Rody Alvarado, whose case was blogged about on Alas multiple times a few years ago (such as here and here), has finally been granted asylum in the US.

In order to demonstrate a valid asylum claim, an asylum seeker must prove that he or she has a well-founded fear of persecution based upon his or her race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. It’s not enough for a victim of domestic violence to seek asylum based on fear that she will face recurrent violence if she returns to her country of origin. She also has to prove that her persecution is tied to one of the five statutory grounds. That’s historically been difficult to do, since these grounds do not include gender (or sexuality, for that matter), since domestic violence is often viewed as a relationship issue rather than a larger societal problem, and the final decision is left to one immigration judge’s discretion.

In Alvarado’s case, her lawyer successfully argued that her abuse was not just an interpersonal issue, because women in Guatemala face persecution on several societal levels and victims of domestic violence aren’t provided adequate protection by the state. Indeed, Alvarado repeatedly sought protection from the authorities but was told the abuse was a domestic affair. Under circumstances like these, simply being a woman could be considered membership in a persecuted social group.

Since U.S. law relies heavily on precedent for its interpretation, Alvarado’s victory could have a huge impact on future asylum cases involving domestic violence. Additionally, the Obama administration has said it is working on regulations that would create a clear pathway to asylum for victims of domestic violence who flee their home countries. The Bush administration, by comparison, fought hard against domestic violence being considered a valid claim for asylum.

Eastsidekate at Shakesville has more commentary on this case.

This completely awful New York Observer article has been making the rounds on the twittersphere today, with most of my feminist and ally friends observing that the article boils down to, as Spencer Ackerman says, “adult women should not ever have sex with any men ever, and especially not with us.” And frankly, how can one look at an article headlined “Rrrowl! Beware Cougar’s Young Niece, the Cheetah,” and think anything else? Clearly, the article is all about slut-shaming women into retreating to demure ladyhood.

And clearly, that’s what the article is about, which is why I’m breaking my reaction to this post up into two parts. Because while the article is about slut-shaming, the anecdote given to shame sluts is an anecdote about something else entirely.

The piece opens with an anecdote about “Seth,” one of the writer’s friends, who’s been at a party and had a few too many.

“I can barely stand,” Seth said, swaying innocently on the soggy sidewalk. (Seth’s a gentleman and asked that I change the names and obscure certain details in unfurling the horrors that so thoroughly furled him that night, in order to protect the honor of a woman.) He was 24 at the time, a magazine writer.

Joel said, “O.K., I think he needs to go home.”

Dana, who was 29, said, “Let’s go get another drink!”

“I wanna go home,” Seth warbled.

“O.K., I’ll take him home,” Dana said.

Joel gave Seth a “WTF?” look and said, “I’ll take him home.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dana said, hailing a cab and then bundling Seth inside.

“I woke up with a condom still on my dick,” he told me.

[...]

Dana’s hunting methods and psychology bear no resemblance to the cougar. As Seth aptly points out, “A cougar would fuck and then leave and not feel bad.”

Instead, Seth awoke to Dana’s limpid eyes, followed by an awkward kiss in broad daylight as the two parted ways on the street. The cheetah stays the night.

Now, you may see the problem here, but you may be thinking to yourself, “Jeff, that’s just a story about a girl having a one-night stand. What’s wrong with that?” Well, to illustrate, let’s turn to Amber at Prettier than Napoleon:

“I can barely stand,” Sabrina said, swaying innocently on the soggy sidewalk. … She was 24 at the time, a magazine writer.

Jennifer said, “O.K., I think she needs to go home.”

Dave, who was 29, said, “Let’s go get another drink!”

“I wanna go home,” Sabrina warbled.

“O.K., I’ll take her home,” Dave said.

Jennifer gave Sabrina a “WTF?” look and said, “I’ll take her home.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dave said, hailing a cab and then bundling Sabrina inside.

“I woke up with a condom still in my vagina,” she told me.

Precisely. Flip the genders around, and we have what is clearly a case of date rape. Not a borderline case, not a questionable case — a clear-cut, no-question, over the line case of date rape.

Now, we don’t know all the details here, and frankly, we don’t have to. We know 1) Seth was extremely drunk to the point of being barely able to stand, and 2) Dana knowingly took advantage of Seth in that condition. Anything beyond that is going to take us straight to Blame Town, where we can talk about what the victim did to cause his victimization.

So why is it that otherwise sensible people like Megan Carpentier respond by saying, not that this was rape, but that, “Everyone should be disgusted by a one night stand with any of the dudes quoted in the piece, imho.”?

The other day, in comments to a post of mine excoriating Bernard-Henri Lévy for his fawning support of Roman Polanski, a commenter named Politicalguineapig came up with a novel solution to the problem of rape:

Maybe setting up restrictions on men’s movements and disallowing men from gathering in groups would stop the problem. But a bill like that wouldn’t have a hope of passing.

This, of course, thoroughly derailed the thread,¹ causing people to debate whether men having their movements legally restricted would be worse than the present situation, where women are pressured to restrict their own movements out of fear of men. The answer, of course, is that the argument was an apples-and-unicorns debate — the idea that men should be prohibited from gathering in groups, for example, is the exact opposite of what we tell women, which is that they should be in groups at all times.

But that’s neither here nor there. The reason I cite this argument is that it stems from the same place that has people completely miss the rape in the NYO article. It is, quite simply, a gender essentialist argument: men are predators, women are victims.

Now, that is the case more often than the reverse. And one shouldn’t pretend that the number of men being raped by women is in the same statistical universe as the number of women being raped by men — it isn’t. But if you believe, as I do, that one woman being raped is one too many, one man being raped is one too many, too.

Women are capable of being victimizers, just as men are. They’re capable of being abusive. They’re capable of sexual assault. They’re capable of rape. Not all women, mind you. Not even most women. Not even a sizable minority of women are capable of assaulting someone else. But some women are, just as some men are.

The proper response when a story such as this is not to minimize or ignore it, not to bury it by saying, “Well, it’s an outlier, and women are the victims of rape far more, and that’s the real problem.” It may be an outlier, but that doesn’t make it okay. Rape is evil, no matter who perpetrates it.

Is the fallout different? Of course it is. I doubt Seth thinks he was raped, and most people — even most feminists — seem to think that it’s all okay, because he got laid, and that’s what men want most in the whole world. But quite frankly, men don’t want to get laid by anyone, and not all the time. And the fact that Seth was taken advantage of, and that so many people who I consider allies don’t see it — or worse, use the incident as reason to attack the victim — saddens me greatly.

Men commit more crimes against women than women do against men. That has its roots in a number of causes, most societal, some having to do with sexual dimorphism — men are on average bigger and stronger than women, and it’s easier for a man to use force against a woman than vice versa. But that doesn’t mean that men have a unique seed of evil planted inside of them, nor that women are pure. Women and men are both human, and all of us are capable of doing great good, and great evil. We are far more alike than different, and that goes for the bad as well as the good.

Later tonight: Part the Second: In which I discuss slut-shaming.

