First up: “A Milli,” a track off Tha Carter III:

Relevant Lyrics: “The Bible told us every girl was sour / Don’t play in her garden and don’t smell her flower / Call me Mr. Carter or Mr. Lawnmower”

Feminist: Weezy’s lawnmower is here to destroy all those antiquated ideas about female sexuality.

Misogynist: A man’s lawnmower chopping up a woman’s flower is not exactly the most sex-positive imagery.

—

“Mrs. Officer,” a song about a sexy cop.

Relevant Lyrics: “Doin a buck in the latest drop/ I got stopped by a lady cop/ She got me thinking I can date a cop/ Cause her uniform pants are so tight . . . And I know she the law, and she know I’m the boss / And she know I can hide above the law / And she know I’m raw, she know it from the street / And all she want me to do is fuck the police.”

Feminist: He’s attracted to women in positions of power!

Misogynist: . . . as long as their pants are tight, and he can neutralize their authority by pulling out his wang.

—

“We Like Her,” a song about wanting to fuck every girl in the world. Every single one!

Relevant Lyrics: “Open up her legs then filet mignon that pussy / I’m a get in and on that pussy / If she let me in I’m a own that pussy / Go’n throw it back and bust it open like you ‘posed to / Girl I got that dope dick / Now come here let me dope you / You gon’ be a dope fiend / Your friends should call you dopey”

Feminist: Every woman is beautiful.

Misogynist: Just beautiful enough for Wayne to declare ownership of her genitals and describe their courtship in sexual assault terms.

—

“Lollipop,” a song about oral sex.

Relevant Lyrics: “I get her on top / She drop it like it’s hot / And when I’m at the bottom / She Hilary Rodham.”

Feminist: He just name-checked Hilary Rodham. In a positive way! And without the Clinton, even!

Misogynist: I’m not sure that riding Weezy is exactly the type of women’s liberation Hil is working for.

—

“Prostitute Flange,” a song about not caring if your lady previously turned tricks.

Relevant Lyrics: I wouldn’t care if you were prostitutin’ / That you hit every man that you ever knew / See it wouldn’t make a difference / If that was way before me and you girl.

Feminist: An anti-slut-shaming anthem: Her sexual history is not an issue, even if she had sex with every man she has ever met. That’s pretty progressive!

Misogynist: Well, the history is unimportant as long as it’s ancient—”way before me and you”—and as long as she’s now only his forever: “Three letters: I do.”

—

“Project Bitch,” a track from Lil Wayne’s Hot Boys days.

Relevant Lyrics: Wayne’s contribution to this track is devoted to the ladies who ” be puttin’ they mouth on it / and they suck everything out of it / and they catch it and swallow it. . . . When I come through in a Rolls Royce / I leave them with no choice / but to hop up in it an just let me make they throat moist.”

Feminist: Hmm.

Misogynist: Yeah.

Don’t believe me when I say that people actually think drunk girls deserve to get raped? Let’s take the case of the 15-year-old California girl who was brutally gang-raped at her homecoming dance for hours in front of dozens of onlookers. Apparently, the victim had been drinking. For some people, that turns her horrific rape into a valuable morality tale that will put the fear into our nation’s drunk girls. Helpful Comments points us to some not-atypical online reactions to the story:

Good news, criminals: As long as everyone in your general vicinity is sippin’ on a beer, you may rape, murder, and pillage at your leisure!

Group drinking. That says it all. Booze will bring out the best in people. (yea go have another one) Perhaps the boys are not all to blame. The young lady had one too many.

Blame it on the alcohal:

I’m a 15 year old girl in New York, and I’m sorry to say this, but isn’t it possible that witnesses saw her get drunk with alcohal and belived she willingly participated as an effect? I’m sorry, but she shouldn’t have drunk alcohal to begin with. I’m not saying she deserved it, but she should’ve been much, much wiser. Getting a ride from dad was intelligent, but she should’ve kept to herself and concentrated on meeting her destination instead of hitting the beer at such a late hour, away from the gym. Agian, I’m this girl’s age, and I asure you that while I do sympathsize with the victim, she also has made very unwise mistakes on her part.

It’s official: “I’m not sayin’ it’s her fault . . . ” is the new “I’m not racist, but . . . “

wait wait wait…..she was drinking prior to this? hmmm. im not sayin its her fault or she deserved this or anything but shes 15 and drinking outside on a bench by herself in a dress….as much as people want this to be a perfect world, its not. what she was doin in the first place was asking for trouble. if your not gunna be smart about the choices you make, im not gunna feel bad for what happens. it sucks she was raped and she will never forget this and it will hurt her for the rest of her life, but come on lets be smarter than that.

One commenter took the presence of alcohol as an opportunity to float this theory: Even though the girl was gang-raped, beaten, robbed, and hospitalized, maybe it was SHE who raped THEM:

These poor misdirect young men will all be exonerated by the court when they get a good lawyer. Young men that are only guilty of allowing a girl that was drinking to take advantage of them. The reason no one went to call the police was that she was a willing participant. No more then that, she was the one who instigated the sexual activity. Why else would so many fine young men in that community be involved in such a heinous deed.

How about #7, NOBODY DESERVES TO GET RAPED YOU STUDPID IDIOT:

#1 Its Richmond High.#2 Its dark.#3 Your a 15 year old girl.#4 You accept the invite to go off in a dark area of campus and consume a larg amount of booze with a low life crowd.#5 Geeeeee, I got raped!#6 Duuhhhhh!These guys are low life scum bags, your 15 and you want to get drunk with them!YOU STUDPID IDIOT

Photo via Trendhunter

Eighteen-year-old Seth Rudnitsky, a freshman student at the University of Maryland, has been charged with first-degree burglary after allegedly entering a G.W. residence hall and attempting to sexually assault several sleeping women. That’s according to the charging documents in the case, which allege that Rudnitsky initiated “unwanted physical contact” with the women, and entered one room with the “intent to commit a criminal act.” The G.W. Hatchet reports that one of the women has secured a stay-away order against Rudnitsky.

Rudintsky’s attorney, Mark Schamel, has got another theory: He was just being silly!

Schamel “declined to comment on the specific allegations from the female students who said Rudnitsky tried to initiate unwanted sexual conduct.” But Schamel did comment on the featherbrained frivolity of the whole affair:

‘This is not a sexual assault case. You have a really good kid who has never been in trouble his entire life,” Schamel said. “It’s your typical freshman ‘I went out and had too much to drink and was being silly’ kind of case.”

Come on, you guys: It’s college! Surely you must remember college, a time when it was perfectly typical to go out, get hammered, have your friend sign you into his dorm, troll the building for sleeping women, and then, according to a police report, twice attempt to stick your hands down some shorts. These were just typical freshman college shenanigans, not unlike sampling marijuana or poisoning a rival college’s fountain with soap bubbles!

For the women who were assaulted, the “typical freshman experience” is a bit different: being awoken by unwanted groping from a strange man. But listen, ladies: That’s fine if that’s your college experience, as long as you don’t make a big fucking deal about it. “This frankly shouldn’t even be a criminal case,” Schamel told the Hatchet. “I think it’s being entirely blown out of proportion.”

Photo by arvindgrover

“Both of these incidents exemplify ways that GW can improve security on its campus,” the Hatchet editorial informed students. According to the camps paper, the bathroom hammering reveals how the university needs to “better expedite information in response to major security threats on campus.” The sexual assault, meanwhile, “shows that students have a responsibility to keep themselves safe.”

Perhaps it was not the best choice of words.

Both incidents, which occurred on Friday, Oct. 9, involved an assault upon students in a private on-campus facility. The male graduate student suffered a “non-life-threatening head injury” after he was “using a urinal when the suspect . . . came out of one of the stalls, stood behind the student and hit him in the back of the head with a hammer.” Earlier that day, several G.W. freshman awoke to a strange man sexually assaulting them in their private dorm rooms. The paper, disappointingly, softens the man’s actions as “sexual advances“:

One female student who lives on the eighth floor reported that the man woke her up by trying to kiss her, and “attempted twice to place his hands down the front of her shorts,” according to the police report. The female began screaming and the man ran across the hallway to another room, where he woke up another girl. She said he told her he had met her at Josephine, a popular nightclub.

“That’s when I knew I didn’t know him—I’ve never been to Josephine,” the second female student said in an interview. “Then he grabbed my head and tried to kiss me.”

In the editorial following the incidents, the Hatchet board wrote that the sexual assaults constituted 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.”

