On the Hofstra Rape/Recant Case & the Campus Rape Epidemic

I’m talking about it all on CNN tonight during the 5PM broadcast. In the meantime, check out my related piece from the Prospect last week.

Why the Charges are Civil (and Why That Doesn’t Mean She’s a Lying Golddigger)

A lot has already been made about why the victim in the Roethlisberger case has pressed civil charges but not criminal ones. Bloggers and commenters across the web have begun suggesting this undermines her credibility and makes it more likely that she’s a “lying golddigger.” (I won’t be sending these folks traffic by linking to them.)

In reality, there are TONS of reasons a rape victim may file civil charges but not criminal ones. For one, the burden of proof is easier in a civil case. In a criminal one, even DNA evidence may not be enough to prove the accused did it “beyond a resonable doubt” if he’s claiming the sex was consensual. But in a civil case, the evidence need only prove that it’s more likely than not that the accused did the crime.

But burden of proof is only one reason among many. I asked the fantastic Jessie Mindlin and Lydia Watts of the Victim Rights Law Center (and my fellow CounterQuo founding members) about this issue, and they said that burden of proof is far from the most common reason victims choose civil suits over criminal ones.

While we don’t know this particular woman’s reasons, here are 10 good reasons Mindlin & Watts see all the time:

News alert: Men see scantily-clad women as objects

I’m sure you’re all thinking, “No shit, Sherlock,” but now there’s actually scientific evidence to back up this notion and the study on the matter also presents some scary details.

New research, presented this week by Princeton University psychology professor Susan Fiske at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, shows that, in men, the brain areas associated with handling tools and the intention to perform actions light up when viewing images of women in bikinis.

But the experts claim men just can’t help themselves. They say it’s a byproduct of human evolution because the first male humans had an incentive to seek fertile women as the means of spreading their genes. So it’s part of their biology to depersonalize sexual images of women. (Yeah. Right.)

The study participants, who were heterosexual college men, also took a questionnaire to determine if they harbored sexist views of women. In the men who were found to harbor “hostile sexism” (an adversarial viewpoint of women that includes the belief that women attempt to dominate men), the part of the brain associated with analyzing another person’s thoughts, feelings and intentions was inactive while viewing scantily clad women.

So these particular dudes are angry because they think women are trying to dominate them and if you’re wearing a bikini they’re not going to see you as a person. Ladies, make sure you never end up at the beach with one of these guys.

I pray this study isn’t misused as backup for the idiotic notion that women who wear skimpy clothes deserve to be raped.

My hope is that instead heterosexual men who read about this research will decide to check themselves and strive to be more aware of exactly how they view different women in their lives and that they will examine how arousing images of women affect their interactions with other female acquaintances.

This study is just another example of why a world without rape will never become a reality unless the men of this world fight for it too.

Click here to read more about the research and let me know what you think of the study.

(crossposted at GeorgiaMae.com)

So cool.

My friend Dawn Paul sent me this. How I wish I’d written it myself!

Happy V-Day, Everyone

h/t Ann Killough

Why Roe isn’t enough

Check out this piece at RH Reality Check today. Emily asked two questions of reproductive rights and justice advocates about the Roe anniversary. The first, what does Roe mean to you and the people you work with, and the second, is Roe enough?

Here are my answers:

For the women we work with, many of whom come from countries in Latin America where abortion is still criminalized, Roe has the potential to have a huge impact on their lives. Roe has the potential to make reproductive health services just like any other healthcare need a woman has, it has the potential to make a usually clandestine procedure safe and accessible. Unfortunately for them, the Roe decision has been weakened and diluted by subsequent legislation. The Hyde Amendment, in particular, has seriously stunted the potential of Roe. Because of these laws, we have a long way to go for low-income and immigrant women to really feel the full affects of this historic Supreme Court decision.

