You Shouldn't Laugh

As a fitting wrap-up to our discussion of rape myths for Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and especially in the light of our last post discussing rapists in particular, we refer you to this excellent post at Shakesville.

Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.

If one in twenty guys (or more) is a real and true rapist, and you have any amount of social activity with other guys like yourself, then it is almost a statistical certainty that one time hanging out with friends and their friends, playing Halo with a bunch of guys online, in a WoW guild, in a pick-up game of basketball, at a bar, or elsewhere, you were talking to a rapist. Not your fault. You can't tell a rapist apart any better than anyone else can. It's not like they announce themselves.

But, here's the thing. It's very likely that in some of these interactions with these guys, at some point or another, someone told a rape joke. You, decent guy that you are, understood that they didn't mean it, and it was just a joke. And so you laughed.

Or maybe you didn't laugh. Maybe it just wasn't a very funny joke. So maybe you just didn't say anything at all.

And, decent guy who would never condone rape, who would step in and stop rape if he saw it, who understands that rape is awful and wrong and bad, when you laughed? When you were silent?

That rapist who was in the group with you, that rapist thought that you were on his side. That rapist knew that you were a rapist like him. And he felt validated, and he felt he was among his comrades.

This can be true about any joke, really. It certainly applies to domestic violence. If you're hanging out with a man who batters, and he makes a joke about knocking some sense into his wife, and you laugh, you just reinforced his belief that hitting his wife is OK. It's as simple as that. So the next time you are confronted with a situation like this, and it might be awkward to speak up, think about this: who would you rather defend, the victim or the batter? The victim or the rapist? Whose side would you rather have people think you're on? As Shaker Time-Machine said in her post, "If you're doing something that is more likely to make rapists feel comfortable, then don't do it!"

Sports Writers Pay Attention

Right on the heels of another article taking athletes and teams to task for their use and acceptance of domestic violence, comes this article from Scoop Jackson on Real Clear Sports. He makes a declaration that we wish all men understood:

As a man, it would be irresponsible of me to continue to ignore it. Continue to tune out the pattern. Continue to pretend that these are just isolated incidents.

As a man -- especially a man who covers sports for a living -- that would make me a coward.

This too is a fantastic article meriting a full read. Here are some of the highlights:

These are not just cases of "Floyd Being Floyd" or "Lance Being Lance" or "Chris Being Chris." The issue is bigger than them individually. This is about all male athletes -- black, white, straight, gay, old, young, paid, not-paid, superstar or unknown -- and how they control personal anger and how they handle personal issues. Again, we can no longer afford to look at these incidents as isolated.

A study by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports, cited in a 2003 story in the Los Angeles Times related to the Kobe Bryant case, found that male athletes are accused of committing an average of two reported acts of violence against women per week. According to Richard Lapchick, one of the authors of that study, those numbers haven't changed since then.

University of Florida wide receiver Chris Rainey, sent a text to his former girlfriend stating, "Time to Die, b----," according to Gainesville police. Rainey has been charged with aggravated stalking, a third-degree felony...

Just the fact that University of Tennessee fans are printing up orange "Time To Die" T-shirts for their upcoming game against Florida this weekend is reason enough for us to increase our investment in a solution.

Please check out the whole thing.

Talking About Rape

People use the word "rape" in all sorts of conversations. Sometimes it's a metaphor, as in "Big business is raping the environment". Sometimes it's used as a threat, as in " The Bulldogs are going to gang-rape Florida this weekend." Sometimes it's used to describe the crime of rape, but when we use it is so many other contexts, it starts to make us take the actual experience a lot less seriously.

Don't believe us? Read this article by Kira Cochrane for the Guardian [warning for adult language]. She goes on for paragraphs listing many recent instances of rape being used as a metaphor, rape jokes told by comedians, and sexual assault scenes in movies used for comedic value, ending with the conclusion that people these days just don't take rape very seriously. I hope we don't need to convince you that it is serious.

As Sandy Brindley, national co-ordinator of Rape Crisis Scotland, says: "Rape is so particularly traumatic and so meaningful in so many ways, that there's something about using the word in other contexts that diminishes the reality of it, and the impact it has on women's lives. Rape is a powerful word, and it's powerful for a reason, because of that devastating impact."

