(Trigger Warning: Discussion of gang-rape and rape culture. I’ll put the story below the fold, but I have some angry words for this.)
This is why I scream about rape culture. This is why I don’t trust society. I have zero respect for anyone who denies that rape culture is a real thing. This is fucking proof. You have no fucking ground to claim that rape culture isn’t a thing when shit like this can happen.
Holy fucking shit…
From Reuters…
Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee, on Monday emphasized the need for judicial independence even as Trump castigates jurists who have ruled against him, while Democrats questioned whether he would rule against abortion rights and gun control while favoring corporations.
With the ideological balance of the Supreme Court at stake, the Senate Judiciary Committee opened its confirmation hearing for Gorsuch, a conservative federal appeals court judge from Colorado. Republicans praised Gorsuch, 49, as highly qualified for a lifetime appointment as a justice.
“I think we’re off to a good start,” Republican Chuck Grassley, the committee’s chairman, said afterward, with senators getting their first shot at questioning Gorsuch on Tuesday.
Committee Democrats noted Gorsuch has the chance to join the court only because Senate Republicans last year refused to consider Democratic former President Barack Obama’s nomination of federal appellate judge Merrick Garland. Despite slim chances of blocking his nomination in the Republican-led Senate, Democrats raised questions about Gorsuch’s suitability for the job.
No, this is not about something he said or did in the last day or two. Actually, it’s a blast from the past. And… I’m kinda late to blogging about it, too… but so what?
I’m watching the episode of TWiBPrime from February 22nd(?), and they talked about Bill Maher taking credit for Milo Fuckface-opoulos’s downfall after that clip of him defending pedophilia came out.
I love how Bill Maher felt very comfortable doing that, when he’s defended pedophilia in that past, as well…
Maher appears to see nothing wrong with a 14-year-old student’s love affair with a teacher 20 years older that produced two children.
“Basically, they’re having a family and they’re keeping the mother in jail because she won’t conform to the perfect American family,” Maher said to groans from the guests and audience.
“How can a woman rape a man?” Maher asked.
(Content note: the song I’m highlighting is a song written in response to the way society allows rapists to get away with their crimes.)
I’ve been a pretty big fan of First Aid Kit ever since I first saw the music video for their song Hard Believer, a pretty openly atheist song.
First Aid Kit is a Swedish folk duo consisting of sisters Klara (vocals/guitar) and Johanna Söderberg (vocals/keyboards/AutoHarp). They’ve actually been around for a long while, now, and are immensely talented.
On March 8th, International Women’s Day, they released a new song called You Are The Problem Here. This is how they described it:
“You Are the Problem Here” isn’t a typical First Aid Kit-song. It’s angry and direct. It’s a song written out of despair. After reading about yet another rape case where the perpetrator was handed a sentence which did not at all reflect the severity of his crime we felt upset and vengeful. We were, and are, sick of living in a society where the victims of rape are often blamed for the horrible thing that has been done to them. Our message is clear and should not be controversial in the least: if you rape, you are the problem. Alcohol is not the problem. So called “youth culture” is not the problem. You are. And you always have a choice.
On March 11th, they released the lyric video for the song:
On a whim, I decided to have a look through Congress’s repository of legislation currently being considered, and found the following bills. All have only been introduced, but I find them to be rather disturbing. Almost all of the ones I’m highlighting here have to do with abortion, and, of course, banning it. Considering the fact that they all include “exceptions”, I have a feeling that they won’t pass a conservative congress that wants to ban abortion outright, with no exceptions at all.
But they are worth highlighting, regardless…
From the New York Times…
The White House, concerned about the possible political repercussions of the Republican effort to defund Planned Parenthood, has proposed preserving federal payments to the group if it discontinues providing abortions.
The proposal, which was never made formally, has been rejected as an impossibility by officials at Planned Parenthood, which receives about $500 million annually in federal funding. That money helps pay for women’s health services the organization provides, not for abortion services.
(Content note: discussion of abuse)
I started listening to Citizen Radio back in, I think, 2012… or possibly earlier. It was the very first truly left-wing podcast I had ever heard. In fact, I think it was the first podcast I ever listened to at all.
At the time, I was still pretty right-wing/Libertarian in my thinking. I found them while looking for something that would challenge my thinking/worldview, and, as should be obvious by now, it worked. Through them I found Radio Dispatch, Democracy Now, Tell the Bartender (and through that podcast I found The Struggle Bus), and Best of the Left. Through Best of the Left I found This Week in Blackness Prime, and through them I found The Black Guy Who Tips, The Read, the Three Fifs podcast, Keith and the Girl, Applying it Liberally, the Friend Zone, and many more.
So I always rather loved Allison Kilkenny and Jamie Kilstein. I even saw Jamie live at one of his improv shows in NYC.
So maybe that’s why, despite the fact that, in hindsight, I really shouldn’t be surprised, this was like a punch in the gut to me:
Wow. I have no words. This is incredible. Thank you Caine for bringing this to all of our attentions…
I knew that finding joy and happiness, and just letting things go and enjoying myself, would be damn near impossible when Trump got elected.
And yet I was still not prepared…
A hearing in El Paso County in Texas went from ordinary to “unprecedented” last week when half a dozen Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up at a courthouse where an undocumented woman was seeking a protective order against the boyfriend she accused of abusing her.
The woman, a citizen of Mexico who was living in El Paso had been driven to the courthouse by a victim’s advocate from the Center Against Sexual and Family Violence, a shelter for victims of domestic abuse where she had been living.
She left under arrest.
(Content warning: this is about a Georgia House Bill that would make college/university campuses unsafe for rape victims. There are numerous links here that discuss rape with varying detail, including one that could be considered graphic. The petition linked to near the end is written by a survivor who very briefly discusses her rape [though not graphically or in much detail].)
I was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut on May 22, 1987. At the end of third grade, my family moved to Sandy Springs, Georgia, where I lived until 2009. Georgia is where I was raised.
And that is why I care about this.
There is a bill currently in the Georgia legislature called House Bill 51. The summary of this bill is as follows:
A BILL to be entitled an Act to amend Article 1 of Chapter 3 of Title 20 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to definitions, so as to provide for the manner of reporting and investigation of certain crimes by officials and employees of postsecondary institutions in this state; to provide for a definition; to provide for penalties for violations; to provide for exceptions; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.
This looks fine on its face, yes. But it’s when you actually look into it that you start to see the problem…