This is old news if you happen to live in Australia, but may be of significant use to those of us in America who are still trying to instill a common definition of rape into our culture . The Sydney gang rapes, which occurred in 2000, involved (as Wikipedia relates): . . . a series of gang rape attacks by a group of up to fourteen Lebanese Australian men led by Bilal Skaf, against white[1] Australian girls, some as young as 14, in Sydney, Australia. . . . [resulting in sentences of] more than 240 years in jail time handed out to nine men. The problem, however, has been explained by Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, as one of uncovered meat . Here's the scoop from our friend Jim Fryar at Real-World Libertarian : Sydney-based Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali alluded to the infamous Sydney gang rapes, suggesting the attackers were not entirely to blame. While not specifically referring to the rapes, brutal attacks on four women for which a group of young Lebanese men received long jail sentences, She...

Every so often you find a thought-provoking paragraph lodged in the middle of a post about something else. That's sort of the case here. At The Curvature , Cara has a post covering her problems with a new study about sexual miscommunication between men and women (she's also concerned with the coverage of the controversy). Hidden away in there is a paragraph in which she provides a definition of rape that I want to be sure my son understands as he grows up : But rape (of a woman by a man; switch identifiers for other types) is not necessarily a situation where a man hears and understands “no” but ignores it. Rape is when the man has sex with a woman who has not consented. If she says “no” but he genuinely thinks that means “keep going” for some dumbass reason, it’s still rape. If she gives more subtle resistance like “it’s getting late” and he keeps going without her willful participation, it’s rape. I know that our laws don’t reflect this. I know that few people seem to get ...

(h/t The Curvature)

From Cara at The Curvature : Think it was bad when Southwest Airlines started kicking women off of their planes for dressing “inappropriately?” Well they’ve apparently got nothing on the Transportation Security Administration. They recently forced female traveler Mandi Hamlin to remove her nipple piercings before allowing her to board a plane — even though she offered to show her piercings to the female officer and required pliers to remove the jewelry. The commentary suggests to me, again, why Feminists and Libertarians follow many of the same lines of thought: I also don’t think that there’s any huge leap in calling this sexual assault. Granted, it doesn’t seem as though any of the officers touched her. But they did force her to touch private areas of her own body for their personal enjoyment, despite her protestations and despite the pain it caused her. This was not a security measure, but the agents used their authority as an excuse for the abuse. Other than sexual assault, I don’t...

Cara has a difficult post up at The Curvature that deals with a lot of my worst dilemmas as a Libertarian--and, I think, finds her grappling with similar issues as a feminist. When you believe in freedom of choice, then you also have to believe in the freedom to make bad choices. The posts discuss a proposed Arizona law allowing the State to detain and involuntarily hospitalize pregnant methamphetamine addicts. Last week, reader Jessica sent me a link to a story about new legislation being considered in her state that would forcibly imprison pregnant women suspected of being addicted to methamphetamine, sending them to drug treatment facilities against their will. The Arizona bill is, of course, designed to protect fetuses, not women.... Indeed: the state has a specific role to protect people from harm, so long as the person isn’t a pregnant woman being harmed by the government who thinks that pregnancy gives them total control over her body. The bill would expand the child abuse stat...

Telling this story now is probably like showing naked baby pictures, since my boy-girl twins are twelve and full of elbows, hormones, and acute hypersensitivity.... But they took baths together when they were little, so there really wasn't any question--even at age two--about differences in anatomy. So one night we had friends over, and--you know--we're trotting the kids out in their PJs to say good night to all the artificial aunts and uncles, and my daughter proudly announces, "Hey, everybody! I've got a vagina, and he only has a penis!" Another moment of proud parenthood. Nor have I noticed any deep depravity or psychological fall-out from (a) their learning the correct terms for their body parts at age two, or (b) being exposed to nekkid siblings. (Unless it was the other day when my son wanted to take his AK-47 to McDonalds, but I digress.... And I didn't let him have the thirty-round banana clip, so he trashed the whole idea.) Now at The Curvature , C...