Aside from suggesting rape isn't all that serious, these jokes also underplay its prevalence. Estimations of the number of women raped or sexually assaulted in the UK every year are necessarily imprecise, but they range from 47,000 to 100,000. It is thought that around one in four women are victims of sexual violence in their lifetimes. In telling rape jokes, or throwing the word casually into conversation, there is an assumption that the person you are talking to won't have experienced this – or that, if they have, you just don't care about the memories you might provoke, the anxiety you might trigger. "I think people don't necessarily realise how common rape is," says Brindley, "and that when they're speaking to an audience there will definitely be people there who are rape survivors. On that basis, I think you have to have some recognition about the impact of what you're saying."

In my view, rape jokes feed a culture in which jurors either disbelieve rape complainants, or just don't think rape is that significant: I spoke to a juror once who said he didn't feel comfortable convicting a defendant of rape because the woman had only been violated orally.

It may be hard to imagine that one joke or one metaphor can be directly linked to a juror acquitting a rapist, but it never is just one joke or one metaphor. We live in a culture that finds these jokes not just acceptable, but funny, and rape metaphors not just tolerable, but clever. When a rape survivor hears her traumas talked about glibly, or joked about, she gets the message that what happened to her isn't considered all that bad, regardless of how she feels about it. She is told that she is not important and that her experiences are not important. What is more important is making a clever threat, or having a good laugh.

"Stupid Criminals" and Bad Reporting

Remember how we are constantly admonishing the world to take stalking seriously? (1,2,3,4,5) Apparently this reporter for the LaGrange Ledger-Enquirer missed the memo.

The man had made some threats to the woman, and she had distanced herself from him.

That distance grew close as she and two of the children walked on the sidewalk toward the apartments. At some point, the suspect jumped from his hiding spot, Brown said.

They fought, falling to the ground where the man lost control of the gun. The woman grabbed it and ran back to her car with the suspect on her heels, police said.

“And that’s when she pulled the gun up and shot him,” Brown said.

Officers found the suspect on the ground behind the car with gunshot wounds in a leg and an arm. The woman was nearby in the parking lot. Everyone else was inside, the detective said.

The man was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta for treatment, and will face charges including aggravated assault, stalking, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, criminal damage to property, criminal trespass and third-degree cruelty to children, reports state.

Police don’t anticipate any charges being filed against the woman.

Sounds menacing enough, right? A man was hiding in the bushes with a gun waiting for his former partner to come back to her home with her children. How can you not take that seriously? Oh wait, did we forget to include the article's intro?

You might not call it the most well thought out plan: Hiding in some bushes in the pouring rain around 5:30 a.m., packing heat, waiting for your ex.

But even under those circumstances, to enter discussions about stupid criminals, the suspect would have to get shot by his own gun.

Enter David Jackson, 39, whom LaGrange, Ga., police say was waiting near the sidewalk by the Old Airport Road apartment early Tuesday. It was pouring rain when a 27-year-old woman, her sister and three children pulled into the parking lot, Detective Brian Brown said.

There is a reason that this man was charged with six crimes, including a felony. He could have killed this woman, her sister, and/or her children. Media members, please stop treating stalking as a joke.

Chicken or the Egg

Via Yahoo - A new study by the Parents Television Council has counted over 400 acts of violence against women and female teenagers on prime-time ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox shows from February until May of this year. When the group conducted the same study five years ago, they counted less than 200 acts of violence against women. The PTC clocked an increase of over 120 percent for beatings, murder, threats and rape of adult women, as well as an over 400 percent increase against teenage girls.

The media watchdog said it was particularly disturbed by the use of violence against women in comedies and said it hoped TV networks and advertisers would stand up against the trend.

"I hope the industry will look at our data and be as shocked as I was," PTC president Tim Winter told reporters.

The report suggested that violent acts against women and teen girls was increasing at rates that far exceed the two percent increase in overall violence that the study found existed on TV between 2004-2009.

The PTC compared prime-time programing on networks ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox in February and May 2004 and the same months in 2009. It said every network except ABC showed a dramatic increase in stories that included beatings, violent threats, shooting, rape, stabbing and torture.

The PTC findings reflect a sharp rise in the number of crime series on TV, such as the popular CBS franchise "CSI" which is one of America's most-watched drama series.

But the report singled out Fox, saying the network allowed violence against women to be trivialized through punch lines in its satirical animated comedies "Family Guy" and "American Dad." It cited one May 2009 episode of "Family Guy" in which a character gets divorced under a fictional 18th century procedure -- by shooting his wife dead.

Our question is, which came first? Is violence against women so tolerated that it makes its way into our entertainment, or does its saturating presence in our media desensitize us to violence in reality? Or is it simply an echo chamber, where each feeds the other and makes the problem more and more extreme?

