July 2010 – Page 3

The Coming Race War

Well, Andrew Breitbart, smearing Shirley Sherrod in order to refute the NAACP’s resolution against “racist elements” in the Tea Party turned out to be a pretty bad idea. Yes, you cost her her job, but she’s making black people look good. It’s too bad you’re not like, a journalist, or something, and did some digging to find the full video before you declared it to be an example of reverse racism. Ms. Sherrod is actually a really worthwhile person, unlike yourself, and now the world knows it. So kudos to you for bringing our attention to a woman who was and is working to bring black people and white people together in solidarity during a time when so many are feverishly working towards the opposite.

Anyway.

I try to avoid watching Fox News. I hear about it on the real news and I see its headlines on my iGoogle page, but I can’t bring myself to waste the electricity changing the channel on my TV to “FNC”. Apparently Glenn Beck has been heralding the coming race war. I’ve always understood “the coming race war” to mean the time that racist white militias finally band together and kill off all the browns. I also thought it was a joke, and kind of funny. Beck, however, wants us to believe otherwise. He’s saying that the “New Black Panthers” are going to start a government-backed race war to kill off Big Whitey. Of course this is silly. Fox News has been complaining about the tiny group of New Black Panthers for like a decade. I don’t know who they think Obama is, but if anything is true about him, it’s that he’s not demonstrably a militant black man. I’m more militant than he is, and I’m a bougie tragic mulatto living in the suburbs. I don’t see any medallions, dreadlocks or black fists adorning the Oval Office. But we’re supposed to believe that in between getting blamed for the oil spill and fomenting socialism, he’s been training this small elite squad of brothers to take out the white menace with the U.S. Army at their disposal? I’m really just speechless.

There was a time when I wasn’t always hearing about reverse racism, race wars, etc. in the mainstream media. It kind of seemed like most reasonable people had come to the conclusion that racism was bad, we needed to work against it, and that if you were a violent, loud mouthed racist you should just stay in your cabin and keep it to yourself. We didn’t worry about them because they stayed in the woods, for the most part, and everyone thought they were “crazy” anyway. I was focused on rooting out insidious racism, the kind that you can’t easily identify, the kind that exists in progressive communities, the institutional kind that deeply affects every person of color and which still exists today but has been obscured by all this blatant racism and the fact that we now have a black man in the White House. I could be romanticizing pre-2008, but it just seems like we wouldn’t be seeing articles like “Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege” during the Bush years. They knew to keep their racism under wraps back then. I’m almost laughing to myself remembering when the GOP was respectful of black people because they felt like if they tried hard enough, they could lure a few over the fence. Case in point: Michael Steele, head of the RNC. He became head of the RNC during the 2008 campaign as, I think, a way to say “hey black people, we’ve got ourselves a Negro too!”, and also as a way to criticize Obama without seeming racist. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out the way they planned, and the black guy still won. So what’s the point of respecting black people or other nonwhite people now? They’re all just going to vote for the Colored, right? Because all people of color are a monolith, especially those predictable darkies.

I think the “racist elements” of the Tea Party/GOP are playing their end game. Calling him any name they can think of, blaming him for everything from AIDS to increased activity on the sun, doing anything they can think of to bring him down before the end game plays out. What happens then is yet to be seen. Will it be the repudiation of the Tea Party by the majority of U.S. citizens in this coming midterm election? Will it be the end (again) of acceptable blatant, virulent racism? Will something ominous happen to Obama? I couldn’t tell you. But you can’t be a right wing ideologue with unstable, easily manipulated followers and go on and on about a “coming race war” without something happening at the end. I know what some of Beck’s followers would really like it to be, and that’s scary.

I live in California, Los Angeles to be exact. I saw this on a bumper sticker the other day:

“Where’s Lee Harvey Oswald When You Really Need Him?”

A Friday-afternoon Diversion (of the Feminist Kind!)

Need some inspiration with your distraction as you wind down the hours to the weekend? Check out nist.tv, the latest addition to the feminist web.

According to creator Anne Jonas:

Nist.tv brings together feminist videos from across the web and embeds them in one place, making them easily searchable and browseable. My hope is that nist.tv can be a useful resource for scholars and activists as well as a general destination for folks who like to watch feminist video. It’s a little bit of a cross between a feminist video archive and a feminist version of something like In Media Res.

