This week brought us a textbook example of intersectionality: in this case, a toxic combination of racism and sexism (or as Trudy calls it, misogynoir ): African-American scientist Danielle N. Lee, who blogs as the Urban Scientist at Scientific American, got a request to blog at Biology-online.org. She asked about pay, they told her there wasn't any, and she declined. Their response:
“are you urban scientist or an urban whore?”
The individual responsible was fired, Biology-online has apologized, and Dr. Lee put up a post on her blog - which was promptly taken down by Scientific American, with ever-changing explanations, until they were finally pressured into putting it back. The Journal of Are You F***ing Kidding does a lovely deconstruction of the apologetics for Scientific American.
The good, the bad and the ugly below the orange intersection.
Violence:
Maryville, Missouri, has been the site of a notorious case where two girls, then 14 and 13 years old, reported being sexually assaulted by teen boys at a party, while another boy took video. They left the 14-year-old passed out on the lawn, wearing only a t-shirt and sweatpants in below-freezing temperatures, which could easily have been fatal.
Sheriff Darren White felt confident the office had put together a case that would “absolutely” result in prosecutions.
“Within four hours, we had obtained a search warrant for the house and executed that,” White told The Star. “We had all of the suspects in custody and had audio/video confessions."
The DA then dropped the charges, claiming the girls wouldn't cooperate (which they deny). It has been noted that one of the accused boys is the grandson of a well-connected local politician. The girls endured an incredible harassment campaign, the 14-year-old's mother was fired and got a recorded admission that it was over the case, and now her family's home has been burned down. Fox News brought on a defense attorney to explain that of course he
"wasn't blaming the victims, but...."
The 15-year-old, Daisy Coleman, has chosen to publicly identify herself and tell her story. The younger girl, Paige Parkhurst, has done the same. After the case sparked a national outcry, the DA's office agreed to have it handled by a special prosecutor.
Inevitably, Slate's Emily Yoffe, who has a history of denial and victim-blaming around rape, wrote another of those "prevent rape by policing women's behavior more" articles. As I've noted before, this isn't really a rape-prevention tactic; it's a switch-the-victim tactic: stay sober, and if you're lucky the rapist will target someone else instead. This doesn't actually solve the problem that the rapist is still raping someone. Echidne calls this the "don't be the slowest zebra in the herd when the lions are hungry" approach.
There have been excellent responses by Amanda Hess and Emma Gray. But my favorite is Ann Friedman's pitch-perfect rewrite of Yoffe, College Men: Stop Getting Drunk. And here's Thomas at Yes means Yes:
Yoffe is wrong, continuing the same thought, because she ignores the moral agency of men. There are a group of people who can consistently be counted on to argue that men’s sexuality is animalistic, feral, uncontrolled, dangerous; that men just can’t help themselves. These people are the rape apologists. If men can’t help themselves but to rape, why is it even wrong? This argument usually isn’t stated explicitly, because when stated explicitly it’s too over-the-top. But it is at the core of every comment that rape has to do with how the victim was dressed or whether she gave off the “wrong” signals. There is a group of people who can be counted on consistently to argue that men are people with both the ability and responsibility to be moral actors and control their impulses, sexual or otherwise. These people are antirape feminists.
And it turns out that teaching men about rape has
actually been tried - and it's effective.
The class started by showing the men a DVD that detailed a male-on-male rape experience. Focusing on a male victim helped the men in the class start to imagine how being a victim of rape might actually feel. Once the men started to feel empathy toward rape survivors, they were told to close their eyes and imagine another horrific scene: a woman close to them has had too much to drink and is raped while someone stands by and does nothing. Just imagining your mother, sister, girlfriend or grandmother being raped hurts a lot – and this exercise helped the men feel even more empathy toward rape survivors. After the thought exercises, the men were given the chance to brainstorm about ways they could intervene if they saw a rape about to occur. They were also taught other valuable skills like how to spot true consent, how to support a rape survivor, and how to confront others who tell jokes about rape, demean women, or brag about abusing women.
I know what you’re thinking. “Sure, this all sounds great, but I bet those men forgot all they learned faster than my heart beats during a True Blood finale.” But it turns out the men who participated in this program were still affected by it years later!
A federal air marshal has been arrested for
taking cell phone photos up women's skirts as they boarded the plane.
The revolting Bob Filner, ex-mayor of San Diego, has pled guilty to one felony charge of false imprisonment and two misdemeanor charges of battery. Civil cases are pending regarding accusations of sexual harassment by at least 17 different women.
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Gabby Giffords discusses the gun connection. And here's a good piece on domestic violence and African-American women, including Marissa Alexander. Check out the campaign of support letters by men for Ms. Alexander.
Health Care:
It's also Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so brace yourself for the pink-washing, including pink ribbons on products that can cause cancer. I haven't seen any on cigarettes yet, but just wait. And I don't even know what to say about the world's douchebaggiest "charity event.".
The Abortion Care Network is sponsoring an abortion stigma-busting video contest.
Workplace:
The She-covery That Wasn't.
Monica Byrne discussed her experience of harassment by Bora Zivkovic, an editor at Scientific American, and how hard it is to come forward about it. After the science writing community erupted in rage at Ms. Byrne, Zivkovic acknowledged she was telling the truth, and apologized. Hannah Waters, who had a similar but less overt experience with him, muses on the power of not-quite-harassment.
Uncategorizable:
Foz Meadows on objectificatin and the male gaze: "Men we know you are better than this."
Good news and action items:
Phill Kline, the former Kansas Attorney General who committed ethical violations in his crusades against abortion providers - and against Dr. George Tiller in particular - has now had his law license suspended indefinitely .
Petition for a thorough investigation in the Maryville rape case.
Last week's diary discussed a Nebraska case where a 16-year-old was denied an abortion because she was deemed "not mature enough" by a judge who let his biases show pretty clearly. Petition to investigate other rulings by the same judge.
Once-and-future Speaker Nancy Pelosi is inducted into the Women's Hall of Fame.
Friday was Persons Day in Canada, commemorating a court decision that women were, you guessed it, "persons."