Proof That Stalking Isn't Funny

A woman is suing Toyota over a terrifying "prank" that left her believing that she was being stalked (note that we put our quotes around the work 'prank' whereas ABC puts their quotes around the word 'terrifying').

In a lawsuit filed Sept. 28 in Los Angeles Superior Court, Amber Duick claims she had difficulty eating, sleeping and going to work during March and April of last year after she received e-mails for five days from a fictitious man called Sebastian Bowler, from England, who said he was on the run from the law, knew her and where she lived, and was coming to her home to hide from the police. There was even a fictitious MySpace page reportedly created for Bowler.

Although Bowler did not have Duick's current address, he sent her links to his My Space
page as well as links to video clips of him causing trouble all over the country on his way to her former house in Los Angeles, according to the lawsuit.

The alleged harassment lasted five days, according to the suit, and frightened Duick so much she contacted neighbors, friends and family, and the occupant of her former home about the man she feared was coming to visit. Her attorney declined to comment as to whether or not she called the police. She even made her longtime boyfriend sleep with a club and mace next to the bed for protection.

"As a result of the e-mails, [Duick] found it extremely difficult to work, and her job performance suffered," the complaint said. "[She] was unable to perform her job duties at standard levels." It turns out the prank was actually part of a marketing effort executed by the Los Angeles division of global marketing agency Saatchi & Saatchi, which created the campaign to promote the Toyota Matrix, a new model launched in 2008.

The campaign was designed by the firm Saatchi & Saatchi to target men under 35 who "hate advertising". Instead, they could be convinced to buy a car by setting their friends up to believe a complete stranger was terrorizing their way across the country, intending to find them at home.

The prank campaign, Saatchi creative director Alex Flint told the magazine, should gain the appreciation from "even the most cynical, anti-advertising guy."

If I were a man under the age of 35, I would be pretty ticked that the advertising industry assumes that I and all of my peers enjoy laughing at people being stalked.

Stop Making DV Jokes!

We could do much to change the way our public views domestic violence by providing training to those at newspapers and news websites who write headlines for articles. The lesson: stop minimizing violence against women and trying to turn it into a joke!

Headline: Man poisoned wife in "ill thought-out" act of love

Actual Article: A man who tried to poison his estranged wife so he could rekindle her love by nursing her back to health gets no jail time.

Headline: Man accused of plotting mayhem to win woman's love
Actual Article: Man tries to hire his roommate to kidnap a woman, slash her face repeatedly with a utility knife and torch her Toyota.

Headline: Boyfriend of the year material
Actual Article: A woman reports a former boyfriend's stalking behavior, including threats to post videos of their intimate moments on Youtube and Myspace, tried to interference with a job opportunity, and comments that, in the past, he "has killed someone."

Headline: Husband goes nuts over nuts
Actual Article: A man beats his wife in front of their children.

Stalking: Still Not Funny

This blog is still getting comments almost two years later on our post about a t-shirt marketed toward teens that reads "Some call it stalking, I call it love." We're accused of taking things too seriously and not being able to take a joke. The problem is, stalking isn't funny. Or, at least, it shouldn't be. Yet people continue to minimize the damage that stalking does to victims by creating spoofs like these:

The real joke is how true to life these stalking behaviors are. But that still doesn't make it funny.

Chris Brown Updates

We're a little late to the game on this one - Summer is a very busy time at WRC - but there has been a lot of recent Chris Brown news. We don't normally zero in on celebrities like this, but following the Brown case start to finish can really provide some insight into what abusive relationships looks like.

First off, after accepting a plea deal for no jail time, Brown was spotted at a party wearing a $300,000 custom-made diamond necklace reading "Oops". In light of that, his video apology rings kind of hollow. We're not the only ones who think so.

The obvious flaw in his apology is that you can't tell what he's apologizing for. He simply calls his brutal assault on Rihanna "the situation" or "what I've done". Anna at Jezebel provides a critique:

Brown says he's sorry about "those few moments," about "what I've done," about "the situation," about "what happened," and about "my mistake." Only once does he actually use the term "domestic violence," and this when he is mentioning the domestic violence that he witnessed growing up. Whether or not his apology is simply a calculated "ploy to encourage parents to let their children buy his records again," as entertainment.ie puts it, someone in Brown's camp clearly knows that if he said, "I'm sorry that I beat Rihanna," the apology would go down a lot less smoothly.

