A commissioned report on Duke University’s response to allegations that members of the Duke lacrosse team had gang-raped a North Carolina State University student was released Monday (news story here, full report in pdf format here). Although the report’s focus is on Duke’s initial response (which was judged too slow, and too dependent on second- and third-hand sources), this paragraph from the report is the reason it’s in the news:

After the victim of the alleged assaults was taken to the Emergency Room of the Duke Hospital in the early morning hours of March 14, having earlier told Durham police that she was raped and sexually assaulted by approximately 20 white members of a Duke team (a charge later modified to allege an attack by three individuals in a bathroom), the official report of the Duke Police Department was submitted and reviewed by the Duke Police Director, Robert Dean, at 7:30 a.m. on March 14.

Predictably, a legion of right-wing bloggers have jumped on this as proof that Mary Doe, the (alleged) rape victim, is lying.

And it’s not just the bloggers. Dan Abrams, on MSNBC’s “Abrams Report” on May 9th, described this story as follows:

A new independent report said the accuser in the Duke rape investigation initially said it was 20 players who raped her, then changed her story to three. Is it time for the D.A. to drop the charges?

I believe Mary Doe was raped at that party, as she claims - but I’m open to the possibility I’m mistaken. Nonetheless, this story - as damning as it sounds when you hear the headline version - doesn’t convince me, because it disintegrates into nothing on closer examination.

The claim that Mary Doe ever said she was raped by 20 men is substantiated by only one source - this police report (pdf link), written by officer Christopher Day. Day wrote:

The female was picked up at the Kroger on Hillborough Rd., and she was claiming that she was raped by approximately 20 white males at 610 N. Buchanan Street. […]

The victim changed her story several times, and eventually Durham Police stated that charges would not exceed misdemeanor simple ass[ault] against the occupants of 610 N. Buchanan.

That may seem pretty damning. But on closer reading of the report, one thing stands out: Officer Day never heard Mary Doe say she’d been raped by 20 men, or change her story. In fact, he never met Mary Doe; the report makes it clear that Officer Day went to 610 North Buchanan when this report came in, and spent some time running down license plates to see who owned the cars parked on Buchanan. So this report is secondhand information at best, and perhaps third-hand or forth-hand.

To make matters worse, no police officer who directly heard Mary Doe say “I was raped by 20 men” is identified, or (so far) has come forward. And the Durham government doesn’t seem to be supporting Day’s version of events:

Durham City Manager Patrick Baker told Eyewitness News earlier Tuesday that he had never heard that she claimed 20 men had raped her. […]

Baker is standing behind the city’s police officers, saying the Duke officer who wrote the report got secondhand information.

“He did not have a conversation with our officer,” Baker said in a telephone interview Tuesday night. “He did not have a conversation with the victim. He prepared his report based on conversations he overheard and the context of that conversation.”

So what has been reported as “the victim’s claim” is actually one campus cop’s interpretation of an overheard conversation between two other cops discussing their interpretation of Mary Doe’s statements in the earliest hours of the investigation. I don’t find that persuasive - and neither should a jury.

By the way, what shape was Mary Doe in to be giving testimony, in the first hours of the investigation? The same Duke University report quotes a different police officer - who, unlike Officer Day, spoke to Mary Doe in person:

One female member of the Duke Police Department, who was on the scene at the Emergency Department of the hospital and who attempted to calm down and reassure the young woman, saw that she was “crying uncontrollably and visibly shaken… shaking, crying, and upset.”

If any Durham police officer claims to have personally heard Doe say 20 men raped her - and so far, no officer has publicly made that claim - I still wouldn’t think much of the claim, especially if the police officer hadn’t been trained in interviewing traumatized victims. If a cop asks a victim “how many people were there,” and she answers “twenty,” the cop could easily interpret that as meaning “20 men raped me” - especially if the cop wasn’t taking the allegations seriously (because she’s a stripper, black, poor, seems dazed, etc). But Doe could have thought the cop was asking how many men were at the party. (InMyHumbleOpinion made a similar point in TalkLeft comments). Experts agree:

Scott Berkowitz, president of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, a victim-rights group, said the first police officers to speak with a rape victim often don’t have the training and experience needed to accurately judge the merits of a complaint. […] “It’s important to note that once the experienced folks got there and started investigating this, they found her story credible and concluded that a violent crime took place,” he said.

The Duke report did say a female campus police officer was at they hospital where police took the accuser after the party, and she descried her as “crying uncontrollably and visibly shaken … shaking, crying and upset.”

Such behavior, Berkowitz said, isn’t uncommon.

“Dealing with witnesses immediately after any trauma is terribly complicated,” he said. “They’re emotional. They’re not focused on the narrative. They’re focused on the sheer terror that they just went through, so folks who have experience at it get the knack for how to deal with them and how to ask questions and how to back off and give her a little time.”

