speak not its name!

*Note - sexual assault triggers

Well this is just plain ridiculous. A Nebraska judge bans the word "rape" from his courtroom, along with "sexual assault," "victim," "assailant" and "sexual assault kit."

The result is that the defense and the prosecution are both left to use the same word—sex—to describe either forcible sexual assault, or benign consensual intercourse. As for the jurors, they'll just have to read the witnesses' eyebrows to sort out the difference.

Um, right. How unbelievably awful is this? This judge is forcing the victim to lie, because rape and sex are not the same thing. Rape is not about sex - rape is about power and control. I call bullshit on the "jurors being too emotional" argument put forth here. It's horrible that Bowen had to go through this, on top of everything else.

Furthermore, how's about some more lying and coddling?

And there's another problem underlying Cheuvront's order: Jurors will not be told of it. Not only is the "dangerous" language to be hidden from them, but the fact that it's been hidden will be concealed from them as well. They are not merely too emotional to hear the phrase rape kit. They are also evidently too emotional to know it's been hidden from them in the first place.

In the words of the victim herself:

"This makes women sick, especially the women who have gone through this," Bowen said. "They know the difference between sex and rape. If it was sex, I wouldn't be speaking to you."

culture jamming yay!

I can't remember where I was directed to this from first, but who cares, it's awesome. A LiveJournal user very awesomely modified those ridiculous Special K ads. Check out the results!

Some of you who know me know that I'm not too fond of bowing to bullshit beauty standards, hence I found this shaving historical timeline interesting. Do pay attention to the entry for World War One, and the fact that

It all began with the May, 1915 edition of Harper's Bazaar magazine that featured a model sporting the latest fashion. She wore a sleeveless evening gown that exposed, for the first time in fashion, her bare shoulders, and her armpits.

A young marketing executive with the Wilkinson Sword Company, who also made razor blades for men, designed a campaign to convince the women of North America that:

(a) Underarm hair was unhygienic (b) It was unfeminine.

In two years, the sales of razor blades doubled as our grandmothers and great grandmothers made themselves conform to this socially constructed gender stereotype. This norm for North American women has been reinforced by several generations of daughters who role-modeled their mothers.

It's all about marketing and social conditioning, as usual.

Also, Colbert mocks people who make such a big deal over name changes:

I'm still alive, I swear

Summer is upon us. I've left the SCSU (my term ended almost a month ago) and have drifted into the wonderful world of waiting tables, and when I'm not doing that, sitting on my ass.

Those of you who remember the disaster that was my boyfriend attempting to get new identification, all is well and he has been in Canada since the start of May. Got here while I was away on a retreat and I had a pleasant surprise when I called my mom's house and he answered the phone. Good times.

Some linkage of good reads and things to keep an eye on:

- I'm keeping my eye on this story. The girl's father really freaked me out when I saw him on the news - if you've seen it, you know he was dancing and grinning and waving as he was arrested. I'm waiting to hear more about it before I come up with commentary.

- Jill at Feministe has a good post on reaction to Paris Hilton's jail time. Sexualised insults and attacking women for being sexual, for enjoying sex, presuming that they do and that that's a bad thing, etc., are things that bother me very very much, so when Jill says,

I’ve found a lot of the conversation around the Paris Hilton jailing to be very troubling — people don’t want to see her incarcerated because she broke the law, but because she’s a “stupid bimbo,” a “skanky little whore,” a “stupid bitch,” a “ho,” a “piece of white trash,” a “ignorant cum hole on a stick,” a “fucking whorebag,” a “whinning pussystretched crab infested skank,” a “spoiled cunt,” etc etc.

I'm well inclined to agree.

- Speaking of Feministe, Zuzu has left the blog. I got to meet Zuzu recently and she is pretty darn awesome; believe me, she will be missed.

