Most good, least harm

Sign this amicus brief; be a part of history

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 19:03:36 -0500

If you believe that attending a diverse campus has enriched your college experience, sign this petition. It’s not just a petition - it’s an amicus curiae brief that will serve as some of the evidence in the October SCOTUS case Fisher v. University of Texas - Austin.

Here is the deal:

Abigail Fisher, a white high-school student in Sugar Land, Texas, was rejected for admission to the University of Texas-Austin. The state requires all students in the top ten per cent of their high-school classes to be admitted to state universities, but students who fall just short of that threshold, like Fisher, are admitted according to a formula; race is one factor in the equation. Fisher’s lawsuit is based on a claim that any consideration of race by a university in admissions violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
(New Yorker)

Lower courts upheld the university’s policy. It is possible that this case could be decided in Fisher’s favor with a narrow ruling, but many people suspect that if decided in her favor, it will be decided with a broad ruling that affirmative action is unconstitutional.

Interested/horrified/appalled and want to learn more? GOOD NEWS! I’ve been obsessively researching since I found out about the case. Here is a compilation of 14 sources, with selected excerpts. I tried to keep the sources neutral by including only the first couple to come up in a google search of ‘fisher vs. university of texas,’ the first page of links to come up in a google news search of the same term, and links cited within those articles. The excerpts are, of course, picked by me, and show my personal bias.

1. This week’s grants: In plain English, Amy Howe, SCOTUSblog

This article has the best summary of the case.

…The lower federal courts ruled against Fisher, who then shifted her efforts to the Supreme Court. In her petition seeking the Court’s review, Fisher suggests that she could win in two different ways. First, she argues that the university’s policies go farther than the Court’s decision inGrutterpermits: although the Court inGrutterrecognized that states have a strong interest in having admissions policies that promote diversity, so that students can receive the educational benefits created by diversity, in this case the university’s use of the Top Ten Percent Plan had already made it one of the country’s most diverse public universities. The university’s efforts to further increase diversity – by considering race as a factor to fill the remaining slots – so that the student body more closely matched the state’s overall population are, Fisher contends, really just the kind of racial balancing that the Court inGrutterindicated would be unconstitutional.

Fisher’s second line of attack comes at the very end of her petition. It is concise, but potentially far-reaching. She suggests that even if the Court concludes that the university’s admission policy is consistent withGrutter, it should overrule that decision.

***

One other thing is noteworthy about the Court’s decision to review the case. The state had tried hard to convince the Court that it should deny review because Fisher (who is the only plaintiff in the case) is about to graduate from another university. On the state’s view, the case was about to become “moot” – that is, it wouldn’t matter anymore because Fisher couldn’t apply again to the university for admission as a freshman or transfer. But at least at this stage of the game, the Court does not appear to regard this as a problem.

2. Citizen Radio interview with Demos’ Heather McGhee. This is where I first learned about the case. They start discussing about 40 minutes in.

3. The Other Big Supreme Court Case, Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker

Abigail Fisher is now a senior at Louisiana State University. The Texas case only concerns admissions practices at public universities, but based on past practices, the courts will likely apply the resulting ruling at private schools as well. The case will also not deal directly with affirmative action in the workplace, but, again, the same standards will likely be applied in that context. The great national experiment with affirmative action began in the Johnson Administration, thrived in the Nixon years, and has survived, embattled but enduring, ever since. We may now be in its final chapter.

In a way, it would not be surprising if the Court sent affirmative action to its doom. No figure in public life, including President Obama, has made a full-throated defense of the practice in years. On an aggressively conservative Court like the current one, that relative silence could well be seen as an invitation to dismantle the practice. In today’s political environment, a decision in favor of Abigail Fisher would generate as much praise as criticism. For the Roberts Court, that makes for a relatively risk-free license to follow its inclinations. Thanks to O’Connor’s opinion, it’s been clear for some time that the days of affirmative action were numbered, but it’s clearer than ever that that number may be dwindling quickly indeed.

4. Justices Take Up Race as a Factor in College Entry, Adam Liptak, The New York Times

The Grutter decision allowed but did not require states to take account of race in admissions. Several states, including California and Michigan, forbid the practice, and public universities in those states have seen a drop in minority admissions. In other states and at private institutions, officials generally look to race and ethnicity as one factor among many, leading to the admission of significantly more black and Hispanic students than basing the decisions strictly on test scores and grades would.

