no" and attempted to fight him off, he punched her in the face and raped her. According to the Daily Mail, 24 percent of women aged 18 to 24 believe that "wearing a short skirt, accepting a drink or having a conversation with the rapist made victims partly responsible [for their rapes]."

The study doesn't detail why these people believe that wearing a miniskirt makes you responsible for your own rape. (For those who do hold this belief, feel free to amuse me with your explanations). Murray floats one theory: When Murray's rapist punched her in the face and then raped her, it was just a natural response to Murray's own subliminal messages.

"When a woman says no, she means no. And that's true, even if her clothes are saying the opposite," Murray writes, as if a piece of clothing could provide consent for any sex act with any person. "I believe we all have a right to wear whatever we choose, whether it's a mini skirt or a burka. Sadly, I'm not sure that the highly sexualised society in which we live offers young people much of a choice. Children are lured into 'sexy gear' before they're old enough to be trusted to take a bus on their own. . . . Is it a surprise that in such a society assumptions are made about a woman's availability?"

Under Murray's theory, wearing a short skirt signals that a woman is sexually available to anyone who happens to see her wearing the short skirt. The social cue provided by this inanimate object is to be trusted beyond a woman's actual words ("no") or actions (desperate attempts at escape). Furthermore, this sartorial secret code (short skirt = down to fuck anyone) is accepted not only by rapists, but by society at large—including rape victims, police officers, and jurors. And what if a woman who does not want to have sex with any and all bystanders decides to put on a short skirt? Her punishment for breaking the code is getting punched in the face and raped.

So, how do we combat this absurd belief that short hemlines carry the power to override a woman's right to consent to sex? Ridiculously, Murray suggests that the way to cut down on short-skirt-related-rapes is to militantly reinforce the false connection between miniskirts and automatic sexual availability. Murray notes that many, many people who wear short skirts—including little girls heading off to school—are not dressing with any intent to provide preemptive consent to sex. Instead of embracing this as a positive sign, Murray's solution is to force younger generations who do not associate short skirts with a get-out-of-rape-free card to re-code their clothing choices along the victim-blaming spectrum. "If I had a daughter I would be telling her to . . . be aware of the signals she may be giving out that may be read as a licence to take liberties," she writes. "It's not an ideal world, but it is the real world."

Tellingly, Murray doesn't bother to address what sort of anti-rape advice she'd be dishing if she had a son. The next generation of potential rapists will have to receive their social cues by eavesdropping on the advice we're providing to the next generation of potential victims. This is what they're hearing: If she's wearing a short skirt, it's not your fault when you rape her.