The reason you need to keep Cara's The Curvature on your "must read" list is that you simply won't find this material anywhere else, and nobody is willing to take the same unflinching look at it that she does. This one you have to read for yourself, so I'm not going to excerpt it. But here's a teaser: At Ithaca College a Resident Assistant admits to raping a female student and is not fired. When questioned, the appropriate bureaucrat explains, first, that this is a personnel issue, so the details can't be discussed. But as a general rule, the office looks at the offense, what the student employee has learned in the situation, and what would be the appropriate decision. For example, had the RA been dealing drugs, he would have been fired immediately.... For rape, not so much. Oh, and by the way, it is Ithaca College policy that if a rape is reported and the woman can identify her assailant, no warning is issued to anybody else. You just have to read this...

Over at The Curvature Cara has a story about a middle-school biology teacher who apparently got a wild hair and decided to show the old anti-abortion standard The Silent Scream to his class one day after a test. No notice to parents; students just told to look away if it bothered them. This led to a predictable outcry, and lots of bureaucratic dodging of responsibility, but the most interesting aspect of the whole post (at least to me) came from Cara when she visited You-Tube to view the film herself: Has anyone out there ever actually seen The Silent Scream? I found it on YouTube once and tried to watch it. It’s only a half hour long, and I assumed that it would be either so ridiculous as to be amusing or so infuriating as to pop a vein in my forehead. Instead, it was just really fucking boring. I’ll admit that I have the attention span of a flea, but I couldn’t make it past more than 10 minutes of the 30 minute film. Yeah, it was outrageous. Yeah, it was ridiculous. It was also n...

The Curvature has another one of those posts you won't see in the national news : "a New York appellate court in Monroe County ruled that New York must recognize legal same-sex marriages from outside the state." Here's a little more: Even though gay couples may not legally marry in New York, the appellate court in Rochester held that a gay couple’s 2004 marriage in Canada must be respected under the state’s longstanding “marriage recognition rule,” and that an employer’s denial of health benefits had discriminated against the couple on the basis of their sexual orientation. “The Legislature may decide to prohibit the recognition of same-sex marriages solemnized abroad,” a five-judge panel of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court ruled unanimously in rejecting a 2006 lower court decision. “Until it does so, however, such marriages are entitled to recognition in New York.” [My in-laws live in a small community near Rochester called Pittsford when they aren'...

A basic Libertarian tenet: property rights are fundamental, and the most fundamental of all is the right to control your own body. At The Curvature, Cara angrily asks the incredible important but uncomfortable question : Why the fuck do people still keep referring to the practice of selling a child’s body to men as “forced prostitution” instead of what it is: holding a child hostage and allowing men to rape her for a set fee? Selling rape is not “forced prostitution.” It’s selling rape. The rape of a child is not sex. You cannot “have sex” with a child.” Rape is not sex. It is violence. I don't think this is an issue of political correctness; I think its one of accuracy and intellectual honesty. But, hey, that's just an insensitive Libertarian perspective.

I'm asking you to visit The Curvature and take the time to read Cara's long post on the British NHS "Know Your Limits" campaign that is actually an anti-drinking campaign, but uses women being raped to make a very bizarre argument. It is a long post, and does not lend itself to abstracting. If you want to get the most out of it, however, first visit the "Know Your Limits" site and play the game as a female. Make the most dangerous choices you can make (chat up the cute guy, take a drink, ride in a taxi home), and see what happens. Then visit Cara and find out the subtext of what's really going on.

Once again, Cara finds items for The Curvature that should appeal to any Libertarian. In this case it's In The Face of Slut-Shaming, Female Mayor Stands Her Ground , about Mayor Carmen Kontur-Gronquist, who is refusing to resign because there's a sexy photo of her in lingerie posing by a fire-engine on MySpace. First off, I'd be proud to have a mayor sexy enough to cause a stir. Second, if Bill Clinton can get head in the Oval Office.... OK I won't go there, but... It's about time that an American citizen in public office told the public where it could kiss off (and where it could kiss for that matter). I don't care what Barack Obama put up his nose as a teenager. I don't care if Mitt Romney wears Mormon underwear (although I would prefer to avoid the pictures on that one). I do know that Cara's right: this wouldn't be happening to a man.