Rape

My email has been bursting with amazing stuff this week. The latest offering is a web ad by WAMP - Women Against McCain-Palin and titled "Rape Victim".

"I was raped. Then I got pregnant. Sarah Palin believes the government should force me to take the pregnancy to term."

And with those words start an incredibly powerful and courageous 35 seconds.

Planned Parenthood is airing this ad focusing on Sarah Palin's forcing rape victims to pay for their own rape kit.

From the script:

"Under Mayor Sarah Palin, women like Gretchen were forced to pay up to $1,200 for the emergency exams used to prosecute their attackers," the announcer says, after a heartbreaking testimonial from a woman talking about her own experience of being raped. "In the Senate, John McCain voted against legislation to protect women from these same heartless policies.

Which brings up the email from Planned Parenthood I highlighted in September. Let me repost that message:

Dear Sarah Palin,

You are not our candidate.

You are not our candidate because you required women in Wasilla to pay for their own medical examinations after being raped.

You are not our candidate because you do not support a woman's right to choose, even in the case of rape or incest.

[EDITORS' NOTES: Date changed to reflect promotion to front page./liza

For an earlier diary on this issue, and some broader issues, please see this diary. And help out if you can!/mole333]

Herstories on the issue of violence against women

A Cheyenne proverb states, “A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is done, no matter how brave its warriors or how strong its weapons.” Our hearts are not on the ground. Our feet are. And we are moving forward.

A travesty to the true spirit of justice is taking place on the Standing Rock Reservation that covers North and South Dakota. Predominantly white male rapists are sexually assaulting American Indian women and getting away with inadequate consequences or no consequences whatsoever.

Crossposted at Native American Netroots

Show me a rapist of an American Indian woman and I’ll show you an upstanding member of society. That’s what the Major said about a man who plead guilty to raping an American Indian woman. Maybe the thieves and vandals who have caused property damage so severe that Pretty Bird Woman House had to close its doors for now are “upstanding citizens” as well.

Little by little I am getting more media traction and, quite frankly, I am down with that. I am going to post about a TV appearance I made on NY-ABC about two weeks ago but right now I am going to point to you to Farai Chideya's show on NPR, "News and Notes". I was on the show's Blogger Roundtable with Baratunde Thursoton in NYC and Avery Tooley in Washington DC shooting the breeze on the black elite's split between Obama and Hillary, on how Obama is redefining blackness and, more somberly, on the LaVena Johson case.

These 20 minutes are, by far, the funnest I have had in a loooong time. I used to be a voice over artist and, quite frankly, if I had to choose between being in front of a camera or microphone and typing, I would go for the talking --because its easier on the body. And as I said that, I still have my issues when it comes to on-camera work, but that's topic for a whole 'nother post.

Click To Play

What I am about to discuss contains a great condemnation of our society as well as a great act of charity. Some of you will already have read about it, but as usual, I will try to take my own, personal, integrated slant to it.

Amnesty International just published a report that became the focus of a series of Daily Kos diaries. The jist of the Amnesty International report is that, one in three Native American women are victims of rape...and most of those rapes are committed by outsiders, not fellow Native Americans. This Daily Kos article covers some pretty nasty aspects of American law covering Native Americans that allow this kind of crime to thrive with almost no consequences. Many laws relating to American/Native relations were written in the 19th century during a period of extreme abuse by the dominant American culture against Native cultures...and many of those laws are still in force.

A side story in that Daily Kos diary discussed a single women's shelter on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, the Pretty Bird Woman shelter, that was just about out of money. This shelter, one of the few facilities set up to help those one out of three Native American women who are raped, mostly by outsiders, was about to close due to lack of funds. Daily Kos, for all its faults, can do wonders. In no time a site was set up to collect funds for the Pretty Bird Women shelter, and within days thousands of dollars were raised, saving it from immanent closing.

About 21 years ago I was in what I would like to dramatically believe was a tempestuous relationship. Unfortunately, it wasn't that glamorous. I was obsessed with a guy who by the age of 19 was an alcoholic coke and then crackhead. The toxicity of my desire trumped my better judgement and I allowed myself to enter in one of the most unsafe relationships I have ever been. It was also the most formative. This was the same relationship that ended with the abortion I have never regretted.

In one of our alcohol fueled outings, I said "NO", he said "Yes" and what happened next, I believe, is a matter of semantics : I would have probably described it as "me abusó" --he abused me. Sexual assault sounds a degree or two more violent than what happened. And I would never name it rape. I can't.

This was Puerto Rico after all and it was the 1980s, a time when we had an influx of South American dissidents fleeing Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and bringing with them stories of los desaparecidos, "the dissapeared". Some of these people had survived their own disappearances and talked about the systematic rape and torture they endured at the hand of the military during their imprisonment. The others who didn't suffer that fate, fled their countries fearing they would be next.