A Supreme Court decision forbidding the use of race in admission at public universities would almost certainly mean that it would be barred at most private ones as well under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids racial discrimination in programs that receive federal money. In her majority opinion in Grutter, Justice O’Connor said the day would come when “the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary” in admission decisions to foster educational diversity. She said she expected that day to arrive in 25 years, or in 2028. Tuesday’s decision to revisit the issue suggests the deadline may arrive just a decade after Grutter.

5. Will Supreme Court End Affirmative Action With Fisher v. University of Texas?, Adam Winkler, The Daily Beast

In 2003, in a case called Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court upheld the race-conscious admissions policy at the University of Michigan’s law school, reasoning that a diverse student body improves the education of all students. As the majority explained, “classroom discussion is livelier, more spirited, and simply more enlightening and interesting when students have the greatest possible variety of backgrounds.” A diverse student body also prepares students for their professional careers, as “the skills needed in today’s increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints.”

***

If the Supreme Court strikes down the University of Texas’s policy, it won’t help Abigail Fisher. She’s set to graduate from Louisiana State University this spring. But it will hurt racial minorities in Texas. Since UT’s adoption of its Grutter-inspired admissions policy, the number of African-Americans matriculating has nearly doubled. The number of Latino graduates has increased by almost 50 percent. Today, the University of Texas is ranked sixth nationwide in undergraduate degrees awarded to minorities.

6. Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin challenges affirmative action in higher education, AP, The Daily Texan

The challenge to the University of Texas program comes from Abigail Fisher, who filed a lawsuit with another woman when they were denied admission there. They contended the university’s race-conscious policy violated their civil and constitutional rights. By then, the two had enrolled elsewhere.

The other woman has since dropped out of the case and the state has said that Fisher is a senior at Louisiana State University whose impending graduation should bring an end to the lawsuit.

7. SCOTUS and Abigail Fisher: The Girl Who May Kill Affirmative Action, Dante Perez, Politic365

The Supreme Court will now be deciding over Fisher v. University of Texas. Which, began in 2008, when Abigail Noel Fisher, a white applicant, was denied admission to the undergraduate program at the University of Texas at Austin. Even though Fisher’s record in high school was not good enough to guarantee her admission, she believed she was turned away solely because of her race. In an effort to insure a diverse class of entering students, the University of Texas engaged in what Fisher called “blatant racial balancing.”

For Fisher, neither redress nor diversity are compelling reasons to support Affirmative Action policies. Government should be blind to race.

To be clear, even supporters of Affirmative Action agree that government should be blind to race. That is why even as the Supreme Court upheld the use of race as a partial selection criteria for colleges and universities, such measures continued to be conceived as temporary.

…However, for some, “[a]ny form of discrimination, whether it’s for or against, is wrong.” This idea was epitomized by Chief Justice Roberts: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

While this argument is terribly pithy and exudes mathematical self-evidence, it is fatally flawed by the assumption that the status quo is neutral. That is, that society will converge into just practices if left to its own devices. Even if you believe progress is inevitable, such a convergence would take many many generations.

As historian Roger Wilkins pointed out, “blacks have a 375-year history on this continent: 245 involving slavery, 100 involving legalized discrimination, and only 30 involving anything else.” Society has proved itself pretty inept at organically producing justice, if you ask me.

Right now, in 2012, there exists a gap in graduation rates between white students and students of color of about twenty percentage points. Similar gaps exist in salaries, promotions, etc. I’m going to go out on limb and suggest that the common factor -race- linking all these current gaps might still be a (conscious or otherwise) factor in people’s decision making.

8. Supreme Court Poised To Smack Down Affirmative Action, Sahil Kapur, TMC

The court is expected to issue either a narrow ruling or a broad ruling against race-based admissions. It could simply rule that UT’s policy is a violation of acceptable use of racial preference, which would not directly affect other colleges but would provide ammunition to chip away at other Affirmative Action systems. Or it might go big and overrule the 2003Grutter v. Bollingerdecision that’s the linchpin of Affirmative Action in higher education.

“If the Supreme Court holds thatGruttershould be overturned,” Fitzpatrick said, “it would pretty much end Affirmative Action in every school in the country, public or private.” He said it’s possible such a ruling could even apply to workplaces, although he predicted that the court is more likely to issue a narrow ruling against UT’s race-based admission policy.

…The court’s third option, to uphold UT’s use of race in admissions, is seen as highly unlikely given that it has swung against Affirmative Action ever since Justice Samuel Alito replaced Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 2006.

An important thing to note is that the plaintiff inFisherhas asked the Supreme Court to reconsiderGrutteritself. And the court accepted the case knowing that it would have no effect on the plaintiff, who is set to graduate from another college this year. That’s an indication that the justices are interested in revisiting the principles that went into the 2003 decision, which held 5-4 that colleges have compelling reason to consider race in the admissions process.

