I want to take a few moments to commend the people who created such a strong public outcry about the pro-rape pages on Facebook.  As a direct result of their efforts and perseverance, these pages have finally been removed.  If you haven’t heard about this then you can refer to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15641998 or http://www.change.org/petitions/demand-facebook-remove-pages-that-promote-sexual-violence or http://www.allfacebook.com/change-org-attacks-pro-rape-facebook-pages-2011-11 to catch up a bit.

Facebook ignored requests to remove the pages for months based on the reasoning that these pages were based on jokes rather than encouragement to rape or sexually assault women.  Many people and advocates did not agree with this reason and believed that it was hateful and violent speech and therefore should be banned based on Facebook’s own Terms of Service.  Rather than quitting after being constantly ignored by Facebook, a Change.org petition was created and over 180,000 signatures were obtained and a Twitter day of action was enacted on November 2. 

The movement created within the social media world - Change.org, Twitter, and even Facebook itself - was picked up by many news sources.  These pro-rape pages gained enough negative attention and public disapproval that major advertisers such as Sony, American Express, and Blackberry demanded that their ads be removed from these pages. 

What is so inspiring is the persistence of these tens of thousands of people who were committed to removing these pages.  They refused to listen to Facebook’s initial responses and demanded attention from a variety of different tactics.  This dedication and perseverance speaks volumes about the progress that our society and culture has made in regards to rape culture and what is considered acceptable behavior.  There is a difference between freedom of speech and hateful speech and many more people are recognizing language which is violent towards women is unacceptable and problematic within society at large.  It is incredible that an online campaign was able to obtain and maintain such strong momentum and forced Facebook to listen and pull the content.  If people had quietly fumed at Facebook or thought their individual thoughts did not matter then this outcome could not have been possible.  It required for individuals to be outraged and then to band together across cities, states, and countries to create enough of an uprising against Facebook to be heard.  Thank-you to the many people who participated, shared this information with friends, family, and acquaintances and created such a strong movement.  Your voices matter and you made sure that they were heard.  Congratulations.

It is stories like these that gives me and others hope that it is possible to change our culture and that there are numerous platforms on which to wage this fight.  It is going to take the work of many people and this story shows that there countless people out there who would like to see a world free of sexual violence and the rape culture that currently exists.

I would love to hear your reactions to either the creation of the pages, Facebook’s actions, or the actions of people to remove these pages. 

Written by: Stacey

Daily life is tricky for a woman in college. We juggle classes, jobs, volunteerism, socializing, relationships, and long distance relationships with our families. On top of that, we are being funneled into a job market that promises wages that won't be able to compete with our male peers and academic careers in which we will be frowned upon for tenure and secure assignments each semester. When we walk to class, we have to worry about cat calls. When we go to a party, we have to worry about getting attacked by someone we thought was an ally. We think about femininity, slut shaming, and gendered expectations of us every damn day, consciously or not.

On top of all of that, our statistical likelihood of getting assaulted is higher than the average woman- 1 in 4 versus 1 in 6. The high rate of toxic alcohol consumption partnered with a culture that both shames us for our behavior and dress, while telling us that "You are safe among students, this is your community" creates a veritable wasteland for college women.

Victim blaming has a shining pedestal when you are at university. Our campus police have gotten into the habit of sending emails that say "Watch your drink. Dress modestly. Go home with a friend," like any of that is the true cause of sexual assault. No matter how careful you are, you might get hurt. I partied a lot as a freshman, utterly sober and there for the purpose of watching out for my wisdom-lacking roommates. I can promise you that every single party of that blur of a year featured all of us being touched without consent, thrust mystery drinks into our hands, and men shaming us at the door for not dressing immodestly enough. It's as if they are expecting us to give them an excuse to attack us, as if victim blaming is so ingrained into college culture that provocative displays are expected and par for the course-and gives reason for a "youthful indiscretion". And, trust me, rape on college campuses is often see as an indiscretion, a mistake, and not a crime. What is it about a diploma that gives people sudden criminal consequences for their actions?