By going the vague route, Brown allows fans to forget the visceral reality of what he did — assaulting Rihanna until her face was swollen and bruised — and instead focus on all the nice things he says about his mother, his "spiritual advisors," and his commitment to change. By saying he's sorry he didn't "handle the situation better," he casts the beating as a response to a bad "situation" — and instance of poor conflict resolution, not of flying off the handle. And by implying there was something that needed to be "handled" in some way, this statement subtly implicates Rihanna too.

It seems that Oprah didn't buy it either. As promised in his apology video, Brown wanted to immediately begin doing interviews once his sentencing hearing was over. He wanted Oprah, but Oprah turned him down, so he turned to Larry King instead. His handlers believe that King will allow Chris the opportunity to get his apology across without facing “brutal questioning”.

But what does all this mean? Will Chris Brown stop being a batterer? Will his fans accept his apology and move on? No one knows, by Jaclyn Friedman at Huffington Post summarizes the implications of the sentencing, and of batterers intervention in general, nicely.

But what really may make the difference for Brown is a factor most programs sorely lack -- accountability. While all eyes will be on Brown as he completes his sentence, that's hardly the case for most abusers. In fact, few jurisdictions in the country have systems in place to enforce their own sentences when it comes to batterer intervention programs, resulting in a national noncompletion rate of about 50%. Given that abusers who fail to complete their court-mandated programs are more than twice as likely to reoffend than those who do, that's a gap which urgently needs addressing.

Go read Jaclyn's whole article. It makes some recommendations I'm sure that our friends at Men Stopping Violence would agree with.

Also Not Funny, Supreme Court Edition

When women are in places of power and visibility, its never long before they get threatened with violence, either explicitly or through cartoons or "jokes" meant to put them in their place. (Just visit a feminist blog like Shakesville or Feministing and search "Hillary Clinton" or "Sarah Palin"). It stands to reason, then, that those who feel threatened by the choice of Sonia Sotomayer for the Supreme Court would feel empowered to draw a cartoon like this, currently running in The Oklahoman :



With editorial cartoons like this accepted by their paper, its not surprising that Oklahoma ranks as the 3rd worst state in the nation for women. According to the Oklahoma Women's Network, much of what holds Oklahoma women and girls back is the state’s culture of violence and disrespect for women. Oklahoma ranks #4 in women murdered by men, #1 in child abuse and their domestic violence shelters are full of women escaping violence.

Obviously playing on damaging racial stereotypes, the prevalence of violence against women in their state makes this cartoon even more insidious, especially when one recognizes the multiple oppressions in play for women of color who are victims of violence and how easily these women are dismissed by the systems designed to protect them. Please help us tell the Oklahoman that racism and violence against women aren't funny.

That's Not Funny

Melissa at Shakesville is amazing about breaking down some of the basic lessons about feminism and gender equality. In March she wrote a post entitled Feminism 101: On Language and the Commodification of Sex Via Humor. Below you'll find a lengthy section from the post, and we encourage you to read it in its entirely. However, note that the original post, its comments, and Shakesville as a whole does contain adult language that some readers may find offensive.

I've talked about the role of humor in perpetuating and normalizing rape and the objectification of women's body parts, and why humor is such a useful tool in the normalization of patriarchal norms and narratives:

[O]ne of the most common themes among the emails I get is gratitude for expressing frustration or contempt or anger at something of which, women have been told in explicit or implicit ways, our jovial and uncomplaining acquiesce is expected. Thank you for saying it's not funny. That something has always bothered me. It's an expression of relief that someone has said publicly what they've felt privately—and maybe never said to anyone for fear of reprisal, for fear of being told they are humorless, hypersensitive, over-reactionary, boring.

…It's a terribly effective silencing strategy, which is why the conveyance of patriarchal norms is so often closely associated with humor. Anyone who dares complain is just No Fun—hence, we find ourselves mired in a culture in which women who don't laugh at seeing parts of their body routinely used as demeaning gags, and the men who are disgusted by such objectification of people they're meant to love and respect, are the ones considered weird.

It can be really daunting to go up against all that, especially in one's everyday life, on one's own, just one woman against someone(s) equipped with such an effective institutionalized mechanism for shaming and silencing.

"Geez, can't you take a joke?" That's all it takes—the implication that the woman who objects to public expressions of misogyny, who doesn't find funny the means of her own subjugation, or doesn't find amusing being triggered by careless "jokes" about a brutal event she has experienced, is humorless. Uncool. Oversensitive. Weak. (As though standing up to bigotry is the easy way out, and laughing along is somehow strong.)

