What really matters about Chris Brown’s sentence.

I’ve got a piece up at Huffington Post today on Chris Brown’s sentencing:

…if there’s any silver lining to this whole awful incident, it’s the way it’s put relationship violence back in our public conversation. Given how infrequently that happens, we should be doing more than just be asking what kind of sentence Chris Brown deserves. We need to ask what kind of sentence will help ensure he — and men all over the country just like him — never beats another woman.

You should go check it out.

Reasons I Am Not Approving Your Post

Anyone who read my article in the Prospect yesterday can guess that this here very blog has attracted its share of sports misogyny apologists in the last few days. Which might make you wonder – how come I can’t see ‘em in the comments?

Well, here’s the thing. They have the rest of the interwebs to spout off, so I really don’t see why we have to give ‘em air here. Plus, WordPress (the free version, anyhow) has this weird thing where you can’t ban commenters. You can only approve or not approve them the FIRST time they post. Once you’ve approved one post, they’re free to run roughshod over your blog and there’s little you can do to stop them. Therefore I’m pretty cautious about approving even the posts that might be from jackholes, and might just be from dumb people who lack reading comprehension. I don’t want to find out the difference later when it’s too late.

That said, some people are downright IRATE that I haven’t approved their posts. Fortunately no one has accused me of iminging on their freedom of speech yet, but I thought I might clear some things up before it gets to that point.

So, without further ado, your (possible) trolls and my responses to them. Jump in in the comments section and add whatever I left out:

Isnt there two sides to every story? The fact that you used Ben rothlisberger, a story that all the facts are not known completely ruins your argument. There are girls out there who will use such accusations to get money from rich people. Im not saying that he did not rape her, I am saying that we do not know what happened. Doesn’t it make you wonder why the police are not bringing up charges? I’m sure police they would if there really was something that happened. Shit they dragged Michael Jackson into court for ever just because they thought he was molesting children. Sexism works both ways and you are promoting it.

On Sports Misogyny Apologists

I’ve got a piece up at The American Prospect today on the legions of sports fanatics that live to excuse even the most heinous behavior by their players and their teams:

The apologists drink from a potent cocktail of hero-worship, almost military levels of team solidarity, and old-fashioned “boys will be boys” gender essentialism. And they would just be offensive if they weren’t such an integral part of the larger culture of misogyny in sports — a culture that makes it possible for there to be so many henious acts to defend, minimize and deny in the first place. As is, they’re downright dangerous, writing a blank check for athletes’ behavior that too many athletes are happy to cash.

Go read it here. And then check out CounterQuo, a new organization dedicated to challenging the way we respond to sexual violence in the U.S.  I’m a charter member, and my fellow leaders there — including Katie Hnida, who I quote in the piece – were much help to me in putting this piece together so quickly. Their site is a great resource to all of us trying to fight the victim-blaming spin already developing in the Roethlisberger case.

Obama: Soft On Domestic Terror?

For reasons I won’t explain, I’m raw and angry from Tiller’s death. Obama’s statements about abortion before Tiller seemed entirely too mealy-mouthed, the statements of a politician who refused to spend any political capital on an issue that I care a lot about. Now it is clear that our dormant domestic terrorist problem has resurfaced. The terrorists hate our freedoms. They will use violence to achieve the goal that our Constitution denies them.

None of us should think that the way to deal with terrorism is to give in. None of us should think that the way to handle people who hate us for our freedom is to give up our freedom. But Obama’s mealy-mouthedness has continued after this terrorist slaying, and I will not moderate my disgust and anger. Obama sounds like he wants to compromise with these people. The right churned up silly outrage that Obama would be soft on Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, but I think we are in much greater danger that Obama will be soft of Christian fundamentalist terrorism.

Six thousand acts of violence. We have our domestic Christian fringe to thank for the Oklahoma City bombing, the killing of eight physicians including in their homes and churches, a shooting spree at a Unitarian church; and Rudolph’s bombing spree, which included two women’s health clinics, a gay bar and Centennial Olympic Park.

We have terror cells operating in our suburbs, living among us, egged on by radical clerics who then deny connection to the violence and its perpetrators. These extremists are trying to change our politics by killing civilians. How will our President respond? He should go on national television and tell the nation that we do not give in and we will not negotiate with terrorists. He should, but he won’t. He won’t do it next time, either. And there will be a next time.

Things (Cis- Het-) Men Are Afraid To Talk About

Over at her blog, Clarisse Thorn writes about her sex-positive documentary series. They just had a masculinity night, and she said the hardest thing was to find work that even addressed male sexuality and the construction of masculinity. She has a lot to say. I have more to say than I can fit in this post, but what I’m getting around to is a specific question that is one of many, but one that cis het men don’t talk much about; and which I’m throwing out there not because it’s particularly the one important question, but because it’s an example of conversations that don’t happen.

