U.S. Rape Culture Attempts to Silence Rape Victims

     We wouldn't have known about the Steubenville rape case if it weren't for the fact that the victim and a blogger refused to be silenced. The crime blogger, Alexandria Goddard, and her commentors had been sued by the Steubenville football player and his parents for defamation. Party-goers filmed and photogrpahed the girl's abuse at the party. They posted their photos and videos to social media websites via their phones. Before many of the party-goers could delete their posts, Goddard took screen-shots and posted them to her blog. If the football player and his parents sued for defamation, they would have had a difficult time proving the information false.  Defamation, as define by dictionary.com , is the act of defaming; false or unjustified injury of the good reputation of another, as by slander or libel; calumny.

     It's awful when one's children are convicted of a crime as deplorable as rape, but the truth  hurts. The parents of the football players would not want the "good" reputation of their sons ruined by accusations of rape. No matter what the cost is to the victim, the parents would want their sons to get off scot-free because their offspring can do no wrong in their eyes. However, the truth, as far as anyone knows, is that the boys did rape the girl. Their attempts at suing the blogger were attempts at silencing a girl who their sons victimized. They wanted to silence all possible outlets that would lend the girl a voice.

    Jessica Valenti, a blogger for The Nation, writes that  Steubenville, a town that puts its prized football team before the justice of a young woman, and  the football players' parents are not the only ones guilty of complicity in the case of rape. Steubenville happens every day in the United States, and everyone is responsible.

      There are numerous examples of conservative white male politicians that want to silence the victims of rape because it makes men look bad. These elected officials want to silence women who are rape victims.  One politician claimed that pregnancies resulting from rape are  "a gift from god". While this is an anti-abortion argument, it is still meant to silence rape victims. The meaning behind this statement is that if a woman is raped and impregnated by her rapist, she should shut up and live with the child.

   Our government and judicial system refuses to acknowledge this country's rape problem. When women are raped, society wants to find a way to blame the victims or label the rapists as "sociopaths" instead of holding ourselves accountable as a nation. We would rather tell ourselves that only the rapists are flawed instead of acknowledging the conservative white male culture that promotes victim blaming and rape.  As blogger Valenti says, "It's time to acknowledge that the rape epidemic in the United States is not just about the crimes themselves, but our own cultural and political willful ignorance".

    Here is another example of the conservative white male "rape" culture: Wisconsin state Rep. Roger Rivard, claimed that his father once told him that "some girls rape easy".  His quote was in the context of a discussion about a teenager charged with sexually assaulting an under-aged girl. Rivard explained that his father meant a woman will willingly have sex with a man and then say that he raped her.

    The very same week that the Steubenville rape video was released, House Republicans let the Violence Against Women Act expire. House Republicans claimed it was too supportive of immigrants, the LGBT community and Native Americans.

    I don't understand why the bill had to expire. There are women in the immigrant, LGBT and Native American communities. Apparently House Republicans are sexist, racist and homophobic (as if we didn't know that already). What bothers me is that they would use that as an excuse to let the Violence Against Women Act expire. This goes to show that there are men even in the U.S. who want to see women silent and compliant. Women like Goddard and the Steubenville rape victim were only "complicating things". If we just kept our mouths shut and our legs closed, our country wouldn't have these problems.

    I'm not saying that the U.S. is the only country with violence against women. There are countries, such as India, Syria, Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East, where women's rights are not protected at all. However, we pride ourselves as a progressive and Democratic nation.  If we take a moment to compare our rape problem to those in other countries, we will see that ours is just another variant of all the others. We cannot excuse the actions of these football players by saying that we have less rape than India. or Syria. Those men cannot be excused from their actions because their parents think they can do no wrong. There is violence against women everywhere. As a nation that prides itself on women's rights, I think we should be ahead of the game when it comes to lending an ear and strength to women.



 


   

Victim Blaming: It's OK to Fire an Employee for Being "Irresistibly Attractive"

This just in. We live in a world where women can be fired for being too sexy. Now I truly fear for the human race. The Iowa Supreme Court decided that it is OK for an employer to fire an employee for being "irresistibly attractive".  A dentist fired his assistant due to his wife's accusations that they were having an affair. He complained that her tight clothing was "too much of a distraction". Although Dr. James Knight admitted that Nelson was a great worker, he couldn't separate himself from his sexual urges.

