Imagine consistent outrage over the use of slavery as a metaphor (disaggregating it from any lust to get Sarah Palin).

"It’s deplorable for people to work wages, slave wages, in the 21st century evolutionary country." That's a quote highlighted in this local CBS report, which is currently highlighted at the top of Drudge with the simple teaser "Slave wages."

Now, we were just talking about all the trouble Martin Bashir encountered after he went super-dramatic about how despicable it was for Sarah Palin to have used slavery as a metaphor, and I said:

Bashir — if he was ever worth having his own show — should be able to say very clearly that he intended to express the depth of the horror of slavery and therefore why it should never be used as a metaphor. Now, of course, he'd be open to the criticism that he only chose to go where he did because his target was Sarah Palin, but he could confess to that, say that was wrong, and dedicate himself to permanent across-the-board opposition to slavery as a metaphor.

So... imagine going Bashir over the use of the term "slave wages." Remember, all Sarah Palin did was use slavery as a metaphor, and she was grilled by Jake Tapper on CNN — here's the transcript — in what to me looks like an effort to make her say something off (as if Tapper wanted to be the new Katie Couric, ruining Sarah Palin all over again).

TAPPER: So, you obviously feel very passionate about the national debt. The other day, you gave a speech in which you compared it to slavery.

PALIN: To slavery. Yes. And that's not a racist thing to do, by the way, which I know somebody is going to claim it is.

TAPPER: Don't you ever fear that by using hyperbole like that -- obviously, you don't literally mean it's like slavery, which cost millions of people their lives and there was rape and torture. You're using it as a metaphor. But don't you ever worry that by using that kind of language, you -- you risk obscuring the point you're trying to make?

PALIN: There is another definition of slavery and that is being beholden to some kind of master that is not of your choosing. And, yes, the national debt will be like slavery when the note comes due.

More at the link. You see what Tapper is doing, playing the old game of Screwing with Sarah. And Bashir just came tripping after Tapper. He can get in there too. They want to tap her and bash her. Rape metaphor intended, because I'm trying to highlight the political use of metaphor and responsive arguments that this metaphor is not allowed. Bashir said:

Given her well-established reputation as a world class idiot, it’s hardly surprising that [Palin] should choose to mention slavery in a way that is abominable to anyone who knows anything about its barbaric history. So here’s an example. One of the most comprehensive first-person accounts of slavery comes from the personal diary of a man called Thomas Thistlewood, who kept copious notes for 39 years. Thistlewood was the son of a tenant farmer, who arrived on the island of Jamaica in April 1750, and assumed the position of overseer at a major plantation.

What is most shocking about Thistlewood’s diary is not simply the fact that he assumes the right to own and possess other human beings, but is the sheer cruelty and brutality of his regime. In 1756, he records that a slave named Darby ‘catched eating kanes; had him well flogged and pickled, then made Hector, another slave, s-h-i-t in his mouth.’ This became known as ‘Darby’s Dose,’ a punishment invented by Thistlewood that spoke only of inhumanity.

And he mentions a similar incident in 1756, his time in relation to a man he refers to as Punch. ‘Flogged Punch well, and then washed and rubbed salt pickle, lime juice and bird pepper. Made Negro Joe piss in his eyes and mouth.' I could go on, but you get the point....

When Mrs. Palin invokes slavery, she doesn’t just prove her rank ignorance. She confirms if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, she would be the outstanding candidate.

I'm asking you to imagine consistency about the use of metaphor, disaggregating it from the lust to get Sarah Palin or somebody else you think is asking for it. Imagine doing the Bashir routine when anyone talks about "slave wages" or being a "wage slave." That's what Bashir would have needed to do to prove his good faith in his outrage over the cheap deployment of the idea of slavery. It's not something you can realistically imagine, and that's why we know it was Bashir, even more than Sarah Palin, who carelessly appropriated the suffering of others to make a political point.

Bonus: Imagine what Bashir — in a quest for consistency — would have to say to Bryan Ferry:



By the way, Bashir's Thistlewood story was about torture, and torture can occur in many contexts other than slavery. True consistency would require him to rage against the use of torture as a metaphor. He ought to lose his cool whenever he sees, say, a headline like "Homework torture for some gifted students."

Be consistent and principled about metaphor or eat shit and die.

"Why is it that women can’t think if drunk but men can?"

"Why is it always about men controlling themselves and being responsible for any sex act while women are treated as children?" asks Dr. Helen.

