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

Month: July 2011

“Bad mom” doesn’t mean murderer

I’m writing in The Daily today about the Casey Anthony trial (disclaimer: I had nothing to do with that headline and I’m trying to see if it can be changed). A sample:

The not-guilty verdict reached this week in the Casey Anthony murder trial set off a social media avalanche of indignation and cynicism directed at the American justice system. The consensus on Twitter seems to be that Anthony got away with killing her daughter. Outraged Facebook statuses asked, “How could this happen?”

If you want to be jaded by our justice system, there are plenty of places to look — for instance, defendants who are wrongfully convicted after the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence, or the disproportionate number of black and Latino men who are sentenced to death. The Casey Anthony trial, though, isn’t cause to rail against the system. It simply illustrates the problems that arise when prosecutors rely on circumstantial “bad mommy” evidence to make their case. It’s an irresponsible strategy, it doesn’t work, and it poisons the public consciousness.

Lacking the physical evidence necessary to pin the crime on Anthony, the prosecution attempted to convince the jury that Anthony’s not-motherly-enough actions — she didn’t act like a grieving mom, she went out drinking, she moved in with her boyfriend, she got a tattoo — meant she probably caused her daughter’s death. I’m not about to stand up for Anthony, who is at best a habitual liar with questionable decision-making skills. But unsavory choices aren’t necessarily criminal, and “bad mom” doesn’t equal “murderer.”

For the record, I think Anthony probably did it, but that’s pretty irrelevant to the point of the article. If the evidence isn’t there, it isn’t there, and it’s radically irresponsible for “news” media to cover a trial the way they covered the Anthony case. It’s also disheartening to see that this case is the one that makes people “lose faith” in the system. I swore I wouldn’t write about this stupid trial beyond praying for Nancy Grace to retire, but the prosecution’s strategy, the TV coverage and the reactions to the verdict were so frustrating I couldn’t hold back.

Anyway, you can read the whole piece here.

Unsolicited Advice for Bristol Palin

The fabulous Jaclyn Friedman has a new column at Good, where she dispenses unsolicited sex-related advice to people who need it. This week: Bristol Palin. A taste:

Dear Bristol,

I so wish you and I could have this conversation on a long girls’ night in. You’d get a babysitter for Tripp, I’d bring the popcorn, and we’d hang in our pajamas and watch Heathers. Afterwards, we’d paint each other’s toenails, and I’d tell you how great your chin looks. And then, when we were both feeling relaxed and expansive and had built some kind of trust, I’d tell you this:

I’m worried about you, girl. You say you’re not accusing Levi of raping you, but the way you tell the story—he knew you didn’t want to have sex, but did it to you anyhow when you were blackout drunk on wine coolers—sure sounds like rape to me.

Go read the whole thing, it is so so good.

Also, can we talk about what awesome writers new Good editor Ann Friedman has brought over? Since she started, Good has become one of my few daily must-reads. So glad to see Jaclyn is now a regular.

Soccer, Sports and Sexism

This is a guest post by Anna Lekas Miller.
It is as impossible to avoid the suspense and excitement of the World Cup. It is equally impossible to discuss the games solely sports when they are such an explicit symbol of nationalism and internationalism. Yet until recently I had no idea that the Women’s World Cup even existed – much less that it is happening right now.

The Gender Equality World Cup

The FIFA Women’s World Cup is entering the single-elimination phase, and Mark Leon Goldberg is taking a look at how the teams would do if victory were decided in terms of gender equality. Here’s how he did it:

I consulted the UN Development Program’s Human Development Index for statistics on gender equality. This is an index that ranks countries by social indicators like literacy rates and child mortality. In 2010, for the first time, the Human Development Index included five gender equality indicators as part of its formula to rank countries based on their human development. These included: 1) Maternal mortality ratio; 2) The male-female ratio of people who have achieved secondary education; 3) The fertility rate of women aged 15-19 years; 4) The labor force participation rate for women; and 5) the share of women in parliament.

Anyone can visit the Human Development Index website and build their own chart using the hundreds of the indicators available. I have chosen to use those five indicators above (and give them equal weight) to develop my Gender Equality Index.

Based on those statistics, the Gender Equality Index generates scores to rank countries. The Netherlands scores highest with 0.687. Afghanistan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia tie for last with a score of 0. (Next comes Yemen, with a score of 0.096). I’ve used these scores to match FIFA Women’s World Cup teams against each other, with the margin of victory represented as the difference between the two countries’ scores on the Gender Equality Index. (For example, if the Netherlands were to “play” Yemen, the Dutch would win by 0.591.)

Go see who wins.