These are just some of the reasons I became a part of BARCC. This system is broken, and in the university microcosm, those problems are painfully obvious. College is supposed to be the best time of your life, but for many, it is a time of weariness and pain. And it has to stop. My name is Sarah-but you can just call me your friendly campus warrior. I'll be posting regularly on the BARCC blog, but don't worry-no midterms on this material.

Written by: Sarah

The latest topic that has gone viral on Facebook and Twitter is the ‘Amber Cole’ scandal.  I am deeply disturbed and appalled at the treatment of this story by the public in general, the news media, and social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.  People are incredibly focused on why a 14-year-old girl would give oral sex to an ex-boyfriend to win him back and her poor decision making skills.  There are numerous articles, FB postings, tweets, and stories asking what she was thinking and why she would be so careless.

‘Amber Cole’ did not engage in these activities by herself, nor did she tape herself in this situation.  There was a boy who was receiving oral sex, one of his male friends who was watching, and a second male friend who was videotaping.  An exceedingly small portion of media and public attention is focused on any of these three boys.  People are questioning where the girl’s parents are, why she chose to do this in the back of the school, why she opened herself up to the risk of being videotaped and blasted all over the Internet, and what type of reputation does she want to have.  Media sources are referring to it as the ‘Amber Cole’ scandal and video.  Where is the discussion about the three other people in this situation?  All three of these boys made decisions as well.  One decided to ask for oral sex from the girl, one decided to video-tape it, one decided to stand and watch.  Additionally, someone decided to post it online. Why aren’t people asking about the boys’ decisions and actions in this situation?  Both the public and the media are ignoring these male participants and creating a discussion based solely around the female participant.

One aspect that I find disturbing is how this girl can be criticized for giving oral sex behind a school building but the boy is not criticized for asking for it behind a school building.  Society does not question or shame boys for asking for sex and, it appears to me, actually expects them to ask and engage in sexual acts.  On the flip side, society still expects girls to be the control factor in these situations, to say no, and to maintain their impeccable moral character.  These expectations remove the responsibility that the boys have in this scenario and places all of it square on the shoulders of ‘Amber Cole’.  Several news stories have posted about the countless number of hateful and deplorable postings her FB and Twitter page received before she had to take them down.  None of the articles focused on the backlash that the boys received, which leads to the assumption that they did not receive much negative attention to their personal pages. 

Another aspect that is problematic is the percentage of media and general public blame the girl for the creation of video and its viral status within the social media world.  Why should ‘Amber’ in this case be responsible for the boys’ actions?  She did not create this video nor did she decide to post it on Facebook and YouTube so that countless other teenagers and adults could view it.  The boy who had the camera created this video and it is debatable whether she even knew a recording was being made.  The boy receiving oral sex saw the camera as did his male friend standing nearby but Amber was already facing away from the camera when the video started.  The boys, as the initial holders and distributors of the video, are responsible for how it went viral, whether they uploaded it directly or sent it out by cell and one of their friends uploaded it..  The discussion should focus on why these boys thought it was appropriate to make a video in the first place and then distribute it, rather than on how this girl should expect to be videotaped. 

The last discussion point I want to make, although it is certainly not the last problem, is the length of time it took for the video to be removed from YouTube and the number of viewers who sought out the video.  This video is of two teenagers, at least one of whom is 14 years old. YouTube has explicit guidelines that pornographic and sexually explicit material cannot be posted on the site.  Therefore, even if these two people were of proper age to be in a pornographic video and had full knowledge and gave full consent, this material is NOT allowed on YouTube.  Secondly, YouTube states that they work with law enforcement and report any material that could contain child exploitation.  However, despite the viral status of the video, it took YouTube four days in order to remove the video from their site.  During these four days, thousands of people, adults included, flocked to YouTube to watch a 14-year-old girl give oral sex to her ex-boyfriend and then sent the link to others so that they could tune in as well.  How are the actions of these people any different from those who send around pornographic material of children and teens?  The content and circulation of both of these types of material are harmful and exploitative to the minors who are involved.  The fact that this video was posted to a public social media website does not negate the fact that it includes minors engaging in sexual behaviors.  YouTube should have acted faster to remove the content and the viewers should have flagged the content rather than passing it on to others.

