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

Month: October 2006

That Consent Thing

I’m sure you’ve all heard by now that Rep. Mark Foley, R-FL, has resigned amid revelations that he sent inappropriate and sexually-charged emails to former Congressional pages. It turns out that Republicans in Congress knew about at least some of these emails since 2005 yet let Foley keep his position as head of a Congressional caucus on children’s issues, and that pages received warnings about Foley from Republican staffers as early as 2001 (Think Progress has a timeline).

Hm. Sounds a bit like the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, doesn’t it? And just like with the church, while the underlying behavior was bad enough, the coverup makes it worse. People who were not only in a position to do something to protect the pages, but who were duty-bound to do so, looked the other way because they were more interested in protecting their own interests and the interests of the institution. Unlike Bernard Cardinal Law, though, Dennis Hastert (who was a high-school teacher and coach, for Pete’s sake) can’t be shipped off to Rome to avoid paying the consequences of the coverup.

The Democrats are making hay with this, of course, and as they should. Knowing about this kind of behavior and covering up for it (while at the same time accusing Democrats of being soft on child predators) are signs that the leadership of the Republican Party cannot be trusted to be in charge of the legislative agenda. Terrance has some thoughts about how the GOP’s political culture, which forced Foley to stay in the closet, might have had something to do with this.

So, we come to consent. At least some of the former pages on the receiving end of the “overfriendly” emails and sexually-explicit IMs from Foley did not consent to sexually explicit communications with him. Even if they had consented, the fact that many of the recipients were under 18 means that the emails may have violated federal child-endangerment and obscenity laws, even if they were above the age of consent in their home states.

And, of course, we have the people in thrall to the Clenis, who are a little unclear on the concept of consent:

He was an adult in a position of power, no matter that his emails (non-sexual) or recently revealed IM’s from 2003 (sexually explicit) appear to be legal as the age of consent in the District of Columbia is 16.

You see, my objection to the consensual affair of Billy Jeff and Monica was the power differential. Just as it is in this case.

I’m being ethically consistent. It’s why I support parental consent laws no matter how many times I’m told that I should “just get over” the fact that teens will have sex.

So count me as among the crowd that, while applauding Foley’s being run out of DC on a rail, I’m finding the manufactured rage from the “it was just about a bj, you prudes, it was just sex” crew emanating more than just a whiff or two of rank hypocrisy.

Oh, Darleen. Such confusion.

Darleen uses, and confuses, several different kinds of consent here. First, the age of consent: Granted, this one is a little tricky because of the differing state and federal laws governing this situation, but suffice to say, she doesn’t seem to have a really good grasp of this concept. Just because someone is able, by law, to consent to sex doesn’t mean that they have consented to sex on any given occasion.

Second, she draws a parallel between the consensual, in-person affair between two legal adults and the one-sided pursuit of a teenager over the internet by a sexual predator simply because both involve a power differential. That, simply speaking, is bullshit. The power differential between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky did not turn a consensual affair into rape; it did not remove her agency or autonomy. It introduced all kinds of ethical problems into the relationship, but it didn’t remove the ability of an adult woman to engage in consensual sex.

By contrast, to the extent the pages who received the IMs and emails from Foley did not consent to sexual communications or a sexual relationship with him, it is the lack of consent, not the power differential, that is the problem here. The power differential doesn’t create the problem, but it does make it worse.

I don’t even know why Darleen mentions parental consent laws for abortions in this context, unless she’s under the delusion that they allow parents to consent to their kids’ having sex or something.

Finally, because Darleen is unable to understand how consent works, she can’t see that people who objected to the partisan pantysniffing witch hunt of Ken Starr et al. re an ethically problematic yet fully consensual affair that had nothing to do with governing the country can still be genuinely outraged that the Republicans have covered up for a sexual predator among their ranks who’s viewed the page pool as his dating pool. See how that works?

William Saletan: Making a Career of Not Getting It

Saleton gives us “The pro-life case for birth control.” Except that, you know, birth control access has always fallen squarely into the pro-choice camp, being that it’s one of my reproductive health choices that we think women should have. And anti-choice activists and organizations are in the process of launching an all-out assault on it.