According to the Daily News article, the state’s all-male Supreme Court ruled 7-0 Friday that an Iowa City dentist legally canned his female assistant because she was “irresistibly attractive” and a threat to his marriage.  The ruling came after Melissa Nelson, the assistant, sued Dr.  Knight, her employer of 10 years. Nelson claimed she was fired after Knight's wife grew jealous of their relationship. 

Knight's lawyer claimed that this ruling was a "home-run for family values". I wish to be enlightened on these "values" he speaks of. I've never heard of a set of values that requires a man to fire his employee because he cannot control his boners around her.

Knight told Nelson that she would know her outfits are too revealing by the bulge in his pants. He compared Nelson's "irregular sex life" to having a Lamborghini in the garage and never driving it". Talk about objectification of women. 

The dentist's actions imply that men cannot control their sexual urges, therefore it is up to the female to control them for him. This victim blaming is a symptom of a greater problem in our world. Women are held accountable for not only their sexual urges, but we are also responsible for those of men. There are men in the world who feel powerless against women they find "too attractive", thus they must find a way to regain what little control they lost.

Would Nelson have been fired if she were a man? She doesn't think so.  If men cannot control themselves around a woman, it is the woman's fault because she is either wearing too tight clothing, too much makeup or too much or too little of something that supposedly makes her "too attractive".

 Here is another instance of a female banker fired for being "too hot". Debrahlee Lorenzana was fired because her clothing, while not skimpy, revealed her attractive figure too much. Her male colleagues complained that her clothing was too tight, making it difficult for them to concentrate on their work.

Her bosses forbid her to wear turtle necks, pencil skirts, three-inch heels and fitted business suits. When Lorenzana claimed that her female colleagues' wore clothing more revealing than hers, her male bosses said that their bodies were not the same as Lorenzana's. Her body shape drew too much attention. Her case was dismissed because her employment agreement called for any disputes to be settled in private arbitration. 

So, I guess that means women who have exceptionally attractive figures should be more aware of it, and they should wear over-sized baggy clothes and tape down their breasts.

Speaking of taping down breasts, an employee at a  lingerie company was fired by her conservative Jewish employers for being "too hot".   Her employer suggested she tape her breasts down to make them look smaller. Her boss gave her an over-sized, garish bathrobe to wear over her clothes  when they didn't approve of her outfit.

I don't know for certain why these women were fired for being too attractive. The reasons don't add up. As far as I have researched, there have not been any men fired for being distractingly attractive in the workplace. Why the male or conservative religious majority feels the need to oppress female attractiveness is something I can only speculate. In the case of the banker, maybe her male employers felt helpless in the throws of their arousal, so they had to find a way to regain that power again. In this case, they regained that power by firing her.

I believe Knight's reasons for firing Nelson were similar. He felt powerless over himself and his love life, so he fired his attractive female coworker to regain what little control he had.

In the case of the lingerie employee, her employers were conservative religious Jews. The Jewish religion is run by a patriarchy. The patriarchy, like all men, feels powerless over women it has no power over. They felt powerless over their sexual urges. In order to regain control over those urges, they fired a female employee whose clothes were a little tight over her ample bosom.

For those of you men who claim that there is no sexual discrimination in the U.S. anymore, you are only fooling yourselves. They can tell themselves that there are laws that prevent this discrimination and that the courts will side with the women, but as we can see in these cases, that was not the case. Nelson's case in particular is an example of the old-fashioned white male patriarchy winning. Where were the laws for Nelson when she needed them most? Nelson was metaphorically raped by the white male court who justified her termination. Lorenzana's case is being worked on in private arbitration. Laura Odes' case has not yet been solved as far as I could find. Women should not be judged in the workplace for the size of their body parts or their attractiveness in general. These companies lost valuable employees because of the decisions they made.

