Charles Ramsey is our new folk hero.

I’m sure you’ve seen this story by now:

Berry went missing in April 2003 after last being seen leaving her job at a Cleveland-area Burger King. She disappeared the day before her 17th birthday. One year later, Dejesus, then 14, went missing while walking home from her middle school in the same part of the city. “Both these girls, Amanda and Gina, went missing when the sun was out,” FBI special agent Phil Torsney said in a 2009 podcast asking the public for help. “Amanda was about 7:00 at night; Gina about 3:00 in the afternoon.” The home where they were found Monday was in a residential neighborhood not far from where all three were last seen.

“These three young ladies have provided us with the ultimate definition of survival and perseverance,” Anthony said. “The healing can now begin.”

They are all free and reuniting with their families because a guy named Charles Ramsey heard Amanda Berry screaming for help and came to her aid.

This guy is amazing. Every town should have a Charles Ramsey with boots on the ground. They should give him a house, salary, health plan and transportation stipend so that he can walk around all day looking for people in distress. When he finds them, their lives will be better for having breathed in his presence. America will soon discover that it is not so shocking for a little pretty white girl to run into a black man’s arms. He will be there for the missing white girls AND the missing brown girls; for the imprisoned sex slaves and garden-variety domestic violence cases. If the police or emergency dispatchers act like douches with the rescued girls, Charles Ramsey will step in and ensure that they get the help they need. He will deal with the press so the girls don’t have to. No kidnapper, sexual predator or batterer will be safe when Charles Ramsey is in town. This guy punches Bystander Syndrome in the nuts. He is a credit to the human race.

I’m not even being facetious here. I am genuinely in awe of Mr. Ramsey.

 

Misery Loves Company: Parenting Edition

Yahoo! reposted this Babble piece by someone named Buzz Bishop, who wants to complain about married couples without kids living in the suburbs.

My best friend is married, no kids. He moved in to his childhood neighborhood, across from his old school which is now closed. It sits empty because too many empty nesters sucked the demand dry. Meanwhile, the edges of our city have kids being bused as schools are bursting at the seams.

If you don’t want to have kids, get out of neighborhoods with schools. Move downtown, or to a chic restaurant district where you need half the space and your “no curfew” lifestyle won’t be cramped by strollers on the streets.

This could have been a valid position. The case could be made that those who have chosen not to have kids should leave more space in the suburbs for those who do, because it’s the families with young kids who actually need that suburban space. He quickly abandons the topic of downtown neighborhoods being more suited to the childfree, however, because that’s nowhere near as much fun as sneering at people who aren’t like him.

As many of us delay having kids until deep into our 30s, and then some find it’s too late and skip the process altogether, we’re finding ourselves with a Me generation of adults, not adolescents.

Yes, a recent study shows that married couples without children are happier than those with, but selfishness will do that to you. Besides, I could just as easily point to a study done a year earlier that says breeders are happier than non-breeders.

If selfishness makes us happy, then perhaps we should all be selfish a bit more often?

If parenting causes people to develop this attitude, then no wonder more people are skipping the process. Dude, I will buy you a ladder so you can get over yourself. Enduring the stress of childrearing does not make you a superior human being.

Pat Robertson has not read this Bible of which he speaks.

I know he’s low-hanging fruit, but this is reflective of a fascinating disconnect in homophobic Christian culture: either he hasn’t read the text, or he assumes his followers haven’t read it.

“If you’re openly living in unrepentant sin, whatever it may be, not just homosexuality, whatever it maybe, I believe that’s walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ,” Broussard explained. “So I would not characterize that person as a Christian because I don’t think the bible would characterize them as a Christian.”

On Tuesday, Robertson insisted that the ESPN reporter had been correct because “fornication is a sin.”

“Somehow we’ve said if it’s heterosexual fornication, it’s bad; if it’s homosexual fornication — that used to be called an abomination in the Bible — now it’s a protected civil right,” he continued. “And so somebody that says that that kind of conduct is sinful is now being pilloried in the press. He’s telling the truth! This is what the Bible says!”