9. The Coming Supreme Court Cases That Will Make You Hate John Roberts All Over Again, Evan McMurray, PoliticOlogy

…Sandra Day O’Connor, the swing vote onGrutter, is no longer on the Court, having been replaced by Samuel Alito, who has decided in the past against race-based admission policies in Ricci v. DeStefano, which overturned New Haven’s admissions for firefighters. Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas sided against O’Connor’s decision inGrutter, giving Fischer four votes in favor of overturning the law. Justice Elena Kagan has recused herself, leaving only four votes in play. One of them is Roberts, who also sided with Kennedy inRicci, and who, despite his vote upholding the ACA, is very much a conservative judge. If he sides with Fischer in favor of overturning Grutter, affirmative action goes down 5-3.

It’s possible the Court sides with Fischer on a limited ruling that merely overturns UT’s second-tier admissions poilcy. But the mere fact that they’ve accepted the case portends otherwise.

10. The World Without Affirmative Action, Daniel Luzer, Washington Monthly

With this case in mind, a researcher at the University of Michigan, Liliana Garces, attempted to figure out what might happen in American graduate schools. Garces looked at the racial breakdown at public colleges in Texas, California, Washington, and Florida, which already have affirmative action bans in place. According to her paper, published by The Civil Rights Project:

Bans on affirmative action led to an estimated drop of 1.2 percentage points in the proportion of students of color enrolled across all graduate degree programs. Before any of the bans were implemented in each state, the average percentage of enrolled graduate students who were students of color was about 9.9 percent. The estimated 1.2 percentage point drop thus represents a decline to about 8.7 percent.

This is a significant, though not exactly astounding, difference.

This is hardly the difference between a wonderful world of great opportunities for ethnic minorities and the abyss, at least in part because it doesn’t look like affirmative action is really greatly increasing the presence of minorities on graduate school campuses anyway.

About 22 percent of Americans are ethnic minorities currently, more than double the figure for ethnic minorities in public graduate schools when they had affirmative action in place.

11. Supreme Court to rule on Affirmative Action, Jeneba Ghatt, The Washington Times Communities

The sad part, perhaps, is no matter how it turns out, there are many people out there who will assume most people of color with higher education degrees could not have gotten into college on their merit and scholastic scores alone. Even though they would be among the mere 35% of Americans with college degree, they will be presumed by some as Affirmative Action admits who were really not qualified to get into college on their merit and must be taking the spot of a white person. Even if they got into school based on merit alone, some people will automatically lump them in with other Affirmative Action admits.

12. Diversity’s Evidences, Len Niehoff, Inside Higher Education

This fall, the United States Supreme Court will consider the case of Fisher v. University of Texas, which asks whether that university’s use of affirmative action in admissions passes constitutional muster. I served on the legal team that defended the University of Michigan Law School admissions policy in Grutter v. Bollinger, where the Supreme Court held that fostering a racially diverse student body is a compelling state interest that colleges and universities can pursue in a narrowly tailored way. I believed that the Court correctly decided Grutter when I was helping to litigate the case, but I believe it even more firmly in my newer role as a law school faculty member.

***

In many other instances, a more self-definitive characteristic that a student possesses has ended up shaping their contribution to the classroom discussion in a poignant and powerful way. I recall, for instance, one day when we were working through a problem that involves the hearsay doctrine. In very general terms, that doctrine prohibits witnesses from repeating things in court that were said outside of court. Students often find the doctrine maddeningly complicated.

…We were discussing a scenario — based on an actual case — that presented the question of whether the tape of a phone call to a 911 operator should be admissible. In the tape, a woman who lived in an apartment building reported that several large dogs, owned by one of her neighbors, were attacking another neighbor in the hallway. The caller described the dogs, the people who owned them and were trying unsuccessfully to restrain them, and the location and severity of the attack. During the entire call, the woman remained in her apartment with the door closed.

I had taught this scenario for many years and the discussion consistently played out along the same lines. The students would recognize that the tape presented a hearsay problem. They would identify the exceptions discussed above as potentially applicable. And then they would spot a difficulty in applying those exceptions: because the woman listened to the commotion through her door and never left her apartment, she arguably did not have personal knowledge about the matters she was describing. This is how the discussion always had gone; this is how it always had ended.

On this occasion, however, a student raised his hand just as we were about to move on. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I disagree with the conclusion. You’ve all wrongly assumed that you need to see something to have personal knowledge about it. This woman knew what her neighbor’s dogs sounded like. She could hear that they were attacking someone. She could recognize her neighbors’ voices. She could tell where the sounds were coming from. Granted, she didn’t see anything. But she certainly had personal knowledge of what was happening.”

