Just after midnight on Sept. 8, 2008, D.C. police found Serbennia Chase hiding down the street from the Skylark Lounge strip club covered in her ex-boyfriend’s blood. Chase, who worked at the club as a dancer, admitted to stabbing the man in the neck with a knife outside the club. She was charged with assault with intent to kill and transferred to the D.C. Jail’s Correctional Treatment Facility to await trial.

Chase got a lawyer. And that gave a jail guard the opportunity, Chase claims, to subject her to an escalating series of sexual assaults. As he escorted her between legal visits, Chase claims, a jail employee named “Lt. Harris” repeatedly grabbed her buttocks and vagina, a pattern that culminated in Harris cornering Chase on a back staircase, grabbing her and saying, “When are you going to let me put this dick in you?”

Chase claims that “if she was not an inmate she would [have] slapped his face.” Instead, she reported Harris to jail brass, who she claims responded to her disclosure by restricting her movements within the jail. Chase claims she was barred from participating in the anger management and Narcotics Anonymous classes she had been taking at CTF. She claims she was first transferred to a “more restrictive CTF jail unit,” and then moved to a more restrictive facility entirely—the Rappahannock Regional Jail in Virginia’s Stafford County. There, Chase says she spent two weeks in 24-hour lockdown, getting her food through a slit in the door and only leaving her cell to shower. And even after she was downgraded to a lower security level at Rappahannock, Chase was now two hours away from family—and her defense attorney.

So Chase got another lawyer, and sued the District and the Corrections Corporation of America (which manages the CTF) in February for violating her constitutional rights. In the suit, Chase claims that CTF and jail employees increased her security level “for reasons unrelated to infractions of jail policies and procedures”—namely, to retaliate against her for snitching on an alleged sexual assailant.

In its legal response, the D.C. government and CCA argued that there’s nothing wrong with slapping more restrictive security conditions on Chase. “Such a policy is not itself unconstitutional,” as increasing restrictions against an inmate has “several legitimate penological purposes relating to security and inmate safety.” Especially, the District says, in the case of a whistleblower: “This is likely particularly so where an inmate has filed allegations of sexual abuse and harassment against a member of the prison staff.” Trust us, the city and the prison corporation were essentially saying—we’ve got to do whatever it takes to keep our inmates safe. Even if the only threat to their well-being came from prison guards. (A CCA rep said the corporation doesn’t comment on litigation, but that “CCA lacks the authority to determine which facilities D.C. inmates are assigned to.”)

The District’s legal arguments persuaded U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle to dismiss the case earlier this month. Which is, more often than not, how these sorts of cases go.

In corrections facilities across the country, “inmate safety” is a persistent rationale for punishing those who have reported assaults behind bars. “After an inmate reports an assault, they often end up having more restrictions on them, going into isolation, or being transferred to another facility with a higher security level,” says Melissa Rothstein, senior program director for prison rape watchdog organization Just Detention International.

But when the staff is responsible for the victimization, solutions like isolation don’t necessarily offer much protection, even though that’s the argument prisons rely on to get judges to approve their actions. “The rationale is that the inmate will be safer there—but they often remain at great risk for assault or retaliation by staff as well as by other inmates,” Rothstein says. “We’ve unfortunately seen some pretty serious retaliation against inmates who file sexual assault reports against staff members. While corrections officers justify this housing as needed for safety and order, it does not always result in better protection for the victim.”

Chase is not the only CTF inmate to complain of retaliation-by-security after a sexual assault report. In 2008, Jessica Rubio was in CTF on solicitation charges and attempting to “turn her life around” by participating in the facility’s “Life Without a Crutch” support group. Rubio claims that “Sgt. Powell,” the CTF staffer running the group, repeatedly paid Rubio’s pimp for the right to have sex with her in the jail’s satellite kitchen. Rubio says that Powell would remove her from her cell during designated “quiet times” and take her to the kitchen where she “felt obligated to have sex with him.” (Her pimp provided her with a receipt.)

After disclosing the alleged assaults in June 2008, Rubio claims that she was put under “lock down,” and that “certain services and programs, that she enjoyed prior to her disclosures, were denied to her”—including phone calls and hygiene packages. Later, Rubio, like Chase, was transferred to Rappahannock Regional Jail, “without a hearing on the transfer, or its impact on her.” In February, Rubio filed a similar suit against the District; attorney Wendell Robinson, who represented both women, declined to comment on the cases.

According to The Examiner, the D.C. jail put Powell and Harris on administrative leave after the allegations surfaced at CTF. But sexual assault allegations have a way of following the accuser no matter where they’re incarcerated. “If a staff member abuses an inmate, and an inmate reports it, you’ll sometimes see other staff members retaliate against that inmate because they ratted on one of their own,” Rothstein says. Even transferring an inmate to a separate facility won’t necessarily prevent retaliation. “Information tends to travel with a person,” Rothstein says.

Given the pervasive nature of retaliation against accusers, it’s not surprising that corrections officials feel justified in increasing security around inmates abused by staff. But when heightened security means loss of privileges, increased distance from family, limited access to educational programs, and sometimes 24-hour lockdown, even a well-meaning policy “can become a kind of a punishment for reporting assault,” Rothstein says. It’s unlikely, however, that the form of punishment is actually unconstitutional: Rubio’s case, which is ongoing, rests on very similar claims to Chase’s dismissed suit.

“People don’t have a right to be at a certain facility,” Rothstein says. “Jail officials have a lot of leeway in how they make that determination.” You might expect an inmate’s accommodations to be determined by what brought them to jail in the first place—like stabbing someone in the neck. In D.C., though, jail officials are free to reprimand inmates for what happens next—like being sexually abused, and talking about it. That’s a lot of leeway, indeed.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

* HUD claims that transgender people are protected against housing discrimination via the Fair Housing Act's prohibition against "gender discrimination"—even though the law doesn't specifically list gender identity discrimination as prohibited.

* Mark Gower, a 26-year-old dancer at SW strip club Secrets, was found dead in his apartment last week.

* The Washington Post conducted a four-month investigation into the career of former Manassas schoolteacher Kevin Ricks, a man the paper says "moved from one teaching job to the next over nearly 30 years, navigating the nation's public and private school systems undetected, evading traps designed to catch him"—and racking up molestation allegations along the way.

* Carolyn Hax on the etiquette of outing your gay ex-husband.

* DC Center plans discussion on body image issues among gay, bisexual, and trans men.

* Susannah Breslin on sexual assault games:

To promote the release of Bret Easton Ellis' new novel, Imperial Bedrooms, a digital creative agency in London created an online game that encourages players to virtually manipulate a young woman. If you play the game right — encourage her, get her drunk, get her high — you'll score a blow job, and then you can brag to your friends about a job well done by posting your "high" score to the social networking site of your choice. So, is this social commentary, or marketing misogyny?

* Alyssa Rosenberg articulates my annoyance with the glamorization of "housewife":

This is a show [Real Housewives] where the term that distinguishes the franchise, "housewife," is pretty much stripped of all meaning. You don't have to be married to be a Real Housewife. You don't even have to be dating anyone particularly seriously. And you're almost certainly not simply a stay-at-home wife or mom if you've been found interesting enough to be on the show. You're running a business, or a charity, or at the very least, stirring up a hell of a lot of trouble semi-professionally. Being an American wife doesn't mean anything in particular these days. That definitional void might be scary, but it's also an opportunity to fill it up with something valuable and interesting and varied.

Interesting. I've always seen the show's title as a shallow attempt to redefine successful women solely by their roles as wives and mothers. But perhaps it works the other way, too—housewives can have it all. Even jobs!

* Via the Washington Blade: D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier has launched an investigation into a satirical flier circulated around the force announcing "D.C.’s First Deaf Mute Gay Marriage."

* Not only will watching porn cause you to get raped, it may also kill you!

* Graph! Canada loves gay marriage. And "Kisses to the 3.5 percent of gay-affirming Jamaicans," Rick Rosendall writes at GLAA Forum.

* NOM tour hits Maryland, attempts to prevent all video evidence of the event:

[youtube:v=qe9QNdcRplw]

Photo via The U.S. National Archives

Back in April, I reported on national standards proposed to end prison rape in the American justice system—and speculated as to whether the pricetag was too high for corrections facilities t commit to implementing them. Last week, the Department of Justice released a report from consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton detailing just how much the PREA standards will cost federal and local governments.

Last month, Attorney General Eric Holder missed his deadline for implementing permanent corrections standards to bring U.S.corrections facilities in line with the Prison Rape Elimination Act, passed 7 years ago. The Prison Rape Elimination Act Cost Impact Analysis [PDF] is an attempt to weigh the recommendation of the PREA commission against the financial concerns of corrections facilities across the country. Just Detention International, bless it, sifted through the 414-page document, and JDI executive director Lovisa Stannow has one major gripe with the accounting: It only includes the costs of the PREA standards, not the benefits—like people not being raped anymore. Stannow:

Strong national standards aimed at ending sexual violence behind bars are urgently needed. The Justice Department's own studies have shown that tens of thousands of prisoners, jail inmates, and juvenile detainees are sexually abused every year. The measures recommended by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission have the potential to improve safety significantly in our nation's detention facilities.

In the recently released report, Booz Allen Hamilton only examined the cost of each proposed standard, without considering the benefits and cost-savings that would result from instituting these basic measures to improve safety and decrease sexual violence in detention. Beyond the dramatic impact on the well-being of inmates, staff, and society at large, the prevention of prisoner rape will decrease costs of litigation, grievance petitions, staff turnover, and the need for medical and mental health treatment.

Notwithstanding its focus on cost regardless of savings, the report found that the vast majority of the proposed standards are readily achievable without significant expense. Three standards—assessment and use of monitoring technology, limits on cross-gender viewing and searches, and inmate supervision — accounted for 99 percent of all estimated upfront costs. Through innovative practices already established at forward thinking facilities, these expenses can be minimized.

Regardless of cost, corrections and detention agencies have a moral and constitutional obligation to protect inmates in their charge. The proposed standards will greatly assist officials in upholding that duty. Attorney General Holder should adopt a robust set of standards as quickly as possible. Every day that he delays action, men, women, and children are subjected to rape behind bars.

Current compliance with the proposed PREA standards ranges widely from state to state—and standard to standard. While 98 percent of facilities currently comply with a standard of "disciplinary sanctions for staff" found to have sexually assaulted inmates, only 62 percent provide "agency protection against retaliation" and a mere 8 percent offer "zero tolerance of sexual abuse." The best corrections facilities in the country are as high as 88 percent complaint across the standards; the worst are as low as 38 percent complaint. Obviously, the corrections facilities with the lowest current compliance rates will have the biggest gripes about the costs associated with implementing the standards. How long will the Justice Department continue to tolerate the concerns of these unsafe facilities?

