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

Month: May 2011

Rude Awakenings: Stories of Political Origins tonight at Housing Works

Feministe pal The Rude Pundit has a new book out, and we’re celebrating him/it with a reading at Housing Works in New York City tonight. I’ll be reading a story about promise rings and Christian Horse Camp — you don’t want to miss it. The details:

What: Rude Awakenings: Political Origin Stories at Housing Works, featuring Lee Pappa, Rachel Sklar, David Rees, Sady Doyle, Jeff Kreisler and Jill Filipovic with a night of political origin stories.
When: Tuesday, May 31 · 7:00pm – 10:00pm
Where: Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, 126 Crosby Street, New York, NY 10012

Hope to see some of you there!

Protest Today, NYC, 5pm

An awesome collective of grassroots feminist activists have organized a protest today at 5pm. Come join us! If you aren’t able to be there, please sign the petition.

The details, from our press release:

Friday, May 27, 2011 (New York, NY) – Hundreds of New Yorkers will gather at 100 Centre Street, in front of the Manhattan Criminal Court building, to protest the acquittal of two cops who had been on trial for raping a woman.

The event is being organized by a loose collection of feminists, women’s groups, and sexual assault organizations, and has a Facebook event page here: http://on.fb.me/endrapeNYPD

WHAT: Protest against the acquittal of Officers Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata

WHERE: 100 Centre Street, in front of the Manhattan Criminal Court

New York, NY

WHEN: Friday, May 27, 5pm

WHY:

· We deserve to be safe. This verdict, and the way the NYPD acted, sends the message that we’re not. “Cuddling” while naked, getting into bed with a woman you are charged to help and putting a woman in a position where she was terrified is never ok. The officers have been fired, which is a good first step, but the NYPD needs to be more vigilant in training its officers and ensuring that there are consequences for breaking the law and violating basic ethical rules.

· No behavior is an invitation to rape. No woman should ever have to worry that having drinks with friends to celebrate a new job will result in a rape, sexual harassment, or assault. And no woman should have to worry that if this does happen, she will have no recourse. Sex with someone who is incapacitated is rape. A sex worker who is raped is raped, and deserves the same care and law enforcement efforts as people who are not sex workers. LGBT and gender-nonconforming people are often targeted for sexual assault and harassment, and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Men can be raped. Rape is rape; “sex with” is the wrong language to use when a perpetrator sexually assaults a passed-out victim. Consent to one form of sex is not consent to all forms of sex.

· This is happening to far too many of us. Every 2 minutes someone in the US is sexually assaulted. 15 out of 16 rapists will never see the inside of a jail cell.

· Police Officers are not above the law. The NYPD has a long history of abuses and violence, sexual and otherwise, especially against people of color and other traditionally disempowered groups. It is unacceptable that the government body charged with protecting us is not held accountable when they break the law.

OUR DEMANDS:

1. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly must institute sustained and comprehensive trainings for every incoming class of officers on rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and proper police conduct. A single training session, or a simplistic lecture not to rape, is NOT acceptable.

2. The NYPD must institute a zero-tolerance policy for sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexualized behavior while on the job. While this case illustrates an extreme example of police officers using their power to abuse women, too many of us have witnessed officers behaving in sexually inappropriate ways while on the job. There is no excuse for that behavior, and the police force must take it seriously. We want an easily-accessible reporting mechanism for sexual assault and harassment at the hands of police officers, and a demonstrated commitment to punishing officers who exploit their position to harass and assault the people they are supposed to protect.

3. The NYPD must be accountable to the New Yorkers they serve in a transparent process for implementing the above two demands. They must keep community leaders, local politicians and New York City residents informed about the initiatives they institute, and how they are working to make sure that an incident similar to the one involving former officers Mata and Moreno does not happen again.

Another day, another attempt to murder abortion providers

Nothing to see here, folks.

