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

Weekend Reads

Lauren

WANTED AND DESIRED, AND RAPED: Rapists make movies and have sympathetic documentaries made about their rape confessions, and numerous famous others turn out in droves to defend their art and legitimacy. But even though Roman Polanski and his team of lawyers tried desperately to keep as many balls in the air as they could, it comes down to one thing: He raped a 13-year-old girl, her story clearly implicated him, and he offically admitted doing it. Moreover, he served no sentence and received no punishment for the act — not even the death of his Hollywood career — except fleeing for Europe, where he’s lived the high life for the last thirty years. Polanski is trying to revisit the case and prove his innocence, not of raping the girl, mind you, but effectively arguing a miscarriage of justice, by trying to move the case out of L.A. where he would have to surrender himself to the courts. On Tuesday, thankfully, “Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza ruled that if Polanski, who fled on the eve of his sentencing, in March 1978, wanted to challenge his conviction, he could — by coming back and turning himself in.”

ASSAULT: [Serious trigger warning] Police have sexually assaulted a woman who called them for help, and are now suing the news station that exposed them. They picked her up on accident instead of picking up her attacker and subjected her to a forcible strip search that violates their own procedure. There is a clip of the news story at the link that includes some footage of the strip search and it is very disturbing, but it gets worse: subsequently five more women stepped forward and are alleging similar treatment. Also related, the social and emotional impact on survivors when embroiled in sloppy and inconsistent police investigations.

WITHOLDING AND CONTROL: M. Leblanc shares her story about a different kind of rape that is enveloped in the confusion of an emotionally abusive relationship.

SOCIAL JUSTICE: Renee asserts that in our work to resist violence and fight racism the work of feminists of color can not be ignored.

MOTHER OF FOURTEEN: Despite the various ethical arguments against Nadya Suleman’s decision to undergo in-vitro fertility treatments as a single mother without any income, the coverage of the case in contrast to other media outlets says a lot about what kinds of large families we will celebrate and why.

WILL WORK 4 JOB ADVICE: What to expect when you’re expecting lay-offs.

TPS REPORTS: Flair, the working class, and corporate attempts to tamp down worker expression and individuality.

LOVE LESSONS: Elle and her son have a genuinely heart-warming talk about whether Valentine’s Day is really just for girls.

Posted in Uncategorized

28 thoughts on Weekend Reads

  1. I’m not even sure Polanski was trying to prove his innocence as much as he was trying to argue that there was a miscarriage of justice because the prosecutor improperly influenced the judge with respect to the plea agreement. The thing that drives me nuts about that is, assuming it’s true, the judge still has discretion as to whether or not to accept a plea bargain.

    Polanski fled because he didn’t want to go to jail. That’s not being in “self-imposed exile”. That’s being a fugitive. I’m not trying to pick on you here, Lauren, but it annoys the crap out of me that someone who fled the jurisdiction after admitting guilt gets to call waltzing around Europe while making films “exile”. Calling it exile, I think, concedes the idea that there was a lack of legitimacy to his court proceedings and that his fleeing to France was some how justified.

    I’m not going to feel sorry for someone who admitted raping a 13-year-old, was complicit in shaming his victim, and has spent the past 30 years living the high life in France. I mean, my god, he couldn’t even come back to accept his Oscar. The sorrow, the pity. Pfft. Fuck that. Polanski can turn himself in and accept the consequences of his actions if he likes, but I don’t see him doing it.

  3. I’m not going to feel sorry for someone who admitted raping a 13-year-old, was complicit in shaming his victim, and has spent the past 30 years living the high life in France. I mean, my god, he couldn’t even come back to accept his Oscar. The sorrow, the pity. Pfft. Fuck that. Polanski can turn himself in and accept the consequences of his actions if he likes, but I don’t see him doing it.

    Yup. And personally, I’m grossed out that people keep qualifying his actions by saying how much they love his movies.

    “He’s a rapist.”
    “But The Pianist was so beautiful!!!!!”

  4. I think you are uninformed about the Roman Polanski case. Polanski DID serve time in jail for the conviction, but then was the victim of an overzealous judge that wanted to set an example of him by sentencing him to more jail time after he thought he was free. This is part of the reason he fled.

  5. Polanski doesn’t get to call the shots on his rape conviction.

    Any further rape apologies on this thread will get deleted and banned outright.