The class sat in stunned silence. Of course, this student was right. He also happened — not incidentally — to be blind.

13. Supreme Court will hear case on affirmative action at college, David G. Savage, Los Angelos Times

In 1997, the Texas Legislature adopted the so-called “Top Ten” plan for choosing new students. As such, the University of Texas was told to accept the top 10% of the graduates from all the state’s high schools. The goal was to maintain racial and ethnic diversity in the freshman class without using race as a factor.

The plan appeared to work. By 2004, 21% of the entering students at the Austin campus were black or Latino, a higher percentage than when the university had used race-based affirmative action.

After the high court endorsed continued affirmative action through O’Connor’s opinion, Texas university officials announced they would again give a preference to “underrepresented minorities” beyond those who were admitted under the “Top Ten” policy. In 2007, the university announced a “record high” number of entering black and Latino students, who made up about 26% of the freshman class.

In 2008, Abigail Fisher was turned down for admission to the University of Texas. Her grades were not good enough to put her in the top 10% of her class, but she said her tests and grades “exceeded those of many of the admitted minority candidates.” She sued, alleging racial discrimination in violation of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws.

She lost before a federal judge and the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which said it was bound to follow O’Connor’s opinion from the University of Michigan law school case.

Her appeal argues that the 14th Amendment “requires an admissions process untainted by racial preferences absent a compelling, otherwise unsatisfied, government interest” in having some racial diversity. Since the University of Texas had already achieved diversity through the use of its “Top Ten” policy, it had no need to use race as an admissions factor, Fisher’s lawyers argued.

14. This amicus curiae brief from the Grutter case has some solid rationales for affirmative action. Look at the section on ‘cultural competence’ that starts on page 23.

Two New Domestic Violence PSAs Shed Light on an Often Hidden Epidemic

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 16:48:53 -0500

Two New Domestic Violence PSAs Shed Light on an Often Hidden Epidemic

"The cops came within minutes and were exceedingly supportive. I went on with my day: I had lunch..."

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 16:47:54 -0500

“The cops came within minutes and were exceedingly supportive. I went on with my day: I had lunch with my mom and then drinks with some of my closest friends well into the evening. I received many messages of support and encouragement, and I’m really grateful to have such wonderful people in my life. But one thing that has bothered me is referring to what I did as “brave.” I was simply walking while female. I guess I didn’t realize what a battle it still is out there and how much work we still have to do.”

- Walking while female: sexual assault in broad daylight

Just reading the title made my pulse race.

Roundup of Tosh bullying links

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 12:47:34 -0500

I’m not sure what to call the instance in which Daniel Tosh threatened a female audience member by suggesting it would be funny if she were gang raped by five men in the comedy club room where he was doing standup. A lot of media outlets call it ‘rape joke controversy,’ but it really doesn’t read to me as a joke, and controversy is too mitigating a term. A couple of comedians below refer to it as bullying, and that seems more accurate to me. Threatening violence against women to keep them in line is a tactic as old as time itself (which Jessica Valenti talks about, below).

1. If you only read one article, read Surfing the Rape Wave: What Tosh Teaches About Humor, Power, and Privilege by Jennifer Pozner. It has the best background information of any article I’ve read and links to almost all of my other favorite links, some of which I’ll repost below.

2. After seeing the long list of comedians supporting Tosh, it’s nice to read The Nation’s 10 Comedians Who Aren’t Defending Rape Jokes. My favorite is Hari’s, and I included his video below, because it’s awesome.

3. Jessica Valenti’s Anatomy of a Successful Rape Joke succinctly makes the argument against rape jokes like Tosh’s (for those who think it was a joke) being edgy comedy:

But here’s the thing: threatening women with rape, making light of rape, and suggesting that women who speak up be raped is not edgy or controversial. It’s the norm. This is what women deal with every day. Maintaining the status quo around violence against women isn’t exactly revolutionary.

4. Elissa Bassist’s Daily Beast Article Why Daniel Tosh’s ‘Rape Joke’ at the Laugh Factory Wasn’t Funny does the best job of explaining why it wasn’t a joke:

Tosh says he was joking. Comedians make rape jokes every day, so why is this one getting so much attention? Because Tosh was more than “just kidding.” He was angry. His “joke” was reactive to the so-called heckler who called him out in front of an audience. He used humor to cut her down, to remind her of own vulnerability, to emphasize who was in control. The “joke” ignited a backlash because it was not a joke; it was vastly different from other jokes about rape. The debate over Tosh shouldn’t be “are rape jokes funny?” That’s misdirection: his statement was a wildly inappropriate putdown, reminder, and threat that this woman could be gang-raped, like right now. There’s a distinction between making a joke to cope or to point out the absurdity of a situation and what Tosh did, consciously or not, which was to use humor to humiliate a woman who stood up for something she believed in. His “joke” was a tool to assert his power.