A man who drove to Madison, Wisconsin to kill an abortion doctor faces federal charges for intending to attack a Planned Parenthood office in Madison, Wisconsin and murder abortion providers. Ralph Lang, 63, was arrested Wednesday night when his gun went off in his motel room not far from the Planned Parenthood clinic that he planned to attack Thursday. According to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court Lang said he had a gun “to lay out abortionists because they are killing babies.”

According to the complaint — which is laughably hosted under the headline “Criminal complaint alleging Ralph Lang intended to hurt abortion providers” — police were dispatched to a local Motel 6 because some yahoo (that’s an official legal term) accidentally shot a few bullets through his door. The yahoo — Lang — apparently thought it was a good idea to disclose to the officer that he had the gun because he planned “to lay out abortionists because they are killing babies.” His plan, he said, included both doctors and nurses; he hoped he “could line them up all in a row, get a machine gun, and mow them all down.”

Good plan. Definitely a smart thing to disclose to a police officer.

Anyway, the officer arrested him (duh). But this is also a lesson in taking peoples’ words seriously, and in not passing laws that enable dangerous people to do harm. Lang drove a car covered in anti-abortion stickers, and had 21 anti-abortion letters to the editor published in the Marshfield News-Herald since 2004. He was also arrested for disorderly conduct outside of the same Planned Parenthood he planned to shoot up. And:

On the day Ralph Lang got arrested, a Wisconsin state Senate committee approved a bill that allows people to carry concealed weapons without permits or training. HuffPo reports that Planned Parenthood opposed the bill, and also that we’re just days away from the two-year anniversary of the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita. And the states and federal government have continued chipping away at Roe v. Wade this week.

Protest the NYC Cops’ Rape Acquittal

A few local feminists, including Lori Adelman, Erica Sackin, Julie Klausner, the women of Permanent Wave and myself are organizing a rally tomorrow, Friday May 27th, to protest the acquittal of two police officers and to demand that the NYPD institute regular and ongoing trainings on sexual assault and harassment for all the members of its force, and institute a zero-tolerance policy for assault and sexual harassment on the job.

So come rally with us! The details:

When: Friday May 27, 5-7pm

Where: In front of the Manhattan Criminal Court building at 100 Centre Street.

How: Public Transportation Directions:
…Take the No. 4 or 5 train to the Brooklyn Bridge Station; the C, N, R, 6 train to Canal Street; the 1 train to Franklin Street.
Take the 1, 6 or 15 bus line.

Why: On Thursday May 26, New York police officers Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata were found not guilty of charges that Moreno raped a woman in her apartment while Mata kept guard, despite the fact that the amount of evidence against the officers in this case was overwhelming. Instead, the jury convicted both officers of official misconduct for entering the woman’s apartment, but found them not guilty of all other charges, including burglary and falsifying business records. This despite the fact that one of the officers had been recorded on tape admitting to using a condom when having sex with the woman who made the accusation. The cornerstone of the defense required that the woman was too drunk to have a credible account of the incident, but sober enough to consent to sex.

Join us in protest. Because raping a drunk women while on patrol is more than “official misconduct”. Because calling 911 should not be an invitation to be raped. Because NO behavior, including being drunk, is an invitation to be raped. Because rapists do not deserve the protection of our tax-funded police department and city officials. Because we recognize this incident as part of the NYPD’s long, horrific history of violence – sexual and otherwise – often and disproportionately against people of color. Because the people of NYC will not accept victim-blaming, cronyism, and a culture of silence that allows rapists to roam free, without consequence.

New York City Cops Acquitted on Rape Charges

That is totally fucked up. But it’s definitely a victory for the “she was drunk” defense.