These general safety precautions—lock your doors and don’t leave your guests unattended—are good to know, but it doesn’t take a G.W. Hatchet editorial for students to finally understand the arguments in favor of locking doors. Actually, a sexual assault on campus is not a “valuable” public service announcement, nor is it an appropriate opportunity to inform victims that they’re lacking in personal responsibility. The Hatchet noted that the assault victims had “accidentally left the door unlocked” before they went to sleep. Compare that lapse in “responsibility” to the guy who illegally gained entrance to a private dorm, climbed to the 8th floor, and systematically sexually assaulted a hallway full of sleeping women. Oh, well. At least he taught those girls a valuable lesson!

Why doesn’t the Hatchet see the a student getting hammered in the head as a “valuable reminder” that using a public urinal puts men in a vulnerable situation to a surprise attack? And why is the campus’ latest head injury victim not reminded that he has a “responsibility to keep himself safe” from deranged criminals? Maybe it’s because that sort of teaching moment works to place the blame on the guy who’s just taking a piss, instead of the unpredictably violent guy with the hammer. Take away the hammer, unlock the door, and turn the bathroom victim into a hallway full of sleeping women, and all of a sudden, nobody’s responsible for your sexual assault but you.

The G.W. Hatchet is writing to a pretty small campus community. The women who were sexually assaulted read that editorial. They know that their experience is being used by the campus press as a “valuable reminder” of campus irresponsibility. I hope they write back.

Early this morning, George Washington University police apprehended a suspect who had been seen attempting to “touch several females while they were sleeping.” According to a campus alert, a male student helped the suspect access campus dorm Thurston Hall at 19th and F Streets NW around 4:30 this morning. A security camera then recorded the male student “leaving the building alone soon after signing in his guest,” leaving the suspect unaccompanied in the freshman dorm.

The incidents sound familiar to a series of sexual assaults that have hit the campuses of Georgetown and the University of Maryland in recent years. But unlike the Georgetown and UMD cases, in which suspects continued to terrorize the campus communities for years, GW’s nighttime sexual assailant was immediately neutralized. The suspect was apprehended after several students living in Thurston hall “brought the male to the security desk at Thurston Hall” and police were notified. The suspect is currently in police custody.

The GW campus alert reminded students not to sign strange people into freshman dorms and then leave, so that they may touch sleeping women in your absence. “Students who violate the security protocols, such as the sign in procedure, may face serious consequences through the Office of Student Judicial Services, up to and including suspension or expulsion from the University,” the alert read. “In this case, a student signed in a guest and left the building, and put the security of all of the other residents in the building in jeopardy. Students should not allow people they do not know to piggy-back in the building and students are required to follow the procedure of escorting any guest they bring or sign into their residence hall.”

Photo by RyanGWU82

This week, Catholic University newspaper the Tower reported that the Washington City Paper would no longer be made available on the school’s campus. In fact, the paper has been gone from the CUA campus since May 7th, the day that my story on CUA’s campus sex ban, Screw U: Inside the Secret Sex Life of Catholic University, was published.

That morning, a very nice man who identified himself only as a CUA employee called to tell me that the university was removing the paper from the campus racks. “I just wanted to bring that to your attention and let you know that really sucks, because I know for a fact there are a lot of staff members and students that love to read your paper, and especially for this article,” he said. ” Again, love your work, awesome, thanks so much for throwing that out there, and, we got a really great chuckle for it. I hope you don’t get in too much trouble. Take care of yourself.”

The Catholic University administration was less amused.

Catholic University spokesperson Victor Nakas, whom I quoted extensively in the piece on the subjects of premarital sex, masturbation, and men kissing, explained the school’s reasoning for removing the paper from campus. “These decisions were occasioned by the City Paper’s hateful article ridiculing our Catholic faith,” Nakas told the Tower. Some CUA students were moderately pissed about it, but they were dealing. “Whether or not that article was a true portrayal of students, we should be able to decide for ourselves whether or not it’s worth reading,” sophomore Joe McAnaney told the Tower. “It’s disappointing that I can’t just pick up the City Paper in the Pryz anymore, even though I understand the University’s decision.”

Oh, Catholic University, always banning things! Catholic University of America has banned sex, masturbation, pornography, and condom possession among unmarried students for years. Let’s see how that’s going for them: clandestine condom distribution, check; student center sex, check; healthy LGBT population (considering), check; masturbation, check; celebrity naked photos, check; girls sneaking into boys dorms, check; boys sneaking into girls’ dorms, check; high-profile sexual assault case involving videotaped group sex in open CUA dorm room, check.

Unfortunately, college students prefer doin’ it to reading alternative weekly newspapers. Or do they? Perhaps a good campus banning is just what the City Paper needed to catch on with the CUA crowd. By my calculations, the Washington City Paper should already be well on its way to becoming the new campus forbidden fruit, a taboo rag which CUA students will hide beneath their mattresses and transport secretly between dorm buildings by slipping it inside the pages of the Express. How can it be wrong when it feels so right?

Or, maybe they’ll just read it online.

—

“But he’s already paid his price, because everyone knows he’s a rapist, and he can never work in Hollywood.”

As Patrick Goldstein wrote in the LA Times, “I think Polanski has already paid a horrible, soul-wrenching price for the infamy surrounding his actions. The real tragedy is that he will always, till his death, be snubbed and stalked and confronted by people who think the price he has already paid isn’t enough.”

Ahh: “the real tragedy.” Some people may be under the impression that a 13-year-old being drugged and raped by a 44-year-old man constitutes a “real tragedy.” Others may contend that both Polanski and his rape victim have suffered “real tragedies” in their lifetimes. But no, there can only be one the real tragedy, and it is that people have “snubbed” Roman Polanski because he raped someone and skipped town. If only the recognition of the Academy Awards, the BAFTAs, the Berlin International Film Festival, Cannes, the Directors Guild of America, the Golden Globes, the Independent Spirit Awards, the Stokholm Film Festival, the Venice Film Festival, and dozens of other awards organizations could begin to heal that wound.

—

“But he escaped the Holocaust / his mother died at Auschwitz / His wife was killed by Charles Manson”

Talk about real tragedies: These, of course, are real tragedies. Upon hearing of Polanski’s arrest, French Minister of Culture Frederic Mitterrand announced that he “strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them.”

This is a fair argument—and one that can be made about many, many people convicted of crimes in the United States. A lot of the people who are locked up behind bars have endured unspeakable traumas in their own lives—sexual assault, poverty, drug addiction, gang life, homelessness, and mental illness. Why are they held accountable for their actions, while Polanski gets to be like, “Peace, I’m just going to chill in France for thirty years, try not to rape anybody else, and maybe win an Oscar. See you guys later”? It’s not because of what he endured. It’s because he makes movies.

But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Polanski isn’t getting a break because he’s famous, but rather because he’s had a hard life. When France decries “the ordeal” being “inflicted” on Polanski, what the country is really saying is that rape is not important because it’s not as horrific as the Holocaust, and not as evil as Charles Manson. And that’s a pretty fucked-up standard, oui?

—

“But he made The Pianist / Chinatown / Rosemary’s Baby / Revulsion.”

Congratulations, the Huffington Post’s Kim Morgan: You win the prize of penning the most disgusting defense of Polanski I’ve read to date! Morgan prefaces her post by saying she is “not going to go into my Roman Polanski defense,” but suffice to say she is “not happy about his arrest.” Instead of getting bogged down by the legal gobbledygook, Morgan shoots off a blog post entitled “Roman Polanski Understands Women.” Seriously.

“One should not,” she writes, “take Polanski’s films literally, for they are often heightened versions of what occurs naturally in our world: desire, perversion, repulsion.” Okay, but how about his rape of a 13-year-old girl? Are we allowed to take that “natural occurrence” literally? Morgan doesn’t directly address that question, but she does argue that Polanski’s very brilliance is a product of his relationship with human “darkness”:

Polanski’s removed morality is exactly why he is often brilliant: He is so empathetic to his characters that, like a trauma victim floating above the pain, he is personally impersonal. He insightfully scrutinizes what is so frightening about being human, yet he doesn’t feel the need to be resolute or sentimental about his cognizance. He is also, consciously or subconsciously, aware of the darkness he explores, especially in his female characters, who could be seen as extensions of himself.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-morgan/roman-polanski-understand_b_301292.html

You know what I find revolting? When a film critic prefaces her work with a disclaimer about how much it sucks that a rapist is getting arrested for raping someone, and then uses the rapiest imagery possible to applaud his film work. Nope! Sorry! Understanding Women is not a valid defense against rape. Similarly, being a really marvelous film director doesn’t mean that you get to rape someone and not go to prison. Even if you made The Pianist.