1. Which, of course, led Mandolin to write her fine rejoinder. (back)

I could write paragraphs and paragraphs about Bernard-Henri Lévy’s bizarre and disgusting HuffPo article, in which he does a premature touchdown dance at the prospect of the freeing of convicted child rapist Roman Polanski. Were I to do so, I’d probably start by noting that Lévy is wrong to say Polanski is about to be freed; at best, Polanski is about to be released on a $4.5 million bond, will have to wear an ankle bracelet, and remains without a passport. The extradition hearing remains, and is considered a slam dunk by most legal experts; Polanski is far from having been “freed.”

Were I to go on, I’d probably note Lévy’s deep concern that Polanski’s children have evidently been taunted in school because their dad’s a convicted fugitive child rapist. Now, that’s not fair to Polanski’s kids — they didn’t choose their dad, and one can’t blame them from the fact that their dad once forcibly raped a 13-year-old. But one can’t help but wonder whether Polanski’s children would face taunts if Polanski had paid his debt to society when it was due. Or, for that matter, if he had simply made the very easy decision not to rape a child.

I could go on in this vein for some time, pointing out the factual errors in Lévy’s piece, his pathetic attempt to paint Polanski as some sort of political prisoner, or the fact that not once in the article does Lévy even acknowledge that Polanski was ever even accused of drugging, forcibly raping, and sodomizing an underaged girl, not to mention the fact that Polanski pled guilty to statutory rape in the case, then fled before he could be sentenced.

I could note all this, but I won’t, because nothing I can say would be more damaging to Bernard-Henri Lévy’s credibility than these, his own words, as written:

I am mostly thinking about him: Roman Polanski, who I don’t know, but whose fate has moved me so much. Nothing will repair the days he has spent in prison. Nothing will erase the immense, unbelievable injustice he has been subjected to. Nothing will take away the hysteria of those ones who have never stopped pouring contempt upon him, hounding him through hatred and asking for his punishment as if we were living the darkest and most ferocious hours of the McCarthy era all over again. At least the nightmare is about to end. At least the end of the hell is looming. And this, for the time being, is what does matter.

Lévy wrote these words, sincerely, about a convicted child rapist and fugitive from justice. Nothing I could possibly say would be more damning than that.

From The Huffington Post:

An amendment that would prevent the government from working with contractors who denied victims of assault the right to bring their case to court is in danger of being watered down or stripped entirely from a larger defense appropriations bill.

Multiple sources have told the Huffington Post that Sen. Dan Inouye, a longtime Democrat from Hawaii, is considering removing or altering the provision, which was offered by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and passed by the Senate several weeks ago.[...]

“The defense contractors have been storming his office,” said a source with knowledge of the situation. “Inouye either will get the amendment taken out altogether, or water it down significantly. If they water it down, they will take out the Title VII claims. This means that in discrimination cases, they will still force you into a secret forced arbitration on KBR’s (or other contractors’) own terms — with your chances of prevailing practically zero. The House seems to be very supportive of the original Franken amendment and all in line, but their hands are tied since it originated in the Senate. And since Inouye runs the show on this bill, he can easily take it out to get Republicans and the defense contractors off his back, which looks increasingly likely.”

This is possible because the bill is now in conference committee, where the House and Senate versions of the bill are merged into a single bill.

Kos has lots of contact info for Inouye, and more information (including the claim that various congressional staffers have anonymously accused Inouye of sexual harassment and in one case rape).

This is mainly a post addressing New Zealand domestic politics, but I think some of the points I make have a wider relevance. In 1972, New Zealanders gave up their right to sue for personal injury in exchange for a national system of accident compensation. This system has provided counselling for survivors of sexual violence.

**********

When writing about my analysis of sexual violence and prisons, one of the points I keep coming back to is how centred it is on the perpertrator. It’s not a new or original thought to point out that everything about the way a criminal law system deals with sexual violence is entirely focused on ‘the offender’. The follow-on from this is our society’s way of dealing with sexual violence revolves around the court system.

A few year ago, I wrote about a nursing student, who was raped by a fellow student, after a typical, ridiculous, defence, the rapist got off. She had to drop out of school, because the school wouldn’t do anything to ensure she wouldn’t have to see her rapist regularly. I think it’s important to understand how structural the problems within our justice system are. These systems are not designed to support survivors of sexual abuse, and therefore they will always fail at that task.

But…

But, in New Zealand, we do have a system that is set up to meet, to revolve around, what survivors of sexual violence need. There are many things it cannot provide - ACC will not help student find a way to continue to study without seeing her rapist. But it can provide counselling and income support.

I don’t have any personal experience, or depth of knowledge, of ACCs sensitive claims system. I am sure, as it currently operates, it has flaws, and some people fail to get the help that they need. But, at the moment, it can be centred around what a survivor needs, based on her relationship with her counsellor (or his).

If these changes go through, it will be much harder, maybe impossible for ACC to be survivor-centre. Currently, a survivor can have up to four sessions of counselling to disclose their abuse, but the changes will cut this down to one session (or maybe two, Peter Jensen, the person in charge of the proposal, was unclear on nine to noon).

At the moment a survivor can access up to 50 sessions with a counsellor before they have to obtain a psychological assessment. The changes will require psychological assessments much earlier in the process, and that process will be directed much more by clinicians. In order to get funded counselling, a survivor of sexual abuse will require a DSM IV diagnosis.

This is not a survivor-centred approach to sexual abuse; it is a clinician-centred approach.

ACC has already begun tightening the screws. And in doing so it has turned funded counselling into another area where a survivor has to prove her (or his) experience – maybe not beyond reasonable doubt, but close.

Dr Kim McGregor explained how ACC restricts access to counselling on an interview on 9 to Noon. ACC declined cover for a young boy who had been sexually abused as the behaviour described: mood swings, tearfulness, and sitting alone sucking his thumb, did not necessarily have a clinical link with sexual abuse. They said these behaviours could just as well have been caused by settling into school and a new environment rather than the sexual abuse events.

Imagine the difficulty of someone who has survived sexual abuse will have in proving that the difficulties she (or he) is experiencing are directly and only a result of the abuse. Those who had what insurance companies call ‘pre-existing conditions’, could find support denied – if they had previously been depressed, how can they know that depression after the sexual abuse is a result of that abuse? (not a question that could be asked by anyone who cared about the experiences of survivors of sexual abuse, but a question that is being asked by ACC). While those who do not seek help for a long time, will have to prove the effects the abuse has had on them, and the more complex their survival strategies in the intervening time, the harder it will be for them to access the support they need.

The parallels between the perfect victim of the court system and the perfect survivor of ACC are strong. In both cases the onus of proof falls on those have been abused to prove either that there was abuse, or that that abuse affected them. Just as previous sexual history is used against survivors in the court system, ACC can use previous mental health history against survivors.

My point is not just that the changes to ACC need to be fought (although they do – Monday is a national day of action – come along), but to show how important, and how fragile, a survivor centred approach to sexual violence there is.

As well as pushing against these threats to survivor support, I want us to push further. I want us to imagine what a response to sexual violence which prioritised survivors look like.

I take back any bad thing I’ve ever said about Sen. Al Franken, DFL-Minn.