You can theorize about a double standard, but I think there is one clear practical point. The article under discussion — the Roxanne Jones piece that we were talking about yesterday here — is warning men about how to protect themselves from accusations of rape. That's what men are afraid of and therefore it's what don't-be-a-victim advice aimed at men looks like. Women tend to be afraid of getting raped, and don't-be-a-victim advice aimed at them comes in the form of warning them about what they're wearing and how much they are drinking.

As I said in my post yesterday, "Telling males to send some nice texts is interestingly similar to telling females not to go traipsing about in short skirts." And we all know that advice about how not to be a victim can be aggravating, because it seems to minimize the wrongs committed by the actual bad actor.

If men were more afraid of rape — and they certainly can be raped — maybe we'd see more advice about things they should do to avoid getting raped. And if women were more afraid of getting falsely accused of rape — and it's possible for a woman to commit rape — maybe we'd be lecturing them about how they need to be careful about getting (and documenting) consent.

I would replace Dr. Helen's question with: Why do we always assume that the man wants sex? Why assume that men, simply because they are men, are "asking for it"?

If your answer is something along the lines of well, duh, then you need to see how you are contributing to the dynamic. 

"I think a lot about what it means to exist as a Female-Identified Woman in this world when people very, very close to me use 'rape' as an ordinary verb, like feel or eat or think or do."

"The answer is not that I surround myself with Bad People, and certainly not that I involve myself with those who intend harm."

These are smart people; they have great jobs, work hard. Some of them have known struggle. Others were raised in big, happy, wealthy families. They’re decent. They’re in love. Passionate. Artists. Good people who will be there when you call them. People who have families and buy presents for babies. People who can quote a whole movie. People who matter.

So why do they feel the need to reappropriate such a word as “rape”?
By their definition, they use “rape” to signify the “incessant want of something:”

“I’m going to rape that pizza.”
“I’m feeling kinda rapey about that restaurant.”
“Oh my god I would rape a six pack right now.”
“That dump I took raped my butthole.”

This is the first I've heard of this problem. So... what do you think?

Is this usage similar to the casual, metaphorical use of other verbs of violence like "kill"— That joke killed me — and "murder" — The Lions murdered the Packers yesterday?

Or is "rape" a special case because there are, out there, rape victims whose PTSD might be triggered and potential rapists may lose their last shred of restraint and human decency?

And by they way, what's with this delusion that the people around you are good? Do you realize how much trouble has been caused in the world over the millennia by indulgence in this cognitive distortion?

And what is your test of goodness? Artists?! Artists get the goodness stamp of approval? Here's an artist I read about this morning: Ian Watkins. It's much more likely that artists think the rules don't apply to them and feel superior to the conventions of your boring fussy little world.

And "People who can quote a whole movie"?! First, what movie? Second, why is the memorization of movie scripts a test of goodness? It's nice to find someone who can approximate lines from movies you like, but who is this dubious character who launches a full recital of — what? — "Scarface"?

"Crazy, I know, but I've actually been encouraging my son and his friends to use sexting — minus the lewd photos — to protect themselves..."

"... from being wrongly accused of rape. Because just as damning text messages and Facebook posts helped convict the high-schoolers in Steubenville of rape, technology can also be used to prove innocence."

Writes Roxanne Jones of ESPN. She's getting some attention for this, notably from Melissa McEwan, who's the type of blogger who, approaching this topic, begins with "[Content Note: Rape culture.]," which is — if I understand the culture of people who say "rape culture" —an enactment of the belief that encountering the topic of rape triggers a post-traumatic experience. Why doesn't the warning itself cause alarm? Isn't that the nature of warning? I suspect that the message isn't so much to the individuals who experience post-traumatic stress but to everyone: Never forget how deeply rape hurts.

After the warning, McEwan writes:

This is an actual fucking article authored by former EPSN [sic] vice president Roxanne Jones and printed at CNN in the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and thirteen: "Young men, get a 'yes' text before sex."

Hey, why didn't we get a warning that you were going to use vulgar language and mock Jesus? Because McEwan is selective about which sensitivities to pet and which to kick in the ribs. It's a way to be funny, and fuck you if you don't laugh. Plus, some people like Jesus Jones. I kinda do. Saying "Jesus Jones" is like saying "Jiminy Christmas" or whatever cornball/hip substitution for "Jesus Christ" amuses you.

[Roxanne Jones] actually posits that a text message can verify consent, as though it's not possible to ask "Do you want to have sex with me?" followed by a series of any other conceivable questions that might elicit a yes, and then delete the interceding messages to make the "yes" look like a direct reply, irrespective of what the actual reply was.