Remember: making The Pianist and being a rapist are not mutually exclusive.

—

“But the girl’s mother made him rape her.”

Oops, nevermind, this one is actually an even more disgusting defense of Roman Polanski, also on the Huffington Post:

The 13-year old model ’seduced’ by Polanski had been thrust onto him by her mother, who wanted her in the movies. The girl was just a few weeks short of her 14th birthday, which was the age of consent in California. (It’s probably 13 by now!) Polanski was demonized by the press, convicted, and managed to flee, fearing a heavy sentence. I met Polanski shortly after he fled America and was filming Tess in Normandy. I was working in the CBS News bureau in Paris, and I accompanied Mike Wallace for a Sixty Minutes interview with Polanski on the set. Mike thought he would be meeting the devil incarnate, but was utterly charmed by Roman’s sobriety and intelligence.

So, Polanski is just a really special guy who was practically forced to have sex with that 13-year-old girl by her mother. It’s almost as if Roman Polanski was raped by that 13-year-old girl. Also, no, the age of consent in California is not “13 by now,” it is 16 18 (!!). By the by: the author of this little gem is Joan Z. Shore, co-founder of Women Overseas for Equality. Thanks, Joan, for your deft approach to women’s issues!

“But he didn’t know she was 13.”

Please, Anne Applebaum. Polanski had to ask her mother for permission to shoot her for Vogue.

—

“But 13 is old enough to consent to sex”

Let’s assume that, like Joan Shore and others have suggested, age 13 is old enough to consent to sex, and Polanski is merely a victim of the Puritanical sex laws of the U.S.A. If that’s true, then surely 13 would be old enough to say no to sex, right? Because here’s what Geimer said happened at the one-on-one Vogue shoots:

According to Geimer in a 2003 interview, “Everything was going fine; then he asked me to change, well, in front of him.” She added, “It didn’t feel right, and I didn’t want to go back to the second shoot.”

Geimer later agreed to a second session, which took place on March 10, 1977 at the Mulholland area home of actor Jack Nicholson in Los Angeles. “We did photos with me drinking champagne,” Geimer says. “Toward the end it got a little scary, and I realized he had other intentions and I knew I was not where I should be. I just didn’t quite know how to get myself out of there.” She recalled in a 2003 interview that she began to feel uncomfortable after he asked her to lie down on a bed, and how she attempted to resist. “I said, ‘No, no. I don’t want to go in there. No, I don’t want to do this. No!”, and then I didn’t know what else to do,” she stated.

That’s rape, whether you are 13 years old or 14 or 16 or 44 or 76.

—

“But the American justice system is fucked up.”

Granted. But if we’re going to talk about the fuck-up-edness of the U.S. legal system, surely we can find a better martyr than a famous rich guy with the best lawyers in the world who drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl, struck a plea deal in order to get off with the lesser charge of “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor” (or statutory rape), and then fled the country when it looked like the plea deal may not be honored? I’m all for Polanski being tried legally and fairly. Over the years, Polanski has repeatedly attempted to appeal the case—a really cool feature of the American legal process he purposefully evaded—but he refuses to appear in court.

Excuse me while I play the world’s tiniest piano, but if the American legal system is broken, the fix is not for rapists to just choose their own adventure (in this case, France).

—

“But his victim has forgiven him”

From Applebaum’s column: “The girl, now 45, has said more than once that she forgives him, that she can live with the memory, that she does not want him to be put back in court or in jail, and that a new trial will hurt her husband and children.”

It’s certainly a relief to hear that Geimer, after three decades and a settled civil suit against Polanski, has moved on from her childhood sexual assault. Of course, a victim’s should always be considered over the course of a trial. At the same time, forgiveness, sympathy, and identification with one’s attacker are fairly common in sexual assault cases, and these sentiments don’t make sexual assault any less damaging—or any more legal. Again, you can argue that Polanski is an example of how the American legal system unduly punishes its criminals, but until you’re willing to free all the nation’s sex offenders and make them promise to just keep their cool until their victims get around to forgiving them, it’s not a very solid argument.

—

“But his victim doesn’t want to have to relive her assault again.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. Samantha Geimer, like many victims of sexual assault, is justified in holding a grudge against the criminal justice system. When a rape victim decides to report her assault to the police, she’s looking at years of intense police, legal, and media scrutiny. She will have to relive her assault over and over again over the course of trial and investigation. She will have her sexual history dredged up and put on display. These are all big deterrents to reporting sexual assault. But while a sexual assault victim may never personally recover from the trauma, the public scrutiny, at least, usually ends with the sentencing.

Unless, of course, your attacker is a famous movie director who refuses to be sentenced, in which case you will be forced to relive your assault: a) every time your attacker attempts to cross another country’s borders; b) every time your attacker releases a new film; c) every time your attacker attempts to have his conviction overturned; d) every time your attacker does anything noteworthy. The fact that Geimer’s childhood sexual assault has haunted her in the press for 30 years is a real tragedy, and one man is responsible for that: Roman Polanski.

It was an odd scene, if only because the implications of this situation are too thorny to be glossed over by a jubilant release story. Since the men were cleared of all charges, the public will likely never know what actually happened during this “incident,” why the woman reported it as a rape, and why she later took it back. For most bystanders, these details are unimportant. Whenever a high-profile rape accusation becomes public knowledge, commentators tend to gravitate to one side of the story, regardless of the outcome of the case. On one side are people who are concerned about the problem of rape. On the other, people who are concerned about the problem of false rape accusations. It shouldn’t have to be that way.

I can’t recall how many times I’ve seen a discussion of a rape accusation devolve into the one side arguing why the accuser should be believed, and the other side arguing that the accuser should be discredited. Another common point of argument I find frustrating—what percentage of rape claims are genuine, and what percentage are false? Most of the time, we, armchair rape analysts, launch into these arguments before we have any actual idea whether a particular person has raped another person. In most cases, we will never know. What we do know, all the time, is that rape is a problem, and false rape accusations are a problem. The meaningless squabbles between the two camps tend to overlook the fact that people concerned about rape and people concerned about fake rape accusations are both fighting against the same thing: rape culture.

Rape culture does not just encourage men to proceed after she says “no.” Rape culture does not simply teach men that a lack of physical resistance is an invitation. Rape culture does not only tell men to assert ownership over whichever female body they desire. Rape culture also tells women not to claim ownership over their own bodies. Rape culture also informs women that they should not desire sex. Rape culture also tells women that saying yes makes them bad women.

Both rape and rape accusations are products of the roles assigned by rape culture. In the traditional seduction scenario, a woman is expected to not desire to have sex, and to only submit after the man has successfully coerced her into submission. When the preferred model for consensual sex looks a hell of a lot like rape, an array of fucked-up scenarios are inevitable: the woman never wanted to fuck the guy, refuses to submit, and is raped; the woman submits to the man’s coercion in order to avoid other negative consequences (like being raped); the woman had desired the sex all along, but must defend her femininity by saying that she had been coerced into sex. Thankfully, a good deal of modern men and women reject these antiquated ideas, but they’re far from being banished from the sexual landscape. Especially when that landscape involves four men, one woman, and freshman year of college.

And yet, even the people who care most about false rape accusations seem to find ways to keep rape culture going strong. In his coverage of the case, Men’s News Daily editor Paul Elam writes:

In what has become a more or less common turn of events, the female Hofstra University student that accused five men, including one classmate, of gang raping her in a school dormitory bathroom has recanted the charges. That’s legal and media speak for admitting she cheapened herself by taking on five men willingly on a men’s room floor and lied about it later out of what little capacity for shame she had.

Elan admits that even if the woman hadn’t accused five men of raping her, she still would have “cheapened herself” by having sex with the men “willingly.” Meanwhile, the four released men in the case carry no such group-sex stigma when they pose triumphantly outside the jailhouse doors. In case you’re interested, it gets worse.

RELATED: Why are people calling the accuser a whore instead of a liar?

According to D.C. police, a sexual assailant known as the “Cuddler” has been terrorizing dorms and townhouses around Georgetown University since January 13, 2008. But when did that other scourge of the Georgetown campus—the suspect’s creepily innocuous nickname—first hit the Hoyas? No one knows for sure. Below, track the moniker’s rise in the campus lexicon. (Suspected “Cuddler” assaults are marked in red).

! January 13, 2008. According to D.C. police officer Helen Andrews, as quoted in Georgetown Voice blog Vox Populi, “The first incident” in the string of sexual assaults “occurred on January 13, 2008 in the 3700 block of R Street, NW.”