Why do I do this? Because in his brief tenure in office, Franken has shown himself to be exactly the kind of senator we need more of — bright, driven, and possessed of a sense of justice. He’s not getting things done by grandstanding or being a comedian; he’s getting things done by writing good legislation and getting it passed.

Take the case of Jamie Leigh Jones. Please.

You probably remember the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, the woman who was raped while working for KBR in Iraq. After reporting the rape, KBR responded to this grievous act by imprisoning her in a shipping container, so that she couldn’t tell anyone. When she finally convinced a guard to give her a cell phone, she managed to get a call to her dad in Texas, who worked with Rep. Ted Poe, R-Tex., to get her home. KBR responded to the actions of its employees by banning cell-phones.

Jones was unable to prosecute her assailants, so she attempted instead to sue KBR. But because her contract provided for arbitration for any workplace disputes, she was unable to; her only route for compensation was arbitration, a process that is a) better used for minor contract disputes, as opposed to cases of rape and false imprisonment, and b) decidedly tilted in favor of employers. She’s made some headway — the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that her case should be handled outside of arbitration — but that’s headway for her, and it’s only come after four years of legal fighting. Any woman — or man — who lives outside the 5th circuit who is similarly treated will have to start from scratch.

On Monday, Franken worked to extend those protections, when he successfully attached an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would defund contractors “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.”

Franken’s speech on the floor was spot on:

Theres a lot of horrible in there, but the nut graf (which I ganked from ThinkProgress) is as follows:

The constitution gives everybody the right to due process of law … And today, defense contractors are using fine print in their contracts do deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court. … The victims of rape and discrimination deserve their day in court [and] Congress plainly has the constitutional power to make that happen.

It would be nice to think that this sensible amendment was simply passed on a voice vote, all members of the Senate opposing the idea that someone who was raped and imprisoned would be prevented from seeking justice. Alas, that was not the case; the amendment passed 68-30, with all Democrats (save Robert Byrd and Arlen Specter, who did not vote) and 10 Republicans voting in favor, and 30 Republicans — 75 percent of the caucus — opposed.

The list of pro-rape Republican senators is as follows: Alexander (R-TN), Barrasso (R-WY), Bond (R-MO), Brownback (R-KS), Bunning (R-KY), Burr (R-NC), Chambliss (R-GA), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Crapo (R-ID), DeMint (R-SC), Ensign (R-NV), Enzi (R-WY), Graham (R-SC), Gregg (R-NH), Inhofe (R-OK), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Kyl (R-AZ), McCain (R-AZ), McConnell (R-KY), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Sessions (R-AL), Shelby (R-AL), Thune (R-SD), Vitter (R-LA), Wicker (R-MS).

Obviously, the amendment still has to go through conference committee, but one suspects its future is bright; certainly, the House is unlikely to water this down. And for most people, that’s a good thing; justice demands that those who are egregiously wronged are able to sue for redress. Yes, most Senate Republicans may view the idea of allowing lawsuits to be quaint, especially when compared to corporate profits. But most humans recognize what happened to Jamie Leigh Jones to be an unconscionable crime, and there is nothing quaint about making sure it never happens again.

A few choice quotes

What he was accused of is not only considered rape because she was underage, and not only because he gave her drugs and alcohol to set it up, but also because he did it while she was saying no and telling him to stop.

There’s nothing ambiguous about that.

That is an account of a rape.

And

This plea bargain was set up by the family and their attorneys because they saw no other way to protect this girl from a trial that would take away her anonymity and subject her to an endless media frenzy. They did not set up that plea bargain because they had any doubts about being able to prove her original charges. They set up the plea bargain because they saw a system that could not adequately protect this child, so they felt that they had no other choice but to compromise and settle for something less than justice.

In the way he always does, Jay lays things out incredibly clearly, and absolutely demolishes every single objection from Polanski’s supporters.

Basically, what it comes down to is that Jay Smooth is a badass and Roman Polanski is a jackass.

Oh, sorry, I meant rapist.

Please do not comment unless you accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people

1. If you believe this, at best it would make the victim’s mother an accessory. However, you’d have to believe the victim’s mother intentionally pimped her daughter out for a casting couch rendezvous, then took her daughter to the police to press rape charges within a few days — which seems like more than a stretch to me. None of this, incidentally, changes the fact that Roman Polanski raped a 13-year-old; no matter how crappy a parent is, you don’t get to rape their child. (back)
2. As Kira helpfully notes in comments at my site, it should be obvious to anyone that “too much force” is equal to “any force.” But it should also be obvious that rape is bad, and a lot of Polanski supporters seem unable to get that, so I think I’d best footnote this. (back)
3. I’m not arguing that women and men are in fact treated equally; they are not. But most Americans would agree with the statement, “Women and men should have equal rights.” The concept is generally accepted, at least in theory. (back)

As we noted the other night, Roman Polanski holds duel French and Polish citizenship, and both nations’ governments have been assiduously lobbying for his release, because evidently both governments believe that being famous allows you to rape kids. This has allowed leaders in both countries to join Hollywood in declaring that this is really just a case of American puritanism. Yes, we silly Americans, believing that forcibly raping a child is something that should be punished! Surely our European brethren are much more sophisticated, and understand that it’s okay to drug and rape a barely pubescent girl.

Except — funny thing — it turns out that far from finding Roman Polanski to be a charming guy who makes swell movies and just once kinda sorta raped a child, and then — funny story — only entered into a relationship with a fifteen-year-old for a while, the European public seems to view Polanski as a creepy pederast rapist who should probably face the music.

We start in Poland, home of Anne Applebaum’s husband. Do the Poles think Polanski should go free? Only about as much as they detest the polka:

One of these steps is an appeal letter to Hillary Clinton. Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner are sending it jointly (Polanski holds dual citizenship – Polish and French). The main reason the authorities have now started to take a low-key approach is their electorate. An opinion poll published today shows that less than 25 percent of Poles would like to see Polanski escape another trial. “This is a very surprising result,” says Jan Stolarz, a sociologist with a polling organization.

He told ABC News that “in light of the near-hero status Polanski enjoys here, this is very telling. People no longer believe that achievement can buy you immunity and that all are equal before the law…This is very encouraging,” adds Stolarz.

Results of the opinion poll are reflected by many Web site comments. Most readers would like to see Polanski extradited to the U.S.

“I’m ashamed that my president and a few ministers are protecting a pedophile,” reads one. “Law is law and money cannot buy you justice. Polanski, Obama or Mr. Jones — in a lawful state all are equal.”

To many Poles, Polanski had been an iconic figure. Events from 30 years ago, his past, were just an ambiguous blur, certainly nothing that could overcast his greatness.

Today, there seems to be a change. With Polish public reaction so vocal and negative, with the past once again revealed, Polanski’s tarnished image may never recover in his homeland. Only a handful of politicians and fellow artists appear to be dedicated to saving the icon.

Huh! You don’t say! It seems that the folks in New Europe¹ don’t think it’s okay to excuse an artist for raping a child, just because he happens to be famous. But we all know how those Eastern Europeans are. So Soviet. So repressed. Why, they eat barszcz! And pirogies! Hardly a nation full of extra savoir-faire. So let’s turn to the nation that gave us the beguiling word coquette, la République française.