Ignorance: The Fuel for Hate Crimes

Randolph Linn of Ohio set fire to a prayer room of a mosque on Sept. 30, after claiming to be "riled up" after watching Fox News. Linn pleaded guilty to the crime today and admitted consuming 45 beers in seven hours. In addition to his drunken state-of-mind and his Fox News brainwashing, Linn confessed that he does not know what Islam is really about. All he knows is that they do not believe in Jesus Christ as the savior. Therefore, he vandalized a mosque.

His religious motives stand out to me the most. Linn did not commit arsony because he drunk. He committed it because he was willfully ignorant. He fed his brain with the racist propaganda of right-wing media. We are not talking about a child who does not know any better. We are talking about a grown man who digests anything that makes sense to him rather than exploring new possibilities on his own. 

Linn threatened the lives of innocent Muslim families based on the bias, radical right-wing propaganda fed to him on Fox News. I do not feel sorry for Linn, and I hope he gets the punishment he deserves for his willful ignorance. Michael Tobin, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice said that Linn used violence to respond to the Muslim terrorist attacks at the U.S. Embassies in the Middle East. According to Tobin, Linn believed the Muslims in the U.S. were getting a "free pass".

The people he threatened were not terrorists. They were innocent. Linn's target was no mere coincidence, as you will realize from his motives. His act represents ignorance and bigotry. I agree with the statement made by Steven M. Dettelbach, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio:

  Although this violence took place in one mosque in Toledo, as Americans we are all victims. The fire in this case wasn't just aimed at destroying a mosque. It was designed to deprive our community of one of our most cherished freedoms.

Linn's move was calculated to infringe on the religious freedom of U.S. citizens. Our country supposedly guarantees the right to practice whatever religion we wish, but hate crimes such as this may make citizens question how safe their freedoms are from people such as Linn. When Linn set fire to the mosque, he proved that he is no better than the terrorists who attacked the embassy. 

Linn was sentenced to 20 years in prison, so he is being appropriately punished. However, I feel that willful ignorance should be punished with something more. I guess his sentence will have to do. 

To tell or not to tell?

When embedded reporters in war zones are kidnapped, their employers try to persuade other news outlets not to print the kidnapping. In the case of Richard Engel's abduction, Gawker ran the story against the wishes of NBC. They believe that media attention may increase the risk of the kidnappers harming the reporter. How true is this? Is it ethical for news outlets to persuade others not to run the story?

Gawker writer John Cook received both negative and positive responses from journalists concerning the story. Gawker published the first set of responses in the first installment of their series about the kidnapping. Most of the critics lambasted Gawker's decision, bringing its journalistic integrity into question. Despite its lack of knowledge of Engel's exact circumstances, NBC requested that Gawker not publish the story. Cook responded:

Under those circumstances, no one at NBC made a case to me that reporting Engel's  situation might cause anything concrete to happen to him, because they didn't know anything about his current circumstances.

NBC could not make the case that reporting Engel's situation would cause any harm to him. How could they if they did not know his exact circumstances?  Given that the news had already been reported  internationally and domestically, Cook saw no reason not to report it. He states, "I didn't see a compelling reason to not do what Gawker normally tries to do, which is (among other things) publish true, newsworthy information. 

Fare enough. I'll give him that his journalistic integrity was in the right place. Cook did not allow NBC to strong arm  him into censoring information that they could not give a concrete reason not to censor.

 Not all feedback was negative. Gawker published one positive response to Cook's decision in "Fifteen Ways of Looking at the Media Blackout of Richard Engel's Abduction, Vol. II: Against".  

 I'm not sure what I would have done in that situation. Gawker's choice was ballsy and risky. Why was it risky?  Gawker *may* have put Engel's life at risk. We're not quite sure about that. NBC may have been blowing smoke up our asses. Second, Gawker risked its credibility with its more journalistically saavy readership. That was Gawker's call. Sometimes news outlets must make those risks to report worthy news.  I want to point out to my fellow journalism students that the situation Gawker faces is one that we may face in our careers as journalists. 

I agree with Gawker's decision to publish the story. They weren't the first the break the news here. A Turkish news outlet was one of the first to publish news of Engel's kidnapping. Also, a Chinese newswire Xinhua and Breitbart republished the story. 

