Hey, as long as it’s in the family…

Open your eyes
(image by LukeDavison via morgueFile)

Outrage! Shock! Horror!  And totally dismissal.  Because while a now 52-year-old man kept a developmentally disabled woman captive for 14 years in his back yard, using her as a sex slave and abusing her, it’s all cool because, you know, she’s family.

Yeah, that’s right.  Not a problem.  Not a big deal.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  The total and complete waste of human life is going to serve 22 years in prison.  (Will he really, though?  Or will he get out early for “good behavior”?) 

The big deal here, the truly horrific part, is that the woman escaped in 2012.  Yes, two years ago.  Two years!  But the authorities never said anything to the public because, well, according to the chief of police, “…we did not release any information up to this point about the case because the crime was perpetrated within the family by a very close family member…there was no reason to believe there were any non-family members who had been victimized…”   

So, yeah, he did horrible horrible things to a woman who couldn’t fight back for over a decade, but since she was family, it’s not worth mentioning.  Now, the chief did also say that the victim was “…very fragile and we did not want to jeopardize her welfare or the case in any way.” 

The woman was 13 when her relative took her in 1998.  For all that time, he kept her in a shed in the backyard.  She did not attend school, and he did landscaping work with her in the backyard.  A neighbor said that she thought something wasn’t right, but apparently, she didn’t bother mentioning it.  And the other relatives also apparently didn’t notice something wrong with her vanishing, but, the article mentions, one of them picked her up.  So how did she contact this relative?  Did this relative know and not do anything about it?  Or did they suspect but not act?

The plea deal that is getting him 22 years, by the way?  Yeah, he’s pleading guilty to “one count of forced lewd acts on a child and two counts of forcible rape.”  Yes, three counts of crimes that spanned fourteen years of this woman’s life.

This article reminds me of something I read many years ago by a wonderful crusader and author named Andrew Vacchs.  Back in 2005, he published an op-ed about how easy it was for family members to get away with incest.  At that time, sex with a child under age 11 was up to 25 years in prison.  Unless, of course, it was a family member.  Because then it’s just a class E felony, one that is considered “an offense affecting the marital relationship” and the person who commits the crime (yes, raping a child falls into this), they can just get probation.  Because incest, you see, is considered a “nonviolent crime.”  I shit you not.  A non-violent crime.

Why is it that we are so quick to forgive people who commit atrocious acts on their own relatives?  Their children?  Their nieces and nephews?  Their grandchildren?  Why do we think this is okay?  Because, really, if we didn’t think it was okay, then these crimes wouldn’t be so easily hidden and swept under the rug.  These rulings wouldn’t happen. 

We need to know about these things, and we need to do something about them.  Me?  I’ve applied to be a child advocate. 

“Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.”

― Mahatma Gandhi

Let’s rape ourselves! (Or, more appropriately titled, why do women feel the need to blame women?)

This mannequin better watch out
or Dick Black might get her!

Image by Pedro J Perez, morgueFile

 

Many a year ago, a wise man named Jonathan Swift suggested that perhaps we need to eat babies.  Eating babies, he said, would solve so many of societies’ ills.  We’d have food.  We’d have less population.  Babies wouldn’t go to waste!  The poor could get rich selling their offspring, which they didn’t really need or want anyway.  It was a total win-win situation.

Sadly, though, the brilliance of Swift is long gone.  Or at least, it appears to be when you are foolish enough to read anything written by Roxanne Jones.  Roxanne Jones, who somehow won the 2010 Woman of the Year award from Women in Sports and Events, wrote two pieces that I had hoped – prayed even! – were satire.  And sadly, for both myself and all women in the world, they were not.

The first one appeared back around Thanksgiving.

In the article, titled “Young men, get a ‘yes’ text before sex,” she begins by telling her son to “watch out for stupid girls…they are trouble.”  Oh my, as a certain famous and funny performer has said a few times.  She goes on to complain about women who are “party girls…who thrive on attention.”  These girls, she says, are not asking to be raped.  But, then she says, what you need to do is to get a girl to text you “yes” before she has sex with you.  This, she somehow believes, will solve the problem of rape on college campuses.

Yes, this awesome woman states “Never have sex with a girl unless she’s sent you a text that proves the sexual relationship is consensual.”  Wow.  Why isn’t she out there, campaigning for this to be made into a law?

Because it’s stupid as fuck.

Seriously, this harkens back to 1999 when an Italian appeals court ruled that a woman wearing jeans couldn’t be raped because “it is common knowledge…that jeans cannot even be partly removed without the effective help of the person wearing them…and it is impossible if the victim is struggling with all her might.” 

Let me just clear this up – there doesn’t have to be a struggle for it to be rape.  A woman can say no, but if fear is there (a weapon, a threat, anything) or if the woman is unable to fight (drunk, asleep, whatever), then it’s still rape!  It does not matter if she fights back.  It does not matter if she texts a yes.  How easy would it be for a guy, holding a gun on a woman, to make her text that message?  How easy would it be to put roofies in a girl’s drink, get her phone, and then text that to yourself?  Who the fuck would honestly consider a text all the permission they need?