One would think that France would certainly have rallied around Polanski. This is, after all, the country that gave us Maurice Chevalier, best known for “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.” Lock up a man simply because he got a bit forceful after experiencing le coup de foudre? Quelle horreur!

Now, let me preface this by noting that I have not been able to locate a scientific poll of French attitudes on Polanski. But the anecdotal evidence certainly suggests that far from seeing Polanski as the victim of a femme fatale and a repressed America, they feel that whatever the director’s œuvre, his actions seem pretty close to meurtre de sang-froid:

Marc Laffineur, the vice-president of the French assembly and a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling center-right party, the UMP, took issue with the French culture and foreign minister’s remarks supporting Mr. Polanski, saying “the charge of raping a child 13 years old is not something trivial, whoever the suspect is.”

Within the Green party, Daniel Cohn-Bendit — a French deputy in the European parliament whose popularity is rising — also criticized Sarkozy administration officials for leaping too quickly to Mr. Polanski’s side despite the serious nature of his crime. On the extreme right, the father and daughter politicians Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen also attacked the ministers, saying they were supporting “a criminal pedophile in the name of the rights of the political-artistic class.”

Meanwhile, an international team of lawyers was fighting Tuesday to free Mr. Polanski from a Swiss jail, where he’s being held for possible extradition to the United States. The arrest last weekend of the 76-year-old filmmaker as he arrived at Zurich’s airport to attend a local film festival is quickly exposing deep fault lines between his supporters in the arts, entertainment and politics and his increasingly outspoken critics.

[...]

Marie-Louise Fort, a French lawmaker in the Assembly who has sponsored anti-incest legislation, said in an interview that she was shocked that Mr. Polanski was attracting support from the political and artistic elite. “I don’t believe that public opinion is spontaneously supporting Mr. Polanski at all,” she said. “I believe that there is a distinction between the mediagenic class of artists and ordinary citizens that have a vision that is more simple.”

The mood was even more hostile in blogs and e-mails to newspapers and news magazines. Of the 30,000 participants in an online poll by the French daily Le Figaro, more than 70 percent said Mr. Polanski, 76, should face justice. And in the magazine Le Point, more than 400 letter writers were almost universal in their disdain for Mr. Polanski.

That contempt was not only directed at Mr. Polanski, but at the French class of celebrities — nicknamed Les People — who are part of Mr. Polanski’s rarefied Parisian world. Letter writers to Le Point scorned Les People as the “crypto-intelligentsia of our country” who deliver “eloquent phrases that defy common sense.”

Mon dieu! It seems the oh-so-above-it-all French are, like people everywhere, properly horrified by the rape of a child. Far from being a sign of American prudery, the arrest of Polanski seems to most of France and most of Poland the way it seems to most of America: as the reasonable outcome of a thirty-odd year flight from justice.

Frankly, I’m not surprised. It always seemed to me to be absurd to believe that the French would see rape as a trifling matter. Still, as with the general left-right agreement in America, it’s heartening to see. And it’s a reminder of just how out on an island Polanski’s strongest supporters are.

1. Just wanted to see if I could get all y’all old-school blog readers to flash back to February 2003. (back)

The fallout from the arrest of Roman Polanski has been interesting and, in many ways, heartening. While there have been many posts defending Polanski — I touched on some yesterday, as did the redoubtable Kate Harding — most bloggers on the left and the right alike have condemned Polanski and praised the arrest. I know, one shouldn’t be surprised that there’s general consensus that someone who drugs and rapes a child, then flees jurisdiction to avoid punishment is someone who probably deserves to be arrested, but it’s still nice to see.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that everyone sees things this way. The film and artistic community, alas, seems to feel that raping a 13-year-old girl is okay if it happened a long time ago, and the perpetrator is famous. Even the liberal Huffington Post has been an epicenter of this activity, mainly because Arianna Huffington has a lot of famous friends who don’t seem to understand why it is that people would want a child rapist brought to justice. French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy gives us the usual run-down:

Apprehended like a common terrorist Saturday evening, September 26, as he came to receive a prize for his entire body of work, Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison.

He risks extradition to the United States for an episode that happened years ago and whose principal plaintiff repeatedly and emphatically declares she has put it behind her and abandoned any wish for legal proceedings.

Seventy-six years old, a survivor of Nazism and of Stalinist persecutions in Poland, Roman Polanski risks spending the rest of his life in jail for deeds which would be beyond the statute-of-limitations in Europe.

We ask the Swiss courts to free him immediately and not to turn this ingenious filmmaker into a martyr of a politico-legal imbroglio that is unworthy of two democracies like Switzerland and the United States. Good sense, as well as honor, require it.

Interesting how Lévy sort of elides a few things, such as:

• The crime Polanski committed
• The fact that Polanski pled guilty to the crime
• The fact that Polanski is only beyond the statute of limitations because he’s successfully dodged extradition for 30-plus years
• The fact that the vast majority of Holocaust and Stalinism survivors aren’t rapists
• The fact that common criminals are often apprehended like common criminals

Lévy then helpfully provides a list of artists and filmmakers who you can safely avoid doing business with, including Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera, Pascal Bruckner, Neil Jordan, Isabelle Adjani, Arielle Dombasle, Isabelle Huppert, William Shawcross, Yamina Benguigui, Mike Nichols, Danièle Thompson, Diane von Furstenberg, Claude Lanzmann, and Paul Auster.

Ultimately, I think the phrase “common terrorist” at the start of Lévy’s screed gets to the heart of the difference of opinion between the European view of this matter and the American one. There is much to like about Europe, but there is no question that culturally, there is a more rigidly defined hierarchy of classes. Polanski is part of the “right kind of people,” and therefore his sins can be forgiven, ignored, swept under the rug.

American culture is not so willing to ignore criminal conduct. Note: I didn’t say totally unwilling. Being rich and powerful can get you out of punishment, whether you’re O.J. Simpson or Ted Kennedy or Dick Cheney. But there is at the very least the notion that this is a bad thing, that justice should, in theory, treat all criminals the same. That a rich, powerful child rapist is no better than a poor child rapist, and that each should face equal punishment.

Reading Lévy’s post and others like it, I don’t get the sense that Polanski defenders believe this. I think they feel that Roman is a famous guy who’s made great art, and all he did was have a little sex with an underage girl, so hey, why not just forget it? Why arrest him as if he was a criminal, when he’s really a swell guy?

Well, because he is a criminal. A confessed one, one who refused to serve his sentence. One who has been evading justice for three decades.

Now, justice may take the form of Polanski having the charges dropped; there is at least some evidence that there were ex parte communications between the prosecutor and the Judge in the case. I’m not an attorney and don’t know how California courts would remedy that, but I do know that they can’t remedy that so long as Polanski refuses to stand up and face the court. By his stubborn refusal to come back and deal with legal matters through legal channels, Polanski acted as a common criminal. And criminals get arrested; I’m sorry, M. Lévy, but they do.