On Abrams’ MSNBC show, Duke report co-author William Bowen carefully backed away from the certain-sounding language of his report:

I myself would not put a lot of emphasis on the difference between 20 and three. This was a large gathering of people. The woman claimed that she was badly treated, very badly treated, and then the specifics of the three people in the bathroom came out later.

Interviewed on the same show, former District Attorney Norm Early raised similar questions:

Right now we have a situation where we`re talking about an amorphous entity, the Duke Police Department, the Durham Police Department. Who said it? Under what circumstances did they allegedly hear this?

Were there others around who could have heard the same thing? Was this one of the individuals who was conveying to the victim the entire time that this was no big deal. It was not going anywhere by gesture or by mannerisms or just by their demeanor. [… It] could be very much like… we`re talking about her relating the story and saying there were 20 people involved, where there are a whole bunch of people involved and then she eventually gets to the point where she says three of them in a bathroom. That is entirely possible. And until you are able to narrow down who heard it and what they heard and under what circumstances they heard it, you are not going to be able to ascertain whether she`s talking about being raped by 20 people or raped only by the three.

The “let’s not leap to judgement, and by the way she’s obviously lying” crowd thinks this new story vindicates their view. But my guess is that - lacking any police officer who claims to have directly heard Mary Doe say “I was raped by twenty men” - this story will go nowhere. And even if an officer does come forward, the possibility that Doe, due to shock and trauma, simply wasn’t speaking in a clear or organized fashion can’t reasonably be dismissed.

* * *

Looking at this latest story from a broader perspective, this is an example of what I think of as “The Platonic Rape Victim Fallacy” - the idea that there is a single, correct fashion in which all True Rape Victims behave. If a rape victim acts in any other way - for example, in in the earliest hours after the rape she fails to produce a simple, coherent, well-organized narrative when talking to police - then according to the Plationic Rape Victim Fallacy, she wasn’t raped at all. I’ll post more later on the Platonic Rape Victim Fallacy, which comes up frequently in discussions of the Duke rape case, and in most other publicly-discussed rape cases.

****PLEASE NOTE****
The comments on this post are for feminist and pro-feminist posters only. If you’re not a feminist and you want to leave a comment, please use the identical post on Creative Destruction instead.

In her Boston Globe column, and also reprinted on her blog, Cathy Young writes:

Feminism has achieved real and important progress in the treatment of sexual assault victims. A couple of generations ago, a stripper at a party with athletes would have been viewed by many as fair game. That this is no longer the case surely makes us a more decent society.

Whenever I see Cathy say something nice about feminism, I know the word “but” is fast approaching. Sure enough…

But even some people who applaud this change believe that in some cases, the pendulum has swung too far. Many feminists seem to think that in sexual assault cases the presumption of innocence should not apply. Appearing on the Fox News show ”The O’Reilly Factor,” Monika Hostler of the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault declared that her role was ”to support a woman or any victim that comes forward to say that they were sexually assaulted.”

To O’Reilly’s question, ”Even if they weren’t?” Hostler replied, ”I can’t say that I’ve come across one that wasn’t.”

Cathy is conflating two things that should be kept separate: an individual citizen’s own opinion, and our Court system. Yes, agents of our Court system are required to presume innocence, but unless she’s sworn in on a jury, Ms. Hostler doesn’t share that requirement. As I wrote in an earlier post:

I believe very much in “innocent until proven guilty.” If and when the police make arrests in this case, I want the accused rapists (whoever they turn out to be) to have their day in court, to be able to present a defense aided by legal council, and to be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. Then, and only then, should they be sent to prison for what I hope is a long miserable stay.

But “innocent until proven guilty” is a courtroom standard. My opinion is not the same as a courtroom… Nothing about the American system of justice requires ordinary citizens to refrain from having opinions; and it’s not inconsistent to want Courts to adhere to “beyond any reasonable doubt” while holding my personal opinions to a less stringent standard.

Cathy thinks that rape victims’ advocates should not assume that a rape happened until it’s been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. How, exactly, does Cathy imagine that would work? Victim advocates don’t have the resources or the training to conduct independent investigations. Courts can take years to reach a “guilty” verdict - assuming there’s ever a trial, which there isn’t for most rapes. Should advocates refuse to help victims (pardon me, alleged victims) until a “guilty” verdict is handed down?

Here’s what I imagine rape victim advocates would do if Cathy Young ruled the world:

ADVOCATE: (picks up phone) Hello, rape crisis hotline. How may I help you?

WOMAN: (Distraught) My… I… I think I’ve been raped. This guy I know, Edward, he held me down and forced….

ADVOCATE: (Interrupting) You mean he allegedly held you down and forced you.

WOMAN: What?

ADVOCATE: I have to presume Edward’s innocent until he’s been proved guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. Please go on.

