6
POPSReactionary anti-women "men's rights" groups go mainstream
More: Toward the end of her piece, Joyce makes a particularly fascinating point about MRAs' domestic violence arguments: Critics like Australian sociologist Michael Flood say that men’s rights movements reflect the tactics of domestic abusers themselves, minimizing existing violence, calling it mutual, and discrediting victims. MRA groups downplay national abuse rates, just as abusers downplay their personal battery; they wage campaigns dismissing most allegations as false, as abusers claim partners are lying about being hit; and they depict the violence as mutual—part of an epidemic of wife-on-husband abuse—as individual batterers rationalize their behavior by saying that the violence was reciprocal. Additionally, MRA groups’ predictions of future violence by fed-up men wronged by the family-law system seem an obvious additional correlation, with the threat of violence seemingly intended to intimidate a community, like a fearful spouse, into compliance.
3
POPSScientology: The Truth Rundown More: Contacted by the St. Petersburg Times, Rathbun agreed to tell the story of his years in Scientology and what led to his leaving… Seeking to corroborate Rathbun's story, the newspaper contacted others who were in Scientology during the same period and have left the church: Mike Rinder, one of Rathbun's closest associates for two decades; Tom De Vocht, who Rathbun named as key to his decision to leave; and later, Amy Scobee… The reporters interviewed the four defectors multiple times, and met with church spokesmen and lawyers for 25 hours… The result of the Times' reporting is this multi-part special report, the latest in a long history of Scientology coverage by the Times…This project, as you will see, features the three days of in-depth reports from the St. Petersburg Times, as well as additional content for this Web presentation. Those additional pieces include video; a photo gallery; and links to previous coverage in the Times, including the Pulitzer-winning coverag
5
POPSMichael Vick's unpaid dues: Why dog advocates won't just "move on" More: "Jumper cables were clipped onto the ears of underperforming dogs, then, just like with a car, the cables were connected to the terminals of car batteries before lifting and tossing the shamed dogs into the water. We don't know how many suffered this premeditated murder, but the damage to the pool walls tells a story. It seems that while they were scrambling to escape, they scratched and clawed at the pool liner and bit at the dented aluminum sides like a hungry dog on a tin can. "I wear some pretty thick skin during our work with dogs, but I can't shake my minds-eye image of a little black dog splashing frantically in bloody water ... screaming in pain and terror ... brown eyes saucer wide and tiny black white-toed feet clawing at anything, desperate to get a hold…The rescuer in me keeps trying to think of a way to go back in time and somehow…pull the little dog to safety. I think I'll be looking for ways to pull that dog out for the rest of my life."
5
POPSvideo: Jasiri X - "Beware Young Girl" More lyrics: And to the shock of her family and the witnesses she was charged with assaulting police and resiting them the difference when you black just the claim that ya yellin can turn a preacher's daughter to a dangerous felon so I tell em Verse 2 So much fun she had at the homecoming dance 930 she got to leave to get a ride from her dad saw a friend runnin past he asked her come and grab a little something that would last the party's jumpin in the back she laughed this was her chance to hang with the cool kids the older guys ones she didn't even go to school with but the rule is to never drink with strangers I wish that I was there so I could tell her she's in danger that those who she thought were good fellas would sedate her beat her and gang rape her and they would forever change her with hatred and anger for 2 and a half hours they brutalized her worse than pouring acid on a flower Continued below.
3
POPSRichmond gang rape seen as "nearly inevitable" More: English teacher Jessica Price, who knows the victim and most of the arrested suspects, said the girl has helped in conflict-mediation groups wanted to join the Police Explorers, a Boy Scouts group that lets boys and girls learn law enforcement with local police… That such a girl could be so brutalized speaks more to a pack mentality, stoked by booze and street machismo, than it does to the general character of Richmond High's youths, Price said. "Those boys who did what they did weren't picturing that girl as a human," she said. "I think you see these kinds of boys at a lot of high schools - so desensitized it was like they saw her as a toy. Boys like that - there aren't many like them, but they can be so hard. All they needed was something to set them off." She told a school district safety panel last week that some girls trying to find out who had watched the rape were being threatened in the hallways - and that, too, she blames on a desensitized mentality.