Finally, I find amusing the fact that Polanski is probably in jail today specifically because of the actions of his attorneys:

Roman Polanski’s attorneys may have helped provoke his arrest by complaining to an appellate court this summer that Los Angeles prosecutors had never made any real effort to arrest the filmmaker in his three decades as a fugitive, two sources familiar with the case told The Times.

The accusation that the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office was not serious about extraditing Polanski was a small part of two July court filings by the director’s attorneys. But it caught the attention of prosecutors and led to his capture in Switzerland on Saturday, the sources said.

Polanski, 76, was taken into custody at the airport in Zurich, where he was scheduled to headline the city’s film festival. Details of his appearance were widely available on the Internet. Variety also reported his planned attendance in August, the month after Polanski’s attorneys had filed two separate documents with the 2nd District of the state Court of Appeal asking for a dismissal of the 32-year-old child sex case against the filmmaker.

In both, the lawyers alleged that the district attorney’s office in effect benefited from Polanski’s absence, because as long as he remained a fugitive, officials could avoid answering allegations of prosecutorial and judicial wrongdoing in the original handling of the case.

Yeah, you know, that was probably a really stupid thing to argue. My guess is that to some extent, the L.A. District Attorney’s office was letting this go, not so much because they didn’t believe in the case but because it’s a hassle to try to get someone arrested overseas and then extradited to the U.S. But when you argue that there’s a conspiracy to try to cover up wrongdoing in the case, and that’s why nobody’s trying to bring your client in, you’d better be damn sure that’s the reason why nobody’s trying to bring your client in. If it isn’t, there’s a good chance that the prosecutor will go after your client, hard, to prove they have nothing to hide. And that’s doubly true if your client is a child rapist.

It’s funny. If your average guy were to rape a 13-year-old girl and then flee into exile rather than paying for his crime, pretty much everyone and their twin sister would agree that he was a scumbag who deserved nothing less than the hammer of justice brought down upon him. Turn that average guy into a rich artist with good connections, and suddenly the crime wasn’t that bad, the girl was probably asking for it (or her mother was, whatever), and it’s really close to fascism to put the guy through the indignity of being extradited to face justice.

I’m having trouble picking out just what my favorite instant rape apology is; there are several good ones, so I just thought I’d share a few of the best.

One of the better ones is from novelist Robert Harris, who was collaborating with Polanski on an upcoming film:

Robert Harris, a British novelist who said he had been working with Polanski for much of the past three years writing two screenplays, expressed outrage over the arrest….”I am shocked that any man of 76, whether distinguished or not, should have been treated in such a fashion,” he said in a statement, adding that Polanski had often visited Switzerland and even had a house in Gstaad….”It is hard not to believe that this heavy-handed action must be in some way politically motivated,” he said.

Why, he had a house in Gstaad! And, and, he’s…uh…old! Clearly he shouldn’t be held accountable for actions he took when he was a poor, foolish boy of…(adjusts glasses, reads text)…just 44 years old. The idea!

Of course, some might say that it’s shocking that a girl of 13, whether “consenting” or not, could be drugged and raped by a man almost three times her age. But I bet she doesn’t have a house in Gstaad. So there.

Joan Z. Shore of The Huffington Post argues that the girl was asking for it, or at least her mom was, and besides, she was almost of age, so…yeah:

The 13-year old model “seduced” by Polanski had been thrust onto him by her mother, who wanted her in the movies. The girl was just a few weeks short of her 14th birthday, which was the age of consent in California. (It’s probably 13 by now!) Polanski was demonized by the press, convicted, and managed to flee, fearing a heavy sentence.

Fun fact: the age of consent in 1977 in California was 16. It’s now 18.

But of course, the age of consent isn’t like horseshoes or global thermonuclear war; close doesn’t count. Even if the age of consent had been 14, the girl wasn’t 14.

As for whether the girl’s mother “thrust” the girl onto Polanski (which she didn’t; testimony at the time indicated the mother was unaware of the photo shoot), it wouldn’t matter if the mother delivered her daughter naked to Jack Nicholson’s hot tub herself, and helped Polanski get the Quaalude ready. No parent can consent to their under-aged child having sex.

Also, of course, this entire line of argument sort of goes out the window when you remember that Polanski drugged and forcibly raped the victim [warning: link goes to graphic grand jury testimony that may be triggering], which kind of makes the age of consent utterly moot. (Incidentally, the fact that she was underage makes the force utterly moot. You can’t be 44 and legally have sex with a 13-year-old in California. Statutory rape has the word rape in it for a reason.)

Many, many articles cited the fact that the victim, now grown up and 45 years old, has said she wants the case to be let go, because each time it gets dredged up it brings up painful memories of her being raped. I choose the Telegraph because its headline puts the word victim in scare quotes, because…something:

In January, [the victim]¹ filed a legal declaration in Los Angeles formally requesting that the outstanding charges against Polanski be withdrawn.

She said Los Angeles prosecutors’ insistence that Polanski must return to the United States before dismissal of the case could be considered as a “cruel joke being played on me”.

She also voiced anger that authorities had detailed her grand jury testimony in related hearings to the case.

“True as they may be, the continued publication of those details causes harm to me, my beloved husband, my three children and my mother,” she said, adding that it was time for closure.

“I have survived, indeed prevailed, against whatever harm Mr Polanski may have caused me as a child,” she said. Polanski had taken flight, she said, “because the judicial system did not work.”

I understand the victim’s feelings on this. And I sympathize, I do. But for good or ill, the justice system doesn’t work on behalf of victims; it works on behalf of justice. And while the victim is no doubt hurt by Polanski’s drawing this out for decades, ultimately more women would be hurt by a justice system that allowed convicted rapists to avoid punishment simply because they were rich and could afford to flee jail. Ultimately, the victim’s feelings must be considered, but they can not be the determining factor in whether a prosecution goes forward.

I said at the beginning that I was having trouble picking out a favorite rape apologist. But I must confess, I think I’ve settled on one. That would be The Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum, declaring that Polanski’s arrest was “outrageous,” because he’s famous:

There is evidence that Polanski did not know her real age. Polanski, who panicked and fled the U.S. during that trial, has been pursued by this case for 30 years, during which time he has never returned to America, has never returned to the United Kingdom., has avoided many other countries, and has never been convicted of anything else. He did commit a crime, but he has paid for the crime in many, many ways: In notoriety, in lawyers’ fees, in professional stigma. He could not return to Los Angeles to receive his recent Oscar. He cannot visit Hollywood to direct or cast a film.

He can be blamed, it is true, for his original, panicky decision to flee. But for this decision I see mitigating circumstances, not least an understandable fear of irrational punishment. Polanski’s mother died in Auschwitz. His father survived Mauthausen. He himself survived the Krakow ghetto, and later emigrated from communist Poland. His pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered in 1969 by the followers of Charles Manson, though for a time Polanski himself was a suspect.

I am certain there are many who will harrumph that, following this arrest, justice was done at last. But Polanski is 76. To put him on trial or keep him in jail does not serve society in general or his victim in particular. Nor does it prove the doggedness and earnestness of the American legal system. If he weren’t famous, I bet no one would bother with him at all.