* March 4, 2008. University of Maryland’s student newspaper, the Diamondback, attributes two similar sexual assaults near the UMD campus to a “City Cuddler.” Kevin Litten, the Diamondback’s editor-in-chief at the time, sources the nickname to a phone conversation he had with Major Kevin Davis, a commander with the Prince George’s County Police Department. Litten says that Davis called the Diamondback with a tip about a new incident in a series of assaults where a man would enter a female’s residence, lie down next to her, and in some cases, sexually assault her.

“[Davis] called us up, and I recall him saying, ‘Our Cuddler has struck again.’ As soon as I heard him say ‘Cuddler,’ I knew that we were going to be using it in the headline,” says Litten. “I had never heard it around campus before we put it in that headline,” he says. “We expected that we were going to get some criticism for using the name from people who thought it was not appropriate . . . but as soon as I heard the police use the name, I thought, ‘that’s such a perfect descriptor for what this is.’”

Evan Baxter, an officer with the Prince George’s County Police Department, denies that PG County police originated the nickname. “We were not the ones that coined the term, and we’re not particularly fond of the term,” Baxter told me. “My understanding is that it got started by local media.”

! May 16, 2008. According to Officer Andrews, a “second incident occurred on May 16, 2008 in the 2400 block of Huidekoper Place, NW.”

* May 2008. By now, the nickname has hit the Georgetown campus—having either jumped from the University of Maryland attacks or arisen on its own. According to a column in the Georgetown Voice, a group of Georgetown students named their wireless network the “Club Cuddler” in May of 2008 as an homage to the campus assailant.

View Suspected “Georgetown Cuddler” incidents in a larger map

! June 1, 2008. According to Vox Populi, another sexual assault “took place on the 1900 block of 38th Street, and the MPD has identified it as a crime.”

! June 26, 2008. According to Vox Populi, this sexual assault occurred “in the 2400 block of Tunlaw Road NW.”

* Aug. 20, 2008. A Washington City Paper story on local college newspapers commends the Diamondback for its “Cuddler” scoops. Georgetown newspaper the Hoya is also profiled in the piece, which was widely circulated among undergraduate journos.

! Sept. 5, 2008. According to a Georgetown campus alert: “during the overnight hours of Friday, September 5, an unknown male entered her bedroom, got into her bed, and put his arm around her. She awoke and got out of the bed. The suspect then left her room and exited the apartment.”

! Sept. 25, 2008. According to a Georgetown campus alert: “an unknown hispanic male entered [the victim's] apartment through an unlocked and ajar door. The suspect took a blanket from a bedroom and put it on top of the complainant, who was sleeping on the couch. He then laid on top of her. The complainant screamed and the suspect immediately left the premises.”

* Oct. 7, 2008. The nickname hits Georgetown newspaper the Hoya’s Web site, via the comments section. On a news report on the sexual assaults, a commenter writes, “Hall Directors and university officials KNOW about the legend of the creepy cuddler, and yet they do absolutly nothing to ensure the safety and well being of resident after resident over the years.”

* Oct. 28, 2009. The Georgetown Voice employs the “Cuddler” nickname for the first time, in a post on Vox Populi. In the same post, writer Will Sommer kicks around ideas for a more appropriate moniker: “The Voice was bandying around the Crapist (cuddle/rapist) earlier, and while accurate, that’s too close to grapist. Ideas?”

* Oct. 31, 2008. A “Cuddler” Halloween. At least one Georgetown student fashions a costume based upon the sexual assailant. Reports of the disguise’s particulars range from the literal—pajamas, pillow, and blanket for laying on people—to the lazy—a plain, white T-shirt marked “GEORGETOWN CUDDLER.” Anna Bank, who interviewed one “Cuddler” costumer for the Georgetown Voice, says that the “Cuddler” costumes raised a red flag for her. “To go through the process of making a costume—even a really simple one—indicates that you’re putting time and effort into belittling and disrespecting a thing that happened to people,” she says. In the interview, Bank says that the student “said something about how he hoped that nobody who was a victim of the cuddling actually saw his costume, because he thought that that might be upsetting,” she says. “I thought that was weird, because if you’re actually aware that a victim might see the costume, maybe you shouldn’t wear it?”

! Jan. 30, 2009. According to a Georgetown campus alert: “[A] student living in the 1200 Block of 35th Street was awakened to find an unknown male in her bed. The suspect left the bed and headed for the bedroom door as the complainant asked, ‘Who is that?’ The suspect did not respond and left the residence.”

* Feb. 17, 2009. The Sexist suggests alternate nicknames for the “Cuddler,” including the “Georgetown Blanketlayer,” the “Georgetown Entrygainer,” and the “Georgetown Rapist.”

! Feb. 26, 2009. According to a Georgetown campus alert: “an unidentified male entered a student’s residence in the 3400 Block of N Street by an unknown means. The suspect crawled into the complainant’s bed while she was asleep. She was startled awake. The suspect subsequently left the bedroom and exited the residence by the front door.”

* Feb 28, 2009. The “Georgetown Cuddler” jumps on the Twitter bandwagon. The first Tweet from @thegtowncuddler:

! March 18, 2009. According to a Georgetown campus alert: “At approximately 4:20 a.m. on Wednesday, March 18, 2009, an unidentified male entered a student’s residence in the 3300 Block of Prospect Street by an unknown means. The suspect lay down on the couch with the student, at which time she was startled awake. The suspect subsequently left the residence.”

* April 1, 2009. The Hoya prints a mock interview with the suspect in its April Fools Issue called “Georgetown Cuddler: Why I Do It.” In the piece, the “Cuddler” character said, “A girl can never reject you when she’s comatose. As I see it, my success rate is 100 percent.”

* April 9, 2009. The Washington Post rejects a diorama submitted to its annual “Peeps Show” contest inspired by the sexual assault suspect. Peeps Show judge Dan Zak explained why the entry didn’t make the cut: “It was removed at the last minute after editors raised a red flag out of—as Robert Gibbs would say—an “abundance of caution.” We apologized profusely to the dioramist, and she was very understanding.” The diorama, entitled “Peeping leads to cuddling,” was created by Annette Lee, and featured a sunglasses-wearing Marshmallow Peep “Cuddler,” a sleeping Lavender Peep Bunny victim, and a Twilight film poster.

* April 2009. The Georgetown Heckler, a campus humor magazine, publishes a satirical piece on the phenomenon entitled, “Mysterious Georgetown Coddler Leaves Students Shaken, Pampered.” “Obviously, sexual assault itself is not funny,” Heckler editor Jack Stuef wrote in an e-mail. “It’s just a pretty good pun that then derives humor from the weird situation and the nature of some students around here who are not exactly self-dependent.”

* April 24, 2009. The Hoya uses the “Cuddler” in a news story for the first time, in an investigative report dating potential“Cuddler” attacks back to 2005. The paper employs the nickname only once in a story of 1,350 words. Hoya editor-in-chief Kevin Barber says that the question of when to drop the “Cuddler” preceded him. “For a while before I became the editor, the question of whether to acknowledge the use of the nickname was up in the air,” he wrote in an e-mail.” In the end, my decision to mention the nickname in the April 24 story was motivated by my belief that we had an obligation to acknowledge the use of it by members of the campus community—the use of that term is extremely widespread here at Georgetown.”

! July 25, 2009. According to an MPD report recovered by Vox Populi: “[The victim] was in her bed when an unknown subject entered her room, disrobed from the waist down, leaving his shoes on and climbed into the bed with her ad hugged her. [The victim] never look at [the suspect] because she assumed that it was her male friend that frequents her home. . . . [She] did not realize until an hour or so later that [the man]was not a friend of hers when he attempted to touch [her] while climbing on top of her placing his penis on her inner thigh. [The victim] further states that her male friend is gay so once [the man] started to touch her she instantly knew that it was not her friend in the bed with her.”

* July 30, 2009. The Georgetown Voice publishes a hoax letter from a man claiming to know the true identity of the “Georgetown Cuddler”: University President John DeGioia.

! Aug. 30, 2009. According to a Georgetown campus alert: “On Sunday, August 30, 2009 at approximately 6:30 a.m., an unidentified male entered a student’s residence in the 1200 Block of 33rd Street, NW, and lay down on the couch with her. The complainant was startled awake, at which time she told the suspect to leave, which he subsequently did.”

! Sept. 1, 2009. According to a Georgetown campus alert: “On Tuesday, September 1, 2009, at approximately 4:20 a.m., an unidentified male entered the residence of a student in Village A through a ground floor window. The suspect climbed into the bed of the complainant while she slept. The suspect began to sexually assault the complainant, whereupon she screamed and the suspect left the residence through the front door, fleeing in an unknown direction.”