6
POPSSurprise spectator at Garrido hearing More: Hall was a blackjack dealer in South Lake Tahoe when Garrido kidnapped her in November 1976 and drove her to a storage unit in Reno that he had stocked with pornography, sex devices and a mattress. He raped her repeatedly over the course of several hours. He was convicted of federal kidnapping charges and of rape in Nevada. Under sentencing guidelines now in place, Garrido would have been behind bars for more than two decades - and wouldn't have been free in 1991 when Dugard was snatched off the street in South Lake Tahoe. But under 1970s-era sentencing laws, Garrido was eligible for federal parole after just 10 years, and he was set free in 1988. "I intend to be at as many (hearings) as I can," Hall said. "I'm not going to shut up and go away like the parole board told me to do 21 years ago. I have my own personal reasons for wanting to see him put away."
8
POPSGore Vidal: latest candidate for Worst Person In The World I can't come up with anything to say without descending into epithets and ad hominem insults against Mr. Vidal, so I'll just repeat: candidate for Worst Person In The World. EDITED TO ADD: Let me make this clear . Comments alleging that the victim wanted it, deserved it, or was indeed a prostitute as Vidal alleges are out of line and (as of 2:20 pm Pacific time) will be deleted from here out. Comments alleging that "we don't know the full story" display the commenter's ignorance of the grand jury testimony and and (as of 2:20 pm Pacific time) will be deleted from here out. DO NOT EVEN TRY TO CLAIM THAT A 13-YEAR-OLD IS AT FAULT FOR HAVING BEEN RAPED, NO MATTER WHAT THE CIRCUMSTANCES.
14
POPSMark Morford: The gang rape and 30 Republican senators who don't give a damn about battered women More: Turns out, when faced with such vileness, all filters fail. All balance is thrown off. You thought you had some sort of way to process and attain perspective? You are proven wrong. So perhaps all we can do is ponder how pathetic and sad these various senator's lives must be, how these bitter old men will now go home at night and announce around the dinner table that, yes, today they worked very hard to help improve the welfare of the nation by essentially enabling rape and sexual abuse, tried their darndest to prevent women who've been viciously attacked from having much legal recourse. And lo, Satan will chuckle happily. Then maybe these senators will try and hug their wives, or their daughters. And maybe, if there's any justice in the universe, their wives and daughters will slap them as hard as humanly possible, lock them in a shipping container, and never let them touch them again.
10
POPSWhat is "rape culture"? Click through for the whole thing. More: Rape culture is treating straight sexuality as the norm. Rape culture is lumping queer sexuality into nonconsensual sexual practices like pedophilia and bestiality… Rape culture is rape being used as a weapon, a tool of war and genocide and oppression. Rape culture is rape being used as a corrective to "cure" queer women. Rape culture is a militarized culture and "the natural product of all wars, everywhere, at all times, in all forms." Rape culture is 1 in 33 men being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is encouraging men to use the language of rape to establish dominance over one another ("I'll make you my bitch")… Rape culture is 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is not even talking about the reality that many women are sexually assaulted multiple times in their lives. Rape culture is the way in which the constant threat of sexual assault affects women's daily movements.
2
POPSGOP member shoots target with Democratic opponent's initials More: Many of the targets were basic silhouettes, though others were figures wearing traditional Arab head scarves, called kaffiyeh, and holding rocket-propelled grenades. Napolitano said the faces of those figures appeared to be white, though he understood why they would be assumed to be Arabs. He said critics of the event are simply angry that a Republican minority continues to exist in such an overwhelmingly Democratic area. "I absolutely have no regrets. I don't care what the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or any of them say — I know that they're offended by the simple fact that we're here and we won't go away and we won't be quiet," he said. "For the Democrats, who are supposed to be the party of minority rights, they're not being very sensitive to our rights." These people live in bizarro backwards-world, I swear.