5. There are also great responses from male comedians. This is from one who formerly used rape jokes and explains the process by which he decided to stop using them: Dear Comedians, and People Like Me Who Think They’re Comedians: Please Stop. I’m also moved by Austin comedian Curtis Luciani’s brilliant analogy, which ends with this:

People have wounds, and those wounds are painful. That doesn’t have shit to do with the weak concept of “taking offense.” If someone talks about Texas being a shitty state, I might “take offense” at that. Fine, whatever. All of us who like comedy are generally in agreement with the idea that “taking offense” is lame, and a comedian should be willing to “offend” whenever he or she wants to.

But causing pain is quite a different fucking matter. Your job as a comedian is to take us through pain, transcend pain, transform pain. And if you don’t get that, you are a fucking bully, and I’ve got zero time for bullies.

6. Jamie Kilstein also talks about bullying in these two Melissa Harris Perry segments:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

7. And finally, here are two examples of female comedians with successful rape jokes, taken from Kate Harding’s 15 Rape Jokes That Work.

ethiopienne: ihavethisblog: forbrowngirls: http://forbrowngirl...

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 08:23:39 -0500

ethiopienne:

ihavethisblog:

forbrowngirls:

http://forbrowngirls.tumblr.com/

Kimberly Anyadike at 15 years old (now 18) became the first African American teen to fly across the United States! She is now a finalist in Seventeen Magazine’s Pretty Amazing Cover contest, where one inspiring, extraordinary reader will be chosen to have her story featured in the magazine along with her picture on the cover ! Interview with Kimberly coming FRIDAY! :)
- Vote for Kim here:
http://www.seventeen.com/fun/articles/pretty-amazing-cover-model

And also she was Vice President of her class.

And she’s already finished a year’s worth of college credit.

And also she’s getting her pilot’s license within the year.

Oh and she’s going to UCLA.

To become a doctor.

So she can join Doctors Without Borders.

And fly herself out to treat patients.

…

I mean I’m not telling you what to do or anything.

But all the cool kids are voting for her sooooo

SIGNAL BOOST SIGNAL BOOST SIGNAL BOOST BECAUSE THE WORLD NEEDS TO HEAR ABOUT BADASS BLACK GIRLS

Photo

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 08:09:54 -0500

Photo

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 08:09:15 -0500

"Male privilege may be more obvious in other cultures, but in so-called Western culture it’s still..."

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 14:43:27 -0500

“Male privilege may be more obvious in other cultures, but in so-called Western culture it’s still ubiquitous. In fact, it’s so ubiquitous that it’s invisible. It is so pervasive as to be normalized, and so normalized as to be visible only in its absence. The vast, vast, vast majority of institutions, spaces, and subcultures privilege male interests, but because male is the default in this culture, such interests are very often considered ungendered. As a result, we only really notice when something privileges female interests.”

- Lucy Gillam, When Worlds Collide: Fandom and Male Privilege (via grrrlstudies)

A number of years ago, in my early BBS days, I got into an argument with a (much older) man about whether the U.S. medical establishment was gender-biased. His argument was that not only was U.S. medicine not gender-biased in favor of men, it was gender-biased in favor of women. His support for this was that as many men get prostate cancer as women get breast cancer, and yet breast cancer receives much more funding and research than prostate cancer.

Without being able to verify either of these facts easily (this was before such information was available with a couple of mouse clicks), I responded thusly: the reason breast cancer has the research and funding it has is because women (and a few men, most of whom had lost women to breast cancer) had gotten off theirasses and gotten it. They had raised money and lobbied and dragged what was once a vaguely shameful disease into the public eye.

I don’t actually remember how the debate ended (knowing this guy, I suspect he blew me off), but the gist of it was this: the idea that men as a group might actually have to do something to get their interests represented was totally and completely foreign to him. The “fact” that they weren’t represented already was just proof of bias and oppression.

Now that is one impressive sense of entitlement.

"Like most rape victims, I was effectively silenced. What silenced me most, was the dread of not..."

