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Jennifer LaPenta, 20, was jailed this week by Lake County Associate Judge Helen Rozenberg who held her in contempt for wearing a T-shirt in her courtroom with the words: "I have the (slang for female body part) so I make the rules." Here is the story as reported by the American Bar Association Journal and the Chicago Tribune.
Some of my issues with this are as follows:
1. While the term used for vagina may have been "offensive" to some, I completely support the idea behind the phrase - that women totally have power to set their own rules sexually.
2. LaPenta offered to take the shirt off but the judge just said it was "too late" and threw her in jail. LaPenta contends that she was incarcerated without being told why, taken to bond court or given an opportunity to call her mother.
3. In both articles this "slang" word for vagina is not explicitly stated and only referenced. This feels very odd and juvenile to me.
What logical objective did the judge think she would accomplish by throwing a young woman in jail for such a minor "offense"? I can't think of one and imagine this was simply an issue of the judge on a power trip and the justice system gone awry once more. It would be interesting to learn what the racial/ethnic backgrounds are of the defendant and the judge and look into how race may have played a role in the situation.
What are your thoughts?
Amanda Hess has a great blog called The Sexist over at the Washington City Paper website. She recently blogged about a case in Ottawa wherein a hospital worker had sexually assaulted a female patient. In convicting the man of sexual assault, the judge cited the woman's attractiveness as evidence -
"...It’s depressing that even as a judge convicts a man of sexual assault, he insists upon reinforcing the most victim-blaming sentiments about women bringing unwanted attention onto themselves based on how they look and what they’re wearing."
Unbelievable isn't it? Click here for the full post.
In a post titled "To the Anonymous gay teen who asked for help in a Boing Boing comment thread" Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing writes a moving message to a gay teen who feels trapped due to his parents' ill feelings (and subsequent actions) towards his being gay. Xeni lists Amplify (though slightly mis-represents it as a soley LGBTQ site) on a list of resources for this teen, which was extremely exciting to see!! Click on the link above to check out the full post!
This is such a powerful video testifying to the realities of rape in the US Military. Sgt Sandra Lee says something very important- that while the staggering statistic is that 1 in 3 women in the military are raped, she was not among that statistic because she did not report it. So can you imagine how rampant the issue of rape is in the military for both men and women? This is such a sad and serious reality that clashes with the overly glorified image of the military in American culture.
RaceWire talks more about this issue here.
Chinese company Gigimo has created the Artificial Virginity Hymen, which costs around $30.00 and is marketed as a product to "help newly married women fool their husbands into believing they are virgins". Male Egyptian politicians are outraged that such a product will make it easier for Egyptian women to "give in to temptation" and are fighting to ban the product to "uphold Egyptian and Arab values" that deem sexual activity acceptable only within the "confines of marriage".
I love the use of the word "confines" and "marriage" seeing as the Egyptian and other Arab states are trying to confine a woman's sexual experience within a strictly regimented social construction that is the institution of marriage. While binary politics does not get us very far, this story begs the question "where is the male equivalent of a so-called virginity test?" The truth is that you can't quite test a man's virginity and yet the truth is that you can't quite test a woman's either. These virginity tests determine a woman's sexual status based on whether or not they bleed when the hymen is penetrated by a penis during sexual intercourse. Such tests are problematic because not all females are born with hymens and hymens can be broken through non-sexual activities (i.e. horseback riding). Additionally, these tests don't account for/are not sympathetic to incidents of rape wherein the hymen (if it did exist) was broken during the act. In essence these virginity tests do nothing more than commodify female bodies and reduce them to products for men- their values increasing or decreasing depending on perceived and "tested" sexual innocence. This is just another form of patriarchal oppression my friends.
A recent phenomenon with the advent of mass access to cell phones is this thing called "sexting" - which refers to the sharing of sexually oriented material via cell hones. I personally have never "sexted" but remember being very close to doing it.
I didn't get a cell until my senior year of high school and at that time photo capabilities on cells weren't widely available yet. It wasn't until the latter part of college that I got a flip phone with a camera. It was at that time that I found myself trying to take some R-rated photos to send to my boyfriend. Alas I didn't have the nerve to click the button and called my boyfriend to say that I couldn't go through with it. He didn't mind and I never thought about it again until I started seeing all these cases in the media about sexting gone wrong.
While I am all for (responsible) sexual liberation, there is an obvious need to help educate people about how to be critical consumers and producers of media generally and about sexting in particular. Girls Rule!, an organization dedicated to empowering young women in the Chicago area, recently published a great article to help parents talk to their kids about sexting: "Girls Rule! Parent ToolKit: Talking to Youth About "Sexting." I think it's also a great read for fellow peer educators should you ever find yourself talking to a someone about sexting.
Check out this nifty packaging featured on Lovely Package:
I walked into a local CVS on my way home from work recently. Browsing through the store I came across the condom section. At first glance nothing looked amiss, but as I walked closer I noticed that, even though they weren't behind glass doors, they were in fact locked!
These locks are a little trickier because they're slightly hidden behind the price label and can't be seen unless you look closely. I didn't need to purchase condoms at the time, but I remember thinking to myself that I would feel uncomfortable having to go to an employee and ask him/her to unlock a box of condoms for me.
With all the horrific statistics about the spread of HIV and other STIs, and studies showing that locked condoms are disproportionately affecting low income and minority communities, it's really upsetting to see condoms locked up like this. The fact that they're locked up may very well deter people from purchasing and ultimately using them to have safer sex. If you haven't already, go here to join others in signing a petition to CVS Corporation encouraging it to stop locking up condoms.
When I read this blog post today I immiediately had images from The Matrix running through my head- remember the scenes of all the humans in pods being "harvested" by machines? Sad thing is, something similiar to this is happening in real life. Amanda Kloer's post "Nigerian Baby Farms Breed Slaves from Slaves" addresses the baby farm phenomenon wherein Nigerian girls are being trafficked to literally breed children; children who are then sold to unsuspecting parents who want to adopt a child or into slavery. Girls are paid $170 for their efforts. Read more by clicking the link above.