Notes for Reporters Covering Rape Cases

Mother Jones, this is for you:*

1. In court, opposing parties each put on their theory of the case, backed up by evidence. Their theories of the case are never identical; that is why they are in court. But just because the defendant puts on a theory that differs from the plaintiff’s theory does not necessarily mean that the plaintiff is lying. And of course, just because the plaintiff alleges something doesn’t mean that it’s true, and the defendant is not necessarily lying if they deny it. But of course the defendant is going to say that the allegations are false; that is why they are in court. And they will put on evidence to suggest that the allegations are false — that is why they are in court. It may, in fact, be that the allegations are false; it also be that the allegations are true. It might be somewhere in between; some might be false and some others might be true. But in an adversarial system, each side puts forward different theories backed up by evidence precisely so that the finder of fact can get the closest to the truth (it’s worth noting here, too, that the Jamie Leigh Jones case detailed in the Mother Jones article is a civil suit and not a criminal case, so the standard of proof is not as high as “innocent until proven guilty,” as it is in criminal cases). That the defendant’s evidence challenges the plaintiff’s claims is exactly how this works every time, and it’s unreasonable to conclude that the mere existence of some doubt-casting evidence demonstrates untruth on the part of the plaintiff (any more than it’s reasonable to conclude that the existence of some evidence supporting the complaint demonstrates the total liability of the defendant).

2. If a victim says “I think I was roofied because I had a few drinks and have no recollection of what happened, except I woke up and someone (or multiple people) had sex with me without my consent” and the response is, “Actually she was probably drunk,” that doesn’t really indicate that she’s lying. Maybe she was drunk instead of drugged! Still not ok to rape her, I think?

3. Lack of DNA evidence from multiple men doesn’t mean “no gang rape.” That prosecutors were only able to find DNA from one man doesn’t necessarily mean there weren’t other assailants; it does mean that prosecutors are doing the responsible thing and only trying the case where they have evidence to back up their theory.

4. Not making a specific legal allegation in your filings the first time around doesn’t mean that what you now want to allege didn’t happen. It means that you lost your opportunity to allege it in court. Different lawyers can look at the same set of events and come to different conclusions about what charges to file; it doesn’t mean that the facts themselves are any different.

5. An attorney mistakenly indicating in a legal document that a victim’s “pectoral muscle” was torn when he meant her “pectoral capsule” is, again, not the best proof that the person with the torn pectoral capsule is a liar. Especially when the attorney owns up to the mistake.

6. Finding vaginal and anal fissures, bruising and redness that could be explained by consensual sex if the person in question were on certain medications that could make her skin more susceptible to trauma is, again, the defense’s way of dealing with the physical evidence that an alleged rape victim had vagina and anal fissures, bruising and redness. That is their job, to show that there could be other explanations. They are apparently doing a successful job at it! But again, it doesn’t mean that a victim’s story — that she was bruised, that she had vaginal and anal tearing, etc — is a lie.

7. Recovery from PTSD is a process. That a victim alleges she has had certain psychological symptoms in the past 6 years does not mean that she has had all of those symptoms at all times.

8. If you find yourself writing this paragraph, you should just stop:

Jones’ medical records are full of information that could cause jurors to question her credibility. Perhaps most significantly, about two months before Jones went to Iraq, according to court records, she told her doctor that she might have had sex with someone; she’d had several drinks, passed out, and couldn’t remember what had transpired.

How exactly does that damage her credibility? Because the only credible rape victims are women who have never gotten drunk, or never been assaulted before?

9. Women can be raped more than once.

10. Drunk women can be raped.

11. If you’re so drunk you’re blacked out and have no recollection of what happened, you are too drunk to consent to sex. The fact that you were drunk instead of drugged isn’t a case-busting bombshell.

12. A book deal or a movie about you doesn’t mean you weren’t raped, especially under these circumstances — where the allegations occurred well before Jones was in the public eye. Seriously, no one suggested that Elizabeth Smart wasn’t kidnapped just because her family wrote about the ordeal.

13. Articles weighing the claims and the evidence are great. No publication is required to believe everything an alleged rape victim says. But defining “the evidence” as only the evidence put on by one side (here, KBR)? That’s not good journalism.

UPDATE: Last year, Megan Carpentier broke down the KBR “facts” about the Jones case, many of which are rehashed in the Mother Jones article. Check it out.

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*Standard lawyer disclaimer: This is not legal advice. This is my own personal opinion about journalistic responsibility.

SlutWalk, Rape Culture and the Anti-Choice Movement

Echo Zen is a feminist filmmaker and women’s health advocate who works to educate communities and families about health, sexuality and respect.
When we tell others we work in reproductive health advocacy, we often see the same attitude of slut-shaming that underlies rape culture in America. “Why do you want to help girls who can’t keep their legs shut?” they ask me. This is what rape culture looks like. These people – many of them men who obviously have no problem having sex with the women in their lives – scoff at the notion of women having control over their own sexuality, over their own bodies.

Diversity in Dating

Cindy majors in linguistics/philosophy, classics and ancient Mediterranean studies, and English at UConn.
I’ve had some head-scratching moments about why I always dated white men – as I disdain white men who fetishize Asian women. I’d be pretty horrified to find out that I am a white male fetishizer. So why I have always dated white men? Because I’m surrounded by them.