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

Translatina, a documentary on the lives of trans women in Latin America, will see its D.C. debut next week at the Pan American Health Organization. The film tackles a host of issues affecting the community—from sex work to sexual assault to homelessness to HIV to  police brutality: "We hit them, with no shame, because they are men," one police officer says in the film. "They are transvestites. They are homosexuals." Screening details after the jump.

Thursday, July 29 2010, 6 p.m.
Pan American Health Organization
525 23rd St. NW

RSVP to sida@paho.org.

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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last week on the Sexist, we took a look at potential complications facing trans patients at local hospitals. Commenters weighed in with their own experiences:

JR on the fear of emergency rooms:

I’m a 30 year old trans man and I am afraid whenever I get sick and can’t see my regular doc or have to go to the hospital. There are so many areas that are fear inducing in everyday life, that most people take for granted. I recently had to come out (a number of times) at the neighborhood swimming pool because they have a “no t-shirt” policy for men, and nothing on the books about pre-op transmen.

Stacey on the deterrent to reporting sexual assaults:

Sad thing is . . . Washington Hospital Center is the only hospital in DC that has medical staff trained for rape kit examinations and evidence collection. . . . not having properly trained staff nor understanding the difference between Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity creates a chilling effect for the trans-community.

Elizabeth K says she was outed by her doctors:

About a year ago I was in the hospital emergency room for detoxification—which required having to run the usual gauntlet of admission and medical history questions. It was a very good hospital, set in a population area of about 35,000 collectively—and I doubt they had ever encountered a transperson in the ER. I was a curiosity to say the least as I had to ‘out’ in detail my condition to seven people ‘officially.” What was interesting is the number of people who suddenly found it necessary to come into the exam room to remove the waste basket, restock shelves, and the like. We are an attraction.

Of course within two weeks I was known as transexual all through the small town I was living. I was rather androgynous at the time and gender neutral in clothing, so I suspect the ‘man in a dress’ expectations were squelched. Professonally I had no mistreatment, but behind it was the unprofessionalism of outing me to the community. That seems to be the way of the world.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

D.C. police may not have stuck anyone with illegal fireworks charges this July 4th, but police did manage to nab one man taking advantage of the day's patriotic displays: On Sunday afternoon, D.C. police detained 49-year-old Maryland resident Charles Defoe for engaging in voyeuristic activities on the grounds of the Washington Monument. According to an affidavit, "Defoe was surreptitiously videotaping the underskirts of numerous females" in the holiday crowd gathered on the Mall throughout the day. A parent of one of the victims reported Defoe, and a review of the tape in his video camera confirmed the activity. The affidavit reads that Defoe "admitted to intentionally video capturing images of private or undergarments-clad genital areas of numerous females on the National Mall, without their expressed and informed consent."

Photo by Mike Hicks.

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.

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.

* Some douchebag slapped the ass of a local female DJ; she recounts her experience on Holla Back DC:

[I] was doing a gig in a bar in Adams Morgan when an older guy came into the DJ booth . . .The guy started bragging that he owns a bunch of clubs in DC, and telling me they’re always looking for “hot female DJs” to spin parties, blah blah blah. He was really creepy, and the whole time he was talking, he was literally inching toward me, until he was right up in my grill.

I (politely) asked if he could take a few steps back and give me room while I worked. Apparently that was offensive, cause he said, “Fine, f*ck you then” and turned to leave, slapping my butt on the way out.

I totally lost it. I screamed “OH NO YOU F*CKING DID NOT JUST TOUCH MY BODY! How dare you, you disgusting PIG! Don’t EVER touch my body like that again, you get me?” He just looked at me like I’d punched him in the face, then skulked off.

Needless to say, I won’t be working in any of his clubs.

* Via GLAA Forum: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services took the next step toward protecting equal hospital visitation rights for LGBT patients. The new proposed rules will "protect patients' rights to choose their own visitors during a hospital stay, including visitors who are same-sex domestic partners."

* David Malitz attends a "disastrous" Hole concert at the 9:30 Club:

The between song chatter was more than just chatter. Ten minutes without playing a song? Sure, let's do that a few times. She talked about her courting style ("I never chase"), being anorexic and bulimic, quizzed fans on the meaning of her late husband Kurt Cobain's lyrics, twice mentioned how The Washington Post hated her new album "Nobody's Daughter," and name-dropped a "TMZ" episode's worth of celebrities, from Trent Reznor to Diablo Cody to George Clooney, even Douglas Fairbanks. She asked what the lamest Hole song was and cursed at people when they gave the wrong answer.

That last part is kind of awesome.

* My Sex Professor tells us what we can learn about sex from Snoop Dogg. (She sticks to "Sexual Seduction," conveniently forgets his video work). "Sexual Seduction" aside, Snoop Dogg's messages on sex have been mixed. While he emphasizes the importance of keeping a pocket full of rubbers—particularly in a sex party situation—and illustrates how to set boundaries—"raise up off these n-u-ts, cause you gets none of these"—he also furthered a "G's up, hoes down" mentality when it comes to heterosexual sex. You don't have to love them hoes, but you don't have to call them that, either.

* Via The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health, Audacia Ray talks about how to improve the lives of sex workers:

[youtube:v=jGTGmB0YfMo]

Photo via State Library of New South Wales

There's this one, submitted intimately via e-mail: "Does your Mother know you're writing for the dumbass shitty paper?" (Hi, mom!). And then there's this vital piece of comments-section copy-editing: "it’s Rick Mangus not Rick Magnus!" And who could forget "Laura, Don’t lecture me about what you THINK you know about video games"?

But I'm feeling a bit saucy this morning, so I have instead chosen that rare comment that manages to utilizes traditional capitalization to actually help further the conversation of this blog! Ladies and gentlemen, Thomas MacAulay Millar on Al Gore's accuser keeping the pants:

Every story gets attacked. A narrative that is bizarre and has unexpected elements gets attacked as too weird to be true, but if it’s straight from a made-for-TV-movie it’s “too perfect” and must be made up. If she freaks out and destroys evidence by showering or throwing out clothes, it must be untrue; if she keeps her wits and preserves evidence she’s a schemer and must be making it up. If she’s drunk or high she must not remember or asked for it or deserved it anyway; if not they why was she in the room with him and why didn’t she try to get away sooner or more effectively?

There is no right story. The apologists come out of the woodwork to attack any story. If they even attack Samantha Geimer, thirteen, coerced to take depressants and still said no, then there is no woman who can tell a story and just plain be believed. Not even Mother Theresa. Not even dead.

Of all the excuses offered to doubt the Portland masseuse who has accused Al Gore of sexually assaulting her in 2006, this is the saddest: She kept the pants.

When news of the woman's year-old accusations broke Wednesday—she first approached police about the incident in 2006, declined to continue with the investigation, then returned to provide a detailed statement in 2009—some commenters chastised the masseuse for not saving the pants she wore on the night of the incident, pants she claimed revealed "suspicious stains" from Gore. "She did not keep the pants, nor submit them to the police for testing," one Gawker commenter provided as reason to discredit her story.

But once the media got wind of the fact that the woman did, in fact, retain the pants—she keeps them locked in a bank safety deposit box—some used her evidence collection as an even stronger reason to doubt her claims.

On Double X, Hanna Rosin wrote: "The latest detail is that the woman saved the pants she was wearing that day (four years ago!), which apparently have some suspicious stains. Why were there 'suspicious stains' if she escaped from the room? Do 'suspicious stains' make for good DNA evidence four years after the fact?" But in a later post, Rosin backed down from her initial doubts: "this very long and detailed statement paints a picture of Al Gore that is so disturbing and so completely at odds with everything we know about him that it's hard to know what to think," she wrote. In an e-mail, Rosin explained, "I hadn't read the police report when I wrote the first post, just the news stories. Then I read the police report, and it's so long and specific that, even though it's only her side, it forces you to take the allegations seriously."

Retaining evidence of an alleged assault is not, in fact, a valid reason to cast doubt on the accusation. But for Bonnie Russell, the accuser's vigilance provided a rare opportunity to make some sexual assault jokes at the accuser's expense. "Personally. . . I can't imagine saving a dirty pair of pants for four years for the simple reason there would come a time after ignoring laundry chores for so long . . . I'd wind up tossing them in the wash and be done with it," she wrote for Salon. "That said, maybe laundry is part of her trauma.  Maybe she's too traumatized to do laundry. That I understand.  Doing laundry always traumatizes me."