Background for folks who haven’t been following the case: A woman was escorted to her apartment by two New York City police officers late at night. She was drunk, and they helped her into her building. They left, and then falsified an emergency call to go back into the building; video shows them entering the building three separate times. One stood guard while the other went into the woman’s room. The woman says she woke up to find the officer on top of her; her memory is hazy, but she recalls him raping her. He says they never had sex, even though there are recorded conversations of him telling her, after the fact, that he wore a condom. And then there’s this:

Although the defense never conceded that the two had sex, a central point of argument in the case was whether the woman was too drunk to consent to sex. Under the prosecutors’ theory of rape, they had to prove that the woman was physically unable to consent to sex, meaning that she was either unconscious or unable to speak when she was penetrated.

Defense lawyers pointed to surveillance footage of the woman walking on her own as she entered the building in front of the officers as evidence that she was conscious and able to communicate. They also contrasted what the woman told some friends shortly after the alleged rape — that she thought she was raped — with the certainty that she was expressing on the witness stand. Her spotty recollection of that night, the defense said, was enough to raise reasonable doubt over whether she was raped.

The officer admitted to getting into bed with the woman, who was nearly naked, and “cuddling.” Which is wildly inappropriate in and of itself. I hope she has more success in civil court.

Wealth, affluence and sex-selective abortions

Yikes:

India’s increasing wealth and improving literacy are apparently contributing to a national crisis of “missing girls,” with the number of sex-selective abortions up sharply among more affluent, educated families during the past two decades, according to a new study.

The study found the problem of sex-selective abortions of girls has spread steadily across India after once being confined largely to a handful of conservative northern states. Researchers also found that women from higher-income, better-educated families were far more likely than poorer women to abort a girl, especially during a second pregnancy if the firstborn was a girl.

It makes sense — wealthier families are the ones who are able to afford ultrasounds and selective abortions. Anti-choicers regularly use sex-selective abortions as an illustration of Why Abortion Is Bad, but really, the moral of the story is that this is Why Sexism Is Bad. If society was more fair to girls and women, and if girls and women had as many opportunities and privileges as men, and if girls weren’t socially required to be burdens on their families, we’d see a lot fewer sex-selective abortions. Just outlawing sex selection doesn’t solve the underlying problem.

Food is cheaper in New York?

That’s what a Columbia University study says. But I’m with these ladies:

“Hell no,” said Tina Smith, a 47-year-old mother of two shopping at the Pathmark in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Center. “There’s inflation in New York.”

“I grew up in Denver and was in Cleveland last year, and here is ridiculous,” said Brittany Dierken, 27, while shopping at the Whole Foods store in Union Square. “I’m heading to get a steak for my boyfriend, which is going to cost me my first born, I think.”

Although these quotes illustrate why I kind of love living here. Where I grew up, 47-year-old mothers of two don’t usually respond to questions by a Wall Street Journal reporter with “Hell no.”

(And, for those who are interested in why food is cheaper in New York, the answer is that we have a wider selection of high-end food products which are sold alongside cheaper national brands. So Velveeta may be the same price or a little cheaper in New York as it is in Des Moines, but there are 36 kinds of better cheese next to the Velveeta in a New York grocery store. My bougie local market doesn’t even sell Velveeta (or Cheerios, which drives me up a wall because I love Cheerios). There’s no Kraft mac and cheese; the cheapest is Annie’s Organic. So low-end products are primarily available at big grocery stores and not so much the Whole Foods organic markets. And lower-end products are cheap at the big stores, but there are a bunch of better options on the same shelf that a lot of people end up selecting. So you walk out having dropped $80 on two bags of groceries. Also, it doesn’t seem like this study took bodegas into account, which is where a lot of New Yorkers do their grocery shopping. A real grocery store opened near my apartment last year, and it’s the first time in almost a decade living here that I’ve shopped primarily at a legitimate grocer rather than at a really well-stocked bodega. And bodegas are glorious, especially when they somehow fit everything you would ever want into a tiny space, but their prices are not low. Cheerios are like $7 for the small box. And that’s how a lot of New Yorkers shop, especially folks who don’t live in particularly well-to-do areas).