A Prostitute Is A Prostitute Is A Prostitute

Recently, a court judge was arrested for rape here. Nigel and I were watching the news and saw the first story in regard to this arrest on July 19. I said to Nigel at the time that it was interesting in a bad way that KOB's anchorman, Tom Joles, in describing the alleged victim of the rape, used "prostitute" four times in two minutes. How many times did he say "alleged victim," "woman," or any other word to describe her? ZERO.

I wrote an e-mail to the news station complaining about this. Haven't heard back.

Today, I searched their website for stories and found several. I watched the videos and read the reports and found that there is some slight improvement in later reports. The reports use the word "woman" four times, and in a video, the judge assigned to the case actually used "victim." So, five in total. However, the alleged victim was called "the prostitute" (one time, they used "escort") twelve times in the same videos/reports!

Let's say that a woman in any other profession besides sex work reported a rape. Would the stories use "the McDonald's employee," "the tax attorney," "the super-model," or similar descriptions to describe the alleged victim? I think not. If those terms were used, they would probably not have been used exclusively.

This feeds into the widely held perception that sex workers cannot be raped, because their choice (or not) of profession implies permanent consent to sex acts. It muddies the waters for the prosecution, whose job will be made more difficult by the use of this inflammatory language to describe the alleged victim.

Some choice quotes from the videos:

"She is fine. There's no other injuries..."(speaking of the alleged victim)

How many injuries other than the rape itself do there need to be for her NOT to be "fine?"

"She's accused of taping one of those incidents."

According to the stories, she had already been forced once to perform oral sex on the defendant, after having said no. Would it be prudent for her to tape future encounters in order to have evidence of rape if it happened again? Would it be prudent for a member of an already suspect profession to make sure her allegations would be believed if it happened again? Probably yes.

"We believe our client is a victim in this case."

Wait, what? I suppose it is an attorney's job to say things like that. And I'm sure it will be much easier to portray the defendant as a victim since the news has ensured that the alleged victim is seen as nothing more than a "prostitute" and therefore is not allowed to say no.

I hope KOB News got a nice check from the defendant's attorneys for services rendered.

My Decision Has Been Made, and It Is Final

I did not watch the royal nuptials a week ago today. However, I did watch several of the "Royal Wedding in 2 minutes" videos. Since then, I have been struck with love for this hat! Nigel hates it. My mother hates it. The Princess hates it. I am going on record forever to say that I LOVE THIS HAT! I LOVE IT! THIS HAT IS ABSOLUTELY THE MOST WONDERFUL HAT EVAR! Thank you, Princess Beatrice of York, for wearing this fantastic hat! I love you! That is all. Have a great weekend. Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there, especially my own! Thanks for shoving me out all those years ago! And to my kids, a gift idea. For Mother's Day, no breakfast in bed, please. Just THIS HAT!

Bill Maher Damages the Old Irony Meter

The following quotation is from the May issue of Reader's Digest. I know, I know, but my FIL gave Nigel and I a subscription for xmas and it's good for at least 45 minutes of reading.

The problem is that the people with the most ridiculous ideas are always the people who are most certain of them.

- Bill Maher -

Now, I have paid to see Bill Maher's stand up comedy. And I was mightily entertained. However, since that time, my respect for Mr. Maher has dropped. It turns out that this hugely funny man, who made a living for a time making fun of creationists, fundamentalists, and capital "C" Conservatives for being anti-science, is quite anti-science himself. At least when it comes to medical science, that is.

Maher has frequently been heard in interviews speaking out against vaccines (except "inoculating Third World children against malaria or diphtheria, or whatever", against the germ theory of disease, and for various woo-woo (s)CAM treatments. Even Bill Frist (Bill Frist, people!!!) pwned Maher on his own "Real Time" show in regard to vaccine facts.

He has backpedaled quite a bit since he first started loudly announcing his distrust of science-based medicine, but his words against vaccination, medical professionals, and effective drugs, along with his words of support for naturopathy, Barbara Loe Fisher (an anti-vaccine propagandist), Dr. Jay Gordon (Jenny McCarthy's pediatrician and another anti-vaccine propagandist), tell us what he really thinks.