WOMAN: Okay… He, well, I kept saying “no, please don’t.” But he ignored what I said and ripped off my skirt -

ADVOCATE: You mean Edward allegedly ignored and allegedly ripped off your skirt. I’m keeping open to the possibility that you’re lying. Now, please hold, while I get Edward’s attorney on the line so he can cross-examine you. If your story remains credible after adversarial cross, then we can begin talking about dealing with post-traumatic stress syndrome.

WOMAN: Umn… Could I talk to someone who’ll believe me?

ADVOCATE: Before a trial takes place? What do you think this is, Nazi Germany?

Ms. Hostler was correct when she said “it’s my role as an advocate to support the woman or person who comes forward to say they were sexually assaulted.” She’s not there as a judge, or a jury member, or an officer of the court; her support will not send any accused rapist to prison. She’s there to support rape victims. Being adversarial, skeptical or cynical about the stories she hears will not help rape victims. Going on O’Reilly and saying “why yes, Bill, I think some of the so-called victims who have come to me for help are total liars” will not help rape victims.

What does help rape victims is knowing that there is one place in the world where they can go and be believed and taken seriously. That is Ms. Hostler’s role.

And suppose that there are a couple of liars who come to Ms. Hostler’s agency and say “I was raped” when they really weren’t. So what? It makes no sense for victim advocates to treat 100% of the victims they help with skepticism and doubt, impeding their ability to help actual victims, in order to catch out the occasional faker. It’s not a rape victims advocacy center’s job to divide rape allegations into those that can be proved true and those that can’t be proved - that’s what courts are for.

Even if Cathy had fairly quoted Ms. Hostler, Cathy’s argument would be wrong, for the reasons given above. But as it happens, Ms. Hostler wasn’t quoted fairly (there’s a transcript of the interview here). Here’s the important bit:

O’REILLY: You don’t believe as an American citizen that you should give anyone the presumption of innocence. Is that what you’re telling me?

HOSTLER: Oh, absolutely. But my role in sexual assault is to support a woman or any victim that comes forward to say that they were sexually assaulted.

“Oh, absolutely” can be interpreted to mean “oh, absolutely, the courts shouldn’t presume the defendant is innocent. But my role is to support the victim.” That’s how Cathy seems to interpret it.

But if that’s what Hostler meant, why start the second sentence with the word “but”? A sentence starting with “but” usually contrasts with the previous sentence in some way - that’s what the word “but” means. But there’s no contrast here, so the “but” is out of place.

I think Hostler meant “oh, absolutely,” meaning “Oh, absolutely, defendants should get the presumption of innocence in court. But my role as an advocate is to support the victim.” If so, the word “but” makes much more sense, because there’s a contrast between the two sentences.

Another statement Hostler made in the same interview clarifies her attitude:

O’REILLY: Now for the top story tonight, convicting two Duke lacrosse players in the court of public opinion. An organization called the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault apparently believes Reade Seligmann and Colin Finnerty, the two Duke students charged with rape, are guilty. […]

HOSTLER: Bill, I wouldn’t say that I think that those particular boys are absolutely guilty. But what I do think is that woman was raped in that house on that night.

Clearly, Hostler doesn’t dismiss the possibility that the two accused rapists are innocent.

It’s ironic that Cathy is criticizing Hostler for not giving the two accused rapists any benefit of the doubt. Ms. Hostler does give them the benefit of the doubt; it’s Cathy, assuming the worse of Ms. Hostler even though the interview as a whole doesn’t justify Cathy’s assumptions, who is unreasonably refusing to give the benefit of the doubt.

Wanting to remove all doubt, I emailed Ms. Hostler. She says “of course” she believes that courts should presume defendants innocent until proven guilty. With all due respect to Cathy, there was enough textual evidence in the interview itself to raise doubts about Cathy’s interpretation, and Cathy should have made that clear in her column. Not only did Cathy’s column fail to inform her readers of the presence of doubt; Cathy’s quotations omitted the elements of the original interview which would have enabled her readers to notice the ambiguity for themselves.

Although I’m sure it wasn’t on purpose, the effect is that Cathy has unfairly smeared Ms. Hostler before a national audience. I hope Cathy uses a future column to correct her distortions and apologize to Ms. Hostler.

Let’s consider, one last time, Cathy’s accusation that “many” feminists want to do away with the presumption of innocence in rape cases. The one example she gave falls apart on examination. Without resorting to quoting undergraduates (a desperation tactic Cathy’s used in the past), I wonder if Cathy can support her accusation at all?

***PLEASE NOTE***
Comments for this post are open only to feminist and pro-feminist posters. Non-feminists may respond to the identical post at Creative Destruction.

From the Washington Blade:

Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean fired the party’s gay outreach adviser Donald Hitchcock on May 2 less than a week after Hitchcock’s domestic partner, Paul Yandura, a longtime party activist, accused Dean of failing to take adequate steps to defend gay rights. […]

Hitchcock’s dismissal came after Yandura created a stir among party activists, both gay and straight, by sending an open letter on April 20 to gay Democrats criticizing Dean and the party for not getting involved in state ballot measures seeking to ban gay marriage.