Photo via christian.senger, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

According to internal police documents, sexual assaults in the first half of 2010 are up as much as 325% in areas across the District. Baumann's letter breaks down the numbers:

Internal department documents show that as of June 8, 2010, serious sexual assaults were up 46% city-wide (from 56 during the same period in 2009 to 82 in 2010 . . .  The increases in serious sexual assaults were not uniform throughout the city. The Second Police District (Ward 3) had a 250% increase (from 2 in 2009 to 7 in 2010) and the Third Police District (Ward 1) had a 133% increase (from 6 in 2009 to 14 in 2010). Both of those increases are alwarming and certainly necessitated a proactive response from the police Department, both in enforcement activity and increasing public awareness of not only the problenm, but also resouces for victims and individuals in abusive relationships.

In the Seventh Police District (Ward 8), the increase in serious sexual assaults has been dramatic. Serious sexual assaults increased 325% from 2009 to 2010 (from 4 in 2009 to 17 in 2010). It is important to remember that the Seventh Police District covers an area of only 6.5 square miles and a population of some 60,000. The fact that 17 serious sexual assaults have taken place in an area that small with a population that size cannot be taken lightly. The fact that the Department has taken no steps to identify the problem, warn the public, create education and awareness programs, focus on registered sex offenders, and proactively address the crisis is indefensible.

It's impossible to say whether the increase is due to more assaults or better assault reporting. But Baumann's greater concern centers on discrepancies between the way sexual assaults are reported internally within the police department and externally to the public:

The Department's website contains crime statistics for the city and individual police districts. Rtaher than report serious "sexual assaults" as a category as it oes in internal documents, the Department on its website instead reports all sexual incidents as "sex abuse." This allows the Department to include all criominal sexual reports in one category.

As a result, criminal sexual misdemeanors (e.g. unwanted touching) are included in the numbers for sexual offenses. The number of misdemeanors is significantly higher than the serious felony sexual assaults, and their presence in the same category skews the numbers and serves to mask the increase in serious sexual assaults. For example, the Department's website reported that in 2010 for the Seventh Police District up to June 8, 2010, "sexual abuse" was actually down by 3% (from 33 in 2009 to 32 in 2010).

So by grouping all sexual offenses together—from groping to violent rape—the D.C. police department has obscured (intentionally or not) the increase in reports of the more serious offenses. Beyond the numbers, Baumann's also concerned with the department's tone—he took Lanier to task for downplaying acquaintance rape in her appearance on WTOP earlier this month. Baumann has called for D.C.'s Office of the Inspector General and the D.C. Council's Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary to investigate the police department's reporting practices.

In an e-mail to WTOP, Police Chief Cathy Lanier wrote, "I have absolutely no problem with the OIG conducting an investigation into my crime statistics." Lanier chalked the controversy up to "confusion" over the department's comprehensive reporting practices: "I am committed to providing full and complete information on crime in the District. Indeed, if anything, more confusion arises because we do provide data in a variety of formats that allow people to analyze the data themselves."

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.

Roman Polanski is free again: A victory for art, intellectualism, European sexual mores, and French dudes with a column on HuffPo, no? Um, no—all attempts to hide a convicted rapist who fled sentencing under a pile of shiny Oscar statuettes will not fool Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I! For, as Sady explains in this excellent piece for the Atlantic, Polanski ain't the only predator to hide behind the veil of "art":

Last week, the New York Times reported that Emma Tamburlini, the daughter of artist Larry Rivers, was asking to have videotapes of herself—young, topless, fielding uncomfortable sexual questions from her father about her breasts—removed from her father's archives and destroyed. She referred to them as "child pornography." The director of the Rivers Foundation, David Joel, demurred: "I can't be the person who says this stays and this goes," he said. Nor can Emma Tamburlini be that person, apparently; the current agreement is that the tapes will be shown after her death.

Looks like some priorities are fucked up in the art world! In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady and I are totally on this! So join us as we  "sneak in a little Buttman discussion, and debate the merits of creating art while simultaneously not sexually assaulting people.

—

SADY: Hey! You know what feminist blogs haven't discussed, ever: Roman Polanski.

AMANDA: Nope. Kind of just let that one go. It's been so long, after all!

SADY: Right! If there's one thing I can say for us all, it is that a very famous dude sexually assaulting someone, confessing, being convicted and serving NO SENTENCE WHATSOEVER for this is something that we all just kind of let fade, after a certain point.

AMANDA: That, or convicted criminals who have fled the country gradually gain points for stamina. I think that's a legal thing. Particularly if they spend their 30-year European vacation doing things like making fancy movies!

SADY: Hah, yeah. This is the thing that kind of enrages, about the Polanski thing: The way so many folks were like, "but... he made MOVIES? They were really good!" And I won't deny that those were some really good movies. And that they benefited from having Roman Polanski direct them. The non-Polanski directed sequel to "Chinatown," for example, is just not so good! (Although, you know, kudos to Jack Nicholson for trying. And for not being convicted of rape.)

AMANDA: Generous points for that last detail. But like, how good do the movies have to be for people to excuse the rapist? As you pointed out in your piece, it's not like this happens all that often, but I'm betting that a lot of people would be willing to forgive people who make less than "Pianist" levels of art. Even saying that is ridiculous. THEY'RE MOVIES. Not people!

SADY: Right. I mean, if Tommy "The Room" Wiseau were convicted tomorrow, I doubt we'd be seeing these outpourings of sympathy. Although folks did rally around R. Kelly during his trial, which makes me think that the question is not how good one is, but how famous one is. If it were some random "Law and Order: SVU" directing alumnus, we wouldn't be here. But Le Cause de Polanski has always been framed as this issue of the permissive/enlightened European sophisticates/degenerates versus The Hard-Working Moralistic American People. Which is a take that's been encouraged by both sides, and ends up serving neither.

AMANDA: So there's a little bit more fame-mongering in Bernard-Henri Lévy's free-Polanski intellectualism than he'd like to admit, is what you're saying.

SADY: Oh, goodness me oh my, yes. I mean: How immeasurably has Levy's profile been raised, now that he's A-Number-One Polanski supporter in the public eye and/or the on the Huffington Post? And I'm sure he'd feel above all that, to some degree, but I don't understand why he keeps publishing on the philosophically enlightened and sophisticated HuffPo if he's not eager to get his name out there. I mean, maybe he just feels passionate about this cause, but I feel that demeans him MORE than a desire for HuffPo readership. Which is not something I say often!

AMANDA: I have several original Huffington Post nipple slips in my collection. So I'm covering this obscenity case in D.C. right now, and it's funny how the "art" argument worms its way into the legal pornography debate as well. These jurors have to decide if there's any redeeming artistic or literary or scientific value to the copious milk enemas they've viewed over the course of the trial. And so on cross-examination, the defense is asking witnesses stuff like, "And are you aware that the Adult Video News Awards are the Academy Awards of the adult entertainment industry?" "And are you aware that Buttman has won several of these awards?"

SADY: I SEE.

AMANDA: The whole thing is ridiculous. Like, I'm not against obscenity. But take the absurd "art" defense out of it.

SADY: Right. I mean: That's the thing. Like the Tamburlini/Rivers case that was being reported earlier this week. In that case, you could maybe make a more convincing argument for "artistic value" — an Artist, Recognized As Such, was coercing and pressuring his daughters into participating in uncomfortably sexual video shoots! For his Art! — but we're still not assuming that Art has the right to involve harm to actual human beings in the process of its creation. A person coerced and pressured his daughter into sexual activity, to which she objected. In the case of "obscenity," which is always tricky — even Dworkin didn't fully support banning porn under "obscenity" laws — the Art question can be brought up in defense, however. If it was relevant for Joyce, it's relevant for Buttman, sad to say. Which is what's so infuriating about this: Often, as in the Max Hardcore case, what's being prosecuted is sexual abuse of performers. And then people are like "obscenity laws are unconstitutional; why didn't these performers bring their cases to court?" Whereas if they did, as sex workers, they'd be slut-shamed and devalued and wouldn't stand a chance of winning.

AMANDA: That's true. The tricky thing is when there is legitimate abuse of performers (as in the Rivers case) and then the dissemination of the work in effect constitutes more abuse. Which, again, in any of these cases, the art argument only serves to obscure the issue, right? Are you producing these works with full consent and participation of everyone involved? Or are you abusing people, and filming that? In either case, it doesn't really matter to me if there's zero artistic value there or if it's fucking Shakespeare abusing his kids for "art.”

SADY: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, I think our conception of Artist as Special Person who is obliged or privileged to Stand Outside Of Societal Norms is useful, in some respects. In the respects that you can't just send D.H. Lawrence packing because he uses the fuck-word a lot, or you can't shut down Mapplethorpe because he's showing these queer BDSM images. But it's abused so easily by folks for stuff like the Polanski case, or the Rivers one — the Polanski case being even more indefensible because SEXUALLY ASSAULTING THAT GIRL HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF HIS MOVIES — to argue that These People Can't Be Held To Normal Standards.

AMANDA: Right. It also ends up being really elitist, or in Polanski's case, both elitist and celeb-focused. Like, hey, what if I'm a really shitty artist who works with queer BDSM imagery?

SADY: And I have to admit, most of my off-the-top-of-the-head associations with Artists who we have to Defend Against Charges of Obscenity because they're just outside the norm have to do with very famous men. Kathy Acker, maybe? But maybe not. I don't recall court proceedings, but that may just be the result of insufficient Googling.

AMANDA: Yeah. I mean, the art test is a really fucked up standard for obscenity law in my opinion. Like things we determine to be “good” and things we determine to be “bad” just balance each other out, naturally? And I think the Polanski case is some sort of bizarre extension of the logic—that if art is good enough, it can make anything tolerable. And maybe if Polanski starts making really shitty movies, everyone will have to be like, "Alright, lock him up," on principle.

SADY: Right. And it might just be a case of removing the quality of the art from the equation: Like, if we're testing whether the art in question is "obscene," that can apply to any kind of art with any kind of behind-the-scenes process. As a person who watches the extremely sophisticated Bravo program "Work of Art," I know this. BUT, if we make the question whether the creation and distribution of the "art" (????) objectively has to harm in order to be produced, we can actually legislate on the level of production, not content. And no-one will ever be able to say that this glorious painting made with the entrails of their Gramma deserves serious consideration ever again. I mean, yeah, we should protect "artists" against petty common morality charges. DUR. But "please don't rape anybody" isn't petty. Nor, sad to say, all that terribly common.

