Legal Shenanigans: How to Blame That Lying Whore

As a pre-law student and a feminist, the antics of defense attorneys in rape trials is always of particular interest. I've been sitting on these stories for about a week now, formulating my response. Without further ado, a glimpse inside how the American legal system dispenses justice to those lying sluts and the poor slandered men:

1. Ask trick questions

From abyss2hope:

''Did you have sexual intercourse with Mr. Vanderbeek?'' [defense attorney Maureen] Coggins asked the alleged victim. She replied that she had not.

Coggins then asked that the charges be dismissed. Greth denied the motion. Coggins then asked that the alleged victim take the stand again for a clarification. The alleged victim then testified that she had engaged in sexual intercourse, but that it was not consensual.

First of all, rape is not sexual intercourse. I would hope that a defense attorney would be aware of this fact. Doubtless, Coggins was aiming for a dismissal regardless of the answer. If she had said yes, then the term "sexual intercourse" implies consent. When she said no, that implies—falsely and only to someone with no legal training or common sense—that no penetration took place (which is doubly absurd, because many forms of sexual abuse do not require vaginal penetration). The only dismissal that I think would be appropriate in this instance is the dismissal of Coggins from her job.

2. Ban the use of the word "rape"

If I thought that the above was horrible, I was sorely mistaken when I discovered via Jezebel and Shakesville that if you have a vagina, and someone sticks a penis in it without your permission, you are not allowed to call that "rape" in a courtroom lest you bias the poor stupid jurors:

It's the only way Tory Bowen knows to honestly describe what happened to her.

She was raped.

But a judge prohibited her from uttering the word "rape" in front of a jury. The term "sexual assault" also was taboo, and Bowen could not refer to herself as a victim or use the word "assailant" to describe the man who allegedly raped her.

The defendant's presumption of innocence and right to a fair trial trumps Bowen's right of free speech, said the Lincoln, Neb., judge who issued the order.

This boggles the mind. How else are you supposed to describe the crime committed against you on the stand? This kind of shit is akin to an assault case in which the witness is forced to say that he "accepted a fist offered to my face" instead of "the defendant punched me". Witnesses and victims are supposed to testify honestly and completely to the best of their abilities. Banning the use of the only word that describes what happened is absolutely ludicrous, and not only implies that the defendant had consensual sex, but also that the witness is lying. Which brings me to my next point:

3. Force victims to perjure themselves to protect rapists

Using "sexual intercourse" to describe rape is completely inaccurate because it misses an extremely relevant point: the lack of consent. Defense attorneys are not required to use the term "rape", so why are prosecuting attorneys finding that they must use a term that implies no crime took place?

Simple: because in the minds of rape apologist judges, no crime took place. The only crime is that some disgusting whore is out to ruin a poor upstanding boy's life for her shame over giving it up too soon. The best way to make sure that the jurors understand the horrible crime that is being perpetuated against the innocent victim of a liar is to require the "liar" to use a term that implies consent, which then implies that she filed a false report.

Of course, to anyone with half a brain, this method of victim blaming is called perjury and is extremely and blatantly illegal. Like I said above, if defense lawyers and judges are not willing to conduct trials without a working knowledge of the nuances of the English language and the crime they are discussing, they should be disbarred.

4. Load the jury pool

Via The Curvature's coverage of how a defense attorney selected his jurors:

“Would you take into consideration that none of these young women, when they were removed from the situation, called 911?” he asked a potential juror. Parrinello asked other potential jurors if they would consider that there were “no eyewitnesses” and “no DNA” and that none of the alleged victims had gone to the hospital to have what’s called a “rape kit” examination for signs of assault and evidence.

[District attorney] Tantillo, meanwhile, asked potential jurors if they would consider that the girls might have been too scared to immediately report what had happened to them or even confused.

Parrinello later asked the panel of potential jurors: “Does anybody know what’s so confusing about whether or not you’ve been raped?”

Hey, I might be new to this legal game, but I'm pretty certain you can be disbarred for loading the jury in a case against a Muslim with jurors that are blatantly and unashamedly racist. The same principle should, but doesn't, apply to rape trials: you don't load the jury pool with jurors that have ignorant assumptions about rape and rape victims.