I would greatly appreciate your feedback. I would also love to bring on more moderators and organizational partners who would add videos and commentary and give context to the content. We’re working on including exhibits, where a curator would bring together several videos on a topic and discuss them, and other next steps, so we really welcome your ideas!

You can also have a constant stream of feminist videos on your website by adding a nist.tv widget. Widgets can also be made for a particular category, just email me for more information on that.

Anne has kindly shared her email for all feedback and request purposes: anne at pculture dot org

Got a vid you think they should include? If you can’t find it on the site, just click the “submit” button to send it it. (And feel free to link to your fave feminist videos in the comments!)

Strong women

Not to write two work-out mentioning posts in a row, but my gym has simply the baddest-ass logo ever:
Weightlifting Girl

It’s a totally co-ed gym and our logo is a girl doing some burly power snatches. How awesome is that?

What’s really weird is that it took me awhile to realize that there wasn’t another logo in addition to this one — a logo with a guy doing the same lifts. I think it says something, that even someone pretty sensitized to gender issues, can still be socialized to accepting men/maleness as the standard representation of humanity.

We’ve come a long way, baby?

The other day, I woke up and threw on running shorts and a sports bra and went for a jog. I’m in Boston for the summer, so I headed towards the Common which takes me by Copley Square. There’s a big marble circle in the ground with all the names of the Boston Marathon winners and for some inexplicable reason (read: it was 90 degrees at 7 a.m. and I couldn’t breathe), I decided to stop and look.

So sometimes there are moments when completely ordinary facts jump up and hit you in a totally extraordinary way. This was one of those times. Looking at this circle, I was suddenly struck by how old the Boston Marathon was (1897!) and the long list of winners names threw something into stark relief: women’s names only began appearing 45 years ago.

Obviously this is something I knew, but standing there in just a sports bra and running shorts, with people rushing past on the way to the T, I was suddenly struck by how much has changed in such a relatively short period of time. I couldn’t help thinking to myself: Holy shit, 45 years ago, I could definitely NOT have just walked out my door in a sports bra and shorts and gone for a jog. Or been one of those women in a suit on their way to work. Or a lot of things really.

This is not to say that I then picked myself up, jogged home smiling, declared feminism a WIN and resigned my membership. On the contrary, I can’t even begin to list all the work yet to do for gender rights. And more than these kind of moments, I usually have “My God, did he/she really just say/do that incredibly anachronistic sexist/misogynist thing? Don’t they know it’s 2010?” But, BUT, I’ve found that sometimes it’s nice to remember how far we’ve come, while gearing up for how far we have to go.

Anyone have similar stories?

On “Rape by Deception”

SEPTEMBER 2010 UPDATE: This case is much more complicated than previously reported. I think that the theoretical arguments about “rape by deception” hold true here; the facts of this specific case, though, have been proven much different than represented below. Please note that it appears this wasn’t “rape by deception” so much as forcible rape, and the “rape by deception” ruling was part of a plea bargain.
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This story about an Arab man being convicted of rape for having consensual sex with a Jewish women is getting a lot of play. Basically, the man said he was Jewish when he wasn’t, the woman had sex with him believing him to be Jewish and a potential romantic partner, and when she found out he wasn’t she filed a criminal complaint for rape and indecent assault. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison. The court reasoned that “If she hadn’t thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated.”

“Rape by deception” or “rape by fraud” can certainly be legitimate. Take, for example, this case, where a woman consented to sex with a man who she believed to be her boyfriend but was actually her boyfriend’s brother (and the brother knew about the mistaken identity). She did not consent to sex with the boyfriend’s brother. The sexual act was consensual insofar as there was no force involved, but it was not a consensual act with that person; and the man involved knew what he was doing and intentionally had sex with someone who was clearly not consenting to have sex with him. The court in that case held that it wasn’t rape, since there was no force — a decision that I think is wrong.

In another Israeli case, a man was convicted of rape by deception for coercing women into sex by pretending to be in a position where he could help them with their social welfare benefits:

In 2008, the High Court of Justice set a precedent on rape by deception, rejecting an appeal of the rape conviction by Zvi Sleiman, who impersonated a senior official in the Housing Ministry whose wife worked in the National Insurance Institute. Sleiman told women he would get them an apartment and increased NII payments if they would sleep with him.

High Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein said a conviction of rape should be imposed any time a “person does not tell the truth regarding critical matters to a reasonable woman, and as a result of misrepresentation she has sexual relations with him.”

