We all know the common response from family, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances when a man is alleged to have committed intimate partner violence and/or sexual violence: That’s not the man that I know.

It’s a curious statement, and one that I’ve personally run into some variation of in a very specific context twice in the past week, though it’s so common that the specifics hardly even matter. It’s rarely an expression of shock and horror, as we see when a neighbor or acquaintance is revealed to be a serial killer. Then we see men and women standing out on their lawns, stunned but rarely disbelieving, saying, “he always seemed very nice; I never would have guessed that he is capable of such things. It’s so scary.”

When it comes to intimate partner violence of sexual assault, the “I never would have guessed” part of the statement rarely comes. That’s because the beginning of both proclamations are also rather different. “He always seemed very nice” is an observation, conditional and past tense, with a distance to it. “That’s not the man that I know” is not only present tense, but definitively stated with personal yet unrelated experience centered as absolute gospel.

It’s not a musing about how violent people are generally capable of hiding their violence in certain contexts. Nor is it even usually an attempt to justify one’s relationship with a violent person. It’s just a flat-out denial. Perhaps even worse, it’s a dismissal.

He’s not aggressive. He respects women. He’s very sensitive. He loves children. He gives back to the community. Once, I saw him do this thing that I consider to be the opposite of the accusation.

Never does the statement leave room for, “How could I have been so unaware of his violent nature?” Or, “It must have been so difficult for his victim(s) to shoulder the burden of that violence alone, when we all thought so highly of him.” Because while not all of the above statements are mutually exclusive with violence against women, and the perception of any of them certainly is not, the “not the man that I know” declaration never leaves room for belief that the accuser is telling an objective truth. The statement is rather always followed with the words, or at least the implication: “He would never do that.”

Taking the side of men accused of violence over the women who allege it is a notable part of our patriarchal culture, of rape culture, of the culture of denial. This much is obvious. But it’s also a part of the culture of victim-blaming.

On the one hand, it makes perfect sense that we want to believe that the people we know, who we love, trust, and/or spend time with, are incapable of violence against women. Not only because it’s our nature to not want to believe that we were wrong about a person, but also, for women, because if they are incapable of violence against women in general, they are incapable of violence against us. Believing that the men we know, no matter how closely or distantly, are not those kinds of men makes us feel safe.

But the statement also purports to know a man better than his victim does — often, his wife or girlfriend. It purports to know the real him, and claims that the man who committed abuse either does not exist (because it didn’t really happen), or was someone else taking possession of his mind and body. And it also reinforces the idea that abusers can be easily spotted. That, if this man you know through work, or social functions, or friendship was capable of hitting his wife, of raping his date, you would know. You could tell, easily and without hesitation.

And if you can tell, if knowing is so easy, so obvious, then any woman who gets tangled up with an abuser, or a rapist, really only has herself to blame, now doesn’t she? Or maybe, you’re just a whole lot smarter than her. That’s why we see the statement so often with abusers and rapists, and not with serial killers; few people believe that serial killers’ victims deserve it, or could have done much to prevent their deaths. We think of these acts as random, as something rare, but which we could all be subjected to. But our society still does believe that victims of intimate partner violence and rape are to blame, and that such things could only happen to those who don’t know any better.

And if so few people are then really willing to admit that they knew a man was an abuser or a rapist, well this whole domestic violence and rape thing must have really been blown out of proportion, now mustn’t it? If no one knows a man who beats his partner, if no one knows a man who rapes his friend, then they mustn’t really exist. At least, not in my family/neighborhood/world.

This is the danger of making statements about what “the man I know” would and wouldn’t do. It places our own experiences with a person above those of a person with whom they have been violent. And it erases the fact that violence against women exists, that it is being committed right now as I write this, and that it’s being committed by men who we’ve gone to school with, been to dinner parties with, played on the playground with, by men who have been non-violent towards us, who have helped us, who have been nice to us.

It puts the men that do such things in the realm of mythical creatures rather than living, breathing, and yes, complicated, human beings. If we do not know them, it is not our concern. If we do not know them, they don’t really exist. If we do not know them, we do not have to be afraid. If we do not know them, we do not have to feel responsible for the difficult work of changing our culture.

It is extremely tough, and very frightening, to admit to ourselves how difficult it is to truly know anybody. And it can be extremely tempting to tell yourself that even if he did do it, it wasn’t really him, the one that you know through your own experience, and therefore, you still do not know that man who is violent.

But it was him. The fact that you “know” somebody doesn’t mean that someone else doesn’t know them very, very differently when you aren’t there. And the fact that they behave differently when you know them doesn’t mean that the person who committed violence isn’t the same person you know. It is the person you know. It is still him. You just know him differently. And you have to learn to reconcile what you know with his violence.