To make matters more complicated, at least for me, I come from an extended family of alcoholics, drug addicts and gamblers. Some of them were wife or child beaters. Some of them were cops. Some of them were all of the above.

UPDATE 2:
I have removed Ms. Mangum's image but left the original post.

What I wanted to have with this post was the possibility of her image being associated with a good discussion about this case. I think it is important that when people go searching for her photograph --given it has been released and it's under the public domain-- that her photograph is associated with a good discussion about this case.

This unfortunately is not the post.

UPDATE :
I have been asked to take down the photograph of Ms. Mangum. Believe me, I am not taking lightly at all that The Smoking Gun rushed to reveal her. On the same breath, believe you me when I say I am not taking lightly at all the gross miscarriage of justice involved in this case.

I want to go on record as saying that I do believe Ms. Mangum when she says she was raped. Yet, as the mother of two boys, one of whom could easily pass as a "white boy", I can't even fathom having to hold my son's hand during a trial in which he was wrongly accused of rape.

There are serious issues that have to be discussed about this case : Mike Nifong was a Democratic candidate for District Attorney who needed to be in the graces of the "black vote" to win the primaries and reelection.

It's indecent that many people in the "left" --people who traditionally vote Democrat-- found it politically expedient to decry Reade Seligmann, David Evans, and Collin Finnerty as guilty of rape because, you know, they were three easy "white guy" targets. This particularly goes out to the feminists who rushed to called them rapists.

Now let me reiterate : I believe Ms. Mangum was raped. I do believe the three "privileged white guys" didn't do it. I do believe there is a truth that nobody who was in that house that day wants to reveal.

What terrifies me is that the evidence that could have potentially vindicated Ms. Mangum was probably tainted, mishandled or even not gathered at all because of the political ambition of a corrupt Democrat who saw her as a political expedient pawn for black votes.

To call this case a gross mishandling of justice is to put it mildly.

And yes, I have even more to say about this, but that goes on a separate post.

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum. She is the woman who accused Reade Seligmann, David Evans, and Collin Finnerty of raping her at a team party where she had worked as an exotic dancer.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper announced yesterday his office was dropping all charges against the three Duke students and that they were closing the criminal case because there was no credible evidence against, and I quote, "the innocent" trio.

Live on CNN : All charges have been dropped due to the inconsistencies in the evidence, especially the accounts by the alleged victim herself.

The North Carolina attorney general says the investigation was so faulty from the beginning, after his office's 12 week-long investigation, he is asking for all charges to the dropped and the names of the alleged attackers cleared.

DA Mike Nifong is under ethics investigation due to his mishandling of the case. The attorney general considers Nifong to have been a rogue DA, which is why he is under ethics investigation. He also is seeking for the state Supreme Court to enact proceeding for the swift removal of DAs in future similar situations.

Now the only recourse the accuser has is to take her alleged attackers to civil court --but that would lift off the privacy shield he has had under sexual assault laws.

I have more to say about this, but have to run out to pick up the kids from school. More later.

This is going to be really interesting. It seems like the charges against the three Duke University Lacrosse team members will be dropped.

American Prospect online has published a piece that has created a good deal of discussion, yet again, around the subject of rape. This time the author, Courtney Martin, makes the connection in American Prospect Online - Willful Ignorance between abstinence-only sex education programs and the high rates of rape and sexual assault in the United States.

Every two and half minutes someone is sexually assaulted in America. Many of these assaults take place on college campuses; 80 percent of rape victims are under age 30. Two-thirds of all rapes are committed by someone who is known to the victim, not a stranger in a dark alley. (Though rape statistics are notoriously inaccurate, we can assume that these, from the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) are at least close to the truth, as they are derived from a survey of multiple studies, including the National Crime Victimization Survey from 2005.)

The lack of public, comprehensive, and complex sex education in this country contributes to this toxic sexual culture on most college campuses. The abstinence-only sex education that most young men and women receive does not teach them how to articulate their own sexual needs and respect those articulated by their partners. Teens who are merely told "Just don’t do it" are lacking more than an anatomy lesson or information on contraceptive choices. They are also missing out on essential communication skills and life-saving knowledge about sex and power. Which is bad news for teenagers in our paradoxically hyper-sexual and hyper-conservative contemporary America who are in desperate need of wise mentorship.

This article has inspired me and irritated me in equal parts. So much so that I believe that in order to break down the barriers around the discussion of sexual education, feminists need to take action now: It's time we build an open-source feminist enclyclopedia.

Humiliation has been on my mind and as one of the significant metaphors for 2006 ---right up there with comeuppance and truthiness.

Nothing best describes 2006 like the story of, yet again, another christian extremist pastor having to step down after accusations of sexual abuse of minors.

PageOneQ | Huge Southern Baptist Church rocked by sexual abuse charges:
Pastor Paul Williams, who directs prayer programs and special projects at the Bellevue Baptist Church outside of Memphis, has been forced to take a leave while a church committee investigates charges that Williams sexually molested a family member 17 years ago. Williams has been at Bellevue for 34 years, reports Agape Press, a news service run by the American Family Association.

