ThinkProgress.org grimly illustrates what happens when state and local municipalities lose revenue and have to slash vital services, like law enforcement, primarily at the expense of vulnerable populations, like women and children.

Last August, a woman in Josephine County called 911 and pleaded with dispatchers to send police—“my ex-boyfriend is trying to break into my house. I’m not letting him in but he’s like, tried to break down the door and he’s tried to break into one of the windows.” The woman had good reason to be afraid of this man, as she told the dispatcher on the other side of the phone, this same abusive ex had put her in the hospital just a few weeks before. But the dispatcher has no one to send. Because the local sheriff’s department recently lost millions in federal funds, it laid off 23 of its 29 deputies and limited their availability to eight hours on Mondays through Fridays. The woman’s call to 911 took place on a Saturday.

With no deputies available, the 911 dispatcher transferred the woman to the state police—but they would not come rescue the woman either. In the words of the state police dispatcher, “I don’t have anybody to send out there. You know, obviously, if he comes inside the residence and assaults you, can you ask him to go away? Do you know if he’s intoxicated or anything?”

The woman's ex-boyfriend later plead guilty to kidnapping, assault, and sex abuse.

Josephine County, the county where this woman lives, is overwhelmingly conservative; its voters have twice rejected property tax levies to fund more law enforcement (the most recent vote was held yesterday). ThinkProgress notes that after the first round of cuts, law enforcement sent out a press release encouraging victims of domestic violence to move, noting that they would no longer be safe in Josephine County. But what's one woman being raped by her ex-boyfriend if it saves homeowners a few bucks every year, right?

Sometimes—not every time, mind you, but sometimes—the best way to demonstrate how a piece of art is sexist is by employing an equal amount of sexism in the other direction. The story of Bro-sie the Riveter is an example of a time when that tactic worked perfectly.

Holy shit, this is great news, via Reuters:

A federal judge in New York on Friday declined to temporarily halt a court order directing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to make emergency contraception available over the counter to girls of all ages.

... [U.S. District Judge Edward] Korman ordered the FDA on April 5 to lift age and point-of-access restrictions on all levonorgestrel-based emergency contraception, also known as the "morning-after" pill or "Plan B," to prevent unwanted pregnancies. The FDA has appealed that ruling.

"In my view, the defendants' appeal is frivolous and taken for the purposes of delay," Korman wrote in Friday's decision.

In less great news, Judge Korman gave the FDA until May 13 to ask a federal appeals court to stay the order, which prolongs this fight into next week.

But! In terms of satisfying public humiliation, Judge Korman declared in his Memorandum and Order that Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius decision to block young women's access to the time-sensitive drug was "politically motivated, scientifically unjustified, and contrary to agency precedent" and "so unpersuasive as to call into question her good faith."

The Order also calls the Obama administration's argument "largely an insult to the intelligence of women."

Man oh man, I'm going to be basking in the glow of Judge Korman's scathing words all day.

This bit of horror arrives courtesy of Wired.com:

An Air Force brochure on sexual assault advises potential victims not to fight off their attackers.
“It may be advisable to submit [rather] than resist,” reads the brochure (.pdf), issued to airmen at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, where nearly 10,000 military and civilian personnel are assigned. “You have to make this decision based on circumstances. Be especially careful if the attacker has a weapon.”

The brochure, acquired by Danger Room, issues a series of guidances on “risk reduction” for sexual assault. Among others, it advises people under sexual attack in parking lots to “consider rolling underneath a nearby auto and scream loud. It is difficult to force anyone out from under a car.” A public affairs officer at Shaw, Sgt. Alexandria Mosness, says she believes the brochure is current.

While the brochure also explains that sexual assault is not always committed by people who “don’t look like a rapist”—attackers “tend to have hyper-masculine attitudes,” it advises—it does not offer instruction to servicemembers on not committing sexual assault. Prevention is treated as the responsibility of potential victims.

“Rapists look for vulnerability and then exploit it in those who: are young (naive); are new to the base, deployment, area, etc.; are emotionally unstable,” the brochure (.pdf) continues.

The quoted brochure is from SC's Shaw Air Force Base, one of the largest Air Force bases in the US, a base that includes its own self-contained town supporting around 16,500 military personnel and their families. (By contrast, the closest town, Sumter, has a population of roughly 40,500.)

So it's important to remember that in the scenarios outlined in this rape-prevention brochure, the rapists that are attacking servicewomen are likely servicemen. Yet these servicemen aren't given helpful tips or training on how to avoid physically and sexually assaulting their peers.

This brochure suggests that the Air Force—these servicewomen's bosses—still don't see rape as a man's issue. It's a woman's issue, one as natural and inevitable as your monthly menses, one women should just accept unless they're dykes or drama queens or some other troublesome kind of women who rolls under cars to avoid being raped by their peers.

Hey, look, Mom: It's institutions, clubs, positions, and honors of all kinds that just happen to entirely exclude women, and a hell of a lot of them, like:

• All incarnations of the Dalai Lama, ever.
• Every annual award given by the National Sportscaster and Sportswriters Association, ever, along with the entire board.
• Everyone to ever hold “the most famous academic chair in the world.”
• Every person on U.S. banknotes ever.
• All of the Master Chefs of France and the board of the American Culinary Federation...

