Written by Kim Shults for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Todd Akin isn't the only one who believe myths about rape (Image: Donkey Hotey / Flickr)

“The events as you’ve described them, Kim, constitute a felony rape. If you do not make a statement, we will still proceed with prosecution and regard you as a hostile witness.”

I was 20 years old, on a semester leave from college. Those were the words of the police officer to me, in a hospital room, after I recounted what had happened to me a couple of days earlier.

It was my first interaction with the police, other than Officer Friendly visiting my elementary school class, or one of the officers my parents had befriended when they started a Neighborhood Watch program in the community where I was raised. Surely I could trust the police, I thought, to understand what had happened and to help me.

Although this was more than 20 years ago, I remember the moment vividly, because it was the acknowledgment, the naming, of something I had been struggling ferociously to reject: I was raped.

I desperately wanted it to be something else, like a misunderstanding between me and this man I’d been dating for a week or so. I felt locked in a life-or-death battle to deny this heinous violation, because it threatened to undo me–my sense of personal safety and well being, my mental health, my personhood.

In the years since, I’ve had lots of therapy, including group therapy with fellow survivors of sexual assault and abuse. I’ve volunteered at two rape crisis centers. One involved a speakers’ panel, visiting college classes, rehab facilities, police training sessions, even a group of men incarcerated for violent crimes including rape. At the other center, I served as hotline counselor and in-hospital victims’ advocate. Most of the other volunteers had stories of their own survival, and saw their volunteer efforts as a way to give back, to create and foster the same kind of community that enabled us to find our own voices and our sanity, to reclaim our selves and reassemble the pieces of our lives.

I rarely think about the assault and its aftermath anymore. The counseling, both giving and receiving, not to mention the tremendous education I got from the centers where I volunteered, helped make triggering a rare event for me. The experience became just one painful part of my life, rather than its central, agonizing, defining core. Occasionally (about every two years in the District of Columbia) I am called for jury duty. As part of voir dire, I have to tell the judge and attorneys that I have been the victim of a crime. When pressed for details, I recall them with startling clarity. My account is invariably met with compassion, followed by a quick dismissal.

Despite the officer’s words to me in that hospital room, the justice system and all those I encountered as I navigated my way through it seemed hell bent on proving that what I had experienced was not, in the words of Senate candidate Akin of Missouri, “legitimate rape.”

Read the rest of this entry →

Written by Carole Joffe for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

“I believe that if you have to choose between new life and existing life, you should choose new life. The person who has had an opportunity to live at least has been given that gift by God and should make way for new life on earth.”

These are the words of the late Paul Weyrich, one of the founders of the conservative Heritage Foundation and a driving force behind the creation of the movement we know today as the Religious Right. As the above quote implies, Weyrich had no patience for those in anti-choice circles who advocated for an abortion exception when the life of the pregnant woman was threatened.

This sentiment, voiced by Weyrich in 1984, has never entirely disappeared from some sectors of the anti-choice movement, though for quite some time, it was not a position widely spoken of. This is hardly surprising given that a huge majority of Americans support access to abortion in life-threatening situations.

However, the Republican Party’s official platform is one place where the absolute ban on any exceptions, including one to save a woman’s life, is retained.

Continue reading….

Written by Marianne Møllman for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

When you work on human rights issues, you notice a certain pattern in government denial of abuse. First line of defense: it didn’t happen. Or if it happened, they did it to themselves. Or if they didn’t, we certainly had nothing to do with it. Or if we did, we didn’t mean to. It doesn’t matter if the issue is torture, forced evictions, or garden-variety employment discrimination. The response from those in charge is often, if not always, the same.

Though this pattern is annoying, to say the least, I have lately become acutely aware of a much more depressing trend: the denial of abuse among those of us who should know better. Of course, we don’t call it denial. We call it “realism.” But the mechanism is the same.

1. “It didn’t happen.”

For decades, commentators and a large proportion of the US public have posited that racism no longer exists. Despite the fact that skin color and ethnicity matters with regard to just about any social indicator you care to look at — health, education, employment, housing, law enforcement — most white people believe the system we live in is racially just.

The writer Touré has described this situation as a “fog of racism:” a situation so subtle, it is blurred. “With this form of racism,” he says, “there is no smoking gun. There is no one calling you a nigger to your face. There’s no sign saying you can’t enter this building. … But … it’s there.”  

This is not much different from the many people who are genuinely puzzled at the need for continued attention to women’s issues in the United States now that “the genders are equal.” I hear this argument almost daily, despite ample evidence to the contrary, including the continued pay gap and the vicious attack on reproductive rights for women and not men.   