* Sept. 1, 2009. Women’s blog Jezebel announces that the “man known only as the ‘Georgetown Cuddler’” is officially “even creepier than Edward Cullen,” the stalking-prone vampire hero of the Twilight series.

* Sept. 2, 2009. Feminist blog Feministing tackles the nickname, saying that its continued use “excuses the attacker, dismisses violence as acceptable, and condescends to survivors.”

* Sept 3, 2009. The “Cuddler” hits A1 of the Washington Post—almost. Reporter Paul Duggan refrains from printing the nickname until after the jump, when the story delves into street interviews with Georgetown students. Their quotes are peppered with “Cuddler.”

“Oh, yeah, ‘the Georgetown Cuddler,’ ” said Clara Zabludowsky, a 21-year-old senior, invoking the commonly used nickname for the assailant or assailants — a moniker that police say is inappropriately cute given the nature of the crimes.

Said Eugenia Sosa, also 21 and a senior: “For April Fools’ Day, my friends knew I’d been thinking about it, so one of my guy friends was going to sneak into my bedroom and cuddle me. That’s how it’s being taken, I think — like it’s not that serious.”

. . . Tuesday’s incident occurred just four days after [Katherine] Everitt moved to Georgetown from her home in Los Angeles. “Before I came, I heard about ‘the Cuddler,’ ” she said. “It sounded like a joke, like some guy comes in and lays down next to you or whatever. . . . Now the whole reality of it comes into effect, and you don’t know if it’s a student or who it is.”

* Sept. 4, 2009. Gawker compares the widely differing descriptions of the suspect to confused racial stereotyping of President Barack Obama.

* Sept. 4, 2009. Georgetown University finally invokes “Cuddler”—in a campus-wide letter telling students not to use the word “Cuddler.” “Descriptions that refer to some suspects as a ‘cuddler’ can detract from the serious nature of these incidents,” the letter read.

* Sept. 16, 2009. Staffers from the Voice discuss the use of the nickname in campus media—and why replacement names like the “Crapist” have failed to catch on.

Photo by NCinDC

On Sept. 4, Georgetown University told its students to stop calling him “The Cuddler.”

Because cuddle is far too soft a description for what the suspect does. In a typical attack, a man enters a student’s residence through an unlocked window or door, lies down next to her, and attempts to sexually assault her. He’s been accused of everything from laying a blanket atop his victim to placing his penis on his victim’s thigh. According to D.C. Police, the episodes span a 20-month period stretching back to January 2008.

Despite the disturbing MO, “Georgetown Cuddler” persists as an on-campus nickname for this criminal. When two assaults were reported days before the start of the fall semester, the university attempted to put an end to the moniker. “Descriptions that refer to some suspects as a ‘cuddler’ can detract from the serious nature of these incidents,” a letter to students read.

Beyond the warning against the popular nickname, Georgetown’s campus alert was conspicuously short on descriptors. “As you may know, our campus and surrounding neighborhoods have experienced incidents over the past year, and several in the past week,” the university hedged. Students who may not know about the history of sexual assaults around campus—including incoming freshmen—were afforded no further elaboration on the nature of the “incidents.”

Molly Redden, who has covered the beat for campus publication the Georgetown Voice, recognized the university’s decision to invoke the nickname even as it denounced its use. “Referring to the suspect as ‘The Cuddler’ does detract from how serious the incidents are,” says Redden. “At the same time, I wouldn’t be surprised if the university used the nickname as an indicator of which specific crimes they’re actually referring to.”

While administrators view “Georgetown Cuddler” as an inaccurate and inappropriate nickname, it provides students a helpful—even necessary—shorthand for covering an ongoing campus safety risk. Georgetown’s letter denouncing the nickname was the school’s most transparent response to the string of attacks to date. But the Georgetown Voice has been publishing the nickname for nearly a year—and alerting students to the school’s sexual assault problem each time the “Cuddler” is invoked.

“When I write something that’s ‘Cuddler’ related, it gets more attention on campus,” says Voice projects editor Will Sommer. “I would never make it seem as though something is a ‘Cuddler’ attack when it isn’t. But when you associate the ‘Cuddler’ thing, it lends a narrative to it.” That narrative, Sommer says, has been missing from Georgetown University’s previous response to the assaults—a series of “Public Safety Alerts” (PSAs) which fail to address the incidents as a campus trend.

Sommer says he was likely responsible for debuting “The Cuddler” in campus media last fall, in a post on Voice blog Vox Populi. Looking back on the coverage, Sommer says, “I thought, Oh my God—did I come up with the Cuddler? What a disaster. But if you look at the post, you can see that I’m not making clear what ‘Cuddler’ even means. By that point, it looks like it requires no explanation.” By the time the term migrated from the student body to the student press, it had already inspired editorial backlash. In his inaugural post referencing the “Cuddler,” Sommer suggested that Georgetown stop referencing the “Cuddler.” “Given the seriousness/scariness of the Cuddler’s attacks, we need to get this guy a new nickname,” he wrote. “‘The Cuddler’ just sounds way too sweet, like he’s a child scared of the dark and in need of affection.”

Over the next year, Voice staffers continued to rally against the nickname’s use—while marking off suspected assault locations on its Google map, “Suspected ‘Georgetown Cuddler’ Incidents.” In November 2008, the Voice published a piece debating the appropriateness of Cuddler-based jokes which included an interview with a student who dressed as the “Cuddler” for Halloween. In February, Redden lamented the term’s stickiness, writing, “I can’t keep using quotes around ‘Cuddler’ to try to mollify my discomfort in using the term forever!”

Possible alternatives to the “Cuddler” have been discussed. “We talk about it a lot. Everyone wants a different name, but we can’t find something good,” says Sommer. “The ‘Cuddler’ is a very catchy thing.” So far, Voice staffers have failed to alight on a viable substitute for the “Cuddler.” “We came up with ‘Cuddle-Rapist,’” says Sommer. “Doesn’t really roll off the tongue, does it?” Even “The Cuddler” has proven more sensitive than some alternatives. “We’ve tried ‘crapist,’ but it sounds too much like the people who make pastries,” says Juliana Brint, the editor of Vox Populi. “There really are no good nicknames.”

Even bad nicknames can produce good PR. “The discussion about the ‘Cuddler’ nickname has made people more aware,” says Sommer. “When someone dresses as the ‘Cuddler’ for Halloween, it makes people think about the fact that there are Cuddler victims out there who could see that costume. So it’s really given a lot of attention to the issue.” Despite the potential positives, other campus outlets have declined to devote much ink to the nickname. The Hoya, Georgetown’s student newspaper, first mentioned the name “Cuddler” in its 2009 April Fools issue, and again in an April 24 investigative report. In an e-mail, Hoya editor Kevin Barber said that Hoya staffers “always limit our use of the term to reference…the campus community’s widespread use of the phrase to describe these sorts of incidents.”

Despite its liberal use of the “Cuddler,” the Voice takes care to clarify the seriousness of each sexual assault incident it reports. It’s also criticized Georgetown University for employing other euphemisms in its reports on the attacks. Georgetown’s PSA alerting students to two similar incidents in April 2008 classified the offenses as “burglaries” instead of sexual assaults, even though one victim “awakened to find an unknown male in her bed.” In the most recent incident, the university PSA described a sexual assault against a student but failed to provide additional details. “I was a little irritated that, instead of giving details about the digital penetration, the university said that the suspect ‘began sexually assaulting her,’” says Brint. “That’s kind of a meaningless phrase. It didn’t indicate at all how serious the incident actually was. I do think that’s problematic.”

Georgetown says its PSAs announcing the sexual assaults were “based on information that is reported to the Department of Public Safety,” and that the assault reports were supplemented by the Sept. 4 letter “underscoring the need for students to remain vigilant.”

Brint says that she was “happy” to see the university finally address the incidents directly and to discourage the use of the nickname on campus. That doesn’t mean that she’s going to stop using it. “My guess is that it’s going to persist,” she says. “It’s hard to get these things out of the vernacular.” In lieu of a less offensive moniker, Brint says the Voice has adjusted how it will refer to the offender. “We’ve been trying to minimize as much as possible our use of that term,” she says. “But we will include it once, for clarification’s sake.”

RELATED: A “Georgetown Cuddler” Timeline: How the sexual assault nickname became a Georgetown institution.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The Catholic University of America (CUA) this summer revised its student rules to clarify that the school condemns sexual assault more strongly than consensual sex. The change to the policy, which became official July 27, comes in the aftermath of litigation questioning the propriety and effectiveness of the university’s longtime regulations.