Written by: Stacey

Hello beautiful internet people - I apologize for the long absence. I'm going to try to be a little more regular at posting here over the next couple of months. Law school sure did happen at me. Fingers crossed, we'll see if I get better at predicting its vagaries.

Another friend of mine who is in law school recently started a public interest clinic. He's had the opportunity to do some basic client representation before administrative judges, and to explore some topics like domestic violence and patriarchy that, if not exactly new to him in theory, are certainly new to him in terms of its real-world effects on his clients. He's discussed a number of these things with me because he knows I do work in this area, and he asked me a question this week that I was hard-pressed to answer. Here's the question: why would any man want to get rid of male privilege? Why would any man want to get rid of patriarchy?

I find this question difficult to answer, not because I don't have any answers, but because my answers are often vague, systemic, and difficult to boil down to a simple and poignant answer. So, to an extent, this post is a question for you, the internet: what are our best talking points here? What are our good selling points for men's involvement in dismantling a system that provides them with a lot of power?

Let me cover my own ass for moment here - I certainly don't want this to come across like I'm supporting patriarchy or rape culture or unfair male privilege. My conundrum is this: when those of us who care about ending these systems of oppression start talking to people who are at the 101 level, let's say, how do we describe the problems they cause, for men, in a way that encourages men to get involved? Because, to an extent, if we're talking to men who haven't had the opportunity to think deeply about these issues, privilege seems pretty damn sweet. It provides, for straight men at least, a world where a lot of women dress and present themselves as an ornament for men to enjoy but where they are not expected to do the same; a labor and capital market where men do not have to compete fairly against roughly half the population; a criminal justice system that takes men's sexual prerogatives over the bodily integrity of women. It assumes men are competent and gives them tremendous benefit of the doubt when they're not. Sure, this isn't a fair deal: I didn't do anything to get all these benefits. But if we're working with men who are starting to get a glimmer of what privilege is, why on earth would they want to give it up? Warning: generalization ahead.

Here are some thoughts, but I could use some help refining them:

1. Privilege causes violence:

Not only against women, and we know that rape culture does do that, but against men, too. Men are more likely to be the victims of violent crime, in general, than women (not rape, but pretty much every other violent crime). In a world where we only provide male privilege to men who fit the stereotype of an aggressive, angry man, it doesn't strike me as surprising that the end result of that is violence. Less privilege and patriarchy may mean a reduction in violence all around, which would benefit a lot of guys.

2. More even playing field against other men

One of the more pernicious aspects of a society-wide system like patriarchy is that it's really hard to argue about its effects from outside of its effects. Patriarchy tells men that they shouldn't consider women, and when it comes to things like getting ahead in a career, most men probably don't feel like women are getting in their way (institutionalized sexism helps ensure that for a lot of women, it's hard to do that even if they wanted to get in someone's way). There is an opportunity to use some of the aspects of patriarchy to our advantage, here, though - men are socialized to be competitive and aggressive, but privilege does not provide for all men the same benefits - for men of color, disabled men, or men who do not otherwise meet the gender stereotypes patriarchy requires, male privilege is a two-edged sword. It puts other men ahead of them unfairly. Though this feels like trying to use the master's tools to destroy the master's house, it might help energize some men to join the fight to more parity and equality in gender relations. It's an appeal to selfishness, sure, but a fair one.

3. It prevents men from having sex

Granted, this argument will only be of significant use to men who want to have sex with women, but maybe there are ways to apply it to the LGBT world, too. The argument goes basically like this: patriarchy requires men to both hate and objectify women. This puts men in a strange bind of lusting after women's bodies, but hating the power to arouse them that women possess. This is a recipe for rape, domestic violence, and boundary crossing. This also puts women in the completely ridiculous situation of having to determine whether every potential partner they have is going to injure them. It's hard to get turned on while terrified. The less women fear men, it seems likely that the more sex people will have.