Yandura charged that the DNC failed to counter efforts by Republicans to promote the anti-gay ballot measures as a wedge issue to win elections. He suggested that gays withhold donations to the Democrats until the party formally addresses issues he raised.

The Dems, of course, are claiming that the firing wasn’t retaliation. I don’t buy it.

The Democrats’ slogan should be, “We’re less awful to queers than the other party, so send us lots of money.” If the Republicans ever decide to stop supporting anti-queer policies, it will cost the Democrats millions every election cycle.

The article is notable as well for an example of exactly the kind of “anonymous” quoting that journalists shouldn’t print:

A third DNC insider, who also requested anonymity out of concern for sounding critical of Hitchcock, said Dean and other DNC officials decided several months before Yandura’s public criticism of the party that Hitchcock “was not the best fit” for his job.[…]

Hitchcock disputes this assessment. “I never had any bad performance review or anyone telling me I was not doing a good job,” he said.

The first two anonymous quotes (who are only identified as DNC insiders retroactively, by the phrase “a third DNC insider”) have reason to not speak on the record: They’re afraid of retaliation from Dean. If they work for the DNC, as seems likely, they might be afraid of losing their jobs. Under such circumstances, printing anonymous quotes is reasonable.

The third DNC insider, however, is hardly a whistleblower, or in danger of being fired for saying something supportive about his boss. He’s not concerned with “sounding critical of Hitchcock”: he is being critical of Hitchcock, after all. He just wants the convenience of slamming Hitchcock without being held responsible. I think it’s likely this leak was set up by Dean’s office. There’s no reason journalists should aid politicians with this sort of anonymous leak. If Dean or other DNC people want to slam Hitchcock, let them do so in their own names, or not at all.

Crossposted on Creative Destruction. My threads on “Alas” are heavily moderated; if you have trouble posting comments here, please try commenting on the crosspost instead.

From Overlawyered.com :

In suburban Washington, D.C., Bono Film and Video has an announced policy of refusing to duplicate material that owner Tim Bono regards as contrary to his Christian values. Now the Arlington County (Va.) Human Rights Commission has held a public hearing and investigated Bono on charges that he discriminated against Lilli Vincenz by refusing to duplicate her Gay Pride videos.

I don’t usually agree with free-market libertarians, but in this case I think they’re right: the business owner should be free to discriminate based on content. If Tim Bono doesn’t have the right to turn down this business, then it follows that similar businesses have no right to turn down xeroxing flyers advertising the KKK - or anti-gay videos produced by Conservative Christians, for that matter. (In both cases, the person turned down could claim to have been discriminated against on the basis of religion).

I don’t think that Bono should be free to discriminate against a customer’s identity; if Virginia wants to force Bono to accept gay customers (or black customers, or Jewish customers, or transgendered customers, etc), then that’s okay by me. (I remain convinced that the Supreme Court’s decision in Dale vs. Boy Scouts was wrong). But although the line between discriminating against who customers are and discriminating against what a particular customer’s job says is blurry, it’s still a line worth maintaining. In this case, the government should defer to the free speech rights of bigots to be bigots.

(On the other hand, just as Mr. Bono has a right to follow the mistaken, bigoted dictates of his conscience, queer and queer-positive customers have the right to follow the dictates of their consciences and refuse to bring any business whatsoever to Mr. Bono. I don’t think such boycotts - from either side - are great forms of political activism; but Mr. Bono started it, and if his business suffers I’ll have no sympathy.)

Dale Carpenter, a same-sex marriage advocate I respect a lot, brings up a tougher case:

Catholic Charities of Boston has decided to stop providing adoption services rather than comply with a state law prohibiting discrimination against gay couples.

Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has proposed a special exemption from this law for religiously affiliated adoption agencies; gay groups have responded that this would amount to discrimination that places politics before the interests of children. […]

Private agencies contract with the state to provide adoption services. The state pays them money and strictly regulates their operations, including the criteria they use to find homes for children. For the past 17 years, Massachusetts has prohibited such agencies from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. […]

Until recently, Catholic Charities coexisted peacefully with this anti-discrimination policy. During the past two decades, the group has placed 13 children (out of 720) with same-sex couples. […] But there is a chill wind blowing from the Vatican now on all subjects related to homosexuality. […] Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, Vatican head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, recently said that allowing gay couples to adopt children “would destroy the child’s future, it would be an act of moral violence against the child.” Catholic Charities is reluctantly bowing to this pressure.

Of course, anti-marriage equality folks have already been spinning this as an example of the Goodridge decision (the decision which established the right to marriage for same-sex couples in Massachusetts) leading to a crackdown on religion. That argument is dishonest; it’s the Catholic Church, not the Massachusetts government, which has changed policy in the wake of Goodridge. In effect, the Vatican is trying to pick a fight over gay rights.