The sooner we can admit that violent men are real men rather than caricatured monsters, that they are human beings and not write ups in the papers or depictions on TV, and that we know them, the sooner we can get to the difficult work of creating a society that produces men who behave differently. But right now, we are sadly and frustratingly stuck, in fear, in a sense of helplessness, and in denial. Saying and accepting that’s not the man I know is helping to keep us there.

By now, you’ve almost certainly read about the gang rape that took place outside a high school dance in California. I’ve avoided reading the updated details due to the fact that this story hit me extremely hard, but [trigger warning] the initial reports said that there were multiple assailants, the rape continued for about two hours, somewhere around 15 to 20 students were believed to have watched and/or cheered on the rapists, and the 15-year-old victim had to be airlifted to the hospital in critical condition.

I haven’t had much to say about the case both because it has particularly affected me, and because anything I would have had to say, someone else said first and very well. But I did want to pass along this important piece of information about something small that we all can do, found via Shakesville. The school has set up a fund to help the victim and her family financially, and will also pass along messages of support:

Richmond High School is accepting cards and donations for the victim and her family, which should be mailed to the school at 1250 23rd Street, Richmond, CA 94804-1011. Checks should be made out to the Richmond High Student Fund, with “For sex assault victim” written in the memo line.

I strongly urge you to donate if you can. And if you can’t, difficult though it might be to find something to say, and inadequate as it may feel, sending a short note will only cost you a stamp and a few minutes of your time. Please do so, and pass along the information.

ETA: via SAFER, donations can also be sent to: Richmond High Jane Doe, account No. 041-30-1188, Mechanics Bank, 3170 Hilltop Mall Road, Richmond, CA 94806.

cross-posted at Feministe in Exile (our temporary home while the site is renovated)

In Scotland, a man was convicted of raping a woman who fell asleep on his couch. She was unconscious throughout the assault, and woke to find herself partially undressed. Craig Byars admitted to the rape and has been sentenced to four years in jail.

But in spite of that confession, his lawyer is still making excuses — assuring us of what a good guy Byars really is, and that raping a sleeping woman is the kind of thing that can happen to the best of us!

Defence counsel Shahid Latif said Byars apologised for the consequences of his actions on the victim.

He said: “I have to stress that what happened was a gross error of judgement on his part. He misread the situation.”

He misread the situation.

The tendency for defenses of a rapist to continue even after he has been convicted or has confessed is something that gets under my skin at the best of times. There is seemingly a compulsive desire by every rapist and those close to him to ensure that the world knows he’s actually a good person. First of all, whether or not he’s a “good person” is incredibly irrelevant to the subject of whether or not he raped someone. Secondly, as we live in a world where only bad, bad men, evil, slimy subhuman creatures, are considered to be capable of raping, the insistence that raping someone was out of character for this particular rapist, a simple mistake, an error in judgment, seems to me to be the same thing as saying “yes, so he raped a woman this one time! But that doesn’t make him a real rapist.”

But this specific defense strikes me as a particularly awful and apologist way of making an already awful and apologist argument.

See, here’s the thing: it’s impossible for one to “misread a situation” to the point of raping someone. If one does not ensure that they have consent from a person prior to engaging in sexual contact, or ignores an explicit lack of consent from that person, they have not misread anything. They have intentionally failed to read the situation at all. Not even attempting to read a situation, or reading it and disregarding what it says, is not the same as misreading. Misreading a situation is asking your date, “Would you like to go back to my place?” and feeling surprised when they say “no.” It’s not purposely dragging them there once they have said no. And it’s not taking them there without telling them where you were going first.

What makes the statement particularly egregious in the context where it was made is the fact that Craig Byars’ victim was asleep. One cannot consent to sex, or to anything else for that matter, when they are asleep. Period. And so, there is absolutely nothing to “misread.” Unless, of course, you’re the kind of person who tends to read unconscious women as perfect sexual assault targets.

What Latif’s statement up above suggests is that one can, in fact, consent while they are asleep. That Byars’ decision to rape an unconscious woman was a little bit understandable, because certainly there are cases where “having sex” with a sleeping woman is okay. It suggests that complete and total lack of consent is a gray area rather than clear bright line. Saying that Byars misread the situation is the same thing as saying that on some level, he had good reason to believe that what he was doing was not rape. It fully reinforces the idea that women exist in a permanent state of sexual consent until that default consent is withdrawn.

This is what happens when we live in a world where many people still fully believe that when a woman says no, she doesn’t really mean it. Right now, we’re still, after decades, fighting an uphill battle to get people to accept the basic notion that no means no, that you don’t get to decide under which circumstances another person’s no is valid and worth accepting, and that your personal opinion of what a person “really meant” doesn’t have the right to overrule what they actually said. We’re still living in a world where certain women are perceived as unrapeable, and where their no’s are seen as counting for absolutely nothing. And we’re living in a culture that tells men that when a woman pushes you away, that’s just reason for you to try harder.