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 14:33:52 -0500

“

Like most rape victims, I was effectively silenced. What silenced me most, was the dread of not being believed. The knowledge that I would be asked: “but why didn’t you shout?” “why did you let him separate you from your friends?” “why didn’t you tell him to stop kissing you and to go straight to the cab office?” “why did you give him your phone number?” “why did you go out with him afterwards - even sleep with him afterwards?” “why didn’t you tell your friends what had happened?” All the questions I asked myself for a couple of decades. Even now as I wrote this, You, Dear Reader, will note what care I have taken to try and explain my behaviour, to pre-empt the questions and criticisms and scepticism. To do what rape victims are always required to do and rapists rarely are: to account for my behaviour, to explain why I became a rape victim. The explanation: “because I was unlucky enough to meet a rapist” will not do, I know. Society doesn’t want to blame men for making the choice to rape women, it wants to blame women for enabling men to make that choice and usually it succeeds. Rapists very rarely get to accept responsiblity for their choice to rape, even rape victims blame themselves for their rapist’s choice to rape them. .

I’m done with accepting that blame. It was not my fault. I didn’t do anything to make him do it. My fabulous blue velvet dress was not responsible. The fact that I’d had a couple of beers was not responsible. Even my abusive childhood, with its failure to inculcate self-esteem, was not responsible. Because I went out with him afterwards and had what society calls consensual sex with him a couple of times, doesn’t mean it wasn’t rape that one time. Because I didn’t behave the way rape victims are supposed to behave doesn’t mean it wasn’t rape. Because I spent between two or three decades feeling unable to tell anyone in case they wouldn’t believe me, doesn’t mean it wasn’t rape. It was rape, he is a rapist and I am a rape survivor. And the fact that neither of us behaved the way society says rapists and rape victims behave, doesn’t mean it wasn’t rape, it just means that society has got to stop misinforming the public, about what rape is. Society keeps selling us the version of rape that rapists have invented: the one which enables them to carry on raping women and know that they will get away with it. We keep on making excuses for rapists, convincing their victims that they have no right to call it what it is.

For years I blamed myself for dating him afterwards, knowing I hated him and found him repulsive. I could never understand, why I’d done that to myself, why I’d thought it so necessary. Why had I punished myself like that? I blamed myself for handing him power over me, the power to penetrate my body again when he knew I didn’t want him to, the power to pretend that he wasn’t a rapist, because his victim had gone back for more. Now, I blame the society which convinced an intelligent, popular teenager, that the only way to make rape OK, would be to date her rapist.

”

- How I Became A Rape Victim (via staceymayfowles)

When we parted, he kissed me, put his hands down my knickers again, just to show me that he could, and said to me “have a great time at university and don’t sleep with anyone you don’t want to”. When I assured him I wouldn’t, he said: “you already have”.

This is chilling.

You are okay. You are not responsible for anyone else's feelings. You are not entitled to anything. You do not deserve abuse.

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 12:30:00 -0500

I’ve been reading a lot of online advice columns lately, and what I see is distressing. So many people (mostly female identified) write in with descriptions of terrible abusive relationships and include all kinds of self deprecation and reasons about why they discount their own opinions of the situation and need outsider advice. But these are like AWFUL situations. AWFUL. Any outsider could see they are awful. So it’s great they are writing in, and great that the advice columnists are helping them out. But my god, it’s tragic that there should be any kind of confusion as to whether some of these situations are acceptable.

I say this often to the people in my life, and I say it now to you, internet readers - romantic relationships are too dangerous a thing to not address at all in our education system. I don’t even mean sex. I mean self love and care. Setting boundaries. Learning that abuse isn’t always physical. Saying no. Knowing how to stay authentic to yourself in a serious relationship, and knowing where one person starts and the other ends. I have so many friends who experienced abusive relationships. Many who stayed in relationships out of a sense of responsibility for the other person. Many who are afraid to say no or set boundaries, or simply don’t know how to do those things.

So if I were in charge of the world, here is what middle schools and high schools would teach in health class.

1. You are okay. Whatever you think about you is broken irreparably - it isn’t. Whatever experience has scarred you so that you feel you can never trust yourself again - trust yourself. If there is something about you that you consider abnormal - your level of sexual experience, the kind of things that turn you on, what you care most about in the world, the way you think or act or look - realize that part of you is okay too. If there is anything about you that makes you feel less than someone - less intelligent, pretty, adventurous, sophisticated - know that part of you doesn’t make you any less worthy a person. This is not self esteem - this is unconditional self love. It’s hard. It’s something many of us don’t learn. It’s something we have to teach ourselves.