Henry Decker at National Memo describes President Obama's address to Planned Parenthood from earlier today:

Obama, who made history by becoming the first sitting U.S. president ever to address the group, offered a spirited defense of Planned Parenthood’s mission. Noting that one in five American women has turned to Planned Parenthood for health care services ranging from contraception to cancer screenings, Obama said “when politicians try to turn Planned Parenthood into a punching bag, they’re not just talking about you, but they’re talking about the millions of women who they serve.”
...
“There’s nothing conservative about the government injecting itself into decisions best made between a woman and her doctor” Obama noted, in a shot at Planned Parenthood’s Republican critics.

Here's video of the speech:

A 28-year-old sailor enjoying a day-long shore leave in Dubai reportedly became the target of an attempted sexual assault when she got on a bus to get back to the port. Instead, the driver parked the bus in a lot, allegedly pulled out a knife, and reportedly tried to rape her. Here's what happened next, according to The National:

The woman, an off-duty US navy sailor, knocked the knife from his grasp, broke it in two, bit his hand, wrestled him to the ground and put him in a stranglehold between her thighs.

Having beaten him into submission, she left the bus and reported the incident to her commander.

Bravo, thigh master. Bravo.

But this Dove ad—in which an FBI sketch artist draws women first the way they describe themselves, and then the way a stranger describes them—plays to female insecurities in a fucking masterful way. "These women are prettier than they think they are, so maybe I am, too." 'Course, if they'd picked some less conventionally attractive women it would be a much more powerful message... but then they probably wouldn't sell as many soaps.

This is fucking terrible:

BISMARCK, N.D. — The North Dakota Senate on Friday approved banning abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, sending what would be the most stringent abortion restrictions in the U.S. to the state’s Republican governor for his signature.

The measure would ban most abortions if a fetal heartbeat can be detected, something that can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. The House already approved the measure. Gov. Jack Dalrymple generally opposes abortion but has not said whether he will sign the bill into law.

To put things in perspective:

If North Dakota Governor Dalrymple signs this bill into law, it'll basically ban abortion in North Dakota.

Conservatives are up in arms over the fact that female soldiers can now get up in arms. Wonkette has already noted Michael Goldfarb's epic Twitter poem about how this marks the end of American honor. But other conservatives think this is part of a greater Obama scheme to destroy the US military. Here are some comments on a National Review post about the news.

Subterfuge to make it harder to garner public support for going to war. Go ahead and call me a war monger, but sometimes wars have to be fought. This is bad policy.

Open homosexuality in the ranks and women on the front lines.
I'm sure Patton, MacArthur, and Schwarzkopf are looking down on all of this with great pride.

The Left has been plotting to destroy the U.S. military for decades. It's finally succeeded.

As everything does, it gets worse when you go to Breitbart.com:

.ummm... miliatry needs em... cause recruitment is being impacted by lack of leadership... and maybe women won't mind firing on their own countrymen... you know... same gals who support late term abortion... they make good killing machines...

They will head for the hills first time they hear gunfire. Scream at the top of their lungs if they see a spider while sneaking up on the enemy. No thanks.

There is so much more after the jump and it is all so terrible.

Continue reading »

Indian spiritual leader Asaram Bapu told his followers that the 23-year-old student allegedly gang raped by six men in December was just as responsible as her attackers for her own assault. You see, she apparently didn't pray to God hard enough to prevent the rape-with-iron-bar:

Addressing his followers recently, Asaram said that when the girl encountered six drunk men "she should have taken God's name and could have held the hand of one of the men and said I consider you as my brother and should have said to the other two 'Brother I am helpless, you are my brother, my religious brother.'

She should have taken God's name and held their hands and feet... then the misconduct wouldn't have happened."

He also went on to say, "Galti ek taraf se nahi hoti hai (mistake is not committed from one side)."
The girl was gangraped on the night of December 16 in a moving bus and died nearly a fortnight later at a Singapore hospital.

"The accused were drunk. If the girl had chanted hymns to Goddess Saraswati and to Guru Diksha then she wouldn't have entered the bus...," he added.

Comforting words for women everywhere.

The Reddit meme Good Guy Greg is a one-note joke: It's a photo of a man smoking a joint, with words demonstrating why he's a good guy published on top and below the man's face. Examples include "Doesn't drink/Doesn't lecture others on why they shouldn't drink" and "Knows you forgot his name/Tells a story where someone says 'Listen, Greg.'" The female version of Good Guy Greg is Good Girl Gina. The things that Good Girl Gina likes to do are pretty different from Good Guy Greg: "Boyfriend works 2 jobs/Waits until 10pm to make dinner so it's still fresh," "Notices you checking her out/smiles and takes it as flattery," "Is a vegan/cooks you a mean Thanksgiving turkey," and "Gives you a blowjob/doesn't expect you to go down on her."

Reddit user LaTeX_Fetish scraped every Good Girl Gina picture and then categorized them. The vast majority of Good Girl Gina photos demonstrate Gina ignoring her wants and needs for a man—either sexually, through media (she prefers watching her man play video games over watching a movie, she decides not to see the Twilight movie because her man wants to see Skyfall) or through cooking. LaTeX_Fetish's full report, including a table demonstrating the percentage of different Good Girl Gina posts is here. This is the summary:

So what can we glean from all this? If someone wants to be a Good Girl, then reddit already has it figured out. A Good Girl is an object to be lusted after. A Good Girl makes sure you're sexually satisfied, either by her or someone else. A Good Girl defies stereotypes, unless they play into your desires, like when she cooks for you. A Good Girl plays your video games and watches your movies, and she'll bring you food and drinks and drugs, but a Good Girl won't talk about any of those things, because she is a Good Girl. And a Good Girl keeps quiet and doesn't rock the boat.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go barf.

Go read the whole thing, please.

(Via The Verge.)