How, in the kind of society that has just that little regard for women, where their actual words do not matter, can we be surprised to see people dismissing their lack of words as also meaningless? How can we expect that a sleeping woman’s right to not be assaulted will be recognized and respected as obvious and inherent when the right of an actively protesting woman to not be assaulted is still seen as up for contention? If no doesn’t even really mean no to so many people, how can they possibly think to wait for a yes? Thinking that no doesn’t mean no is the very definition of believing that women exist in a permanent state of sexual consent. So of course, if this is your belief, one can potentially misread a sleeping woman as existing purely for his sexual use, and as saying “I’m here, so you might as well remove my pants and have sex with me.”

This view of women and consent is epitomized in one particularly chilling quote that Byars gave to police when they asked him if he had raped the victim:

Byars, 34, later claimed to police that he had consensual sex with the woman at his then flat above the Ghillies Lair pub, in Great Southern Road, in Aberdeen.

But when asked if the woman could have been sleeping or dozing when he had sex with her he replied: “Yes she could have been and I’ve never clicked.”

I hope, I really, really hope, that Byars was simply giving the most pathetic and ill-considered lie possible to police in response to that question. Because if he was being honest, if he pays so little attention to the women he is sexually touching that he doesn’t even notice when they are unconscious, I truly dread to think of just what else he has failed to notice, and how many women he has raped while they were awake.

The New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan has made a ruling that will make it easier for transgender people to petition for a name change. The ruling overturned a previous decision by a lower court:

Should a transgender person seeking judicial permission to change her or his name be required to furnish medical documentation justifying the change?

A panel of justices in State Supreme Court in Manhattan ruled on Wednesday that the answer is no. The ruling was a victory for the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, a nonprofit advocacy organization.

The fund had brought the case on behalf of a transgender man, Olin Yuri Winn-Ritzenberg, who had petitioned the New York City Civil Court seeking to legally change his name from Leah Uri Winn-Ritzenberg.

In February, a Civil Court judge in Manhattan, Manuel J. Mendez, denied the petition, ruling that Mr. Winn-Ritzenberg first had to provide a letter from a physician, psychologist or social worker documenting the “need” for the name change.

Michael D. Silverman, the executive director of the transgender advocacy group, argued that the state’s common law generally allows an adult “to change his or her name at will, for any reason,” and that transgender petitioners like Mr. Winn-Ritzenberg were being held to a higher standard. About 10 other people, all in Manhattan, have approached the fund with similar reports of having their name-changing petitions denied for the same reason Judge Mendez gave.

Legally changing one’s name is one of many major hurdles that trans people face during transition, and the unnecessary difficulty of the process is just yet another way that a cis controlled system polices trans people’s genders and identities. Cis people already regularly feel as though they get to call trans people by the incorrect name, and that’s all about reinforcing undeserved privilege. Further, the issue is about more than just respect and the right of every person to be called what they want to be called — which ought to be enough — but also about basic safety. In a world where transphobia is so regularly expressed through violence and seriously consequential discrimination, one’s official documents matching their identity can sadly be a matter of life and death, or of accessing needed services or not.

The previous ruling that Winn-Ritzenberg had to provide a letter from some sort of authority figure documenting a “need” for the name change also was not only a hurdle, it was an insult. What it meant was that a court could choose to take the word of individuals universally presumed to be cis (even though they’re not), about the lives and needs of trans people, over the words of trans people themselves. It medicalized and pathologized trans identities where they need not be, and dismissed marginalized people’s authority over their own lives.

And in addition to the fact that no one should need a letter of permission, or should be forced to disclose their medical history in order to complete a simple legal request, there’s also the reality that not all individuals requiring a name change have access to medical treatment as a part of their transitions, or even want it:

Advocates like Mr. Silverman note that not all transgender people take steps like hormone-replacement therapy or sex-reassignment surgery; many take the view that gender is socially constructed, or not even a stable or meaningful category altogether.

The Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, which represented Winn-Ritzenberg in his case, has also released a statement on the ruling, which says in part:

[T]he appellate court wrote, “[t]here is no sound basis in law or policy to engraft upon the statutory provisions an additional requirement that a transgendered-petitioner present medical substantiation for the desired name change.”  The court’s decision sends a powerful message that transgender people must be treated equally and that they cannot be subjected to different legal requirements than everyone else. People’s names are fundamental to their identities.  This decision confirms that each one of us has the right to be known by a name we choose.  That decision can’t be second-guessed by doctors, therapists or anyone else simply because someone is transgender.

