Misogyny and Sexism in the News

[Nat]

School district blames disabled student for own molestation

When a teacher's aide at Saddleback High School in Santa Ana, CA was arrested for molesting one of the special-ed students under his care, the school district's first impulse was to cover the incident up and hope no one would find out.

Now the student's parents have sued the Santa Ana Unified School District for negligently keeping on an employee that other parents had been complaining about for years. The district's lawyers have responded by not only blaming the mentally disabled girl for her own abuse but asking that the judge dismiss the charges and make the victim's family pay the district's legal fees.

The seventeen-year-old victim, who has cerebral palsy, has the mental capacity of a seven-year-old and is confined to a wheelchair. Because she is unable to speak, no one knows exactly what was happening when another school employee found her alone in a room with Alonso Manuel Gonzalez, with her shirt pulled up and her breasts exposed, but the incident resulted in the aide's arrest for a "lewd act with dependent adult."

The school's immediate reaction was to attempt to keep the incident under wraps. Saddleback teachers told the OC Weekly they had been told not to discuss the incident with anyone. Parents were not notified and a school representative refused to discuss the matter with a reporter. Over the next few months, the school district made no public acknowledgment of the arrest, either when Gonzalez was arraigned or several months later when he pleaded guilty to child abuse and endangerment.

The parents of other disabled students, however, quickly came forward with their own complaints about Gonzalez, going back to at least 2005. They told the OC Weekly that a group of parents had met with Saddleback's principle and the head of the district's special-ed program to complain that Gonzalez made the students uncomfortable and seemed to want to spend time alone with female students, but that the district ignored their concerns.

Now, a year after the aide's guilty plea, the parents of the student have brought a civil suit against Gonzales for causing mental and physical trauma to their daughter and also against the school district for negligence. As a result, the district's lawyers are fighting back -- hard.

In a filing with the Orange County Superior Court, the attorneys claim that the wheelchair-bound girl "chose to encounter the known risk" of being alone with Gonzalez, that she "consented to" him lifting up her shirt, and that her injuries were the result of her having "failed to use due and reasonable care for her own safety and protection."

They also charge her parents with having "negligently, carelessly and recklessly supervised, monitored, controlled and instructed the minor plaintiff so as to legally cause and contribute to her injuries and damages, if any."

"As a grand, caring finale, the district asked presiding Judge Luis A. Rodriguez to not only dismiss all charges against them but to make the victim's family pay all legal fees," the OC Weekly concludes, adding, "Since when did the Santa Ana Unified School District take its directions toward sex abuse from the Diocese of Orange?"

[Soon]

No, Sexual Violence Is Not 'Cultural'

By LISA SHANNON

A month into my first trip to eastern Congo, site of the deadliest conflict since World War II, I had heard plenty of horror stories — from forced cannibalism to the burning alive of the inhabitants of entire villages. I was no longer easily shocked. But one exchange with an aid worker stopped me cold.

I arrived in Baraka, a town on Lake Tanganyika that was overrun with Congolese soldiers and international aid workers, in February 2007. I asked a disheveled European woman working with the United Nations about security. She enthusiastically described her pet video project, to convince refugees in neighboring Tanzania that it was safe to return home.

“Foreign militias are gone,” she said. “Just rapes and looting for the moment. No attacks.”

Stunned, I asked, “You don’t consider rape a security threat?”

“Rape here is so common,” she said. “It’s cultural.”

That was the first of many times I would hear mass rape in Congo dismissed as “cultural.”

The sexual violence in Congo is among the worst on the planet. The U.N. estimates that hundreds of thousands of women have been gang-raped, tortured and held as sexual slaves since the conflict began in 1998.

That’s when armed groups began behaving like mafias, battling for control of the minerals in eastern Congo. To control territory, militias use rape as their weapon of choice.

In May, the U.S. Senate included a provision in its financial regulation bill requiring publicly traded companies to ensure that “conflict minerals” are not purchased from militia-controlled mines in Congo. Such efforts are welcome, if grossly overdue.