Russell's harrowing experiences with housekeeping aside, few tasks are more unnerving than a victim's efforts to retain the last physical remains of his or her own assault. Keeping the pants isn't evidence of an accuser's weird obsession—it's a troubling sign of police apathy. Also in 2006, a Howard University student attended a college party where she says she was drugged, led to an upstairs bedroom, and sexually assaulted by a classmate. For days following the incident, the woman pleaded for area hospitals and the D.C. police department to collect evidence from her body and begin investigating her case. They refused.

Now, the woman still retains the underwear and T-shirt she was wearing on the night of the assault. They're wrapped in a plastic bag in her sister's closet, sitting there on the off-chance that police will finally open her case and investigate her claims. “I didn’t want her to wash them," the woman's sister said in a deposition. "Because we weren’t being helped."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Today, Amanda Marcotte filed a helpful post identifying how media outlets routinely describe assaults against women in collaborative terms, as "fights" or "altercations" between people. She writes:

Do not be fooled, people! In the mainstream media, “fights”, “conflicts”, or “altercations” between men and women they’ve had relationships with are rarely fights, conflicts, or altercations. If you read down, you find that this woman was no more engaged in an “altercation” than Wile E. Coyote is with the piano that squishes him.

Marcotte points to press coverage of an assault that David Vitter aide Brent Furer allegedly committed against his ex-girlfriend. Reporters characterized the assault as a "knife-wielding altercation." Here's the actual story: "Furer was accused of holding his ex-girlfriend against her will for 90 minutes, threatening to kill her, placing his hand over her mouth, and cutting her in the hand and neck."

In Corey's case, the Washington Examiner not only characterized her assault in terms of a collaborative "bar fight," but went on to focuse most of its attention on Corey as the aggressor. In one story, the paper described Corey's self-defense as "slam[ming] a man (if provoked)," and referred to her choice to defend herself as a "controversial decision." The nature of the "provocation"—sexual assault—does not warrant a mention in the story. When a man kidnaps a woman at knife-point, that's an "altercation"; when a woman fights back against an assault, it's a "controversial decision."

After Miss D.C. 2009 Jen Corey's claim that the Washington Examiner mischaracterized her sexual assault as a simple "bar fight," reporter Tara Palmeri first defended herself by claiming she doesn't always write her own stories. Now, the paper has revealed its second line of defense: Accusing Corey of being a bad sexual assault victim.

After registering Corey's complaint with the Examiner's coverage of her assault, J.P. Freire, the Examiner's associate editor of commentary, has decided to lend his expert opinion on the appropriate response to being sexually assaulted! And the appropriate response is: "to get away as fast as" possible. Thank you, noted sexual assault victim appropriateness expert J.P. Freire! What would victims of sexual assault do without J.P. Freire making things "fair"?

Let's follow the trajectory of the Examiner's response here: Corey was concerned that the paper had mischaracterized her experience with sexual assault, conflating her self-defense with "controversial" aggressiveness befitting a "bar fight." Palmeri responds by claiming that she didn't write the story—she just represented an intern's work as her own. Then, editor Freire jumps in to suggest that the paper's mishandling of sexual assault is justified because Corey wasn't a demure enough victim for Freire's taste.

Never mind that Corey has spoken publicly about all the potential tactics available to victims of sexual assault—from physical self-defense to verbal diffusion strategies to running to safety to reporting to authorities. Never mind that she's emphasized that there is no one "ideal" way to respond to an assault. Never mind that it is, in fact, the Washington Examiner that has been goading every beauty queen it can squeeze a quote out of into adopting Corey's own self-defense strategies. Never mind all that! I'd hate to let actual reporting get in the way of some dude offering glib 140-character solutions to sexual assault over Twitter:

Bonus: Freire has previously written on the dangerous problem of institutions mischaracterizing sexual assault! In April, Freire criticized Duke University's "disturbing" new sexual assault policy, which he said makes "no clear distinction between genuinely horrifying behavior and non-offenses." You don't say.

UPDATE: Freire has posted a response in the comments.

Last month, Washington Examiner gossip columnists Tara Palmeri and Nikki Schwab drafted a hot little item about Miss D.C. 2009 Jen Corey "kicking some tail at the local bars." Corey, the gossips reported, recently physically defended herself after being repeatedly "spanked," "touched," "pushed," "slapped," and "sexually harassed" by men in public. Corey's got a different word for what those men are doing— "sexual assault"—and she wishes the Examiner would use it.

The terminology dispute arose today, when Palmeri and Schwab attempted to get some additional mileage out of Corey's history of being publicly sexually assaulted. The gossip duo asked newly-crowned Miss D.C. 2010 Stephanie Williams if she would also "slam a man" while out at the bars, and reported that "Williams, 23, told Yeas and Nays that she respects all of the controversial decisions of her predecessor Jen Corey, including that bar fight last month."

Corey took to Twitter to contest the Examiner's characterization of the "bar fight," which suggests that Corey was the aggressor—not her sexual assailants.

"Still pissed @washexaminer for not getting the story right. My controversial decision to fight? You mean defend myself when attacked?" she wrote, adding: "Apparently @tarapalmeri is the only reporter in dc who doesn't understand the term 'sexual assault' #stillcantgetitright."

Palmeri also jumped on Twitter to defend her work. Her excuse? She didn't actually write that story—she just slapped her byline on an intern's reporting. And if Palmeri attached her name to a story that happens to downplay the seriousness of sexual assault? Well, that's hilarious!:

Corey's response:

UPDATE: Examiner moves on to victim-blaming to defend its journalism.

It wasn't until I read this woman's experience, via Holla Back DC!, that I understood how D.C.'s annual Capital Pride Parade could present the groper's perfect storm. She writes:

I marched in the Capital Pride Parade last weekend as part of a marching band. For part of the parade route, the crowds had pushed up into the street, leaving very little room to march through and no space to separate us from the crowd. One man at the front of the crowd took the opportunity to grab my ass as I marched by.

Because I was concentrating hard on playing and marching, I couldn’t respond. Nonetheless this upset me. Obviously, being part of a parade does not make my body public property. I was also disturbed by the fact that, given the context, this guy probably assumed I was a lesbian, yet still felt entitled (perhaps even felt more entitled) to sexually assault me.

All the elements are here: The close proximity, the element of alcohol, the assumption of a safe space, and the selection of a target who—because she is directly in the public eye, because she is concentrating on playing an instrument, because she is surrounded by potential suspects, because she's swiftly marching away from them, and because she may even be a member of a marginalized group—can't do anything about it. That's not to say that Capital Pride is infested with gropers—but this isn't the first story I've heard from someone being assaulted at this year's event.

We know that gropers seek out situations like this in order to get away with assault. In order to deal with that reality, we invent excuses to blame groping victims for also being present in these circumstances. The victim-blaming is tailored for each space in which a groper operates. Because sexual assailants target places where people are drinking, "potential victims" shouldn't drink so much. Women—and men, both gay and straight, who aren't into non-consensual groping from strangers—don't belong in gay bars, or at least shouldn't complain when they're assaulted in them. Of course, it's hard to argue that people should avoid public transportation just because gropers get off on the sheer number of people who do take the train. So we suggest that people targeted on the Metro are to blame for failing to speak up or fight back.

Even an action as innocuous as playing in a marching band at a Pride Parade has to be defended against the implication that the victim was asking for it: "Obviously, being part of a parade does not make my body public property," she writes.

Some consensual touching at the 2010 Capital Pride Parade

This weekend, Miss D.C. 2009 Jen Corey graciously agreed to march alongside City Paper at the 2010 Capital Pride Parade. Along with her support of the LGBT community, Corey has been outspoken about D.C.'s groping problem as her reign draws to a close. The Miss D.C. organization is behind Corey's new platform, and her recent efforts to physically defend herself against assault: "Jen recently got quite a bit of notoriety for her reaction to an overly familiar 'admirer.' In the fine tradition of [Miss America 1944] Venus Ramey . . . who defended herself against an intruder, Jen’s body slam or 'Smack Down' has become legendary."