Prior to the change, the CUA campus code performed an awkward lumping operation when it came to sex: Its sexual misconduct clause outlawed “physical conduct of a sexual nature that is unwanted by either party and/or that is disruptive to the university community, such as any sexual expression that is inconsistent with the teaching and moral values of the Catholic church.”

The new rules are all about distinctions. The university has tossed the “Sexual Misconduct” clause in favor of one that clearly differentiates between consensual “Sexual Relationships,” which it calls “inconsistent” with the religious nature of the university, and “Sexual Assault,” which is “unacceptable behavior, will not be tolerated, and will be adjudicated to the fullest extent afforded to the university.” According to CUA’s new policy, prohibited “sexual relationships” include “sexual acts of any kind outside the confines of marriage.” (Less genitally-inclined displays of disruption, like men kissing, are still undefined.) Prohibited “sexual assault” is defined more progressively: “sexual contact without meaningful, explicit, ongoing consent.”

The school’s administration quietly published the revision in its online Code of Student Conduct last month, noting only that its “sexual offenses section [was] strengthened to clearly articulate unacceptable behavior.” CUA did not return a request for comment.

Why has CUA struggled to nail the wording on its sexual assault policy? While other schools strive to protect their students from predators and themselves from lawsuits, CUA has to juggle a third consideration: protecting its relationship with the Vatican.

As the national university of the Roman Catholic Church, CUA earns points with the Pope by outlawing sex among its students, on-campus and off. Keeping undergraduates’ hands to themselves is easier said than done, but the Holy See doesn’t come knocking for evidence of enforcement. Fucking in CUA dorm rooms is common, but the infraction rarely—if ever—rises to administrative review. During the 2006-2007 school year—the only year the university has reported figures on the infraction—CUA recorded zero violations.

Enforcing a “sexual assault” policy, on the other hand, is required under U.S. law. According to university watchdog group Security on Campus, Title IX “prohibits sexual harassment of college and university students whether the harasser is an employee or another student,” as sexual assault is considered “an extreme form of sexual harassment”—and qualifies as gender discrimination.

By creating a clear distinction between the two infractions—sex, which is unenforceable, and sexual assault, which must be strictly enforced—CUA may begin to move past the legal and moral mess that has marked its sex policies for years.

The controversy over those policies came to a head earlier this year, when two students involved in a contested sexual assault incident on the CUA campus later sued the university (Screw U, 5/7/09). The incident involved a female CUA student, a male CUA student, and three of his high school buddies, all of whom engaged in one very visible violation of the sexual misconduct policy in the spring of 2008: a late-night, open-door, thoroughly witnessed group-sex session in a CUA dormitory. The female student later reported the incident as a sexual assault; the male student, who was expelled, maintained that the incident was consensual. Both students cited Title IX in their complaints against the university. The female student alleged the university acted with “deliberate indifference” to her sexual assault claim; the male student claimed that the sex policy was administered inconsistently. (Both suits have since been settled out of court.)

Here’s where the university’s former sex policies failed. The boy’s suit claims that the university failed to give him a “fair and impartial disciplinary hearing” to make his case that the incident was consensual. As a result, the suit alleged, CUA effectively expelled him over a couple of lesser infractions—engaging in oral sex and consuming alcohol—while his female accuser received no punishment for the same offenses. In order to prove that he was unduly punished for his maleness, the boy’s lawyers invoked a CUA celebrity: Antonella Barba, a pop singer who made national news when she competed in the sixth season of American Idol in 2007.

At the height of her American Idol exposure, Barba was a CUA undergraduate. During the course of the competition, photographs of Barba in various stages of Catholic shame surfaced on the Internet. Most of the photos—like the one of her posing in a wet T-shirt and thong next to the World War II Memorial—are fit for Maxim but not necessarily prohibited by catechism. One photo, however, allegedly shows Barba—or a look-alike—performing oral sex on a man. CUA’s response to the matter amounted to an expression of sympathy for Barba and her family. She graduated from the university in 2008.

Even though the boy was expelled over a much more serious offense—allegedly engaging in oral sex without his sex partner’s consent—his lawsuit still built his discrimination case upon CUA’s failure to enforce the campus’s many consensual sexual infractions. The boy’s lawyers demanded that CUA deliver “all documents relating to any investigation, determination, discussions, complaints discipline, or the like concerning Antonella Barba, including, but not limited to, all documents relating to your decision not to expel her.” In most sexual assault policies, the differences between the boy’s case and Barba’s would be glaring. At CUA, the infractions were hardly discrete. According to the old policy, both instances of sexual misconduct were outlawed in the very same sentence, and no further definition of consent was provided.

CUA’s revised sexual assault policy helps to clarify the importance of that little nuance between the cases—consent. The university’s new sexual assault policy still prohibits premarital sex, but it also clearly acknowledges the importance of consent in these forbidden relationships. The separation of sex and assault will help the university prove that it is not “deliberately indifferent” to the possibility of on-campus assault—even as it deliberately avoids policing the consensual stuff. Previously, CUA prefaced its sexual assault policy with the following proposed strategy, which urged both victim and perpetrator to remain chaste: “The optimal approach and most appropriate solution to this issue is for all persons to develop and live by a value system that respects other persons’ bodily integrity and the sacredness of human sexuality.”

By eliminating that “solution,” CUA has opened its sexual assault policy to those victims who may have strayed from the catechism, consensually, in the past. The definition will both help the university discipline sexual assault offenders and confine its judgment on consensual dorm-fuckers to the religious realm.

Illustration by Doug Boehm

Meanwhile, back home, Jamie Foxx’s latest single, “Blame it (On the Alcohol),” is currently No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. Its video, featuring Ron Howard, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Samuel L. Jackson, enjoys a heavy rotation on U.S. MTV—despite an equally frothy date-rape theme. The song details Foxx’s pursuit of an increasingly drunk lady. The track also features T. Pain, who chimes through his hallmark vocoder: “Couple more shots you open up like a book.” The song is, essentially, an attempted date rape by a movie star and a dude who sounds like a robot:

Who is allowed to make light of rape?

Foxx, an Academy Award–winning actor and recording artist, recently suggested that 16-year-old Miley Cyrus “make a sex tape and grow up.” Palmer, frontwoman for cabaret rock outfit the Dresden Dolls, explains on her blog that she has experienced both rape (at age 20) and abortion (at age 17). “[I] could try to win points by talking about [them],” Palmer writes, “but i actually DON’T believe those experiences should lend me any credibility.”

They don’t. Rape, along with infant death and the Holocaust, is one of comedy’s most taboo targets. Blogger and humorist Jon Wellington refers to rape as the comedian’s “Mordor.” Despite the stricture, popular culture will accept rape jokes when they’re delivered in the right context—and potential rapists are often granted more room to kid than potential (and actual) victims.

Threat level LOW: People Stereotypically Identified as Potential Date-Rapists
Includes: gangsta rappers, frat members

When A Tribe Called Quest released “The Infamous Date Rape,” in 1992, the New York Times decried the song as “just plain misogynistic.” Fifteen years of gangsta rap later, the track’s date-rape treatment has been reshelved as a smart dissection of misogyny itself. It’s also full of jokes. Shortly after the track condemns nonconsensual sex—“I don’t wanna bone you that much/That I would go for the unforbidden touch”—it presumes that the woman doesn’t want to bone only because she’s currently bleeding out of her vagina. “When you’re done with the pads can you come check me,” Q-Tip taunts.

Asher Roth, a white rapper from Morrisville, Pa., also delivers a soft anti-rape blow, in his ode to undergraduate excess, “I Love College.” On its surface, “I Love College” condemns nonconsensual sex (“don’t have sex if she’s too gone”). So why would a commenter on a Village Voice article about Roth call his first album “nothing more than a soundtrack for date rape”?

Roth, like Q-Tip, takes pains to establish his masculinity despite his distaste for passed-out sex. At the beginning of the song’s video, Roth awakens on a fraternity house couch with a half-naked girl passed out on his lap. He doesn’t date-rape her: He just pushes her off onto the floor and starts drinking again. Later, when the party is in full swing, Roth boasts that he drank the party house dry as he “danced my face off and had this one girl completely naked.” He doesn’t date-rape her: He just uses her naked body to boost his cred.

Roth’s song sets limits for consensual sex—don’t do her if “she’s too gone”—while simultaneously urging college students to push those limits by getting wasted and getting it on—when she’s juuuust gone enough. In a fraternity house full of people partying naked until all the booze is gone, “she’s too gone” might start to seem pretty relative.