Still, we in the West too often find it easier to perceive rape as an accepted part of an unfamiliar culture rather than as a tool of war that we could help banish. Too often, the enemy becomes all Congolese men rather than men with guns terrorizing the Congolese people. By casting the chaos and violence as “men vs. women” or dismissing the crisis as “cultural,” we do a profound injustice to Congolese men. Rather than help, we send an implicit insult: It’s a pity, but, well…it’s just who you people are.

This perception is widespread. I work full-time for Congolese women, and I find myself devoting an inordinate amount of energy to defending Congolese men, whether arguing with a gazillionaire at a backyard barbeque over “Africa’s tribal rape rituals” or sitting on a panel with a human rights activist who waxes on about “the cultural roots of the sexual violence in Congo.”

Margot Wallstrom, the U.N. secretary general’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, recently described such thinking as the “lingering assumption that sexual violence is a tradition, rather than a tactic of choice.”

Any Congolese will tell you rape is not “traditional.” It did occur in Congo before the war, as it does everywhere. But the proliferation of sexual violence came with the war. Militias and Congolese soldiers alike now use sexual violence as a weapon. Left unchecked, sexual violence has festered in Congo’s war-ravaged east. This does not make rape cultural. It makes it easy to commit. There is a difference.

Analysts often use the phrase “culture of impunity” to describe Congo. John Prendergast, who has worked in African conflict zones for 25 years, explains: “The rule of law breaks down and perpetrators commit crimes without fear of conviction or punishment. Over time, this leads to further breakdown of societal codes and the very social fabric of a community.”

The media, aid workers and activists alike have consistently failed to tell the stories of Congolese men who were killed by fighters because they refused to commit rape. In interviews with hundreds of women, I heard countless stories of men who chose to take a bullet in the head, literally, rather than violate their child, sister or mother. In Baraka, one survivor recalled: “They tried to make my older brother rape me. He refused and was killed. So they raped me.”

Describing the violence in Congo as “cultural” is more than offensive. It is dangerous.

The European aid worker who dismissed the violence as “cultural” implied that Congolese women should expect to be raped. In so doing, she dismissed her responsibility to so much as warn returning refuges about the extreme security threat.

Later that day in 2007, I met 20 Congolese women who had returned from refugee camps in the last six months. In that time, half had been raped.

“Cultural relativism legitimizes the violence and discredits the victims, because when you accept rape as cultural, you make rape inevitable,” Ms. Wallstrom explained in a recent opinion essay co-authored with the Norwegian foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Store. “This shields the perpetrators and allows world leaders to shrug off sexual violence as an immutable — if regrettable — truth.”

When we blame all Congolese men for sexual violence, not only do we imply that rape is inherent to the African landscape, we avoid critical questions, particularly regarding the role that we in the West play.

Who has been silent during 12 years of mass rape and off-the-charts atrocities? We have.

Who funds the bloodshed with our hunger for the latest computer processor and smart phone produced with minerals from Congo? We do. Perhaps unwittingly, but we do.

Who helped the fighters get their guns? We did.

This prevents us from taking the basic steps required to end the crisis: a coordinated international effort to choke off the militia leadership, some of whom reside in Europe and the United States; requirements that technology companies spend the extra penny per product that would guarantee conflict-free gadgets; and an aggressive plan to end the culture of impunity through justice and accountability measures.

When we label rape in Congo “cultural,” we let ourselves off the hook. And that is a cultural issue. Ours.

Lisa Shannon is founder of Run for Congo Women and author of “A Thousand Sisters: My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman.”

[Linus]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_630800.html

[Medusa]

Originally Posted by Linus

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_630800.html

"Parker argues that his style is female in nature because like women, Obama tends to act more passively and form circles to talk out problems instead of taking immediate action"

Im glad that these journalists can recognize that President Obama isnt a fucking hotheaded ogre but the whole "like women" thing? REALLY?
Written by 2 female journalists?!!!

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by Medusa

"Parker argues that his style is female in nature because like women, Obama tends to act more passively and form circles to talk out problems instead of taking immediate action"

Im glad that these journalists can recognize that President Obama isnt a fucking hotheaded ogre but the whole "like women" thing? REALLY?
Written by 2 female journalists?!!!