People often ask us what they can do to end domestic violence. The standard answers always donate money or volunteer, but what Melissa gets at here is equally important. You can help end violence against women by doing the hard work of saying "That's not funny" when someone makes a joke at the expense of women, or "That's not ok" when someone condones the use of violence to solve a problem or get their way. It isn't easy; none of us want to make our friends feel uncomfortable. But by taking a stand, you're communicating to those with whom you have influence that you are not ok with sexism, objectification, and all of the isms that, when added together, create a culture where violence against women is accepted. If your kids see you taking a stand, better yet, because the more kids who grow up knowing that violence against women is unacceptable, the better their world will be.

Some Rare Good News

A San Antonio man has been successful in his quest to shut down a Dallas-based 'wife-beaters' Website.

Wife-beaters.com, a Dallas-based business that sold wife-beater T-shirts, has been shut down after a San Antonio man complained to the company hosting the site.

Cbeyond, a communications company based in Atlanta, said it shut down the site Monday after receiving a complaint last week.

The site was removed because its customer violated its contract by reselling Web hosting services to Wife-beaters.com, said Bill Weber, CBeyond’s general counsel. The content of Wife-beaters.com also violated Cbeyond’s acceptable use policy, which prohibits “objectionable information of any kind.”

The Web site sold white tank tops, commonly referred to as “wife-beaters,” and gave a discount to anyone who could prove they were convicted of wife beating.

“We are not going to host a site like that,” Weber said.

When reached on Tuesday, business owner James Doolin said he would return The Dallas Morning News’ call but never did.

Patrick Greene, who has for weeks searched for a way to remove the site from the Internet, said he was pleased that the site was removed. “I felt like I was helping thousands of women,” he said.

After filing complaints with the FBI, the Texas attorney general and the Better Business Bureau to shut down the site, but was unsuccessful. On Friday, he contacted Cbeyond to report that the site was offensive and violated the company’s policy.

Greene said he plans to keep looking for wife-beaters.com - just in case Doolin finds another host for his material.

Thank you, Mr. Greene, for not dismissing this as a harmless joke like so many others do.

Violence at the Emmys

Ten minutes into this Sunday's Emmy Awards, many past victims of sexual violence turned off their TVs. Why? Because memories of the violence they experienced were retriggered by a tasteless bit by the show's hosts.

During the opener, hosts Tom Bergeron, Heidi Klum, Howie Mandel, Jeff Probst, and Ryan Seacrest are all dressed in tuxedos. As the only female host, however, Heidi Klum cannot be allowed to remain fully clothed for long, and, in a display that can only be described as horrifying, Bergeron and his guest on stage William Shatner proceed to rip her clothes off, revealing a skimpier and sexier outfit underneath.



Attention Emmys: Violence against women is not a joke. It is not shtick. It is not funny. Heidi Klum is more than a body to be displayed, and by reducing her to such through an act of violence, you have communicated to the entire country that ripping a woman's clothes off against her will for your own sexual gratification is not only acceptable, but amusing.

This is why violence against women is still a common occurrence.


h/t to Shakesville.

Because alcohol causes domestic violence

As an interesting follow-up to our discussion of victim blaming in rape cases where the victims had been drinking comes this ad from the Bernard Brewery in the Czech Republic.

The difference here is that alcohol absolves the drinkers of blame, the drinkers in this case being abusive men. Elle, Phd writes:

Somewhere, I'm sure, someone had a good intention. But the execution of said intention leaves MUCH to be desired. Here is the logic behind the ad:

Men in Czech Republic consume the most beer in all of the Europe. Unfortunately, the beer changes many of them into aggressors upon arriving home. In order to stop this domestic alco-violence, we redesigned the trademark beer mugs of our client Bernard brewery to reventatively warn its beer drinkers to not lose control over their drinking.

Because the one thing that will stop a drunken abuser is having already had his fist pressed to a woman's face all night.

This feels like a ready made excuse to me--"Honey, you know how I get when I drink. That's not the real me." People always search for ways to rationalize and justify men who are assumed to be "good" except for that little abusive streak.

I don't think beer "changes" you. I know there are people who are exceptionally mean when they drink, and I know alcohol can exacerbate a situation, but abusers don't need validation for one of their most common ways of shifting responsibility for their actions.

Besides, I think the post on which I found the ad says a lot--I get the creepy feeling lots of people would find this mug funny, a sort of kitschy/novelty item.

Something else I thought about upon seeing the picture? Her bland, semi-smile does little to communicate how devastating someone's fist to the middle of your face can be.