I think cissexual het men have largely ceded the field of talking about male sexuality. I think there’s a huge unstated assumption that to even address the question, for men, is to mark one’s self as “other.” Trans men and queer men have always had to deal with their masculinity being contested territory, and cis het men are brought up to fear that their masculinity could ever be called into question. By even opening up a dialog, I think some folks fear that they are conceding that their sexuality is not uncontroversial. (Though I have not read it, one book on teen male sexuality is titled “Dude, You’re A Fag.” Further to my point about cis het men ceding the field, the author, C.J. Pascoe, is a woman.)

It’s All About Kyle Payne

The Henchwoman has a post up about Kyle Payne, the convicted sex offender who sexually assaulted a young woman under his care, is now out of prison, and continues to seek attention as a “feminist.”

I can’t add much to what others have said, except to say that Mr. Payne has nothing to offer to women or to the world until he accepts that he has nothing to offer. He needs to stop seeking attention, to realize that the only one who really benefits from him putting his voice out there is him, and that he owes is to his victim and to everyone to do whatever work he needs to do alone. Alone. Without communicating about it. Without seeking forgiveness, credit, or attention from anyone.

Until he can do that, he is making zero progress and remains a sexual assault waiting to happen. Because that’s how rape happens: privilege elevated to a level of solipsism by a man whose self-absorption is so great he can reduce a woman to a mere prop in his narrative. Since Payne is unable or unwilling to go quietly into exile, he clearly still thinks it’s all about him, and he has not and cannot make any progress.

h/t Lauren

Antioch, We Hardly Knew Ye

And by Antioch, I mean the much-mocked Antioch College Sexual Offense Prevention Policy. It factors heavily in one of the essays in Yes Means Yes, Rachel Kramer Bussel’s “Beyond Yes or No: Consent as Sexual Process.” Also, while ze never mentions it, is Hazel/Cedar Troost’s essay “Reclaiming Touch: Rape Culture, Explicit Verbal Consent, and Body Sovereignty”, it sat behind the page, on my reading, as a huge unmentioned subtext. (I don’t know the author, so I don’t know if that was a deliberate tactic.) I also saw it lurking in the subtext in parts of Lee Jacobs-Riggs’s “A Love Letter form an Anti-Rape Activist to Her Feminist Sex Toy Store”. (Lee is an active blogger here; I’m sure she’ll tell me if I’m seeing things) More than that, the Antioch Code seemed to sit behind all of the thinking about consent as affirmative, rather than the absence of no.

Imagine A Marriage Between Two People

To us, that sounds obvious. But this thought experiment might prove enlightening to Dennis Prager, whose ideas about gender are so essentialist, and whose thinking about sexuality is so backward, that he cannot really be conceiving of marriage as between two equals, each with their own needs and desires.

Men’s Magazine Desires World Without Meaningful Consent

This image, of a scantily clad woman attached to a video game controller with the caption “Keep on dreaming of a better world,” was posted without comment at Sociological Images.

First of all, it seems pretty obvious to me what the man targeted in this ad (by a men’s magazine) is supposed to use the controller for, and I don’t think it’s making the woman in question do the Chicken Dance for a giggle. The question I keep coming back to is whether this is supposed to be a “real” woman who has somehow been modified and turned into an all submissive sex toy (read: rape victim), or if it’s supposed to be a highly realistic fembot that looks like a real woman for a man’s sexually assaulting pleasure.

Clearly, the former is the worse option, but I’m not sure how much better I would feel about the latter still being upheld as a part of a “better world.”

Of course, I realize that this image is supposed to be lighthearted.  It’s a “joke.”  But that doesn’t make it funny.

I think that images and “jokes” like this really do point out the deeply destructive and misogynistic rape culture we live under, when “sex” is so regularly portrayed in this way.  Few, I imagine, would consider this image to be promoting rape.  But personally, it’s all I can see.  After all, if the woman was willing and truly consenting, a remote control would not be necessary for her to perform the desired acts.  The idea of a completely sexually controlled woman, however tongue-in-cheek, is still promoting as a false-ideal a woman who cannot say no.  And a woman who quite literally cannot say no due to control from outside forces is in fact a woman who cannot give a meaningful yes.

Funny, my idea of a “better world” is one where women are sexually empowered and respected, not enslaved.

cross-posted at The Curvature

Goldthrowers (On The Social Construction of Bullshit)

We all know the stereotype: the “goldthrower.” The guy who spends profligately looking to attract female partners, whether he can afford it or not.

Wait … did you miss that one? Me too.

But we all know what a “golddigger” is.