6
POPS"Violence is animalistic" meme reduces support for war More: Although right-wing authoritarians "typically show strong in-group bias and support for violence against out-groups, their heightened need to view themselves as non-animals makes them reticent to demonstrate violence when it is linked to animality," Motyl concludes. It should be noted that 104 of the 136 participants in the test were women. Before generalizing these results too widely, one would like to see them duplicated with a mostly male sample, preferably one from outside the walls of academia. Nevertheless, these are hopeful findings for those looking for ways to inspire peaceful resolutions to problems.
6
POPSSchroedinger's Rapist Rape culture hurts women and decent men as well. More: So when you, a stranger, approach me, I have to ask myself: Will this man rape me? Do you think I’m overreacting? One in every six American women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime… While you may assume that none of the men you know are rapists, I can assure you that at least one is. Consider: if every rapist commits an average of ten rapes (a horrifying number, isn’t it?) then the concentration of rapists in the population is still a little over one in sixty… How do I know that you, the nice guy who wants nothing more than companionship and True Love, are not this rapist? I don’t. When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Rapist. You may or may not be a man who would commit rape. I won’t know for sure unless you start sexually assaulting me. I can’t see inside your head, and I don’t know your intentions.
3
POPSGun-toting PA soccer mom, husband found shot dead "Remember, there's no connection – and you would be a fool and a communist to make one – between having a gun and shooting somebody with it and not having a gun and not shooting somebody with it." – Bill Hicks More: Meleanie Hain made headlines after she attended her then 5-year-old daughter's soccer game in a park on Sept. 11, 2008, with her 9mm Glock pistol in plain view holstered on her hip, upsetting other parents. The county sheriff, Michael DeLeo, revoked her gun-carrying permit nine days later. Hain successfully appealed the permit revocation, although the judge who restored the permit questioned her judgment and said she had "scared the devil" out of other people at the game… DeLeo said at Hain's appeal that he revoked her permit after fielding the parents' complaints. He said he based his decision on a state law that prohibits certain gun permits from being given to anyone whose character and reputation make him or her a danger to public safety.
2
POPSData-mining medical records could predict domestic violence More: Using the new system, the researchers were able to predict abuse an average of two years before the doctor made the diagnosis. Presumably, the computer is picking up signs of ongoing maltreatment the patient hasn’t yet revealed. The researchers also speculate that, in principle, some subtle signal could precede direct abuse. One surprise finding that could be relevant… is that infections turned out to be strongly linked to abuse. That might suggest worsening hygiene in the family or increased psychological stress, possible omens of abuse. But at this point, it is anybody’s guess whether true predictions are possible. Predictions or not, with the current model, fewer than 20 percent of the patients flagged as high-risk cases turned out to have a diagnosis of abuse. Part of the problem may be that the system is only as good as the data it was based on. And as Emory University’s Houry points out, that data isn’t up to speed when it comes to diagnosing abuse.
5
POPSRape is never okay... unless you also happen to make Great Art More: Rape is a crime of violence. It doesn't matter who the rapist is. It doesn't matter who the victim is. It doesn't matter how hard she fought or what she was wearing or how much she had to drink. It doesn't matter whether she knew the rapist, whether she'd gone out with him, whether she kissed him or went back to his place or had sex with fifty thousand other men first. No one has the right to rape another person, and anyone who does must be held accountable, must receive the message that rape is not okay and will not be tolerated, each and every time, no exceptions. How else can we ever build a society in which a woman can move freely through her world without fearing for her physical and emotional safety at every turn? I can only hope and pray that our justice system takes this opportunity to declare loudly and without apology that no one has immunity from accountability for rape, not even Roman Polanski.
3
POPSNate Phelps: My father is addicted to hate Nate Phelps is the son of Fred Phelps , leader of the hate-filled Westboro Baptist Church. More: violence was a fact of life in our home, and is interwoven from my earliest memories as a child… In terms of knowing how to administer punishment, my father was an adept. Seven or eight blows would be enough to cause the skin to swell and bruise. However, if he administered a few blows, and then waited five to ten minutes before the next round, this gave the damaged tissue time to swell and stretch the skin tight. The new round of blows would cause that skin to split and bleed.… When my mother tried to intervene in some of his more brutal beatings, he’d turn on her and punish her, also. Proverbs 13:24 was core to his actions: He that spareth his rod hateth his son. But there was a fundamental contradiction. He claimed that this punishment was done out of love for his children; yet as he beat us, he’d scream his hatred at us also.