Adding money and social benefits into the mix, and lying about one’s ability to provide those things in exchange for sex, brings the issue to another level, since there is coercion involved. Rape by deception? Yeah, I think so. Point being, there are good reasons to have rape by fraud or rape by deception laws on the books, and we shouldn’t write off the whole concept.

But this latest case is different. The woman did consent to sex with that man. Did he either mislead or possibly lie about some aspect of his identity? Yes (although it’s not clear if he lied and said he was Jewish or just failed to disclose he was Jewish when he knew or should have known that she assumed him to be. He is also married, and apparently either lied about that or failed to disclose it). Is it pretty clear that he’s a huge jerk? Absolutely! But being misled about someone’s ethnicity does not remove the ability to consent. I’m sure she was mad — I’d be mad if I had sex with someone who told me they were a pro-choice feminist lefty when in fact they were an anti-choice religious fundamentalist. But being lied to about things like your religion or ethnicity or belief system should not translate, legally, into a sexual assault charge. There may be justifiable feelings of violation and of course the woman in question should be able to define her experience however she chooses, but a legal standard that allows one to be prosecuted for rape because they concealed or lied about some aspect of their life is very troubling.

Also, in this case? Very racist.

There are also other issues at play when it comes to rape by fraud/deception. There have been cases where people with HIV have been prosecuted for rape by fraud because they did not disclose their status to their partners; those laws, too, have been used simply to target HIV-positive people. And while I have not heard of a case where a trans person has been prosecuted for rape by fraud for having consensual sex and failing to disclose their history, trans people have been civilly sued for fraud simply for publicly identifying as their gender. I wonder what this case could mean for trans people, who even after being murdered are often vilified for allegedly not adequately disclosing their entire history, and whose murderers too often get off on bullshit defenses of “panicking” when they realize they are with a trans person.

In the aftermath of this decision, there’s been some writing around the interwebs about how rape by fraud is always bullshit, and haha I’ve lied about being 5’4″ when I’m actually 5’2″, so am I a rapist? It’s particularly unfortunate that this case is being used as fodder for the proposition that women lie about rape. To be clear, I am not suggesting that the woman in this case lied. Rather, I’m arguing that the Israeli criminal justice system made a serious misstep here; that the man should have been neither prosecuted nor convicted; and that this case creates a series of potential problems.

The reality is that there are certain circumstances where rape by fraud is a legitimate claim. This, though, is not one of them, and opens the door to even greater abuses.

SYTYCD Season 7 Top 6

Spoilers below!

This week on SYTYCD: even more injuries, even more tears, it’s like the episodes are reruns or something. Except with KENNY FREAKIN’ ORTEGA! Jump over to the recap and discuss with me.

Two Other Massage Therapists Claim Assault By Gore

Trigger warning for some description of assault

This just in via The National Enquirer, which broke the original story:

The ENQUIRER recently uncovered shocking allegations, from two other massage therapists.

The first incident allegedly took place at a Beverly Hills luxury hotel when Gore, 62, was in Hollywood to attend the Oscars in 2007.

The second reportedly occurred a year later at a hotel in Tokyo.

A Beverly Hills hotel source told The ENQUIRER:

“The therapist claimed that when they were alone, Gore shrugged off a towel and stood naked in front of her.

“He pointed at his erect penis and ordered her, ‘Take care of THIS.'”

That’s all that’s available online, and I haven’t got my hands on an Enquirer yet, but that hasn’t stopped the apologists from jumping on it already. As this story breaks further, let’s keep on media outlets to remind them how they should be reporting this story.

UPDATE: I just went in search of the full story, which The Enquirer claims is available “on newsstands now.” But their current issue has nothing about the story that I could find. Do let me know if you see anything more, and I’ll do the same.

Cross-posted at Yes Means Yes.

GMVW*: Sara Bareilles

A friend passed this to me yesterday, and at first I was like, “Ok, fun and poppy, pretty good. Kinda empowering.” But then, bizarrely, I woke up this morning and it was the only thing I wanted to listen to (over, and over and over**). And now, I’m now passing the infection on to all the Feministe blog-readers.

You’re welcome.

* Gratuitous Music Video Wednesday
** I can’t be the only one that does this, though I might bring playing the same song on repeat to a new level. My iTunes “Top 25 Most Played” is an embarrassment. For example: “Toto, Africa, Plays: 184 (And that was probably in succession over the course of two very emotional weeks in February).