Upon learning of the ruling, Olin said, “This means that I can finally change my name and move forward with my life.  My gender transition has been a very personal journey, and no one is in a better position to decide that I need to change my name than I am.”

Unfortunately, according to a comment left on a post about the ruling at Pam’s, there is question about whether or not the ruling will effectively set precedent throughout all of the state. (I don’t know enough about the law to have any idea one way or the other.) And it seems pretty clear that a legislative solution would be far more ideal than the current system whereby judges get to make their own decisions about whether or not to allow a name change, and bad rulings have to be individually challenged in districts all over the country.

But in spite of the limitations, the ruling was the right one, is undoubtedly a positive thing for those people whose lives will be affected by it, and does send a strong message of support for transgender rights. It’s just necessary to remember that as far as these messages go, a lot more of them are needed.

The U.S. Department of Justice has released a national report called Children’s Exposure to Violence: A Comprehensive National Survey (pdf). It’s being billed as the most comprehensive study to date on children’s exposure to violence in the United States. The resulting statistics are pretty terrifying. From the introduction:

More than 60 percent of the children surveyed were exposed to violence within the past year, either directly or indirectly (i.e., as a witness to a violent act; by learning of a violent act against a family member, neighbor, or close friend; or from a threat against their home or school) (for full details on these and other statistics cited in this Bulletin, see Finkelhor et al., 2009). Nearly one-half of the children and adolescents surveyed (46.3 percent) were assaulted at least once in the past year, and more than 1 in 10 (10.2 percent) were injured in an assault; 1 in 4 (24.6 percent) were victims of robbery, vandalism, or theft; 1 in 10 (10.2 percent) suffered from child maltreatment (including physical and emotional abuse, neglect, or a family abduction); and 1 in 16 (6.1 percent) were victimized sexually. More than 1 in 4 (25.3 percent) witnessed a violent act and nearly 1 in 10 (9.8 percent) saw one family member assault another. Multiple victimizations were common: more than one-third (38.7 percent) experienced 2 or more direct victimizations in the previous year, more than 1 in 10 (10.9 percent) experienced 5 or more direct victimizations in the previous year, and more than 1 in 75 (1.4 percent) experienced 10 or more direct victimizations in the previous year.

Again, those are a lot of really scary numbers, and there are a whole lot of statistics there to let sink in. But in short, our nation’s children are being abused, witnessing abuse, and being taught how to abuse, all at exceedingly high rates. With what we know about cycles of abuse, this only provides us with yet more reason to make the reduction of violence a major priority.

But due to the wide scope of this study and consequential difficulty of discussing it comprehensively, I want to focus in a bit on the results about sexual violence. Above, it states that 6% of children surveyed were victimized sexually within the past year. Again, I need to emphasize this: not in their lifetimes, but within the past 365 days.

And the numbers get scarier still when we consider that the above statistic includes children of all genders, and of all age groups. Thus, breaking the statistics down further provides a more detailed view:

Adolescents ages 14 to 17 were by far the most likely to be sexually victimized; nearly one in six (16.3 percent) was sexually victimized in the past year, and more than one in four (27.3 percent) had been sexually victimized during their lifetimes. The most common forms of sexual victimization were flashing or exposure by a peer, sexual harassment, and sexual assault.

Girls were more likely than boys to be sexually victimized: 7.4 percent of girls reported a sexual victimization within the past year, and nearly one in eight (12.2 percent) reported being sexually victimized during their lifetimes. Girls ages 14 to 17 had the highest rates of sexual victimization: 7.9 percent were victims of sexual assault in the past year and 18.7 percent during their lifetimes (Finkelhor et al., 2009).

It’s also certainly worth noting that with regards to sexual assault, peers were actually more likely to be the assailants than adults: 1.3% of all respondents had been assaulted by a peer within the past year, compared to .3% for adults known to the child, and 2.7% had been assaulted by a peer within their lifetimes, while 2.4% of lifetime assaults were committed by known adults.

This last tidbit does not surprise me. With the fact that I was raped as a teenager by another teenager, and that a really good chunk of rape survivors I know had a similar experience, I’m not exactly taken aback to learn that our society is teaching young people, undoubtedly primarily (but not entirely) young men, to be sexual predators. But it does send a chill down my spine.

The last piece of bad news is, as the survey’s authors themselves concede, that it’s incredibly likely that the numbers represented here are actually lower than the reality. They write:

The survey methodology has several limitations that may cause it to understate children’s actual exposure to violence. First, because the survey required the cooperation of the family, it ran the risk of missing those children who were most vulnerable to being exposed either to violence in general or to specific types of violence. Second, parents or caregivers who answer for younger children may not know about all of a child’s exposure to violence or may underreport or minimize certain types of victimization. Third, the screening and followup questions may miss some episodes of victimization and incorrectly classify others. Fourth, children may not recall some exposure to violence, particularly less serious exposure, or may not accurately recall the timing of their exposure (i.e., whether or not the exposure occurred within the past year).