Corey, 22, will hand over her crown this Sunday at the Lincoln Theater. But before she finishes her reign, she's agreed to answer some questions about public sexual harassment and assault:

In your NBC interview, you mentioned that you've experienced both physical and verbal sexual harassment. In my experience, a lot of people who agree that touching a stranger is wrong can't understand what the big deal is about making sexual comments toward them. How have both types of harassment affected you personally?

Jen Corey: I have a lot of guy friends who agree and don't understand what a little harmless catcalling has to do with sexual harassment. Sometimes I wish a hidden camera could follow me down a street because it's not just the fact that someone calls out to you and maybe pays you a compliment. I used to live 1 block from campus in college and after walking to school for the first week down Massachusetts Ave, I drove for the rest of the year. I counted once and I was either catcalled or beeped at 11 times in one block. Living in a city alone is scary for a woman. It only increases your fear more when you are walking alone and a white van pulls up next to you and a car full of men are yelling derogatory things at you. A girl can only take so much before she is too afraid to go out alone.

I know that many, many women in D.C. experience this type of public sexual harassment and assault on a regular basis, but a lot of people are skeptical that this is actually that big of a problem. When you speak out about groping, are other people ever surprised that it's this common an experience for you?

JC: I think men don't always understand how often it happens. My own boyfriend really didn't grasp it until recently one night when he walked me back to my car late at night after a photoshoot. I was walking with him and men were still coming up to us to try to talk to me or touch me. I've also heard other men say, "Oh that only happens because you're probably dressed in a short dress" or it's because I'm Miss DC. But this has happened to me since I was 13 and happens when I'm in sweatpants and a sweatshirt or when I'm in jeans and t-shirt.

Speaking of how frequent groping is: Can you talk a little bit about how this problem affects people all across the District?

JC: Not only does it affect people all over the District, but it affects people all over the country. The fact that we're an active city where a most people are out and walking around, it just seems to happen more. My biggest point that I'm trying to get across is that we need to speak out against it. Do NOT just accept it as "a part of life." It is not OK and the only way it will stop is if it is confronted. That's why I'm so glad to have the support of the Washington City Paper, stopstreetharassment.com and Holla Back DC.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AMANDA: For real.

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

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

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

AMANDA: URRGGGG

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

AMANDA: Someone get FEMINIST HULK on this.

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

Photo via ed.ward, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Today on Holla Back DC!, a bystander witnessed a man harassing and stalking a woman on the street in Mount Pleasant, and decided to step in. After a confrontation, the bystander walked away with bruises courtesy of the harasser's belt. Here's the story:

I was walking off a late-night snack around 3:30 in the morning. There was a woman walking with a man right behind her. She kept turning around at him. I could tell that she didn’t want his attention. She was headed down Irving which is a very dimly lit street. At one point the woman suddenly jumped back and began dialing on her cellphone. I figured she was calling the police. Being just across the street, I approached them and ask for the time. The woman seemed startled. The man just looked at me. The woman then continued down Irving street. The man began to follow her. I yelled,”You shouldn’t be doing that.” The guy stopped and turned around towards me. I pulled out my pocket camera and took a quick picture. That really got his attention. The woman kept walking down Irving and the man’s attention was now on me. He mumbled something and then came towards me.

I crossed Mount Pleasant street and he followed me. He began taking off his belt and then began swinging it at me in a zig-zag cross motion. The belt buckle struck me several times. I lifted my cane to stop the blows. I began yelling. There was a couple walking across the street and a guy yelled, "We’re calling the police." I managed to strike the assailant with my cane on his head. I had hit him so hard that my cane bent. He ran across the street into an alley. Another man was walking past me and I told him to watch out. The assailant was now gathering beer bottles as the police approached. He threw a bottle just as the first of 3 police cars stopped. . . . The assailant was arrested. The woman was safe. I am covered in bruises.

When the problems of street harassment and public sexual assault are raised on this blog, readers sometimes respond by placing the onus on ending harassment on the harassee. This usually takes one of three forms:

(a) Don't overreact. Just learn to take a compliment.

(b) Why didn't you fight back? Kick him in the balls.

(c) Street harassers are too dangerous for us to expect anyone else to intervene.

Of course, challenge (c) points out the problem with expecting victims of harassment to either (a) shake it off or (b) fight back. It also shows how violent misogyny can transfer pretty easily from female targets to anyone who would defend them. So—beyond preventative measures—how do we help minimize the risk of street harassment when we see it, while keeping ourselves safe? Last year, local self-defense expert Lauren Taylor gave Sexist readers some tips on being a pro-active bystander:

* Look out for number one. “Always think about your own safety first,” Taylor says. “Look at who’s around who could back you up if necessary. If you’re inside, say at a bar or social event, figure out where the doors are.”

* Speak to the victim. “When you’re thinking about intervening, address the person you think is being targeted,” Taylor says. “Say to her, ‘Are you OK?’ Or, ‘Can I do anything?’ Or, ‘Do you want to come with me?’ This won’t necessarily solve the situation, but it will let her know that there are other options. It will let her know that people are seeing what’s happening, and it lets the harasser know the same thing. There are witnesses, and it’s not going to go unnoticed.”

* Make a scene. “For example, you could draw attention to it by saying something like, ‘This guy is putting his hands all over her!’ Or, ‘This guy is harassing her!’ and that could draw enough attention to the situation that the harasser would cut it out,” Taylor says. “Airing any of these things, and making them more visible, will ultimately make them better.”

“Now, the harasser may respond by saying, ‘Who are you? This has nothing to do with you! She doesn’t mind!,’” Taylor says. “But you still have transformed what’s going on, and possibly made it safer. The harasser talking back doesn’t mean it didn’t work.”

* Even if the victim doesn’t ask for help, you can still do something. “Like with everything, it totally depends on the situation,” Taylor says. “Especially if it’s a partner thing, you may hear the victim respond, ‘Oh, I’m okay, go away.’ But I still think it makes a difference that it was noticed and recognized.”

The Holla Back DC! witness looks to have followed Taylor's tips to a T. Results were mixed: While the initial harassee got away safely and an obviously dangerous person was arrested, the bystander paid the price with a painful and scary physical confrontation.

Photo of Mount Pleasant by NCinDC, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

The D.C.-based WEAVE, or Women Empowered Against Violence, has launched a new campaign to raise awareness about domestic violence for an LGBT audience. "Show Me Love, DC!," the campaign's online component, includes statistics about the problem, discussions about healthy relationships, and legal resources for the LGBT community.

Some stats that illustrate the need for Show Me Love: While the overall rates of domestic violence in gay and lesbian relationships are comparable to those of straight couples, LGBT youth are at a higher risk of dating violence than straight people of the same age. Over 75 percent of the cases handled by the D.C. police's Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit are domestic-violence related.  Only 20 percent of LGBT victims of domestic violence and sexual assault seek help. Press release after the jump.

Campaign Launches to Address Intimate Partner Violence in LGBTQ Communities

Local Nonprofit to Raise Awareness of Healthy Relationships in DC

WASHINGTON (JUNE 1)  –  Women Empowered Against Violence, Inc. (WEAVE) today launched Show Me Love, DC! – an innovative campaign designed to promote healthy relationships in Washington’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) communities.  An interactive web hub for the campaign, www.ShowMeLoveDC.org, features information on healthy relationships, support resources for LGBTQ survivors, quizzes and facts and the campaign’s “Postcard Project.”

“This is an exciting campaign because there is very little information out there for LGBTQ people on building healthy relationships or about where to go if relationships aren’t healthy,” said Morgan Lynn, Supervising Attorney and Manager of LGBTQ Program for WEAVE.

“The hopes of the Show Me Love campaign are twofold — To get people in DC’s LGBTQ communities actively talking about and working toward healthy relationships, and to provide a resource for people in unhealthy relationships where they can find information and lists of LGBTQ-friendly service providers,” Lynn said.

In conjunction with LGBT Pride Month, throughout June, the Show Me Love campaign will host a series of events throughout DC, including a Launch Party at Pulp DC store on 14^th Street, NW on June 11^th from 5-7 PM, an interactive art-based Postcard Project, community-based conversations, a Metrobus ad campaign and information tables at upcoming Capital Pride and Trans Pride events.