- Oh my god, ew. Ew ew ew ew ew ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

- Andy and I went to see the new Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum on Friday. I have to say I was pretty darn underwhelmed. From the first time I saw the plans for the thing, I was horrified by it. And people were going on and on and on about it once it opened with glorious reviews and beautiful photos and the like, and I knew I was going to give it a chance anyway but... yeah. We went on Friday because that's the cheap night and despite the fact that it took like, five years to build the damn thing, it already looks cheap and beat up inside. Just in the entrance hall there was a bit of masking tape left on a wall, elsewhere I already saw dents in the walls (not to mention footprints on some of the slopes, since people can't seem to READ THE FUCKING SIGNS THAT SAY DON'T CLIMB ON THE WALLS), and in general it just seemed to be... meh. It wasn't brilliant, it wasn't inspiring, it wasn't beautiful, it was pretty darn meh. I am curious to see what it will be like when there's actually stuff in there (on the fifth floor there are already two small exhibits) but it seems like way too much money spent on something that has turned out to be really not that special. Anyway, I did take some pictures of my own, and in the end I stand by my initial proclamation of five years ago, that it's a blight on a beautiful old building. As Andy put it, in a somewhat appalled tone, when looking at it from the angle of that last picture, "It looks like a growth."

- From the Saturday Star, a series of profiles on women presidents, principals and deans at Canada's universities. It's really fascinating, and Mayo Moran, dean of law at U of T, hits the nail on the head when it comes to motherhood and career:

"You look at women in senior levels in the university and most have children that are grown or no children. That's not something that is true of men." Moran, 46, who has a 10-year-old son, adds: "I'm the only one (female dean) who had a son that was little. However, the last dean had four young kids when he became dean and no one mentioned that. It is one of the hurdles that we have to cross."

. Make sure you check out all the links on the sidebar to read these women's stories.

- From TheGoodReverend, a photo quiz: Exercise Equipment or Sex Toy?. I don't remember where I found this but it made me giggle.

- A very good read about the crime half of all humans commit, and the punishment doled out for, Living While Female, at a cat and twenty.

- And finally, one of my favourite bloggers, Jessica Valenti of Feministing.com, was on the Colbert Report last week, and kicked some ass.


I might add more to this later, but right now I am hungry.

TBTB

Aw fuck, I've got 15 minutes left to get my Take Back The Blog post in.


I'd been thinking about what to write all day, and realised that I didn't really have much more to say, other than to re-tell what I wrote for Blog Against Sexism Day:

This summer, I was harassed because of decisions I made while serving on the student union. These decisions offended a small group of people (one person, really, two or three max) who are generally the disgusting type. And instead of being criticised with rational reasons as to why they disagreed, I was (to be expected given their history) instead berated as a woman. I was called a bitch and a whore. I was made fun of for my weight (which is actually pretty average). Pornographic pictures were posted with labels indicating that I and the SCSU were double-penetrating the students. This person drove by my house in the middle of the night screaming at me. I had to get the Administration and the Community Safety Office involved. That was six months ago. I don't even want to know what they're saying about me now. My office-mate and fellow female executive, Lisa, faced similar insults when it came to some of her decisions.

My male colleagues? When they made a decision or said something people didn't like, their characters were gone after as well. But the names they were called didn't have anything to do with their sexuality. They didn't have anything to do with their body. No, they were called "power hungry" and "corrupt." Their actions were criticised more, they were "not accountable," they were playing political games and being manipulative.

Most of this happened on the Internet, because the decisions were in relation to an online forum that the SCSU was running at the time. The Executives were moderating it. At one point I was the forum admin, and the person who drove by my house was someone who I had banned.

There's a whole lot of stories behind this forum - when I was helping to run it, it was its third incarnation. It was taken down the previous two times (and ultimately, a third) because people couldn't play nice in the sandbox. And as I said, Lisa and I got a lot of shit on that forum whenever we said something, in ways that our male colleagues did not, and that was part of why we took the thing down. I was losing sleep over the harassment I was getting and it fucking sucked.

I really can't explain it, other than to rehash what is a given already: it's a lot of hatred for women, and fear of women in positions of power, and an inability to accept that we could possibly be right and they could possibly be wrong. According to people who know the guy behind all this, he was never a physical threat to me, just talk. They told me this months later. But how was I to know this while I'm lying awake in bed at 3 AM unable to sleep because I've just been screamed at for no good reason by a cowardly asshole who can't accept that he broke the rules? Way to discredit my feelings.