5. Question the testimony with medieval assumptions about intercourse and scare the jury

Parrinello is expected to crack away at the alleged victims’ credibility, drawing attention to the fact that three of them had consensual sexual relations with Wido before the alleged attacks. “How do you know any of them said ‘no’?” he said.

The defense attorney pointed out that the women were slow in notifying authorities and said there is no DNA evidence or eyewitnesses, “no credible evidence.” He asked the jury: “Is this a rush to judgment? Is this a slanted prosecution? Is this a Duke lacrosse prosecution?”

A good defense attorney would attempt to prove that the sexual encounter in question was consensual. Parrinello, however, goes for the tried and true, "once consensual, always consensual" tactic. I remain completely unaware of any sort of legal statute that states once I have sex with someone, I am not allowed to withdraw or withhold consent for the rest of my natural life. The assumption Parrinello makes here harkens back to a not-so-distant past in which men owned their wives because they had consummated their marriage. Since marriage is not a precursor to sex today, apparently a man does not have to buy a shiny bobble before he claims ownership over her body forevermore. All he has to do is get her to consent to sex once!

If the jury was not taken in by the throwback reference to the fact that women are property, they must be scared into submission by reference to the Duke lacrosse prosecution. To this day, I am not entirely certain that the Duke lacrosse players were innocent or guilty. As Cara over at The Curvature says, the Duke case has become the new "women are lying whores!" rallying cry. What a reference like this does is circumvent the question of the accused's innocence or guilt. It plays upon the jury's hesitance to wrap their minds around the fact that such a popular, attractive, white athlete could commit such a crime. It also asks, "are you willing to ruin this guy's life just because he probably raped someone?" After all, sports before justice. A man's right to rape and play sports is always more important than a woman's right to say no and seek justice.

6. Just plain harass and verbally abuse the victims

If all of the above fails—which it probably will not—the defense attorney can just become a pedantic asshat to make sure that all rape victims know what awaits them lest they seek justice (via MPN Now):

While the prosecution witness — one of Wido’s three alleged rape victims — was still seated, the argument began, with Parrinello at one point highlighting previous testimony that she had willingly performed a sexual act on Wido in the weeks before the alleged rape — only Parrinello used crude, street language to describe the act, drawing out both Tantillo and the judge, William Kocher.

“What Mr. Parrinello just did was outrageous in the presence of this witness!” Tantillo shouted, calling it “abusive,” “harassing,” and “disgusting.”

Parrinello fired back, “You know that’s what happened — I’m not making it up… I have a right of free speech.”

Parrinello then briskly approached the judge, coming within a few feet of his bench and pointing his finger while defending his actions. A security guard rushed to Parrinello’s side.

“I want him away from me,” Parrinello told the judge of the guard. Then Parrinello pointed at the guard, face to face, and hollered, “You’re not to get near me.”

Parrinello then told the judge: “He’s not going to intimidate me. If he does it again, we’re going to have a big problem: I’ll have him arrested.”

Judge Kocher ordered the defense attorney not to “make such editorial comments” and asked him several times if he understood. Repeatedly, Parrinello told the judge that no, he did not.

Amid the fiery exchange of words, the alleged rape victim began to wipe tears from her eyes, eventually breaking into sobs. The young woman was led out of the courtroom by Sarah Utter, the victim and witness advocate from the D.A.’s office.

The best way to shut those uppity women up is to be a violent loud jerk and reduce her to tears. Threatening judges and guards is also highly effective. Nothing feels better to a woman reliving her rape through testimony than a defense attorney that describes you and the situation as vulgarly as possible, and then lambastes from his arrogant soapbox about his right to be an abusive moron. Which, of course, would be:

7. Defend your antics with the highly ironic appeal to the First Amendment

I hope you caught that bolded passage in the quote above. Parrinello thinks that he has more of a right to the First Amendment than the victim. Oh the appalling irony! Why is it that when I see someone invoke the First Amendment, they are nearly always white men defending their right to be pedantic abusive asshats? I have a shocking idea: how about we use the First Amendment to protect the victims from perjury instead of defending an egomanic defense attorney?