All of these are excellent points. There are two others, though. Firstly, a lot of children’s abusers are actually their parents. And parents answering the survey were, I imagine, incredibly unlikely to report violence against their children when they themselves had perpetrated it. Probably even less likely than if it was perpetrated by a spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend, extended family member, etc. And secondly, surveys on violence always hold the same, inevitable flaw: many victims of violence are too ashamed or afraid to admit it, even anonymously, or fail to recognize that what was done to them was violence, even when they have violence explicitly and broadly defined for them, as was done here.

And so, while I wish with all of my heart that it was not the case, I’m left to believe that as bad as things look here, they’re actually at least a little bit worse.

I have no grand conclusion here, no analysis of our culture of violence that I have not previously made, no concrete solutions that have not been laid out a million times. Indeed, it’s all I can do upon reading that close to 20% of our nation’s 14-17 year old girls have been sexually assaulted to not just break down and weep.

But I spend most of my time talking in anecdotes. A lot of us do, and that is in truth an extremely powerful thing. Because anecdotes connect with people, they outrage people, and they inspire people in ways that numbers seem to rarely do. And yet, sometimes I still think it’s important, when having these discussions, to step back and look at the bigger picture, and to arm ourselves with statistics. Because someone will always be demanding them later on down the line.

Marcella has a whole lot more over at Abyss2Hope.

Trigger Warning

I’ve written before about Fernando Manuel Alves, a pub owner who was convicted of brutally raping a drugged and unconscious woman, and the judge who decided not to send him to jail because he deemed the rape a crime of opportunity.

Now, via Broadsides, we’ve got the actual decision, and what it contains is incredibly disturbing. First of all, it confirms that the judge referred to the rape as a crime of opportunity — and horrifically reveals that he said as much when the prosecution asked that Alves be ordered to undergo counseling.

[51] MS. GAULD: And, Your Honour, just another condition I would ask you to consider is counselling as directed.

[52] THE COURT: No. What you did, sir, was reckless, but not something that shows some pathological danger to the community; indeed, the contrary. It was an opportunistic event, one that has caused tremendous harm to G.E. and her family and hopefully they can put this behind them.

Nice, he doesn’t need counseling because raping an unconscious and drugged woman is only reckless and does not pose a danger to the community. (What, did you think that women were a part of the community? There would be your mistake!) Also, it wasn’t actually a crime of opportunity … just an event.

But despite the new information about the judge refusing counseling as a part of the sentence, I’ve already discussed this aspect of the decision at length. Feel free to read it again. What I’m currently interested in is a newly revealed remark by the judge about the violence that Alves inflicted on his victim. He didn’t call it “violence.” Nor brutality, or physical force, or serious assault, or any other such appropriate phrase. And yes, even for rape apologists who don’t see rape itself as violence, what Alves did should be very easily considered violent (again, trigger warning):

[5] In Exhibit A, it is clear that G.E. was very distressed over what had happened, and the fact that she had a complete memory loss. She reported by way of injuries that her shoulders were tender and bruised. There was some bruises on her legs and the back of an arm. Her nipples were sore and bleeding. There was also significant pain and swelling to the vaginal area and there was some blood in the urine. It is indicated in Exhibit A that over the two weeks following the incident that her eyes became black. She had no recollection how the injuries were received which injuries are detailed in appendix B.

I’m pretty sure that these types of injuries do not generally appear, at least not all together, for reasons other than violence. I’m pretty sure that the fact that this was violence should be especially clear when the injuries were sustained after what has now been legally determined to be a rape.

But Judge Rideout has a different term for it (bold mine):

[6] There was also detailed in Exhibit B pictures of the complainant with the accused with his cellphone taken at or about two o’clock in the morning where there is no evidence of any injuries. It would appear to be clear that there was some rough play in relation to the sexual contact which resulted in injuries to G.E.

Rough play, he calls it. And it’s not just a fluke. It appears twice more!

[30] Here, the aggravating circumstances are that sexual intercourse took place in an atmosphere which also involved rough play, and in circumstances where, in my opinion, the accused would be called upon to explore completely that the complainant unequivocally consented to any sexual activity including the rough play that is described or highlighted by the injuries.

You know what’s really playful? Raping someone! It’s just like tickling, wouldn’t you say?

I’ve written many, many times before, and at length, about the tendency for people to minimize rape by referring to it as “sex.” This strikes me as a new, inventive and particularly awful way of doing exactly that.