2. You are not responsible for anyone else. You’re not. You’re not responsible for making a loved one happy. You’re not responsible for preventing a loved one’s anger. You’re not responsible for keeping a partner alive when they threaten suicide. You’re not responsible for keeping someone from harm when they threaten harm. You don’t need to stay with someone for their sake, or equivocate just to protect their feelings. Other peoples’ emotions and actions are their responsibility. They are never your fault. They could only be your fault if somehow you managed to control their arms and legs and minds and literally act for them. This is not possible. So I can say, with authority, that other peoples’ emotions and actions are not your responsibility. No matter how much you love them. You cannot save people. You cannot nag or threaten or cajole people into acting a certain way. And you cannot be the full time guardian of another grown-up.

3. You are not entitled to anything. You are not entitled to any sort of emotional response from others. If you like someone and they like you, awesome. If you like someone, but more than they like you, that sucks. But this is the flipside of not being responsible for anyone else. You are not entitled to another’s affection for any reason. Not because you like them or you are nice or rich or did them a favor or look a certain way or act a certain way or think a certain way or have had successful relationships in the past or have had unsuccessful relationships in the past. You are not entitled to another’s money or attention or love.

4. You don’t deserve abuse. No matter what you think about yourself, no matter how much lower you see yourself than your partner, you do not deserve physical, verbal, or emotional abuse. You don’t deserve to be stalked, or harassed, or threatened. You don’t deserve to be continuously insulted or made to feel guilty. Abuse isn’t always physical. Abuse is never love. There is nothing that you are that could possibly deserve abuse. There is nothing you can do that could possibly deserve abuse. I don’t care if you yelled at someone, threatened to leave against their will, challenged their authority, put yourself in a stupidly dangerous situation, welcomed some sexual advances or a certain level of intimacy - you do not deserve abuse. A hundred other people in your life could have responded to those same actions or situations without resorting to abuse. And, going back to #2, there is nothing you can do that can make an abuser not an abuser. Their actions are in their own hands. No matter how much you love someone, no matter how much they say they love you, you do not deserve abuse.

I don’t like to get too personal on the internet, but let’s just say these are lessons born of experience, mine and others. And I know how one can lead to the next. If you think you’re broken, you can let all kinds of awful things happen and say you deserve it. Check out this question at Yo, Should I Dump This Asshole? Being a 22-year old virgin is something she sees as so abnormal that it warrants abuse.

This shit is sad, you guys. And it gets worse, with this awful run of stalking related questions at Captain Awkward. So much responsibility for others in abusive relationships. And from the third LW, a lot of discounting her own experience because she is young, has social anxiety, originally found his attention flattering.

As for the entitlement thing, a friend directed me to this horrifying story today. Ben Spurr’s twitter responses are the definition of entitlement. There are many, many white men not imbued with a sense of entitlement. But damnit, white people and male people seem to have a monopoly on the entitlement thing.

I’m not male, but I am white. And I get it, kind of. It took me a long time to recognize my own entitlement. Because my parents are my parents, I felt entitled to their money. I felt entitled to my mother’s attention because she was my mother. My family did all sorts of awesome things for me that they were financially able to do, and I thought I was entitled to them just for being born.

So I know how the entitlement thing works in a specific relationship. And I’ve dated people who felt entitled to my time because we were dating. I’ve had friends who felt entitled to call me at all hours and lay all sorts of things on me because we were friends.

Entitlement has no place in healthy relationships. To reference Jaclyn Friedman, think of love as a verb. Love is an action. People who love you act in loving ways towards you. There is no need to feel entitled to a partner’s time - if they love you, they will want to spend time with you. And I’ve experienced much better relationships when I set boundaries about what I can give to another person.

To paraphrase Jewel, if I could tell the world just one thing, it would be we’re all okay, we’re not responsible for anyone else, we’re not entitled to anything, and we don’t deserve abuse. (Which is kind of four things.)

For those of you who are dealing with these things now, big hugs and all my love.

"I have very little understanding of asexuality. It didn’t even occur to me that my language might..."

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 11:04:45 -0500

“I have very little understanding of asexuality. It didn’t even occur to me that my language might make someone feel this way, and I’m sorry that my thoughtlessness hurt you. Please accept my apology, and if you know of any places (blogs, forums, or in text form) that asexuality is being discussed in what you feel is a positive and educational way, please point me towards them so I can learn and try to avoid making this mistake again.”

- Stoya’s beautiful response to someone who was offended by her piece, Touch. YES. This is how to respond after unintentionally saying something hurtful to a minority group - not with denial or anger, but with humility, an acknowledgement of the other’s feelings, and a desire to learn more so the mistake doesn’t happen again. Stoya is so great.