3
POPSThe 1,400 legal benefits of marriage in the US More: spousal exemptions to property tax increases upon the death of one partner who is a co-owner of the home; veterans' discounts on medical care, education, and home loans; joint filing of tax returns; joint filing of customs claims when traveling; wrongful death benefits for a surviving partner and children; bereavement or sick leave to care for a partner or child; decision-making power with respect to whether a deceased partner will be cremated or not and where to bury him or her; crime victims' recovery benefits; loss of consortium tort benefits; domestic violence protection orders; judicial protections and evidentiary immunity; and more.... Most of these legal and economic benefits cannot be privately arranged or contracted for. For example, absent a legal (or civil) marriage, there is no guaranteed joint responsibility to the partner and to third parties (including children) in such areas as child support, debts to creditors, taxes, etc.
4
POPSFour things about the Hofstra rape/recant story More: 4) Honestly, this case just makes me so sad. I think it's highly likely that something bad happened that night, whether or not she literally consented. It's hard to imagine something like this happening if all the parties had engaged in direct sexual communication and sought enthusiastic, affirmative consent - not just lack of protest. For me, this whole mess just demonstrates how badly we need a real sea-change in how we talk about and view sex in our culture. Here's where a conclusion should go, but this column has none. Because this case has none. And this crisis has none. At least none so far. But we're working on it. Right?
7
POPSHowl of the unhinged is scary voice of America's "culture war" More: The report provides troubling context for the outrageous behavior that has attended the election of our first African-American president. When you call them on that behavior, Barack Obama's detractors love to accuse you of equating dissent with racism. It is a specious argument. I disagree with the president's use of signing statements… but it would never occur to me to carry a sign vowing death to him, his wife and their "two stupid kids" as a protester in Maryland did, or to pray that Obama dies of brain cancer as a "minister" in Arizona does, or to heckle him during a joint session of Congress as Rep. Joe Wilson infamously did. That's not dissent. It is the howl of the unhinged and the entitled. The same folks who were complacent as President Bush spent surplus into deficit, wasted $600 billion dollars and 4,000 American lives on the wrong war, and watched a major American city drown are morally outraged because the new guy wants to reform health care?
9
POPSDid bad care spur a mother to kill her disabled daughter? More: She wrote that the aides bathed Yvette "like a car," with cold water at times to punish her. When Yvette would scream, the aides would turn the hot water back on before the nurse in charge could arrive, according to the letter. "There's much more but you can ask my family. "... They can tell you. I can't go on like this. She has been begging me to end it for two years," Diana Harden wrote. "My health is failing and I don't want to leave her alone."… Because she was partially paralyzed, Yvette Harden could get around only with a wheelchair. But staff took away the motorized chair after Harden broke a glass patio door and bent the metal on a gazebo fixture in July 2008. She was given a manual chair that she had to be strapped into because it was too small and made the pain in her legs and back worse, according to Department of Public Health records. She told her mother, "I want to die; I don't want to live without my wheelchair…"
5
POPSpoem: "wishful thinking" or "what i'm waiting to find in our email boxes" by Alexis Pauline Gumbs Too long to clip – click through for the rest. More: 9. people are interested in what you are wearing simply because it tells them what paintings to make. 10. everyone has always told you you can stay a child until you are ready to move on 11. if you run across the street naked at midnight no one will think you are asking for anything. 12. you do so many things because it feels good to move. you have nothing to prove to anyone. 13. white people cannot harm you. they do not want to. they do not do it by accident. 14. your smile makes people glad to be alive 15. your body is not a symbol of anything 16. everyone respects your work and makes sure you are safe while doing it 17. at any moment you might relive the joy of being embraced 18. no one will lie to you, scream at you or demand anything. 19. when you change your mind, people will remember to change theirs. 20. your children are safe no one will use them against you.