Jesus Christ had nothing whatsoever to say about Teh Gheyz, but he did hang out with a bunch of single guys and a woman who was widely assumed to be a sex worker. His “family values” were basically that family was for the birds. The part of the Bible that condemns man-on-man action is also the part of the Bible that forbids eating pork or shellfish and wearing wool/linen blend fabric. Go pick up a copy of the Bible and read Leviticus from start to finish. Seriously; do it. Really puts the “man shall not lie with another man as with a woman” bit in perspective. Does Pat Robertson never indulge in bacon or shrimp? If he ever enjoys a crab cake or pork chop, he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

This reminds me of that joyous day I spent participating in the #mdssm hashtag on Twitter, when the Maryland assembly was debating a bill to approve same-sex marriage. I ended up arguing (shoulder-to-shoulder with two Christian, African-American Maryland dudes) with some ignorant guy from Virginia (e.g. does not vote in Maryland) about what the Bible says about homosexuality. He was actually surprised to hear that Leviticus also forbids a lot of things that he and other Christians do all the time without apology.

Also, Pat Robertson? Your church should be so lucky as to be good enough for my gay Christian friends. Go fuck yourself. Wait here while I get you a pineapple.

Jason Collins, congratulations on coming out. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

Dean Saxton has a Google problem.

This week has not been kind to your blogger.

I spent much of Tuesday and Wednesday burning rage-calories, and now the rage-fatigue has set in. Not that I’m satisfied that I’ve run out of rage; only when I get a full day without anyone screwing me over will I let my guard down. Not that I need to search for reasons to be pissed off; lest my personal life finally stop sabotaging my free time, the Internet always provides.

For example, we have this prize right here:

Saxton, a junior studying classics and religious studies, said his sermon was meant to convey that “if you dress like a whore, act like a whore, you’re probably going to get raped.”

“I think that girls that dress and act like it,” Saxton said, “they should realize that they do have partial responsibility, because I believe that they’re pretty much asking for it.”

Saxton’s sermon came ahead of the “Take Back the Night” event held Tuesday night, which aims to unite people against sexual violence. He said his decision to create the sign and display it was tied to the event and to the fact that April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

It’s like punching someone repeatedly in the face, then scolding them for putting bruises on your fist.

Just remember: if you hold up a sign like a jackass, point fingers like a jackass, you’re probably going to get your teeth knocked out with a baseball bat. You should realize that you do have partial responsibility, because I believe that you’re pretty much asking for it.

“They marked her.”

I am appalled by the news from Boston yesterday afternoon, but I will leave the analysis on that until we get some info on the bombers. For now, I will share some further news in the Audrie Pott case.

Awakening in a friend’s bedroom after drinking too much at a sleepover, 15-year-old Audrie Pott looked down and realized she had been sexually assaulted and her attackers had written and drawn on intimate parts of her body, her family’s attorney said Monday.

Over the next week, she pieced together one horrifying detail after another. She went online and tried to confront the three boys she had known since junior high who she believed had done it.

[...]

The police report also says witnesses told investigators the three suspects took the drunken Audrie to sleep in an upstairs room then assaulted her.

The report says the attackers pulled off her shorts and partially removed her bra, exposing her breasts, the newspaper reported. Markings were found on her chest, legs, back and near her genitalia.

“They wrote ‘Blank Was Here,’ on her leg,” said family attorney Robert Allard, not using the actual name because the suspect is a juvenile. “They marked her.”

There are two thing that stick out here.

One is that the assailants were known, trusted quantities to Audrie. She didn’t just meet these random boys at a party and fail to stop them from taking advantage. She knew them since middle school. They abused and humiliated a girl they’d known for years, and who thought they were okay.

It’s not enough to tell girls to keep themselves safe by sticking with guys they trust. Sometimes, the rapist uses the victim’s trust against her.

The other is that they had no problem with making themselves identifiable as her attackers. They put their names on her body AND circulated a photo of her unconscious, graffiti-laden body to their friends. Which means they believed they would not be punished for what they did to her, even if everyone knew they were the perpetrators.