Play is a word regularly used to describe different “kinds” of sex, or just sex itself (”sex play”). I think this is a wonderful thing, actually, because sex is, or ought to be, a form of play. It’s the perfect word because it presents sex as something optional that participants have explicitly chosen and something fun and enjoyable rather than scary and shameful, because it implies that there are no “right” or “wrong” ways to do it and takes the focus off of heterosexual intercourse, and because it also strongly implies collaboration between sexual partners.

Rough play, as can logically be deduced, is a term that can be used to describe sex play which is rough, whether to a lesser or greater degree. It’s something that is enjoyed by a fair amount of people. It’s also something entered into consensually and safely. And Judge Rideout compared such consensual activity to rape, and rape to such consensual sexual activity.

That he cannot see the difference between the two is greatly disturbing to me. It would seem, in my estimation, to speak to an inability to understand exactly what rape is, and to see that the woman’s role in what happened makes a damn bit of difference at all. In order to believe that the term “rough play” is an accurate way to refer to brutally violent rape, I imagine that one has to not even remotely care about the woman’s experience or autonomy. Because the term here does not refer to the woman’s experience. Calling it “play” indicates that she was a willing participant, one who had chosen to engage, and was in a position to have done so. It appallingly minimizes the violence by referring to it with a word associated with happiness and fun. If anything, the term refers to the rapist’s experience (and even that is doubtful, as this strikes me as a case where even he himself saw his actions not as “rough play” but as violence, with violence being the point).

And framing the rape around the rapist’s point of view during the sentencing for that rapist says a whole lot of things about a person. And not a single one of them is positive.

Rape is not sex. It is also not play, nor is it making love, or being intimate, or fucking, or any other term used to describe sex that you can think of. Enthusiastic, non-coerced consent is what very clearly distinguishes one from the other. To refuse to make that distinction is an insult to every single person who has ever been raped. Hell, I’d say it’s an insult to sex itself, and to the people who choose to engage in it. To fail to understand the distinction is also to speak volumes about your perception of sex, and the relative humanness of its participants.

Which, I presume, is precisely why Alves is out on the streets.

Last week, a freshman at the University of Maryland allegedly gained access to a dorm that was not his own, entered a female student’s room and woke her up by trying to kiss her. He also twice tried to put his hands down her shorts. When the victim screamed, he allegedly ran across the hallway to another room, and grabbed another female student by the head and tried to kiss her. Then, according to the official report, he did something similar to two other students in two other dorm rooms.

So, Seth Rudnitsky allegedly entered several dorm rooms illegally and then attempted to sexually assault their residents. Apparently Rudnitsky has even confessed to entering the dorm rooms and touching the women, though he does not say that he attempted to kiss the women or put his hands inside their clothing. In any case, what he has confessed to alone is already a serious crime — which is why he has been charged with first-degree burglary.

But Rudnitsky’s defense attorney Mark Schamel frames the allegations differently:

Mark Schamel, Rudnitsky’s attorney, said Rudnitsky was intoxicated and made a “typical freshman” mistake. Schamel declined to comment on the specific allegations from the female students who said Rudnitsky tried to initiate unwanted sexual conduct.

“This is not a sexual assault case. You have a really good kid who has never been in trouble his entire life,” Schamel said. “It’s your typical freshman ‘I went out and had too much to drink and was being silly’ kind of case.”

Charging documents refer to the incidents as “unwanted physical contact.” In an interview with police, Rudnitsky admitted to entering “3 to 4 rooms and touching a bed, arm, or shoulder,” according to the documents.

…

Schamel said his client simply made a mistake.

“He had no ulterior motives. He’s a wonderful kid who had too much to drink,” Schamel said. “This frankly shouldn’t even be a criminal case. I think it’s being entirely blown out of proportion.”

You know, the last time I checked, breaking and entering and then sexually touching sleeping people without their consent is not actually a “typical freshman mistake.” And trying to put your hands inside a sleeping woman’s clothing is not “being silly” — it’s assault. How exactly did you spend your college years, Mr. Schamel?

Schamel might as well come out and say that “boys will be boys,” as it’s what his defense amounts to. But of course, that kind of view is not unusual. “Boys will be boys” is a common defense for all kinds of sexual harassment and abuse committed by young men — though most commonly white men of a certain class status.

We see it from the very early days of the playground, when a little boy lifts up a little girl’s skirt to take a peek, and everyone giggles rather than explaining to him why what he did was wrong — or giggles and then gives him the explanation, but with it the distinct impression that what he did was cute. We see it when the little girl is hit and pushed in the mud, and told that the boy did it because he likes her. We see it when boys try to grab girls’ developing breasts, or look down their shirts, or slap their butts, none of which is asked for — and met with some variation of, oh, he’s just playing around. All those hormones! It’s experimentation! And really, it means that he thinks you’re good looking, so take it as a compliment, ladies! And we see it when teenagers start dating, and girls are warned about not being alone with a boy, because you never know what he’ll try to do — after all, boys will be boys, and we can’t expect them to control their sexual urges or worry about your consent.