Photo via Jacob Freeze, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.o

After the sexual assault allegation against Al Gore surfaced last month, a friend told me: "I hope it's not true." I don't. Here's why:

No one wants to believe that gender-based violence—like sexual assault and domestic abuse—happens. And so, friends hope it's not true. Neighbors hope it's not true. Classmates hope it's not true. Parents hope it's not true. Football fans hope it's not true. Liberals hope it's not true. Anonymous Internet commenters hope it's not true. People who happen to be attending a wrestling tournament at Seneca Valley High School hope it's not true. Reporters hope it's not true: The Frisky's coverage of the recent domestic abuse allegations against "Family Matters" star Jaleel White included the line, "We certainly hope this report is untrue."

To draw from one of the few "Lost" principles applicable to sexual assault reporting: Whatever happened, happened. Either a sexual assault occurred, or it didn't. The only thing "hoping" can influence is whose account is supported after the fact. Commentators have hoped it's not true for the alleged perpetrator's sake and for the alleged victim's sake—as if any amount of hoping could erase a sexual assault—but "hoping" never helps a victim. It only helps an onlooker who doesn't want to believe that bad things happen—and a perpetrator who benefits from the assumption that they don't.

Victims of sexual assault frequently report being victimized twice. "That day in court was the day I fully understood the concept of being raped twice—first during the act and then later during the court proceedings," Latoya Peterson writes in "The Not-Rape Epidemic." But hoping it's not true functions well outside the legal burden of proof. It works to shut victims down before any evidence is presented, before the crime is reported, even while the assault is still happening—Gore's alleged victim says that she feared that "if I made dissent with Gore, I could be in danger of being falsely arrested for false allegations of alleged soliciting or even attempted assault in his efforts to do damage control."

When we "hope it's not true," we state our willingness to participate in this re-victimization. We're not hoping that our criminal justice system works to convict the guilty and acquit the innocent. We're hoping that the person who reported the sexual assault is a liar. We're hoping that people who claim to be victims of sexual assault are all lying, that it never really happens. We're hoping, in the end, that bad things do happen—to good men who are victimized by bad women.

Photo via Center for American Progress Action, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

* Nancy Schwartzman talks about having her rape debated on camera for a potential new "feminist" series:

I was told that the 30 second trailer of my film would be used to “kick off” the conversation and we’d go around one by one, with some guidance from the moderator, and discuss the multidimensional and complicated topic of rape. We’d use smart, snarky analysis of a real—not imagined, not whined about, not exaggerated, not falsely claimed—problem.

Instead, egged on by the producer, participants—not the moderators—were encouraged to take what they saw in the trailer and the one sentence synopsis of my rape (she consented to vaginal sex, and then was raped anally) and debate. It didn’t occur to me that a producer would structure a conversation around my film when no one had seen it, nor was it ever articulated that my body parts and my rape would be at the center of this debate.

* Want more on Olivia Munn and What She All Means? Sady's got it.

* BuzzFeed unearths Rachel Maddow's yearbook photo, where she appears with long blond hair, pearls, and no glasses. Maddow can now rest easy knowing that some dude on the Internet would "tap that!"

* D.C. attorney Bruce Stovell is suing LeBron James and James' mother Gloria "seeking to prove that he is the father" of the NBA player. Stovell claims he impregnated Gloria at a D.C. bar in 1984, then urged her to ensure that the fetus "plays basketball." He's also looking for $4 million in damages.

* New vaginal gel may help combat HIV.

Given the huge percentage of sexual assaults that are never reported to the police—and the added concern that D.C. police don't always investigate reports they do get—this could actually be a good sign for the District. Lanier didn't go that far: "You can't just look at numbers and not do any analysis and use that as something to warn or scare people with, you gotta kinda look at what the facts are," she told WTOP. She agreed to come back with more information on the problem in her next appearance on the program.

And on that note: Scotland says it best. [Via PostBourgie].

Think of it this way: We all agree that pickpocketing constitutes "theft." A pickpocket doesn't get to come along and argue: "No, what I did isn't theft, it's merely pickpocketing, and therefore it isn't illegal." Any newspaper that played along with a pickpocket's demand to stop using the word "theft" would be taking the pickpocket's side, not occupying any middle ground. There is no middle ground here.

Remember that the next time the media calls intimate partner violence and sexual assault by any-other-name. When a publication calls rape "sex," it is not reserving judgment before trial. When it describes an accused assailant as "a loose cannon" and a "bad boy," it is not adding color. When it characterizes self-defense after sexual assault as a "bar fight," it is not being fair. It's taking sides.

Today, June 23, 2010, marks the deadline for Attorney General Eric Holder to finalize the national standards for corrections facilities to address prison rape. And unless Holder's doing some serious cramming right now, he's going to miss it.

Last June, the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission released a report of proposed national standards for the “prevention, detection, and response to sexual abuse in confinement settings”—a path toward ending prison rape. Holder had 12 months to review the report and make a final ruling on what standards would become law. Holder failed to meet the deadline—according to some corrections experts, he appears to be at least several months behind schedule—and every day Holder waits means the continued abuse of people in detention facilities across the country.

Today, Just Detention International (JDI) held a teleconference to voice its disappointment with Holder's tardiness. According to Lovisa Stannow, Executive Director of JDI, Holder's failure isn't solely administrative.  "National standards have the potential to protect tens of thousands of men, women, and children from being sexually abused behind bars every year," Stannow said.

Scott Howard-Smith, a survivor of sexual abuse while incarcerated on theft and tax code violation charges, also shared his story on the call. "The attacks that I suffered were devastating," said Howard-Smith, who detailed how a white supremacist gang in his Colorado prison "raped, assaulted, and extorted" him in an attempt to convince him to commit fraud on their behalf.

The abuse didn't stop with fellow inmates. “My efforts to report were often fruitless," Howard-Smith says. Corrections officers refused to help him unless he identified all of his assailants by name and detailed their illegal activities, a move Howard-Smith thought would have put him at greater risk in the facility. Other officials informed Howard-Smith that “as a homosexual I should expect to be targeted by one gang or another," while refusing to offer him added protections.

Also joining in on the call was Rep. Frank Wolf, a Republican from Virginia, who emphasized the urgent time factor in finalizing the standards. "I’ve heard figures [of sexual abuse of prisoners] from 60 to 100,000 people a year!" Wolf said in a call from the House floor. "This is unacceptable. The Attorney General has got to act, and he’s got to act now . . . and if he doesn’t act, someone ought to call the president. But to let this go on for one more day is just wrong.”

Photo via decade_null, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0.

* 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.

Charlie Glickman points to this graph to illustrate how the fight over porn needs to get more specific (enlarged image here). The data is from a 2000 article in the Review of Sex Research, where researchers examined the link between porn consumption and sexual aggression. The results: For men determined to have a low risk of sexual aggression, frequent use of pornography was not correlated with higher rates of actual aggression. But for men determined to already have a high risk of sexual aggression, frequent porn use was correlated with an increase in acting out that aggression.

Glickman's take: "the thing that I find so interesting about this study is that it shows a possible reason why some people say that porn is harmless and others say that it causes real harm. Different people have different experiences, so of course, porn has different effects on different people." [Via Kink on Tap].

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.

* The New York Times profiles Eve Tushnet, a "celibate, gay, conservative, Catholic writer" opposed to same-sex marriage:

Marriage should be reserved for heterosexuals, whose “relationships can be either uniquely dangerous or uniquely fruitful,” she explained in an e-mail message. “Thus it makes sense to have an institution dedicated to structuring and channeling them.”

But same-sex marriage, she wrote in The New York Post in 2007, “can bring one of three outcomes: A two-tiered marriage culture, where heterosexual couples are asked to do the hard things (sex only within marriage, marriage for life in most circumstances) and homosexual couples work out their own marriage norms; reshape marriage into an optional, individualized institution, ignoring the creative and destructive potentials of ‘straight’ sex; or encourage all couples to restrict sex to marriage and marry for life, and hope that gay couples accept norms designed to meet heterosexual needs.”

* The National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association calls Tushnet "a prime example of the kind of sources mainstream journalists should be talking to when they want to 'balance' a story about same-sex marriage. Rather than dialing up a homophobic talking head from some religious-right-wing group to peddle junk scientific claims or just wildly ignorant statements lacking in any bases of fact, there are sources out there to quote who won’t just spew more anti-gay hate speech."

Really? Because she sounds like standard-issue wingnut to me, floating a wacky essentialist conception about gays and straights and then concluding that only straight marriage "makes sense." What differentiates Tushnet's views from "junk scientific claims or just wildly ignorant statements lacking in any bases of fact"? Is it that she's also gay?

* Heather Corrina addresses the myth that all rape survivors compulsively pursue sex.

* Carnal Nation on the sexual politics of vanity plates: An ecologist's attempt to pay tribute to the "pine genus" on his license plate has been knocked down by Michigan officials who say the word "PINUS" "might carry a connotation offensive to good taste and decency as judged by the Department of State." In other words, it looks too much like the word "PENIS."

* Tiger Beatdown on sexism, Lynn Hirschberg and MIA:

M.I.A. is a fake, the article more or less says; no matter what she says or writes or records about global capitalism being a bad thing, no matter how fiercely she would seem to defend marginalized people, she’s just a shallow, narcissistic, bossy, stupid woman who only wants your attention, only wants to be famous, only wants to be a star. And did you hear that she was having contractions when she sang “Paper Planes” at the Grammys? Shocking! Provocative! Fame-whorey! Regular-whorey! Unfeminine! Selfish! Bad mother!

Here at the Sexist, we're always on the lookout for popular songs that don't condone rape. Finally: Introducing Rap Against Rape, an (I'm guessing) early-90's group of white dudes that performed their titular activity in order to raise funds for rape crisis centers. But Rap Against Rape's anti-rape activism is, perhaps, exceeded by its fervor for embodying early 90's stereotypes; follow along with my checklist as you watch "What Did I Do Wrong":

Early 90's White Dude Stereotype Checklist:

___ Mom jeans on a dude

___ Guy channeling Falco

___ Guest lady channeling Cyndi Lauper

___ Backup dancers channeling Boy George

___ T-shirt (tucked in)

___ Mustache (unironic, collect them all!)

___ Mullet (curly)

___ Sunglasses (indoors)

___ Earnestness

___  White socks

___ Halter tops

___ Rented prom fedora

___ White guys clapping

___ "rap"

___ Neon

___ Bad VHS copy

Add a few gold chains and a Golden Labrador Retriever, and that covers pretty much all of the 90's, no?

One Thursday last month, during the lunch hour at H.D. Woodson Senior High School, half a dozen teenage boys have gathered to eat pizza and talk about hollering at women. “From where I come from, you holler at a girl,” one student tells the group. “A girl can’t be too upset when a guy is paying attention to her.” “It depends on the type of girl and whether she has respect for herself,” another says. “Some girls will say, stop. But they like it, for real.” “If she’s wearing short shorts, booty shorts, short skirt, with the thong showing, she wants it,” another guy says. “Can’t blame it on the boy. She knows what she’s doing.”

