rape culture

It's Wednesday again! Here's some feminist news to start your day.

Stay tuned!

Good morning; whatcha reading? Here's our list:

• Prosecutors in the Cleveland kidnapping case are weighing whether to charge Ariel Castro with feticide for intentionally causing  Michelle Knight, one of his captives, to miscarry several pregnancies. From a reproductive-justice standpoint, this could set a dangerous precedent. [The Daily Beast]

• Kiera Wilmot, the Florida teen who made national news a few weeks back when she was arrested for causing a small explosion at her school while conducting a science experiment, will not be charged with a crime. And Homer Hickom, the former NASA engineer whose memoir became the movie October Sky, has awarded Kiera a scholarship to attend the United States Advanced Space Academy. [The Root, Black Youth Project]

• Eesha Pandit knows she may be expecting too much from The Mindy Project, but her heartfelt piece about how she gave up on the show is still worth a read. [Crunk Feminist Collective]

• How college campuses are taking steps to acknowledge and combat rape culture. [ThinkProgress]

• At the Nation, Farai Chideya considers "the resegregation of American media" and makes a case for why race and class in journalism matter. [The Nation]

• In GQ, The Office's Ellie Kemper asks "Can Men Be Funny?" For extra laughs, check the comments for some angry, satire-deficient responses from actual men. [GQ]

• A great piece from Kma Sullivan on being bored with the quotidian, mindless, and largely unintentonial sexism of ostensibly "good" guys. [The Rumpus]

Here's to your weekend! As always, share your fave current reads in the comments!

It's almost the weekend! Here's some news on our radar.

• If you’re in Arizona and want to go pee, be ready to show your papers indicating what gender you were assigned at birth. [TransGriot] 
• Why are “Men’s Rights” groups popping up all over Canada? [Linchpin]
• Trans artist of color Kay Ulanday Barrett dares us to re-imagine the beautiful in this interview on administrative violence, ableism, and the need for interdependence. [Poor Magazine]
• So Siddhartha wants liberation, Dante wants Beatrice, and Frodo wants to get to Mount Doom, but what adventures are in store for women? On the serious lack of female road narratives (and why it matters).  [The American Reader]
• Rising star Willow Smith uses her celebrity status to fight cyberbullying. [Clutch Magazine]
• Nope. We’re not done talking about rape culture, and neither is Lauren Nelson. [Rant Against The Random]
• Not one but two articles on trickle down feminism for you today! [Socialist Worker] & [Dissent Magazine]

Stay tuned!

Some weeks it's tough to choose who gets the Douchebag Decree. I'll admit that I've written posts that were a bit of a stretch in the past, or tried to cram two stories into one because I couldn't decide who was the bigger douche. This week, however, the guesswork's been done for me. You know him, you probably don't love him, you may be disgusted and/or threatened by his very presence: Ladies and Gents, it's Daniel Tosh!!!

Meanwhile, in the land of blogdom...

• Tiger Beatdown's Garland Grey reports from SXSW!
• On Salon, Bitch contributor Page McBee talks about not fitting into the gender binary.
• At Racialicious and Bold as Love, Rob Fields explores the limited film-buzz surrounding I Will Follow.
• Ms. and AlterNet look at how budget cuts could affect HIV-positive women.
• Matt Kailey talks about the class dynamics of clothing on Womanist Musings.
• At Trans/plant/portation, Bitch contributor EvMaroon discusses redefining terrorism.
• Helen at Questioning Transphobia reports on some bad reporting regarding the supposed average lifespan of trans* people.
• RH Reality Check continues to keep us up-to-date about anti-choice politicians with a profile on Republican maybe-candidate Chris Christie. In the humor category, Colbert has something to say about all this maybe-running business.
• Still furious about the New York Times' awful coverage of the gang rape in Texas? So are we, and so are the folks at Bitch Flicks, who talk about rape culture, the media, and the defensive chorus of "You just want to be offended!" (via Gender Focus)
• The Drop the I-Word video campaign continues at ColorLines with "I Am... Undocumented."
• Jos at Feministing shares and discusses the LGBT documentary "Always My Son."
• If you're in the San Francisco area, be sure to attend next week's Girl Talk, A Trans & Cis Woman Dialogue, co-curated by Gina de Vries, Elena Rose and Julia Serano!

Gather 'round pardners! It's time for a Douchebag round-up! This week we're featuring three women unafraid to rain their misguided, bigoted, and douchey ways down on the world.

We've been following the sexual assault allegations against Julian Assange for the last few weeks, and we're really upset with all of outrageous victim-blaming that's been going on. So, I thought I would compile a book list for those of us who would like to feel more well-versed when talking about rape culture, and for those of us who still have no clue what rape culture is (I'm looking at you, Naomi Wolf). These are books that effectively explain how and why rape is justified and ignored in our culture while also envisioning a future where sexual violence does not exist.

Are there books that helped to shape your understanding of rape culture? Let us know in the comments.

In the past year, rapes in the city of Dallas have increased 25.3%. Seriously. Such a huge increase of reported rapes would be shocking anywhere, but in a city where crime of all sorts is down 6.3%, a 25.3% jump in rape is astounding. At a Public Safety Committee meeting on Monday, though, Police Chief David Brown came up with a brilliant solution to decrease the number of rapes in the city. Not really though.

In Chris Lynch’s 2005 young adult novel Inexcusable (2005 National Book Award Finalist – Young People’s Literature, 2005 School Library Journal’s Best Books, 2006 YALSA Best Books for Young Adults) is a disturbing tale of the effects of rape culture from the inside. In narrator Keir Sarafian, high school senior and football star, Lynch has created a sickeningly realistic embodiment of a teen rapist.

Pete Campbell is a rapist.  On Sunday night's episode, he met a young au pair living in his building and helped her out of a difficult situation with her employers.  He propositioned her; she refused.  Later that evening, undeterred, he knocked on her door, forced her to let him in to avoid a scene, followed her into her bedroom, closed the door, and kissed her, leading her towards the bed.  Apparently, for some people, this wasn't clearly a rape.  I'm here to tell them: it was.

Pete Campbell is a rapist.  I've heard some people say that Mad Men is a show about nuance, shades of grey, and therefore Pete Campbell Cannot Be A Rapist.  (As if there was no such thing as a rapist in serious, well-developed drama.)  I think these people are doing a very superficial read of Mad Men.  I don't think the writer or director of this episode was the least bit confused.  The au pair is slightly afraid of Pete throughout.  She doesn't want him in the apartment.  She recoils when he kisses her.  That she submits, ultimately, is irrelevant to the question of whether Pete rapes her.  She didn't want to sleep with him; she made it clear; he didn't care.  He wanted to have sex, and she was there, and she owed him, in his mind.  So he raped her.  End of story.

Pete Campbell is a rapist.  What Mad Men is being subtle about, when it shows us an episode in which a character rapes someone for no reason better than boredom, is the fact rape doesn't just happen in alleys.  It doesn't just come from total strangers who leap from bushes.  It doesn't involve kicking and screaming and clawing his eyeballs out, because that would only get you in even more trouble.