2. “They did it to themselves.”

Blaming the victim is par for the course in rape cases, a context in which it (rightfully) is denounced by women’s groups as sexist, discriminatory, and just plain wrong. But it is also common for individuals who identify sexual or racial discrimination to be called silly, overly sensitive, or even vindictive. 

When I firmly told off a male colleague at a former employer for caressing my waist, a female colleague immediately and loudly concluded that I “must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed.” 

And I can’t count the times I have been told that “black people are racist too,” as a manner to excuse racial discrimination. In sociology and social psychology, this phenomenon is called internalized oppression, that is the manner in which an oppressed group comes to use against itself the methods of the oppressor. More commonly, it is expressed as a desire to maintain the dignity of the group: we may suffer, but we don’t complain or sulk. 

3. “We had nothing to do with it.”

Most people don’t like to think of themselves or the people they know as bigots. This is natural and reasonable. It is hard to remain sane if you believe your actions are consistently insensitive or morally wrong. This, however, is not the same as noticing and addressing injustice — especially injustice that we, ourselves, are benefitting from. 

For example, I cannot in good conscience say that I have nothing to do with racism (or sexism, or hetero-centrism, or…) when I know that I benefit daily from a system that overwhelmingly recognizes my humanity and rights because of my Northern passport, fair skin, perceived heterosexuality, motherhood, and Judeo-Christian background (I could go on). Unlike my Peruvian ex-husband, I don’t have to think about what I wear when I travel in order to avoid additional hassles at airport security. And unlike those of my female friends who are non-gender-conforming and childless, I don’t have to defend my worth as a woman.  

4. “We didn’t mean to.”

When all other justifications have failed, the usual fall-back for governments who violate human rights is lack of intent: we may indeed have tortured a couple of prisoners, but it was unknowingly done and therefore, it is implied, of limited importance. 

This excuse is hardly ever used as a denial strategy for continued and entrenched racial, sexual, and other discrimination in the United States. And not because we recognize our responsibility in the stereotypes we perpetuate. But rather because we don’t. In fact, as shown above, we routinely deny the very existence of discrimination.

I am not advocating a collective guilt complex, or, worse, some sort of warped paternalistic pity-fest in which those of privileged background pound our chests in earnest distress and bemoan the supposedly pathetic lives of those considered beneath us. I am, however, advocating a reckoning that allows us to confront those stereotypes that result in the abuse of human rights. Even, and especially, when this means that some of us must give up our special privileges.

And here’s why: I know I am benefiting from many of the stereotypes that prevail in the country I have chosen to live in. I also know I am complicit in the resulting discrimination to the extent that I don’t challenge it.

Written by Alia Al-Khatib for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

On March 13, 2012, the Supreme Court in Argentina issued a decision in the case F., A. L. s/Medida autosatisfactiva, which clarified a woman’s right to obtain an abortion in all cases of rape.  This is particularly significant in a country where, according to an official estimate from the Health Ministry in Argentina, between 486,000 and 522,000 illegal abortions are performed annually. While this is an enormous achievement towards women’s access to safe and legal abortion in Argentina, ensuring that rape survivors are able to access abortion in practice represents an even greater challenge.

The decision emerged from a March 2010 case in the province of Chubut involving a 15-year-old girl, A. G., who was raped by her stepfather and became pregnant. With the support of her mother, A. G. sought an abortion by first requesting approval from the Criminal Court judge in the province. Due to an unclear understanding of the Penal Code in the lower courts of the province, she had to obtain authorization ultimately from the Superior Justice Court in Chubut, a process that lasted two months. A. G. was able to obtain an abortion, though only after a long period of delay and a great deal of unnecessary stress. Even when the pregnancy had already been terminated, the case proceeded to the Federal Supreme Court in order to seek clarification concerning the permissibility of abortion in certain circumstances.

According to Article 86 of the Argentine Penal Code, abortion is not punishable on two grounds: first, if the health or life of the mother is at risk and abortion is the only way to relieve this risk; second, if the pregnancy results from a rape or if the woman is mentally incapable of providing consent.  In this case, the Supreme Court considered the second clause. The Court determined that, in all cases of rape and not only in situations in which the woman is mentally incapable, a woman has not provided consent. For this reason, the Court provided an interpretation of the Penal Code that decriminalizes abortion in all cases of rape and that allows a rape survivor to obtain an abortion without the need for judicial proceedings. Furthermore, the Court made it clear that it is illegal to obstruct a rape survivor from exercising her right to abortion.