And so, there you have it, the reason why only 16% of rapes are reported to the police, 8% of reported rapes are deemed unfounded (not false, but not prosecutable), less than half of those arrested for rape see trial, 54% of rape trials end in dismissal or acquittal, 21% of convicted rapists never serve time, and 24% of the convicted receive less than 11 months behind bars (statistics from Rochester University).

Considering that only 2-3% of reports are fabricated—a statistic no different from the false reporting rate of other crimes—there is a very large chance, almost an inevitability, that if you rape a woman she won't report it. If she reports it, it probably won't see trial. If it goes to trial, you probably won't get convicted. If you get convicted, you probably won't serve any time at all, or less than 11 months. Which means that in the eyes of the law, a convicted rapist is less guilty than a robber, a burglar, a drug addict, a drug dealer, and anyone who misuses a weapon for whatever reason; all of which receive more time on average than a convicted rapist.

This is how the justice system treats a rape victim: it looks for any and all excuse to discredit her and drag her name through the mud. In the end, if she perseveres, defies the odds, and gets a conviction, she probably could be rubbing elbows with her rapist in less than a year's time.

In this patriarchy, raping a woman is more excusable than stealing a television. Which leads me to conclude that not only has the justice system, by its actions, defined women as property, that they also think of them as particularly useless property at that. Considering that women/property may be raped without much of a fuss from the legal system, I do not think it illogical of me to say that not only does the legal system regard women as property, it also implies by the reality of the extremely low rape conviction that the purpose of a woman is to be abused at will.

Not For Sale

From the European Women's Lobby, a documentary on prostitution, and why full legalization cannot grant women the agency they deserve in three parts:

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Like I have said before in the comments section of an earlier post, I do not support the legalization of prostitution because I feel that legal systems would not be interested in women's rights over the market demand or the privacy of the pimp or john. From stories like the D.C. Madam to the normalization of violence against sex workers, it is very clear that the American justice system is not as interested in protecting the extremely vulnerable women in the sex industry as they are demonizing them. With statistics coming out of European countries like Britain's deplorably low rape conviction rate, it looks as if my skepticism for any legal institution is well founded. Like this documentary, I think that the only solution is to criminalize buying sex and decriminalize selling sex like Sweden did. There are hundreds of trafficked women and children in Sweden, compared to the thousands elsewhere. While Sweden's solution is hardly ideal, it seems to be doing a lot of good.

So while I believe that the best policy is always legalization, and I shy away from anything that looks like morality legislation, there are simply too many human rights violations in the market of prostitution that legal systems are not equipped, or willing, to handle. The interest of protecting women from the most grievous harms trumps any right to buy sex. I have never yet seen any argument that is capable of convincing me that the sex trade is so demonstrably important that it must be allowed to flourish even if the majority of women meeting the demand for sex are raped, trafficked, abused, or coerced. As long as we live in a patriarchy unwilling to hold our agency over our own bodies above any wrongly perceived right to abuse, neglect, harm, and fuck, it is shamefully irresponsible to legitimize the deplorable conditions in which the sex trade operates.

Shatterboy

In a Rape Culture, anyone can be a rape victim or a rapist.

On Being a Bookworm: Part Three - what are the effects of porn on men?

I promised in the comments section of my last post that I would cover some of the factual supports to the preposition that porn is damaging to its viewers. The book I am reading, Pornified, devotes an entire forty page chapter to the subject. I wanted to cover a couple of things from the chapter, particularly the factual studies done on porn with interesting results.

1. Violence in Porn

According to a study done by Barron and Kimmel called Sexual Violence in Three Pornographic Media:

25 percent of pornographic magazines showed some form of violence, ranging from verbal aggression to torture and mutilation, compared with 27 percent of pornographic videos. Usenet groups on the Internet depicted violence 42 percent of the time. "We might expect that just as individual consumers of pornography tend to tire of a certain level of explicitness and need more, so, too, would the market, acting as an individual," noted the study's authors. "The more pornography is consumed at one level, the less arousing this material becomes, as the consumer becomes used to the material"... The authors then concluded that as new pornographic technologies emerged, porn would become increasingly violent. That research was conducted in the late 1990s, still the early days of the Internet. (Paul 58-59)