Hat tip to Maria for the vid!

Full lyrics after the jump.

The Impermanence of Light

Tonight I did something I do less and less of these days — I came home and didn’t jump on the Internet. Didn’t rush through my meal to hurry up and check my e-mail only to be inundated with the day’s nauseating blog comments. Didn’t skip reading the book I’m almost finished with to see what’s going on with Twitter. Just fed the animals, changed, ate my dinner, watched Louie, and then sat down in the new dorm-room style circle chair I bought on sale at Target with said book I’m almost finished with.

I don’t want to go all Calculon on you by saying I was filled with a large number of powerful emotions, but I actually was. I was unplugged and I could hear myself thinking without the background noise of the fan keeping my laptop from burning my palms as I type. I thought about how my whole life is in light; fiber optics transmitting my thoughts to people I’ll probably never meet, silicon holding my words only to be revealed by the tickle of electricity sent to circuits triggered by the touch of my finger to a button. Where do my words go when I’m gone? The frantic pace of the Internet makes me feel that if I don’t check in every few hours, or every day, or every other day, all memory of me will vanish. Do people read my blog archives? Or do they simply absorb the missive I’ve sent for the day, then dash off to some other blog, where they’ll read something else that scoots my words out of the way to implant themselves in their place? If I didn’t post for a month, would you remember who I was? All you know of me is light. My picture appears to you in pixels and photons, but you don’t know the flesh behind them. And this is true for all of us who inhabit this world, who put their words out for consumption in blog form or comment form or tweet form or e-mail form. When we’re all gone, — all of us, including you — what will be left of us to know?

I’m a realist, I don’t expect our current mode of civilization to last for a thousand years or even a hundred years if we keep doing what we’re doing with no major modifications. When the time comes that there are no more working DVD players to play our DVDs, when our infrastructure is so dilapidated that we can’t access what’s left of the Internet, when there’s no electricity being generated to power our communications towers and our orbiting satellites come crashing to Earth from lack of maintenance, how will we remember what we are? How will whatever civilization rises after us, comprised of whatever beings have replaced us, know who we were? Civilizations we consider ancient today used decidedly more low tech materials to share their information, and we can pore over them today. We only need other low tech writings to teach us how to interpret the strange symbols their society used to communicate. I can’t even begin to figure out what a shiny CD has on it without benefit of fancy technology that, in our future as it stands to become now, will no longer exist. I can’t take out my laptop’s hard drive and flip through the circuits to find that short story I wrote 2 years ago. I can’t tell you one damn thing about what’s on that drive except through the low tech method of retelling memories — what I can remember about what I had on there. It’s kind of frightening to me, this impermanence. It feels like the knowledge about this golden age of history is a mere electromagnetic pulse away from becoming nothingness. I know, I know, I’m getting all existential up in this piece. But if you sit with it, it leaves you cold.

That’s why I’m obsessed with notebooks and pens and paper and books, why I’m putting together an anthology telling stories of women of color on paper, why I’m not too keen on e-books and I still buy CDs — hey, at least the liner notes and lyrics will still be readable. I don’t advocate some kind of neo-Luddite existence. I don’t think we need to start carving stone tablets. Just write some. Papryus is still around, I have hope that archival quality, acid-free paper will be too. Write your memories, journal daily, write your speculative autobiography. Write your parents’ or your significant other’s biographies. Leave your story for the climate refugees of the 2100s to read. Go out with your friends and tell each other your stories and write those down. Don’t let the only ones remembered be the ones lucky enough to get their words in print before the clock runs out.

Now excuse me while I go finish reading that book I’m almost finished with.

Where do you like/have you liked/do you want to go?

I mentioned the other day that I was fortunate enough to recently revisit Melbourne, my favourite city in all the world. (Not that I’ve left southeastern Australia since I was about… four.) I love it for its friendliness, its food, its gardens, the amazing little alleys, the artiness, the FAIRY PENGUINS and, well, not so much that crisp wind coming off Antarctica.

What I want to know from you, Feministers, is if you have a favourite place to go. Perhaps it’s where you live or where you’re from, or somewhere you visited just the once. Or perhaps you’ve not done much or any travelling and there’s a place you like the sound of. Links to pictures (with descriptions) are requested!