The Supreme Court’s decision is consistent with developments in international human rights law and standards. In one such case from July 2006, L. M. R. v. Argentina, L. M. R., a young woman with a mental age of between eight and ten years, became pregnant after being raped by her uncle. Though Article 86 of the Penal Code clearly permits abortion in this scenario, the public hospital initiated judicial proceedings to determine whether or not L. M. R. could terminate the pregnancy because staff members at the hospital disagreed as to whether she had grounds to do so. A juvenile court judge denied the abortion.

Following a series of appeals, the Supreme Court of Buenos Aires determined that L. M. R. could terminate the pregnancy based on the second clause of Article 86 of the Penal Code. Even after the Supreme Court of Buenos Aires issued this decision, the local hospital refused to perform the abortion and defended their position by claiming that the pregnancy was too advanced, though at the time L. M. R. was just under 20 weeks. With the help of local advocates, she ultimately obtained an illegal abortion in a private clinic. In March 2011, the Human Rights Committee of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights determined that denying L. M. R. an abortion violated her right to equality and non-discrimination embodied in the Covenant and that forcing her to continue with the pregnancy constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

The cases of L. M. R. and F., A. L. illustrate that, although the law provides for the right to abort in certain circumstances, women face many obstacles from anti-abortion legislators and judges, and even health providers who are meant to provide these services. Shortly after the Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of F., A. L., the governor of Salta, a province in northern Argentina, announced that he would not comply with the Supreme Court’s decision. Similarly, the Health Minister in Santa Rosa, the capital of La Pampa province, stated that public hospitals would not abide by the decision. Though not surprising, the refusal of these provincial leaders to comply with the federal case is futile and only serves to delay the implementation of protocol for non-punishable abortion in rape cases. Furthermore, the Archbishop of Santa Fe denounced the decision in an interview with a national newspaper, La Nación, and stated that there never exists a justification for abortion, a statement that carries a great deal of weight in a country, like others in Latin America, that remains heavily influenced by the Catholic Church.

Such reactions to this particular case remind pro-choice advocates that this decision is only the first step in ensuring that rape survivors can access abortion and that there is even more work ahead for women to gain access to safe, voluntary, and legal abortion in Argentina. Moving forward, local advocates plan to urge provinces to implement protocols in hospitals so that the law is clear to health providers and to women seeking abortions.

Written by Eleanor J. Bader for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

The cliché tells us that war is hell, but for female enlistees, the war on the domestic front—within their units–trumps that of the battlefield. In fact, a recent Veteran’s Administration survey revealed statistics that should have turned the military on its warmongering head: 30 percent of female vets told the interviewers that they had been assaulted by a male colleague and/or supervisor. Worse, 14 percent reported having been gang raped and 20 percent reported having been raped more than once.

Shockingly, these figures may be low since under-reporting of sexual crimes is known to be endemic.

Part of the blame for the reluctance to report rests with an unsympathetic military chaplaincy, one of the few places soldiers, sailors, reservists, national guardians, and marines can turn for counseling. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 20 percent of today’s 3000 military chaplains were trained at the ultraconservative Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary in Lynchburg, Virginia. Founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell and Elmer Towns in 1971, the school bills itself as the world’s largest seminary, something it attributes to its “conservative doctrinal position, its sound grounding in Bible teachings, and its reflection of core Christian essentials.” The school’s website clears up any definitional murkiness: “Liberty is committed to changing the entire world for Jesus Christ, first changing the world with its students, then equipping them to change the world around them.”

While most of its students are undoubtedly attracted to this mission, others attend Liberty because tuition is low: $1900 a term for residential students and $2200 for distance learners. During the 2011-2012 year, nearly 9000 students from 46 countries registered for online classes; of them, more than 1000 hope to complete the 72-credit program and become military chaplains. A severe shortage of armed forces clerics—an article posted on Times Union.com in February 2011 blames the deficiency on the military’s rigid age and physical requirements and on the reluctance of pastors/rabbis/imams to exchange the comforts of home for combat—will likely make this dream come true for many of them.

That this bodes badly for women and the LGBTQ community is a given. Read the rest of this entry →

Written by Editor-in-Chief Jodi Jacobson for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Kansas NOW’s state director and special to RH Reality Check Kari Ann Rinker testifies before a committee of Kansas state representatives.  She asks exactly how the legislature’s obsession with restricting women’s rights will lead to more jobs, and reminds Rep. Pete DeGraaf that you can’t “prepare for rape” like you would a spare tire.