Yes, it’s true, if Polanski wasn’t famous, he wouldn’t be in this mess, because he wouldn’t have had access to Jack Nicholson’s house while Jack was out of town. And he wouldn’t have been able to flee to France. And he wouldn’t have been able to live comfortably for 30 years. But hey, the poor guy had to forgo his Oscar! The horror!

Ultimately, Applebaum’s argument is pretty foolish. Admittedly, there’s been all sorts of tragedy in Polanski’s life, but that doesn’t justify his committing several felonies. Most Holocaust survivors did not grow up to become rapists.

But it’s worse than that. You see, you may not realize it, but Applebaum is married to a guy named Radosław Sikorski. Now, that’s pretty uninteresting, until you realize that Sikorski is the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs. Who just happens to be actively lobbying to have Polish native Polanski’s charges dismissed.

This is something Applebaum somehow forgot to mention in her column.

Time for another blogger ethics panel, I guess.

1. If you really want her name, click through. I don’t publish the names of victims of sexual assault. (back)

Roman Polanski, a convicted child rapist who has been living in exile since fleeing punishment in 1978, was arrested on Saturday night in Zurich, Switzerland, on an international warrant. Polanski, 76, has been living in France since he pled guilty to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl. Polanski had made the plea deal in order to avoid the more serious charges of rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious acts upon a child under 14, and furnishing a controlled substance (methaqualone) to a minor.

Polanski said in his defense at the time that the 13-year-old child was “sexually experienced,” and “consented,” thus arguing that somehow it would be okay for a 44-year-old to have sex with a 13-year-old in Jack Nicholson’s hot tub even if he hadn’t drugged her, which he had.

Polanski, who has directed a number of films, including Chinatown and The Pianist, had traveled to Zurich to accept an award for his filmmaking. The arrest outraged the government of France, which evidently doesn’t feel child rape is a serious crime. French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said he was “stunned” by the arrest, adding that he “profoundly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already known so many during his life.” Mitterand did not comment on the fact that the ordeal was being “inflicted” on Polanski because he raped a girl, and avoided justice for three decades.

A number of people who’ve worked with Polanski and pretended not to be aware that he once raped a child also came to his defense, arguing that he raped a child a long time ago, and was a really charming guy, and rich and stuff, so he should be allowed to get away with rape and with fleeing punishment for rape.

It remains to be seen whether Polanski will ultimately be extradited to the United States. His attorneys have vowed to fight extradition, and Polanski, as a man of means, is able to hire expensive attorneys. Nevertheless, the arrest serves as a reminder that whatever his skill at directing or his ability to make small talk at cocktail parties, Roman Polanski is a man who drugged and raped a kid. And by his actions he is making sure we never forget it.

Shayne at No, Not You writes this brilliant list:

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!

1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.

2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!

3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!

4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.

5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!

6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.

8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.

9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!

10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.

And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are commiting a crime- no matter how “into it” others appear to be.

Abyss 2 Hope and Girl With A Pen have more serious takes on the same topic.

(Via.)

From Signs of the Times:

Women who hold supervisory positions are more likely to be sexually harassed at work, according to the first-ever, large-scale longitudinal study to examine workplace power, gender and sexual harassment.

The study, “A Longitudinal Analysis of Gender, Power and Sexual Harassment in Young Adulthood,” reveals that nearly fifty percent of women supervisors, but only one-third of women who do not supervise others, reported sexual harassment in the workplace. In more conservative models with stringent statistical controls, women supervisors were 137 percent more likely to be sexually harassed than women who did not hold managerial roles.

While supervisory status increased the likelihood of harassment among women, it did not significantly impact the likelihood for men.

“This study provides the strongest evidence to date supporting the theory that sexual harassment is less about sexual desire than about control and domination,”said Heather McLaughlin, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota and the study’s primary investigator. “Male co-workers, clients and supervisors seem to be using harassment as an equalizer against women in power.”

McLaughlin and her co-authors examined data from the 2003 and 2004 waves of the Youth Development Study (YDS), a prospective study of adolescents that began in 1988 with a sample of 1,010 ninth graders in the St. Paul, Minnesota, public school district and has continued near annually since. Respondents were approximately 29 and 30 years old during the 2003 and 2004 waves. The analysis was supplemented with in-depth interviews with a subset of the YDS survey respondents.

The sociologists found that, in addition to workplace power, gender expression was a strong predictor of workplace harassment. Men who reported higher levels of femininity were more likely to have experienced harassment than less feminine men. More feminine men were at a greater risk of experiencing more severe or multiple forms of sexual harassment (as were female supervisors).

In a separate analysis examining perceived and self-reported sexual orientation, study respondents who reported being labeled as non-heterosexual by others or who self-identified as non-heterosexual (gay, lesbian, bisexual, unsure, other) were nearly twice as likely to experience harassment.

Researchers also found that those who reported harassment in the first year (2003) were 6.5 times more likely to experience harassment in the following year. The most common scenario reported by survey respondents involved male harassers and female targets, while males harassing other males was the second most frequent situation.

Via Hunter of Justice.

The Economist argues that sex offender laws — specifically, sex offender registries — are too harsh. It’s mainly concerned with statutory rapists, some of whom were only two or three years older than the person they were arrested for having sex with.

There are three main arguments for reform. First, it is unfair to impose harsh penalties for small offences. Perhaps a third of American teenagers have sex before they are legally allowed to, and a staggering number have shared revealing photographs with each other. This is unwise, but hardly a reason for the law to ruin their lives. Second, America’s sex laws often punish not only the offender, but also his family. If a man who once slept with his 15-year-old girlfriend is barred for ever from taking his own children to a playground, those children suffer.

Third, harsh laws often do little to protect the innocent. The police complain that having so many petty sex offenders on registries makes it hard to keep track of the truly dangerous ones. Cash that might be spent on treating sex offenders—which sometimes works—is spent on huge indiscriminate registries. Public registers drive serious offenders underground, which makes them harder to track and more likely to reoffend. And registers give parents a false sense of security: most sex offenders are never even reported, let alone convicted.

It would not be hard to redesign America’s sex laws. Instead of lumping all sex offenders together on the same list for life, states should assess each person individually and include only real threats. Instead of posting everything on the internet, names could be held by the police, who would share them only with those, such as a school, who need to know. Laws that bar sex offenders from living in so many places should be repealed, because there is no evidence that they protect anyone: a predator can always travel. The money that a repeal saves could help pay for monitoring compulsive molesters more intrusively—through ankle bracelets and the like.

I agree with pretty much all of this. (Via.)

(MAJOR TRIGGER WARNINGS — Lots of stuff about how Fred Phelps abused his entire family. Please be cautious about reading on or following the links if you think it may be a trigger for you.) Read the rest of this entry »

Marine biologist Sheril Kirshenbaum is, along with Chris Mooney, a co-blogger at The Intersection, a blog on science and public policy whose RSS feed should be in your reader, and if it isn’t, you should go, right now, and rectify the situation.

Done? Good. Now let’s talk about the epidemic of rape facing young women around the world.