But what Jones — Roxanne, not Jesus — wrote was: "Never have sex with a girl unless she's sent you a text that proves the sexual relationship is consensual beforehand." All McEwan is saying is that some efforts at concocting text evidence could be fake. But Jones said "a text that proves," without elaborating what text would be adequate proof. And McEwan doesn't seem to realize that deleted interceding messages would be recoverable, and the deletions themselves would be evidence against the accused. If Jones's idea is any good, it's because she's encouraging building relationships — however minimal — around sexual encounters and doing so in writing so you can defend yourself if you are falsely accused.

Give Jones some credit for saying "relationship." She also recommends "follow[ing] up any sexual encounter with a tasteful text message saying how you both enjoyed being with one another — even if you never plan on hooking up again." That's also about maintaining relationships. If your concern is avoiding accusations — false, true, or true-ishly false — don't do things that provoke the person who might go on the attack. Telling males to send some nice texts is interestingly similar to telling females not to go traipsing about in short skirts. It's don't-be-a-victim advice that some people find aggravatingly close to letting the victimizer off the hook.

But, of course, McEwan doesn't want to talk about the potential for false or false-ish accusations. She rails at Jones for talking about "stupid girls" who get drunk, throw themselves at young men, and then accuse them of rape:

Ms. Jones, I was not raped because I am stupid. I was raped because I had the misfortune of being in the presence of a rapist who was determined to rape me. Fuck off.

McEwan is an enforcer of the doctrinaire position that the issue of false accusations is such a distraction from the real problem that anyone who mentions it should be slammed down hard. Isn't it odd that extreme sensitivity about rape is expressed by telling another woman to "fuck off"? Why is fucking used as the metaphor for the expression of extreme hate? It sounds as though, in the mind of the person deploying the metaphor, fucking equals rape. It's a violent hateful action directed at the woman's body.

What is the true scope of this "rape culture" we are being warned about?

What Rush Limbaugh is almost surely planning to say to those who are outraged at his rape analogy.

Rush Limbaugh likes to throw out things that he knows liberal media types will propagate. He knows what gets them, and he's using them to go viral. It doesn't always work out right for him, and the Sandra Fluke incident ended up hurting him, but often it creates excitement around his show and keeps his reputation relatively fresh. People love him and hate him, and that's keeps the old radio show going.

This weekend lots of the sort of people who love to hate him are raging about the analogy he used in talking about the ending of the Senate filibuster:

Let’s say, let’s take 10 people, in a room in a group. And the room is made up of six men and four women, okay? The group has a rule, that the men cannot rape the women. The group also has a rule that says any rule that will be changed must require six votes of the ten to change the rule.

Every now and then some lunatic in the group proposes to change the rule to allow women to be raped. But they never were able to get six votes for it. There were always the four women voting against it, they always found two guys, well the guy that kept proposing that women be raped kinda got tired of it. He was in the majority and he said, you know what, we’re going to change the rule. Now all we need is five."

And the women said, "You can't do that."

"Yes, we are. We're the majority, we're changing the rule." Then they vote. Can the women be raped? Well, all it would take then is half the room. You could change the rule to say three. You could change the rule say three people want it, it's gonna happen. There's no rule.

We've got Carolyn Bankoff in New York Magazine ("a vile, profoundly inappropriate rape analogy"), Amanda Marcotte ("The rape comparison is distasteful and casually misogynist"), and Politico collects the tweets:

Ana Marie Cox, a political columnist for the Guardian US, wrote that “Limbaugh using a rape analogy to explain the filibuster really takes mansplaining to a level I never imagined” — or as ChartGirl.com founder Hilary Sargent dubbed it, “rape-splaining.” Media Matters research fellow Oliver Willis tweeted that “rush limbaugh really games out how you could theoretically vote to rape women. hes just throwing it out there folks,” while fellow Media Matters colleague Todd Gregory called it “dumb, glib bullshit” that “is such a perfect encapsulation of rape culture, it should be put in a museum.” And The Huffington Post’s Elise Foley and Sabrina Siddiqui also weighed in, with Foley tweeting “Class act, that guy” in response to Siddiqui’s comment, “In today’s edition of offensive rape analogy.”

Come on. It's a trap. Don't you know your most basic famous aphorisms about democracy? "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch." Usually attributed, probably incorrectly, to Benjamin Franklin, it vividly drives home the problem with simple majority rule.

I'm virtually 100% certain that on his Monday show, Rush Limbaugh will laugh at his critics for their ignorance of the famous aphorism. He can easily point out that he did not minimize the seriousness of rape. In the aphorism, the lamb is killed by the wolves. His analogy substitutes rape for killing, men for wolves, and women for the lamb. Really, it's men who are getting the negative stereotype, so misogyny is exactly the wrong word. A lamb is the very symbol of innocence. And it is killed by those terrible, selfish wolves. Knowing Rush, I predict he'll pivot to a discussion of abortion: Maybe women don't realize that killing an innocent is terrible. Maybe that's why they didn't understand the workings of his analogy.