2. Porn and Perceptions of Sexuality

Paul takes a lot of time to consider the very methodical and balanced research that Jennings Bryant and Dolf Zillmann did 25 years ago to test how the viewing of pornography impacted the viewer's opinions of various social phenomenons. Modern studies this extensive are not available because most universities will not approve studies that cause any sort of psychological harm to the testing subjects that cannot be cured. Since the effects could not be proven reversible, their studies are probably the most reliable statistical scientific examinations of pornography to date:

80 college students were divided into four test groups. Three groups were shown a variety of short films over a six-week period. The "massive exposure" group was shown six explicitly sexual films per session, about 48 minutes per week or 36 films total. The "intermediate exposure" group was shown three erotic movies and three non-erotic films in all, or about 3 hours of porn over a six-week period. The "no-exposure" group was limited to non-pornographic fare, 36 regular movies with no sexual undertones or content. Finally, the fourth group, the control, was shown no films during the six weeks.

Because the study took place between 1979 and 1980, the films were far tamer than much of today's hardcore fare. All sexual acts were heterosexual and consensual. The acts were confined to oral, anal, and vaginal sex, and none involved coercion or deliberate infliction or reception of pain.

The members of all four groups were asked to estimate the prevalance of certain sexual behaviors in America. Their opinions were solicited on everything from the percentage of sexually active adults to the percentage of Americans performing particular sexual acts. Without exception, the more pornography the subjects had viewed over the six-week period, the more likely they were to believe others to be sexually active and adventurous. For example, the "massive exposure" group believed on average that 67 percent of Americans engaged in oral sex, compared with 34 percent of those who had not been shown any porn. They also believed that more than twice as many adults had anal intercourse than did those who viewed no porn (29 percent verses 12 percent)... they also believed that three in ten Americans engaged in group sex, compared with the one in ten estimated by the no exposure group. Porn viewers also estimated that roughly twice as many people engaged in sadomasochism and bestiality (15% and 12% of all Americans), gross overestimations of actual sexual practices, according to all available data. (Paul 77-78)

3. Porn and Objectification, Misogyny

Paul covers more of the Zillmann-Bryant studies and a modern one at Texas A&M Unversity:

...men and women who were exposed to large amounts of pornography were significantly less likely to want daughters than those who had not. It's not just hardcore porn either. According to a large-scale 1994 report summarizing 81 peer-reviewed studies, most studies (70 percent) on nonaggressive pornography find that exposure to porn has clear negative effects. Gary Brooks, a psychologist who studies pornography at Texas A&M University explains that "softcore porn has a very negative effect on men as well. The problem with it is that it's voyeurism--it teaches men to view women as objects rather than to be in relationships with human beings." According to Brooks, pornography gives men the false impression that sex and pleasure are entirely divorced from relationships. In other words, porn is inherently self-centered--something a man does by himself, for himself--by using other women as the means to pleasure, as yet another product to consume. (Paul 80)

In the study done for the book:

Half of all Americans think porn is demeaning towards women. Women are far more likely to believe this--58% compared with 37% of men. Only 20% of women, and 34% of men--think porn is not demeaning. (Paul 80)

...while 60 percent of adults aged 59+ believe porn is demeaning towards women, only 35% of Gen-Xers--the most tolerant and often heaviest users--agree. (Paul, p81)

In a study done in 2002 by a professor at Texas Christian University:

...involved heterosexual men who used porn via Internet newsgroups. On average, the respondents looked at five hours and 22 minutes of porn per week. They were divided into three groups: high consumption (6+ hours per week), average (2-5 hours per week) and low (2> hours per week). The study found that the more porn men use, the more likely they are to describe women in sexualized and stereotypically feminine terms. They were also more likely to approve of women in traditionally female occupations and to value men who are more submissive and subordinate to men.(Paul 92)

4. Porn and Diminishing Returns

Paul also postulates that viewing porn, especially for prolonged periods of time, facilitates the need to view more explicit and demeaning porn to get the same thrill. This is supported in the study by James Howard, Myron Reifler, and Clifford Liptzin which is cited in the 1970 federal report on pornography:

...men who were shown pornographic films for 90 minutes a day, five days a week, experienced less sexual arosual and interest in similar materials with the passage of time. What initially thrills eventually titillates, what excites eventually pleases, what pleases eventually satisfies. And satisfaction sooner or later yields to boredom. (Paul 83)

5. Porn and Acceptance of Sexual Violence, Diminishing of Sympathy

Paul cannot provide any sort of evidence that those that view porn are more likely to be rapists or become a rapist (the problem of causation). However, the Zillmann-Bryant study does show that increased exposure to non-violent pornography demonstrably affects how men and women perceive men who rape:

...participants were asked to read a newspaper report about the recent rape of a hitchhiker. The crime was described in the report, but the criminal sentence was not revealed. Students were then asked to recommend a sentence for the convicted rapist. Men who had viewed massive amounts of porn recommended significantly shorter sentences for the man who committed the crime. Men in the "massive exposure" group recommended an average of 50 months' imprisonment for the rapist while while who had not viewed the films recommended 95 months. (By comparison, women suggested 77 months in the massive exposure group and 143 months in the no exposure group). Men who viewed porn were also less likely to support women's causes in general and were about three times less likely to favor the expansion of women's rights.(Paul 89-90)

Pauls says that:

Pornography leaves men desensitized to both outrage and exicitment, leading to an overall diminishment of feeling and eventually to dissatisfaction with the emotional tugs of everyday life. Men find themselves upgraded to the most intense forms of porn, glutting themselves on extreme imagery and outrageous orgasms. Eventually they are left with a confusing mix of supersized expectations about sex and numbed emotions about women. (Paul 90)

Zillmann himself calls this phenonmenon the "satisfaction dilemma of pornography":

What has been labeled "pornotopia" tells [men] what joys they might, could and should experience. As pornography features beautiful bodies in youthful, at times acrobatic, sexual interactions during which nothing short of ecstasy is continually expressed, consumers of such entertainment are readily left with the impression that "others get more" and that whatever they themselves have in their intimate relationships is less than what is should be. This comparison, of which pornography consumers may or may not be fully aware, is bound to foster sexual dissatisfaction or greatly enhance already existing dissatisfaction.

So what?

For one, many have argued that they can separate fiction from fantasy when looking at porn, and that attitudes and expectations portrayed there are not carried over to real women. This supposition is in direct opposition to the entire premise of the multi-billion dollar marketing campaigns running constantly. If humanity was impervious to images and advertising, why would businesses spend so much on it?

The answer is that humanity is not impervious to images and sights, as seen above in various studies. Pornography is much more subtle than advertising. It does not prey upon an unnatural urge for a Mercedes, but the appreciation of human beauty and sexuality. It does not enforce itself with the rush of new purchases, but with the ecstasy of orgasm. Advertising must convince us that we want or need a new car. Pornography just asks that we submit to human sexuality. It taunts us with sexual release without vulnerability. It preys upon cultural stereotypes of women and men and then reinforces them.

And then it succeeds: horribly, subtly, orgasmically, addictively.

Previous parts of this series: Part One, Part Two

Eww: A Rad Feminist Reads About Johns and Their "Pain", Provides Witty Commentary

In my long look into the sex business, I came across many primary sources on what exactly it is like to be a porn star, a prostitute, or a stripper. I felt connected to the experiences of the women I read. I felt that what they did was so normal and wrongly stigmatized. I could see myself doing what they did, hating doing what they did, and most of all, hating the people that asked them to do it. Part of letting go of my zealous relationship with the Madonna/Whore dichotomy was to stop looking at sex workers as whores, manipulative she-witches, and weak downtrodden sex objects.

What I discovered, however, from reading the first hand account of Johns was anything but empathy. I am a serial monogamist. When the inclination to stray is strong enough, I cash in my chips, break the poor guy's (and one woman's) heart, and engage in sowing my oats without being a lying sack-of-shit cheater. The thought that fucking random people would be fun is not something that I have never entertained. However, I have never understood the point of being self-destructive and letting my libido do the driving, so I do not understand the actual action of cheating.