Roth is allowed to joke because the standard for frat-boy discourse on rape—as with gangsta rap—is so low. Writes one commenter on feminist blog Feministe: “I honestly didn’t expect that much because date rape is usually so fucking hilarious to frat boys.”

Threat level GUARDED: People Not Stereotypically Identified as Date-Rapists
Includes: Jamie Foxx, women

Foxx hasn’t received any congratulations from feminist commentators regarding “Blame It (On the Alcohol)”; the nonconsensual undertones of Foxx’s song have simply been ignored in favor of continuous radio rotation. Jody Hill, who wrote and directed the Seth Rogen mall-cop vehicle Observe and Report, wasn’t let off the hook so easily. While Foxx’s song justifies its date-rape-y tone by simply denying the woman’s protestations, Hill’s film goes one step further—justifying its date rape joke by reserving the punch line for the female victim.

In an interview, Rogen explained:

When we’re having sex and she’s unconscious like you can literally feel the audience thinking, like, how the fuck are they going to make this okay? Like, what can possibly be said or done that I’m not going to walk out of the movie theater in the next thirty seconds? . . . And then she says, like, the one thing that makes it all okay: “Why are you stopping, motherfucker?”

In the film, the victim not only consents—she consents hilariously, with a line that relieves the hero of the charge of “date rape” status and relieves the audience of its voyeuristic guilt with a big laugh (never mind that she was actually unconscious). Date rape jokes are more difficult to slip into mainstream films than they are in the context of rap, which is why Hill and Rogen took pains to brand their film as desperately “edgy.” Still, writers can get a pass when they write the jokes for women.

Threat Level ELEVATED:
Includes: Don Imus

Don Imus should never make a joke about date rape.

Threat level SEVERE: Actual Victims of Sexual Assault
Includes: Dresden Dolls singer Amanda Palmer, former Jezebel blogger Moe Tkacik

It makes sense to be wary of women telling rape jokes written by men. But if rape jokes are considered so offensive because they run the risk of triggering the experience of an actual victim, how do we respond when the actual victim is telling the joke?

Last week, the Guardian shamed former Jezebel blogger Moe Tkacik for not reporting her college date rape to the police—and being sarcastic. “I had better things to do,” Tkacik once said of the assault. “Like drinking more.” When Tkacik first spoke out about her date rape on Jezebel, she also laced the experience with humor, writing: “When he, after about a half hour of fooling around, put on a condom I was like, ‘Whooooah, what are you doing?’ But I’d had two forties and I kept drifting in and out of consciousness—my tolerance, obviously, wasn’t what it is today—and I woke up to find him sticking it in.”

Never mind that a college sophomore may actually have better things to do than report a crime with little evidence and no witnesses, one that will enter her name and sexual experiences into the public record and possibly lead to a years-long legal battle: It was a joke. Critics—like women’s studies scholar Linda Hirshman and Daily Show creator Lizz Winstead—who didn’t find Tkacik’s joke funny argued that, as a victim of rape, she should know to speak responsibly on the issue of sexual assault. Feminism has criticized hip-hop, frat houses, and filmmakers for their own light treatment of rape, so it would make sense for the movement to shut out rape jokes from its own discourse, too. But the critics again fail to catch the context of the joke. Bloggers, like rappers, always have their tongues firmly in cheek. Feminist bloggers, then, are held to the highest standard—they must navigate between the sobriety of the women’s movement and the irony of the Internet.

Blogs have afforded individual women the opportunity to speak frankly and publicly about an issue too often relegated to fiction—their own sexual assaults. By holding sexual assault victims to a higher standard of seriousness, we’re doing something worse than blaming the victims: We’re stripping them of their right to contextualize their rape on their own terms. As Palmer wrote in defense of “Oasis,” (on her blog, naturally): “Humor is one of the strongest weapons that human beings have against suffering, death and fear.”

BONUS: A Hierarchy of Date Rape Jams (I made a chart!)

This week, I wrote a cover story for the paper on the sex life at the Catholic University of America, the official U.S. university of the Catholic Church. The Washington, D.C. school bans all behavior that is “inconsistent with the teaching and moral values of the Catholic Church”—including premarital sex, condom use, masturbation, and sexual assault.

Every year, Catholic’s coeds manage to successfully compromise the university policies—and their own chastity—within the school’s residence halls (and, according to one student, in the student center). The difficulty, for students and administrators, is acknowledging that sex happens. Consistent with Catholic tradition, sex isn’t sex at the Catholic University of America if nobody knows about it.

You can pick up the story on newsstands tomorrow.

Illustration by Doug Boehm

In this week’s friendly neighborhood chat, Sady of Tiger Beatdown and I hang up our cardigans, lock the door so Mr. McFeely can’t come in, and talk about something that’s been on our mind for a while: those rapey filmmakers who rape you again, in the movie theater. Hey, kids. It’s okay. It’s not your fault. And you don’t have to let Seth Rogen touch you in that way ever again.

SADY: good afternoon or evening!

AMANDA: any time is a good time for high-brow discussion on the art of raping women on film

SADY: ha, yes! i myself have been spectacularly dour and serious on the subject as of late. i think i’m going to stop posting words and just type frowny faces from now on. seth rogen, :(. it’s funny, because i think that telling stories about rape from the perspective of ladies who’ve lived through it can be totally important, you know?

AMANDA: are there any rape scenes in movies that you think are important? i think the scene in Boys Don’t Cry was important.

SADY: yeah, that one was huge. it was intense and it was scary and it totally centered Brandon Teena and the fact that the rape was a crime about power and gender and the fact that they viewed him as “really” a woman and wanted to drive that home through forced sex. it’s funny but i think a lot of the more interesting rape scenes i’ve seen have been in TV. Mad Men—Joan gets raped, and it’s the same thing, it’s about the fact that her boyfriend is threatened by her power and her sexuality and wants to take that away from her. I guess what I’m saying is that you can have rape in your movie and I will NOT EVEN YELL AT YOU, if it’s a story about sexual assault and what that means and what it does to a person. not something that uses sexual assault to add spice or shock value or whatever. because the thing about rape: once that shit happens, you have to LIVE with it. it’s not a thing that you can just resolve with some punching or with a laugh line or whatever.

AMANDA: yeah, and I think it’s an interesting dynamic when it happens that way—particularly when the rape is committed by the protagonist, as in Observe and Report (ostensibly). because, really, rape is actually a pretty common thing to happen to a woman, and a lot of times the people who commit them are otherwise normal seeming friends, etc.—people who might even be protagonists in motion pictures!

SADY: Ha! Indeed! I think the thing about “Observe & Report” style rape, which is not even that different from your usual how-do-we-make-it-clear-this-guy-is-a-villain-oh-I-know-raping move, is that in each case it’s kind of about deploying rape as your “edgy” move. Oh, look, rape, BUT SHE LIKES IT, isn’t that crazy? Oh, an incredibly brutal rape, LOOK HOW BRUTAL THIS RAPING IS, isn’t that crazy?

For the purpose of arousing or gratifying the sexual desire of the person or another person, intentionally propels any dangerous substance at a victim who does not consent thereto. . . . As used in this section, “dangerous substance” means blood, urine, semen or feces.

The bill was prompted by “an incident last June when a man threw his semen on a mother in a Portland area Target store. Her little girl saw it first.” The man in that case was convicted of plain ‘ol assault.

According to The Oregonian’s Michelle Cole, Rep. Chris Garrett, who sponsored the bill, was a bit squeamish when the semen bill hit the floor:

“Good bill. I urge your aye vote,” Rep. Chris Garrett, D-Lake Oswego, said Tuesday about House Bill 2478.

Any closing remarks?

“No,” Garrett said firmly.

Like many gross and unexplainable offenses, the semen throwing thing has been categorized as “part of a gang initiation rituals.”

Fox D.C. creepily frames the initiative by saying it will “preserve a woman’s dignity and collect the necessary evidence.” I’m unclear as to how and where most hospitals treat victims of sexual violence, but private rooms and professional medical personnel sound like they should be standard procedure to me. You should be placed in a private room with a professional anytime a medic is inspecting your genitals. Language about “preserving a woman’s dignity” makes these common-sense medical necessities seem like amenities to help women cope with their shame.

Last month, the Washington Post Magazine printed an “XX Files” essay by Wanda Fleming. In “Suspended Disbelief,” Fleming wrote about struggling with the news that a friend’s husband had been accused of sexually assaulting a young girl. The essay’s sub-head reads, “Guilty or not, it’s a tragedy.” After a correction to the piece was published in Sunday’s magazine, the “or not” scenario seems a lot less likely.