Gawker's original posting of Engel's kidnapping can be found here.

War on Generosity

What happened to feeding students who can't afford a lunch at school? Dianne Brame, a lunch lady at Hudson Elementary School in St. Louis, did what anyone with a heart would do. She fed a student lunch when he was no longer enrolled in the school's free lunch program. 

 Brame dared to give him the "normal lunch". She took it upon herself to ensure he ate what the other kids ate rather than the "reduced lunch" for the students who cannot afford regular lunches. The reduced lunch included a meager cheese sandwich and milk carton. 

Brame feared that the student would be mocked by his peers if she gave him the reduced lunch. After all, economically disadvantaged students are usually ridiculed by their peers.

Chartwells repaid Brame's kindness by firing her. 

Let that sentence hang in the air for a moment. Dianne Brame was fired for feeding a hungry student. Chartwells viewed her actions as "stealing" because the food wasn't hers to give to the student. 

When has it ever made sense to punish someone for being generous?  Maybe it makes sense to greedy corporations such as Chartwells.  They fill their pockets while taking the food out of the stomachs of students. 

Chartwells rehired her because they learned of the reasons for Brame's actions. In reality, Chartwells rehired her due to negative attention from the media and public. 

 Why should students who cannot afford school lunches receive a lesser lunch from the school? The answer is that Chartwells won't have to spend that much money feeding students who cannot give that much money back. Therefore, let them eat a less filling meal which may be the only meal they get to eat all day. 

My Sex n the SUNY column this week

Social networking sites create spark

Internet dating is not just for older people. College students can find love on the Web, too. Not everyone is into the party scene. Those of us who are more shy or reserved make friends slower than others. I am definitely a home body and prefer to spend my evenings vegging out with a book or on the Internet. I met my boyfriend on the Web over a year ago. It will be two years on Nov. 19.

I started speaking with Will in an atheist discussion page on Facebook in August 2010. We took things slowly by speaking on MSN and Skype.  At first, I was nervous about meeting him in real life because I was afraid my mom would be mad at me for dating someone I met on the Internet. I was very hesitant, but after mulling it over for a month, I decided I wanted us to meet in person. We physically met in November 2010 and spent a wonderful weekend together.

It was also my first time having sex. I was nervous, but he was gentle and considerate of my feelings. I sat at the end of the bed, and he took my boots off for me. He sat next to me and lifted me onto his lap so I could be closer to him.

We started out slowly and then we got into it.

We spent the night learning what the other person liked and did not like to do sexually. After we finished, Will introduced me to Battlestar Galactica. I fell in love with the show as quickly as I fell in love with him.

From the beginning, I felt like I knew him my entire life. I felt like he was that best friend I had always been searching for. 

We share so many interests, but we have our differences, too. We both like  science fiction, such as Dr. Who and Star Trek. I love vegetables, and he hates them.

It took me a while to get up the courage to tell my mom about Will. I was nervous about telling her because I thought she would freak out. Not that it would matter what she thought, but I wanted her to accept it because it would take a lot of stress off me. I wasn’t ashamed of the relationship, and I would still keep dating Will no matter how she felt.

It took weeks of discussion with my therapist and Will about how to break the news to my mom.

My therapist gave me a couple suggestions. She told me to either send my mom an email saying that I have something to share with her. I could also wait until I saw her on spring break. 

Come spring break, I was not calm  when I told her. I was hesitant, and I cried.

However, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  When I broke the news to her, she wasn’t mad at all. She was thrilled.

  Now Will and I spend many days and nights together cuddling and watching science fiction shows and art films.

I am grateful that I met Will because he is an extremely calming force in my life. He helps me through the panic attacks and depression I suffer from. He is my anti-depressant.

Society is slowly beginning to accept the idea of Internet dating. However, I would like to tell everyone out there that it doesn’t matter where you find love. It just matters that you find it.

A Pulitzer Prize winning piece

Crossing Over 

Here is my analysis of this piece.