Perhaps I am a rare and horrible imitation of humanity, but the objectification of a sexual partner does not turn my crank either. Paying someone to mimic an intimate action, which should be a gesture of mutual respect and affection, never occurred to me. I'm not a fucking kind of gal. My bullshit detector runs smoothly. I am not some pathetic slob that invents romance and respect where there is none. Chances are that if you shop for a sexual partner with all the emotion of shopping for a television set, you're not getting the best deal.

So I do not sympathize with the two primary motivations for buying sex: (1) I'm too good for monogamy and (2) sex is all about me, me, ME!

Morality in hand, I delved into Letters From Johns, a blog that features the sexploits of random johns, most of which are men. My knee jerk reaction was a feeling of intense sorrow for all of humanity. As I nit-picked through the various misogynistic woe-is-me confessions , I was struck with the thought, "okay, your intense angst is nice, but what about the other side of the equation -- isn't it quite ridiculous to do all of this introspection without once thinking about the humanity of the woman you just bought?"

Well, one sympathetic John was nice enough to make sure that the Chinese woman he purchased was not trafficked. After, of course, he climaxed. Orgasm before morals, you know:

I like Asian girls (have since I was a teen). I like their skin, their soft features, their hair. I ordered one over in the middle of the day a month ago. I was very horny, and only wanted a little talk before sex, but after fucking her, cumming on her face and helping her clean up, it's always a good time to get to know someone with the remaining part of the hour. She was straight off the boat. With Human Trafficking being the boogie man of the 21st century, I wanted to find out how she came to NYC and this line of work.

Retroactive concern does not work. I am guessing that a guy that will fuck a potential sex slave before he determines whether or not he is raping her is not very nice. The half-assed interest in her personhood does not fool me.

I also really liked the guy who was "Faithful in Every Other Sense of the Word" and very good at authoring horribly ironic titles. His reason for buying sex was not the simplification of an entire culture to attractive things to look at while fucking (see above), but because his wife had the audacity to ask for sexual satisfaction in bed:

I'm happily married, but my wife and I don't have sex nearly as often as we used to before our daughter was born, and unfortunately, it's starting to wear on me. Not only that, but when we do end up having sex, I have to do all the work, get her all worked up and then get to humpin' at her command. It's fine and everything, but sometimes it's nice to have someone focus on me, and my sexual needs and wants, for a change.

You mean like porn, right? Where the other half of the equation is nothing but a place to sheath your uncontrollable prick and tell you how much they love it when you ask them to do demeaning things with no regard for their pleasure. Oh yeah, exactly like that:

The last time I went, I got to have sex with an older (then me, she was about 38. I'm 31) Russian lady, who still occupies a warm place in my heart because she looked me in the eyes as I climaxed and genuinely seemed to be interested in my pleasure. That's what turns me on.

I am guessing that she was faking that interest. Probably because you paid her to, genius. I am also guessing that your wife would be more interested in your pleasure if you were more interested in hers. Reciprocity: it's hot. Random John B wants all the pleasure without the work. I also find it unspeakably pathetic that he is bored with his wife and has affected such a world-weary tone at the tender age of 31.

I also found the woe-is-me letters, from Johns that want our sympathy so badly:

The answer that I have [for seeking prostitutes], and that many others in this website have also provided, is rejection. Rejection, and its close associate, the loneliness that comes after it, leads many of us to believe that we are fundamentally unloveable. And for us, the prospect of trading some of our money for the affection and the satisfaction that an escort, or a masseuse, or a prostitute (you name it) can provide is not just about sex--it's more about safety, the feeling that all you have to do to keep this girl by your side is treat her right and pay her promptly.

My guess if that if you have to pay someone to fake liking you that you are generally unlikable. That is probably not anyone's fault but your own, probably because you really do not care if you are raping a trafficked woman:

My latest experience was with an escort called A. She came from the same South American country I did, a tall, dark-haired girl with a great body. She says she's in town to "learn English," which I doubted, but who cares? For an hour and fifteen minutes, I had someone listen to me wholeheartedly, rub my back, provide me with the ersatz-girlfriend that I crave for but feel that I am unable to attract, and then at the end of it all she even asked for my phone number.

"You will call me again, right?" she asks.

I would like to say that I won't. But my hour with A. felt like water washing my wounds, easing the pain of my brutal loneliness, helping me feel accepted and valued again, a feeling that I haven't felt in many, many months.