What other arguments do you all have?

I was all set to write some awesome post about the new revelations in the Dominic Strauss-Kahn case, and then Jaclyn Friedman beat me to it and did it better than I could ever reasonably could have. Check out her awesome column here.

Here's the part of it that I think hits hardest:

The newly revealed inconsistencies in her testimony raise more questions than answers. Did she launder money? Did she lie about a previous gang rape in order to gain asylum? What did she actually say about the case to her incarcerated friend on the day of the assault?

I'm wondering why so few people are asking the most important question of all: How does any of this prove that DSK didn't rape her? Emphasis mine

Here's the problem with this case, in my mind - it's the same problem I'm having in my evidence class this summer: credibility is a mostly broken concept, that allows us to make some truly ridiculous broken inferences. Here's the example I'm struggling to understand in law school right now. Under the federal rules of evidence, a lawyer can attack a witness's credibility in court by asking the witness about a prior conviction. This witness could be the defendant in the case, if he or she chooses to testify, but the rules are not limited to only defendants. Any witness who takes the stand in a case and provides testimony about it can be questioned about prior convictions for the purpose of reducing their credibility. We get to use the fancy term "impeaching the witness" in law school.

This doesn't make sense, though, if we sit and think about it for a few minutes. The chain of inferences we are making is something like this:

Witness committed a felon in the past -> clearly, by committing that felony, that witness has been willing to break rules before -> that witness was asked to follow a rule today in court (by taking an oath to tell the truth) -> that witness is, somehow, less likely to tell the truth simply by nature of being a felon, because he or she broke a rule in the past and got caught -> juries need to know that this witness broke the rules before, so they can downgrade/ignore the testimony the witness provides as appropriate.

It's that third step that doesn't quite make it there for me. It feels like we're making an inference that doesn't...catch. If a witness gets on the stand and talks about what he or she saw or experienced, the opposing attorney may bring in some examples of prior convictions to essentially make the witness look bad. There are other ways to impeach a witness that make more sense to me - an attorney can call into question a witness's eyesight, or memory, or actual knowledge of an event. Those make sense - a witness who can't see very well can't provide particularly believable testimony about what he or she saw. A witness who can't really remember what took place can't reasonably testify as to the sequence of events. But being a felon has nothing to do with eyesight, or memory. It has everything to do with how we view an ex-con's character, though.

We have decided that being an ex-felon automatically reduces a witness's credibility. What this really means is that we've decided as a culture that we don't have to listen to ex-felons. Regardless of how correct what they have to say may be, we find it culturally appropriate to discount it, off the bat, because we've decided they have some sort of glaring hole in their character that makes them more likely to lie, even for no reason, than someone who is not a felon. Credibility is the socially movable line that the majority gets to move around to whatever unattainable location it wants to set it, so it doesn't have to listen to anyone else.

We do the same thing to women, as we can see in this case. The accuser here has a shady past. She may have lied on some documents to get into the US. She may well have lied about some specific aspects of the events as they went down in this case. Why does that kick out the whole case? Why does that basically remove the possibility that any court would listen to her? Because the line for credibility in a sexual assault case is so far away from what real survivors live that no one can ever meet it. The accuser in this case has lost her credibility, despite having DNA evidence, tearing her clothes, etc. Despite having a whole bunch of other evidence, physical evidence, that doesn't have a whole lot to do with her credibility, no one will believe her anymore, because she's lost her 'credibility.'

If you can make more sense of this than I can, let me know, but here's what this story is asking me to infer: a woman with drug-dealing associates is more likely to lie about rape than someone without them. A woman who lied on her refugee application is more likely to lie about rape than one who didn't. A woman who is poor, who accuses a famous rich white man, is more likely to lie about rape than one who is his socio-economic equal. I'm not sure I buy any of those connections, at least not any more than I buy the idea that a felon is fundamentally, at his or her core, a liar forever.