[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. --L.]
- Free Speech Isn't Free
- Not being a lawyer I can't figure out the rightness of this ruling, but there it is.
- Predator Theory « Fugitivus
- …serial rapists operate with identifiable patterns that can be witnessed and interrupted. Those identifiable patterns take full advantage of misogyny, victim-blaming, and misperceptions about what abuse is and whether or not it’s actionable. In other words, the guy who says “she’s a dumb slut who probably liked it, so what does she expect” means it, and statistics will back up your gut. [...]
Thomas finishes his post with something I think is really important. Predator theory really breaks down to bystander theory: until the criminal justice system recognizes the consistent pattern of grooming and abuse rapists utilize as criminal and actionable, we can’t remove predators from the general population. What we can do is stop giving them a license to rape around us, using those we know and love as victims. We can do that by recognizing their pattern for what it is — not a misunderstanding, not a drunken night, not a thing Nigel just spouts off about women sometimes but otherwise he’s okay, not a helpful action totally misinterpreted by crazy ladeez (I was just trying to walk her home!), not a joke — and making it clear that we consider those things repugnant, unacceptable, and socially actionable. In other words, making it clear to the potential rapist that his big bag of victim-blaming tools don’t work around you.
This research shows that rapists aren’t just testing the boundaries of their victims, but they’re testing the boundaries of the entire social group and support structure that surrounds the victim. A potential rapist might find a potential victim who does not respond well to his attempts to invade her boundaries and otherwise wouldn’t be a good target, but if that potential victim is surrounded by friends that laugh at rape jokes, don’t speak up when the potential rapist goes on sexist screeds, and doesn’t offer support when the potential victim says that guy is really creeping her out, that potential rapist (or serial rapist) is going to make an accurate assumption that when he rapes your friend, you won’t help her prosecute. You probably won’t even believe her, which — good news for the rapist! — means he can rape all your other friends now, too, before moving on to a new social circle.
- You’re not gonna reach my linkspam (31st March, 2010)
- AAUW presents Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, profiles of eight key research findings that point to environmental and social barriers that continue to block women’s participation and progress in science, technology, engineering, and math. There’s coverage and comment:
* in the New York Times
* in Science Insider
* in Historiann’s blog
* in the W-Women Globally blog
- Ladies celebratin’ ladies
- Like a lot of people, I think, I became an instant convert to the cult of Sady when I read her 13 Ways of Looking at Liz Lemon last week. I’m a big 30 Rock fan but not blind to the show’s problems, especially in its treatment of race and class, and I loved Sady’s trenchant take. But I think her piece on Parks and Recreation for Feministe’s Weekend Arts Section is even better. [...]
I’m not claiming to be a great feminist in my thirties, but one dramatic change has been the quality and intensity of my relationships with other women. These days when I meet an awesome woman my first reaction is not, or isn’t always, to be threatened and defensive. The self-confidence that has been the single absolute best thing about growing older has made it possible for me to hold my own in awesome company, not because I think I am awesome, but because I mind less and less what other people think. And of course awesome women tend to be awesome friends, if you gather up the courage to approach them, and when you realize that you somehow without really meaning to have created this network of strong intelligent kind entertaining adults on whom you can rely – well, it makes the prospect of middle age look downright pleasant to me.
It’s what Wired magazine and the Burning Man organization used to call the shift from a scarcity economy, where people competed over constrained resources, to a surplus economy, where people just give each other gifts, because. That model looks like questionable economic theory these days but it’s certainly true that love and friendship don’t need to be constrained resources, and that the more you give, the more you get. Another economic analogy might be investment. Romantic relationships were for me always very high-risk, high-return propositions – a VC investing in a startup – and I wish I’d never risked more than I could afford to lose. (I did, of course. Oh well. I wasn’t using that dignity anyway.) Platonic friendships, in this analogy, are dividend-bearing stocks.
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