All their lives, boys who commit sexual violations are told that they’re cute, clowning around, letting off steam, normal. What the phrase “boys will be boys” in fact means is that behaving this way is an integral part of being a boy, growing up, and proving your masculinity. And all their lives, girls see their feelings on the matter pushed to the wayside.

Is it really any shock that many of those boys carry this attitude over into adulthood? The fact is, if the alleged crime here didn’t involve a break in by a stranger, but instead a break in by someone the woman knew — or if it didn’t involve a break in at all, but happened at a party or a club — far fewer people would find Schamel’s assertion absurd. If the women knew the guy, well he was just playing a prank! Trying to scare them! Hehe, funny! If it happened while the women were awake, well what were they doing out around all that alcohol? What do you expect young men to do when they’ve been drinking and you’re all there and gropeable? You know how they are!

“Boys will be boys” is a pervasive part of our culture. We see it everywhere, all the time. And the consequence of that reaction to sexual misconduct and violence is not only a stronger rape culture, but also more and more extreme behavior being excused underneath the banner.

And the whole time, no one thinks about how the girls might be feeling in all of this. We talk all the time about what it supposedly means to be a boy, and ignore the fact that if they are that way, we’ve conditioned them into it. But we as a larger society never, ever talk about what it means to be be a girl, how exactly girls will be girls in a land where boys will be boys.

As Amanda at the Sexist writes in response to Schamel’s statements up above about “typical freshmen”:

For the women who were assaulted, the “typical freshman experience” is a bit different: being awoken by unwanted groping from a strange man. But listen, ladies: That’s fine if that’s your college experience, as long as you don’t make a big fucking deal about it.

Yet again, the (straight, white, cis, middle-class) male experience is portrayed by other men as being the default experience. Yet again, it serves to erase the impact that experience has on the experiences of those around them. Yet again, the rights of women and the many other people who are impacted by this behavior don’t count nearly as much as the right for boys to be boys. Far too few care about what an insult such a phrase is to the intelligence and ethics of men and boys when it can be so efficiently used to maintain their privilege. And even fewer think or care about what it does to women and girls.

Vandy Beth Glenn was fired in 2007 when she informed her boss her boss that she was a trans woman with plans to begin her transition. With Lambada Legal, she has since launched a federal lawsuit against her former employer, the Georgia General Assembly. (Yes, you did in fact read that correctly — her employer was a government body.) In an interview, she said:

“Mr. Brumby told me that people would think I was immoral. He told me I would make other people uncomfortable, just by being myself. He told me that my transition was unacceptable. And over and over, he told me it was inappropriate.”

Then, Brumby fired Glenn.

“I’m not sure I was really thinking anything in that moment other than utter shock,” Glenn told ABCNews.com. “That he was so matter of fact about it blew my mind.”

Now, Sewell Brumby has actually confessed to firing Glenn on the basis of her gender identity, while still claiming to have done no wrong (warning: transmisogynistic/transphobic language contained in the quoted text):

During the deposition, Brumby describes Glenn, who is referred to in court documents by her pre-transition name of [redacted], as not being very good at her job and not particularly well-liked. Brumby said several times that Glenn’s transition would have been disruptive to his workplace.

“I think it would have been, I suppose, an unusual and notorious event. And I think when unusual and notorious events happen in the workplace it distracts the people in that workplace and takes away from the performance of their job duties,” he said.

Although the legislative cousel office has four one-stall gender-neutral bathrooms, Brumby was concerned about what would happen if Glenn were to use one of the public women’s bathrooms. He also expressed personal concerns about his reactions to Glenn’s transition.

“I think it would have made it very uncomfortable and emotionally upsetting for me to communicate with [Glenn's male name redacted] under those circumstances, and I imagined that some other number of our employees would feel likewise,” he said.

“It makes me think about things I don’t like to think about, particularly at work … I think it’s unsettling to think of someone dressed in women’s clothing with male sexual organs inside that clothing.”

Brumby couldn’t explain to Cole Thaler, the Lambda Legal attorney representing Glenn, why it was upsetting.

“It’s not something that I enjoy thinking about, and I think it would have been unsettling to have a constant reminder to think about something I don’t like to think about,” he said.

Brumby called her transition unnatural, but said he didn’t make moral judgments while acknowledging others would. He said that some in the legislature would view Glenn’s transition as “liberal or ultra-liberal” and could lose faith in the office’s required neutrality.