If they thought they weren’t doing anything wrong, we should be asking why.

If they thought nobody else would think they’d done anything wrong, we should be asking why.

If they thought Audrie wouldn’t object to being stripped, penetrated and marked while unconscious, we should be asking why.

I suspect it has something to do with all those people who jump straight to pointing fingers at the girl who got drunk, rather than at the boys who betrayed her trust.

 

This isn’t supposed to make sense from the outside.

I see around the leftosphere that someone named Steve Stockman is showing off a bumper sticker that says:

If babies had guns, they wouldn’t be aborted.

Our first reflex is to sputter and point at that womb-controlling, gun-pushing asshat and insist to him that if a fetus shot a gun through its mother’s abdomen, that fetus would be screwed, and besides, babies are already born so stop calling fetuses babies.

That’s not the point. This slogan isn’t about us. We’re not supposed to picture a scenario that actually makes sense. This is about combining anti-choice with pro-gun sentiment. It’s about selling the anti-gun-control position to womb-controllers.

I suppose this message is supposed to evoke the image of a fetus shooting its tiny gun at the abortion provider when he dilates the woman’s cervix, rather than threatening the pregnant woman with a bullet wound if she chooses to abort.

Considering that abortion providers already have to wear bulletproof vests to work, this rhetoric is irresponsible, but it’s not surprising. The anti-choice movement has long demonstrated that it sees nothing wrong with being pro-war, pro-death-penalty, anti-environmental-protections, anti-public-assistance, and anti-universal-healthcare. Why shouldn’t they also be anti-gun-regulations? This is just more of the same.

Ask the Daily Beast, and you shall receive the rape apologism!

Oh yes. Oh fucking yes. Here we go, in the comment section.

Laird Winkelvoss 7 hours ago

Girls, in the 1850′s when you passed out drunk at a party with a bunch of boys present, they would have to do copper engravings of you being assaulted.  Tedious and time-consuming.  Now, you can be instantly humiliated world-wide.  Think about it.

Yes, everything was so much better for women back in the days when we couldn’t vote, own property, access contraceptives, and public knowledge of one act of non-marital sex could ruin our lives.

Everyone knows that this shit keeps happening because WOMEN HAVEN’T THOUGHT ABOUT IT.

Let’s get this party started!

Think Progress is on the case. The article is fine, the comments are mostly good, but of course we can’t have any discussion of a gang-rape of an incapacitated teenager without the predictable hand-wringing:

It’s a solid block of stupid.

She’s getting rightly dogpiled over there. How about this: instead of shaking fingers at the girl’s parents for having failed to keep her under lock and key, why not scrutinize the assholes who RAISED THE RAPISTS?

This is Psychology and Neurobiology 101 right here: Kids don’t think about the consequences of their actions before they act. Why not? Because they’re young, their brains aren’t fully developed and they’re short on life experiences. The people who are learning from these experiences will be adults in a few years. The people who will be teenagers by then are just little kids now. No matter how much shit goes through our culture, kids’ brains don’t get any older.

In which “be strong” = “never let your guard down, ever”

Yeah, of course, blame us feminists for telling girls it’s not their fault if other people hurt them.

We must never, ever try to MAKE REALITY A BETTER PLACE by advancing the cause of women’s rights to their own bodies, and it’s SO MUCH BETTER to tell girls to lock themselves in their bedrooms by sunset every night than to try to shift the discussion over to the actions of sexual abusers.

Furthermore, of course it’s SO MUCH MORE REALISTIC to ask girls to never, ever let their guard down, never have fun, never relax around other teenagers, than to get those same teenagers to look at rape as a crime against the victim rather than a fun thing to laugh about on Twitter. It’s SO MUCH MORE FEASIBLE to punish teenagers for failing to behave like buttoned-up adults than to demand that rapists pay the consequences for their actions.