“But what if it’s hot out?” This is Kedrick Griffin. He’s here to play the 37-year-old devil’s advocate on a subject that’s generally considered normal behavior for a teenage boy in the District of Columbia.

“What if all her other shorts are dirty? What if it’s 2 a.m. in a dark alley? What if it’s your girlfriend who’s wearing the short shorts?” Along with the targeted line of questioning, Griffin has also brought three boxes of Pizza Boli’s and an 18-pack of Sierra Mist. These Woodson students have been eating Griffin’s pizza since September. By now, they know full well that it’s wrong to blame a woman for rape based on what she’s wearing—now, they’re just struggling through the street harassment piece. This exercise has come almost at the end of a year-long District program called the “Men of Strength” club—MOST Club, for short. The same pattern is repeated with groups of boys in public middle and high schools across the District: Come for the pizza, stay for the deconstructions of masculinity.

Getting teenage boys to engage in gender theory can require a soft approach. The vague title of the clubs—“Men of Strength”—dodges the activist implications of the D.C.-based organization that runs them: Men Can Stop Rape. At the beginning of each school year, MOST facilitators arrive on campus and lure in participants. “Last year, we were hanging out outside school, and some people were like, ‘we need some males over here to eat some free pizza,’” says Eugene, a 16-year-old junior at Foggy Bottom’s School Without Walls. At that first MOST meeting, Eugene and a dozen other guys were fed pizza and offered free movie tickets; over the next school year, they came back each Tuesday for the pizza, and gradually advancing conversations on gender. Now, “I kind of like to keep the MOST club secret from other dudes,” says Eugene. “We all have this strong connection with each other . . . But also, if you bring more people in, then there are fewer slices.”

Griffin facilitates two MOST club meetings a day at nine different DCPS schools. Every week, he spends less than an hour with each group. But that’s enough time, he hopes, to challenge traditional masculinity and push his young charges to respect their female peers.

Thus Griffin has become accustomed to addressing thorny concepts in abbreviated time frames. At one middle school MOST club, he says he knocked out a discussion on prison rape in the time it takes to travel between classes. “One of the guys said, ‘When you go to jail . . . you get raped and when you come out you’re gay,’” Griffin says. “I said, ‘Oh really? Well, I’ve got ten minutes. That’s enough time for me.’” So he moderated a discussion with seventh and eighth grade boys about why a man’s sexual orientation and history with sexual assault make society see him as less of a man. “I wasn’t prepared for that discussion. It wasn’t even on my radar,” says Griffin. “But if a young person brings up a topic for discussion, I can’t just ignore it.”

Griffin doesn’t just stroll into D.C. public schools with a pizza and start engaging boys on topics like rape. Each MOST meeting begins with a slow wind-up: a weekly “check-in” in which each student updates the group on his recent life developments. Stuff like how he can’t find a ride to football practice, or how he only slept in one class today, or how he’s starting to look at colleges, or how he put his rap video on YouTube but then he took it down. These personal conversations are meant to transition into headier discussion topics like understanding rape culture and questioning the patriarchy. As a short-cut, MOST has chosen a phrase that Griffin employs more than once in each meeting: “The Dominant Story of Masculinity.”

In order to illustrate what that means, Griffin performs an exercise he calls “The Real Man.” Griffin shows students photographs of male celebrities—from Lebron James to Barack Obama to 50 Cent to Johnny Depp—and asks students to comment on “who they think society says is a real man and why.” The exercise is meant to reveal how society’s idea of ‘manhood’ is threaded with negative attributes. While it’s reasonable to want to be president and dunk a basketball, do you really want to get shot nine times in order to prove you’re a man? “When we talk about what a ‘real man’ is, we think of stuff like: Strong. Lifts weights. Spike TV. Prison. Explosions,” explains Eugene. “When we start talking about men in our lives and what we want from them, we think: Nice. Fun. Cares about us. Respects his family.”

By the time the exercise is finished, a few students at each D.C. public school have at least a taste of looking at gender expectations from a different perspective. When they leave the club, the theory goes, the students will tell their friends, and gender relations in the District will slowly begin shifting. Woodrow Wilson Senior High’s MOST club, facilitator Nate Cole says, averages from between two to eight students every meeting—but five are members of the school’s basketball team. In “the hierarchy or food chain of high school, they’re at the top,” says Cole, 23. “When they start challenging their friends and the people they come in contact with, that has a huge effect on the school.” But even with these high-status students, an hour is not always enough time to tease out all the complexities of gender relations.

At a recent Woodson MOST meeting, Griffin starts off the discussion by raising the murder of University of Virginia lacrosse student Yeardley Love. “She got killed, she was on the lacrosse team. I think they said her boyfriend did it,” one student says. Griffin explains that the man charged with her murder is George Huguely, a male lacrosse player who allegedly sent Love death threats—and then violently beat her head against the wall—when she tried to break up with him. “Remember, in the dominant story of masculinity, the only emotions we are taught to show are anger and rage,” says Griffin. They nod. “If a girl broke up with me, I’m like alright. Oh well,” says one student. “You can be mad but you don’t have to kill somebody.”

Time to move on: In the last ten minutes, Griffin mounts a quick discussion of the murder of D.C. principal Brian Betts, who was allegedly targeted on a gay chat line. In order to illustrate the social dynamics behind the killing, Griffin constructs a social ladder with his hands. “If a heterosexual man is on this level,” he says, raising his hand to his nose —“and a woman is at this level”—his hand descends to his chin—“then a homosexual man is on this level”—his hand drops down to his chest. “No, no, women are at the top,” one student says. “Fags. They got the most money,” another suggests. As time runs out, Griffin discards the gender discussion and tries a more accessible approach: Don’t kill a guy, steal his credit card, and get locked up. Stay in school.

Photo via Darrow Montgomery

Back in 1977, though, Venice, Fla. police chief Robert Ferry was happy to spell this all out for his fellow victim-blamers, in a column about rape prevention for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. The article is called "Rape Most Often Crime Opportunity," and it's all about how women "get" raped, because they're stupid like that. Also: Feminism.

He begins:

Rape is far more often a crime of opportunity than premeditation, due to the obvious physiologic involvement. Adult women are cognizant of this fact, yet allow situations of potential attack to develop, seemingly with little thought of avoidance. Why?

Translation: Even I, a man, can not begin to explain why women's brains are so feeble, causing them to get raped so much. Nevertheless, I will try.

All people, men and women alike, dress to be their most attractive. The basics of human nature demand notice, admiration, in varying degrees from those around us. But, rape victim case analyses often indicate many women go overboard in the attainment of these commonly desired goals. Example: the night worker who dresses in peekaboo blouse, see-through skirt, with accompanying cosmetic signals of unattachment, when she knows she must wait 20 minutes for her midnight bus ride home in a questionable neighborhood.

Translation: While rape case analyses always indicate that rapists "go overboard" in their attempts to forcibly rape people, it's much more fun to draw caricatures of slutty women's libbers who confuse and arouse regular Joes through their "cosmetic signals."

Don't many sexual attackers come through open windows late at night? Some do, but how would they gain entrance if common sense precautions were taken by the women alone? One woman was attacked in her third floor bedroom by a rapist who climbed up to her unscreened, open window, using a ladder from her own garage that had been left unlocked. the only way she could have made it easier would have been to leave a key in the front door lock.

Translation: I think rape victims are both dumb and easy, but I have replaced "vagina" in this sentence with "front door lock" in order to protect the delicate sensibilities of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune readership.

The "new morality" and deepening convictions about women's liberation have without doubt done much to increase the frequency of forcible rape.

Translation: Women cause rape!

Law enforcement is in agreement with women having equal rights, but we dislike seeing women place themselves in situations of high vulnerability to criminal attack, when setting out to prove they are equal.

Translation: Law enforcement officers agree that women should have the right to cause rapists to rape them.

Some common sense rules for preventing sexual attack are worthy of every woman's consideration:

- Dress for the occasion or social situation you anticipate.

Translation: Carefully plan your "cosmetic signals" to not scream "rape me!"

- Don't be 'too nice' to strangers, at your door or at social gatherings when knowing you will leave alone.

Translation: Be a bitch! Then read my follow-up column, "Why Go To A Party When You're Just Going to Be A Goddamned Bitch to Everyone?"

- Avoid flirtations, unless ready for any eventuality.

Translation: Never flirt with olde-tyme Venice, Fla. police chief Robert Ferry.

- If you live alone, list only your initials in phone directories and on mail boxes.

Translation: Don't be a woman! If you are a woman, don't let anyone know that you are a woman!

In this listing, it is not the author's intention to oversimplify by presenting only the most obvious. However, since a large percentage of sexual attacks against women involve a seeming disregard of the most common methods of prevention, it was felt utilization of limited space in this manner would hold the most potential value for all readers.

Translation: I am finally wrapping this up now, you dumb sluts.

It may come as a surprise to some that forcible rape, especially where juveniles are the victim, is all too often committed by a close family friend or relative. Baseless trust in all people known to you should not be awarded automatically, on the grounds that "nothing has ever happened before." This particularly where children are concerned.

Translation: Even if you never wear makeup, go by your initials, avoid parties, never flirt, don't take the bus, cover your body adequately, and lock your vagina, you may be raped by a close family friend or relative. This is also your fault, even if you are a child.

—

So. The victim-blaming "tips" I hear in 2010—all those helpful crime prevention strategies presented as "common sense" for women to follow in order to avoid rape nowadays—don't explicitly blame equality between the sexed for rape. But 33 years later, the solution for reducing sexual assaults against women hasn't changed: Tell them to stop moving about the world freely, and then blame them when they do.

According to the Examiner:

Five out of eight Washington-area universities reported an increase in sexual offenses to the Department of Education from 2007 to 2008. The University of Virginia and Virginia Tech as well as Georgetown, George Mason and Catholic universities reported an increase in sexual assaults—which include rape and any other sexual act against someone's will.

This is how the Examiner crunches that data: "Women are increasingly being victimized on college campuses across the Washington region, with romantic relationships behind most of the assaults, according to the FBI and statistics from local universities."

Nope. It's certainly possible that more women were assaulted at local colleges in 2008 than were in 2007. But equally possible is that more women reported their assaults to authorities. So based on the data, we're really not in a position to either panic or pat ourselves on the back here.

But let's take a closer look at the data. Of the eight schools the Examiner included in its data, five saw their sexual assault report numbers fluctuate by only one assault. At Virginia Tech, reports increased from 3 to 4 assaults. At George Mason, they dropped from 12 to 11. At Catholic, they increased from 1 to 2. At American University, they dropped from 2 to 1. At the George Washington University, they increased from 5 to 6.