Sorry to shift gears without depressing the clutch, but I do so for a reason: to draw attention to an effort launched by Kirshenbaum to attack a problem that is horrifying in its scope:

Today begins a very important initiative called Silence Is The Enemy to help a generation of young women half a world away.Why?  Because they are our sisters and children–the victims of sexual abuse who don’t have the means to ask for help.  We have power in our words and influence. Along with our audience, we’re able to speak for them.  I’m asking all of you–bloggers, writers, teachers, and concerned citizens–to use whatever platform you have to call for an end to the rapeand abuse of women and girls in Liberia and around the world.

In regions where fighting has formally ended, rape continues to be used as a weapon. As Nicholas Kristofrecently wrote from West Africa, ‘it has been easier to get men to relinquish their guns than their sense of sexual entitlement.’ The war has shattered norms, training some men to think that ‘when they want sex, they need simply to overpower a girl.’ An International Rescue Committee survey suggests 12 percent of girls aged 17 and under acknowledged having been sexually abused in some way over the previous 18 months.  Further, of the 275 new sexual violence cases treated Jan-April by Doctors Without Borders, 28 percent involve children aged 4 or younger, and 33 percent involve children aged 5 through 12. That’s 61% age 12 or under.  We read about their plight and see the figures, but it’s so easy to feel helpless to act in isolation. But these are not statistics, they are girls.  Together we can do more.  Mass rape persists because of inertia so let’s create momentum.

[...]

Silence Is The Enemy was born–so named because we will not be. All through June, I’ll continue posting information, details, benchmarks, and let everyone know about progress made, new initiatives, and stories from the region. I encourage others to do so as possible.  The Intersection, On Becoming A Laboratory And Domestic Goddess, Aetiology, Bioephemera, Neurotopia, The Questionable Authority, DrugMonkey, andAdventure In Ethics And Science will be donating all revenue this month to Doctors Without Borders. The goal is two-fold:  Raising funds and–arguably more importantly–awareness. Since blogging revenue increases with traffic, we hope to get people to keep coming back for more information about what’s going on and thinking about how to make a difference. Do not feel obligated to donate, but it’s one idea. There are many ways to contribute:  Write and email Members of Congress (Congressional Directory here), speak at community meetings, encourage others to get involved, or donate to our chosen charity (Doctors Without Borders). Help us maximize our donations by visiting Isis, Jessica, Tara, Neurotopia, Mike, DrugMonkey, Janet and returning here often because every click will help raise money. Spread the word.  We want to make sure elected officials at multiple levels realize this is a global issue that matters to a large voting constituency!

I will be donating to Médecins Sans Frontières this month, and I encourage others to do the same. But whether you can donate money, or simply can donate your effort spreading the word that rape is not acceptable, and that you support efforts to end it, your efforts matter. It is incumbent on all of us to say that we will not be silent in the face of these attacks, and that the safety and well-being of the women and girls of Africa matters every bit as much as the safety of Americans.

Other blogs discussing the oral arguments in the case I blogged about yesterday.

• You’re Reading Too Much Into It, an interesting blog about politics and pop culture, starts by discussing Breyer’s infamous remarks and segways into critiquing the Daily Show’s sexist reporting from Sweden and a comedian who badgered her into performing on stage. What connects all of this is how our society treats women as objects to be looked at. (Plus there’s a clip from “Coupling” that I really enjoyed, less for the political relevance than for the clever use of 90’s phone technology as a prop for farce.) Hard to summarize, well worth reading.
• Amanda at Pandagon gets to the heart of the matter:
  

  What’s traumatic about strip searches and sexual assault isn’t that someone touched or saw something previously untouched or unseen. It’s the horror of having someone use your nudity and your sexuality as a weapon to degrade and humiliate you. And anyone who’s been subject to the routine degradation and humiliation dished out by sadistic school administrators has a pretty damn good idea of what was going on here.

• So was the goal really degradation and humiliation, or was it to find contraband? Jacob at Hit & Run points out something I didn’t know: school officials didn’t even search the student’s desk or locker before strip-searching her. The strip-search wasn’t a last resort, it was a first resort.
• Also from Jacob at Hit and Run:
  

  Wright, the school district’s lawyer, initially suggested it would unconstitutional for schools to enforce their zero-tolerance policies with body cavity searches, because there is no record of students’ hiding drugs in their vaginas or rectums. But later he backtracked, saying the real problem is that school officials are not properly trained to conduct such searches. When Souter asked him whether body cavity searches would be OK once administrators and teachers had undergone the requisite training, Wright said “that’s to be left up to the local governments.”

• Scott at Tapped has several good points that defy a one-sentence summary, so go read his post. And then go read Scott at Lawyers Guns and Money, where he breaks down how the Justices are likely to vote.
• The Agitator, responding to a comment by Justice Souter, writes:
  

  Can anyone think of a single incident in the last 30 years in which several children have died after ingesting drugs distributed by one of their classmates on school grounds? Before we let school principals go rummaging through the panties of underage girls, shouldn’t we be at least be able to cite a few examples?

• It’s pretty obvious to most “Alas” readers, I think, that part of this story is that eight of nine Supreme Court Justices are male. Historiann points out that this aspect has seemingly escaped the notice of most mainstream newsmedia. (Via Feminist Law Profs.)
• Rad Geek expresses a thought similar to what my all-too-infrequent co-blogger Myca said in comments.
• TechnologyWoman argues that what happened to Redding was an assault.
• SCOTUSblog has a useful summary of the background of this case.

Dahlia Lithwick reports on the oral arguments at the Supreme Court, involving a 13 year old girl stripped-searched because she had been falsely accused of giving ibuprofen to other students:

Adam Wolf, the ACLU lawyer who represents Redding, explains that “the Fourth Amendment does not countenance the rummaging on or around a 13-year-old girl’s naked body.” Wolf explains that he is arguing for a “two-step framework,” wherein schools can use a lower standard to search “backpacks, pencil cases, bookbags” but a higher standard when you “require a 13-year-old girl to take off her pants, her shirt, move around her bra so she reveals her breasts, and the same thing with her underpants to reveal her pelvic area.” This leads Justice Stephen Breyer to query whether this is all that different from asking Redding to “change into a swimming suit or your gym clothes,” because, “why is this a major thing to say strip down to your underclothes, which children do when they change for gym?”

This leads Ginsburg to sputter—in what I have come to think of as her Lilly Ledbetter voice—”what was done in the case … it wasn’t just that they were stripped to their underwear! They were asked to shake their bra out, to stretch the top of their pants and shake that out!” Nobody but Ginsburg seems to comprehend that the only locker rooms in which teenage girls strut around, bored but fabulous in their underwear, are to be found in porno movies. For the rest of us, the middle-school locker room was a place for hastily removing our bras without taking off our T-shirts.

But Breyer just isn’t letting go. “In my experience when I was 8 or 10 or 12 years old, you know, we did take our clothes off once a day, we changed for gym, OK? And in my experience, too, people did sometimes stick things in my underwear.”

Shocked silence, followed by explosive laughter. In fact, I have never seen Justice Clarence Thomas laugh harder. Breyer tries to recover: “Or not my underwear. Whatever. Whatever. I was the one who did it? I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think it’s beyond human experience.” [...]