The other awful part was how hardly anyone stood up for me publicly. I got supportive e-mails and phone calls and talks over tea, but no one ever came out and said, STOP to his guy. And I don't know what to say about that, either. Maybe they were afraid of being targeted themselves. Maybe they didn't know what to do. I don't know.

But, I do know that I haven't let it stop me. Thankfully it was also never as bad for me as it was for people like Kathy Sierra, and hopefully it never will be. We deserve to be here just as much as anyone else.

it lives!

Yes, I'm alive. Things have just been crazy, but, today has been good.

As I mentioned before, Andy has been in a right state over the past eight months without any ID, the past year without a steady job, and the past six months without a home of his own. Last weekend I went to visit him, we stayed in a hotel. This past week he's really been on the street, more or less (well, in a friend's basement, really, and that was kinda sketch). We decided to take a big step, and my mom and I got together enough money to send him to Worcester, MA, where he grew up, to see about getting him some ID. He left at 3 AM and arrived just before noon. By 1:20 PM he had a record of his birth from the town clerk, and a temporary MassID from the RMV. By 4 PM he'd also taken care of his social security card and sent off an application for a passport. Wooo! He'll be spending the weekend with a friend of mine in Connecticut before heading back to Buffalo. The passport will take 1-4 weeks, and when he gets back to New York he'll be applying for ID from that state.

I am pretty fucking ecstatic about that. I could very well have him here in Canada by the end of May, which would be absolutely amazing.

I also had my last exam today. I think I kicked its ass. Awesome.

For the next week or so I'll be pretty much AWOL. I'm packing this weekend, moving on Monday, then I have peer educator training and a retreat next week as well. I won't be back until Sunday, then I have a week left with the SCSU. So I'll be busy, to say the least.

Hope you're all doing well out in internet-land. :-)

What. The. Fuck.

The opening of this article is disgusting. Short of coming out and saying, "It was Emily's fault," this is blatant, awful victim blaming.

Emily Hilscher was not responsible for the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Even if she was his ex-girlfriend, she was not responsible - the man who shot her was. He's the one who picked up the gun, he's the one who pulled the trigger. He was the one with such a sense of entitlement to this woman that he went out and killed her. But it doesn't seem like this paper realises that she's the one who was murdered.

So now every media source is going on about gun control, gun control, gun control; security, security, security. To be honest though, let's face it - if the guy was this disturbed, all the gun control and security in the world probably wouldn't have stopped him from harming others. As more details come out, I'll be interested to hear more about his story and his possible motives. Maybe it was the ex-girlfriend. Maybe it was his mental health. Maybe it was bullying (yes, it happens in universities). Maybe it was a campus culture he didn't fit into, didn't understand. We don't know. But I really don't think gun control should be made into the main issue. The backstory, what was going on in this young man's life, should be at the forefront of the discussions, so that if it was mental illness, in the future people in the same frame of mind can get the proper help sooner; so if it was a relationship gone sour, that we can get information out on handling those kinds of situations - and so that dead women don't get blamed for what they weren't responsible for.

Update: Making the article I wrote about even more ridiculous, it turns out that Emily Hilscher didn't even know the guy. Though he did seem to have a history of stalking, to the point where his roommates told their female friends not to come by their room. Apparently he "saw promiscuity" in one girl. *shudders*

Of Note

June Callwood died yesterday. A real hero and an amazing woman. I really admired her.
Toronto Star: one, two, three.

How not to be an asshole: a guide for men by Chris Clarke over at Pandagon. Cue wild applause, alongside a sigh that probably the only reason some of the men this is directed at will take a hint is because it was written by a dude.

What's with the sexualized threats against women? by E.J. Graff at TPM Cafe. As someone who has been the target of sexualised threats, this means a lot to me.

Take Back the Tech. Much love for this campaign.

And finally, just for fun: Bedjump.com. Awesome.