1. “Crossing Over” is a feature story about a town called Gee’s Bend and follows the life of a woman named Mary Lee Bendolph. Moehringer combines literary elements with journalism, giving an essay feel to the story. He uses journalistic skills and literary elements to report the facts and to portray his subjects as the human beings. He observes his environment and speaks with a lot of people. He uses the river to portray the racial tensions between blacks and whites in Gee’s Bend since before the Civil War. He also uses the river as a metaphor for “crossing over” to the other side because Mary Lee was always preoccupied with dying.
2. Moehringer’s reportage is very thorough because he speaks with all the right sources and he carefully observes his environment to portray the subjects as human beings. Moehringer follows Mary Lee around to focus on her life so he can write about Gee’s Bend. The analysis said that Moehringer had trouble writing the story until he realized that in order to write about a place he needed to focus on someone who lives there. He did a lot of historical research to learn about Bee’s Bend, too. His research shows in his use of background information about Gee’s Bend. Moehringer writes that the river in Gee’s Bend has divided blacks and white in Gee’s Bend for 180 years. He wrote that Gee’s Bend is where the Civil War came and went, but the slaves of Gee’s Bend stayed. Moehringer brings in other historical examples of places like Gee’s Bend. He said that the South was once “dotted” with such places, where slaves remained after Lincoln abolished slavery. He explains that Gee’s Bend is so isolated because of the geography. The land is U-shaped, dividing it from the 20^th century. Moehroinger incorporates these facts to put Gee’s Bend into perspective for the readers. He did his research on it so he could better understand it. When the reporter understands what she is writing about, she can better explain it to her readers. He interviewed Hollis Curl, the racist reporter who fought against the Civil Rights movement. Despite is regrettable past; Moehringer does not show bias toward Curl. Instead, he presents the past Curl and the Curl of the present. He interviewed Curl to show that he is a changed man and he regrets his past. Moehringer’s reportage portrays the human qualities of the people in Gee’s Bend. Specifically focusing on Mary Lee, Moehringer shows her “many strengths and few flaws”, as the analysis said. He uses few quotations, but when he does he shows Mary Lee’s quirky foibles. One example is her botching of certain words such as “confusionment” and “interpretate”. Moehringer does not do this to show her ignorance but to show how charming and sweet she is.
3. Moehringer does not interview a lot of people in the story, but he does do a lot of research and focuses on the people that matter to the story. He focuses on Mary Lee to give the story focus. Moehringer said in the analysis, “When you write about a place, it’s often best, or at least easier, to write about one person’s experience of that place.” He gets the background information by researching the history of Gee’s Bending. He interviewed Curl about the newspaper he wrote for and its relevance to the area. He probably interviewed Mary Lee and the people who live in Gee’s Bend to understand the relevance of the river and the ferry. It is important to explain the relevance of the river to the readers because there are rivers everywhere, so what makes this one so special? Moehringer did a thorough job of showing the reader’s the relevance of the river. He interviewed Mary Lee and found out that the Benders would ride the ferry into Camden for groceries and medicine. He discusses how, like Mary Lee, “rivers have their faraway looks too”. Despite the dangers that lurk at the bottom, Mary Lee describes it as a “strong brown god”. Camden was the only place the Benders could go for their basic needs, and the ferry took them there. He researched why Martin Luther King Jr. was important to Wilcox County. This is all information he could have gotten by interviewing Mary Lee and the people who live in Gee’s Bend. Because her memory may not be accurate, Moehringer would need to confirm the historical information with texts and documents. Moehringer quoted the neighbor Lucy about the quilts the slave women made. Lucy told him it was their only way to keep warm.
4. The story is very detailed and written like prose. He uses a lot of details and literary elements. He frequently uses a literary element called anaphora to create an emotional impact on the readers. Some examples of anaphora are, “lonelier than a leper colony”, “like a raindrop down a dirty window”, “The headstones tilt this way and that, like the earth's rotted teeth”. The first example refers to how the whites did everything they could to make the Gee's Bend “lonelier than a leper colony”. Moehringer writes that the Benders were proud of their capacity for solitude, but the racist whites made them lonely by segregating them with the river. He personifies the river, “”But rivers have faraway looks too. Slow, timid, her river typically keeps to itself...On hot summer days, it goes through the steaming fields at about the speed of a Model T, giving no signs of its quick temper.” Here Moehringer compares the river to Mary Lee's temperament. It has a “faraway look too” like Mary Lee. The river seems calm on the outside, but it is guarded by venomous snakes and alligators at the bottom in the summer. Moehringer also uses a lot of repetition to create sentences that stop the readers their tracks. “She” is repeated a lot in the lead paragraph. For instance,