An interesting take. What strikes me is obviously the white middle-class, heteronormative thinking here. UGH!!

He is well versed in community organization building and has these skills.... that is my take on his decision-making style. He actually processes within a democratic framework. As well as the fact that he is just a critical thinker. JeepsSakes.... I know a multitude of women and men like this!

[Soon]

Equal Rights for Women? Survey Says: Yes, But ...

People around the world say they firmly support equal rights for men and women, but many still believe men should get preference when it comes to good jobs, higher education or even in some cases the simple right to work outside the home, according to a new survey of 22 nations.

The poll, conducted in April and May by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project in association with the International Herald Tribune, shows that in both developing countries and wealthy ones, there is a pronounced gap between a belief in the equality of the sexes and how that translates into reality.

In nations where equal rights are already mandated, women seem stymied by a lack of real progress, the poll found.

“Women in the United States and Europe are shouldering major responsibilities at home and at work simultaneously, and this makes for stress and a low quality of life,” said Prof. Herminia Ibarra, co-author of the 2010 Corporate Gender Gap Report of the World Economic Forum.

The opinions of the French, in particular, are emblematic of the uneven drive for equality of the sexes.

One hundred percent of French women and 99 percent of French men backed the idea of equal rights. Yet 75 percent also said that men there had a better life, by far the highest percentage in any of the countries in which polling took place.

Why do people in France, which provides generous state care for new mothers and toddlers, feel so far from having achieved gender equality?

“Because they are, at least in terms of economic participation,” said Professor Ibarra, who teaches organizational behavior at Insead, the international business school based in Fontainebleau, France. “There are still very few women running large organizations, and business culture remains resolutely a boys’ club.”

Indeed, the United States and Germany reported an especially strong gap between the sexes on whether enough has been done to give women equality. Of those who believe in equal rights, many more American and German men believe their nations have made the right amount of changes for women, while many more women than men in those countries think more action is required.

“When you’re left out of the club, you know it,” said Prof. Jacqui True, an expert in gender relations and senior lecturer at the University of Auckland. “When you’re in the club, you don’t see what the problem is.”

The rising giants of China and India, together with Indonesia and Jordan, were the four other countries where a majority of equal-rights supporters think most of the adjustments necessary to establish equality have already been made.

In telephone and face-to-face interviews, the Pew Center found that equality of the sexes was by vast majorities a goal for men and women alike.

In 13 of the countries, more than 90 percent of the respondents said they supported equal rights; in every other country except Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Indonesia and Nigeria, more than 75 percent backed gender equality. Nigeria, in fact, was the only surveyed country where more than half (54 percent) said women should not have equal rights; 45 percent of respondents favored equal rights.

In addition, only in Pakistan, Egypt and Jordan did fewer than 80 percent of the respondents say that women should be able to work outside the home. Even in those three countries, a majority said they supported women’s right to work.

Showing how widely accepted the notion of equality has become, even more men than women in Britain and Japan supported equal rights. (Scandinavian countries, which often score highest on gender equality, were not part of the survey.)

Yet few countries consider that equality achieved. Only in three countries did a majority of those surveyed say that women and men have achieved a comparable quality of life: Mexico (56 percent), Indonesia (55 percent) and Russia (52 percent). In six other countries, a sizable ratio — 40 to 50 percent — said they believed that men’s and women’s lives were equally good.

In Poland, by contrast, a majority (55 percent) said men had the upper hand. And in another five countries as diverse as India, Spain and Nigeria, 40 to 49 percent said men retained the higher quality of life. But France’s 75 percent led the list.

Only in South Korea (49 percent) and Japan (47 percent) did more people say women are better off than say men are, or that they are the same. It may be that men there “resent being married to their company, and also that there are fewer expectations of women,” Professor True said. “But that’s not equality.”

The variable assessment of gender equality suggests, according to the Pew Research Center report, that “while egalitarian sentiments are pervasive, they are less than robust.”