Some people say that love is priceless. Well, to those people I say, for two-hundred and seventy Canadian dollars, something quite like it is there for the taking. At least until the hour is done.

If you are such a sorry human being that you equate "something quite like love" to raping a sex slave, then you probably belong in jail or the ninth circle of hell. I am also guessing that people that find nothing more sublime that sticking their dick in a woman/object/rape victim because they are "lonely" should probably remain lonely far far away from me and the rest of civilization. The best word I can use to describe someone that only feel goods about himself because he just raped/fucked a potential trafficked sex worker is criminal. Perhaps that's why nobody wants you, even though you describe yourself as "obedient, fundamentally good man in his 20s".

Those gems came from just the first page. The blog is packed of pages and pages of people justifying the objectification of female, and a few male, prostitutes. The harder they try to make their reasons sound plausible, the sillier and more pathetic they sound. Nothing is more unspeakably disgusting than someone that avoids responsibility for their actions with appeals to their humanity while avoiding the topic of a sex worker's humanity.

If it really needed saying after that long post here it is: I am absolutely and fundamentally against prostitution. I commiserate and have nothing but empathy for those women that choose to make a living doing something so potentially dangerous. However this feeling does not extend to the other end of the equation: the Johns that profit off of the exploitation, objectification, and rape of sex workers.

The aforementioned blog does nothing to foster the sympathy for Johns. Our rage should know no limits for those who excuse death, rape, and misery with hollow excuses.

"Post-feminism Society" Laughs at Female Objectification

Here in our "post-feminism society", where genders are finally equal in every sense of the word (yes, that is sarcasm), we can comfortably laugh at female bondage and the antiquated notion that your wife is your property at MarryOurDaughter.com. Maybe I am just being a kill-joy, but I thought for something to be satire it required that the targeted audience, men who objectify women, could not view or say it without a shred of irony. I just think it is probably in bad taste to mock something that is not at all historical. Considering that Washington University just handed out an honorary degree to Phyllis Schlafly, the woman who supports marital rape, the view that marriage renders a woman the sexual property of her husband is alive and well even in the ever-praised bastion of gender equality, the Western world.

Eerily, the website reads more like a pedophile's shopping list than the lame attempt at satire it really is. From the profiles:

Katelyn F.
Age: 14
Location: Caribbean

Bride Price: $24,995

Our own Little Mermaid Katie Lynn swims like a fish and isn’t happy unless she’s getting wet! She got her SCUBA ticket at 12 and she can pull more than her weight as crew on any kind of boat or ship. She tells us she’s tired of dry land and that’s she’s looking for a husband who works on, by or in the water.

I suppose I have no sense of humor, being that I do not think that selling young girls into slavery to men is at all funny.

The testimonials, of course, sound familiar:

"Thank God for your site! Our daughter was really nervous walking down the aisle, but she seems okay now and the money we got let us keep our farm and even add on a few acres."

Because selling your daughters to keep afloat is nothing new to real people, in real places, right now:

"We were not so desperate before. Now I have to marry them younger. And all five of them will have to get married if the drought becomes worse. The bride price is 200,000 afghanis. His father came to our house to arrange it. The boy pays in installments. First he paid us 5,000 afghanis, which I used to buy food."

Accusations of shrill feminist aside, my definition of satire lies more along educational lines. Meaning, of course, that the purpose of satire is to educate people how utterly ridiculous the universal phenomenon of objectifying women really is. Piss poor attempts at being clever like the Marry Our Daughter website are, at best, getting a sick laugh out of female objectification without providing any relevant context. At worst, the site operates on the same wavelength as the ubiquitous rape joke, the headlining punch-line of every half-wit comic's cliche repertoire.

New rule: poking fun at stereotypes, especially anything resembling female objectification, is only funny if and only if sexist pigs cannot chuckle along without a shred of irony and self-reflection.

The Mundane Rape

Cross-posted at Female Impersonator

Warning: this post could be a trigger for victims of sexual violence.

In the wake of Amelia's posts on rape and the disgusting spectacle of Johnny Vegas raping a woman onstage in a sorry display of dudely humor, I wanted to share how utterly mundane and common rape is.