Also read Rinker’s piece today on predictions for Kansas in 2012.

Written by Marianne Møllman for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

On Tuesday last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation‘s Criminal Justice Advisory Policy Board voted in favor of changing its definition of rape. The current definition, established in 1929, covered only female victims and archaically—and imprecisely—referred to intercourse as “carnal knowledge,” whereas the proposed change is gender-neutral, contains a relatively objective description of sex, and does not require physical force.

If the director of the FBI approves this change, it has the potential to change how we think about rape. At least in part. Another equally important part is the definition of rape in the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code which remains unchanged.

Here is why that matters.

As a society, the way we think about most social phenomena—including sexual assault—is influenced both by facts and morals. Neither is immovable or entirely objective. Facts depend on how you study and define them, and morals depend on who you are. But in the United States, the way we think about rape has, for decades, been operating with an outdated version of both.

With regard to the facts, the FBI’s rape definition determines what gets counted as rape in national crime statistics.  These figures are used, among other things, to decide on government use of resources for rape prevention, and to determine the success of government efforts to prosecute this crime.  A restricted definition is likely to lead to underestimates, which, in turn, leads to the assignment of insufficient resources to deal with rape. And, because government efforts to prosecute for rape often are judged by comparing number of rapes to numbers of cases filed, investigated, and prosecuted, the FBI’s definition also affects the evaluation of justice system effectiveness in this regard.

Of course, even if we use the current, potentially underestimated, figures for rape, resources allocated for prevention and prosecution of rape are insufficient and sometimes misused, and prosecution percentages appallingly low. However, a more accurate count of when and how rape happens can at least provide arguments for policy change.

With regard to criminal law—the ultimate guide on what society believes is “right” and “wrong”—our moral compass has been equally obsolete. The US Model Penal Code, which was adopted in 1962 by the American Law Institute to provide guidance for state criminal law reform, does not reflect what we have learned over the past four decades about rape through service delivery and care.  Unlike FBI’s rape definition, unfortunately, change to the Model Penal Code is not immediately imminent (though explorations of a potential project to do so are underway) and the deficiencies are potentially more glaring.

Over the years, scholars have explored many problems with the various sexual offence definitions in the model code.  The four most conspicuous are these:

• The need for an “objective manifestation” of force—that is, visible signs of physical force—before forced intercourse counts as rape in the eyes of the law  (we now know that threats, verbal violence, and other forms of non-physical coercion are equally if not more effective in subduing a victim);

• The definition of rape as always having a male perpetrator and female victim (the recent allegations of rape of boys by Penn State coach Sandusky have made abundantly clear that rape can happen across the board);

• The deliberate exclusion of marital rape from any criminal sanctions (it is now hopefully beyond discussion that spouses don’t owe each other sex—even the Mexican Supreme Court has now acknowledged this); and

• The focus on the victim’s sexual past and previous behaviour towards the perpetrators and others.

This latter part is particularly worrisome. 

The Model Penal Code explicitly excludes date rape and rape of former partners or even those the perpetrator has casually dated or maybe just kissed or held hands with (the victim must not be the “voluntary social companion” of the perpetrator at the time of the crime, and should not have “previously permitted him sexual liberties.”) This would also exclude rape against sex workers, which is a relatively frequent occurrence in part because many people believe sex workers automatically have consented to having sex with everyone because they make a living out of having sex with some.

At a time where the use of date rape drugs reportedly are on the rise, and where police officers already believe women are much more likely to lie about rape than victims of any other crime, there is no room for legal ambiguity.

Forced intercourse is rape whoever committed it, whatever the victim wore or said, and wherever it occurred.  The American Law Institute should follow the lead of the FBI and update its definitions to reflect reality.

Written by Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

See all our coverage of the Administration’s 2011 Emergency Contraception Reversal here.

This article was changed at 12:05 pm on Tuesday, December 13th.  The original mis-identified the author. It is Jessica Gonzales-Rojas. We apologize for the error.

Last month a ten-year-old girl in Puebla, Mexico gave birth, via c-section, to a premature infant. The girl says her stepfather raped her repeatedly. She only spoke out about the abuse after she gave birth when the glare of public attention gave her some measure of safety. Her stepfather immediately disappeared. This story has received wide attention in the Spanish language press and has sparked anger across Latin America.