The Show Me Love, DC! campaign is backed by an advisory committee of local artists, activists, social workers and attorneys and is funded through a grant from the Office for Victims of Crime, which is a component of the Office of Justice Programs in the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Everyone deserves relationships that are healthy and free from all forms of abuse – no exceptions” said Joye E. Frost, Acting Director of the Office for Victims of Crime.  “We are proud to support this initiative and think it can be used as a model in other parts of the country.”

Created in 2007, WEAVE’s LGBTQ Program provides free assistance to address the specific legal needs of Washington’s LGBTQ survivors of domestic violence, sexual violence, dating violence and stalking. WEAVE also hosts three weekly walk-in legal clinics that provide free legal advice.

For more information on the campaign, please visit: www.ShowMeLoveDC.org.

###

WEAVE is a Washington-based nonprofit that works closely with adult and teen survivors of relationship violence and abuse, providing an innovative range of legal, counseling, economic and educational services that leads survivors to utilize their inner and community resources, achieve safety for themselves and their children, and live empowered lives. For more information on WEAVE, please visit: www.weaveincorp.org.

D.C. police have released an alert about a "suspicious male individual" who is "attempting to make contact with adolescent females as they walk to school." The alert says that yesterday, "the suspect exposed himself to four juvenile females that were walking to school." He's operating around the 200 blocks of 17th Street and 17th Place, NE"—close to both Eliot Junior High School and Eastern Senior High School. He's described as "a black male, 20-30 years of age, 5’7, thin build wearing a white t-shirt, blue shorts, a black skull cap and sunglasses."

* Zack Rosen at The New Gay on the assumption that gay men love Sex and the City: "assumptions about my relationship to SATC make me about as angry as being called fabulous," he writes. "We’ve all gone on bad dates or slept with someone who never called us again. We do not all, however, live in a New York City haze of money and extreme fashion. We do not all act as if women and gay men are half-formed creatures that will die flopping on the floor if they cannot find a mate. And most importantly, we do not all subscribe to the notion that the life lived by the SATC gals is a mirror image of that undergone by the contemporary urban gay male."

Rosen isn't just peeved at the constant comparisons between all gay men and a set of sexually promiscuous, frivolously spending, Cosmo-swilling white ladies; he's also unimpressed with the film's depiction of actual gay men: "this movie . . . features a gay wedding between two men who hate each other, love an all-white color palette and hired Liza Minnelli to sing 'Single Ladies.' I’ve hosted orgies that were less stereotypically gay than that."

* Who would you rather work for: Andrea or James?

Madeline Heilman at New York University once conducted an experiment in which she told volunteers about a manager. Some were told, "Subordinates have often described Andrea as someone who is tough yet outgoing and personable. She is known to reward individual contributions and has worked hard to maximise employees' creativity."

Other volunteers were told, "Subordinates have often described James as someone who is tough yet outgoing and personable. He is known to reward individual contributions and has worked hard to maximise employees' creativity."

The only difference between what the groups were told was that some people thought they were hearing about a leader named Andrea while others thought they were hearing about a leader named James. Heilman asked her volunteers to estimate how likeable Andrea and James were as people. Three-quarters thought James was more likeable than Andrea.

The story goes on to examine the experiences of two transgender scientists at Stanford who transitioned mid-career—one transitioned to male, the other to female. I wonder who had a better time post-transition?

* SAFER Campus on WaPo's recent examination of campus rape: When you headline a story "Schools trying to prevent and respond to sexual violence," shouldn't you then report on some schools that are actually trying to prevent and respond to sexual violence?

I found the title of the article “Schools trying to prevent and respond to sexual violence” in the Washington Post to be extremely misleading. I expected to read a some stories of how schools are adequately and sincerely making efforts to prevent and respond to crimes such as rape, but instead I found myself reading a boring, shallow article that barely grazes the real picture of violence on college campuses and how institutions are dealing with it.

* Student journalists at the University of Utah who secretly inserted words for genitalia in the school newspaper will not be penalized. Apparently, publishing "penis" and an unidentified "slang term for the vagina" are not, in fact, outlawed in the school's Code of Conduct. "Administrators said academic holds on the journalism students were lifted after they determined the student code was not violated by the prank, which spelled out the words in large capital letters within The Daily Utah Chronicle's farewell columns."

* Alyssa Rosenberg points to another lady-centric movie I will definitely see:

[youtube:v=j92Rka-FtUw]

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

Miss D.C. Jen Corey discusses defending herself against gropers with body-slams and head-locks on NBC4. AWESOME. She also makes some really important points about public sexual assault:

"It doesn't just happen at bars, either—it's happened to me at the grocery store, it happens to me on my lunch break in Georgetown, and it's just demeaning, and it's disrespectful, and it scares you, which is the biggest thing," Corey says. "The big thing that's upset me the most is people say, 'Oh, you're at a bar or you're out in public, you should accept the fact that that's going to happen.' And that's not OK."

The disappointing part of the interview is the reporter, who frames groping as a newly emerging and unexplainable trend. Her line of questioning: "Why do you think this is? . . . Where was this? . . . Who knew? Is this a new thing? Is this something you started seeing in college that is now accelerating?" To her credit, Corey handles the feigned disbelief well: "No. This started happening to me as soon as I started hitting puberty. As soon as I got tall enough, guys would yell things to me from the car, and now that I'm out in public more often, I get grabbed a lot."

Corey's headline-making body-slams aside ("I'm lucky because I'm almost six feet tall"), the queen presents a variety of groping response tactics in her four-minute interview: physical self-defense, verbal responses, getting quickly to safety, reporting the incident to authorities, and even hollering back.  "I want girls to know that it's okay to tell people and say something out loud," she says. "The biggest thing is that it's so underreported. . . . This has happened to me dozens of times, and I've never once reported it."

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.

Georgetown Girl points out this WJLA story from earlier this month on a recent sexual assault near the Georgetown University campus. The story is targeted at warning college-aged women to stay inside at night: "Keep in mind, the victim was walking around late at night by herself, and authorities are urging young people to be careful out there," the reporter says. Nevermind that women are far more likely to be sexually assaulted by someone they know—indoors, even!

Photo via JenniferCorey.com

The Diamondback reports that the new education program will be funded with a $500,000 grant from the Department of Justice, and that it will be targeted at "expanding existing programs, educating students, training public safety officials and training administrators."

It's the "educating students" part the Diamondback is concerned about:

Though the details of the education aspect are still being worked out, health center officials said it will likely be incorporated into freshman orientation and be similar to the university’s online alcohol education program, AlcoholEdu.

. . . Some students, however, were doubtful the effort will have the desired effect.

“Taking a collaborative approach is a great way to help decrease the amount of sexual assault that goes on campus, as it is not possible to tackle the problem if not everyone is involved,” junior marketing major Stephanie Nguyen said. “But if the education program is similar to AlcoholEdu, then I can guarantee that no one will pay attention.”

AlcoholEdu, for the uninitiated, is an "interactive online program" about the effects of alcohol that all University of Maryland students must complete. On-campus skepticism of the alcohol abuse education program is encapsulated in this University of Maryland Facebook group, entitled "AlchoholEdu Is Way More Interesting When DRUNK!!!!!!!!" The group, which currently only has five members, describes itself this way: "group is for anyone who has had to sit through that 3 hour bullshit that encouraged me to drink way more."

Let's hope that UMD's sexual assault education program does not produce similar results.

Well, it looks like AlcoholEdu haters are in for some good news. The sexual assault education program "will not be anything like AlcoholEdu," says Kelly Kesler, Assistant Director for Health Promotion at the university. "The comparison is actually not correct."

Outside the Classroom, the organization that developed AlcoholEdu, has also created an online program for addressing sexual assault on campus: SexualAssaultEdu. Kesler says that UMD's program will be not at all be related to that initiative. (Outside the Classroom, for its part, says that several independent studies have found its programs effective).

So what will UMD's student education piece look like?

It's a video. Kesler says the project is still in the beginning stages, but the proposed content of the work has largely been defined: "The objective is to educate students about the scope of the problem on campus in terms of sexual assault, relationship violence, and stalking," says Kesler. "It will teach students about the contributing factors. . . . It will educate students about bystander support skills, about making a positive peer influence, and about the resources that are available for victims and how to make use of them."

Kesler says the university is researching how best to relay that information—two possibilities are through "vignettes and expert interviews." The video will likely be shown at new resident orientation programs for students living on-campus, in selected classrooms, and online.

