In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Category: Crime

People are awful: #JusticeForJada leads to more cyberbullying and Hobart and William Smith Colleges’ football priorities

Content Note: drug incapacitation, sexual assault, victim-blaming, cyberbullying, ostracisation

The news gets worse on the appalling assault and social media shaming of Texan teenager Jada, and the flawed investigation of a similar case at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York is analyzed by the NYT.

Rape culture? What rape culture?

Women, Vulnerability, Rational Precautions And The Men Who Refuse To Believe

[Content note: gendered violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment]

That it was not enough for Davies’ college roommate to know that their classmate had been murdered by an intruder to understand Davies’ fears [of walking home alone from work late at night] honestly terrifies me. That a woman had to get attacked right in front of him in order for that to sink in is horrifying. And as Davies points out, he was not some anomaly. This is common.

PUAs and MRAs respond to the Santa Barbara killings

Well hello again! Yes I am still here, although MIA for the past month or so as I wrapped up my freelance life and started at Cosmopolitan.com full time. And I’m writing a lot over there: On illegal abortion in Brazil, on pro-choice advocates embracing life, on the minimum wage, on the increasing inaccessibility of abortion in the American South, on the kidnapped Nigerian girls. I’m also doing a series of interviews with women who have interesting careers, detailing how they got to where they are. So far I’ve spoken with Jordan Zimmerman, a cheese educator; Anna Holmes, a journalist and the founder of Jezebel; and Sadie Nardini, a yoga instructor who was paralyzed as a child and now runs a massive international wellness empire. The latest: On PUA and MRA responses to the misogynist murders in Santa Barbara. Here is one of those things:

New book supports Marissa Alexander’s legal defense

Marissa Alexander appeared in court Friday morning to request a new Stand Your Ground immunity hearing, hoping for a chance to demonstrate that the abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband justified her use of a warning shot to defend herself. To support her legal defense, Prison Culture will be selling No Selves to Defend: A Legacy of Criminalizing Women of Color for Self Defense, an anthology of stories, poetry, and original art about women of color who have been imprisoned for defending themselves.

What would you do if you needed an abortion in a country where it’s outlawed?

I’m in Brazil right now with the wonderful International Reporting Project, and while here I spoke with a young woman who, like many women around the world, got pregnant when she didn’t want to be. Here in Brazil, abortion is generally illegal. After trying several different methods unsuccessfully and reaching out to a variety of slightly-shady people for help, she decided to go the safest route: To say she had been raped and get a safe, legal abortion in a Brazilian hospital. Her story is here. Women in this country are understandably very afraid to speak with anyone about abortion, and lots of women die or are injured from unsafe procedures. I’m particularly grateful to this young woman, who I’m calling Juliana, for her generosity, her honesty and her courage in sharing an extremely complicated story.

We need to imprison fewer people.

The ACLU released a report on life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and the shocking numbers of inmates who are incarcerated for the rest of their lives with no hope of getting out — for committing non-violent crimes, usually drug-related. There are money interests in keeping people incarcerated, but there are also cultural and psychological ones. Long sentences are entrenched in the law through mandatory minimums, but they’re also seeded in our national psyche as “normal”: