“She Wasn’t Conscious So She Technically Didn’t Say No” Is The New Defense In Rape Cases

I’ve tried to be quiet about the Steubenville rape case but I can no longer keep my mouth shut. A sixteen-year-old girl found out she was raped, multiple times, when she went on to her social media and saw pictures of her unconscious body being carted by two boys. She texted the boys and others from the party and was met with ‘you wanted it’ type responses. In fact one of her rapists told her he looked out for her and if she told anyone what happened he, “would never do anything nice for you again.” It was so nice to put your fingers inside her while she was unconscious in the backseat of a car while someone else filmed it. Good looking out, bro. Or wait, maybe he was referring to the time he tried to make her give him a blowjob in the basement while others watched and testified she “wasn’t into it”.

The boys took her from party to party where they (and others) raped her. I’m not putting “allegedly” in there because they did it. There is photographic evidence of it and recently someone has testified that they even recorded some it on their cellphone.
This case has gotten a lot of attention because Anonymous, the hacktivist group, hacked into some social accounts and uncovered a video in which a few football players, including both suspects, were joking about the incident. Here are some choice quotes:

“He’s puttin’ a wang in the butthole, dude.”

“They peed on her. That’s how you know she’s dead, because someone pissed on her.”

“They raped her harder than that cop raped Marcellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction.”

“They raped her quicker than Mike Tyson raped that one girl.”

“They raped her more than the Duke Lacrosse team.”

“Her puss is about as dry as the sun right now.”

“It isn’t really rape because you don’t know if she wanted to or not.”

As disgusting as that is, what’s worse is the defense for these cocksuckers. The defense is, “it was not rape because she was unconscious therefore she didn’t SAY no.” ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!? That’s the defense? That’s what we’re calling a “defense”?!!? Those lawyers should be brought up on charges of their own. Half the people in that town are SUPPORTING the rapists. I don’t care if she was a “party girl” I don’t care if they play football THEY RAPED SOMEONE.

It’s disgusting, it’s frustrating, it’s infuriating and I hope those boys find themselves in jail where they meet a lovely cell mate that will be “puttin’ a wang in a the butthole, dude”. I hope those lawyers have daughters that drink too much at a party one night and they see pictures of her unconscious with two men dragging her to the back room where they will “rape her harder than that cop raped Marcellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction”. I hope that half of that town find themselves at a party with the Duke Lacrosse team.

When will it stop? When will men learn that women are not their property? When will men learn DO NOT RAPE?

On Sunday, March 17th 2013 these two men were found guilty of rape. They were tried as juveniles and received minimum 1 and 2 year sentences, respectfully the maximum time they will spend in a juvenile detention center is 5 years. It will be up to the center to decided their release and they will get credit for all time served. The only punishment that they received that I found fitting to the crime is: they will have to register as sex offenders for the rest of their life. Good, because that is exactly what they are.



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The Twitter Lifeline During Hurricane Sandy and the Impact of Social Media on Current Events

photo of twitter hurricane sandy pictures
When super-storm Sandy was making her way to NYC, I was sitting in my little cube at my job in California. I have a little TV in my cube and so do my coworkers, and all of the TVs were on and tuned in to the news but the sound was off and backs were turned, the faces were reading Twitter.

Every desk I walked by was pouring over a Twitter feed of some kind. That’s how I got my news, too. I read Ice-T and Coco, who were breaking down the storm from New Jersey, and Julie Klausner who was in the thick of Manhattan. Even today I’m following their updates about the storm. Julie was evacuated to a friend’s apartment with her cat, and Ice-T and Coco still have no power.

I was watching my feed as my friends in New York tweeted that they were okay, where they were, and what was happening. Later during the hurricane, I fell in love with Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, New Jersey.

The night of the storm I lay in bed and saw a RT from Bette Middler of Cory Booker. I clicked on his feed, I had no idea who he was at the time, but I saw this man responding to tweets every few seconds. ‘DM me your address I’ll come there’, when someone would say the emergency number wasn’t working he would reply with one that was. When someone said power was out he responded with “I’ll report it, I’m in the area do you need anything?” he was out all night. Three days later he’s still updating people on Twitter letting them know he’s there.