Of the three remaining schools, The University of Virginia saw the highest jump in reports—5 to 16. Georgetown saw reports increase from 8 to 10. And at the University of Maryland, reports dropped from 21 to 17.

What do these numbers mean? Absolutely nothing, probably. Unfortunately, the Examiner's go-to campus expert, University of Maryland administrator John Zacker, doesn't help to clarify matters:

He said sexual assault on campus is much higher than data reveals—the number of assault cases ranged from three to 16 in area colleges during 2008, but only 5 percent of victims file a report.

Zacker said students are building higher thresholds for obsessive behavior and waiting longer to report incidents—if they report them at all.

"There are some [victims] that incur this behavior for months without reporting it," he said. He said the invasive nature of campus investigations also deters victims from reporting—especially considering only 10 percent to 25 percent of students found guilty of sexual assault face expulsion, according to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit research center.

Zackler knows that there are huge barriers to reporting sexual assault on college campuses, so it's disingenuous for him—and the Examiner—to claim that a small fluctuation in the already tiny number of sexual assaults reported on campus has any sort of statistical significance. But even more bizarre is the fact that Zackler is actually arguing against the data's (likely insignificant) trend. If more students reported assaults in 2008 than 2007, where is the evidence that students today are "building higher thresholds for obsessive behavior and waiting longer to report incidents—if they report them at all"? Zackler may have personal knowledge that some victims on his campus have high thresholds for obsessive behavior and wait a long time to report their incidents, if they report them at all. But situating Zackler's observations as a frightening trend without presenting any comparative data is extremely misleading.

This week marks the beginning of the next stage in an extended, seven-year process to fulfill the directive of the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003: to establish "zero-tolerance standard for the incidence of prison rape in prisons in the United States." Meanwhile, George Mason economist Bryan Caplan has proposed what he considers a quick fix for the problem, courtesy of the world of sports: "Reduce the variance of strength and aggression within single-sex prisons by separating prisoners into something like 'weight classes.'" [Thanks to Whet Moser for the tip]. Caplan explains:

In boxing, heavyweights don't fight featherweights.  It's not a fair fight.  But in prison, heavyweights serve their time side-by-side with featherweights.  A simple remedy for rape and brutality, then, is split up prisoners by size and strength.  You could assign the various classes of prisoners to different wings.  Or if that's too logistically difficult, you could assign each prison a weight class, then reallocate existing prisoners.

You could practically hear the windmill high-fives slapping across the blogosphere. Caplan writes that "my proposal seems like an obvious and cheap improvement over the status quo"; one commenter calls it "a brilliant idea" and says that the Department of Justice should be notified immediately. Ily Somin of The Volokh Conspiracy says of Caplan's premise that "unless someone points out a really major problem with it, Bryan’s proposal should at least be tried."

But as with many cheap and obvious solutions to tremendous social ills, a viable "remedy for rape and brutality" isn't exactly that "simple." Prison rape doesn't keep happening because anti-rape activists are lacking in good ideas, but rather because correctional facilities have been reluctant to implement them. For one thing, the idea of reforming prisons by better classifying inmates isn't new, and weight is far from the sole consideration.

"I think what he’s trying to get at is that proper classification of inmates can reduce sexual abuse, which is certainly the case," says Darby Hickey, Communications Director for anti-prison-rape organization Just Detention International. "[S]tudies of risk factors have shown that while any prisoner can be abused, some of the most vulnerable inmates are those with prior experiences of victimization; transgender, gender non-conforming, and gay/bi/lesbian inmates or those perceived as such; young inmates; those who are incarcerated for the first time and for non-violent offenses; and inmates with disabilities or mental illness."

But there's a larger problem with Caplan's thesis. Caplan admits that the weight class idea "has no direct effect on the comparable problem of authority-on-prisoner abuse," but he guesses that "it's probably easier for a guard to get away with raping a prisoner in an environment where prisoners are raping each other on a regular basis."

I find Caplan's assumption—that the standard of behavior in prisons is set by prisoners, and that correctional officers simply conform to whatever standard of rape acceptance they set—extremely depressing. A better idea? Hire and train correctional staff who are committed to eliminating both forms of violence in detention centers. Says Hickey, "Classification helps to address inmate-on-inmate violence, but is unlikely to help protect inmates from predatory staff—that’s where strong policies and practices come into play with regards to training, employment screening, and leadership setting an example that no such abuse will be tolerated."

Photo via Daz., Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Yesterday, the comment period closed on the standards proposed by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission on, well, how to eliminate prison rape. According to Just Detention International, over 10,000 people submitted comments in support of the proposed corrections standards, including 100 survivors of prison rape. Press release after the jump.

10,000 People Urge Attorney General to Stop the Rape of Prisoners

Thousands of Americans — including corrections officials, prisoner rape survivors, and legal experts — call on Attorney General to adopt measures proposed by bipartisan commission

Washington, DC, May 10, 2010. A new phase in the development of national standards addressing prisoner rape begins today, as the Department of Justice closes its 60-day public comment period on a set of standards created by the bipartisan National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. Mandated by the U.S. Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA), the Commission released its recommendations last June, referring them to the U.S. Attorney General for review and codification into binding federal regulation.

During the public comment period, some 100 prisoner rape survivors submitted comments asking Attorney General Holder to enact a strong set of standards. Dozens of supportive corrections officials, advocacy groups, and legal experts also submitted comments. Additionally, more than 10,000 individuals signed Just Detention International's petition, urging Holder to take action now. As of Monday afternoon, the Department of Justice had posted over 575 public comments online.

Under PREA, Attorney General Eric Holder has until June 23, 2010 to finalize the standards — but Holder has told Congress that he will miss that deadline. The delay is due, in part, to opposition to the standards from some powerful corrections officials. The measures already underwent significant revision after officials criticized an earlier draft — the standards now before the Attorney General are a compromise, balancing fiscal and security concerns of corrections officials with the right of all inmates to be free from sexual violence.

"These standards represent the bare minimum that corrections agencies must do to stop the sexual abuse that plagues U.S prisons and jails," said Lovisa Stannow, Executive Director of Just Detention International. "If fully implemented, they have the potential to prevent the rape of tens of thousands of inmates every year."

"If the standards had been in force when I was incarcerated, I might never have been assaulted," added prisoner rape survivor Kimberly Yates. "Attorney General Holder needs to move as quickly as possible to formalize them, so that others don't have to suffer as I did."

To read JDI's comments to the Attorney General, please click here.

For comments of prisoner rape survivor Kimberly Yates, click here.

To read comments from the Institute for Policy Integrity, click here.

Just Detention International seeks to hold government officials accountable for prisoner rape; to change ill-informed public attitudes about sexual violence behind bars; and to ensure that those who have survived such abuse get the help they need.

Photos via Just Detention International.

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

* The Chronicle of Higher Education on how pop culture figures can inspire "people of working-class backgrounds to pursue academic careers":

Among the interview subjects, whose names Ms. Wright kept confidential, were a man who was inspired by the Rolling Stones and other British Invasion bands to envision being in Europe, as well as a woman who was inspired to think independently by Wonder Woman and Batgirl comics. Another man came to think of academic research as "a cool thing to do" based on his devotion to the comic series The Atom, the hero of which was a college professor by day and a miniature crime fighter by night. . . . A woman who entered a community college to learn a trade following a divorce credits her decision to continue on to earn a doctorate partly to an obsession with Dana Scully, Gillian Anderson's character on the X-Files television series. Watching the combination medical doctor-FBI agent at work inspired the subject to think of women in the role of professionals with advanced degrees.

The pop-culture icons who taught me that women can be kick-ass, brilliant, and successful: Dana Scully. Clarice Starling. Lisa Simpson.

* Just how skinny do your skinny jeans have to be for a defense attorney to argue that they were so tight that you could never have been raped? Apparently, size-6-skinny-jeans-on-a-42-kilogram-frame is a sufficient degree of tightness for rape to be deemed physically impossible. I'm eager to hear the science behind this.

* Commenter: "Do you have any women on your staff?"

You guys have a column called “the sexist”? And with such stupid content? But who even cares about the content. Just calling it that is really sexist. Do you have any women on your staff? And would you ever consider having a blog called “the racist”? Or “the xenophobe”? This is so disappointing. I occasionally come to your site. Perhaps I hadn’t seen it before. Now that I have, I won’t be coming back. How ugly and irresponsible.

* Chloe Angyal at Feministing takes on penazzling, compares Jessica Simpson to Werner Herzog. Finally:

Which brings us to penazzling. As both Simpson and Herzog demonstrate, sometimes you have to turn things upside down to realize just how ridiculous they look right side up. Sometimes you have to look at the practice of gluing crystals onto a dude's junk region to realize just how absurd it is that Jennifer Love Hewitt devoted an entire chapter of her new book to encouraging women to gluing crystals onto theirs. It's worth asking ourselves, next time we're giggling at penazzling or makeup for men or man Spanx why we find these products so amusing or absurd. Chances are, it's not because of what they are, but because of who they're aimed at. It's not the practice of bedazzling one's private parts that makes us realize that, come on, this is ridiculous, it's the fact that the practice is now being marketed to men.

* Why is the media so obsessed with singledom among black women? The Loop 21 floats a theory: The media is white:

I would like to note that there are so many more issues of dire importance affecting Black women and men, that it’s frustrating when such a powerful platform is devoted to a topic that while not entirely a media creation, has certainly been overblown by them. A Google search of “Why are successful Black women single?” yields over 3 million results, while a search for “why are Black men jobless?” yields just 120,000 results. (Anyone else see a problem with that? Because I do.)

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

This week in college sex columns: The University of Mary Washington tells students to fuck finals, and just fuck; Georgetown University explains WTF a "Zombie Fling" is, and why it should be avoided; Jaclyn Friedman administers a beatdown to misogynist college columnists.

UNIVERSITY OF MARY WASHINGTON tells you to fuck finals:

Sex Tip: In this edition of The Bullet sex column Sexclamations, Erin Hill advises students to take sexual study breaks to relieve stress: "Although it will consume a bit of your study time, making love to your partner and enjoying his or her presence will boost your mood and help you get a better grip on stress and other activities related to it. You may not find yourself 'in the mood,' but spending time with your partner and getting a few sessions in the sack can ultimately be extremely rewarding and beneficial to you and your partner’s well being."

Life Lesson: You don't have to take your clothes off: "simply holding hands can alleviate stress," Hill writes. Students without hands to hold can also "look at some LOLcats and have a few giggles," or masturbate.

Progressive Meter: Blowing off studying to have sex? Including options for students who don't want to have sex, and those who want to have sex with themselves? A+.