Being Deaf: How Different the World Is Without Hearing

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 08:48:40 -0500

Being Deaf: How Different the World Is Without Hearing:

Must read.

"This isn’t just about individuals, either. Everyone who says “I don’t want to be..."

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 12:49:41 -0500

“This isn’t just about individuals, either. Everyone who says “I don’t want to be a victim-blamer, but girls should know frat parties aren’t safe places” is treating rape culture like a missing stair. Everyone who says “it’s an ugly fact, but only women who don’t make trouble make it in this business” is treating sexual harassment like a missing stair. Everyone who says “I don’t like it either, but that’s the way things are,” and makes no move to question the way things are, is jumping over a missing stair somewhere.”

- http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2012/06/missing-stair.html

abaldwin360: Do they really believe that abortion is murder? (a...

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 08:03:00 -0500

abaldwin360:

Do they really believe that abortion is murder? (a handy dandy chart, courtesy of Alas, A Blog!)

Almost none of their policies make sense if they really see no difference between the death of a fetus and the death of a four-year-old. However, nearly all their policies make sense if they’re seeking to make sure that women who have sex “face the consequences.” are punished. After years of seeing this pattern repeated again and again, it’s difficult to take them at their word.

"You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving..."

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 18:28:22 -0500

“

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.

”

- Aaron Freeman “You Want A Physicist To Speak at your Funeral” (via loveyourchaos)

Still haven’t made this and it haunts me.

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 13:38:46 -0500

Still haven’t made this and it haunts me.

Dr. Glen Barry: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker Is STILL Unfit for Office

Fri, 25 May 2012 22:43:50 -0500

Dr. Glen Barry: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker Is STILL Unfit for Office:

If it’s TL;DR, just know that Scott Walker is pretty scummy and you should vote for Tom Barrett.

drglenbarry:

Personal Essay by Dr. Glen Barry

May 22, 2012

The year was 1988 – current Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is running for Marquette University student body President. Hoping to shake off the embarrassing loss to a write-in candidate for resident hall President the year before, Walker…

"I want to impregnate you over and over again and then appreciate your intrinsic personality and..."

Fri, 25 May 2012 22:35:03 -0500

“I want to impregnate you over and over again and then appreciate your intrinsic personality and caring nature.”

- - The A(n)nals of Online Dating

I think my favorite part is how the only thing that this person can say about his future baby mama’s personality is that it’s intrinsic.

Attn Feminist Job Seekers!

Fri, 25 May 2012 17:51:13 -0500

jessicavalenti:

If anyone is looking for a feminist job, here are a few that just came up…pass them around!

Associate Editor, Ms. magazine

Director of Operations, Girls Write Now

Communications Coordinator, Girls Write Now

Simply Vegan Week 27 recap

Tue, 22 May 2012 17:45:00 -0500

Read the Simply Vegan e-newsletter in its entirety here.

This week’s recipes:

Chef challenge: Pear, tempeh bacon, and raspberry grilled cheese sandwich

Baketivism: Chocolate bar pie

Links:

For the animals

Belated mother’s day slideshow of adorable moms and babies!
Greatest animal photobombers of all time. (THIS IS AMAZING)

For your health

Miracle foods for vegans
Vegans less at risk for cataracts

Meow! Vegan lynx:

Two new sweet bean dips: chocolate peanut butter black bean dip and cinnamon spiced adzuki bean dip

Quick and Easy Low Calorie Vegan Comfort Food is on the shelves! Enter to win a free copy!

The Vegan Society answers some tricky questions. I didn’t love all the answers, but it’s nice to have a baseline response.

GGA compiles the comfiest vegan shoes this summer. (Like, cute comfy, not comfy comfy.)

Activating empathy. Voting starts soon!

Paleoveganology compares speciesism to creationism; argues for conversational intolerance. ”In short, we’ve been acting like the burden of proof lies with us. But it doesn’t, and we really ought to start acting like it doesn’t.”

Remember that infuriating “Giving up the V-Card” post? Our self proclaimed archenemy over at Let Them Eat Meat interviewed the author, David Cain. Once again, Cain alludes to this all or nothing mentality which I don’t believe in. And once again, he says some really insightful things. I especially like his points about how humans aren’t really rational, so using rational arguments is kind of a waste. Benj liked this too, and he’s pretty much the expert on vegan activism.

Upcoming vegan events:

17 days, 16 hours, and 38 minutes to Vegan Fest! (I may or may not have a google countdown going…)

*Also, I can’t believe I forgot this, but Madison Vegan Drinks tomorrow night, Tex Tubbs, 6:30 - 9!