Yesterday, the c-word—chivalry—arose in the comments section of this blog, in the context of the outdated gender code's unfairness to men. Ah, chivalry: That old code of behavior that men must follow in order to protect the "honor" of women they know. Through chivalry, a woman's honor becomes a man's responsibility; her honor brings honor to him, and her shame brings him shame. Chivalry isn't just offensive because it forces men to protect women, but also because traditional ideas of what brings  "honor" and "shame" to women are often highly sexist. And so, chivalry also works to encourage women to internalize misogyny in order to preempt shame from befalling men.

Three recent events that provide an insight into chivalry, and how it functions:

1. In a recent post on Holla Back DC, a woman describes being harassed by a group of firemen while out celebrating her fiance's birthday. As her fiance stepped away to retrieve cash from an ATM, she stepped to the curb to look for a cab. She was "dressed up," but "did not look slutty," she says; the firemen disagreed:

As I was looking down the street at oncoming traffic, a fire engine drove by. It was not on its way to an emergency, as its lights and siren weren’t on and they were driving at a somewhat slow speed. However, they honked their loud siren at me and started cheering out of the window. This was of course just as my fiance was walking out of the ATM. He was offended that men in uniform would do that, and to tell you the truth, it made me feel like common street trash and that they treated me like a hooker. Even if my fiance was outside with me and it happened, nothing could really have been done. He may have yelled after the fire engine, but that wouldn’t have accomplished anything.

I was really embarrassed and am still embarrassed when I think about it. I even felt embarrassed on behalf of my fiance, as I thought others may have thought he was with a hooker. I don’t know if that’s rational or not. It makes me want to cover up more when I go out, but I shouldn’t have to. I was dressed quite nicely, yet I still was treated in this manner. It was disgusting.

For this anonymous Holla Back DC poster, being treated "like a hooker" was a stunning insult of her value as a woman, and therefore a great source of shame. (As far as traditional expectations of women go, being confused with a sex worker is, unfortunately, pretty low on the "honor" list). This woman's reaction may help to explain why some victims feel shame after being sexually harassed or assaulted. When women are treated as less-than-human, there are often two conflicting internal reactions: (a) anger at the harassers who devalued her based on her gender, and (b) being forced to consider the idea, however briefly, that she has no value.

Our writer presents a third reaction: A secondary source of shame, derived from the possibility that someone "may have thought [her fiance] was with a hooker." Since the woman's fiance is responsible for her shame as well, he may have a similarly conflicted reaction: (a) anger at the harassers who devalued her based on her gender, and (b) shame that he is associated with a woman who is considered by other men to be valueless. Chivalry encourages him to take personal offense to this, inciting one of two reactions: (a) engaging in a verbal or physical altercation with the harassers in order to compensate for the woman's shame with a display of manhood; and/or (b) chastising the woman for bringing shame upon him, i.e. "Don't embarrass me in front of other men"; "Don't go out looking like that"; "See what you made me do."

In this case, there's no indication that the fiance openly chastised this woman for dressing inappropriately (though he may have gone after the firemen had he had the opportunity). The actual display of chivalry isn't necessary to instill in this woman a sense of responsibility for her fiance's honor. The realization that a man may be shamed when she is harassed for being a woman makes her want to dress more conservatively in order to preempt any further shame on him in the future.

2. This weekend, I had a conversation with a guy visiting the District from Turkey. We got to talking about the evolving tradition of women wearing headscarves in his country. About half the women he knows wear headscarves, and half don't; his mom wears one, but his wife doesn't. In Turkey, he said, a woman who doesn't cover her head brings society's shaming not only upon herself, but also upon her husband. Insisting that a woman wear a headscarf is considered a man's responsibility, and a woman with her head uncovered can reflect a personal failure on the man assigned to enforce the rule. "If you follow all the rules of the religion, you get an A+ in being a Muslim," he explained. If your wife doesn't cover your head, you can still be a good Muslim, but your grade gets knocked down a few points.

Not all women wear the headscarf because their husbands or fathers or brothers tell them (or force them) to. Some choose to wear it for personal, cultural, and religious reasons. And some choose to wear it in order to preempt any possibility of shame being brought upon the men in their lives. They want their husbands to get an A+.

3. Today, WTOP reported that Vladimir Djordjevic has died after spending three years in the hospital attempting to recover from the extreme burns covering his body. Djordjevic, a manager at District strip club Good Guys, was "doused with gasoline and set on fire" on Nov. 4, 2007, after he ejected a patron for breaking a house rule—he took a cell-phone photo of a dancer's butt. The patron, trucker Vasile Graure, returned to the club with a gallon of gasoline and proceeded to light Djordjevic—and then the club—on fire. (You can read a complete account of the trial here; Graure was sentenced to 30 years in prison, which may be increased in light of Djordjevic's death).

So: Graure thought he had complete authority over the naked woman in front of him; Djordjevic informed him that he did not; Graure set Djordjevic on fire.

Djordjevic's death is an extreme example of how chivalry facilitates the transfer of misogyny from women to men. As Amanda Marcotte noted earlier this year,  "when it comes to the patriarchy, sexist men will enforce the rules not just on women, but on other men who seem insufficiently committed to the art of oppressing women," she writes. When Graure set Djordjevic on fire, he applied his misogynistic rage to the man who would not sit back and allow him to control women. You see the same kind of transfer of misogyny with guys who, thanks to chivalry, will "Never Hit A Woman"; instead, they'll hit the closest guy.

This kind of misogyny transfer doesn't just result in the tragic deaths of guys like Djordjevic (who, as club security, had the unnerving professional task of protecting dancers from misogynistic patrons). It also helps to obscure the root of the violence, which is an extreme hatred of women. By placing a male intermediary between a misogynist and the intended recipient of his misogyny (a woman), the misogynist can walk away from a chivalry-induced fist-fight patting himself on the back for how much he "respects women." Meanwhile, some blame for said fist-fight can be conveniently transferred onto the woman for failing to take the punch herself. In order to avoid both the fist-fight and the self-blame, the woman has one line of defense—don't do whatever you think caused the misogynist to get so angry. Don't wear a short skirt. Don't protest when he takes your photo in a strip club. Don't get angry when he sexually harasses you.

"The lesson here is not that women should be more eager to be treated like subhumans," Marcotte writes. "The lesson is that sexual harassment is a dominance display, and the harassers will often resort to violence to maintain the dominance they desire. 'Never hit a woman' doesn’t really do much to address the underlying cause of violence against women, which is male dominance and misogyny."

Chivalry encourages a form of preemptive internalized misogyny that results in the policing of women, how they dress, where they go, how much hair they show, and whether they stand up for themselves when harassed or assaulted. In the future, the woman harassed by the firemen may dress more conservatively, or avoid standing on the street corner alone, in order to prevent her husband from ever being associated with someone who is confused for "a hooker". A woman may choose to wear a headscarf in order to preempt any shame being brought to her husband. And a woman who is victimized by a man may not speak out, in order to avoid the chivalrous man-next-door from starting a fist-fight—or criticizing her for somehow encouraging the harassment.

Chivalry works to unfairly displace misogyny onto men. But focusing solely on that particular failure of chivalry ignores the obvious truth—that misogyny is unfair for everyone. Women, too!

Photo via David Spender, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Today, the Supreme Court decided that sex offenders can be kept in prison "indefinitely"—regardless of the length of their sentences—if they are considered still "sexually dangerous." Our government reserves the right to exert complete control over the lives of sex offenders, possibly until they die. Is that enough time to rehabilitate them?

The background on the ruling, via the Associated Press:

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal officials can indefinitely hold inmates considered "sexually dangerous" after their prison terms are complete.

By a 7-2 vote, the high court reversed a lower court decision that said Congress overstepped its authority in allowing indefinite detentions of considered "sexually dangerous."

"The statute is a 'necessary and proper' means of exercising the federal authority that permits Congress to create federal criminal laws, to punish their violation, to imprison violators, to provide appropriately for those imprisoned and to maintain the security of those who are not imprisoned by who may be affected by the federal imprisonment of others," said Justice Stephen Breyer, writing the majority opinion.

President George W. Bush in 2006 signed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which authorized the civil commitment of sexually dangerous federal inmates.