Everyone knows it’s totally realistic to expect teenage girls to treat every moment like a potential attack against themselves, but it’s not the least bit realistic or evidence-based to observe that rapists will find a way to rape, no matter how hard women and girls try to protect themselves.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Liz Calkins. Keep telling yourself that you’re so much tougher and stronger than those silly feminists, so nothing could possibly happen to you.

Warm-up for teeth-sharpening!

In an otherwise very good piece on Audrie Pott, Eve Vawter unfortunately goes there in the comment section.

This is not bad weather we’re talking about.

Points 1 and 3 are good. 3 is especially cogent. Her inclusion of 2, however, unfortunately undercuts the others.

Her head is 99% in the right place, but I can’t pretend this 1% isn’t happening.

It’s not that I think Ms. Vawter is holding Audrie Pott responsible for her rape, or that she lacks sympathy for her or other girls who are victimized while intoxicated. Her article makes it clear that she knows the problem is with the people who commit rape and that victims need compassion and sympathy. So, with that in mind…

WE NEED TO FUCKING STOP TALKING ABOUT RAPE IN THE PASSIVE VOICE.

We need to stop telling young people that victimization is an inevitable consequence of heavy drinking. It’s not alcohol that makes rape happen. The presence of sexual predators is what makes rape happen. How about, instead we tell growing adolescents: if you can’t be around a drunk and unconscious person without violating her bodily orifices, then DON’T GO TO A PARTY where alcohol may be served. If you feel inclined to commit sexual violence, then don’t put yourself in the position where you might be tempted.

Every minute we spend talking about what girls can do to protect themselves from predators is another minute we don’t spend teaching impressionable minds about the importance of sexual boundaries and bodily autonomy. Every minute we spend telling girls don’t do this, don’t do that so you don’t get raped, we’re sending the message that if girls let their guard down, then boys just can’t help themselves, and that if a girl didn’t want to get raped, she shouldn’t have had so much to drink. We are sending the message to potential rapists that if the victim was drunk at the time, they will get away with attacking her.  This is where victim-blaming comes from.

I would like to propose a moratorium on so-called “safety tips” to shield young women from sexual violence. If we successfully convince all girls not to drink around boys, then people who want to commit rape will find other ways to incapacitate and isolate their victims. We’ve been discussing these “safety tips” for decades, and holy shit, rape still happens and victims can’t get justice.

Fuck that noise. Rape isn’t something that just happens to girls who get wasted. Rape is a decision that one human being (or several) makes against another. It’s well past time we focused on that decision and stopped talking about violent crime as something the victim allowed to happen to her.

 

The time has come for a campaign of terror against victim-blamers.

The incinerator hasn’t even cooled off from cremating Rehtaeh Parsons’s body, and now we hear of yet another girl who has committed suicide because some boys raped her, took pictures, and the Internet joined in treating her like shit.

Eight days after allegedly being sexually battered while passed out at a party, and then humiliated by online photos of the assault, 15-year-old Audrie Pott posted on Facebook that her life was ruined, “worst day ever,” and hanged herself.

[...]

“The family has been trying to understand why their loving daughter would have taken her life at such a young age and to make sure that those responsible would be held accountable,” said family attorney Robert Allard.

“After an extensive investigation that we have conducted on behalf of the family, there is no doubt in our minds that the victim, then only 15 years old, was savagely assaulted by her fellow high school students while she lay on a bed completely unconscious.”

Allard said students used cell phones to share photos of the attack, and that the images went viral.

You know what the onslaught of stories like this makes me feel?

Glee.

Vicious, maniacal, bloodthirsty glee, in looking forward to a fresh round of supposedly well-meaning Netizens talking about what the girl should have done differently, and how of course no one should be raped, but this wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t gone to the party, or had so much to drink, or associated with those boys, or, or, or…

I am so looking forward to tearing all those people apart.

By the time this one cools off—and I’m sure there’ll be plenty more teen suicides following rape and online humiliation in the meantime—my teeth will be so sharp.

Bring on the victim-blaming, muthafuckas! You will all be my chew toys!