You see, we now have school districts all around the country finding naked photos of teens and immediately calling in the police for possession of kiddie porn. Yet schools see nothing wrong with stripping these same kids naked to search for drugs. Evidently teenage nakedness is only a problem when the children choose to be naked.

Scott at Lawyers Guns and Money breaks down how the vote is likely to go (Scalia is likely to vote for student’s privacy rights, incidentally, while this will probably be the second time Alito has favored the state strip-searching little girls).

Three points:

1) Yet anther example of how the drug war has eroded sanity.

2) Yet another example of why a Court with only one woman on it is a court that’s unable to fairly administrate justice.¹

3) Yet another example of why Democratic presidents appointing “centrist: judges while Republicans appoint far-right judges creates right-wing outcomes, not balance.

1. Yes, women aren’t always more connected to reality on these issues than men; I’m sure Camille Paglia, for example, would see nothing wrong with Breyer’s logic. But this isn’t a question of absolute difference; it’s a question of odds. A Court with 4 or 5 women on it would be substantially less likely to have Ginsburg be the only Justice appalled by Breyer’s rationalization. (back)

I was not planning to start posting again until I could begin in earnest the series I want to do on classical Iranian literature–and interruption after interruption after interruption has kept me from getting to the point where I am ready to do that–but something happened this week relating to a former students of mine that I need to write about. It is actually quite urgent, probably not to anyone who reads this blog, but certainly to the woman whose message is at the root of this post, and it makes a point that cannot be made strongly or frequently enough: We, especially but not only those of us who have survived sexual abuse of any kind and are strong enough to do so, need, need, need, need, need to speak up loudly and often about the realities of that abuse and how it has shaped our lives (because, whether we realize it or not, it shapes the lives even of those of us who have not been abused, either because we know someone who has or because it shapes the culture in which we live.) You may have seen this post in which I put up a YouTube video of an interview I gave to Jackson Heights Poetry Festival, an organization on whose advisory board I sit. In the interview, I talk about the relationship between my experience of child sexual abuse and the fact that I became a poet. The substance of what I said there is not important here. What is important is that watching this video moved a former student of mine to send me a message in which she told me–and the tone of the message suggests that I am the first person she has told–that she was sodomized a couple of years ago and had been trying to deal with it by pretending it didn’t happen. Even more importantly, though, and more urgently, she said that she suspects her three-year-old daughter is being sexually abused at the girl’s father’s house and that she [my former student] freaks out just thinking about the possibility. As I read the message, it sounded to me like she was saying this freaking out keeps her from acting on what she intuits, which is scary, because even if it turns out she is wrong–and there was no indication in the message that she has any vindictiveness towards the girl’s father that would lead her to make a false accusation (my point being that she might be wrong in good faith)–she needs to tell somebody, first to make sure that her daughter is safe and, second, to alleviate her own anxieties (and maybe understand, if she is wrong, what triggered her unfounded suspicions in the first place).

I responded in all the predictable ways–thanking her for her trust, acknowleding the courage it took for her to speak out, and encouraging her to get in touch with someone about her daughter’s sitation, though since I was running out the door, I couldn’t take the time to look up crisis hotlines or other phone numbers–and I am hoping to hear back from her, but what her message made me think about was, as I said above, just how important it is for us as a society to talk openly about the reality of sexual abuse. More, though, it made me think about how important it is to talk about that reality not just in contexts where sexual abuse is the topic–i.e., talk shows, conferences, seminars, etc. that are set aside for the specific purpose of addressing sexual abuse–but also, simply, merely, in the contexts of our daily lives, because abuse is always already part of our daily lives. Because you never know who is listening and how important your words might be to them.

I am remembering as I write this something that I have written about before, that I was not even thinking about when I started, but that is worth talking about here: An independent study I did five or seven years ago with two women who told me they wanted specifically to work on personal essays that dealt with the sexual abuse they had experienced when they were girls. They were both in a creative nonfiction class I was teaching and one had written an essay about her abuse that, while obviously cathartic for her, worked neither as a public document of personal testimony nor as art, and it was art she was trying to create. The problems in the essay were indicative of the difficulties abuse survivors have speaking out about their experience. Under normal classroom circumstances, I handle this by directing the student to some examples of writers who had dealt with similar topics; I might have a kind of “therapeutic” conversation (and I put that word in quotes because I do not mean that I would try to do therapy) to explore whether or not the student was really willing and able to delve into the topic at the depth and level of complexity it required. (I do, after all, have to assign a grade to the work my students hand me, and the last thing I would want is to give a low grade to an essay in which someone is struggling to come to terms with, or even just to name, the sexual abuse they’d survived because they were not yet able to write about the experience at the college level.) If the answer is no, then I offer the student the chance to write about something else; if the answer is yes, then I try to get them to articulate some of the difficulties they were having in writing the paper as a means of talking about how to deal with them in writerly terms; and I always encourage such students, if they are not in therapy, to seek counseling.

The woman in my creative nonfiction class, however, was not simply fulfilling an assignment I had given. She wanted to be a writer and she told me quite explicitly that she saw me as a role model, and so I was faced with the decision of whether to share with her my own experience of trying to write creatively, to make art, out of the fact that I had survived child sexual abuse. For reasons that are not so relevant here, I decided to do so. Then, when a second woman in the class also began to write about her experience of child sexual abuse, and she told me that she too wanted to be a writer, and she was a damned good writer, when the first woman approached me about doing an independent study, I suggested that the two of them might work together. The story of that independent study is really quite remarkable, but the part of it that is relevant here is this: At the end of the semester, all independent study students at my college are required to present their work at a colloquium; if they don’t, they don’t get credit. As the day of the colloquium drew near, my students grew increasingly nervous, for all of the predictable reasons, but one that stood out was their concern that the faculty and administrators present would think the subject of their work inappropriate for an academic context. So I told my students that I would introduce them by talking about my own experience of abuse and how meaningful it had been to me to be for them the kind of mentor/role model that just was not available to me in the 1980s when I started to talk about my own abuse. At that time, people were just starting to recognize the sexual abuse of girls. No one, as fas as I know, as talking in any substantive way–or at least was being given a forum to talk in any substantive way–about the fact that boys were being sexually abused as well.

And that’s what I did: I introduced those two women by naming myself as a survivor of sexual abuse and telling a little bit of my own story. It was a watershed moment in my life and in my career as a teacher. Not that I had any problem talking about my abuse, but I had always kept that part of my life separate from my professional life. It was “personal,” and so I had not really thought much about the degree to which it informed my practice as a teacher and a writer, my political stances in the world, etc. and so on. There is a great deal more to say about what it has meant to me to integrate these parts of myself, and I will, I hope write more about that. What I want to say here is simply that, if it were not for that independent study and the women who worked with me that semester, I would never have talked in that interview about the relationship between my abuse and my becoming a writer as easily as I did, and I would never have had the chance to encourage my former student to act on her feelings about her daughter’s situation, and my encouragement might turn out to be the thing that moves her to act, and we all know what kind of difference that could make in her daughter’s life (if she is being abused), and in my former student’s life as well.

Cross-posted on It’s All Connected.