If he says all this on Monday, I won't know whether I've figured out his devious plan or if he reads my blog. If you're reading this, Rush, feel free to steal my ideas and you don't even have to say: It should have been so obvious that my analogy was built on that old wolves-and-lamb aphorism, but these idiots are blinded by their perpetual grievance. Well, I've got to say that one female saw what was clearly there, and that was the unusually perspicacious law professor blogger Ann Althouse.

ADDED: I do get why people feel antagonized when Rush — who's been taunting feminists for years — whips out a rape analogy and why they choose to exploit the occasion to attack Rush again — as feminists have done for years. I'm explaining a syndrome of baiting, taking the bait, and exulting. Rush doesn't always win, and sometimes both sides win, each in the minds of different audiences.

I know that many people think that rape should be sacrosanct in a way that murder is not, and that it cannot be used casually in jokes and metaphors and that even serious discussions of the subject require advance warnings so as not to inflict mental pain on rape survivors. We use murder as metaphor constantly in jokes and figures of speech, and murder is an even greater crime than rape. I'll bet some readers feel inclined to say: Yeah, but murder victims are dead. But that's my point: We say lightweight things about murder all the time. (And victims of attempted murder are alive, as are the loved ones of murder victims. These people are around to feel mental pain.)

ALSO: I realize that Rush's analogy deals with a more complex scenario than the old wolves-and-lamb aphorism. The wolves and lamb had only a simple democracy, with no safeguard added to protect the minority. The Senate filibuster rule was a safeguard for the minority, and Rush's point had to deal with the problem of using a simple majority to abolish the safeguard for the minority. So if you wanted to talk about lambs and wolves, you'd have to develop the story so that the lambs had believed they were protected by a system in which they could not be outvoted by the wolves, and then the wolves used their majority to change the system and then they outvoted the lambs.

Of course, in the real life of lambs and wolves, there is no system to lure the lambs into complacency, there is no pre-lunch vote, and everyone knows all along that wolves eat lambs and lambs don't eat wolves. The predator and prey are locked into place, and the wolves should never be trusted.

In the real life of men and women, all are threatened by violence, including violence to themselves and to the people they care about, and nearly all men care about at least some women. Only some men — probably quite few — want to be free to commit rape, and it's hard to imagine any man wanting all the other men to be free to get away with raping any women that they want. It's not helpful to try to think about the damned filibuster in these terms because unlike lambs and wolves — where you totally get that all the wolves want to eat all the lambs — there's no reality to the scenario.

So it is fair to say that Rush selected rape as the analogy in order to get a rise out of his usual antagonists, who responded to his call. They were seduced by his allure.

Now, in real life of the Senate, it's quite different from lambs and wolves or men and women, because the majority position switches back and forth over the years and both parties are equally eager to further their interests as they see them and equally tempted to take advantage when they have the majority. The Senate had a structural safeguard that protected the minority and it was always subject to repeal by simple majority. The rule survived because each party, when it had the majority, could picture itself back in the minority. To use a temporary majority to take away the protection of the minority was to accept a risk and to activate the predatory nature of their long-time opponents. In this setting, no one is eaten (like the lamb) and no one is raped (like the women). All survive in an endless political fight that just got nastier.

Therefore we do need some better analogies.

"The problem with anti-rape underwear."

Headline at the Guardian. Guess what "the" problem is with anti-rape underwear? That is, assuming there's one problem — because it would be easier to think of 5 problems — what's the problem?

"Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of this story is the virtually unanimous support for the 'survivor' from anti-rape activists and their supporters."

"Letters published in The Post, from women and men alike, deplored the 'disheartening' skepticism about the 'poor woman's' claims and decried the pernicious sway of 'the rape culture.'" 

[A] class of 2013 alumnus... chided "misguided skeptics" for failing to realize that "it takes incredible courage for a woman to come forward and report a rape," since she subjects herself to "massive public scrutiny."...

A column on ThinkProgress.org.... suggested that eyewitness accounts confirming that both participants in the act were "very, very drunk" proved that, no matter how consensual it looked, it fit Ohio University's criteria for sexual assault.  (Actually, the university policy quoted in the column states that a person is unable to consent if "incapacitated" due to alcohol or other factors.)  The writer, Tara Culp-Resser, did not seem to realize that by her definition, the man can be considered a victim of sexual assault as much as the woman — leading to the absurd conclusion that they were raping each other.