Writes editor Tom Shroder:

The column had factual errors, and editors in the Magazine, including me, failed to catch them. The author wrote that the man had been talked into accepting a plea agreement, and implied that there had been only one accuser. In fact, the man had turned down the plea offer, and had been tried and convicted. Also, more than one girl made accusations. The inescapable conclusion is that the man’s guilt was not as ambiguous as presented. No names were used, but the families of the victims only too readily recognized the circumstances and were understandably upset by the implication of the story.

The correction, as appended to the piece online, seems like it could be an honest mistake: “This column incorrectly indicated that a man accused of molesting a child had pleaded guilty as part of a plea agreement. He was found guilty in a bench trial.” A letter from the victim’s grandmother, also published in Sunday’s edition, is far more revealing. She writes:

[The article's author] did the right thing when she instinctively shielded her daughter from a convicted child molester. Even though the “facts” she reports are far from accurate, they provide sufficient detail for the case to be recognized by those of us affected by it. Denial may well be a survival tool for the molester’s wife and sons. However, the families of the children molested by this man could not then, and can not now, afford denial.

These parents listened with growing horror when their daughters told what happened while watching movies with this trusted family friend and his children. They berated themselves over and over again for being so gullible—why did they not suspect the repeated invitations for movie afternoons? They saw their reputation and credibility destroyed by friends of this “affable” seeming man. [The author should] please tell her daughter that not all bad guys look like bad guys!

I am the proud grandmother of one of the young girls who had the courage to tell her story to detectives and social workers; to stand alone, without the comfort of a parent, in front of a grand jury; and, in a crowded court-room to testify and be cross-examined in the presence of the man who molested her. This man was convicted.

I understand why the molester and his wife wanted this story written. I do not understand why the Post saw fit to print it. It can only reopen barely healed wounds.

Fleming’s piece, at first glance, offers a compelling insight into what happens when an old friend is branded a monster. In light of the piece’s factual inaccuracies, however, the author comes off as callous to the molester’s victims—young girls who spoke out about being sexually abused, only to be discredited in the Washington Post.

Take this mention of one victim:

For a moment, it looks like her husband might be exonerated. A rumor swirls that the child has expressed sorrow for him and his family. But although the rumor proves true, it comes to nothing.

An 8-year-old molestation victim apologizing to her molester is not an alibi for your friend. It’s another symptom of what he did to her.

Or this one:

“Do you think she’ll ever recant?” I ask. “Maybe when she’s older?”

A fair question from a friend of an accused molester. But one that seems a lot less fair when you know that “she” is actually “they.” Do you think all the victims will recant, maybe when they’re older? Here is where reasonable doubt turns to conspiracy theory.

How about this final mention of the molester, after he returns from prison: “the accused comes to pick up his wife.”

But he’s not “the accused.” He’s not even “the guy who took the plea bargain.” He’s “the convicted.” His reputation hasn’t just been tarnished by rumor and accusation—it’s been confirmed by the courts. Now, it’s not just Fleming’s friend whose reputation has been tainted. The young victims, like so many victims of sexual assault, have also had their dignity dragged through the mud.

Photo by decade null.

Cuddler, eh? That’s a pretty good nickname for a villain who holds damsels hostage, thwarts heroes, etc. (Redden credits the UMD Diamondback with first coining the name). As a real threat to a community, though, it’s a bit of a misnomer. Oh yes, the Cuddler does more than cuddle. He also:

a) gains “entry to [a female victim's] residence by unknown means”

b) takes “a blanket from a bedroom,” lays it “on top of the complainant,” then lays himself “on top of her.” [Incidentally, Cuddler, if you're reading, this is my number one greatest fear].

c) attempts to rape women (with varying success).

Aren’t there other, more appropriate nicknames we could use to describe this menace? I submit:

a) The Georgetown Entry-Gainer

b) The Georgetown Blanketlayer

c) The Georgetown Rapist

CORRECTION: This post originally credited the Vox Populi post to Will Sommer instead of its author, Molly Redden. What can I say, I like them both.

Monday, Jan. 5, 2009 (that’s today), 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
The CommonWealth Pub, 1400 Irving Street NW, Washington, D.C.

YWTF says that the Stand Up project aims to encourage victims of sexual assault to report the crimes, and to encourage D.C. organizations to make that process as easy as possible. Cheers to that!

If you have information on the crime, call Crime Solvers at (800) 673-2777.

In the strangest allegation, the suit accuses photo boss Gresham of having “purchased panties with a MPD insignia and provided them to the females in his office.” In the most violent, the lawsuit alleges Gresham “hit [Gilkey] on the top of her head with a telephone receiver so hard she bled because [Gilkey] made a disapproving face and mouthed disapproving words when she witnessed Defendant Gresham lying to his wife while he spoke to her on the telephone.”

The suit accuses Gresham and the District of Columbia of “sex harassment,” creating a “hostile work environment,” “intentional infliction of emotional distress,” and “retaliation.” The District of Columbia is also accused of “negligent training and supervision.” The suit alleges that “MPD knew about Defendant Gresham’s proclivities as a sexual predator, was informed of Defendant Gresham’s actions towards Plaintiff, and failed to take appropriate remedial actions against Defendant Gresham.” The complaint requests damages for “physical and emotional distress” and asks that Gresham be removed from his post.

Gresham picked up the phone at MPD’s photo lab yesterday. When asked about the case, Gresham said he hadn’t heard anything about the lawsuit. “I have no comment, and don’t know anything about [the allegations],” Gresham said.

Gilkey’s attorney, Ted J. Williams, previously represented MPD employee Tina Hall-Johnson in another sexual harassment case against Gresham and D.C., which the city settled in 2001. When asked about the new case against Gresham, Williams said, “I find it shocking that the Metropolitan Police Department would continue to employ this person, who clearly is a sexual predator and harasser and a wart, knowing what he had done to one employee. Also of concern is they were on notice of the actions of this man, and there is absolutely nothing that we’ve seen to show that they’ve taken any appropriate action.”

According to the complaint, Gresham’s alleged verbal harassment began shortly after Gilkey was hired on as an MPD lab technician in June of 1994. Gresham, Gilkey’s superior, is accused of commenting that Gilkey “had big full breasts” and “walked like she had good pussy.” Gilkey also alleges that Gresham told her “he would give her money if she would permit him to lick her pussy” and that “if he gave her his penis she would be wearing a mattress on her back.” According to the complaint, Gresham made many of these comments while he “licked his tongue” or “while touching his penis. Gresham is also accused of introducing a “peter meter” in the office, a term the complaint does not explain.

The complaint also accuses Gresham of several instances of physical harassment:

While in the dark room, Defendant Gresham would walk behind the Plaintiff and touch her body with his erect penis. Defendant Gresham on one occasion grabbed the Plaintiff’s breast and told the Plaintiff that if she informed anyone he would make it hard for her. Defendant Gresham repeatedly showed Plaintiff pornographic pictures and pictures of nude women on beaches. Plaintiff informed Defendant Gresham over and over that his actions were unwanted and asked him to stop.

While MPD was investigating Gresham in regards to the Hall-Johnson suit, the complaint reports that “Gresham was detailed out of the MPD Photo Lab for approximately one year.” Following the absence, however, the suit states that Gresham returned to work, “where he began his sexual harassment as if he had never left the photo lab.”

After reassuming his post, Gresham is accused of continuing his verbal and physical harassment of Gilkey between the years of 2000 and 2006, including exposing Gilkey’s breast, displaying pornography “where one man had his arm up the other man’s ass,” and constantly telling Gilkey “how good she looked and [that] he would do anything to fuck her.”

The suit claims that Gilkey reported the abuse to supervisors in 1998 and 2003, as well as during the course of the Hall-Johnson investigation. In both ’98 and ‘03, the suit alleges that supervisors “failed to act on Plaintiff’s complaint and did not either investigate Plaintiff’s complaint, refer Plaintiff to the MPD EEO office or restrain Mr. Gresham in any way.”

In response, the suit alleges, the harassment intensified. According to the complaint, Gresham:

created a situation by which Plaintiff’s co-workers would not speak to her or assist her so that she was forced to ask him for assistance. Defendant Gresham would then take advantage of [Gilkey] having to seek assistance from him and would touch her inappropriately or ask her for sex while complying with her request for assistance. He also encouraged Plaintiff’s co-workers to harass her with the ultimate goal of increasing control over Plaintiff and force Plaintiff to have sex with him.

When contacted yesterday, MPD spokesperson Traci Hughes said that the police department “cannot comment on matters that are currently in litigation.”