  6. Um, actually everything I can find, SerpentLibertine, says that he served a 42 day psychiatric evaluation period, the purpose of which was to determine his official sentence. And then he fled.

    That’s not the same as serving jail time for a conviction. And surely, expecting a rapist to serve more than 42 days is not “overzealous.”

    If those facts are wrong, however, and you have alternate sources, I’d love to see them . . .

  8. “but then was the victim of an overzealous judge that wanted to set an example of him by sentencing him to more jail time after he thought he was free.”

    Pretty sure that’s impossible, by the way. A judge, overzealous or otherwise, can’t just show up and add another jail sentence to your conviction if you’ve actually served your sentence.

    Not that this is meant to excuse his drugging and raping anyone, but Chinatown is about as dark an indictment of patriarchy as I can imagine.

  9. Let’s be clear here: in US courts a judge cannot revise a sentence upward once it has already been served. Polanski might have been confined either pretrial, during his trial (of which there wasn’t one), for a psych eval, of while awaiting sentencing. Even if Polanski thought he was getting time served, he still hadn’t been sentenced and fleeing still makes him a fugitive.

  10. I tried to wade in over at Salon. Of course, it was largely useless – the people who think it’s just “uptight puritans” who have no sympathy for poor Polanski won’t change their minds either way. But I was also glad to see the apologists being consistently called out.

  11. That’s not the same as serving jail time for a conviction. And surely, expecting a rapist to serve more than 42 days is not “overzealous.”

    Definitely not, and considering what he was originally charged with, his plea deal strikes me as very generous. Polanski really should be persona non grata in the film industry; it is galling that so many people are willing to work with and give awards to a fugitive rapist.

  12. I really liked the Valentine’s Day story, as questioning something is the first thing we should do, especially Valentine’s Day.

    Also, about the Polanski thing, and MikeF’s comments, wasn’t the director of Jeepers Creepers 2 also a former child molester? I know that knowing that made the film extras super creepy, considering the sexual tones towards young boys it was charged with. *shudders*

  14. I have to say it. “Rape apologists?” I think they are still just rapists. The term seems to lessen what they did.

  17. Nikki

    Rape apologists are people who try to justify why someone was raped. As far as we know, they have not raped someone, they are the types that leave comments about how the accused have been treated unfairly or complain that victims are the ones that caused the problem. A rapist is a rapist, rape apologists are the people that help make it easier for them to get away with their behavior

  18. Mzbitca, I think she’s referring to Lauren’s reference in the first line of the post: “Rape apologists make movies and have sympathetic documentaries made about their rape confessions.” I think that Nikki was saying that if Roman Polanski is the one having the movie made, as implied here, he’s not a rape apologist (well, he is that too), he’s a rapist.

  19. Fascinating Polanski link, Lauren, didn’t know about the new documentary.

    Ed Sanders’ landmark book THE FAMILY outlined the connection between Roman Polanski and Charles Manson through satanic church leader Anton LaVey, whom both socialized with. (LaVey also played satan in “Rosemary’s Baby”) Manson was also friends with Terry Melcher, the Beach Boys producer who had sublet the house to Polanski and Tate.

    In short, the murder of Sharon Tate and company might not have been as “random” as all that, you know? Polanski and Manson had likely met before and probably knew each other–they had the same friends.

    And when people say to me, surely you don’t believe that… what I believe is that Roman Polanski was regularly partying and orgy-ing with some very sick fucks and it all just got away from him, got out of hand. Just like the whole “party” that ended up in his drugging and raping a 13-year-old. Does anyone think that wasn’t standard behavior for Roman? Sanders says otherwise, and I believe him.

    I’ll always wonder why it was that Roman was so conveniently out of town, called away on such short notice during his wife’s late pregnancy. (The pregnancy he was so angry about, BTW.) Just a lucky guy, being away when the Manson family comes to visit!

    I believe anything of him.

    (No rape apologist here, but as an ex-Yippie, conspiracy theories are my specialty!)

    PS: thank you for the link! (((kisses)))

  20. @Nikki: I also went ahead and changed “rape apologists” in the first link to “rapists,” considering that’s what Polanksi is.

    It’s not semantics, words mean things. 🙂

  21. I just watched the video of this woman being “strip searched” and all they seem to focus on is that she wasn’t the perpetrator in this case.