The Un-Funny Rape of the American Teenager

ABC Family’s new show The Secret Life of the American Teenager has created quite a stir because of a July 22nd episode that showed a teenage girl who was almost a victim of rape. The scene takes place from 1:56 – 5:00.

The character, who is very religious, says a short prayer and is then able to ward off her attackers with a broken bottle until a friend arrives and scares them away.

What is remarkable about this clip is that the thwarted assault was captured on a security camera and the footage was shown on all of the local news channels – for laughs. Apparently it’s funnier to see a cheerleader fend off a would-be attacker with a broken bottle than it is horrifying that a teenage girl barely escaped being raped.

Send ABC your comments letting them know that you don’t think rape is funny.


H/T to The Brat Queen

Local Bar Owner thinks Homicide is Hilarious

Image taken from Shakesville

The AJC reports:

Just down the street from Marietta's famous Big Chicken, Mulligan's has carved a provocative niche in an increasingly multicultural area, thanks to its owner's ultra-conservative political views. If you live in Marietta, it's impossible not to know what's on Norman's mind, as he posts his views on signs in front of Mulligan's.

Among his recent musings: "I wish Hillary had married OJ," "No habla espanol — and never will" and the standard "I.N.S. Agents eat free."[emphasis added]

These offensive signs, however, did not draw community wide protest. It was not until owner Mike Norman began selling Obama '08 shirts with pictures of Curious George on the front that several organization including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Nation of Islam, and the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials organized a rally to protest the bar's racism. While it's very important to call out these racist and reprehensible actions, we cannot forget to highlight the misogyny as well, that this restaurateur would rather Hillary had been murdered than run for president.

Part 2: Take it Seriously

Recently Wayout TV, a Damon Wayans project, put out this video on YouTube. It features a young man who, after hearing his girlfriend is pregnant, calls on Abortion Man to fix his problem. This "super hero" then proceeds to find the young man's girlfriend and repeatedly punch, kick, and stomp on her until what is meant to be a bloody fetus flies across the screen.

In short, it is horrifying.

Violence against women is not funny. This video is especially egregious given that women are at greater risk of violence during pregnancy than at any other time. It is important to note as well, given the perceived ages of the two people in the video, that pregnant women between 15 and 19 are at a higher risk for homicide than any other group.

Producing this kind of "entertainment" is not edgy, or cool, or funny. It's irresponsible at best. Making light of violence against women gives tacit approval to abusers and would-be abusers, and tells the rest of society that this type of violence is really no big deal.

H/T Feministing

Should you rape a woman?

The Australian Football League is making an interactive DVD as part of their efforts to improve players' respect for women. Respect and responsibility program co-ordinator Melanie Heenan says it's purpose is to "prompt confident decision-making in situations that can be quite complex".

We are always thrilled when a professional athletics organization takes a step to deal with violence against women. However, we are disappointed that the type of training being implemented by the AFL is actually necessary. Melinda Tankard Reist says it best:

We have so failed in the very basics of civilised human interaction that the Australian Football League has been forced to hire a swag of actors and a film crew to make an interactive DVD to help players understand that perhaps it's not a good idea to pretend to be your best mate so you can have sex with his girlfriend.

As sarcastic is it sounds, Reist's chosen scenario is drawn from an actual draft question from the training DVD's script. Among the drafts released to the public are the complicated moral dilemmas of whether or not to trick a woman into having sex with you, take of advantage of a woman who is very intoxicated, or watch people have sex without their permission. In respect to these questions, blogger Melissa McEwan comments,

That these are considered complex ethical questions is just completely insane to me. It's like being asked: "You see your friend Todd walking down the street toward you. Do you: (a) say hello or (b) hit him in the head with a shovel?"

In her column, Ms. Reist goes on to say that it does not seem that the DVD will address the seriousness of sexual assault and that it is playing on negative stereotypes of women. She also believes that the actions of the AFL are a reflection of a larger culture of contempt for women as exemplified by an Australian made t-shirt that reads "It's not rape, it's surprise sex."

Inexcusable Journalism from the New York Post

If there was ever any doubt, the New York Post has provided us with concrete evidence that main stream culture doesn't take violence against women seriously. Here is their headline for an article regarding Ike Turner's recent passing.

IKE "BEATS" TINA TO DEATH

Bear in mind someone doesn't just slap these headlines up. They have to be approved by a series of editors. This was considered the best possible headline for this story, not by just one idiot, but by a group of successful professionals.