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

Not our fight: Male Violence and the Bystander Effect

[Trigger warning for domestic violence]

These good people, these people whom, albeit in different industries and capacities, are each individually working to make the future a better place than the present, do nothing. They, of relative privilege, watch the aforementioned horror unfold. Some are stunned. Some don’t notice. Some shake their heads. It’s a shame, they think. It’s fucked up, they think. It makes my blood boil, they think. But they do nothing. They hold their girlfriends tighter. They back their friends away from the scene. They try to break their stares. They go get more drinks. These are good people. But they do nothing. They are silent.

A few try. Three university age young women try. They do as their friends tell them. Go get security, they say. But security does nothing. This is between a husband and a wife, they say. Please go back inside, they say. The young women beg their friends and the bar security to do something. They do nothing. Get away from the car, they say. There is nothing you can do, they say. You’re going to get hurt, they say. You’re being irrational, they say. It’s not our fight, they say.

The Subtleties of Consent: Deception and Sexual Violation

If there had been laws to protect me from his actions—laws that forbade the use of deception and manipulation to lure someone into dangerous and unwanted sexual situations—perhaps this wouldn’t have happened to me. At the very least, if it had happened, I would have had some legal recourse. As it stands, there is no prosecutorial action I can take regarding his loathsome behavior in the state of Virginia—and I’m not sure I could take such action anywhere else, either. But we can’t let the subtlety of this issue of consent confuse us from recognizing it as the violation it most certainly is. If someone were to ask William*, even now, if I would have consented to sex with him had I known the truth, his answer would be an unequivocal, “No.” He knew it then, just as he knows it now: He was having sex with me against my will.

People lie all the time. There is no law against it. But lying becomes criminal when it is used to coerce others into sexual acts. “Why is deception tolerated in the context of sex? What protection does society provide to a person’s sexual integrity…? It is time to remove deception from the realm of sexual interaction in American society. Its tolerance promotes an unseemly status quo in our social fabric that denigrates the most intimate of relationships” (Decker and Baroni, 2012, p. 1167-1168).

Excluding Women from Combat Is Just Plain Wrong: A Navy Captain’s Story

Our guest blogger is a retired Navy captain Dwayne Oslund, USN (Ret.), partnering with the ACLU to advocate for women openly serving in combat roles.

During my 25-year career as a Navy officer and helicopter pilot, I was fortunate to witness firsthand the genuine skills and capabilities of U.S. servicewomen. But at the same time, these brave women were limited in their opportunities by arbitrary rules that had nothing to do with their abilities and, if anything, hurt the readiness of our military. I also saw women rise to the occasion when the policies that excluded them from certain positions yielded to the realities of modern warfare and the challenges of maintaining an effective fighting force.

Spillover #5

A new month means time for a new #spillover thread. Some reminders:

#spillover is part of our comment moderation system for keeping other threads on-topic.