This after yet another minister stepping for sexual (read: homosexual) misconduct. His name? James Beard.

Which brings me to the idea of humiliation as defining of American culture:

Should it come as a surprise that Nicaragua has outlawed abortion? I don't know what to say. I feel though, this is the last nail in the coffin of the Sandinista revolution.

I don't believe for a moment that people in Nicaragua are so pious as to need to have a theocratic government in place. It's more like this is the way they defend the institutional mysogyny that allowed them to laugh-off one of the biggest scandals to come out of the underbelly of the Sandinista revolution : Zoilamérica Narváez, stepdaughter of Daniel Ortega, the former sandinista president of Nicaragua, accused him of making her his sexual slave from the age of 11.

The case of one woman who has said no has now become a cause celebre in Nicaragua. Exactly a year ago, Zoilamérica Narváez accused her stepfather of systematic sexual abuse. She is now 33. The abuse, she said, began when she was 11. The allegations would have been shocking under any circumstances. But the fact that Zoilamerica Narvaez's stepfather is Daniel Ortega, the former president and Sandinista revolutionary hero, made it into a national scandal.

Zoilamérica's case was front page news again in Managua on the first anniversary of the day she made them public. I met her in the thinktank where she now works and she talked of the pain and difficulties of the past year. Perhaps the most painful thing, she said, was the fact that her own mother had denounced her. But despite that, she had no regrets about what she had done. "I had to do it, because I had to get him to stop. He was still abusing me by telephone," she told me.

Daniel Ortega is now the leader of the opposition and hopes to be the Sandinista presidential candidate in the next elections. I had interviewed him several times in the eighties, while he was Nicaragua's president, but never imagined that one day I would have to ask him about allegations like these. I went to see him in the National Assembly in Managua. He strenuously denied the charges, and told me he saw them as a political plot; but Daniel Ortega refuses to give up his parliamentary immunity to let the charges be tested in court. Now Zoilamérica is trying to bring charges in the Central American Court of Human Rights.

The Sandinista revolution once promised equality for women. Now, many women have left the Sandinista movement to campaign separately against violence and sexual abuse.

That last paragraph is what's emblematic of the problems of Latin America. Revolutions and insurgencies have been created on the shoulders of women; yet political equality is denied to us once the men are in power.

What is tragic about Zoilamerica's story is the women power plays at work. Her mother publicly repudiated her --she was after all the First Lady of Nicaragua and the alleged accomplice to her husband's abuse of her own daughter.

While perusing my homeotwn's New York Daily News, I came across yet another disturbing report of female pedophilia :

[via New York Daily News - Breaking News]:

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (AP) -- When a 16-year-old boy rolled into his driveway with a Mercedes-Benz no one had ever seen before, his mother got suspicious.

After some questioning, the teenager told his mother that the car was a gift from Lisa Frodella, 39. Police said their investigation revealed the married mother had two sexual encounters with the youth at Long Island hotels in March and April.

Frodella surrendered to police Wednesday on charges of rape and a criminal sexual act. A judge set bail at $40,000 cash, or $120,000 bond.

Is it me or the numbers of women accussed of these cases are growing by the minute? I mean, just in the last year I've heard of jaw-dropping charges against women, some of the cases happening here in New York City and involving public school teachers (yet another reason to homeschool).

It's not everyday I read that bastion of online conservatism, but World Net Daily has an improbable list of women pedophiles; including the recently notorious Mary Kay Le Tourneau. Crime Library, by the way, has a hideously pulp fictioney account of her life and the infamy surrounding her own family's sexploits. It creeps me out her bio reads like a five cent novel.

Milan Babic, a former Croatian Serb leader commits suicide in a prison cell in The Hague and I cannot find it in my heart to give the man a minute of silence. No, what I find is rage, pure blind rage because the repercussions of his actions are but a glimpse of what could become the future of this country.

Babic was tried and imprisoned for crimes against humanities; some of the including the politically sanctioned raping of thousands of Bosnian women by Serbian soldiers. It ought not to be taken as a coincidence that the only other suicide case at The Hague was of Slavko Dokmanovic, another Croatian Serb leader.

UNICEF created a report about the Bosnian rape babies that allegedly has been blocked by the country and not been published. You can read about it at Bosnian Institute News: Bosnia's rape babies: abandoned by their families, forgotten by the state:

These men were lynched because a white woman accused them of rape.

Jill over at Feministe has two posts about rape that have unsettled me some.

The first one, She was asking for it is in response to a post at Alas A blog by Nick Kiddle called My rape story.

First off, the rape in this story never happened --and that is one of the reasons why I felt the whole discussion was disjointed but could not articulate exactly why I felt so. I complained by saying that these kinds of discussions, in a way, trivialized what is a horrible act of physical and psychic violence. Then Arjet wrote this back :