He has some pretty ridiculous ideas: HIV/AIDS denial, immune system "boosting" with, presumably, herbs, supplements, diet restrictions (as a naturopath would advise), vaccine efficacy denial, among others. And he's pretty certain of them, regardless of his back-pedaling, which sounds insincere and is full of "I don't really think this, BUT (I sort of do.)"

While he inserts humor into his denial of being a denialist, it rings false. Sorry, Bill. I still think you're pretty funny, though. Lots of this is really old news, but the quotation in Reader's Digest got me all wired up about it.

Do You Pay To Advertise For Others?

When I was a teenager, I wanted, wanted, wanted a pair of Guess Jeans (dating myself much?). I did end up getting a pair, but not until my extremely fashion conscious mom outgrew her old pair. Other than that, having grown up when I did and where I did, I never paid too much attention to trends, labels, and other crap. While my teammates were buying the most expensive and trendy sports shoes for volleyball, I always went to Kenney Shoes (sadly, Kenney Shoes is long gone) for their cheap NBAs, because they were comfortable and stuck to the court when I needed them to. I wore holey jeans, but only after they had developed holes on their own. I didn't want shirts with a little polo dude or an alligator on them.

I was always more into comfort than trendiness, and I still am. I'd be a great person to put on that show where family members turn in mom for wearing frumpy stuff all the time. But the women who get wardrobe makeovers always look fashionable but uncomfortable at the end. Sometimes, even the men end up looking uncomfortable, but not as often since men's clothing, except for neckties, is not deliberately designed to be UNcomfortable like lots of women's fashions.

Now that I have kids, it seems important to me to instill skepticism into them in regard to pop culture and the advertisement industry, and to make sure they know that they don't have to wear things that look fashionable, but are itchy, pokey, or cut off the circulation to their legs. I refuse to buy them clothes with visible corporate logos. I am careful to call products what they are instead of using trademarked product labels, e.g. tissues instead of Kleenex, swabs instead of Q-tips, etc.

I believe that if I wear a t-shirt with Coca-Cola's logo, the Coca-Cola company should pay ME, not the other way around. Anyone wearing a Coke shirt should be able to get free Cokes that day. I've explained that to my kids, and they seem to understand. I hope so, anyway. So far, they have shown no interest in trendy fashions, and in fact, they often have trouble just picking out tops and bottoms that don't mix stripes and plaids or orange and green, so I'm hoping for the best. They're only 8 though, so the tough years are still ahead.

Do you wear corporate logo clothing? If so, you might think about the fact that you actually PAID money to provide FREE advertising for that corporation. Even if you really, really, really like their product, perhaps you should start sending them an invoice every month requesting reimbursement based on how long you wore the clothing and how many people saw it. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me!

MSM Has A Story!

I've been lax in keeping up with my regular news reads lately. So, I'm a bit behind the times, but had to share this!

While perusing a site I read regularly, Feministing.com, I ran across this, in the September 14th Weekly Feminist Reader post.

In a previous episode of When Patriarchy Makes the Rules, I had expressed dismay at the apathy of the US mainstream media in regard to "honor" killings and wondered when they would cover such things.

Now they have! And the story now seems to match the original "now with even more disgusting behavior" tale. MSNBC reports that, yes, FIVE women were murdered. A government vehicle WAS used in the murders.

Of note: in the article, notice the "elderly woman" in the photo near the end. I have to wonder just how old this "elderly woman" is. Is she really old or has the oppressive patriarchy she has lived in all of her life aged her prematurely? Just curious.

Also of note: see the photo of "frail shepherd," Ali Baksh. His eyes twinkle and he grins happily as he says, "I am proud of our Balouch traditions and it was the right punishment for those girls who defied the will of their fathers." Nice.

Fuck these fucking barbarians. And for those who say I am not culturally sensitive and ask who I am to judge them, FUCK YOU, TOO. I am me, and I judge them based on my own moral compass, which says "killing people not in self-defense = extremely bad."