Most of the countries where people said men and women had equally good lives, Professor True said, “are only beginning to question and challenge gender discrimination and injustice, which have been taken for granted and seen as legitimate.”

“There is a lower consciousness of the gender differences there because men have always dominated,” she added. “Women have not had the opportunity to band together to challenge the power of men.”

Professor True, who is the author of five books on international relations and gender politics, is also head of the feminist theory and gender studies section of the International Studies Association, an organization of scholars and publisher of academic journals.

The surveys were conducted nationwide in all countries except China, India and Pakistan, where samples were disproportionately urban. Margins of sampling error are plus or minus three to five percentage points.

Although government mandates for equal education and job opportunities are frequently the means to gender equality, some nations that uphold the principle of equality also have sizable constituencies who would not give women the same rights to schooling and jobs.

Half or more of those asked in India, Pakistan and Egypt say a university education is more important for a boy; in China, Japan, Jordan, Poland and Nigeria, that number was at least one-third.

In some places where a boy’s education is favored, women had opinions far different from those of men. In Egypt, for instance, a solid 60 percent of men said boys were more entitled to that education, while an equally solid 60 percent of women disagreed. The gender gap was similar in Jordan and Pakistan.

“A lot of families are too poor to send all of their kids to school,” Professor Ibarra said. In India, for example, social groups are trying to organize day care for families so that daughters do not have to stay home and care for younger siblings while the sons go off to school.

Likewise, a strong core in several countries said men had more right to a job than women. More than 50 percent in 10 of the 22 countries said that when jobs are scarce, they should go to men. “If we think that it’s a growable pie, equality is fine,” Professor Ibarra commented. “If we think it’s a limited pie, it’s not.”

In India, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia and China, this belief was most widespread, while respondents in the United States, Britain, Spain, Germany and France most strongly disagreed that men should be preferred for jobs when they are hard to find.

Yet the belief that men should not have the edge does not translate into economic reality in many of the same countries. In France, Germany, Poland and India, at least 80 percent of those surveyed said men still got more opportunities than women for jobs that pay well, even when woman were as qualified.

What may be more surprising is that the respondents were not unanimous about men getting the good jobs. The inequity in well-paying jobs, Professor Ibarra said, “is absolutely true.”

“That’s not even an opinion,” the professor said. “You could find hard facts to support that anywhere you look.”

Professor True said it often took two generations before reality caught up with changes in attitudes.

“We’re entering the next phase in many of these countries,” she said. “We’re going to see much more frustration with gender inequality among both women and men before we get institutional change in developing countries.”

[Nat]

“When you’re left out of the club, you know it,” said Prof. Jacqui True, an expert in gender relations and senior lecturer at the University of Auckland. “When you’re in the club, you don’t see what the problem is.”

well said.

[waxnrope]

Originally Posted by Medusa

"Parker argues that his style is female in nature because like women, Obama tends to act more passively and form circles to talk out problems instead of taking immediate action"

Im glad that these journalists can recognize that President Obama isnt a fucking hotheaded ogre but the whole "like women" thing? REALLY?
Written by 2 female journalists?!!!

Great, now some dummy/ies will see the post, abstracted, and like the furor over his being a Muslim, there will be loud cries of Obama is a tranny?

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by waxnrope

Great, now some dummy/ies will see the post, abstracted, and like the furor over his being a Muslim, there will be loud cries of Obama is a tranny?

Probably!

Rachael Maddow did a piece on this yesterday and came to the same conclusion! People are so damn goofy!!

[Soon]

Sharron Angle's Advice For Rape Victims Considering Abortion: Turn Lemons Into Lemonade

Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle has moderated a host of policy positions in her transition from a primary candidate to general election contender battling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. One thing she has not backed away from has been her insistence that abortion should be outlawed universally, even in cases of rape and incest.



In a radio interview Angle did in late June, the Tea Party favorite re-affirmed her pro-life sensibilities (rigid, as they are, even within Republican circles), when she insisted that a young girl raped by her father should know that "two wrongs don't make a right." Much good can come from a horrific situation like that, Angle added. Lemons can be made into lemonade.