—

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY wants your relationships to feel like "an icy cool glass of lemonade on a hot July day":

Sex Tip: Hoya relationship columnist Colleen Leahey apprises her classmates of all manner of "fling" they can engage in this summer. According to Leahey, all summer flings are good ideas. Except for the "Zombie Fling," which must be avoided:

This relationship resembles a pesky bee you continuously chase around the room trying to swat, but, at the last minute, feel too bad to kill. It’s that hook-up you absolutely hate to enjoy and desperately want out, but you can’t seem to fully climb down the escape ladder. Out of all the flings, this is the only one I would suggest staying away from, for the complex feelings it typically yields are far from refreshing or exhilarating. If you find yourself with a zombie, get the strength to end things and use the summer as your rebound. There is no better time for a little recuperation than the summer months."

Life Lesson: "Like an icy cool glass of lemonade on a hot July day, the summer fling refreshes the exhausted college student’s mental and physical health."

Progressive Meter: Leahey approves of all summer relationship lengths, of from one week to three months. I'll take it.

—

SEX COLUMNIST EMERITUS and feminist superstar Jaclyn Friedman ain't in college anymore. But campus columnists of the misogynist variety would do well to heed her advice:

Sex Tip: Your faux-edgy pro-rape columns are not, in fact, edgy. "Congratulations. You have written a column encouraging dudes to rape drunk girls, and it's now earning you 15 seconds of internet fame. Well played. I hope you're making the most of your moment," Friedman writes. Unfortunately, your misogyny is boring: "don't kid yourself into thinking you're groundbreaking or even original. People have been telling women who 'misbehave' that they deserve/secretly want 'whatever happens to them' since the dawn of time."

Life Lesson: Do not write faux-edgy pro-rape columns: "please go directly to hell," Friedman concludes. "I have just as much right as any man does to go out and have a few drinks without having a violent felony perpetrated against me."

Progressive Meter: A zillion.

Photo via the Library of Virginia.

* 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.

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?

Three recent crimes reported to the George Washington University, and how the university identified their perpetrators to students and staff:

•     Crime No. 1. On Feb. 15, former G.W. mailroom worker James Markley was arrested for making a “non-specific threat” to faculty and students over the telephone. A crime alert was issued to the campus community naming the former employee, circulating his photograph and informing students to immediately inform G.W. police if they spot him on campus.

•    Crime No. 2. On Feb. 14, a G.W. library worker received more than just a threat; while she was assisting a man inside the library, he “put his hands down her pants and up her shirt.” A crime alert was issued describing the suspect, a 35- to 45-year-old black male “wearing a white sweater”; a few weeks later, a follow-up alert notified the campus that the man had been identified through surveillance tape as a current G.W. graduate student. The university declined to release the suspect’s name to the campus at large; the unnamed student was referred to G.W. Student Judicial Services.

•    Crime No. 3. On Jan. 6, an incident of “sex abuse” occurred inside on-campus freshman residence Thurston Hall. It was reported to the university a month and a half after the incident. The case, which remains open, didn’t inspire a crime alert—just a single line in the University Police Department log.

Wondering why crimes like No. 2 and No. 3 don’t inspire a campus response that’s more in line with crime No. 1? So do campus security experts, who are turning their focus to a very common crime that rarely inspires an all-campus alert—acquaintance sexual assault. “As a general rule, institutions are reluctant to put out an alert for any acquaintance sexual assault,” says S. Daniel Carter, director of public policy for campus safety non-profit Security on Campus, Inc. The organization, founded in 1987 by the parents of Jeanne Clery, began advocating against crime on college campuses after Clery, a freshman at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University, was raped and murdered in her dorm by a fellow student. By 1990, Security on Campus had succeeded in making the Clery Act federal law, requiring most U.S. colleges and universities to report certain crimes that occur on their campuses. If a reported crime poses an ongoing “threat to students and employees,” schools are required to report those crimes quickly, through “timely warnings” that will “aid in the prevention of similar occurrences.” Which crimes rise to the level of an ongoing threat—and what information ought to be aired in the alerts—are decisions largely left up to individual schools.

In 2006, the Department of Education made it clear that institutions covered by the Clery Act must at least consider issuing a timely warning in cases of acquaintance rape. At G.W., the person making that case-by-case call is University Police Department Chief Dolores Stafford, a nationally recognized expert on the Clery Act. Stafford will be leaving G.W. in a couple of weeks to become a consultant on campus security and Clery Act compliance, but for the past 18 years, Stafford has determined which of the dozens of crimes reported to the university each month deserve an all-campus e-mail blast. G.W.’s published crime reporting policy says that campus alerts are “considered on a case-by-case basis, depending on the facts of the case and the information known by GWPD.”

According to Stafford, the “facts of the case” are most difficult to determine in acquaintance rapes, where reluctant victims sometimes report the crime months after the fact and often decline to provide pertinent details—like the identity of the perpetrator—if they report the crime at all. The majority of sexual assault reports that do reach the university are reported not to university police directly but rather to a “designated campus security authority”—like dorm staff, athletic coaches, and deans. These authorities are required to notify the police department when a student reports a rape to them, but they’re under no obligation to squeeze any specific information from the victim. “If we had all the details about every acquaintance rape, we’d probably put out a warning for each of them,” says Stafford, adding that her office has issued timely warnings in acquaintance rapes in the past. “The expectation of a warning is that you’re providing individuals with some information about what occurred and how to protect themselves. If I don’t have that information, it may not result in a warning.”

Still, even if campus authorities do have adequate information about an assault, a campus alert won’t necessarily be activated. According to Stafford, once the university is aware of the identity of a crime’s perpetrator, the university can take steps to “mitigate the threat.” And because the perpetrators of acquaintance rapes are, by definition, known to their victims, victims who report all the details of their assaults can often preempt the need for a timely warning. “If we arrest them, put them through the judicial process, or bar them from campus, we’ve taken some action to mitigate the threat,” says Stafford. Add up all the acquaintance rapes that are never reported to G.W., those that are reported with too little detail, and those that reveal the identity of the perpetrator, and acquaintance rapes are not likely to inspire a G.W. campus alert.

One aspect of G.W.’s timely warning policy [PDF] suggests that its response to acquaintance rapes may not be solely influenced by a lack—or surplus—of information. The policy notes that crimes that arise from “disagreements” between students aren’t generally considered an ongoing threat: “if an assault occurs between two students who have a disagreement, there may be no on-going threat to other GW community members and a Crime Alert would not be distributed.”

But according to Carter, students who victimize other students are likely to pose a threat in the future, and issuing a timely warning can actually serve an instrumental role in mitigating these threats. Students who are jailed can get out on bail, and those that are shuffled through the campus judicial process can still drop in on frat parties while they await a hearing. In the meantime, it can be helpful for students to know who to trust their drinks with and who to avoid in the stacks. Carter’s Clery Act recommendations lean heavily on the work of researchers David Lisak and Paul Miller, who found that a majority of “undetected rapists”—or rapists who haven’t been convicted of any crime—go on to rape again and again [PDF]. In Lisak and Miller’s sample, two-thirds of rapists raped more than once—on average, each was responsible for six rapes. Over 90 percent of rapes are committed by repeat offenders, and the great majority of rapes that occur on college campus are committed by these undetected predators. “At these institutions, there’s the assumption that if the victim and perpetrator are known to each other, it’s not an ongoing threat, and that’s absolutely not true,” says Carter. “In the overwhelming number of cases, acquaintance sexual assaults are likely to indicate a threat to someone else,” he says. “Odds are, if you assume there’s not a threat, you’re going to make a mistake the overwhelming majority of the time.”

Despite the research, Carter says he’s only aware of a “handful” of schools that have responded to acquaintance rapes on campus with alerts—and none that actually named the perpetrator. Some institutions choose to alert students to the general possibility of acquaintance rape on campus, without singling out any particular accused rapist. In 2008, G.W. released a crime alert warning students and staff of the danger of acquaintance rapes on campus after eight sexual assaults were reported in the space of two weeks. The alert didn’t name any of the alleged perpetrators of the assaults, but it did identify one common player in most of the attacks: alcohol. The approach helps to raise awareness of rape on campus, but it also can work to shift the blame off of the perpetrators, who remain nameless. “I think there is a reluctance to believe that someone in their community is capable of this, to label one of their own community members—including a paying student—as a threat,” says Carter. “But I would be hard-pressed to identify how a timely warning of that type could truly be effective without that information,” he says.

Schools that do choose to publish perpetrators’ names may be at risk of losing more than just a student’s tuition. Because the campus alerts are widely distributed, there’s also the possibility that the student named in the alert will sue for defamation. In 2007, Johnson & Wales student Christopher Havlik sued the university for naming him in a campus crime alert. After Havlik was accused of fracturing another student’s skull in an on-campus fist-fight, the university sent out a campus-wide alert that directly named Havlik (and his fraternity). Johnson & Wales chose to air Havlik’s name after determining that the incident presented an ongoing threat to students—the fight was attributed to “fraternity-related animosities,” and Havlik was regarded as “the likely aggressor” in the fight. After being acquitted of his criminal assault charge in court, Havlik decided to make his name even more public by suing Johnson & Wales, and then appealing the decision up to federal District Court—which decided that the school was within its bounds in naming Havlik, as it had a duty under the Clery Act “to inform the university community of a reported crime.”

At G.W., when a former employee makes “non-specific threats” over the phone, he’s named, his photograph is released, and he’s barred from campus; when a current student sexually assaults a worker in the library and runs away, his case is quietly adjudicated within the campus community; when another student suffers “sex abuse” inside her freshman dorm, only the closest readers of the UPD crime log are even aware that the incident occurred. Every university faces significant challenges in persuading victims of acquaintance crimes to come forward. When they do, campus perpetrators should be regarded as just as much of a threat—if not more of one—than the stranger who can be easily isolated from the campus community. After all, students who solve their “disagreements” with violence—or who resolve a disagreement between sex partners with rape—are likely to disagree again.

Photos by Darrow Montgomery

Celibacy is probably not a feasible option for most undergraduates, but students at Duke University may want to consider it anyway.  Duke's new rules governing sexual misconduct and coercion are so vague, subjective, presumptive of guilt, and oblivious to the dynamics of consensual sexual relations that they pose a risk of prosecution even for students engaging in innocent foreplay.  Sexual misconduct at Duke includes "inappropriate (or non-consensual) touching," as well as rape; "inappropriate touching" and "acts of a sexual nature" that require clear consent include ("but are not limited to") touching and "attempted touching" of an "unwilling person's" erogenous zones, "either directly or indirectly."

Kaminer continues by stating, "I don't know what constitutes a non-consensual, indirect, attempted touch, but I wouldn't try it at Duke."

Really? Surely Kaminer, an extremely accomplished lawyer, can manage to understand three different legal concepts at one time. Touching a person in a sexual manner without that person's consent is sexual assault. And if you touch that person sexually with something other than your hand, it's still sexual assault. And if you try to touch that person sexually with something other than your hand, it's attempted sexual assault.