   “She hopes the ferry won't come, but if if it does, she'll climb aboard. She'll tremble as she steps off the landing because she can't swim, and she can't forget the many times she's crossed this ugly river only to meet more ugliness on the other side.”
   The lead is gripping because of Moehringer's use of repetition. He repeats “she” so many times that the readers know the story will be about this woman he refers to. The end of the lead stops the readers in their tracks because it is unexpected. I was not expecting to see that sentence when I finished reading the lead. I wanted to read on to find out what he meant by the “ugliness”. The ferry is used as a metaphor for death. Moehringer writes, “She'll board that ferry, if it comes, because something tells her she must, and because all the people she loves most will board with her...When the time comes to cross your river, you don't ask questions. You cross.” This is how Mary Lee sees life. She may not want to die, but when her time comes she will be ready. She is not afraid to die because the people she loves most will meet her on the other side. Her loved ones will cross over with her. Moehringer uses few quotes, but the quotes he uses are powerful. Referring to her lack of education, Mary Lee said, “I loved-ed school, but I loved-ed mens more.” The quote is powerful because it shows that she made mistakes in her life that she regrets.
5. Moehringer uses a lot of details in his writing to bring out the beauty and history of Gee's Bend. He focuses on details of Mary Lee's life to give the reader a better vantage point. He used a lot of the details form his research, interviews and observations. For instance, at the beginning of chapter four he wrote, “Mary Lee rises with the river birds and changes her 87-year-old mother's diaper, then straightens the house, then feeds her three grandchildren...” Moehringer uses these intimate details to convey that Mary Lee is tied to Gee's Bend. She will not leave because there are so many people who need her. Moehringer uses concrete details to give the story focus. He includes intimate details about Curl to show how rampant racism was. Rather than focusing on racism in general, Moehringer focuses on Curl as an example. He write that Curl was the owner of a Camden newspaper that published racist articles. Curl was also city court judge and jailed black for marching without a permit. Sheriff Lummie is another concrete example of racism. When King visited Gee's Bend the church was “a sagging barn with planks for pews” and “a pot-bellied stove gave off scant heat. A bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling”. Moehringer got these details from speaking to the people who live in Gee's Bend. He used these details to recreate the moment when King arrived in Gee's Bend. Moehringer recreates the moment when Mary Lee drank from the “whites only” water fountain. She told him “it was no different than other water. But it was colder.” This quote shows how much segregation effected society. The water in the whites only water fountains was colder than in the black only fountains., so the government must have showed more favor to the whites. Moehringer could not have gotten all of these details just by doing research at a desk. A story of this caliber requires the writer to create relationships with the subjects. A writer needs to gain the trust of the people he speaks with to get such intimate details. Moehringer writes that when the Benders boarded the ferry to join King's movement, the boat nearly capsized. This detail allows the readers to visualize how many Benders there were and how much of an impact King had on them.
6. The story is organized into chapters to break the information down for the readers. Each chapter takes the reader into a different aspects of Gee's Bend and Mary Lee's life. Each chapter title reflects what the chapter is going to be about. For example, chapter one is titled “Mary Lee's Vision”. Moehringer explains in the chapter that Mary Lee has prophetic visions. Moehringer wrote in the fifth paragraph that “Mary Lee has already seen her self crossing”. In the same paragraph he writes that Mary Lee sees the future in her dreams. In the beginning of the chapter he establishes ideas that are all related to each other and give meaning to the title. The second chapter titled “The Road To Freedom” is about Martin Luther King Jr.'s influence on the blacks of Gee's Bend. The chapter titled “A Change of Heart” is about Curl changing his mind about black people. Every chapter is titled to reflect its content. The chapters break the information down so the readers have a better vantage point. Readers can digest the information more easily.