Jones, at the end of her article, once again says that men shouldn’t rape drunk women.  But right before she makes that point, she again points out that “true equality means that we are also held accountable for our actions.  Partying and drinking until you are no longer in control of your body or mind instantly sets you up to become a victim of rape or bodily harm – or even to die.”  Yes, true, but the same is true for men – at least the death part is.  But it doesn’t matter.  People can do stupid things.  They do do stupid things.  But to bring that up – to say that “nobody wants to be a stupid girl” – implies that women are asking for it.  It says straight out that women should not be able to get drunk, like men can get drunk, without being “instantly set up” to be raped and murdered.

But Jones doesn’t stop there.

In December, she got up on her soapbox again and suggested that false rape accusers should be sued.  

Now, I’m all for justice.  It is very true that some women have lied about being raped.  However, that being said, Jones even admits that some things that can make rape cases not go to court can be as simple as the fact that “the alleged victim did not try to fight off the suspect or suffer injuries, was not threatened with a weapon or the victim and perpetrator had a previous relationship.”  In all those cases, the rape charge might be dismissed, and the case might be considered a false accusation.  In fact, according to GOP candidate Dick Black, spousal rape shouldn’t be a crime, and you can’t really call it rape if someone is wearing a nightie.  

Jones ends her article by telling us that “we have a long way to go before there’s justice for all.”  But she’s not referring to the rape victims who have had their cases dismissed because there wasn’t enough physical injury. She’s referring to those falsely accused of rape.

Again, I’m all for justice.  If someone is falsely accused and their reputation is destroyed, they deserve their day in court and their name restored.  However, what about those who are actually raped and can’t get their day in court?  How can you ignore the 87,000 “forcible rapes” that the FBI has on record in 2012?  How can you ignore the non-forcible rapes, where lives were just as destroyed?

I would love to see Jones stripped of her “Woman of the Year” award.  Her writing is not for women.  Her views are not for women.  She feels horrible for the “innocent men [who] end up in prison or with lives shattered” but seems to ignore the women who wind up in their own mental (and sometimes physical) prisons. 

Mayors will be mayors…

Law books
by southernfried
@ morgueFiles.com

I’ve been following a horrifying news story.  And I want to thank Ruben Navarette, “a CNN contributor and a nationally syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group.”   His lovely article “Will ‘Mayor Naughty’please step down?’ alerted me to the fact that, first, this is a horrifying situation, and second, people are still fucking idiots.

Mr Navarette talked about Bob Filner, the mayor of San Diego, who “has been accused of sexual harassment, inappropriate touching, lewd comments and other boorish behavior by -- at last count -- 17 women.”  Navarette says that he “snarkily predicted that we'd get to 20 women by Labor Day.”  Because, you know, it’s fucking hysterical that the mayor harassed and abused over 15 women who were willing to come forward and face the personal attacks that were bound to happen because, of course, the crime in this case is often being willing to talk. 

Navarette further points out that “…all the while, Mayor Naughty fiddles. Filner isn't exactly cleaning out his office. He doesn't seem to care what anyone thinks about him. He won't leave, and it might just be that -- even with all the pressure being applied -- we can't make him leave.” 

Possibly without even meaning to, Navarette is helping to prove that point.  By calling him “mayor naughty” and talking about “How embarrassing are the Filner follies? Try this on for size: Hooters restaurants in San Diego have banned the mayor because, according to the management, Filner doesn't respect women. What do you do when you're deemed morally deficient by a restaurant chain that made a fortune off the concept of waitresses serving up hot wings in tight shorts and cleavage-baring T-shirts?”, he is one of the guys who seems to think that it’s amusing when men abuse women.  Calling his actions “follies” and joking about his title…these aren’t the musing of someone who feels that a man has done something wrong.  This is a man who believes in the good old boys’ club and is amused when someone gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar.  Further evidence is in his comments about Hooters.  While I know that many other feminists may hate Hooters, I see it as further freedom of choice.  If women can make money by dressing in something that has more coverage than a bikini and being friendly with lonely men, what’s wrong with that?  And while some Hooters have had issues, many of them have very good benefits and treat their employees well.  But, of course, the women are in the wrong and being “morally deficient” when they wear “tight shorts and cleaver-baring T-shirts.” 

In the end, Filner agreed to resign,  but he only “apologized to accusers but denied ever sexually harassing them.”  Filner’s actions, as reported by women in this article (with slightly less humor) included “more women—one of them a great-grandmother and another a retired Navy admiral—came forward and told stories of Filner touching, forcibly kissing, making lewd comments and even placing them in headlocks.” 

I have nothing against innocent until proven guilty…and I have nothing against proper criminal and civil proceeding occurring.  That *should* happen.  But I’m worried it won’t.  I’m worried that, since he’s just a ‘naughty mayor’ and since we all have a ‘mayors will be mayors’ attitude that he will never come to justice.  Sure, he lost his position, but he caused that to happen.  They did nothing to deserve what happened to them.  They were innocent bystanders, and he abused his power and them. 

I don’t want to just bring up the evils of men sexually harassing women.  We all know about that.  We need to change the perception of it.  We need to stop joking about it and making it funny.  Many, many things in life are funny.  Sexual harassment and abuse does not fall into those categories.