After all, it's not as if Duke just pulled the terms of its "non-consensual touching" rule out of its erogenous zone. The full Duke rule against inappropriate touching defines it as the "touching or attempted touching of an unwilling person's breasts, buttocks, inner thighs, groin, or genitalia, either directly or indirectly." The Duke rule is eerily similar to the standard applied to everyday citizens in jurisdictions across the country. In D.C., for example, "misdemeanor sexual abuse" is defined as engaging "in a sexual act or sexual contact with another person . . .  without that other person's permission," where "sexual contact" is "the touching with any clothed or unclothed body part or any object, either directly or through the clothing, of the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person."

It's possible that Kaminer, a career legal expert, is unaware that groping exists, and that it is not legal. But I suspect that what's really going on here is that Kaminer is reluctant to recognize this very real, very much illegal form of sexual assault because of where it takes place—college.

In the United States, the cultural narrative surrounding a college student's sexual experience tends to by extremely hypersexualized. It's not just that undergraduates are assumed to be promiscuous—it's also that the sexuality of college students is presented as "out of control" and "gone wild." The subtext here is that when people choose to pursue an undergraduate degree, they must also necessarily abandon their autonomy over their bodies and their right to choose their own sexual experiences. Underlining these assumptions is a deeply warped attitude toward sex: Because many college students choose to have sex—and sometimes, lots of it—we deny them to right to ever choose not to do it.

Because we hypersexualize college students in this way, we tolerate sexual assaults on college campuses that we would never tolerate in other communities—in the workplace, in public spaces, in society at large. As I noted earlier, the non-consensual, indirect, attempted touches that Kaminer is so confused about are illegal in most places. And when those types of crimes are committed within certain communities, they also constitute sexual discrimination. Thanks to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, such discrimination is outlawed in education and employment, respectively. Despite these parallel protections, I suspect that college sexual assault skeptics like Kaminer would be less eager to discredit a workplace sexual harassment policy that prohibits employees from sexually assaulting their co-workers at work functions.

Meanwhile, as long as a sexual assailant attends the same university as his or her victims, Kaminer is fit to explain away illegal groping as "innocent" and "well-meaning," dismiss victims as "self-proclaimed," and determine sexual coercion to be "imagined." Administrators who are interested in protecting college students against sexual assault are ridiculed as "virginal," furthering the idea that college students must either embrace a climate of non-consensual sex or abstain entirely. Kaminer then goes on to argue that college students who prefer their sex to be entirely consensual have no place in the university setting at all: "Intellectual debate cannot thrive, individual liberty cannot survive, and 'healthy sexual relationships' cannot develop in a university that seeks to eradicate 'personal affronts,'" she writes. In short, if you can't stand a little groping, perhaps higher education is not the place for you. If that's not educational discrimination, what is?

Good morning, Sexist readers:

* Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams got me all excited when she titled this post "Fighting for Ke$ha's Right to Suck," because . . . come on, she does. But isn't it interesting how aggressive sucking is pretty much exactly the vibe that  Ke$ha's music is going for? I mean, the woman is auto-tuned within an inch of her life, her music is all about getting extremely shitty in the most self-conscious way possible, and her stated cultural icon is P. Diddy. Even her cultural appropriation (from the horrific "native" garb to her confused appreciation of "the transgender community") is half-assed. Also, I know all the words to her songs. Accordingly, I was extremely pumped for Williams to commence pontificating on how Ke$ha's brave, brave suckiness is actually a subversive feminist rejection of the expectation of perfection placed on young girls today, but instead Williams suggested that maybe Ke$ha won't suck forever. Oh well.

* 14-year-old  Jordanna blogs about her experience dealing with street harassment:

What would have happened if he had come closer towards me?  I felt so completely powerless; I could have done almost nothing to protect myself from this man.  At that moment I hated myself for being so small, for wearing something one day that actually made me feel pretty, for walking with my head held high.  Because I was running so fast I had a few minutes alone at the bus stop. My breathing was heavy, my heart was pounding.  At that moment I felt so utterly alone.

* Amanda Marcotte grades country songs on "family values" criteria on the spectrum from sin to salvation. Truth: "Ramblin’ is sinful behavior."

* Thomas at Yes Means Yes!, describes the patterns emerging in the accusations against Ben Roethlisberger:

As the number of accusations mounts, and the accusations themselves look like classic engineered acquaintance rape situations — pick victims with little recourse and/or use alcohol, test boundaries, physically isolate, deny — there may be some people stupid enough not to see it. But mostly those who choose not to see it are those who don’t want to see the problem because they’re in favor of the problem. They think that any woman who wanders too close to Big Ben is a very bad girl and deserves something of his stuck up something of hers whether she wants it or not. The serial rapists themselves may be a small percentage, but the number of people who are basically their fan club is large enough to allow them to operate with impunity for a good long time.

* Check out SAFER Campus' policy suggestions for dealing with sexual assaults on college campuses.

* Bitch Magazine reminds us that some people employ the term "sweater puppies" to refer to boobs, and I am saddened.

Last week, I asked you all for your thoughts on the use of trigger warnings on this blog. Sixty-seven comments later, I've come to a decision about how this blog will deal with potentially triggering material on topics like sexual assault, abuse, and eating disorders.

But first, your thoughts:

Emily H. says no thanks:

Definitely don’t want you to add trigger warnings. I don’t object to their being used sometimes, & I can appreciate the idea that a feminist blog should be a “safe space” of sorts where women don’t have to fear seeing traumatic subjects discussed insensitively. But the way it’s used on many blogs is just ridiculous—if a post has rape or assault in the title/subject matter, the writer will put a warning, even if there’s nothing in the post more graphic than the word “rape.” I’ve seen it even with less violent topics like a woman being called called a bitch… which I suppose could be triggering to a woman who’s been verbally harassed… but it just seems like major overkill. & anyway, the amount of asshole comments this blog gets renders the “safe space” idea moot.

Bottom line, I don’t think it’s necessary unless a post contains graphic details of a rape or other violent act, & the title /intro para are so innocuous that they don’t indicate what’s ahead. Which is rare, & doesn’t seem likely to happen here.

Lauren says please do:

As someone recovering from an eating disorder, I am always grateful to see trigger warnings in particularly intense ED-related articles. I assume the same would be true for survivors of sexual assault.

Trigger-warnings are nothing more than an occassional annoyance for the average reader, but for those who are survivors of trauma, trigger warnings are a kind, helpful gesture. I support the use of them.

Kay Steiger says if you do warn, be specific:

Because trigger warnings are used for such a wide range of things, seeing one often makes me wonder why the warning is in place. Perhaps the trigger warnings, if employed (I, like you Amanda, don’t use them and feel agnostic on whether they should be used) should be more specific. For instance, “Trigger warning: the following post explicitly describes the details of a violent sexual assault.” seems more preferable than a flat “trigger warning” that is unspecific. I could see how a victim of rape might be interested in reading about policies surrounding sexual assault but may not want to read about the details of others’ sexual assaults because it hits too close to home.

Mazzie says if you contextualize correctly, there's no need to warn:

I am a survivor of sexual assault who has worked for many years with other survivors in a variety of capacities, so I am pretty familiar with triggers and trigger warnings. I do certainly think trigger warnings have their place—usually when talk about or depictions of sexual assault are unexpected. (For instance, I kind of wish “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” had one.) As a fairly regular reader of your column, however, I never feel like I “stumble upon” material that might be triggering. You’re pretty unambiguous and upfront about your topics. It’s not as if you write a headline about cupcakes and dive into a graphic depiction of an assault. I don’t think you’re an asshole.

Mmmm, cupcakes.

Jenny makes the point that this blog attracts so many horrific comments that trigger warnings may actually be misleading:

I often find the comments here to be very, very upsetting. But I know that you have a very liberal commenting policy, so if I not feeling up to hearing about how dumb sluts deserve to get raped, or whatnot, I don’t read the comments. To me, trigger warnings make more sense in a heavily moderated blog that makes an effort to be a safe space. Here, there is no such promise, so I think trigger warnings don’t really make a lot of sense.

I really appreciate everyone weighing in on this issue. After a great deal of thought, I've decided that I won't be placing explicit "trigger warnings" on this blog. Jenny's right: This is not a safe space. I write a feminist column for a general-interest newspaper, which tends to attract some, ahem, alternate perspectives. On the City Paper website, comments are open to everyone but the most persistent of trolls (who are largely banned, it should be noted, over annoying behavior, not misogynist vitriol). As a result, the comments section of this blog is almost uniformly horrific—with some really wonderful insight thrown in there from regular commenters, whom I appreciate very much. Commenters should feel free to flag comments they don't want to tolerate on the blog, but at this point I have neither the time nor the inclination to reign in the comments section myself.

I realize that the open comments section here creates a sometimes inhospitable environment for hosting conversations about sexual assault. I also know that not all of the potentially triggering material on this blog comes from rogue commenters—a lot of it comes from me. Much of the work I do on sexual assault deals in specific, sometimes horrifying, detail. It also engages specifically with people who shame and blame sexual assault victims. This blog can be graphic, disturbing, and to some people, triggering, but as a journalist and a feminist, I think this work is necessary to prevent people from ignoring, discounting, or excusing sexual assault.

That being said, I know that this type of conversation isn't one that every reader will be interested in engaging in at any time. The debate over trigger warnings has reminded me that whether or not a blog uses a trigger warning, material dealing with sexual assault ought to be presented with sensitivity and care, and in a way that allows blog visitors to opt out of reading it at all. So: When I'm writing about potentially triggering subjects, I will make an effort to craft clear, specific headlines which alert readers to the subject of the blog. I will attempt to place any potentially triggering details after the break so that they don't appear on the blog's home page. In the introductory paragraphs of the post, I will describe the material I'm about to present, so readers can judge for themselves what they want to read and what they want to skip. And because I know that everyone's trigger is different, I'll listen to your suggestions on how to do this better. If any graphic or disturbing material sneaks up on you by surprise, please let me know by e-mail or in the comments so I can amend the post, increase the context, or do better next time.

Photo via Let Ideas Compete, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Yesterday, the controversy unfolding over Alex Knepper's sexual assault opinion columns in the American University Eagle hit National Public Radio. The dialogue between Knepper, AU LGBT and feminist activist K. Travis Ballie, and host Michel Martin touched on Knepper's homosexuality, the politics of sex at drunken fraternity parties, and one important policy point—the lack of a victim's advocate on the AU campus. At one point, Martin asks Knepper, "Do you find it at all problematic, Alex, that you don't date women and yet you're judging their conduct in a situation that you are unlikely to be in?" An odd question for a program that's invited two gay men on to debate the topic, no?

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?