A huge misconception is that only the psychologically deviant rape women. In that link, the author claims that it is "staggeringly insensitive" to post fliers around a college campus that read "Man up, get consent". Why? Well, because the "ridiculous idea that rape is not caused by the sociopathic tendencies of individual men, but because men as a whole watch too many Michael Bay films".

The author clearly as never heard of the tabula rasa theory which states that our socialization and upbringing have much more to do with how we interact with the people and the world around us then genetics. Simply put, there is no "rape" gene. Scientists will never pin-point the exact sequence of DNA that makes some men rapists and others "nice guys" because it does not exist.

This fiction of the psychological illness of rapists, similar to the myth of pedophilia, causes the deadly culture of silence that aids and abets sexual assaults, rapes, and other forms of violence against women every day. The patriarchy and its underlying premise that men are not responsible for treating women like pieces of meat baptizes each and every one of us in Dude Culture as young as possible.

For as long as I can remember, I can say that I would rather be maimed and handicapped than ugly. My identity and success in life, because I am a woman, is directly correlated with my ability to titillate and treat myself like the plaything of men. My self worth is boosted every time a man looks me up and down. I wait behind good-looking men in the line of a local fast food joint and wish for them to notice me. My worth is directly tied to my sexuality. I am the Sex Class, I am a woman.

And I was sexually assaulted and raped repeatedly by my first serious boyfriend and the man I lost my virginity to.

Rape is not uncommon. By law, what that asshole did to me was not rape because I cannot prove it. However, I was repeatedly goaded into various sex acts while I feigned sickness or exhaustion to get out of seeing him. After he moved out of the suburbs, and into an adjacent dorm, I would make excuses to have study sessions with my very large and loud male English peer review partner. Seeing him was a nightmare. The sex was awful. I fooled myself by thinking that it was about time I got rid of my virginity anyway (I was 18) and that if I asked him later I would eventually get an orgasm out of the deal. However, if I did not want to kiss, I was groped and fingered through my clothes when he would visit my dorm after his classes. If all I wanted was a massage, I got my bare breasts pawed at for an hour while I pretended I was asleep so that he would go away. He would belittle my opinions, ignore my desires, and take advantage of me whenever he so wished. I was an accessory to his life, I was his masturbation aid. I was not a person.

When I finally broke up with him, he would invite himself along with my friends and hang all over me like I was his possession. I remained silent throughout it all because I thought it that was normal that I was taken advantage of and I did not wish to make a scene or make others uncomfortable. It was my fault that I did not enjoy the sex. I was frigid. I was wrong. I was a whore.

I have never shared this farce of love with anyone. Over two years later, I have not been in a serious relationship with a man due to serious trust issues. Until just recently, I thought that there was something wrong with me. Now I finally know that what he did to me, and what he took away, can never be replaced. It was sexual assault, and if the law was less sexist than it is, my entire relationship was months of rape. I will never see justice because there is no evidence other than my word and my pain.

My ex-boyfriend is not a sociopath. He is a normal college male who wanted some tits to paw at. When breaking up with him, he asked, "does that mean I do not get booby privileges anymore?" He probably has a girlfriend now, who lets him finger her after she feigns a headache to get him to go away. He is a rapist. I am a rape victim. He is a product of a sick society, and I am the victim. I am the loser, because I was born with a vagina and indoctrinated in the ideology that my worth as a person is indistinguishable from my ability to please men.

Women, because of socialization, are raped every day. Why? Because we as a society have placed women in the Sex Class, and by doing so, have furthered the disgusting agenda of rapists the world over. Rape only happens to women that fight it, that are raped by strangers, that have evidence and did not orgasm. I was raped. I never fought it, I knew my rapist and introduced him to my friends and family as my boyfriend. I have no proof other than my hole in my heart where my faith in humanity used to be. My body reminds me of the pain/pleasure that it suffered/enjoyed to this day.

Sociopaths do not rape women, men rape women. The only thing insulting about asking men to get consent, not the absence of resistance, is that we have to fucking ask in the first place. I know first hand how rape happens and what a rapist looks like.

I also know what a rape victim looks like. I see her in the mirror every day.