The act, named after the son of "America's Most Wanted" television host John Walsh, was challenged by four men who served prison terms ranging from three to eight years for possession of child pornography or sexual abuse of a minor. Their confinement was supposed to end more than two years ago, but prison officials said there would be a risk of sexually violent conduct or child molestation if they were released.

If our government is going to keep these offenders under lock and key until they're no longer "sexually dangerous," it better be doing everything in its power to attempt to make them safe. But if we put all our efforts toward rehabilitation, can we actually stop sex offenders from abusing again?

This 2007 New York Times story on "relapse prevention" rehabilitation programs for sex offenders suggests that the answer is "maybe." Take the case of Bill Price, a former Sunday-school-teaching pedophile who has admitted to abusing 21 children. Price's rehabilitation plan is targeted at reducing all risk of offending again, once he's back in society:

A requirement of his treatment, the plan catalogs on five single-spaced pages the tactics Mr. Price has learned to stop molesting.

There are 42 so far, including avoiding places where children congregate, abstaining from alcohol, shunning the Internet and sniffing ammonia whenever he has a deviant thought.

“It was just like a hunt for me,” Mr. Price, 59, a former Sunday school teacher, said of his sexual crimes. “I kept choosing children because they were easier prey; they were easier to deal with than women.”

But will the 42-step plan work? History says probably not:

Treatment plans like Mr. Price’s, known as relapse prevention, have been a cornerstone of efforts to reform sex offenders for the past 20 years. Yet there is no convincing evidence that the approach works, or that others do either.

Similar to aspects of Alcoholics Anonymous, relapse prevention has sex offenders own up to wrongdoing and resign themselves to a lifelong day-to-day struggle with temptation. But one of the few authoritative studies of the method, conducted in California from 1985 to 2001, found that those who entered relapse prevention treatment were slightly more likely to offend again than those who got no therapy at all.

A relapse prevention plan like Price's isn't the only approach to rehabilitating sex offenders, but no other approach has been found any more successful—except, of course, for keeping them locked up. For a few reasons, sex offender rehabilitation is still very much an evolving discipline.  Some look down upon allocating resources to helping people who abuse children; since it can be difficult to get pedophiles to talk, the sample groups here can be very small; some offenders will simply play along in order to get out of jail. One lawyer interviewed in the Times story refers to sex offenders undergoing rehabilitation programs as "living experiments."

So far, the gains that have been made in the field of sex offender rehabilitation have not been very encouraging. One study showed that after five years, 15 percent of released sex offenders would offend again. Medical methods of treatment—like chemical castration—have an undetermined effect on re-offending rates. And methods used to figure out which convicts are likely to offend again—like polygraph tests and "penile plethysmograph" tests—are inconclusive.

Particularly in light of the Supreme Court ruling, it's clear that a great deal more research needs to be done. In the meantime, the best way we know to stop re-offending may actually be waiting a very long time: "research has also suggested that even lifelong offenders tend to stop, for the most part, by the time they reach their 70s."

Photo via laurapadgett, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Last week, we discussed a public masturbator operating on Metro's Orange Line. Commenters disagreed on how victims ought to react to a public sexual assault—and why they sometimes feel ashamed.

kza writes:

It’s important to report this to the police. A cop can actually do something unlike a regular citizen. I’m not quite sure how you could blame yourself or feel shame …

Emily WK writes:

kza, telling a victim of sexual assault what they should do afterward is in a general sense not very helpful at all. Neither is dismissing their very real and valid feelings of helplessness or shame. You might want to learn a little more about sexual assault and why people who have been victimized feel the way that they do before you start proclaiming what’s best and what each person should do in a particular instance.

Until then, you don’t really know what you’re talking about.

kza writes:

I think shame comes about after doing something shamefull. I don’t believe being a victim is a shamefull act. And I know I don’t know what I’m talking about here but I’m going to go out on a limb and say the women in these stories weren’t soliciting the guy so it’s not as if they are to blame…

Emily WK writes:

kza, try this.

That’s a start for what you might be able to find out about shame and why it isn’t always what you expect it to be. Human emotion, particularly when it relates to something like sexual assault, is a lot more complicated than “You have to do something shameful to feel shame.” You’re way over simplifying it.

Nobody here posting thinks these women should feel shame. But when we live in a world where women are routinely blamed for being raped, what on earth reason do you think these women would have NOT to feel shame? Jeez, dude. Like, think for a few seconds.

kza writes:

Rape is different. People blame victims of rape so I can understand that of course. Anyone who blames the girls that had to forcibly watch some jerk off jackin off is a lunatic who should not be listened to. No person can blame them.

Emily WK writes:

You are willfully not trying to understand. Have a great day, kza, and enjoy your little bubble of ignorance. Hope it serves you well.

kza writes:

You know what Emily? I probably am wrong. I think that victims should not feel blame but in the society we live in it’s understandable that they feel that shame. I would love to live in a world where victims didn’t have to feel that way. Maybe figuring out a way to stop making victims feel blame could lead to more of them being able to take a stand and force police into actually stopping this shit. I just feel like the best way to combat sexual assualt is with 1st hand accounts. They have 0 responsibility to stop future assaults but I think they can do more to change people’s minds then people like me, a random male who gets outraged by assualts I read about online.

groggette writes:

kza, I think you’re wrong about that last part:

"I think they can do more to change people’s minds then people like me, a random male."

Whether we like it or not, men’s (or white people’s, straight people’s, able bodied, etc.) voices are heard more often then women. In general, people are more likely to listen to what you have to say on this, just because you are male. And I want to make it clear that I would never ask someone to do anything they perceive would put them in harms way, but if you see something like this going down and feel safe, you telling the creeper to stop is almost always going to be a hell of a lot more effective than the woman (who should have been paying more attention, shouldn’t have been wearing those shoes/that shirt/those earrings, is just looking to be offended, etc.) saying or doing anything.

And it’s not just with the assholes doing what the guy in the OP does. If your friends are always talking about how this or that woman (that they probably don’t even know) is a slut for whatever reason, call them out on it. Your words will carry more weight than the women they are talking about.

I agree with you that these women shouldn’t feel shame. But that doesn’t change the reality. Men calling out other men is just as effective (if not more than, at least for now) as women trying to call them out and sharing their stories.

Saurs writes:

kza and others like him are merely parroting the party line. Only in a misogynist culture can the majority of people (women) have to fight to get a powerful, vocal, furiously self-centered minority (men) to recognize that their experiences are valid and true. “Changing people’s minds” is a neat little code phrase for “getting men to appreciate that women know what they’re talking about when they talk about themselves and their lives.” It’s a nearly impossible task to actually pull off. Privileged dudes don’t recognize how fucking privileged they sound when they talk about the necessity of “changing people’s minds” or “educating people” – “people” not actually signifying people in this instance, but ignorant men who want desperately to stay ignorant.

Man becomes the default person, his point-of-view the default point of view. Women, who actually outnumber men, become a fringe group that out of necessity must work in a unified fashion to mold their opinions into something palatable for men, to work hard not to worry male insecurity, and placate their delicate, fragile world-views in order to be “believed.” Sometimes this requires that every woman a man has ever known profess the truth of some perspective; otherwise a complaint is not universal, and therefore not worthy of interest. Other times, like all paternalists, anti-feminist men need other men to explain to them why misogyny is awful; otherwise, it’s just a bunch of bitches crowing and clucking, and who the fuck cares what dumb whores think, anyway? The person of the messenger and the appearance of the packaging really become irrelevant, because they’re always lacking; women are always fucking up and making men ignore them and discount them.

Why men are the arbiter of truth and reality – those who constitute a group that must “be convinced” of something in order for it to be true – remains to be seen, as most have a vested and entirely selfish interest in disproving or ignoring sexual inequality. It’s frankly laughable why anyone should take anything a man says about sex and gender seriously. When anti-feminists feign dispassionate, would-be scientific skepticism about feminism, they’re being disingenuous; like all conservative counter-reactionaries, anti-feminist men are threatened by feminism and have every reason to be frightened of it. Women, meanwhile, have nothing left to lose. The opposite of a feminist world is the here and the now; things can’t get very much worse, comparatively speaking. The dominant culture in the United States is violent, woman-hating, racist, capitalistic, greedy, and very, very dumb. If we don’t succeed, we know what to expect because we’re living it, and each day we become more backwards and more subject to repressed, oppressive ways of thinking. Men, on the other hand, would very much like things to stay the same – barring bigger tits, more housewives, more houseboys, more male privilege. Most can probably barely fathom a world and a culture in which men do not have the final say, in which what constitutes progress is not decided and fashioned solely by men, in which the minor inconveniences they mistake for grievous injuries against themselves and all men are put into their proper proportion, in which they can actually muster up empathy.