When word got out that the NYC Marathon was going to go on, I watched my feed explode with anger. People going on and on about how awful it was to not cancel it and a few hours ago I watched as they rejoiced that Bloomberg announced that due to an outcry on social media, the race had been canceled. I saw pictures of people sharing power with signs that said “We have power, please use it to charge your phones or go online”. Getting online was a connection, it let us know you were there and what you needed.

I saw the storms devastation on Instagram and Twitpics, I saw the share link for the Google doc that was listing displace persons, and I read the hashtag #NOLATONYC where survivors of Katrina reached out and comforted people over 1,300 miles away.

Like it or not our lives play out over social media. Or lives intersect over social media. It is an age of rapid fire information. And is that always such a bad thing?



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Hey Girl: Paul Ryan Gosling Goes Web-Viral


Is everyone familiar with the Feminist Ryan Gosling meme? You know, it’s a picture of Ryan Gosling (who is still super dreamy, but I think that he really looked his best when he was on that short-lived Young Hercules* show) with text that conveys really compassionate, understanding, entirely-too-perfect boyfriend lines that often involve an in-depth knowledge of feminist thinkers.

It’s an adorable meme and it’s fun to imitate. I actually made a set with my favorite handsomes specifically catered to me. Pictures of Avan Jogia seeming to commiserate with my frustrations over Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse being canceled have a lot more to do with poking fun at myself than anything else, but it was an entertaining exercise.

Well, you guys have probably read that Paul Ryan is a terrible nightmare for American women. In my experience, die-hard Republicans who are opposed to abortion state that they do not wish for women to be jailed for having abortions, but simply wish to ban the practice. Paul Ryan goes beyond that. (He also goes beyond wanting to ban any recognition of same-sex couples and wants to ban adoption by same-sex couples, which is kind of the political position of an over-the-top 1980s supervillain)

So, the Paul Ryan Gosling meme is a pretty brilliant way of conveying Paul Ryan’s 17th-century views in a humorous way. I don’t think that it’s inappropriate to do this—I think that it’s perfect. Like the pointillist portrait of Rick Santorum comprised entirely of tiny images of gay porn, except that there is actual substance to Paul Ryan Gosling. Tweets like: “Hey girl, I support your right to choose: kitchen or laundry,” is kind of beautiful in their simplicity.

If you aren’t following @PaulRyanGosling on twitter, then you probably should. It’s worth a laugh. And sharing something humorous rather than something political can reach more people.

A lot of people know about Paul Ryan’s alleged** handsomeness, and about the fact that he apparently mostly likes musicians and philosophers with whom the feeling is not mutual (Rage Against The Machine, of course, but it’s important to note that fiercely pro-choice Ayn Rand would have detested Paul Ryan). A lot of people know that his social views are ultra-conservative, but I think that it is important to keep reminding people. And humor is a wonderful vehicle for that.

*Before you cry foul, he was 18-19 then. Even though it was the 1990s, he somehow had better hair back then than he does now.

**Is anyone else a little weirded out when people talk about Paul Ryan being handsome? Like, I wouldn’t say “no,” but that says way more about my terrible, terrible sexual decisions than it does about his appearance. He has nice eyes, but I kind of think that he looks like some sort of albino goblin king.***

***I actually came up with a fairy tale involving the 2012 election. A retired knight who is now an aged but handsome baron and an albino goblin king team up to seize control of the kingdom from the kindly king whom some of the peasants view as a “dark lord.” And there was something about Jon Huntsman with a bow and arrow and being left out of the adventure but I don’t quite remember.



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Gen Y Wants to Keep Work and Facebook Separate

photo of facebook screenshot pictures

According to a report from Business Wire, researchers have supposedly discovered that Generation Y workers (defined as ages 18-34)  don’t think they should be free to tweet on the job.

The study finds that only 31% of “youth” workers (26% of women and 36% of men) believe they should be allowed to access and use social media while at work, while 38% believe that their work should not be able to view their social media activity. The 4500 respondents hail from the UK, Canada and …

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