If you’re one of the millions of Americans who don’t like abortion but also don’t like the idea of banning it, good news is on the way. In the last three weeks, two bills have been filed in the House of Representatives. Without banning a single procedure, they aim to significantly lower the rate of abortions performed in this country. Voluntary reduction, not criminalization or moral silence, is the new approach.

I’m truly happy that politicians are finally catching on, but this isn’t exactly a “new approach,” unless by “new” you mean “exactly what pro-choicers and reproductive health professionals have been advocating for decades.”

How do you stop abortions without restricting them? One way is to persuade women to complete their pregnancies instead of terminating them. The other is to prevent unintended pregnancies in the first place. And there’s the rub—or, in this case, the rubber. The two House bills used to be one proposal, backed by an alliance of pro-life lawmakers and organizations. The alliance split because one faction wanted to fund contraception and the other didn’t.

Guess which side is which.

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A Step Backward

Wal-Mart, already under fire for its shoddy labor practices, low pay, locking cleaning crews in at night, nonexistent benefits, encouraging their workers to make up a living wage by seeking welfare benefits, antitunionism, et al., is sinking even deeper into the mire of worker exploitation by introducing wage caps and relying more on part-timers.

Wal-Mart executives say they have embraced new policies for a large number of their 1.3 million workers to better serve their customers, especially at busy shopping times — and point out that competitors like Sears and Target have made some of these moves, too.

But some Wal-Mart workers say the changes are further reducing their already modest incomes and putting a serious strain on their child-rearing and personal lives. Current and former Wal-Mart workers say some managers have insisted that they make themselves available around the clock, and assert that the company is making changes with an eye to forcing out longtime higher-wage workers to make way for lower-wage part-time employees.

It’s one thing for a highly-paid professional like a doctor or a lawyer to be available around the clock; quite another for a part-timer with no benefits who barely makes minimum wage to do so.

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“Only a girl”

Michael Savage: Supporting “better” child molesters everywhere.

On the September 27 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage asserted that an employee of The Washington Times charged with soliciting a 13 year-old girl for sex over the Internet “should get a reward that it wasn’t a boy. I actually was thrilled to see it was only a girl.”

Because attraction to young girls is a “normal” perversion, whereas molesting or raping a 13-year-old boy would just be wrong. Heck, let’s reward him!

SAVAGE: Washington Times employee arrested in sting, just popped up. Metropolitan police today charged the director of human resources [chuckle] at The Washington Times with one count of trying to entice a minor on the Internet. Randall Casseday, 53, was arrested at 9:45 p.m. yesterday with where police said he had arranged to meet a 13-year-old girl. He had actually exchanged Internet messages and photographs with a male police officer posing as a girl. Well, OK, great. I actually think he should get a reward that it wasn’t with a boy. I actually was thrilled to see it was only a girl. I’m not saying it was good that he did it. But don’t get me wrong, I was stunned that it was with a girl. I mean, there is still a normal pervert out there. It’s hard to believe. There are still normal perverts? It’s shocking.

I mean, raping little girls is one thing, but raping little boys? Now that’s just un-American.

And we musn’t forget that somehow, those Muslims are to blame:

SAVAGE: I think it’s a very dangerous trend. Not only the obsession with child molestation, which is an obsession, by the way, with the American media right now because they don’t have the guts to take on radical Islam so they make a big deal out of child molestation. It’s like a new hysteria. It’s the new witch hunt. Going after child molesters today is the equivalent of witch hunts in Pilgrim times. Everyone is suspected of being a witch or a child molester because — well, many different reasons.

He’s right. This is clearly a witch hunt, and when this man was online trying to track down girls to sexually assault and got caught. Let’s go kill some more brown people to prove that we take Radical Islam seriously.

Thanks to Una for the link.

Movie I Must See

Just watch the trailer. It looks… intense. The Johnny Cash song? Wow. I will definitely post a review as soon as it hits New York.

Trigger warning: About the Catholic Church pedophilia scandal.