Recently, I began re-watching The X-Files, a 90's television program about a fringe department in the FBI devoted to investigating "unexplained phenomenon"—paranormal activity, extraterrestrial life, government conspiracy, alien fetus contraband, and the like. Heading up the X-Files is Fox Mulder, a brilliant psychological profiler who has been marginalized in the FBI for his strong belief in all things paranormal; his partner, Dana Scully, is a medically-trained skeptic who acts as Mulder's foil (sexual tension abounds).

But in the middle of Season 2, Mulder comes across one unexplained phenomenon that he just can't bring himself to believe in: Rape.

. . . Okay, so it's specifically a rape committed by the invisible spirit of a septuagenarian Alzheimer's patient living in a retirement home ["Excelsis Dei," 1994]. Michelle Charters, an orderly at an assisted-living facility, contacts the FBI claiming that she was brutally beaten and sexually assaulted by a resident while on duty. According to Charters' medical report and a self-shot video she provided to the FBI, "the abrasions and contusions here would be consistent with her claims," Scully notes, and the examination revealed "injury and tearing associated with sexual trauma."

Hmm . . . looks like someone made up a story to get out of work today.

But what's not explained by the medical report? Charters "claims to have been raped by an invisible entity," specifically the projected spirit of a long-time resident who had repeatedly groped and made sexual comments toward Charters in the past. Sure, the whole spirit-rapist thing sounds pretty unlikely, but this is just the kind of paranormal twist that, in nearly every other episode of the X-Files, Mulder would immediately believe, back up with evidence from several previous X-Files cases, and then aggressively investigate. This time, Mulder cites a couple of other X-Files documenting "entity rapes," notes that none have ever been substantiated, and is basically like, "well, fuck it."

Over the past season and-a-half, Mulder has instantly accepted the following explanations for otherwise "unexplained" crimes:

- a slain police officer with a penchant for origami animals is reincarnated as a 9-year-old suburban girl in order to exact revenge against his former partners (and complete his widow's origami animal collection);

- the spirit of a dying bank robber, shot by Scully in a botched robbery, assumes the body of another FBI agent in order to exact revenge upon her (and hook up with his ex-girlfriend);

- an extraterrestrial parasitic organism living deep under the Alaskan ice invades the bodies of Arctic scientists, leading them to all murder each other;

- the members of an Amish-ish community known as "the Kindred," who somehow have the ability to instantly switch from male to female, murder people with their superior powers of seduction (and bury dying members in the sticky residue of some sort of restorative cave);

- a criminal who Mulder helped capture in his first FBI case, presumed dead, is actually alive, killing people again, somehow growing younger, and now has a salamander hand;

- a centuries-old man who can stretch his body to inhuman lengths commits a series of murders in order to provide sustenance before returning to hibernate in a nest;

- a former alien abductee, with the help of a government conspiracy bent on dismantling the X-Files, kidnaps Scully and offers her up to the alien beings, who perform tests on her for an unspecified period of time before returning her to Earth in an unexplained coma;

- vampirism;

- a Vietnam veteran who, through a strange war experiment, was left without the ability to ever sleep, murders the surviving members in the company by projecting his violent dreams into reality.

But when a woman contacts Mulder and Scully and informs them that she was raped by an invisible spirit, Mulder's all like, "What, that's impossible!"

Pppphhhhhffffbbbbtttttt!!!

But Mulder agrees to go to the retirement home anyway, where he tells Charters that he can't go forward with her case without some kind of physical evidence, as if that has ever been necessary to Mulder's investigations before, ever. Then they go on a nice tour of the facility with Charters' boss, who tells Mulder and Scully that Charters is just a big whiner, and also the weirdest thing is happening at the facility where all the patients who used to have Alzheimer's magically don't have Alzheimer's anymore. Meanwhile Mulder is just farting his way through the whole process, telling Scully things like, "I think this is going to turn out to be a huge waste of time, just like all the other X-Files on entity rape," as she attempts to figure out WTF is going on in this facility, where all the Alzheimer's went, and how invisible people are raping (and now killing) all of the facility's orderlies.

. . . but what if she wasn't lying about being brutally beaten and raped?

Then Mulder tells Scully that they're leaving, checking out of their hotel, and heading back to Washington "with a big goose egg," and she's like, but, but:

Scully: What if there's a connection?

Mulder: Between the rape case and the Alzhemiers? You mean, when they're not drawing childlike pictures they're violent sex offenders? . . .  You think Michelle Charters was raped by a 74-year-old schizophrenic?

Scully: It's possible.

Mulder: . . . an invisible 74-year-old schizophrenic?

Scully: Well maybe it's not the medication. Maybe it's the place itself.

Mulder: Are you saying the building is haunted? Because if you are, I think you've been working with me too long.

Scully: I'm saying there might be an environmental reason for what's happening there . . .

Mulder: I think you're looking too hard, Scully, for something that's not there. I think that Michelle Charters concocted this story to get out of a job she hates.

Scully: Her lip required 13 stitches. The blood to her head resulted in a subdural hematoma. That's quite a concoction.

So Mulder is finally like fiiiiine, and they return to the retirement home, where additional shit goes down:

Spirit murder

Spirit flooding

. . . and so Mulder finally puts his Oxford-trained brain to work, immediately determines that a guy he refers to as "The Asian Orderly" has been growing illicit mushrooms in the old folks' home basement as some sort of medicinal treatment from "his home country," and the mushrooms were making the Alzheimer's go away and also helping the spirits of dead residents seek revenge against their former orderlies by . . . well, that part's not really explained, actually! But whatever, case closed—Mulder never needs any real evidence, anyway, as long as the case doesn't have anything to do with rape.

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

A cabinet storing rape kits at Washington Hospital Center.

A rape kit is known as a "Physical Evidence Recovery Kit," or PERK.

A white sheet is placed under the victim to collect debris from her body.

Clothing is collected and stored in a paper bag.

Swabs and glass slides are used to collect evidence from the body.

Swabs for the lips and lip area.

A sample of the victim's saliva.

A sample from the victim's cheek.

An envelope for storing hair contaminated with semen.

A sample of the victim's head hair.

A bag for collecting the victim's underwear.

A bag for the victim's tampon or sanitary napkin.

An envelope for collecting the pubic hair combings.

The comb.

A sample of the victim's pubic hair.

Swabs for the thighs and external genitalia.

Swabs for the vagina and cervix.

Swabs for the perianal and buttocks.

Swabs for the anus and rectum.

Miscellaneous swabs.

An envelope for collecting other material on the victim's body.

A sample of the victim's blood.

A seal for the completed kit.

A bag for transporting the completed kit.

The safe used to store completed kits.

After a week of national media coverage over a column by Alex Knepper casting doubt on the existence of date rape, American University student newspaper The Eagle has devoted its home page to serious discussions of the problem of rape on campus. In one story, the paper discusses proposed changes to the school's sexual assault policy; in another, an anonymous victim of campus rape shares her story. Has the campus conversation at AU progressed from these widely-publicized accusations of "rape apology"? Let's go to the comments!

In response to news that the school's new sexual assault policy would clarify definitions of terms invoked to describe sexual assault, and would "differentiate between the charges students receive for different types of sexual assault," commenters complained:

Everything was better in the '60s:

Men are tired of 5 decades of women telling us what we say is unacceptable. We will say what we will, when we will, in the manner that we so chose.

What you believe we should say, how we should say it, or the way we should say it, is of no importance.

If you do not like the way in which we state our opinions, then too bad.

The law is so inconvenient:

What the hell is the school doing keeping records on students for sexual assault? Isn’t that the job of the police?

The first boy who gets falsely accused (it will happen with people like Gail Hanson in charge) should sue AU into the dirt. Furthermore, the false accuser should be expelled forthwith.

This fragile imagery will not stand:

Get the fuck over yourselves and your fragile imagery of women, its embarrassing and you give women everywhere a bad name.

This guy figured it out, everybody!

I have a way to prevent rape. How about all of yall stop sluttin it out and wait until you are married to have sex. Have a blessed day.

Token completely nonsensical comment:

How about AU gets it’s own abortionist? Problem solved.

This article about sexual assault on campus sounds like a great opportunity for me to make a rape joke:

What about girl on girl date rape?  It’s a serious issue.  I would know.  I frequently date rape other chicks.

Shut up. They like it.

Wait, someone else had the exact same idea!

This guy in my class raped me in my dream. Can I press charges?  I’m pretty sure Women’s Initiative would approve of that idea.

Did you know that preventing rape hurts women?

We need to prevent rape.  Here’s how we do it.  We need to protect girls because they are fragile and men are evil.  So here is what we will do.  We will petition the university for a new rule that says girls can’t leave their dorm rooms after 5 PM.  If they must leave, they shall be escorted by campus security.  If any man comes within 50 feet, he will be tasered on the spot.  DOWN WITH EVIL MAN-RAPISTS!

Rape victims are huge whiners:

The same thing happened to me my freshman year at a frat party.  But I am not going around claiming “rape” and trying to get sympathy.  If the girl and the guy are both drunk, the girl does not get to claim “rape”.

Unless you say “No”, “Stop”, “Get off me” or something to the likes, then it isn’t rape.  Two drunk people having sex and later regretting it does not equal rape.  It’s called a mistake.

Policies meant to prevent rape are so immature!:

People will act in their own self-interest. As a mature and educated person, one ought to expect other people to act in their own self-interest. If a drunk guy spots a drunk girl and the drunk girl is coming onto him, he is going to attempt to have sex with her. This is not rape. It is human nature.

Rape is just one big misunderstanding:

Guys can’t read girls’ minds.  Many drunk girls come to frat parties wanting to get drunk and hook up.  How can we tell which drunk girls are wanting to hook up and which drunk girls are not wanting to hook up if both sets of girls are acting the same way?  Unless the girl tells me that she doesn’t want to have sex, I am going to assume that her come-ons are genuine and she wants to have sex.  And I will pursue sex unless she tells me to stop.  How am I supposed to know what she wants unless she tells me?

Just like drinking and driving causes dangerous accidents, so too does drinking and partying with frat boys.  I’m sure people who drink and drive do not intend on crashing their cars, but they still do because they made the stupid decision to drink and drive.  They knew that alcohol affected their judgement yet they still chose to drive.  And they deserve to die in car crashes.  Have a sense of self-responsibility and stop blaming others for your mistakes.  The guy was probably just as drunk as you.  You knew drinking would effect your judgement.  And you still chose to get shitfaced.  You brought this on yourself.  I do not feel sorry for you one bit.  Hopefully you learned something from your mistake.  But as evidenced by it happening to you again, I guess you didn’t.  It will probably happen to you again and again until you learn some self-responsibility.

Plenty of anti-rape AU students are also making their voices heard on this thread. To the haters, I have to ask: What is so threatening about a policy revision that would make the school's sexual assault policy easier for students to understand?

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.