5
POPSInsurance companies: "Domestic violence is a pre-existing condition." Your partner hit you? No health insurance for you, ever! This is WRONG. More: “In 1995, the Boston Globe found that Nationwide, Allstate, State Farm, Aetna, Metropolitan Life, The Equitable Companies, First Colony Life, The Prudential and the Principal Financial Group had all either canceled or denied coverage to women who’d been beaten.” Source
9
POPSOnly rapists can prevent rape More: If a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don't rape her. If your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don't rape her. If your step-daughter is watching TV, don't rape her. If you break into a house and find a woman there, don't rape her. If your friend thinks it's okay to rape someone, tell him it's not, and that he's not your friend. If your "friend" tells you he raped someone, report him to the police. If your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there's an unconscious woman upstairs and it's your turn, don't rape her, call the police and tell the guy he's a rapist. Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it's not okay to rape someone. Don't tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape. Don't imply that she could have avoided it if she'd only done/not done x. Don't imply that it's in any way her fault. Don't let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he "got some" with the drunk girl.
19
POPSMan slaps stranger's crying child I don't care what you say about "kids today are out of control", you don't slap somebody else's child. Period. I would also say, you never slap a child across the face, period.
5
POPSJury convicts man of raping multiple prostitutes as his attorney says sluts and whores deserve rape The defense attorney continued with his attempts to slut-shame the women this man had raped: "They are not like your wife, your girlfriend or your daughter," he said. "They are street tramps. And what happened to them was, at least in part, their fault."… Giggenbach said the law protects them from violent crime just as it protects everyone else. "That's a wolf right there," Giggenbach said, standing before Gravely and pointing. "A wolf who attacks the weak, the uneducated and the socially crippled, because he knows they are not going to go to the hospital or the police. "He's a serial rapist, 15 or 20 times in our community," Giggenbach said. "Lurking, stalking, waiting for the weak to come out at night. "You find him not guilty and you tell this man, 'You go right ahead, anybody in this community can do that,' Giggenbach told jurors.
5
POPSA grief like no other: listening to the families of murder victims More: The increase in the U.S. murder rate has been accompanied over the past few decades by a rising incidence of crimes once considered rare. Mass murders, serial murders, and murders committed by strangers have become more commonplace.… Since 1966 hundreds of books have been published that follow murderers along their paths of destruction… And yet just a handful of books have looked at murder from the victim's perspective.… During the past twenty-five years hundreds of articles in psychiatric journals have examined the homicidal mind. Fewer than a dozen have explored how a homicide affects the victim's family. In a study of murder in Romantic literature the theater scholar Laurence Senelick used a phrase, "the prestige of evil," that goes a long way toward explaining why our culture has become obsessed with the murderer while ignoring the victim.
8
POPSPSA: How to disappear Much longer than could be clipped. Click through for the whole thing. I hope nobody reading this ever needs it, but better to have the information...
10
POPSWhy rape is not "just rough sex" [CAUTION: likely triggery] More: Worse: imagine that you are so frightened that the person will kill you that you just lie there, unresisting, unmoving, trying hard not to really be there in your body because then the stick shoving dessert down your throat doesn’t hurt quite so badly…. Imagine that you survive the forced-feeding, and that as your attacker leaves you, either in the place of attack or having dropped you off somewhere to make your own way home, that they mock you by talking about how wonderful your favourite dessert tasted, and how lucky you were that they gave you more of it than you’d ever had before. And now for the kicker: * Imagine that when you tell people what happened, and how bad it was, and how scared you were and how hurt your body is, they look at you blankly, and say: “But what’s the problem? Everybody knows that you really, really like that dessert!”
2
POPSAndrew Sullivan: Where this far-right rage is coming from More: If that is what you really believe - that people in cities or suburbs, that minorities, that gays, that blacks and Hispanics are not part of "real America" - then of course, you are angry. You believe a fake America has taken over. You cannot understand this. So you start believing that we have a fascist/communist dictatorship, that there was some fraud allowing a non-citizen to become president, that the government is about to "take over" all healthcare provision ... and on and on. And no one is left in the GOP to challenge this, to calm it down, to present practical alternatives to the obvious crushing problems the country and the private sector have in paying for increasingly costly healthcare.
Newest Clips
see Newest Clips
9
Latest Pops
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Tags
Print
Save
Turn on live update