That's actually not "absurd." In statutory rape, depending on how the statute is written, both can be committing the crime. If you want to define "sexual assault" broadly, it can be possible for both to be committing the offense. If a campus would like to exercise more parental control over students, it can say no drinking and sex. You can think about why that may or may not be a good policy, but it's not absurd. In the old days, the rule was just: No sex.

The question of what is "rape" — or a "rape culture" — can be distracting. We're talking about a university's disciplinary code, not putting people in prison. The case at the link shows the problem of treating the female as the presumptive victim in drunken-but-otherwise-seemingly-consensual sex. But what's so bad about treating them both as violators of a campus code forbidding drunken sex?

As I said the other day, it might help to ease up on the "rape culture" talk and discuss whether there's a "bad sex" culture.

Student newspaper editor extensively explains decision to publish a letter questioning the existence of a "rape culture."

You have to try to imagine the criticism the editor (Katherine Krueger) must have heard. She goes on at such great length. On the blog yesterday, we talked about the letter, here. The newspaper is The Badger Herald, at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.

Krueger begins with the assumption that we are living in something that deserves to be called "rape culture":

The existence of ‘rape culture’ on college campuses — the social conditions that allow for the normalization of sexual assault and violence — leads to one in four college women being assaulted before they reach graduation.  For evidence that rape culture is alive, well and thriving on the University of Wisconsin campus, look no further than David Hookstead’s letter to the editor.

So Hookstead is not only a denialist; his denialism is proof of the existence of the culture. There should be a name for the culture where there are articles of faith so strong that if you say X is not true, you are viewed as reinforcing the proposition that X is true.

Krueger condemns her fellow student in language so strong that I had to go back and reread his letter to try to figure out what was so inflammatory. Krueger calls it "morally repugnant, patriarchal... offensive... the embodiment of rape culture... horrifically misguided... repellent... reprehensible... hateful... infuriating... ugly."

Isn't that a little over-the-top? Is no one allowed anymore to muse about the location of the line between bad sex and the crime of rape? Must one become a social pariah for questioning whether the activities of some criminals means their crime is our culture?

As ugly as Hookstead’s version of reality is, this is an actual view held by more than a few UW students. 

"More than a few"... but is that enough to make it our culture? Anyway, Krueger says condemning Hookstead's views is not enough:

If you’re disgusted and angry, this is your starting point. It’s only by opening the dialogue and banishing topics like sexual assault from our list of cultural taboos that we can begin to affect [sic?] a lasting change on campus.

So... does that mean students are supposed to talk about it or not talk about it? I suspect the message to those who have anything even mildly challenging to say is: Shut up or we will ruin you.

Krueger ends by expressing regret for her failure to put a "trigger warning" on Hookstead's letter. Now, there's: "Editor’s Note: trigger warning for sexual assault."

ADDED: I see Hookstead got attention in Jezebel last August, here.

AND: As MadisonMan in the comments tells me, I actually did blog that at the time.

ALSO: I'd just like to say there are so many issues here: 1. I'm not sure who, if anyone, I feel sorry for, but I know I don't feel sorry for any members of my own generation that may have made Ms. Krueger feel she had to talk like that. 2. Young people: Break loose, be free, say new things, dare! 3. What is the meaning of "culture"? How do you define that term? If you use it loosely, but someone else wants to use it narrowly, why are you — especially in a university — fighting instead of having an intellectual conversation about what "culture" is? 4. Who is being repressed and who is repressive, and why doesn't everyone care? 5. In what might be called a "culture of repression," is it any surprise that people are drinking too much and having bad sex? 6. Can we talk about whether we have a "culture of bad sex"? If so, why? 7. Isn't the real rape question: What should be reported to the police for prosecution? And if we put that in a separate category, would we be able to talk about what bad sex is and why we're having it? 8. What about love?

"The Badger Herald printed a letter from a political science junior titled, 'Rape Culture Does Not Exist.'"

And we're told, it's gone viral.

“When I was consulting with our managing editor and our opinion editors about whether or not to publish it, we knew there would be a pretty strong response from the campus,” said [the newspaper’s editor, Katherine Krueger]. “I think it’s important to stare something ugly in the face every once in a while to be reminded that there’s still a lot of work to do.”

Okay. Stare at "something ugly" and do some "work."

ADDED: Here's the student's letter, with comments. Please read it and try to understand why it is stirring people up so much.

ALSO: Here's the full text of Krueger's response. 

Normally, we admire actors whose performance looks like real life. But if it's actually real...