Carpenter makes a compelling argument that the Catholics should be granted their exemption. Since there are plenty of non-religious adoption agencies able to take up the slack, an exemption won’t actually deprive same-sex couples of the chance to adopt, nor will it deny any children the chance to be adopted.

Exemptions to laws of general applicability inevitably raise slippery-slope concerns. All kinds of exemptions exist in all kinds of laws. Each is an invitation to slide down a slope, but we seem to manage it. Title VII is understood to exempt the Catholic Church from having to hire women priests, for example, but that hasn’t gutted employment-discrimination protection. […]

If we can grant religious exemptions with little or no burden placed on others, we should presumptively do so. Yes, this allows people to discriminate in ways that seem irrational or even invidious to many of us, but our resulting discomfort is an acceptable price for living in a religiously pluralistic and free society. […] If we can’t respect others’ exercise of religious conscience in a case where it costs us nothing to do so, can we really be said to respect religious liberty in a meaningful way at all?

Carpenter’s argument is persuasive. In my heart, I’d like the Massachusetts government to drive Catholic Charities out of business, because I find what the the Vatican is doing disgusting and hateful. But “revenge” isn’t a principled reason to oppose religious freedom in a pluralistic society. (Dammit!)

However, I’m skeptical about the “religious liberty” flag Carpenter is waving. Is there really any threat to religious liberty here? No one is being prevented from praying, from performing rituals, or in any other way from practicing their religion. It is possible to be a practicing, religious Catholic without running an adoption agency in Massachusetts (indeed, I suspect that the large majority of Catholics run few if any adoption agencies).

Nor am I convinced that religious liberty should extend to freedom from anti-discrimination laws so long as no one is hurt. Suppose that the Vatican wanted to open a “no Latina or Latinos allowed” private school - should that be acceptable so long as there were enough open slots in other schools that no child would be deprived of a good education?

But of course, even if it wanted to, the Vatican wouldn’t dare do that. And that’s the point. Suppose the Vatican had sent a message that no more adoptive placements with Asian families were to be allowed? My bet is that no one would find that acceptable, and there would be no question of granting an exemption to anti-discrimination law to coddle the Pope’s loathing of Asians.

What’s the message sent by an “it’s okay to discriminate against queers” exemption? That exemptions like this still seem reasonable to many - so long as the targets of discrimination are gay - is a measure of how much lesbians and gays are not seen as fully human. If the interests of lesbians and gays were seen as fully important the way that (say) the interests of Jews are, this legislation would be seen as beyond the pale.

Normally I dislike “send a message” arguments about legislation. Laws are not post-it notes, and the rights and lives of individuals shouldn’t be trampled on to make rhetorical points. In this case, however, the legislation would do little harm either way. According to Carpenter, whether or not the exemption is granted will have little or no impact on any individual child’s odds of getting adopted, or on any same-sex couple’s chance of adopting a child. With so little directly at stake here, I think it’s appropriate to consider the indirect results, such as the message sent.

An exemption to discriminate against gays, when no such exemption against other groups would be granted, endorses the still-pervasive belief that gay and lesbian interests are unimportant, trivial, disposable. In contrast, refusing to allow this exemption says that expanding discrimination against same sex couples - even when apparently “harmless” - is not reasonable, not mainstream, not acceptable. It’s hate, and the government of Massachusetts shouldn’t practice giving a special green lights for spreading hate and prejudice against citizens of Massachusetts. For that reason, I think Carpenter’s position is mistaken.

Curtsy: CultureWatch.

NOTE: Comments on “Alas” are heavily moderated - especially comments by right-wingers. If you’re having trouble posting here, try the unmoderated comments to the same post at Creative Destruction.

The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page splinters even further from reality:

…In one of the most absurd legal decisions in modern times, the Florida Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that the voucher program violated the “uniformity clause” of the state constitution guaranteeing a high-quality system of public schools. Because the performance of the voucher kids was superior to those in public schools, the court ruled that education was not uniform — or in this case not uniformly miserable. As they used to say in the Soviet Union, everyone gets to share their poverty equally.

(I found this through Protein Wisdom, where the above passage is quoted approvingly).

Whenever a conservative says something unbelievable has occurred, it’s a good idea to do some fact-checking before you say “holy shit!” About a minute of googling turned up the Florida Supreme Court decision in question (pdf file). The Florida Constitution mandates that a uniform system of public schools be provided by the government. Until that passage in the Florida Constitution is amended, the legislature doesn’t have any authority to take money from public schools and give it to private schools, especially when those private schools are free of the constitutionally-required uniform regulations public schools are subject to.

People can disagree with the Court’s decision. But no honest person can agree with The Wall Street Journal’s claim that the Florida Court’s ruled that educational outcomes must be “uniformly miserable.” Not a word of the Court’s decision referred to different outcomes; the Journal op-ed writer made up that ridiculous claim.