Shorter Brumby: In addition to generally being a transphobic bigot, I also can’t stop thinking about the genitalia of the women who work in my office, and see this as a reason why they should be fired instead of myself.

How can Brumby officially make these confessions only to have the case still be open? The answer is sadly quite simple: Georgia is among the majority of states that do not explicitly make discrimination on the basis of gender identity illegal. Instead, Glenn and her lawyers are filing suit under the federal law which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. While it seems obvious to me that such a law is applicable to this situation — Glenn was fired for openly identifying with her true sex — legal opinions on the subject are mixed. And Brumby admits to knowing as much when he made his decision:

Brumby said he did his own legal research and asked another employee to do her own legal research. He checked to see if Gender Identity Disorder fell under the Americans with Disability Act, and if there was case law that would prohibit him from terminating Glenn because of her transition. He said he found that GID is not covered in the ADA and there is conflicting case law about firing people who transition on the job.

He also noted that one or more of his friends told him, “I would get sued and I would lose.”

In other words, he knew perfectly well that what he was doing was discriminatory — otherwise, there would be nothing to research. But he also saw that many others have gotten away with the exact same behavior and figured that his desire to discriminate was worth the gamble.

The experience of Vandy Beth Glenn and the atrocious actions of her ass of an ex-boss are a perfect example for why it’s so vital for Congress to pass an inclusive ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act). Indeed, Glenn and her lawyers are hoping to bring attention to precisely that bill with this case. Even if Glenn wins in the Federal District Court in Atlanta, that’s only one jurisdiction. Every other person who faces similar discrimination in a different district would have to go through the same process with their own district court, and hope that the same decision is reached. This is particularly troublesome because of the fact that there are countless stories like Glenn’s out there.

ENDA as currently written would outlaw discrimination on the basis of gender identity, as well as sexual orientation, gender and disability. With the last major attempt to pass ENDA, there was a debacle in which gender identity was dropped from the bill, and trans people were screwed over by GLB leaders, in an attempt to increase the chances of passage. Though sexual orientation is still the aspect of the bill getting the most media coverage, gender identity is in the bill this time around — and it needs to stay that way, and the bill needs to be passed.

Check out the Inclusive ENDA Facebook page, and please be sure to take a few minutes out of your day to contact the representatives and senators who need to be pushed for their vote. The decision to contact or not contact can make the difference between passage or non-passage, and between a fully inclusive bill and one that leaves trans people out in the cold.

Tomorrow, Sunday, October 11 at 8pm EST, I’ll be on the Womanist Musings Blogtalk Radio show. Melissa McEwan from Shakesville and I will be discussing rape culture, as well as the Roman Polanski case, with Renee Martin and her podcast co-host Monica Roberts from Transgriot.

I’m not quite entirely sure at the moment what I’ll have to say on the subject — let alone in the awesome company of Liss, Renee and Monica — but with any luck I’ll come up with something. You can go to the podcast page to tune in live — and even call in to chat with us — or wait until it’s over and listen on demand. I’m really excited to be taking part, and I hope you’ll check it out!

Today, October 9, is John Lennon’s birthday. He would have turned 69. It’s also my mom’s birthday, so Happy Birthday, Mom! (And let us not further forget Sean Lennon, and the fantabulous Giles Martin. Amazing people are born on October 9, that’s all I can say.)

Last year, in honor of this day, I posted Imagine. I considered posting Mother this year, but seeing as how it’s also my mom’s birthday, thought it might give a wrong impression about my relationship with her! So instead, I’m going to go with God:

Lots of people hear this song as John burning bridges and slamming doors. It is, in part — and I can also imagine that hearing the song when it first came out was probably traumatic for a lot of Beatles fans. But I tend to think that John needed to close those doors to open new ones. Many people logically hear all of the things that John doesn’t believe in; I tend to hear “I just believe in me, Yoko and me,” and I find that an incredibly hopeful message. Plenty hear John denouncing his identity as the walrus, but I tend to hear him claiming his true identity. I hear him announcing that he is John, and I hear him coming to peace with that.

I’ve also argued for a long time that while starting one of the Beatles was one of the best things that ever happened to John, breaking up the Beatles was one of the best things that ever happened for him personally, too. Whatever you think about the effect on his music, I think that it allowed him to grow and find happiness that staying with the Beatles never would have. With this song, John may in fact be smashing his public image, and a perception that many people held dear — but I think he’s also establishing himself. And I find that fitting on a day for celebrating his life.

Because I need it, you also get the bonus track of Hold On:

Happy Birthday, John. Also, for those who are interested, don’t forget to watch Yoko’s lighting of the Imagine Peace Tower. It goes on at 3:30 EST.