... and we're being scammed into thinking it's acting, there's no performance that can impress us, only the illusion of performance.

Once you know it's real, you can't admire the acting. You could admire the nerve of the performers to go through the ordeal, but only if they chose to do it that way. Were they paid enough? Did they willingly submit to whatever surprises the filmmaker had in store for them? Did they know there were limits to what would be imposed on them? What power did they have to draw the line?

What if you knew that the actress in a rape scene had no idea what the scene would be and a willing actor was directed to rape her on the set? Assume that afterwards, she was convinced that it worked to produce what looks like a great acting performance, for which she might receive an Oscar, and she was persuaded to keep the director's methodology secret. But the truth slipped out somehow. Would you refuse to see the movie because of the way it was made? If others chose to see it, would you denounce them as moral cretins?

Related questions:

What did Alfred Hitchcock do to Tippi Hedren to produce the footage that became the movie "The Birds"?

Should an actor get drunk to play drunk?

Do we prefer to watch love scenes with actors who really love each other or actors who have to act like they love someone they hate?

Did Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie fall in love because they got so deeply into the roles they were playing in "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" and never found their way back to their previous personas?

If an actor stays in character for months — on set and off — is that acting or something like madness?

Are very young children playing movie roles undeserving of acting credit because their performances arise out of their childish inability to distinguish fantasy from reality?

What do they say to little child actors to make them cry and emote?  

Were animals harmed in the making of that movie?

Comedy = tragedy + time.

Yesterday, this blog was devoted to the topic of comedy and tragedy, with particular emphasis on the aphorism "Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel," which might be the most famous + insightful thing ever said about comedy and tragedy. The competition is that Mel Brooks quote I was redoing the other day — "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die" — and the one you see above in the title to this post — "Comedy is tragedy plus time."

That aphorism invites criticism. One is that it should be phrased "tragedy plus time allows comedy" — because you still have to say something funny about the old tragedy. Another is that it may be that we feel free to make light of old-enough tragedies, but that's something pretty disgusting about us, as is extremely well explained by the comedian David Mitchell here:

"How I’ve wished, over the years, I’d never told anyone about that poke in the butt."

A sentence in "The Girl," the authorship of which is credited to Samantha Geimer, whom Roman Polanski raped in 1977, and Lawrence Silver, who is Geimer's lawyer, and someone named Judith Newman, to whom the NYT book reviewer Lisa Schwarzbaum attributes the book's "lively, pugnacious narrative voice."

Schwarzbaum says the book is "a feisty, almost jaunty you’re-not-the-boss-of-me account" and "autobiography as a feminist tactic for Geimer to own her sexuality," because — I guess — that's what the lawyer and the pugnacious-narrative-voice provider figured would be the best approach to selling a graphic tale of the poke in the butt anal rape of a child.

Unfathomably, Schwarzbaum goes for a comic tone: "And wasn’t that what second-wave feminists fought for: our butts, ourselves?"

"This case definitely falls in the rarest of rare categories and warrants the exemplary punishment of death."

Said the judge, in India. 

Earlier, protesters outside the court had demanded that the four men should be hanged.

As they were escorted to the courtroom, the four men shouted to the crowd: "Brothers, save us!"

Why is this called "The Anti-Male Craziness at Yale"?

KC Johnson attacks Yale University's regulation of sex, which might be crazy, but I don't see the justification for calling it "anti-male."

This week the university produced a document... which tried to explain its approach.... The document listed eight "scenarios" that fit under the university's extraordinarily broad conception of "non-consensual sex."

Johnson highlights only one of Yale's fictional scenarios:

"Morgan and Kai are friends who begin dancing and kissing at a party. They are both drunk, although not to the point of incapacitation. Together they decide to go to Kai's room. They undress each other and begin touching each other. Morgan moves as if to engage in oral sex and looks up at Kai questioningly. Kai nods in agreement and Morgan proceeds. Subsequently, without pausing to check for further agreement, Kai begins to perform oral sex on Morgan. Morgan lies still for a few minutes, then moves away, saying it is late and they should sleep."

According to Yale, "Kai" is a guilty of having had nonconsensual sex, a term that most people would consider to be rape. 

Note to Johnson: The statutes in my state use the terms "sexual contact" and "sexual intercourse" (not "rape") and "sexual intercourse" includes cunnilingus and fellatio. [ADDED: Statutes defining crimes.]

But quite aside from that, what's with "anti-male"? I have absolutely no idea whether Morgan and Kai are 2 men, 2 women, or a man and a woman. And if they're a man and a woman, I can't tell if Morgan's the man and Kai is the woman or Kai is the man and Morgan is the woman. I think Yale's fiction writers are deliberately making the sex of these 2 characters inscrutable, which makes the scenario damned hard to visualize.