The trouble is, a lie travels around the world twice before the truth even gets its pants on. (Who did I swipe that from?) The right-wing attack on the judiciary doesn’t need to be truthful to be effective.

Crossposted on Creative Destruction. Comments on “Alas” are moderated, so if you’re having trouble getting your post to appear here, use the Creative Destruction link instead.

Brownfemipower could use a little support.
She’s short of funds needed to maintain her internet connection and her eyesight (i.e., glasses). If you can, go over and hit the donate button on her sidebar, please.

Blac(k)ademic: Fourt Radical Women of Color Carnival!

Mombian: June 1st is Blogging for Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans Families Day

My Mother Is White: Racist Cops
There’s a lot of good stuff here, but particularly notable for me, with my addiction to social science, is the concern that cops may be deliberately recording people of color they victimize as “White” in order to prevent racial profiling from being detected.

Granny Gets A Vibrator: On Everyday Racism and “Mundane Stress”

But this is part of the whole toxic crazy-making nature of mundane stress: the people on the receiving end, like Bobby, see this subtle dynamic in action day after day, year after year, for their whole lives, yet everyone else insists it’s not really happening. (Curtsy: PunkAssBlog).

Feministe on Bigotry and Mundane Stress

Feministe: Trans Responses To Feminist Myths

Supreme Court Refuses Pro-Life Appeal in Free-Speech “Wanted” Poster Case
Good! I don’t think free speech includes the right to implicitly call for opponents to be murdered. Via Bush v. Choice.

Ruminations of a Racial Realist: Is Oprah a Modern-Day Mammy?

Mad Melancholic Feminista: Rethinking Consent and Campus Codes
Campus sexual conduct codes help colleges cover their legal ass, but is there anything there for feminists to be pleased with? (Curtsy: Abyss2Hope).

Creative Destruction: “Virginity Pledgers” Lie About Having Sex and Having Pledged

Beat The Press: Corruption in the Pharmaceutical Industry Is Predicted by Basic Economics
Government-created monopolies tend to be corrupt. Why should we expect monopolies created by Intellectual Property laws to be any different?

Independent Gay Forum: The Right-Wing Assault on Gay Adoption

Question: What’s worse than a dozen or so states contemplating gay marriage bans during an election year?

Answer: A dozen or so states contemplating gay adoption bans during an election year.

Tennessee Guerrilla Women: Map of Which States Have Anti-Gay-Marriage Ballot Measures in 2006

Independent Gay Forum: Blacks on Gay Marriage
What do the polls show?

Political Science & Politics (pdf link): The Strange Evolution of the Conservative Case Against Gay Marriage

The case against same-sex marriage, [Republicans] decided, would focus on marriage and children, not morality and homosexuals. Sen. Santorum’s experience shaped the Republican strategy for the Federal Marriage Amendment: suppress religious and morally perfectionist arguments, avoid “gay-bashing,” and appeal to widely acceptable values. But the selectivity of the Republicans’ concern about children’s welfare, and their unprincipled focus on gays and lesbians, marks their legislative strategy as cynical, opportunistic, and inconsistent with the equal respect and fairness that majorities owe to minorities if they are to govern legitimately. (Curtsy: Independant Gay Forum).

Lawyers, Guns and Money: Iraqi Police Execute 14-Year Old Boy For Being Gay
Thank goodness we freed him before the violent psycho fucks we put into power murdered him.

Reappropriate: Who I Am and Who We Be
This post, about Jenn’s own background and Asian American Heritage Month, is simply too stuffed with interesting thoughts and smart quotes for me to find just one to pull out. Go read the whole post, is my advice.

Reappropriate: Dumb Asiaphile Responses to Criticism
Check out also the comments to the original anti-Asiaphile post - some interesting stuff there.

Crooked Timber: Eugene Volokh Flunks Feminism 101

Ann Bartow: Yup, Volokh Really, Really Flunks It.
Curtsy: Lawyers, Guns & Money.

Majikthise: Striking photo of military graveyard
I don’t take the deaths the graves represent lightly. Nonetheless, it’s an impressive image.

On The Whole: A Modest Proposal Regarding Weight, Fat, And Preventing Death

Super Babymama: Criticizing the Cutting Remarks of the Clueless Coddled Classes

For you stupid smug people who think that every single poor person in the world isn’t really poor unless they’re living out of a cardboard box on some godforsaken city street, or eating dog food out of a can in some trailer in the backwoods: get a clue.

Blackprof: Great Post Discussing Racism and Racial Politics in Brazil

Majikthise: Caitlin Flanigan is Dissed For Being a Lightweight and a Hypocrite, Not a Housewife
The mix of analysis and eloquent contempt in this post is masterful. For some reason, I was really cracked up by this sentence: “I just don’t see how Flanagan’s rarified existence is relevant to any larger social issues, except perhaps as an implied argument for a more progressive tax structure.”