    This should be irrelevant. Have you watched that thing? Did you hear her screaming? If she had just murdered 20 people, that would still be inhumane treatment. That was a form of rape. Sorry to say that.

    I’m still sitting here crying.

  22. While it would still be bad if she were the criminal, I think it is worse when she wasn’t the perpetrator because she called for help. You should be able to call for help against criminals without being locked up and forcibly stripped by the people you’re calling. It gives a lesson of “don’t call for help, you’ll only make things worse”.

    It’s kind of like the difference between murdering 90 people and murdering 100, but it’s there.

  23. “In short, the murder of Sharon Tate and company might not have been as “random” as all that, you know?”

    Don’t most theories that go down that route assume that Manson felt he’d been burned by Melcher and was targeting him, not Tate/Polanski?

    “You should be able to call for help against criminals without being locked up and forcibly stripped by the people you’re calling.”

    Or without being locked up and denied EBC, or without being locked up and beaten, etc. Pretty much every time this sort of thing happens, that’s precisely the message that’s sent to victims. “If you don’t report the rape, you can at least get medical treatment to prevent pregnancy.” “If you don’t report the assault, you’ll at least be able to go home afterwards.” “Why should you submit to a rape kit? They’re not even going to bother testing it.”

    When it happens to the accused, it’s a serious human rights violation. When it happens to the accuser, it’s a serious human rights violation and a serious blow to the ability to even report crimes.

  24. Regarding the mother of fourteen (since I can’t seem to respond on the linked blog), my personal response is not a positive one. I’ve been thinking about why that is, and I suppose it’s because my upbringing has led me to believe that having more than 1-3 children is… selfish, somehow, I guess. Taking up more of the world’s resources than is your due? Not as if we don’t do that in the US already, but still. It doesn’t matter one bit to me whether the woman in question is a person of color or not or whether or not she has a permanent romantic partner, the part that bothers me is that she made the decision to have this many children when she could not support them financially. I question whether or not she can support them all emotionally, but I don’t have enough information about that to say definitely either way. If she were able to provide for all her children, would it seem better for me? Yes, but it would still seem selfish. Maybe that says more about me than it does about her.

  25. Regarding your “ASSAULT” story: that is my worst fear. That the people you rely on to protect you would turn against you is terrifying to me. Who can we trust?

  26. I remember the Polanski story from the 70’s and it always bothered me that his victim was called a ‘lolita’. So I blogged about it–
    How Can We Miss Him if he Won’t go Away?
    http://kmareka.com/?p=2811
    and included many links. The Salon piece was really good, and the only place I have seen the press called to account.

  27. Preying mantis, yes, the most popular theory is that Manson was gunning for Melcher, who was then living with Candice Bergen. He owned the house, and it is widely believed that the Manson family mistook Tate for Bergen, both stunning blond movie stars. (Poor Candice Bergen was robbed of sleep for years.)

    The more sinister theories remind everyone of the plot of Polanski’s ROSEMARY’S BABY… you know, how a man (played by a well-known movie director, John Cassavetes) sacrifices his pregnant wife to the devil, so that he can attain success. As I said, the head of the church of satan, Anton LaVey, played satan in the film, who rapes Rosemary in the dream-sequence. He was friends with both Polanski and Manson.

    The plot similarity is probably just one of those (cough) strange coincidences.

    The third theory is that Polanski knew there was gonna be trouble, was tipped off and split, never expecting the wholesale slaughter than ensued… he possibly thought coffee heiress Abigail Folger (one of the victims) would be abducted for money, something like that. Folger is the one who let them into the house, for whatever reason.

    I am a terrible Manson murder junkie and know everything about the case. It’s embarrassing how much I know.

    And Polanski was always a pig. During the filming of CHINATOWN (a movie I love–yes, sometimes pigs can -unfortunately- create excellent art, as Lauren noted), Polanski didn’t like stray hairs poking out of Faye Dunaway’s 30s-bouffant hairdo during the scene where she is eating dinner with Jack Nicholson. So, after a few failed attempts by make-up personnel to smooth her hair into place, he took it and just YANKED IT OUT. (Also note the pedophilia subplot there, too.)

    A real misogynist asshole. It’s not like this accusation took place in a vacuum; this is a pattern.

    Next time, you lose the whole thing.

Comments are currently closed.