I am concerned about the due process problems in the way universities enforce their sex codes as they bumble along trying to make the campus climate welcoming for everybody, but I'm drawn toward pitying whoever got the assignment to write those scenarios. Pitying and laughing at. Imagine needing to describe explicit sex that is utterly not titillating and duly instructive.  Morgan moves as if to engage in oral sex and looks up at Kai questioningly. It's up to you to picture that move and that look. Later, Morgan fails to look and Kai moves. Or Kai fails to look and Morgan moves. Who are these people? What are they doing?!

"A Texas father who discovered a man raping his five-year-old daughter and beat him to death with his bare hands will not be charged with homicide under state law."

"Under Texas state law, deadly force is authorized and indeed, justified in order to stop an aggravated sexual assault and coupled with the fact that the harrowing 911 calls made by the father back claims he even tried to save the pedophile's life led to the grand jury's decision."

"Washington Post’s ‘second look at statutory rape’ click-trolling inspires #WaPoPitches."

"Is the Washington Post getting into Slate’s business of click-trolling, or do the paper’s editors really think it’s time for a national conversation on sex between teachers and underage students?"

"If a TV Shrink makes my daughter feel guilty b/c she was date raped while drunk, can I punch him in his dick?"

Just one of the #DrPhilQuestions Dr. Phil inspired — simply by asking "if a girl is drunk, is it OK to have sex with her?"

"The stories of young men sexually assaulting young women seem never to stop... and there are times when I find myself darkly wondering if there’s some ineradicable predatory streak in the male subset of our species."

Writes Frank Bruni, beginning his NYT column, which proceeds to tell us about a psychology professor who blames the culture and is in the business of fixing the culture. The military uses him to teach and advise on the prevention of sexual violence, so it's in his economic interest to promote the theory that it's the culture and not the innate biology. On the other hand, even if a tendency toward violence is inborn, we demand that people overcome destructive urges and channel their energy in a positive way.

Reading the line quoted above, what I found myself wondering — darkly wondering? — is whether Bruni should have noted that he is gay and thus not susceptible to the "ineradicable predatory streak" that he imagines leads to the sexual assault of young women. Is it wrong to write something like that about men and not address his own exclusion from the category he's derogating? Maybe. There's added authority in running down one's own kind.

A more serious omission here, however, is that sexual assault in the military happens to men even more than to women. If homosexual encounters are a big part of the problem, then Bruni is protecting his own kind, and the eclipsing of his exclusion from the heterosexual group he insults becomes much more problematic.

Young Cory Booker — groping women or appeasing women?

The Daily Caller, apparently hungry to make Cory Booker look bad, has an article with the headline "In college column, Cory Booker revealed time he groped friend, and she resisted." I think we're supposed to find it significant that when he was 15 and making out with a willing partner, on a bed, he put his hand on her breast and she rejected the move. This is nothing, of course, but it's something not because he "groped" a girl, but because he used the incident, years later, to score with women.

He was at Stanford, in peak feminist times — post-Anita Hill, pre-Monica Lewinsky — and the column was titled "So Much for Stealing Second." In the manner of the time, he told his "own personal story" to "make a point" and "make people think":

“When grandiose statements entrenched in politically correct terminology are made, many may listen but few will hear,” Booker continued. “When I hesitated in writing this column, I realized I was basking in hypocrisy. So instead I chose to write and risk.”

Booker the 15-year-old may have been awkward, but Booker the college student is slick, speaking to his female peers the way they wanted. Eschew abstractions and grandiosity. Confess your male transgressions. Within the 1992 feminist environment, getting personal — "risking" — was the inroad to favor. He expresses regret about his susceptibility to "messages that sex was a game, a competition," and he'd seen getting the hand onto the breast as reaching "second base." Ironically, he was still trying to score with women, this time the college women, and admitting that he thought of sex as a game was a way to compete in the new game.

The Daily Caller writer, Charles C. Johnson, was probably a child when Booker wrote that column. Johnson doesn't seem to understand the context at all. Or maybe he understands and he's just shamelessly appropriating this material to launch the rumor that Booker is a sex offender. Is Johnson dumb or malicious? The result is malicious, but I suspect Johnson is dumb, because look at this:

"After having my hand pushed away once, I reached my ‘mark,’” Booker wrote.

Booker didn’t elaborate on what his “mark” was, but whatever happened, it was enough to haunt him for years to come.