It’s little wonder why a lot of men need “convincing,” but convincing men is probably not actually a worthwhile cause.

Photo via stevebott, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Over the past week, Holla Back DC has received two very similar reports of a man masturbating on Metro's Orange Line. The first incident occurred near the Metro Center stop on a train heading toward Vienna; the second occurred near the L’Enfant Plaza stop in the same direction. In both, a man targeted a female passenger and proceeded to masturbate at her.

From the first incident:

I was playing solitaire on my phone, not really paying attention to what was going on around me. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a man, about 5’10″ wearing a white t-shirt tucked into black gym shorts wearing a backpack. I noticed him because he was standing closer than most people do. I saw a jacking off type motion out of the corner of my eye, but wasn’t sure that is what I was seeing so didn’t look over.

When the train arrived I hurried toward the front of the car to sit down. A man came and sat down beside me. I thought it might have been the same man but I wasn’t sure. When a similar motion caught my eye again I looked down and realized his penis was outside of his shorts and he was using a grey sweatshirt to prevent other passengers (other than me) to see what he was doing.

From the second:

I was engrossed in a book and on “auto-pilot” on the way to work. When I got on the train, a man sat down next to me, in the seat closest to the aisle. I sat next to him for about 10 minutes before I realized he was masturbating right next to me. I was shocked! When he realized that I had noticed he started talking to me, and making comments about oral sex. The train car wasn’t full, but there were many people in my near vicinity including families with small children. I had to ask him to get up and let me out, which thankfully he did, and moved to another car.

The first victim reacted in the way that many victims of public sexual harassment and assault do—she froze. Later, she reported the experience to Holla Back:

I took a minute to think of what to do—snap a picture, no because I don’t know how to turn off the picture taking sound on my phone—say something? no, what if he is a psyco, plus bad shit happens to people all the time when they say the wrong thing to the wrong person—even if there are many others around. I picked a third option—I got up, walked around him (luckily I was in the seat with no seats in front of it) and took a seat next to a woman.I feel bad because by not saying anything I may have made him more likely to do this to another woman, but at the same time someone who would do this clearly has limited sense of propriety. I wanted to post to Holla Back DC! to at least have my experience documented or recognized in some way. Unfortunately this is the second time I have had to post.

The second victim had a less common reaction—she reported the incident to Metro Police:

I was so nauseous and disgusted after this whole incident. Its especially shocking considering the time of day and the amount of people on the train. I reported the incident to Metro Police. The man was African American, about 40 years old, wearing jeans and a baseball cap. We were in the last car of the orange line train departing from L’Enfant Plaza in the direction of Vienna at about 10:30 AM this morning.

I don’t know what good it does to tell you this story, but I know there is little that the Metro Police can do.

There are a variety of reasons why victims might be uncomfortable immediately reporting an incident like this to the police—fear, shame, self-blame, the possibility that they won't be taken seriously, the idea that incidents like this don't constitute "real" threats, and the suspicion that the cops wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Thanks to Holla Back, public records of this pattern of behavior that can help to empower future passengers who sit down next to a guy like this. Writes Holla Back: "If you feel comfortable reporting this perpetrator, contact Metro Transit Police at  202-962-2121. And/or, take a picture of the perpetrator on your cell phone and send it to us. HOLLA BACK DC!"

Photo via stevebott, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

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.

* Human centipede: It's a thing. A horrible, horrible thing.

* "Pretty women pose health risks." Burn them. Buuuurn them! Wait, actually, they just stress out heterosexual guys who are trying to finish a really important game of Sudoku.

* Brown University is being sued by a former student who claims he wasn't afforded a proper investigation after being accused of rape. SAFER Campus on why schools must strictly adhere to their own sexual assault policies, for the benefit of both victim and accused:

I have no idea why in this particular case Brown decided to disregard their procedure (the article suggests perhaps because the complainant’s father was a Brown alum and donor) but they did a serious disservice to all their students in doing so. While we usually focus on the rights of the survivor, it’s also imperative to uphold the rights of the accused, both because it’s absolutely important to protect individual students and because when you disregard the rights of the accused to add fuel to the fire of those who want to paint campus rape hearings as unfair witch hunts.

* On Femocracy: Why the media gets rape wrong—legal concerns, boys clubs, and a lack of training.

* Scarleteen launches a series for queer teens of color.

* On Tiger Beatdown, Sady Doyle conducts a Mother's Day chat with her mom, who is a super awesome feminist lady who was put on a "death list" by the Klan:

SADY: . . . OK: Can you tell me some awesome Journalism Stories, please? Because I always tell people that you home-schooled me as a teen (WHICH YOU DID) and now you are home-J-schooling me as an adult. But mostly I just like the stories! So let us revisit a time in the swinging ’70s, when the smooth sounds of folk-rock were everywhere, and you were listening to a LOT OF STEVIE NICKS and also a journalist. Go!

KAREN: Mississippi was still a mess. And every day felt important when you were a liberal white journalist in rural Mississippi. The Klan began a small resurgence about the time that Mississippi began to reinstitute compulsory education. (When the federal government ordered the schools integrated, Mississippi revoked all mandatory education laws so the white kids wouldn’t “have” to go to school with black children. This was getting fixed when I was there.) The Klan members wanted to be interviewed with their hoods on, and I refused to do so. They supposedly put me on a “death list,” but they did take off their hoods. It turned out they were all just factory workers that no one knew. And then the Klan treasurer stole all their money, and the Klan dissolved.

A local college student was shot in the ankle over the weekend after she refused to give her phone number to a guy on the street. The student was leaving a party with a group of friends on early Sunday morning when the man shot her for rebuffing his sexual harassment. As she told Fox 5:

He told my cousin that he was gonna shoot at us if i didn't give him my number, and then he started shooting . . . I thought somebody kicked me in my leg, like, it was a lot of us running, so I thought somebody kicked me. I didn't know it was a gunshot.

The bullet is still lodged in her ankle.

Women who are harassed on the street have two options:

1. Be nice. Do what they want. Laugh nervously at their jokes. Surrender your phone number. Endure an increasing amount of sexual harassment. Get labeled a tease when you eventually turn down a date / refuse sex / don't answer the phone call / otherwise fail to please the stranger who is harassing you.

2. Be dismissive. Ignore the stranger's advances. Refuse to surrender your phone number. Tell him you're not interested. Endure an increasing amount of vitriol for turning the guy down. Get labeled a bitch immediately.

Which path do you choose? The college student chose to be dismissive; she got shot. But remember what can happen to you when you choose to be nice: After being stalked and then cornered in an empty Metro parking garage early in the morning, Emily Ruskowski eventually agreed to give the man her phone number. Then he groped her breast and attempted to enter her car.

The bitch-or-tease decision is made necessary by the pervasiveness of casual street harassment that can quickly escalate into a serious threat. I would talk about how easily unwanted sexual advances can turn into angry, violent advances, but in reality, the two scenarios are often indistinguishable from one another. When a man demands the phone number of a woman who is obviously uninterested in him, or when he propositions a lesbian couple that is obviously uninterested in him, or when he reaches out to grope a woman who is obviously uninterested in him, he is just as threatening as the man who intimidates a person into surrendering her wallet, or screams homophobic slurs at a lesbian couple, or exerts physical violence over his victim.

The difference is that the first category of advances is explained away as innocent consequences of a runaway libido and the victims' mixed messages; the second category is recognized as unacceptable violence. Sexual harassment is harassment; sexual assault is assault. If you don't want to contribute to a culture of street harassment the moves a man to shoot a woman who won't go out with him, then don't cat-call, don't ogle, don't ask for a number, don't grab, and don't follow. Stop tasking women with the potentially dangerous decision of how to let a guy down easy.

* Dan Savage weighs in on vajazzling:

So I have to know, Dan: What is your opinion on vajazzling? – Vajazzle Azzle Gadazzle

Asking for my opinion on vajazzling, VAG, is like asking a vegan for her opinion on the wallpaper in a steak house. I’m simply too revolted by what’s on the menu to take much notice of the décor.