Roe isn’t enough because privacy is not enough. That narrow legal framework has only barely protected our legal right to access the procedure. It says nothing about access, about funding, about autonomy and barriers. It says nothing about justice. It has not addressed those who based on moral and religious convictions try to limit the health care women can receive. It has not addressed those who want women’s bodies to be manipulated in service of a religious agenda and who want the fetus’s rights to be placed about those of the mother. We need a lot more than a shaky legal framework to stand on if we want to achieve reproductive justice.

Read other advocates comments here.

Are striptease aerobics classes anti-feminist?

Though I haven’t been to a class in a while, I love striptease aerobics. The classes I’ve attended were actually pole-free and the hour was filled with learning a high-energy, sexy dance routine. They were always a great workout and always fun.

As I look for new things to try this year I’m eager to move on to more advanced classes (i.e. one with a pole). But (other than the fact that my body is still recovering from being knocked to the ground by a moving car this fall) there’s something keeping me from giving these classes a twirl.

I keep wondering: Are striptease aerobics classes anti-feminist?

Is getting naked the key to happiness?

Last week while Gov. Rod Blagojevich was gettting arrested and Oprah was announcing she now weighs 200 pounds, actress Jennifer Aniston was also making headlines.

Aniston posed for the January issue of GQ magazine wearing nothing but a neck tie and you better believe that got some people’s attention.

Pop culture pundits say Aniston is not only hoping to promote her new movie “Marley & Me,” but that she also wants the world to know she’s not sitting home “getting fat” and sulking about Brangelina.

Aniston was quoted saying, in regards to the photo shoot, “It felt really good to be that comfortable with myself…” and this comment echoes the sentiments of many women who have posed nude for magazines.

While I’m thrilled that these women love their bodies, it frustrates me that posing nude is the supposed self-confidence booster that seems to be celebrated most in the media. Sure, a woman should have a right to pose nude if she wants to, but aren’t there other ways, better ways, to feel confident and celebrate our bodies? And is having folks lust over your photo real sexual power?

What do you think?

(This issue also being discussed at my blog GeorgiaMae.com.)

Update: Univision agrees to run condom ads!

Good news! Univision responded to our protests from last week and has decided to run the ads! Thanks to any readers who took action.

The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and Catholics for Choice are happy to share the wonderful news that Univision has decided to run our Condoms4Life radio ads. We emailed all of you last week, urging you to take action and ask the President and COO of Univision Radio to run these important advertisements. The Spanish-language ads, which you can listen to here and here, talk about the importance of condom use within communities of faith. We are thrilled that Univision has agreed to play the ads which will air over the holidays on Univision stations in New York City.

When Univision Radio refused to run our ads on three of their NYC stations, we asked you all to get involved. You took action in impressive numbers, sending emails to Gary Stone with the message that this kind of censorship was unacceptable and that these messages are key to keeping our community safe. We want to thank all of you for taking action, especially those who passed the message along to their friends and family. A number of blogs also posted about this issue, further spreading the action.

Gary listened to you! We have the activism of the Latino community and our allies to thank for this win and Univision to thank for doing the right thing. We want to recognize Univision for listening to the resounding message you all sent last week-that the message Good Catholics Use Condoms deserved to be heard. NLIRH and Catholics for Choice will share a message of appreciation to Univision on behalf of all of us for listening to our concerns.

Thanks again for all your hard work and support. To keep up to date on this campaign, you can visit www.condoms4life.org or www.latinainstitute.org.

In solidarity,

The staff of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and Catholics for Choice

Cross posted at feministing

On 2L, My Cynical Self, and the Possibility of Another World

Tonight as I waiting for the bus in the cold, I read Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s Yes Means Yes essay “What it Feels Like When it Finally Comes: Surviving Incest in Real Life.” Later, in my warm apartment, I took in some of the blogosphere buzz around the recent sexual violence against a University of Michigan law student. I am proud of this woman for writing publicly about her experience. I want her to know that, like so many other people, I believe one hundred percent that this was NOT HER FAULT. After reading hers and others writings, I felt a vague rumbling of remorse in myself about my initial cynical response to her story of abusive response from the police.