In the Nation, a sports writer talks about the connection between jock culture and rape culture.

As a sportswriter, there is one part of the Steubenville High School rape trial that has kept rattling in my brain long after the defendants were found guilty. It was a text message sent by one of the now-convicted rapists, team quarterback Trent Mays. Mays had texted a friend that he wasn’t worried about the possibility of rape charges because his football coach, local legend Reno Saccoccia, “took care of it.” In another text, Mays said of Coach Reno, “Like, he was joking about it so I’m not worried.”

In this exchange we see an aspect of the Steubenville case that should resonate in locker rooms and athletic departments across the country: the connective tissue between jock culture and rape culture. Rape culture is not just about rape. It’s about the acceptance of women as “things” to be used and disposed, which then creates a culture where sexual assault—particularly at social settings—is normalized. [Read more…]

How bad can it get? Well, I probably can’t even imagine, but I can see part of the way to how bad it can get. It can get as bad as Why don’t we have a Dumb Fucking Whore Registry? The author of that calls herself Judgybitch.

So two of the boys involved in the Steubenville “rape” case were found guilty and will now face imprisonment and a lifetime membership on the Registered List of Sex Offenders. That is a tragedy for the boys, for justice and for the victims of actual rape.  As we go through this case, ask yourself who benefits from this verdict, and why.

Most of the facts in this case seem relatively incontrovertible:  a young woman, who was not part of the regular social group, went to a football party, in a town mad for football, got trashed out of her mind, voluntarily accompanied two of the biggest football stars to another party, passed out and then got treated like a whore.

In a moment of mind-numbing stupidity, the boys opted to film their “assault” on the girl, which involved fingering her while she was passed out.  Rather than leave her in a ditch somewhere, they carried her around to different locations, none of which had any adult supervision. [Read more…]

There’s a funny thing where obsessive people have Rosicrucian-like Ideas about what happened when once long ago a comment they made on my blog ended up on the cutting room floor. They think it’s because Dogmatism or Social Justice Warrior or Skepticism Stabbed in the Back or the Femistasi or The Lindbergh Baby. They obsess; they make wikis; they type and type and type and type; they go on for thousands of words. And all the time it’s much simpler than that.

The comment was fucking boring.

It was long, and detailed, and pedantic, and about a very small thing that couldn’t stand that much length and detail and pedantry, and it was fucking boring. [Read more…]

Hotshot starry tv trainers who can make people lose 800 pounds in a week turn out to be peddling quack “weight-loss pills” that are both useless and harmful. How sleazy.

Both trainers have created standalone sites — jillianweightloss.com and bobharpersupplements.com — to sell their supplements. By taking this under-the-radar path with their diet pills, the trainers are using the fame and trust they’ve gained from their time on the Biggest Loser to market weight loss supplements to a consumer base eager for a quick fix that “really works.”

There is little proof that either pill “really works” at all. Michaels has faced four different lawsuits from consumers claiming her supplements either didn’t work or were dangerous. All four suits were dismissed, and it wasn’t clear whether the ingredients singled out in one lawsuit — Chinese rhubarb, Irish moss powder and uva-ursi — posed a major risk to consumers. But Lynn Willis, professor emeritus of pharmacology at Indiana University, says that Michaels’ Total Body Detox and Cleanse supplement is ineffective:

“This product is an absurdity,” says Willis. [Read more…]

Hot new idea in Egypt! Allowing citizens’ arrests.

Uh oh. It doesn’t take much slow careful pondering to see the risks in that idea.

Only Islamist political powers, represented by the Freedom and Justice Party and Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, welcomed the decision as an attempt to curb the security deterioration in the country.

Really? You sure? Not as an attempt to curb the secularism and sluttiness and bareheaded woman-ness in the country? Not as an attempt to curb the blasphemy and Christianity and apostasy in the country?

Yes, Egypt is right off my bucket list. I’d be arrested before the captain turned off the seatbelt sign.

One of the pseudonymous harassers commenting at Michael Nugent’s blog is now just plain posting libel about me. It’s “Commander Tuvok”  – who will never have to face any consequences of his penchant for posting libel about people, because he is pseudonymous.

Meanwhile, we have Ophelia and her mob claiming terms such as “gender traitor”, “sister punisher” and “chill girl” were NOT taken up and used frequently by the Baboons and their followers. Just a pity the Pit has screencapped and documented dozens of examples of those terms being used with NO condemnation from the FfTB leadership. But this is typical of Ophelia and her insane sycophants – lying liars.

I claim no such thing. I said, truthfully, that I don’t call people “sister punisher” or “gender traitor.” I said what I do and don’t say. I don’t know which people “Commander Tuvok” means by “the Baboons” but in any case I said what I do and don’t say, not what other people do and don’t say.

And I am not a lying liar. And it is my real name and reputation attached to these smears, while “Commander Tuvok” keeps his own name and reputation clean by keeping them a secret.

 

Raw Story offers the top five rape apologist responses to the Steubenville verdict, so you don’t have to go looking for them and evaluating them.

1. CNN: “Those poor boys’ lives are ruined”

CNN correspondent Candy Crowley responded to the verdict by bemoaning the sad future of two rapists who traumatized one young girl for life but would never get to live out their football dreams.

3. Author/blogger Michael Crooke: “It’s just buyer’s remorse”
Author/blogger Michael Crook, who additionally claims that “rape doesn’t exist,” won the race for most-likely-to-be-poorly-executed satire, at least until he took to his Twitter feed to demand that the survivor be “held accountable”, tell women that “skimpy clothing is pretty much implied consent” and encourage every woman to not “dress like a whore if you don’t want to be treated like one.”

Those are my top two from Raw Story’s top five. Not at all, don’t mention it.

Gee, is Mitch McConnell a fan of the slime pit?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) got in a few yucks during his 2013 CPAC speech Friday morning, telling a crowd that he thinks the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential field is looking like “a rerun of ‘The Golden Girls.’”

“Don’t tell me the Democrats are the party of the future when their presidential ticket in 2016 is shaping up to look like a rerun of ‘The Golden Girls,’” he said. The crowd erupted with laughter.

Ahahahahaha – that’s so funny. Old; geddit? Women who are old. Hilarious, right? Stupid bitches – they should just die instead of hanging around getting old.

A guy got beaten up by shouty racist bully-boys on a Manchester tram packed with football fans, and nobody helped, instead everybody just watched, as if it were an entertainment.

Prakash Patel, 56, from New Moston, was on a tram with his daughter Devyani  at Trafford Bar when he suffered a tirade of racist abuse followed by a sustained vicious assault. He was punched in the face and head more than 18 times and suffered two black eyes and concussion.

He tells what happened.

WE had been to the Fulham match at Old Trafford. We go as often as we can because we are big fans, we’ve been going for 25 years and never had any trouble. There were more than 200 people just in our carriage, it was so packed you couldn’t move. About six men or seven men came on to the tram and started making indecent racist comments. [Read more…]