His "mark" was obviously the breast. The column is titled "So Much for Stealing Second." I know these kids today have relabeled the bases, but how can you not understand what "mark" means in that context? Or does Johnson understand but maliciously intend to insinuate that Booker reached some other part of the woman? Clue to Johnson: Third base was fondling the genitals, and to get the penis into the vagina was to reach home.

I got to Johnson's nonsense via Instapundit who teased it with "Reverse the sexes and there's no story here." But there is no story here! Instapundit quotes 2 sentences of Johnson's and repeats the words "groped" and "grabbed" to refer to what the 15-year-old did to the girl's breast. But Booker writes of a very slow and gentle move of a hand toward the breast of a female who had intruded on him with "an overwhelming kiss" when he'd offered her a hug at midnight on New Year's Eve. So actually, the sexes were reversed, and Instapundit — in the midst of his sarcasm about how we overlook female sexual aggression — overlooked female sexual aggression.

If anyone was assaulted, it was Booker: "As the ball dropped, I leaned over to hug a friend and she met me instead with an overwhelming kiss." Then: "As we fumbled upon the bed, I remember debating my next 'move' as if it were a chess game." He was 15, fumbling, and thinking about chess. How old was she? How did they get to that bed? Booker was using what he had to make his feminist points to Stanford women in 1992. He had nothing, but he made something out of nothing for rhetorical purposes to lecture college men about how they ought to behave toward women.

If he did anything wrong, it's that he sought so earnestly to please women, adapting to the preferences they seemed to express, first, by trying to perform appropriately for the woman who imposed "an overwhelming kiss" on him and, then, by trying to talk the talk of the college feminists.

Rachel Jeantel made it sound like Travon Martin profiled George Zimmerman... or... what is a "creepy ass cracker"?

TalkLeft describes "a train wreck" witness:

She said (on direct exam no less by the prosecutor) that shortly after first spotting Zimmerman, Martin described Zimmerman to her as a "Creepy-a*s Cracker" and later, described Zimmerman a few times as "this ni*ga" (as in this ni*ga following him.) The two minute clip above is of Rachel and the prosecutor repeating creepy a*s cracker over and over as the court reporter struggles to make out what she's saying, Rachel explaining that creepy as* cracker means a white person, then and expressing concern the creepy guy might be a rapist.

So "cracker" is a way of saying white guy, but "ni*ga" is apparently just a way to say guy? I can understand that, but I'd like to ask a few questions — out of curiosity. I'm not saying the defense lawyer should ask this on cross-examination. (Which should make for some interesting TV today.) I'd like to know whether perhaps Trayvon Martin perceived Zimmerman as a person of color and not a white man at all. You assume that there's no way he'd say "cracker" if he didn't see him as white? But he didn't say "cracker." He said "creepy ass cracker." I understand the use of "ass" as an intensifier connected to the adjective "creepy." Creepy-ass cracker, as in very creepy cracker.

But "ass" could go with "cracker" — "ass-cracker." The conversation continued, according to Jeantel: "So... he told me the man was looking at him, so I had to think it might have been a rapist."

Why rapist? A man raping a man? How common is that as a fear? But it was the first thing Jeantel thought to say after he said creepy-ass cracker/creepy ass-cracker. The term "ass cracker" could easily mean a man who rapes a man, especially one who goes after a teenaged boy.

Urban Dictionary has some definitions of "ass cracker" that predate this trial:

1. ass cracker...
One who not knowing the code or combination to a particular slice of ass is nonetheless able to get inside the ass...

2. Ass Cracker...
One who engages in anal sex.
That wanker is an ass cracker.

3. Ass Cracker...
A term used to describe a man with a large enough penis, to brake the anus of the woman or man he is having anal intercourse with.
"Damn, his's cock is so big, he is definatly an ass cracker!"

The word "creepy" makes special sense if you reinterpret the "ass" to go with "cracker." Martin said a man was following him, looking at him. He might have thought Zimmerman was a man out looking for sex and was watching him for that reason. What conversations had Martin had in the past with Jeantel about worries of this kind. She "had to think it might have been a rapist."

TalkLeft says:

She describes how Martin was "right by his father's house" after he lost Zimmerman, and refused to run home. I think he had plenty of time to go home, he obviously chose not to....

Why didn't Martin take Jeantel's advice and run home? The rapist/ass-cracker theory makes sense of Martin's decision to go after Zimmerman. If he saw Zimmerman as a sexual predator, he might think confrontation was a good idea or even an important step: These creeps in the neighborhood need to know that I'm not their prey. It's not enough to run inside daddy's house. My manhood must be established here and now or I can't walk free around here anymore.