Lawyers, Guns and Money: Pro-Lifers in Power = Less Access To Birth Control = More Abortion

Alternet: Women-Only Train Cars in Brazil: Protection from Gropers, or Segregation and Discrimination?

Advocacy groups, moreover, consider the measure to be a serious step backwards for women’s rights in Brazil — and have begun a campaign to declare the state law unconstitutional. Women’s advocates acknowledge that harassment is pervasive and grossly under-reported, but they believe that the law is an illegal form of discrimination that will only legitimize the abuses that still occur. (Curtsy: My Amusement Park)

Nappy As I Want To Be: US Soldier’s Rape Sentence Cut Due To Iraq Stress

Obsidian Wings: What The Democrats Say They’ll Do If They Take The House
1) Raise minimum wage. 2) Allow Medicare to use bulk-buying power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices. 3) Fully implement all the bipartisan panel home security recommendations. 4) Reinstate pay-as-you-go rules for new spending and new tax cuts.

Obsidian Wings: Graphs About The Bush Tax Cuts

My Amusement Park: “Blogging Against Disablism” Link Farm

Tennessee Guerilla Women: Stephen Colbert Link Dump!
Lots of links about Colbert shocking a nation by telling truthiness to the President’s face. Don’t skip the links to TGW’s own posts on the matter, at the bottom of this post.

Left2Right: Kaavya Viswanathan Should Be Seen As A Victim, Not A Plagiarist

Deilight: Bad Biblical Arguments For Opposing Euthanasia
The writer, a pro-life Christian, probably would agree with me about almost nothing. But from a debate perspective, I enjoyed this post.

USA Today: German Man Plans To Adopt 1,000 Children

A 56-year-old German living in Paraguay is seeking to become the legal father of 1,000 foreign children so they can have German nationality, education and social benefits, Der Speigel reports in its edition to appear on Monday.

Sydney spiralling downhiill - which is one of her favorite activites. This playground is in a little park about four blocks away from the house.

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The Countess

As I had expected, the news about the woman who has been ordered by a judge to take her children to see their father, the man who had raped her, is bringing out the claims by men’s rights activists that women frequently falsely accuse men of rape. A big problem is including unfounded cases with cases of outright false allegations. When a rape case is deemed unfounded, it does not mean the woman was lying.

This blog continues with some excellent information on how statistics on rape cases may feed into the myth that most rape allegations are false and therefore no rape occurred.

Fox News

“Every year since 1989, in about 25 percent of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI where results could be obtained, the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing….”

There is a huge flaw in using this data to say that 25% of the sexual assaults reported didn’t happen and therefore 25% of the alleged rape victims are liars.

In many of the cases handled by the Innocence Project (where the quote above came from), those cleared through DNA testing were convicted of rape/murders. So making a direct correlation between a DNA mismatch and a false allegation (as the phrase is commonly used) would mean that no murder occurred. Since we know this isn’t true, the use of this data is meaningless in determining the percentage of alleged victims (in non-lethal rape cases) who lie about being raped.

An alarming national trend: False Rape Allegations by Eugene J. Kanin, Ph.D.

The investigation of all rape complaints always involves a serious offer to polygraph the complainants and the suspects. Additionally, for a declaration of false charge to be made, the complainant must admit that no rape had occurred. She is the sole agent who can say that the rape charge is false.

and

First, with very few exceptions, these complainants were suspect at the time of the complaint or within a day or two after charging. These recantations did not follow prolonged periods of investigation and interrogation that would constitute anything approximating a second assault. Second, not one of the detectives believed that an incident of false recantation had occurred. They argued, rather convincingly, that in those cases where a suspect was identified and interrogated, the facts of the recantation dovetailed with the suspect’s own defense

The investigation process used as the basis of this study raises a huge red flag. Even though the official stance is that all rape allegations are investigated fully, it’s clear that in the recanted cases investigators quickly assumed the accusers to be liars. Combine that assumption with the polygraph and you’ve got everything you need to get false confessions (and false retractions).

In the city studied by Kanin, there is no mention whether the recantations were given in response to a threat of criminal charges against those who reported rape or whether the recantations were influenced by a “We investigated your allegations and know you weren’t raped. What really happened was ____, isn’t that right?” type of questioning.

It would be fascinating if someone did a survey of all those who made rape reports in that city during the period of Kanin’s study to see how they would evaluate the police response and ethics. If they were asked: “Were you pressured to recant your rape allegation?” what percent would answer yes?

About reports of a 50% rate of false rape reports on campus referred to by Kanin, I suspect the high rate is due to combination of a mismatch in where people draw the line between “real” rape and unwanted but non-criminal sexual contact and the college’s desire to look as safe as possible. Likely the campus police would ask questions to see if the alleged victim did anything wrong or “stupid,” and if the answer was yes then the campus police could decide that what happened to her couldn’t be rape.