I immediately thought of the girl from Puebla last week when President Obama expressed concern that an 11-year-old might go to a drugstore and purchase emergency contraception along with “bubble gum and batteries” because the drug could “have an adverse effect.” The image of a young child casually purchasing birth control was used to describe the “common sense” reasoning behind his administration’s refusal to allow the FDA to make emergency birth control available to young women below the age of seventeen. President Obama invoked the image of his daughters when discussing the drug store scenario, but I imagined the girl from Puebla, standing at the checkout counter with birth control, bubble gum and batteries in her hands. The profound injustice of her life brought me to tears, and the trivialization of her situation, as if girls at age ten would be purchasing birth control with the same weight that they would purchase the bubble gum, is enraging.

Whether President Obama was compelled to weave the bubble gum narrative for political gain or because it truly reflects his thinking, the result is the same. Complex sexual health issues get overly simplified, society focuses on stigma more than solution, and young people are left with policy decisions that don’t begin to match the weight of their lived experiences nor keep them “safe.”

What is repeatedly lacking in our narratives about adolescent sexual health is a human rights perspective. If our society were to seriously contemplate how to help children who are victims of sexual abuse, it would not be to make birth control access harder for teens. This tunnel vision ignores the complex social factors that foster abusive environments, and ignores the dignity and justice that every child deserves.

A real discussion about emergency contraception would focus on addressing the real needs of teens. Yet due to the structural barriers that our politicians and healthcare industry have erected, most Latina teens will not realistically be given this last chance to prevent an unintended pregnancy. More than any other racial or ethnic group, Latinas lack health insurance and their households struggle economically. Teens without health insurance or money will need to seek out a healthcare provider to write a prescription, collect the $50 for the co-payment to fill the prescription, and to take the pills within three days of unprotected intercourse. Furthermore, Latina teens that encounter additional barriers due to their immigration status or limited English-language proficiency are even more isolated. No one reasonably believes this is a recipe for success.

There has always been strong political interference in FDA rule making about emergency contraception. Politicians simply can’t let scientists and public health experts do what’s best for our young people. That’s why years ago the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health was a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit (Tummino v. Hamburg), which resulted in the court directing the FDA to make emergency contraception available to teens age seventeen and above. And that’s why today our lawyers from the Center for Reproductive Rights will be back in federal court fighting against the continued political interference in healthcare access for younger teens.

Written by Vicki Saporta for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Tell CWA There’s no ‘Cure-all’ for Rape

This week, while we were busy trying to get military insurance coverage for raped servicewomen, the anti-abortion group Concerned Women for America (CWA), showed us that they aren’t really that concerned about women at all.

In a letter to the Senate opposing the Shaheen amendment, CWA said the amendment would be giving “abortion as a ‘cure-all’” for rape.

This outrageous statement shows just how little CWA knows about how sexual violence affects women.

Written by Nancy Schwartzman for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Dear Friends,

This Saturday, the International SlutWalk movement finally comes to New York City. After thousands of women marched along the streets of hundreds of cities around the globe, we will gather in New York City’s Union Square together. At The Line Campaign, we recognize that there have been many valid concerns and contentions over the name—primarily that it doesn’t speak to many women of color, or others who are offended or who aren’t in a position to parade under a “slut” banner.

“Slut Walk” as a name began as a challenge to the notion that what might fall under a contemporary description of “sluttiness”—revealing clothing, flirting, drinking—does not equate consent to sex, and never justifies rape. However, somewhere along the line it became about re-appropriating the word “slut” into an empowering term, something that many women of color have expressed feels dangerous and counter productive to combating a problematic history of racialized sexuality.

SlutWalk was never meant to be divisive—but its controversial name was both a blessing and a curse, gaining media attention, but inciting a politically theatrical debate that veered the movement off-course from a universal struggle against victim-blaming and started dividing women along race lines.

SlutWalk is a grassroots movement, often spearheaded by young people organizing for the first time. Every movement has its growing pains, and we hope that SlutWalk can work through these contentions and mature into an inclusive and groundbreaking movement that inspires conversations and further organizing that lead to real change.

At The Line Campaign we see the SlutWalk Movement as a tidal wave against rape culture and victim-blaming, something that women of all backgrounds need one another’s support in resisting. Women have organized across the world, from Toronto to Buenos Aires to Mexico City, Kyrgizstan, and Morocco under the universal agreement that we, as women, have had enough. I hope that you will continue this movement by joining us to march from Union Square at 12 noon sharp; I will be speaking along with representatives from Radical Women, Red Umbrella, Queers for Economic Justice, Domestic Workers United, STARR, Sex Worker Outreach Project, International Socialist Organization, and other independent activists.

In Solidarity,

Nancy Schwartzman