Vaginas: Revolting no matter what, so why bother with the appliqué?

* Via Feminine Things, the argument for why schools should not alert students to acquaintance rapes on campus.

* Old, but good: I Blame the Patriarchy on men in wedding dresses:

When I got a spam for “men in wedding dresses” this morning I thought, hell yeah! I sure do wanna see some men in wedding dresses. I bet men look even more asinine in wedding dresses than women do. And who doesn’t want to look at something asinine first thing on Sunday morning?

Men universally look asinine in women’s clothes, yeah? The reason for this, and for mild funniness in other low forms of humor, is incongruity. Nothing says “I submit to my species’ disdain and surrender forthwith any claims to my own humanity” quite like a wedding dress. Women’s clothes are designed, according to a rigorous standard of misogyny, to communicate that the wearer is totally up for self-abasement. Men, on the other hand, are required by law not to be totally up for self-abasement. Therefore, in accordance with the laws of patriarchy, comedy and gender, a dude in a wedding dress is improbable and unnatural, thus causing the observer to laugh or retch or curl a cynical lip.

*  s.e. smith writes a Dear Dear Abby: Please do not explain away sexual assault by calling it "hitting on another woman."

* John DeVore of the Frisky advises women to ask men out on dates, then insists (thrice!) that the woman need not foot the bill:

If a woman asks a man out on a date, she is not obligated to buy dinner. I just wanted to clear that up. . . . don’t worry about the bill. I’ve actually been asked this question. The dude will take care of it because that’s what dudes do. There are some things the male species will always be in charge of, like bear defense. You know what else? Buying dinner on the first date. (Dear Testicles: She’s going to spend time and money getting her hot on anyway.) . . . Now make sure you look gorgeous. And don’t worry: He’ll get the check. If he doesn’t, he’s a donkey pizzle.

I love that DeVore's imaginary female reader is so afeared of being expected to pay for anything ever that she avoids social situations because of it.  You figured us out, man! We're so nervous about the possibility of whittling away our petty women's salaries on the beers of our suitors that we have instead spent centuries waiting for men to initiate all romantic contact. Also, we refer to men who have earned our disdain as "donkey pizzles."

Image via freeparking, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Did you read this Sexist story about a woman who was cornered in an empty parking garage late at night, forced to surrender her phone number, and then sexually assaulted by a stranger, and wonder, "Why is everyone approaching this so seriously?" Well I've got just the event for you!

Emily Ruskowski, the victim in that story, has turned her harrowing groping incident into a stand-up comedy routine. Ruskowski has assured me that it is "hilarious." And as a longtime supporter of the transgressive power of comedy in these situations, I'm truly excited for this.

Ruskowski will be performing tomorrow as a part of Holla Back DC's "Speak Up, Speak Out" event, a night of spoken word, collaborative art, raffling, and comedy, of course. Proceeds will go toward an anti-harassment public mural that's in the works.

Details:

Tomorrow, Thurs. April 29
6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Cafe Collage
1346 T Street NW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#1 SHE WAS WEARING TIGHT JEANS:

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

#2 SHE WAS ASKING FOR IT:

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

#3 SHE WAS FLIRTING ONLINE:

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

#4 SHE WAS HIS STEADY GIRLFRIEND:

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

#5 SHE WAS DRUNK AND PARTYING:

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

#6 HE HAD IT COMING:

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

#7 SHE WAS HIS WIFE:

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

#8 I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING FOR HER:

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

#9 THE INTENSITY GOT TO HIM:

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

#10 SHE HAS SEX FOR MONEY:

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

#11 SHE CANNOT HEAR, TALK, OR REPORT:

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

#12 RAPE IS NOT PART OF THE SENTENCE:

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

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

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?

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

I've been fascinated by the dust-up over "trigger warnings" that's inched across the feminist blogosphere this week. "Trigger warnings," for the uninitiated, are warnings placed before blog posts that touch on certain subject areas (or particularly graphic presentations of them) that could possibly "trigger" the past trauma of a survivor of sexual assault or abuse. So: To trigger-warn or not to trigger-warn?

The debate over the feminist blog staple began with sex writer Susannah Breslin, who thinks trigger warnings are condescending at best, and a disingenuous ploy to keep feminist blogs relevant at worst. The topic then migrated to Feministing, which employs trigger warnings for the simple reason that it "care[s] about rape victims." Feministing declared Breslin a "certifiable asshole," at which point the debate moved on to Jezebel, which doesn't employ trigger warnings, also cares about rape victims, and thinks Breslin is an asshole, too. (For the record, I think Breslin is an asshole, and that's often what makes her work compelling to this feminist, anyway). Melissa McEwan shies from the Breslin: Asshole? angle, but does provide the most impassioned defense of the warnings, writing:

A trigger is something that evokes survived trauma or ongoing disorder. For example, a person who was raped may be "triggered," i.e. reminded of hir rape, by a graphic description of sexual assault, and that reminder may, especially if the survivor has post-traumatic stress disorder, be accompanied by anxiety, manifesting as anything ranging from mild agitation to self-mutilation to a serious panic attack.

Those of us who write about triggering topics (sexual assault, violence, detainee torture, war crimes, disordered eating, suicide, etc.) provide trigger warnings with such content because we don't want to inadvertently cause someone who's, say, sitting at her desk at work, a full-blown panic attack because she happened to read a triggering post the content of which she was unprepared for.

We provide trigger warnings because they give survivors of various stripes the option to assess whether they're in a state of mind to deal with triggering material before they stumble across it. Just like someone who isn't easily triggered can nonetheless have, say, a shorter temper when stressed or tired or hungry, a person whose history of trauma makes some material triggering for them can often navigate triggering material without a problem, except when stressed or tired or hungry. Trigger warnings give them a moment to consider whether they want to deal with potentially triggering material right now.

We provide trigger warnings because it's polite, because we don't want to be the asshole who triggered a survivor of sexual assault because of carelessness or laziness or ignorance.

My personal position on trigger warnings is pretty clear to regular readers—you won't see a trigger warning on this blog. Unlike Breslin, I don't think trigger warnings are some sort of page-view ploy or a harbinger of the End of Feminist Days. But like Breslin, it seems that neglecting to trigger-warn does make me kind of an asshole.

I'll likely never stop being an asshole, but I am open to reconsidering my position on the warnings, and I'd like to know what my readers think about that. So: What are your thoughts on trigger warnings? Survivors, do you find trigger warnings effective? Are triggers too personal to be avoided with a blanket warning? What about feminist blogs that write about potentially triggering subjects in nearly every post (hi there!)? Anyone got a feminist argument against trigger warnings up their sleeves? How big of an asshole am I? Discuss.

Photo via Let Ideas Compete, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

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.

Last week, 27-year-old Christopher McDonald was sentenced to 120 days in jail for his "unprovoked assault on a group of gay women" in Adams Morgan last year. McDonald approached the women while they ate pizza on the 18th street sidewalk. Then, he made derogatory remarks about their sexual orientation and then threatened them with a knife. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, here's an account of the incident:

According to the proffer of facts to which McDonald admitted, on September 7, 2009, McDonald approached a group of women who were eating pizza along the sidewalk of 18th Street in Adams Morgan. He confronted the women about their sexual orientation and made derogatory,  profanity-laced remarks about their appearance and sexual orientation.  With no provocation, McDonald, who was born in Jamaica, pulled out a  knife and began advancing toward one of the women, saying that “if we were in Jamaica I’d shoot you in the face for being gay.” The stunned victims, fearing for their lives, called the police, and McDonald was  stopped while attempting to flee. He admitted that he made the threats  and brandished the knife based upon his prejudice against the victims’ actual sexual orientation, or what he perceived it to be.

McDonald was convicted of Bias-Related Threats To Do Bodily Harm and Simple Assault. In D.C., the maximum penalty for bias-related crimes is one-and-a-half times that of crimes that aren't bias-related. After serving his 120 days, McDonald will be on probation for two years, during which he "must complete fifty (50) hours of community service, seek substance abuse treatment, and complete courses in anger management and sensitivity to issues of sexual orientation." [Thanks to Holla Back DC for the tip].

Photo via krossbow, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0