In my post Abyss2hope: Gang rape and university culture - a case study the gang rape describedwasn’t classified by the university as a rape. In fact if it were included in a study like Kanin’s it very well could be classified as a false allegation of rape.

The bottom line is I can’t find a single scientific reason to believe the claims that more rape reports are false allegations than any other type of serious crime.

Note: Also posted on my blog, abyss2hope.blogspot.com

That seems to be the message in Kathleen Parker’s column Sex, lies and prison. As long as the rapist is “a good son” and his victim isn’t a stranger he snatched off the street, then he isn’t a “real” rapist no matter what a jury decides. So much for the argument that rapists are “innocent until proven guilty.”

For Ms. Parker, rapists are innocent until she decides otherwise.

The moral of Gorman’s story, which can’t be proved or disproved in this limited space, is that boys and men accused of rape have little hope of reclaiming the life they once knew, regardless of whether they’re guilty or innocent.

Really? Tell that to Kobe Bryant.

And isn’t it interesting that Ms. Parker makes all accused rapists, those innocent and those guilty of rape, sound like the only ones we should be concerned about in rape cases. Rape victims are only important if something about them can be used to make them seem less than “good.”

Apparently, those of us who have been raped by “good” men or boys are only “good” if we shut up and let all “good” rapists continue on with their lives as if they’ve done nothing wrong. I bought into this destructive advice for far too long and paid a steep price for my silence.

If squashing victims’ voices means those “good” men and boys continue with the same type of rapes, Ms. Parker doesn’t care or will continue to blame the “bad” victims for the actions of “good” serial rapists.

Ms. Parker is blind to the irony that many “good” rapists pick victims who are vulnerable to attack and who are least likely to be believed if they do report. Ms. Parker’s disbelief that “good” men and boys commit “real” rapes is so strong that she sees all prior reports of rape as proof that the alleged victim must be the real perpetrator.

One minute a junior at Florida State University majoring in business/computer systems, the next a prison inmate labeled a sex offender.

Uh huh, it happened just like that. But somewhere in that minute, the accused had time to turn down a plea deal that would have kept him out of prison and given him twelve months probation. But does Ms. Parker scold him for his stupidity at not taking the deal? Nope. She continues to paint him as the only victim in this case.

With so much glossed over in this article, there is no way I can trust that Ms. Parker has accurately given readers the full picture of the events that led to this man’s conviction. With her “I only see wrongly-accused men” glasses, she can’t do anything except discount all elements in this case that counter her vision of who is a criminal and who is not.

But all is not lost for our wholesome convicted rapist. He reconnected with his high school sweetheart and got her pregnant. No marriage yet for this wholesome father and convict, but in this case Ms. Parker approves.

This backlash against the prosecution of “good” rapists will continue to grow as the minimum sentences for rape convictions go up. Of course another irony is that those behind the backlash are often those behind the push to increase minimum sentences given to “real” rapists.

For you men who would never rape any girl or woman, not even the “bad” ones, it should bother you that Ms. Parker lumps you in with “good” rapists.

Note: Also posted on my blog, abyss2hope.blogspot.com

Edited to add: Never mind, got it covered. Thanks.
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WCCO

The board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota has voted unanimously to challenge a new Taylors Falls, Minn. ordinance restricting where sex offenders can live.

I think questioning these laws and making sure they don’t violate any civil rights is healthy.

If we hope to have an effective system that does its best to protect past, present and future victims without straining the criminal justice system or violating civil rights, we need to begin by accepting that sex offenders are not as different from us as we’d like to believe.

The good news with that concept is it means that at least some potential rapists can change their patterns before they get into a situation where they might rape.

We need a complex and coordinated structure of sex offender prevention, investigation, prosecution, sentencing, treatment and monitoring. And we need to accept that nothing we can do will eliminate all risk.

The best intense supervision programs do a great job of dealing with sex offenders who have set pre-offense triggers (like using alcohol) and who aren’t a physical danger to their victims. These programs work because they send most of those who are on the road to reoffending back to prison before they find their next victim. But even the best programs won’t work if they doesn’t have the funding needed to work as designed.

The worst thing we can do is have a system that does nothing more than catch, hold, tag and then release or kill sexual offenders. Many people crave the idea that the government can have the sex offender problem under complete control without helping these people in any way. However …

Absolute control of sex offenders is an illusion at best.

The most dangerous and least manageable sex offenders, like sadistic rapists who kidnap their victims, cannot be effectively controlled through electronic monitoring or sex offender registration. By the time we do catch them offending again it may be too late for one or many victims.

Many of the laws do a poor job of responding to the most serious crimes where the sex offender failed to complete the mission. If there is overwhelming evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, that someone planned to kidnap, rape and kill the intended victim, that criminal should never be paroled — even if the intended victim got away during the kidnap attempt.

If criminals like that are only convicted of non-sex crimes that don’t put them on the sex offender registry but all non- predatory sex offenders are put on the list, something’s seriously wrong.

A key step to stopping the worst sex